Intuition

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INTUITION

INTUITION . The term comes from the Latin intuitio, which is derived from intueri, meaning to look at attentively (with astonishment or admiration), gaze at, contemplate, or pay attention to. At first confined to direct visual experience, the term came to denote the process of insight as well as its object. Intuition in this first sense is a direct "look" at a particular thing that shows itself immediately in its concrete fullness without the mediation of any other knowledge, procedure, or content. The roots of this meaning lie in the visual character of the Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew mentalities as reflected in the Platonic-Augustinian tradition. In the later and wider sense, the word designates the direct apprehension of an object in its present, concrete reality through either sense perception (including memory and imagination) or the intellect. Intuition is today almost exclusively understood in a metaphorical sense; the word designates the human capacity for instant and immediate understanding of an object, a person, a situation, and so forth. The immediacy of intuition sets it in opposition to the discursive function of the intellect, which is mediated by concepts and propositions. In this sense, intuition entails the direct, nonmediated presence of the object to the knowing faculty; it sometimes extends to a partial or total fusion of subject and object. Knowledge of this kind excludes all rational, gnoseological, or even psychological analysis or justification.

The many, sometimes divergent, uses of the word can be classified into several distinct types: (1) sensory (aesthetic) or empirical intuition is a nonconceptual, nonrational grasp of reality; (2) intellectual, logical, or mathematical intuition is the self-evident grasp of fundamental ideas, axioms, principles, or truths; (3) essential intuition is a grasp of the inner essence of a thing, a being, a cause, a situation; and (4) spiritual intuition is the immediate contemplation of the highest order of things, an insight gained neither through the senses nor through intellectual reflection, but stemming from the "inner man" and akin to the receiving of a revelation.

The Philosophical Tradition

In Plato's works, especially the dialogue Phaedrus, with its myth of the soul that contemplates the heavenly ideas before its embodiment, intuition is of these eternal essences, which are visible only to the intellect. In Plotinus, for whom the nous is able to apprehend the true world in itself, and the Neoplatonic mystics, the role of intuition in the spiritual sense looms large. Aristotle recognized the existence of intuitive knowledge (Posterior Analytics 1.9.76a21) in relation to the first principles, which are not in need of any demonstration. Augustine of Hippo, who believed that "the truth lies in the inner man," considered intuition a form of mental contemplation. Thomas Aquinas attributed to God the veritable creative intuition; he defined human intuitive cognition as "the presence, in some way, of the intelligible to the intellect" (Commentaries on the Sentences 1d3.94a5). The medieval scholastics used "intuitive cognition," as opposed to "abstractive cognition," to designate knowledge in which the object is delivered directly to the senses. For Descartes, intuition constitutes each successive link in a chain of deductions that are noninferential concepts of the "pure and attentive mind." For Spinoza, it is the third and highest degree of cognition. Kant recognized only sensible intuition. The German Idealists (Schelling, Fichte, Schopenhauer) and Husserlian phenomenologists viewed intellectual intuition as a deep and instantaneous understanding of things, essences, and situations given in perception. For Henri Bergson, intuition signifies an immediate awareness akin to instinct and sympathy, capable of penetrating its object while unfolding in the unique, qualitative time ("duration") of each living being. Bergson opposed intuition to intelligence, the proper dimensions of which are geometrical space and mechanical clock-time; for him, intuition alone is capable of grasping the dynamic nature of things in its original simplicity.

Religious Intuition

In religion, the term intuition functions on several levels; the specific meanings are mostly variants of the spiritual intuition defined previously. The following aspects of religious intuition may be distinguished: (1) the understanding of divine commands; (2) the perception of the divine in religious or numinous experience, in the sense of a peering into the mysterious elusive presence of the transcendent in ways simultaneously sensory (seeing, hearing, or "smelling" divinity), intellectual, and suprasensory; (3) the illuminating understanding of the meanings hidden in metaphors and other literary tropes of sacred writings; and (4) the means of communicating and communion among believers.

All forms of mysticism and Gnosticism rely on intuition in the formulation of cognitive claims regarding the ineffable understanding of religious mysteries. The highest states of mystical contemplation may be conceived as uninterrupted chains of intuitive acts. The experience of nonduality in Advaita Vedānta, for example, is based on the insight of oneness and the disappearance of the distance between subject and object. "Suchness" (tathatā ) in Mādhyamika Buddhism may be called an intuition of the ultimate as the invisible reality underlying all things. The Buddha's enlightenment constitutes an intuitive peak—the highest form of mystical contemplation. Zen Buddhism, with its abhorrence for the discursive intellect, emphasizes satori as the immediate grasp of the Buddha nature. The crux of Zen meditational disciplines, whether of gradual enlightenment (in the "zazen only" Sōtō school) or of sudden enlightenment (the kōan -solving Rinzai school), lies in the all-pervading illumination of the mind, an insight that reaches into that which is beyond any subjectivity or objectivity.

In Jewish mysticism, the secret contents of the Qabbalah are considered highly intuitive, obtained by a form of supernatural illumination. The poverty of ordinary human faculties does not allow proper cognition; intuition alone, tantamount in its "fine points" to divine inspiration, can create a felicitous "science of God" that reasoning is incapable of encompassing. Hence the claim, characteristic of Jewish mysticism, that true tradition and true intuition coincide, a tenet that plays an important part in the history of Qabbalah, that of maintaining the balance between tradition and innovation.

In Islam, intuition plays a role in connection with al-ʿaql, a cognitive faculty often mentioned in the Qurʾān that binds humankind to God (the root ʿql means literally "to bind"). Religious knowledge is participatory knowledge, higher than rational yet not opposed to the intellect. Direct vision by a "third eye," as opposed to the indirect knowledge yielded by intellectual ratiocination, is emphasized. In Islamic theology and philosophy, but especially in Ṣūfī mysticism, where the heart is traditionally considered the locus of intelligence and spirituality, the actually intuitive "knowledge of the heart" is connected with the creative imagination of the perfected universal man; such knowledge alone counts before the divine and is essential for salvation. In the esoteric tradition, some commentators of the Qurʾān considered the intuitive faculty a gift of revelation by the Holy Spirit (the archangel Gabriel), an illumination received by the intellect.

In Daoism, the doctrine of "no knowledge" or "ignorance" is aimed at obtaining true wisdom or intuition. Creativity is unconscious of accumulated technical knowledge, but it relies on the certainty and precision of intuitive knowledge.

Bibliography

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Bergson, Henri. Introduction à la métaphysique. Paris, 1903.

Hadamard, Jacques. Subconscient, intuition, logique dans la recherche scientifique. Paris, 1947.

Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913). Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. London, 1931.

Lévinas, Emmanuel. Théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl. New ed. Paris, 1963.

Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. London, 1957.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. "Intellect and Intuition: Their Relationship from the Islamic Perspective." Studies in Comparative Religion 13 (Winter–Spring 1979): 65–74.

Palliard, Jacques. Intuition et réflexion. Paris, 1925.

Penzo, Giorgio. "Riflessioni sulla intuitio tomista e sulla intuitio heideggeriana." Aquinas 9 (1966): 87–102.

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Schuon, Frithjof. L'œil du cœur. Paris, 1950.

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Verdú, Alfonso. Abstraktion und Intuition als Wege zur Wahrheit in Yoga und Zen. Munich, 1965.