INTUITION. — From the Latin *intueri* (Gk. εισόρασις), meaning to see, to look within, to contemplate, the term *intuition* etymologically denotes vision, gaze, with a sense, for the most part, of penetration and intensity. However, even in classical usage, the term was transferred from the visual sphere to indicate intellectual perception: *"mentis aciem seipsam intuens"* (Cicero, *Tusc. Disp.*, 30, 73). This is the principal reference that the term has retained in the Romance languages (toward which German *Anschauung* also tends), though with a multiplicity of meanings, particularly in philosophical usage.
In common language, *intuition* has a dual meaning: a) the original and profound perception of a reality, a truth, a value, a principle, or a fact—for example, the Platonic, Galilean, or Einsteinian "intuition"; b) ready and sudden knowledge or perception, whether of theoretical-abstract truths or of practical-concrete facts and relationships. In this sense, common usage contrasts the "intuitive type," which grasps the meaning of a fact or problem, or the exact value of a situation, at a glance through mere clues, with the "discursive type," which requires a slower process of analysis, comparison, and deduction. Scientific discoveries (laws, hypotheses) and, in general, the inventive and creative moments of thought, though often following prior conceptual analyses and elaborations, are usually attributed to "intuition" in the twofold sense indicated. A reference to the common meaning can be found in Aristotle, who contrasts *εὐστοχία* (sagacity, quickness of intuition) with *εὐβολία* (prudent counsel) (*Eth. Nic.*, VI, 9, 1142a 31 ff.) and speaks of *εὐστοχία* (= certainty of "intuition" that occurs without discourse and is something sudden: *"ἀνευ τε γὰρ λόγου καὶ ταχύ τι ἡ εὐστοχία"* (*ibid.*, 1142b 3).
In philosophical usage, five principal meanings of *intuition* can be distinguished:
1) With predominant reference to logical intellect, *intuition* is the direct and immediate knowledge of principles (theoretical, practical, moral) and evident truths (the reference to "evidence" is linked to the primitive meaning of the term: *"intueri"*, to see), in contrast to derived, mediated, logical-discursive knowledge. The term is used in this sense by Locke, Leibniz, and Descartes. Connected to this are, though with a predominant gnoseological reference, the Platonic-Plotinian sense: *intuition* as the direct apprehension of the intelligible in itself; the Augustinian-Bonaventuran-Malebranchean sense: *intuition* as the immediate contact of the mind with truth, the direct apprehension of the *"rationes aeternae"* or absolute values; and the Rosminian sense: *intuition* as the immanent and essential relationship of the intelligence with its fundamental object, the idea of being (*cf.* *Teosofia*, V, ed. nazionale, Rome 1939, p. 20).
2) *Intuition* as the direct perception of the existent, the individual, the concrete, in contrast to abstractive, representative, universal knowledge: a meaning of Kantian derivation, now frequent. To this belongs the technical, proper meaning, according to some, of Thomism: *intuition* as perception (in sensitive knowledge) of the real without intentional mediation, and *intuition* (in beatific vision) as the union of the intellect with the divine essence itself, without the mediation of a mental word.
3) *Intuition* as sympathetic and instinctive compenetration into the depths of reality and life, in contrast to external and fragmentary knowledge through conceptual determinations. This is the Bergsonian sense (*cf.* *L'évolution créatrice*, 77th ed., Paris 1948, pp. 176, 179). To this can be likened, though it involves a different metaphysical meaning, the Husserlian sense: *intuition* as the vision of essences, *Wesensschau*.
4) *Intuition* as the productive process of the first forms of theoretical activity of the spirit. This is the idealistic sense, already foreshadowed by Kant’s "pure intuition" (the intuitions of space and time as a priori forms of the spirit: *cf.* *Critique of Pure Reason*, Transcendental Aesthetic, § 1, Italian trans., Bari 1940, p. 63). From this derives the aesthetic reference developed by Croce: *intuition* as the original activity of the spirit, creative and expressive of pure images (words, colors, sounds, forms).
5) In a religious-mystical sense (and it could have analogous applications in other fields): *intuition* as the predominantly affective apprehension of God and the divine, thus distinct from purely logical-rational religious knowledge.
The theory of *intuition* (for its historical developments *v.* INTUITIONISM) presents two main questions:
a) whether and in what sense human knowledge can be called intuitive;
b) what is the gnoseological-metaphysical meaning of *intuition*.
a) *Intuition* in the sense of the immediate perception of values, principles, relations, intrinsic connections between facts, concepts, and principles, is a fundamental function of the intelligence; indeed, ultimately, the very essential power of thought to express in conscious apprehension the values of being. In this sense, *intuition* is the substratum of all fundamental noetic processes: ideation, judgment, reasoning. The idea (*v.*) in fact does not come into act in thought except as an *intuition* of a value; judgment (*v.*) in its cognitive moment is the perception of the relationship between subject and predicate; reasoning, both in the order of abstract truths and of concrete facts, is essentially the intuitive perception of the logical connection between premises and conclusion (St. Thomas distinguished between *intellectus* and *ratio* only in the sense that *intellectus* indicates immediate knowledge, *ratio* discursive knowledge: *Summa Theologiae*, I, q. 59, a. 1, ad 1). The meaning, not entirely obsolete, of *intuition* as a synonym for intellectual perception in general (*cf.* St. Thomas, *In I Sent.*, d. 3, q. 4, art. 5, c.; *De Veritate*, q. 15, a. 1, ad 7) relates to this original meaning of knowledge as the "vision" and "penetration" of an object, a value.
*Intuition* in the sense of direct perception or consciousness of the real, of the existent, of the singular, can be and is referred both to the senses and to the intellect. It must first be clarified that pure sensation cannot be equivalent to *intuition* properly so called: an impression of color, sound, or form, as such, is a pure lived state of consciousness, devoid of both appreciation and conceptual clarity and therefore of *intuition*. But pure sensation in man is found only at the dawn of existence. In the rapid development of consciousness, it soon clarifies itself in further perceptual processes (apprehension of objects as totalities and apprehension of the meaning that objects present for the subject) and intellectual processes (apprehension of objects as categorial values). It is in this indissoluble sensory-perceptual-intellectual synthesis that the intuitive moment in human knowledge is realized. Indeed, human intelligence, considered formally as pure power of thought, does not, as Kant well saw,
An immediate relationship with concrete reality, and therefore no direct intuition of spiritual realities. Yet, beyond the power of abstract conceptualization and logical discourse, the human intellect is, by virtue of its immanent relationship with sense, an immediate consciousness of sensory-perceptual contents. In this its proper function, the human intellect is intuition insofar as it presents itself as the assumption of concrete contents to the actuality of their own immanent intelligible value. The universal, which is the proper object of the human intellect, is not, more than anything else, the abstract universal, but rather the concrete universal, “in particulari existens” (Sum. Theol., 1 q. 84, art. 7, c.). And since sensory data, by virtue of their very experiential positivity, are first of all valid as realities, the human intellect, through its continuity with sense (which St. Thomas expresses with the noted formula “conversio ad phantasmata”: ibid., art. 7), achieves an actual intuition of the real and thus of being, according to the various determinations that being itself assumes in sensory presentations. It is in this that the condemnation of every phenomenism (v.) lies, insofar as human knowledge does not present itself as pure consciousness of phenomena, such as might be a knowledge confined to the sensory-perceptual sphere, but rather as intuition of the phenomenon in its value as being. This radical intuition, in which the first actualization of thought consists, does not, however, attain the ontological meaning of being and therefore seems not to entail an equal intuition of substance, which is a further concept elaborated from the more complex contents of sensory presentations.
From what has been said, it appears that intuition, even in the sense of perception of the existent and the concrete, should not be contrasted with conceptual knowledge unless “conceptual” is unduly identified with “abstract.” The concept is always in the background of any perception or intellectual intuition: it is the categorical values more or less distinctly contested in every intuition of the concrete; and indeed, the more intuition becomes clear and objectively consistent, the more the concrete, assumed from the objectual sphere of sensibility, is conceptually grasped in that deeper sphere of its real ontological contents. Modern irrationalism, therefore, which reduces the knowledge of values to sentimental, emotional, and volitional moments to which it attributes the meaning of intuition, in reality misunderstands the true concept of intuition.
Intuition as perception of the concrete and the existent does not, at least in a broad sense, distinguish itself from reasoning. It is indeed possible, and indeed frequent, to have a dialectic of thought based on data and connections that are essentially concrete (intuitive reasoning): such is, for example, a medical diagnosis or historical reasoning.
A second intuitive moment presents the intellect as self-awareness. As such, thought is indeed the immediate perception of itself as act, process, and consciousness. All the psychic reality of the subject, and particularly thought and volition (beyond the fundamental, though obscure and indeterminate, sense of our being, living, and enduring), insofar as it is immediately present to consciousness, is intuition in the strictest sense of the term, even if it does not entail an equal intuition of its own ontological principle, namely, the self (v.). The self, therefore, may be said to be an object of intuition in its psychological-operative consistency (the intuitive certainty of the self and of one’s personal continuity), but not in its metaphysical reality (cf. St. Thomas, De verit., q. 10, art. 8, c.). The sphere of psychic-conscious reality is the only objectual sphere that does not entail, in knowledge, mental representation (intuition in the strict technical sense that some would wish to extend to the perception of sensible reality). Psychic reality, in fact, as an intrinsic determination of the self, has no real consistency outside of consciousness, but is, in its very reality, a fact of consciousness, and therefore, when assumed in apperception, is immediate intuition.
In the realm of religious knowledge—if one disregards the higher forms of supernatural experience, possible through the gratuitous gift of Grace—the so-called mystical intuition does not seem to qualify as intuition in the strict sense of the term. It remains, in fact, analogical and representative knowledge, although it reaches and stirs the deepest strata of the self through the will and love that unite the soul to God and permeate, in a certain way transfigured by their affective tone, the very knowledge itself. Mystical knowledge therefore has a certain experiential value insofar as it is a reflection of religious experience (v.) itself, all the more vivid the deeper that experience is, but it does not, of itself, include a true intuition of God. It implies an intelligibility of the direction of consciousness toward the supreme object of religious knowledge, not a perception of that object in itself.
In the domain of art, the intuitive moment is present as the conscious expression of images and forms in which the human spiritual world and its values are sensibly configured. It is therefore essentially the work of the imagination, but insofar as this is part of the living unity of the spirit and draws from the intense moments that the spirit unfolds in the order of intellect and will the spiritual contents that it translates into images and forms. Even aesthetic intuition cannot, therefore, be understood in its true nature and is in fact fundamentally distorted if it is separated, as in Croce’s thought, from intellectual-conceptual knowledge.
Beyond the indicated forms of intuition, there sometimes occur in human consciousness states of penetrating clairvoyance (v.)—not yet fully explained either from a scientific or philosophical standpoint—in which an intimate, though conceptually obscure, contact with the deepest values of reality is realized: the mystery of being (time, eternity, existence, duration, nothingness, becoming...) permeates consciousness, giving rise to that lofty sense of wonder and sometimes dread already known to Plato. It is perhaps chiefly in this order of experience that one must recognize an objective foundation for intuition in the Bergsonian sense.
b) The gnoseological meaning of intuition reveals itself in two fundamental directions. As perception of the existent and the concrete, it is the solid phenomenological basis of realism (v.): as immediate perception of values, concepts, and absolute principles, it includes in human thought a positive presence of the absolute, though not as a real term of intuition, but rather as the supreme Value and condition of thought. To dialectic, which finds in the value of thought the indispensable bases for all its articulation, belongs the task of determining the ontological meaning of the Absolute and its transcendence. It is in this essential dialectic that one must seek the perennial, ever-vivid moment of intuition in the Augustinian sense.