Part two can be found here.

Aristotle provides a framework for understanding reality based on foundationalism and the idea that the first principles of reality can be known, either through sense perception, empirically, or intellectually through reasonable demonstration. Intuition is the foundational aspect of sense data and non-discursive reasoning because it apprehends immediate self-evident truths. In Aristotle’s epistemology, human beings are hardwired with a latent ability or capacity to apprehend the world around them. Our rational abilities seem to be tuned to comprehending reality. When the mind is functioning correctly, it makes no sense for someone to assert that they are having a perception of an object and claim at the same time that it does not exist. In ordinary human sense experience, it is impossible to separate a perception from actual existence. The Aristotelian premise that the external world is knowable is based on the common sense judgment that perception is awareness of external objects. This human capacity of apprehending immediate self-evident truths is the rational intuition to which Aristotle points us.

Perhaps the Aristotelian position that describes human knowledge and the interaction between the self and the world can be understood as “embodied intuitive rationalism.” (Aristotle points us in this direction throughout his works but especially in his work On the Soul.) His argument suggests that humans have an inherent capacity through memory, imagination, the intellect, and use of sense perception (empiricism) to make meaning and intelligibility out of the world around them. If this is true, then in human cognition, the body and mind work together in a symbiotic relationship. If the nature of human beings is essentially rational, and dependent on and directed toward external reality, then a proper understanding of intuition is an essential element of embodied rationalism. To be embodied means to have an innate capacity of intuitive reasoning which allows one to grasp the fundamental first principles of reality.

If there is a kind of embodied intuitive rationalism that all humans possess, there might be a significant implication for Bergson’s approach to metaphysics. Some concluding thoughts are in order. While Bergson’s text An Introduction to Metaphysics can be read as an extended critique of Kant’s transcendental idealism, his description of metaphysics as the rejection of symbols and analysis is misplaced. If human beings are essentially rational, it is hard to figure out how analysis, reason, and symbols for communication are not helpful when struggling to think critically about the most important questions of life and reality. Language, analytical reasoning, and the examination of evidence are simply the ways human beings rationally make sense out of reality. Analysis and symbols are used in everyday life and it is impossible to imagine how anyone could live a significantly meaningful life without the use of symbols, analysis, and critical reasoning. It is why parents tell toddlers to “use your words.” Words provide meaning and structure to reality. If Aristotle is correct, all things tend towards their nature, including human nature. If the nature of human kind is to be rational then analysis, examination, evaluation, the use of symbols, and intellectual demonstration are essential and must be used to make sense and order out of the world. Reason is what human beings use to explore the ultimate questions and theories of reality. Discarding reason or throwing out the affirmation of rationalism is not the correct approach to metaphysics.

Bergson’s approach to philosophy is similar to Descartes. He starts with the immediate awareness of the self and distrust of sense data in providing a reliable understanding of reality. Bergson goes further than Descartes, however, and demonstrates an even stronger distrust of external reality than did Descartes. Even mental concepts, because they are products of analysis, render an artificial understanding of reality (74). Bergson explains that if metaphysics is to be a serious project, “it must transcend concepts in order to reach intuition” (75). What is clear from Bergson, is that reason, abstraction, concepts, and analytical thought will never allow one to correctly understand reality. Intuition, for Bergson is the rejection of critical discourse, observation, evaluation, and reason in general. Bergson’s understanding of intuition is irrational and he says quite clearly that the correct way to understand reality is not through analysis or reason. On the other hand, Aristotle holds that intuition is that which apprehends immediate self-evident truths which provide the basis for interpreting reality to a very high degree of accuracy. Reason, whether it is understood as the evaluation of empirical evidence or through the cognitive intellectual processes of the mind alone, is an integral part of what it means to be human and should not be thrown out when examining the great questions of existence.

In some ways, Bergson lays the groundwork for the later twentieth century existentialists such as Martin Heidegger. These thinkers believe that human passions and moods are superior to reason in interpreting reality. Heidegger, in his work, What is Metaphysics? claims that the mood of dread is what opens one up to a proper understanding of being and non-being. Some of these philosophers put moods, intuition, and mystical experience into the category of the nonrational—that which is apart from reason, but not necessarily against reason. Even if the nonrational is a valid category for knowledge development, Bergson goes further and ultimately embraces the irrational. For Aristotle, intuition is not in the realm of the nonrational, or irrational, but a pre-discursive starting point for reason and science itself—and really for any body of knowledge that can be discovered, collected, categorized, and developed.

Bergson might be right in the sense that there could be things in life that are not completely rationally analyzable, such as human love, true friendship, great works of art, indescribable aesthetic or religious experience, but he goes astray by rejecting reason and substituting intuition as the only valid way to interpret reality. Bergson’s concept of intuition must be evaluated, checked, or modified by sound reason and empiricism. Many philosophers, including Aristotle, believe that there is an element of intuition in human knowledge. Aristotle’s approach, as it turns out, is correct. Intuition, sense experience, and reason must work together—not against each other—in the quest for knowledge.

Works cited

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 7. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 2. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 8. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Bergson, Henri. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999