A Study On The Theory Of Intuition In German Classical Philosophy

‘Intuition’ and ‘Logic’ are the fundamental ways of human beings to understand the objects of metaphysics in western philosophy,and each has its advantages and disadvantages.‘Intuition’ focuses on immediateness and reality,while ‘Logic’ focuses on abstractness and idea.However,the main tone of western philosophy is rationalism,after all,philosophers more praise ‘logic’,which led to the everlasting‘light intuition’ theory tendency.Such‘tendency’ is directly reflected in our theoretical research,especially in the study of German classical philosophy.Schelling’s intuition thought,as the master of western intuitive theory,should be the highest theoretical achievement of western intuition theory with its development into the German classical philosophy stage,and to some extent,Schelling’s intuitive positive philosophy as ‘one is all’ became the real terminator of German classical philosophy.However,in our theoretical study,we often interpret Schelling’s ‘intuition’ as a link in the evolution of German classical philosophy.It was only after Hegel used ‘logic’ to surpass Schelling’s intuition,then achieved the end of German classical philosophy.Obviously,this understanding does not correspond with the fact of the development of German classical philosophy,and it greatly masks the position and role of Schelling’s intuition theory in German classical philosophy.Therefore,it is very necessary to explore the evolution process of intuition theory of German classical philosophy,especially reevaluate the theoretical position of Schelling intuition theory to German classical philosophy itself,which also constitutes the main purpose of this paper.At the very beginning of the ancient Greek philosophy,‘intuition’ was identified as a philosophical way of cognition,which was first applied to Plato’s idealism.Plato’s transcendental ‘idea’ is to use ‘what the eyes of the mind see’.The task of philosophy is to make the idea enter the human spirit through intuitive memory,and internalize it into the human consciousness and reflect it in its full fashion,which also laid the basic mode of western intuition theory.In the medieval Christian theology which God gains the position of ontology,the intuition is internalized into the “direct” way of knowing God,the mysterious experience of communicating with God,and the revelation theology that God can show,etc.In the stage of modern epistemology,intuition theory presented itself in both empiricism and rationalism,and the former believes in the reliability of perceptual intuition,while the latter has more confirmation in the certainty of the ‘innate ideas’ of intellectual intuition.However,the individual and accidental in the perceptual intuition of the empiricism cannot generate the universal and inevitable in ideas,and the intellectual intuition of rationalism can not prove the real existence of the intuitive objects.As a result,Hume plunged the intuitive theories of the two schools into an‘intellectual crisis’,and the reconstruction of the future metaphysics became the mission of the German classical philosophy,and the intuition theory also gained a new vitality.The first step of Kant’s transformation of intuition theory is to clearly stipulate the‘intuition’ in the sensible field,and the perceptual intuition provides an multiple representation for the understanding category.where there is a sharp distinction between the perceptual observation and the intellectual thinking,intuition can not think,and thinking can not intuit.In Kant’s view,human beings do not have the innate capacity of knowing infinite and absolute,so human beings certainly do not have the capacity of intellectual intuition.But Kant’s contribution to intuition theory lies in pointing out the connection between the objects of intellectual intuition and the infinite or absolute,and intellectual intuition itself obtains the theoretical status of communicating with the noumenon;Fichte reconciled the dualism of Kant’s philosophy through the ‘absolute I’.He understood the intuition as the Tathandlung of ‘absolute I’,thus making the‘interactive determinateness’ into the intuition.Thereupon,intuition is no longer a‘static observation’ but a transcendental action of act and passive-act,in which intellectual intuition,as the self’s direct awareness of its own actions,understands itself and confirms the absolute ontology status of itself in the ‘transcendental action’,while perceptual intuition provides objects in the ‘transcendental action’,therefore,intuition unifies perceptual intuition with intellectual intuition in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre.Fichte advanced Kant’s intuition theory in that he gave the capacity of intellectual intuition to human being,achieving the inner unity of perceptual intuition and intellectual intuition in the absolute I’s action.However,such unity,in Schelling’s opinion,still does not come out of the dilemma of Solipsism,and Fichte’s intellectual intuition has not really grasped ‘absolute’.It was Schelling then who developed the ‘intuition’ from Kant and Fichte’s transcendental idealism to his own absolute idealism.In the early stage Schelling started the construction of intuition theory from the natural philosophy,and then developed about the transcendental philosophy of the self.In Identity Philosophy of both nature and self system,intuition plays the same function,which can be summarized as the Original intuition,Creative intuition and Purposive intuition.The specific understanding is as follows: at the beginning,the original position of the ‘absolute’ is found through the Original intuition.In the process,the potenz is produced through Creative intuition and the internal relationship between potenz and ‘absolute’ could be understood.At the end,the return from the highest potenz to ‘absolute’ is manipulated through Purposive intuition.In the late stage,Schelling turned into the Positive philosophy of Existence intuition,where his theoretical purpose was no longer to construct an absolute identical system,but to enter life and existence from the ‘Creation’perspective of absolute existence,and to understand ‘absolute’ in the truth of real existence.In Positive philosophy,there is no highest potenz,but a confirmation of the existence and reality of ‘absolute’ with an open attitude via Existence intuition,so that real existence intuitively gives ‘absolute’ its meaning and value.Just in this sense,Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik is still ‘all is one’ Negative philosophy developed from pure existence to absolute idea.Schelling accomplished the the final of the German classical philosophy with his Positive philosophy of intuition theory.The evolution of the intuition theory of German classical philosophy can be synthesized through three internal correlated dimensions.First,the subjective dimension,reflected in the evolution of the intuitive subject from human to god(absolute).Second,the objective dimension,reflected in the evolution of intuitive objects from limited reality to real existence.Third,the dimension of subject-object identity,reflected in the continuous deepening of der Einbildung of the intuitive subject and the intuitive object.The intuition theory of German classical philosophy has a great influence on the later philosophy,especially on Husserl’s Wesenserschauung in phenomenology,Heidegger’s Sicht and Aletheia in Existentialism and Bergson’s Intuition and dureé in life philosophy,which can be all regarded as the presentations of intuition theory in the era of modern philosophy.