Raymond Ruyer

Raymond Ruyer (1902–1987) was a French philosopher in the late 20th century. Author of many important works, he covered several topics such as the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of informatics, the philosophy of value and others. His most popular book is The Gnosis of Princeton in which he presents his own philosophic views under the pretence that he was representing the views of an imaginary group of American scientists. He developed a theory of consciousness of all living matter, named panpsychism, which was a major influence on philosophers such as Simondon, Deleuze and Guattari.

Raymond Ruyer was born in 1902 in the village of Plainfaing department of Vosges, France. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure, passing the aggregation in philosophy with a thesis on the phenomenology of knowledge. In 1937 he published his first book, "The body and the conscience".

During World War II Raymond Ruyer was a prisoner of war in Germany from 1940 to 1944. Upon his return he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Université de Nancy, where he developed his theories of the philosophical implications of various branches of science, mainly embryology, biology and informatics. At the same time he continued his research on the theory of value which he had started before the war.

In the 1970s he was named corresponding member of the Institut de France. He was also offered a position at the Sorbonne which he declined, preferring to continue working in Nancy, where he was friends with many other scientists.

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