Concept
Intuition (Bergson)
Overview
Intuition is the philosophical method of French philosopher Henri Bergson.
In An Introduction to Metaphysics, Bergson introduces two ways in which an object can be known: absolutely and relatively. Pertaining to each mode of knowledge is a method through which it can be gained. The latter’s method is what Bergson calls analysis, while the method of intuition belongs to the former.
Intuition is an experience of sorts, which allows us to in a sense enter into the things in themselves. Thus he calls his philosophy the true empiricism. In the following article, analysis and the relative will be explained as a preliminary to understanding intuition, and then intuition and the absolute will be expounded upon.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Intuition (Bergson) is discussed.
Bergson maintains that intellect can only deal with things in so far as they resemble what has been experienced in the past, while intuition has the power of apprehending the uniqueness and novelty that always belong to each fresh moment. That there is something unique and new at every moment, is certainly true; it is also true that this cannot be fully expressed by means of intellectual concepts.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
The manifold in an intuition, which I call mine, is represented by means of the synthesis of the understanding, as belonging to the necessary unity of self-consciousness, and this takes place by means of the category.[19] The category indicates accordingly that the empirical consciousness of a given manifold in an intuition is subject to a pure self-consciousness à priori, in the same manner as an empirical…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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These fleeting intuitions, which light up their object only at distant intervals, philosophy ought to seize, first to sustain them, then to expand them and so unite them together. The more it advances in this work, the more will it perceive that intuition is mind itself, and, in a certain sense, life itself: the intellect has been cut out of it by a process resembling that which has generated matter. Thus is…
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
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All _hypotyposis_ (presentation, _subjectio sub adspectum_), or sensible illustration, is twofold. It is either _schematical_, when to a concept comprehended by the Understanding the corresponding intuition is given _a priori_; or it is _symbolical_. In the latter case to a concept only thinkable by the Reason, to which no sensible intuition can be adequate, an intuition is supplied with which accords a procedure of…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph
But if it should appear, on examination, to be at least as fallible as intellect, its greater subjective certainty becomes a demerit, making it only the more irresistibly deceptive. Apart from self-knowledge, one of the most notable examples of intuition is the knowledge people believe themselves to possess of those with whom they are in love: the wall between different personalities seems to become transparent, and…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Intuition (Bergson)
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Henri Bergson
- Homer
- Philosophy
- Immanuel Kant
- Metaphysics
- Monism
- Philosophical pluralism
- Michel Weber
- Substance theory
- Nicholas Rescher
- France
- Ineffability
- Rationalism
- Duration (philosophy)
- Simulacrum
Place in the tradition
Part of Continental philosophy.