On Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:17 AM robert fanelli robertfanelli2001@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: robert fanelli robertfanelli2001@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>

To: Joe&Anne <josephcol@...>

Cc: Hegel Hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>; Chris Fanelli <fanellichris@...>

Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2019, 07:34:14 PM EDT

Subject: [hegel] Hegel and Intuition

 

Joe,

 

Referring to our discussions on intuition, I offer the following and am pleased to say that Hegel regarded intuition as a useful spoke in the cognitive wheel.  If you can survive the included quote here, you hopefully will come away with a more positive view of this great philosopher who even today has been included in much post modern commentaries.

 

 

Intuition

Quoting Hegel's Science of Logic

"True, intellectual intuition is the forcible rejection of mediation and the ratiocinative, external reflection; but what it enunciates above and beyond simple immediacy is something concrete, something which contains within itself diverse determinations. However, as we have remarked, the enunciation and exposition of such concrete beginning is a process of mediation which starts from one of the determinations and advances to the other, even though the latter returns to the first; it is a movement which at the same time may not be arbitrary or assertoric. Consequently, it is not the concrete something itself with which that exposition begins but only the simple immediacy from which the movement starts. And further, if something concrete is taken as the beginning, the conjunction of the determinations contained in it demand proof, and this is lacking. " SL # 120

 

Unfortunately we must read Hegel with the challenge of a translated text that comes from a difficult German as a start.  Hegel means that when you apply reason and rational activity to the world you must mediate, ratiocinate, and externally reflect.  Intuition does not allow you to do this.  Instead you may immediately offer 'something concrete' and something which you the intuiting person may nonetheless determine such concrete things about the world.  Ironically, as Hegel stresses, once you start taking your intuitions and addressing them with cognitive forms, mediation automatically sets in.  Such is the nature of reflective thought.  However, such mediation has its challenges.  It may be 'arbitrary or assertoric.  Thus we may lose the force of the intuition because we have lost its immediacy.  However the last sentence saves the day.  Intuition can be affirmed by 'demanding proof.' 

This addresses what Hegel considered to be  the domain of intuition, so important in our experiences and thoughts; Hegel asserts and agrees that intuition can be concrete, real, and filled with diverse determinations.  But all such intuitions, especially empirical, 'demand' proofs of confirmation of such determinate being.  He complicates his assertions by bringing in the element of immediacy and emphasizes that intuition inherently challenges logical mediation and 'exact reasoning.'  This is an important point since when we intuit something we tend to abandon mediating it or applying exact reasoning to it.  Of course in scientific method, once we intuit we create hypotheses and thus enter the domain of experimentation, trial and error (just think about Edison as an example.  I'm sure he did a lot of intuiting and most likely much was wrong, but what did take place was superb.).

 

Regards,

Bob