Humanistic Studies of the University of Kansas, Vol. 1Mitchell, Arthur
Philosophy
Humanistic Studies of the University of Kansas, Vol. 1
Mitchell, Arthur
Humanities
The nature of the opposition between the two modes of consciousness
called intuition and intellect is discussed in the chapter on Bergson’s
epistemology. The intuitionist philosopher is such never for logical
reasons, always for temperamental reasons. He is a man to whom life
is richer and fuller, more self-fulfilling, more natural, in the
intuitional mode of consciousness than in the intellectual. Hence the
suspicious and disparaging disposition toward the intellectual mode of
consciousness, in a very numerous class of minds of the highest order.
From a personal feeling of safety and security in intuition and of
dissatisfaction with intellectual efforts, the transition is natural to
a conviction that the trouble is in the essential nature of intellect.
A mode of consciousness which is so inveterately and (presumably)
inevitably beset with self-frustration cannot be knowledge. It is too
obviously the opposite of knowledge, to wit error and delusion.
But once the opposition has reached this point, where not only the
convenience but the very validity of intellect is impugned, one is
involved in a disjunction between these two modes of consciousness
that is demonstrably false, both logically and psychologically. It
is surely a false hypostasis of terms whose distinction is merely
abstract, to set over against each other in this way two aspects which
are equally essential to any conception of the nature of consciousness.
For intuition and intellect can be seen to imply each other with the
same necessity with which quality and quantity imply each other. And
there is the same absurdity, on the side of epistemology, in regarding
intuition as valid knowledge and intellect as not valid, as, on the
side of ontology, in regarding quality as real and quantity--or
relation in general--as not real. As if either were conceivable except
as a co-aspect or coefficient with the other, in the nature of reality.
This would be to conceive of quality as quality of nothing, or relation
as relation between no terms.
If philosophy must be reflective (and reflectiveness to some degree
is undoubtedly an inevitable condition of human consciousness,
perhaps of any consciousness), it must be, _quatenus_ philosophy,
intellectual, and not, _quatenus_ philosophy, intuitional. Intuition
will assuredly be there, in any philosophy, as the pole is inseparable
from its antipodes. But the philosophicalness of philosophy is just
its reflectiveness; that is, once more, _quatenus_ philosophy, it is
intellectual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account