Bergson's Intuitionistic Epistemology

Bergson's philosophy is also known as the philosophy of life, and the concept of duration lies throughout his entire philosophical system. It advocates that the nature of the world and the fundamental reality is duration or life. Duration is the essence of life, and it observes the various moment of life during the eternal flow of life, as only duration is the true time. Intuition can bring the moment to the duration, so as to make these moments into one and experience the whole process of life. In the process of free action, people realize the creation of life. Intuition is the only way to duration.Intuition, innate to everyone's consciousness, affects people's daily life. Most people living in the world have such rational analysis and intuitive experience. People will be inadvertently use intuition, or even be dominated by intuition. The intuition and human life consciousness is interrelated, inseparable, and becomes the combination of instinct and reason. Bergson's intuitionist epistemology is the further development based on Schopenhauer's intuition theory and Nietzsche's perspective. With the characteristics of conscientious, personal, non-verbal, intuition is kind of "rational blend".Different from instinct and emotion, Bergson's intuition is a way as well as an inner experience. Instinct and emotion is an instinctive reaction to external things or objects, and is a kind of fragmented understanding. However, intuition goes deep to the inside of the object to feel every moment of change in the duration. Moreover, to achieve this intuitive understanding, one must turn to sympathy, into the play, memory and other forms, because only when individual goes deep into the object, with the use of their own memories,so that the past pours into the present,and the main body goes into the object, then one can fully grasp the various processes of life.Bergson's intuitionism is not equivalent to the that of Descartes, Schopenhauer, Kant and Deleuze,whose intuition is more of a sensuous theory of sensibility, which only from the outside to know things. Their intuition observes thing, just as from the outside of the window, without knowing the inner side of it. Like a dagger, Bergson's intuition goes into the room by cutting the window paper,so that it can carefully observe the structure of the house.Regarding life as the focus and motive force of philosophical thinking, Bergson's intuitionist epistemology not only can help philosophy to be closely connected with human's life,but also finds a joint point for the combination of philosophy and natural science. Grasping this intuitive method correctly will help to understand Bergson's philosophy, and has important guiding significance for reversing the direction of western traditional rational thinking and dealing with the relationship between humanities and science. At the same time, it also has important epistemological and methodological value for the scientific theory innovation in the great scientific era.