RAVAISSON, FÉLIX. — French philosopher, born in Namur (Belgium) on 23 October 1813, died in Paris on 18 May 1900. An independent spirit,
he did not join the followers of Cousin (v.), who at that time dominated French academic circles, and never obtained a university chair. He pursued his career in public service as an official of the Ministry of Education.
Schelling (v.) in Munich, he felt his influence, together Maine de Biran (v.) Aristotle (v.), whom he subsequently studied in the Essai sur la miraphyique d'Aristote (2 vols., Paris 1837–46; partial Italian translation edited by A. Tilgher, Florence 1922), which, despite remaining incomplete, is a work of considerable value. Other important writings are the essay De l'habitude (Paris 1858; subsequent editions) and the Rapport sur la philos. en France au XIXe siècle (ibid. 1868); edited by C. Devivaise, Testament et fragments (ibid. 1932). For R. (as for Schelling), at the foundation of the universe there is a principle that is spontaneous creative activity, which organizes reality, of which mechanical necessity is only a secondary and superficial manifestation. positivism (v.) is its failure to take account of this free and creative principle, which is discovered in things, in us, and in God: in nature as dispersed, in us as concentrated in personality and in the unity of consciousness, and in God as supreme perfection and absolute order. God is a person and his perfection shines forth in the world, but his existence cannot be rationally demonstrated, nor can his nature be known. God is apprehended through an inner intuition (Biran) and through immediate intuition of the beauty and harmony of the universe.
Through Schelling, R. is connected with the scholastic tradition and constructs a metaphysics of an intuitionistic and anti-intellectualist character that would influence both Boutroux’s contingentism and Bergson’s intuitionism.