Intuition

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Intuition (Latinintueri, to look into) is apsychological andphilosophical term which designates the process of immediate apprehension or perception of an actual fact, being, or relation between two terms and its results. Hence the wordsIntuitionism orIntuitionalism mean those systems inphilosophy which consider intuition as the fundamental process of ourknowledge or at least give to intuition a large place (the Scottishschool), and the words Intuitive Morality and Intuitional Ethics denote thoseethical theories which base morality on an intuitive apprehension of the moral principles andlaws or consider intuition as capable of distinguishing the moral qualities of our actions (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson Reid, Dugald Stewart). As an element ofeducational method intuition means the grasp ofknowledge by concrete, experimental orintellectual, ways of apprehension. The immediate perception of sensuous or material objects by our senses is called sensuous or empirical intuition, the immediate apprehension ofintellectual or immaterial objects by our intelligence is calledintellectual intuition. It may be remarked thatKant calls empirical intuitions ourknowledge of objects through sensation, and pure intuition our perception of space and time as the forms a priori of sensibility. Again, our intuitions may be called external or internal, according as the objects perceived are external objects or internal objects or acts.

The importance of intuition as a process and element ofknowledge is easily seen if we observe that it is intuition which furnishes us with the first experimental data as well as with the primary concepts and the fundamental judgments or principles which are the primitive elements and the foundation of every scientific andphilosophical speculation. This importance, however, has been falsely exaggerated by some modernphilosophers to an extent which tends to destroy bothsupernatural religion and the validity ofhumanreason. There has been an attempt, on their part, to make of intuition, under different names, the central and fundamental element of our power of acquiringknowledge, and the only process or operation that can put us into contact with reality. So we have the creation or intuition of theego andnon ego in the philosophy of Fichte; the intuition orintellectual vision ofGod claimed by theOntologists in naturaltheology (seeONTOLOGISM), W. James's unconscious intuition or religious experience (The Varieties of Religious Experience), Bergson's philosophy of pure intuition the experience or experiential consciousness of the Divine of theModernists (Encyclical "Pascendi gregis"). According to theOntologists, ourknowledge of notions endowed with the character of necessity and universality, as well as ouridea of the Infinite, are possible only through an antecedent intuition ofGod present in us. Otherphilosophers start from the principle that human reasoning is unable to give us theknowledge of things in themselves. The data of common sense, ourintellectual concepts, and the conclusions reached through the process of discursive reasoning do not, they say primarily represent reality, but acting under diverse influences such as those of our usual and practical needs, common sense and discursive reason result in a deformation of reality; the value of their data and conclusions is one of practical usefulness rather than one oftrue representation (seePRAGMATISM). Intuition alone, they maintain, is able to put us in communication with reality and give us atrueknowledge of things. Especially in regard to religioustruths, some insist, it is only through intuition and internal experience that we can acquire them. "God", says theProtestant A. Sabatier in hisEsquisse d'une philosophie de la religion, "is not a phenomenon which can be observed outside of the ego, atruth to be demonstrated bylogical reasoning. He who does not feel Him in his heart, will never find Him outside . . . . We never become aware of ourpiety without at the same time feeling a religious emotion and perceiving in this very emotion, more or less obscurely, the object and the cause of religion, namely,God." The arguments used by theSchoolmen to prove theexistence of God, say theModernists, have now lost all their value; it is by the religious feeling, by an intuition of the heart that we apprehendGod (Encycl. "Pascendi gregis" and "II programma dei modernisti").

Such theories have their source in the principle of absolute subjectivism and relativism — the most fundamentalerror inphilosophy. Starting withKant's proposition that we cannotknow things as they are in themselves but only as they appear to us, that is, under the subjective conditions that ourhumannature necessarily imposes on them, they arrive at the conclusion that our rationalknowledge is subjectively relative, and that its concepts, principles, and process of reasoning are therefore essentially unable to reach external andtranscendental realities. Hence their recourse to intuition andimmanence. But it is easy to show that if intuition isnecessary in every act ofknowledge, it remains essentially insufficient in our present life, for scientific andphilosophical reflection. In ourknowledge of nature we start from observation; but observation remains fruitless if it is not verified by a series of inductions and deductions. In ourknowledge ofGod, we may indeed start from our nature and from our insufficiency and aspirations, but if we want toknow Him we have to demonstrate, by discursive reasoning, His existence as an external and transcendent Cause and Supreme End. We may indeed, in Ethics have an intuition of the notion ofduty, of the need of a sanction; but these intuitive notions have no moral value if they are not connected with the existence of a Supreme Ruler and Judge, and this connection can be known only through reasoning. Thetrue nature, place, and value of intuition inhumanknowledge are admirably put forth in theScholastic theory ofknowledge. For theSchoolmen the intuitive act ofintellectualknowledge is, by its nature, the most perfect act ofknowledge, since it is an immediate apprehension of and contact with reality in its concrete existence, and our supreme reward in thesupernatural order will consist in the intuitive apprehension ofGod by our intelligence: thebeatific vision. But in our present conditions of earthly life, ourknowledge must of necessity make use of concepts and reasoning. All ourknowledge has its starting-point in the intuitive data of sense experience, but in order to penetrate the nature of these data, theirlaws and causes, we must have recourse to abstraction and discursive reasoning. It is also through those processes and through them alone that we can arrive at the notion of immaterial beings and ofGod himself (St. Thomas, "Contra Gentes", I, 12; "Summa Theologica" I:84-88, etc.) . Our mind has the intuition of primary principles (intellectus) but their application, in order to give us a scientific andphilosophicalknowledge of things, is subject to thelaws of abstraction and successive reasoning (ratio, discursus, cf.I:58:3,II-II:49:5, ad 2um). Such a necessity is, as it were, a normal defect of human intelligence; it is the natural limit which determines the place of thehumanmind in the scale ofintellectual beings.

Concepts and reasoning therefore are in themselves inferior to intuition; but they are the normal processes ofhumanknowledge. They are not, however a deformation of reality, though they give only an imperfect and inadequate representation of reality — and the more so according to the excellency of the objects represented — they are atrue representation of it.

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