INTUITIONISM. — A philosophical term whose meaning cannot always be precisely defined, sometimes replaced by the alternative term intuitionism. In general, it designates intuition (v.) or to intuitive knowledge an importance and function superior or special in comparison with other forms of knowledge. In this sense, intuitionism is distinguished from or opposed to rationalism, intellectualism, etc.; in relation to these, in its polemical positions (characteristic above all of contemporary philosophy), it presents itself negatively as anti-rationalistic and
anti-intellectualistic. In itself, however, and in its positive aspect, it neither denies nor excludes the validity of rational or intellectual knowledge. In any case, it indicates an immediate or direct knowledge and therefore one different from mediated, discursive, or indirect knowledge. On the one hand, it seeks to satisfy the demand for concrete knowledge, that is, knowledge which embraces everything in a single (synoptic) glance, without abstracting or surpassing; on the other, the need for a more intimate, more inward, more penetrating, and fuller possession of truth than rational knowledge permits. From the mystical point of view, it expresses—often in powerful images and symbols pregnant with spirituality—the desire for an ever fuller and more direct contact with God. This explains why intuitive knowledge is now considered the initial stage of knowing, now the final one, in which the dialectic of knowledge reaches its culmination: in the first case it remains absorbed into the higher stages; in the second it includes and surpasses the others. Intuitionism in the proper sense is only the latter.
In the history of thought it takes different forms: a) epistemological intuitionism, when a theory of knowledge considers intuition the direct and primary source of truth; b) ethical intuitionism, when a moral doctrine assumes direct and immediate experience as the source for recognizing ethical values; c) aesthetic intuitionism, when aesthetic activity in general is considered a fact of intuition; d) scientific intuitionism, when an epistemological theory attributes scientific discovery to a kind of intuitive divination, to a rapid and intuitive “grasping.”
Before examining these principal forms of intuitionism through brief historical references, it is necessary to clarify two fundamental positions of intuitionism itself. The way in which classical-Christian thought understands the value of intuition or intuitive knowledge is in fact different from that proper to modern subjectivist and immanentist thought: for the former, the act of intuition is receptive of the object intuited or of the truth, whether sensible or intelligible; for the latter, it is instead creative of its object—that is, in the act by which the spirit intuits, it “constitutes,” “posits,” and “creates” the truth or reality intuited. This is the substantial difference that exists (in this as in other problems) between Greek-Christian “realism” and the “subjectivism” of modern philosophy.
Although the term is absent, intuitive knowledge (intellectual intuition) lies at the foundation of Platonic epistemology: νόησις, or immediate knowledge of principles, is more perfect than διάνοια, or discursive analytical procedure, which provides an imperfect and derivative knowledge “which stands to science as the image to the object” (Respubl., 510 a). The latter presupposes the former, whose scope in Plato is metaphysical: souls have had an original intellectual intuition even before falling into a body, when, following the gods, they succeeded, some more and some less, “with difficulty in seeing the essences” (μόγις καθορίσας τὰ ὄντα, Phaedr., 248 a). The dormant recollection of this primal intuition is awakened through contact with sensible things, produces in the soul “astonishment,” and kindles ἐρως in it to the point of delirium (μανία, ibid., 250 a b). Of all the essences, only Beauty is visible through sensible images; only it shines to the eye (κάλλιος δὲ τότε ἦν ἰδεῖν λαμπρόν, ibid., 250 b) and kindles in the “newly initiated” an intimacy of love without limits, not “adulterated by mortal prudence, occupied with mortal and petty things” (σωροσύνη θνητῇ κεχαμένη, θνητὰ τε καὶ φειδωλὰ οἰκονομώσας, ibid., 256 e). Thus Plato does not separate intellectual intuition from sensible intuition (which may also be called “aesthetic intuition”), and he makes both the origin, foundation, and also the end (contemplation, as the apex of dialectic, is itself a form of intuition) of discursive and rational knowledge. And since dialectic is also—and above all—moral elevation, it may be said that Plato’s epistemological intuitionism is implicitly also ethical intuitionism. Although in his philosophy reason clearly prevails over intuition,
Aristotle (v.) considers principles (τὰ ἄμεσα) objects of immediate apprehension, in the sense that they are self-evident. Plotinus (v.), referring back to Plato, identifies pure intellectual contemplation (the union of the soul, freed from the sensible, with the Νῶς) with intuitive thought. For him too, intuition belongs to the first (προτέρα), or higher, Soul, while discursive reasoning belongs to the second (δεντέρα), or lower, Soul; indeed, intuitive science excludes reasoning and is proper to the divine Intellect (and to the human intellect insofar as it returns to the Νῶς), since reasoning is impossible in eternity (ὁν γὰρ ἐνλογίζεσθαι ἐν τῷ ἀεί), where everything is intuited all at once and where decisions are made all at once, without reasoning or choice (Enn., VI, 7, 1-3).
In the Christian philosophy of the early centuries, intuitive knowledge acquired a new and significant meaning and importance as an interior experience of truth, especially with St. Augustine. The concept of “interiority” replaced the Platonic concept of “innatism”; intellectual intuition became a loving, vital, and living participation in truth, an experience of spiritual life. The philosophical meaning of the term was enriched with a mystical sense and charged with theological value (in relation to the problem of Grace), without there nevertheless being—at least in Augustine—any confusion or identification of meanings. Ratio and intelligentia or intellectus inhere naturaliter in the mens (De Civ. Dei, XI, 2): the former “est mentis motio, ea quae discutur distinguendi et connectendi potens” (De ord., II, 11, n. 30); the latter, superior to ratio, is the interior vision of truth, objectively present to the mind. Hence the intellect is the true eye of the soul (ibid., 9, n. 26), whereas ratio is the discursive faculty (analysis and synthesis) applied to sensible things in order to judge them (De vera relig., cap. 29, n. 30). In brief: reason constructs the scientia of the sensible world (De divers. quaest. ad Simplic., I, II, cap. 2, n. 3), while intelligence applies itself intuitively to the intelligible world of supreme ideas (Solid., I, I, cap. 6, n. 13). Augustinian intuitionism, which does not exclude reason or invalidate discursive procedure (and which is realist, insofar as the truth intuited is an object given to the mind), nourished later Christian philosophy up to St. Anselm, ontological argument (v.) has its roots in this intuitionism; it is found again in the Franciscan school (St. Bonaventure), in modern Christian philosophy (e.g., Pascal, Rosmini, etc.), as well as, in its more inward meaning of spirituality, in Christian mysticism of every age. Thomistic scholasticism accepts intuitive knowledge in the Aristotelian sense of the immediate self-evidence of principles and, in the other sense, of the evident knowledge of an external object that is present or actual. Thus implicit within it are the two senses that intuition assumed in modern thought, the Cartesian and the Kantian, while the difference between realism and subjectivism regarding truth and reality remains intact.
Indeed, Cartesio identifies intuited truth with evident truth, the principle and foundation of discursive reasoning: intuition is the “evident conception,” which arises from the light of reason alone and is more certain “because it is simpler than deduction.” Or, as he further says: “Atque perspicuum est intuitum mentis tum ad illas omnes extendi [naturas simplices], tum ad necessarias illarum inter se connexiones cognoscendas, tum denique ad reliqua omnia quae intellectus praecise, vel in se ipso, vel in phantasia esse experitur” (Regulae, XII). Cartesio also admits a kind of intuitive knowledge which may be said to arise from discursive exercise: the fourth rule of the method makes thought so agile (it “trains” it) that it can then embrace in a single act of the mind what it had previously apprehended successively and discursively (Discours de la méthode, part 2). In short, there is an intuition acquired slowly and laboriously, as Blondel points out. Both Locke and Leibniz retain the Cartesian intuition as evidence: all primitive truths are known “by intuition,” whether they are “truths of reason or truths of fact” (Nouv. Essais, I, IV, chap. 2, § 1).
The philosophy of the so-called Scottish School is intuitionistic (v. REID; STEWART), and Hamilton and French eclecticism are linked to it: the foundation of knowledge is the intuition of rational truths, superior to experience; on the other hand, the subject directly knows
the existence of material objects, without reason intervening. It is enough to perceive an object, Reid says, for there to be the “irresistible conviction” or the “belief,” beyond all doubt, in its actual existence. This conviction is immediate and not the “effect of reasoning”; that is, “it is not following reasoning and demonstration that we come to convince ourselves of the existence of the objects we perceive.” In short, it is enough to perceive (intuit) an object to admit its existence (Reid, Essays on power of the human mind, Edinburgh 1785, essay II, chap. 6). There is in man an innate “suggestion,” an “instinct,” an original and connatural “belief,” infallibly leading him to admit the reality of perceived things, as is also attested by the universal agreement of all thinking beings. The principles of morality, too, are immediate and direct. Shaftesbury—and with him the philosophers of the so-called moral sense—had already admitted in man an innate “instinct” of esteem and admiration for what is noble and just, and had identified it with the principle of ethics. HUTCHESON, FRANCIS (v.) likewise places at the foundation of morality the innate and immediate feeling of helping others, of which reason makes use (and therefore its function is secondary rather than primary) in finding the means suited to its practical realization. Thus, shortly after the emergence of Kantian criticism, as a reaction to Hume’s phenomenalism and, on the other hand, to the egoism systematized by Hobbes, there arose within English empiricism (also under Platonic influences) the epistemological and ontological i. of the Scots and the ethical i. of the philosophers of the moral sense.
Kant (v.), intuitive knowledge acquires an original meaning, especially in transcendental aesthetics. Intuition (Anschauung) is knowledge that refers immediately to objects, but on condition that the object be given and modify the mind in some way. Objects are given through sensibility (the capacity to receive representations), “and it alone furnishes us with intuitions” (Critica d. ragion pura, Transcendental Aesthetic, § 1). But every intuition is merely the representation of a phenomenon. Man does not know objects in themselves, but only his manner of perceiving them (ibid., section II, § 8). For Kant, intuition is connected with sense, but contains a formal element: space and time are the “pure forms,” known a priori, that is, prior to every actual perception; they are pure intuition (reine Anschauung: ibid.). From this, which is sensible, Kant distinguishes intellectual intuition, or that by which the existence of the object of intuition is given, belonging, insofar as man can know, only to the Supreme Being; sensible intuition is derivative (intuitus derivatus), whereas the other is original (intuitus originarius: ibid., section II, § 8, IV). For Fichte, intellectual intuition is identified with self-consciousness, but it is inseparable from a concept and from a sensible intuition: all three form a synthesis. Schelling is directly linked to Fichte: self-consciousness is knowledge that is “absolutely free” (not through proofs, reasoning, or concepts) and is therefore an intuition in which the intuent and the intuited are “identical.” He calls it “intellectual intuition,” in opposition to sensible intuition, which does not produce its object, as occurs instead in the knowledge of the ego. “Intellectual intuition is the organ of all transcendental thought”; the latter, therefore, is constantly accompanied by it (System of Transcendental Idealism: Werke, III, p. 361). SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR (v.) speaks of intuition in the broadest sense of immediate and non-conceptual knowledge, both of things and of their relations. Every intuition is intellectual, that is, “it places us in the presence of the real” (The World as Will and Representation, I, § 4). The perfect form of intuitive knowledge is aesthetic contemplation, which effects the sudden transition from ordinary knowledge of individual objects to knowledge of the Idea: “… knowledge frees itself from the service of the will and precisely for this reason the subject ceases to be merely individual, becoming a pure subject of knowledge, devoid of will. It no longer follows relations according to the principle of sufficient reason, but rests in steadfast contemplation of the object offered to it, immersing itself in it” (ibid., III, § 34, Italian trans. by P. Savi Lopez, Bari 1920). It is enough to cease considering things according to the principle of sufficient reason, to think according to rational categories, and to concentrate the entire mind in intuition, “plunging into it,” for the “whole of knowledge” to be filled “with the tranquil contemplation of the natural object before us,” whatever it may be, provided that “we lose ourselves entirely in the object.” In this contemplative intuition man ceases to be an “individual” and becomes a “pure subject of knowledge,” whose object is the ideas (and not individual objects), outside will, pain, and time (ibid.). The essence of “genius” is precisely the capacity for contemplation or complete absorption in the object (idea), whereby “genius” is “objectivity,” or “the capacity to confine oneself to pure intuition, to lose oneself in intuition” (ibid., I, III, § 36). Thus, for Schopenhauer, intuition in its aesthetic form has metaphysical significance; it reveals the Idea and, with it, the inseparable meaning of the intuing subject and the intuited object.
Purely Platonic in origin (but how different in meaning!) is the i. ROSMINIANI (v.) Gioberti (v.). For the Roveretan, there is no objective and universal knowledge without an a priori element, which is not, however (as for Kant), a function of the intellect or a form of its activity, but an intuition of the mind as its object, the light of reason. Such is the idea of being, of which the mind possesses the fundamental objective intuition. Thus it is immanent in the mind, but at the same time transcendent, insofar as the idea of being is given and, as such, refers to absolute real Being, by which it is given. It « is an eternal thing », Rosmini writes, « that illuminates the mind; it is a primitive mode of being that has its seat in God himself; it is the essential light; it is that which forms the essence of knowing », the mother-idea of all other ideas (Introduz. alla filos., Casale 1850, p. 351); not formed through abstraction, but intuited « by us naturally », even though we become aware only very late that we intuit it (Il rinnovamento della filos. in Italia, Milan 1856, bk. II, chap. 24, p. 167). Rosminian intuitionism, after the Kantian critique and by resolving the problems raised by it, intends to restore to intuition its authentic epistemological and metaphysical value, which is that of Augustine: the intuition of ideal being is the first object of knowing and the foundation of all knowing and is, at the same time, as constitutive of the capacity for thought, one of the metaphysical structures of the human subject. Gioberti, on the other hand, tends toward ontologism, Malebranche (v.), insofar as he admits the intuition of real Being. « I call the first idea the Psychological First », he writes, « and the first thing the Ontological First; but since the first idea and the first thing seem to me to be identified with each other, and therefore the two Firsts constitute a single one, I give this absolute principle the name of Philosophical First, and I consider it the sole principle and foundation of all reality and of all that can be known » (Introduz. allo studio della filos., II, Brussels 1844, bk. I, chap. 4, p. 152). Thus there is no escape from pantheism with all its erroneous and indefensible consequences.
In our own day, Bergson (v.) identifies intuitive knowledge with metaphysics, which is precisely a special mode of knowing, « de posséder une réalité absolument au lieu de la connaître relativement, de se placer en elle au lieu d'adopter des points de vue sur elle, d'en avoir l'intuition au lieu d'en faire l'analyse, enfin de la saisir en dehors de toute expression, traduction ou représentation symbolique » (Introd. à la métaph., in Revue de métaphys. et de mor., 1 [1903], p. 9). Intuition (unlike rational or scientific knowledge) penetrates into the innermost core of the « individual » creativity of beings; it is a kind of sympathie intellectuelle « par laquelle on se transporte à l'intérieur d'un objet pour coïncider avec ce qu'il a d'unique et par conséquent d'inexprimable » (ibid., p. 12). Intuition is therefore defined in opposition to the abstract and discontinuous intellect, as that which is capable of grasping the absolute originality and continuity of reality, although Bergson admits (A. Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philos., I, 4ᵉ ed., Paris 1938, p. 402) that « une connaissance scientifique et précise des faits est la condition préalable de l'intuition métaphysique qui en pénètre le principe ». Croce, on the other hand, identifies intuition with art: works of art are intuitive forms of knowledge (Estetica, 6ª ed., Bari 1928, p. 17). Intuitive knowledge is distinguished from logical knowledge: the former is knowledge through «fantasy», of the «individual», of «single» things, producing «images»; the latter is through the «intellect», of the «universal», of the «relations» among things, producing «conecti» (ibid., p. 3). Every true intuition or representation is at the same time «expression» (ibid., p. 11). It is therefore also distinguished from sensation, which is not objectified in an expression. It is an autonomous theoretical form, identified with the aesthetic and artistic fact.
Whereas Bergson opposes intuition to abstract scientific intellectualism, other thinkers, by contrast, discern intuitive knowledge in the sciences as well, and as pertaining to them. Thus W. Whewell observes that induction is neither a form of reasoning distinct from the syllogism nor reducible to it; it is logically incorrect reasoning proceeding by hypothetical suppositions. «Induction is not conclusive as reasoning. It is not reasoning; it is another way of arriving at truth», namely that of «conjecture» (guessing: Filos. della scienza induttiva. Sulla filos. della scoperta, Edinburgh 1860, p. 454). Discovery therefore requires bold initiative, scientific genius, intuition. Poincaré (v.) gives great importance to intuition of mathematical order «qui nous fait deviner des harmonies et des relations cachées» (Science et méthode, Paris 1908, p. 47). With logic «one demonstrates», with intuition «one invents». «La faculté qui nous apprend à voir, c'est l'intuition: sans elle le géomètre serait comme un écrivain ferré sur la grammaire, mais qui n'aurait pas d'idées» (ibid., p. 137).
Intuition is a form of knowledge about which no doubt can arise. Yet i., understood in opposition to reason and discursive knowledge, or as their devaluation or negation, is a polemical position and, as such, a negative one: intuitive knowledge itself would lose its value if it were a negation of reason or antithetical to II. This is the error of the anti-intellectualist and anti-rational forms of i., dangerous for philosophy and also from a theological point of view if they go so far as to admit the direct and immediate intuition of Being in itself or of God. Modern i., for its part, by identifying in human knowing the truth or reality known with the subjective act of intuition, thereby denies intuition itself, because there is no longer any intuition if subject and object become one and if the latter is a position or creation of the former. Intuition in finite intelligence has meaning as the presence or interiority of truth to the mind of which it is the object (Augustine), without its being Truth in itself (God), to which it nevertheless refers; rather, it is truth as it may be present to the mind in the natural order, which reason uses to judge things and establish connections and relations among them.
#### INUMAZIONE: V. CREMAZIONE.