Raymond Ruyer

French philosopher (1902–1987), specialist in the philosophy of biology and animal behavior. In the wiki's context, Merleau-Ponty's primary source for the animal and embryological material in the 1954–55 Institution course. MP follows Ruyer's 1953 article "Les conceptions nouvelles de l'instinct" (published in Les Temps Modernes under MP's own editorship) very closely for data — Lorenz's experiments on imprinting, Tinbergen on supra-normal stimuli, Gesell on embryonic behavior, Piéron on sleep — but refuses Ruyer's finalism and his realism of "true forms." The term "experimental Platonism," which MP adopts approvingly, is Ruyer's.

Summary

Ruyer is not one of MP's major interlocutors, but he is a crucial intermediary. The Institution course's treatment of "Institution and Life" (animal institution, embryological plasticity, imprinting) depends on Ruyer as a reading of the then-recent literature in animal behavior and theoretical biology. MP does not cite Lorenz, Tinbergen, and Gesell directly; he cites them through Ruyer, whose footnotes are paraphrased throughout the opening chapters of the Institution course. The Lawlor/Massey translators of Institution and Passivity note: "Merleau-Ponty's references to Ruyer, which are extremely precise, make sense only through some rather long quotations that we have reproduced in the endnotes below."

What MP takes from Ruyer: the data of animal imprinting (geese, herons, jackdaws following their human observers as substitute parents); the data of embryological development as already "behavior" (Gesell); the data of supra-normal stimuli (eggs that are more spotted than real eggs, more typical than typical — which Ruyer calls "experimental Platonism"); and the general framework in which animal behavior is not reducible to mechanical causation.

What MP does not take from Ruyer: Ruyer's finalism. Ruyer argues that the unity of a true form depends on "the world of essences" — a neo-Platonist realism that MP rejects. MP's move: keep the data, refuse the metaphysics. "The unity of cohesion of the true form is either for God, not in-itself, or unexplained. Return to the problem of being for-itself in the true form, which the finalist solution forgets" (122 verso).

Role in the wiki sources

  • merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity (1954–55 course) — the primary site of engagement. "Institution and Life" section (13–19) is almost entirely a paraphrase of Ruyer's 1953 article; the editors have reproduced Ruyer's passages in the endnotes. MP also engages Ruyer critically in the Passivity course's opening pages (122–124), where Ruyer's "true form" realism is the immediate target of MP's development of the perceptual-ontology view

Key points from MP's reading

  • Ruyer is the source of the Lorenz material — the geese following Lorenz; the starred heron adopting its human keeper; the jackdaw that tries to feed Lorenz bread-paste as a mate. MP cites these via Ruyer, not via Lorenz directly
  • Ruyer is the source of the "experimental Platonism" concept — Ruyer's term for the phenomenon of supra-normal stimuli. MP adopts the term approvingly: it "echoes the thought of institution, since institution is concerned to surpass the opposition of fact and essence" (editors' note at 17)
  • Ruyer's embryological data anchors MP's claim that institution is already at the biological level — Gesell on twins picking up pills with identical postural attitudes; the embryo as already "behavior" regulated by semicircular canals and respiratory movements
  • Ruyer's finalism is rejected — "if [Ruyer] does not think 'substance,' one cannot claim the notion of in-itself for the benefit of the form. If one abandons 'punctualism,' what one considers is not the existent insofar as it exists... but an existent surveyed from above, a spectacle or landscape" (122 verso). See the question of what MP keeps and what he refuses for the fuller analysis
  • MP disagrees with Ruyer on the ontological priority of the perceived world — Ruyer wants to ground forms in "true forms in themselves"; MP wants to ground them in the perceptual ontology of Gestalten-in-a-field

Connections

  • is the source for MP's animal-institution material in institution
  • coined experimental Platonism — adopted by MP for the supra-normal-stimulus phenomenon; radicalised by Beith 2018
  • contrasts with MP on the question of finalism — Ruyer's "true form" realism is rejected; MP's perceptual ontology is affirmed
  • is the intermediary for Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, Arnold Gesell — MP cites them through Ruyer
  • also cited for the dream-as-organic-sketch analogy — Ruyer's line that "the primary consciousness of the embryo or of the instinctive animal must be conceived, in many regards, as similar to dream consciousness in humans"
  • is a contemporary of MP, writing in the same French philosophical milieu (Les Temps Modernes editorship)
  • belongs to a tradition of French philosophy of biology that includes Canguilhem, Simondon, and later Deleuze

Open Questions

  • Ruyer's mature work (Néofinalisme, 1952; La genèse des formes vivantes, 1958) develops a systematic finalism that MP never engages. Would MP's perceptual ontology hold against Ruyer's mature position?
  • MP's use of Ruyer is selective: the imprinting and embryological data are taken seriously, but Ruyer's theoretical framework is refused. Is this a fair reading, or does MP miss what makes Ruyer's data intelligible in the first place?
  • The Lorenz/Tinbergen material MP cites via Ruyer has been superseded by contemporary ethology. Does MP's argument survive the updating?
  • Is "experimental Platonism" a useful concept on its own terms, or does MP's adoption of it serve a rhetorical function (providing a bridge between fact and essence that MP needs for institution)?

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity — the primary source. "Institution and Life" section (13–19) paraphrases Ruyer's 1953 article "Les conceptions nouvelles de l'instinct." The Passivity course's opening (122–124) critiques Ruyer's "true form" realism while accepting the data. The translators' endnotes to the course reproduce Ruyer's passages at length, showing how closely MP is following the source