Intuition
Intuition (Latin intueri, to look into) is a psychological and
philosophical 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 words Intuitionism or
Intuitionalism mean those systems in philosophy which consider
intuition as the fundamental process of our knowledge or at least
give to intuition a large place (the Scottish school), and the
words Intuitive Morality and Intuitional Ethics denote those
ethical theories which base morality on an intuitive apprehension
of the moral principles and laws, or consider intuition as capable
of distinguishing the moral qualities of our actions (Shaftesbury,
Hutcheson Reid, Dugald Stewart). As an element of educational
method intuition means the grasp of knowledge by concrete,
experimental or intellectual, ways of apprehension. The immediate
perception of sensuous or material objects by our senses is called
sensuous or empirical intuition, the immediate apprehension of
intellectual or immaterial objects by our intelligence is called
intellectual intuition. It may be remarked that Kant calls
empirical intuitions our knowledge 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 of knowledge
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 and
philosophical speculation. This importance, however, has been
falsely exaggerated by some modern philosophers to an extent which
tends to destroy both supernatural religion and the validity of
human reason. There has been an attempt, on their part, to make of
intuition, under different names, the central and fundamental
element of our power of acquiring knowledge, and the only process
or operation that can put us into contact with reality. So we have
the creation or intuition of the ego and non ego in the philosophy
of Fichte; the intuition or intellectual vision of God claimed by
the Ontologists in natural theology (see ONTOLOGISM), 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 the
Modernists (Encyclical "Pascendi gregis"). According to the
Ontologists, our knowledge of notions endowed with the character
of necessity and universality, as well as our idea of the
Infinite, are possible only through an antecedent intuition of God
present in us. Other philosophers start from the principle that
human reasoning is unable to give us the knowledge of things in
themselves. The data of common sense, our intellectual 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 of true representation (see
PRAGMATISM). Intuition alone, they maintain, is able to put us in
communication with reality and give us a true knowledge of things.
Especially in regard to religious truths, some insist, it is only
through intuition and internal experience that we can acquire
them. "God", says the Protestant A. Sabatier in his Esquisse d'une
philosophie de la religion, "is not a phenomenon which can be
observed outside of the ego, a truth to be demonstrated by logical
reasoning. He who does not feel Him in his heart, will never find
Him outside . . . . We never become aware of our piety 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 the Schoolmen to
prove the existence of God, say the Modernists, have now lost all
their value; it is by the religious feeling, by an intuition of
the heart that we apprehend God (Encycl. "Pascendi gregis" and "II
programma dei modernisti").
Such theories have their source in the principle of absolute
subjectivism and relativism -- the most fundamental error in
philosophy. Starting with Kant's proposition that we cannot know
things as they are in themselves but only as they appear to us,
that is, under the subjective conditions that our human nature
necessarily imposes on them, they arrive at the conclusion that
our rational knowledge is subjectively relative, and that its
concepts, principles, and process of reasoning are therefore
essentially unable to reach external and transcendental realities.
Hence their recourse to intuition and immanence (see IMMANENCE).
But it is easy to show that if intuition is necessary in every act
of knowledge, it remains essentially insufficient in our present
life, for scientific and philosophical reflection. In our
knowledge of nature we start from observation; but observation
remains fruitless if it is not verified by a series of inductions
and deductions. In our knowledge of God, we may indeed start from
our nature and from our insufficiency and aspirations, but if we
want to know 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 of
duty, 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. The true nature, place, and value of intuition
in human knowledge are admirably put forth in the Scholastic
theory of knowledge. For the Schoolmen the intuitive act of
intellectual knowledge is, by its nature, the most perfect act of
knowledge, since it is an immediate apprehension of and contact
with reality in its concrete existence, and our supreme reward m
the supernatural order will consist in the intuitive apprehension
of God by our intelligence: the beatific vision. But in our
present conditions of earthly life, our knowledge must of
necessity make use of concepts and reasoning. All our knowledge
has its starting-point in the intuitive data of sense experience,
but in order to penetrate the nature of these data, their laws 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 of
God 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 and philosophical knowledge of things, is subject to
the laws 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 the human mind in the
scale of intellectual beings.
Concepts and reasoning therefore are in themselves inferior to
intuition; but they are the normal processes of human knowledge.
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 a true representation of it.
GEORGE M. SAUVAGE
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
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