Abstract

The article entitled “Ruyer and the lessons of Instinct” focuses on the problem of the anthropological difference. André Conrad first shows that for any comprehensive ethology (Fabre, von Uexküll, Buytendijk) instinct depends neither on the mechanism of “autonomous sequences” (Lorenz, Tinbergen) nor on “regulated behaviours”: it is an embryology organised and developed accordingly to a “thematic action” (Ruyer). Thus, if human being is separated from animality by the originality of the symbolic function (Cassirer and Langer), the thematic action does not separate social embryology –both cultural and political– from the mystery of Life. That is this precise “Thematism” (Ruyer) that allows us to understand both the difference and community between living beings.