The Royal We

In retrospect, it's obvious that an avowed Neo-Platonist's philosophy will end with a new myth.  In the end, it's even the same old myth, really the only myth -- the story of how the divine appears in the world, and the story of how, by recognizing or remembering the divine, we tend to converge with it.  Ruyer self consciously ends his masterpiece with a modern version of the metaphysical myth, and at the same time assures us that there is no way to turn this myth into objective knowledge.  For Ruyer, all metaphysics is mythical by its nature.  So the myth is not just his optional flight of poetic fancy, but is necessitated by a world of individual transspatial forms.  This is because each form is in a sense closed on to itself, an absolute autosubjectivity that ultimately knows nothing beyond its self, even if it also knows that this self appears to have boundaries.  Naturally though, we are just one of these forms.  So the connection with the other forms is never through direct observation, but only through analogy, inference, or the sort of 'divine seeing' we call intuition -- in short, through myth.  Nevertheless, if it should happen that all the individual forms are in truth One, why then our myth would become reality, and repeating it to ourselves would turn us, and everything else, into God.

Ruyer's theory poses the same problem as every metaphysical theory, the problem that leads us to call them myths.  How can a particular creature, that is clearly a limited part of the universe, someone encompass the whole thing from a divine perspective? How can we be us and at the same time be God?  Every metaphysics suffers from this problem because it takes the God's eye view and attempts to exhaustively describe reality as if from outside (NF, 225)  The attempt can't help but fall into contradiction or infinite regress when we try to describe our describing, etc ... In a sense, we might even consider this the opposite paradox of the axiological cogito with which we began.  Any particular meaningful statement we make -- even, "the world is meaningless" -- automatically proves that there exist meaningful statements.  By contrast, every total metaphysical theory we propose creates a contradiction in the every act of proposing it.  One activity is self-positing, the other self-negating.  We exist; therefore we are not everything.

The problem of how we can articulate a theory of everything from within everything corresponds to the problem Ruyer faces in defining the notion of God within his system.  He has told us that all real beings are absolute domains, unified forms of activity held together by their striving for a transspatial Ideal.  And he's shown us many of these individuals, along with the three broad classes they fall into -- physical quanta, organic forms, and consciousnesses.  His universe is constructed entirely of these fibers of individuality that split and bifurcate and transform into one another.  Since these seem to occur in a sort of 'colonial' hierarchy where individuals subsume sub-individuals and in their turn become the 'material' for super-individuals, the question arises of whether there is a largest individual.  More precisely, the question arises of whether this theoretical largest individual would actually count as an individual?  Is the totality of the universe, the collection of all finalist activities, itself a finalist activity, an absolute domain?  Does the universe as a whole aim for some Ideal?  As with metaphysics, we encounter here a paradox of self-reference when we try to apply the concept of finalism at this largest scale.  If the only real entities are the individual finalist activities, then their collection is not itself an individual, which proves that finalism actually isn't universal, and perhaps even implies that there is no such real thing as 'the universe'.  On the other hand, if we say that this totality forms an individual which claims to be the largest finalist activity, we run into a problem of infinite regress, since it seems we would always need to add this largest activity to the set of all activities to create a new larger set, and so on ...

If every finality presupposes agent, unitary domain of work, and ideal, does the finality of the world, that is, the fact that it is assembled in such a way as to render particular finalist activities possible, require in its turn agent, unitary domain, and ideal? God as Sense of senses or End of ends is thus no more intelligible than God as Cause of causes or Being of beings. In both cases, one is caught between an infinite regress and the negation of the concept one sought to raise to the second power—which seems to reduce the concept itself to a fantasy.  Either the Sense of senses is senseless or we have to search for the sense of the sense of senses, and so forth. (NF, 240)

If the only realities are individual finalist activities, then a God which transcends these and orders them as if from outside would not be real.  But without a God, we have no explanation of why the individual finalist activities exist nor why they form continuous fibers and even seem to compose the elaborate and often harmonious tapestry we call the Cosmos. God, it turns out, is a problem whether he exists or not.

Ruyer's solution to this problem is very interesting.  He advocates a form of gnosticism.  That is, he thinks God indeed exists, but that he hides himself.  Here is how his myth ends.

In brief, the creation of real beings is so successful that beings are at once free and yet made to work in a direction in which creation would encounter no obstacle. Provided they labor and exploit their faculties, they discover all that is indispensable to their existence: energy, material, fields of action of all kinds. To the point that they sometimes believe themselves to be true gods, children of chaos, the only conscious beings, the sole beings capable of judgment, choice, and projects. Creation is carried out so well that it remains invisible to the creatures. God guides beings without impelling them. And when beings, while benefiting from the resources of creation and using their language and brain to speak, declare that they have realized that God is only a myth, it is at that moment that God is satisfied and can proclaim his creation good. (NF, 227)

Of course, the original gnostics believed that God was hidden because he was removed from the world, hidden behind it, in transcendence.  By contrast, Ruyer's God is hidden in plain sight, hidden within the world, immanently.  This is a very difficult thought that can seem like attempt to square the circle.  He ends up asserting the reality of distinct individual finalist activities at the same time that he asserts their unity.  Ruyer has naturally been preparing the ground for this conclusion throughout the book by highlighting the analogy between and continuity of the three types of individuals he's discussed.  All his individuals have the same overall form of absolute survey.  Nevertheless, this threatens to reduce the world to a single individual at the root of the analogy.  It's only if I keep in mind that the way the individuals are distinct is different from the way they are the same -- if diversity and unity happen on different conceptual 'levels' -- that I can see this as a solution to the problem.  All the individuals are different expressions of the same process of individuation.  God is the structure of this process rather than any particular example of it.  He is embedded in the world without being of it. 

There is one and only one way of escaping the contradiction: to identify God not with a being, a sense, or an activity transcendent to the world but with the two poles of all finalist activities whose totality constitutes the world. God is thus supreme Agent as well as supreme Ideal; and "Creativity" cannot be distinct from a God who is at once and indissociably Agent and Ideal. (NF, 240)

Only finalist activities exist. God also exists.  Yet God is not himself a finalist activity.  He is Finalist Activity.  Process. The Form of all activity.  God is the structure of freedom, the structure of striving after an Ideal, the structure of the actual-virtual, Agent-Ideal split and the Activity of being/knowing this split implies.  Ruyer has already told us that this is a mythical and somewhat mystical conclusion.  Activity in itself is ungraspable and unknowable except through its expression in the particular activities that we are.  And yet the endless bifurcation and colonization of these activities never exhausts the Form of Activity.  It's a peculiar and paradoxically satisfying ending for NeoFinalism -- precisely because it isn't one.