The fact is that in this part of his doctrine--and it is an important
part--the brilliant French writer, in his endeavours to make
philosophizing more concrete and practical, makes it too abstract.
Intuition is not a process over against and quite distinct from
conceptual thought. Both are moments in the total process of man's
attempt to come to terms with the universe, and too great emphasis on
either distorts and falsifies the situation in which we find ourselves
on this planet. The insistence on intuition is doubtless due, at bottom,
to Bergson's admiration for the activity in the creative artist. The
border-line between Art and Philosophy becomes almost an imaginary line
with him. In the one case as in the other we have, according to him,
to get inside the object by a sort of sympathy. True, there is this
difference, he says, that aesthetic intuition achieves only the
individual--which is doubtful--whereas the philosophic intuition is
to be conceived as a "recherche orientee dans la meme sens que l'art,
indeed, but qui prendrait pour objet la vie en general." He fails
to note, it may be observed, that the expression of the aesthetic
intuition, that is to say, Art, is always fixed and static. This in
view of other aspects of his doctrine is remarkable. But apart from
this attempt to practically identify Art and Philosophy--a hopeless
attempt--there is, of course, available as a means of explanation the
well-known and not entirely deplorable tendency of the protestant and
innovator to overstate his case, to bring out by strong emphasis the
aspect with which he is chiefly concerned and which he thinks has been
unduly neglected. This, as hinted, has its merits, and not only or
chiefly for Philosophy, but also, and perhaps primarily, for the conduct
of life. If he convinces men, should they need convincing, that they
cannot be saved by the discursive reason alone, he will have done a good
service to his generation, and to the philosophers among them who may
(though they ought not to) be tempted to ignore the intuitive element in
experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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