p Our characterisation of the philosophical form of cognition as predominantly speculative must be supplemented by an analysis of intuition, whose cognitive significance has been proved by modern science. Dialectical materialism has dispelled the mysteries surrounding the concept of intuition, and shown that intuition is actually a part of the sensory and rationalist reflection of objective reality. Marxist epistemology tackles the question of intuition not only with a view to tracing the paths that lead to scientific discoveries but also in connection with the analysis of everyday experience, which includes the involuntary (unperceived by the consciousness) memorising of perceptions and their equally involuntary and 137 unexpected recall, the “discovery” of something that one thinks one has never known, never noticed, and never memorised. This recognition of what has been involuntarily memorised was given an idealist interpretation in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, which states that cognition is in essence an intuitive process of recognising that which is already present in the consciousness.

p The problem of intuition is particularly relevant to an understanding of the specific nature of philosophy, since through two thousand years or more philosophy has not possessed the necessary factual basis for the extremely wide theoretical generalisations that constitute its basic task. And since philosophy cannot refuse to answer the questions by which it is faced, it has had only one choice: epistemological scepticism or acknowledgement of the great cognitive value of philosophical hypotheses, which as a rule entail conjecture, intuitive conviction, imagination, assumption of postulates, and so on. Philosophical hypotheses have never been suppositions, i.e., statements that no one is prepared to vouch for. On the contrary, they have always been put forward as convictions, psychologically absolutely incompatible with any notion that they may only possibly be true. Philosophers have never employed formulae such as "it seems to me" and their statements have been of a categorical nature. Epistemologically these statements may be correctly understood as intuitions, as long as this word is not taken to mean only direct cognition of truth, of course.

p The philosopher’s intuitive assertions have been made in various ways, depending on historical conditions and the level of development of 138 science and culture. Sometimes they have appeared as beliefs based on the sensory perception of reality, sometimes as mystical, imperatively proclaimed “revelation”, sometimes as the adoption of some “self-evident” proposition as the point of departure for a train of logical reasoning, and so on. In all cases, however, philosophers have consciously or unconsciously relied on intuition. Yet it should not be assumed that intuition has been the specific organon of philosophy. It has played (and continues to play) a substantial part in the natural sciences.  [138•1 

p The intuitionists grasped this peculiarity of the development of philosophy and absolutised it without noticing that intuition itself requires critical research and assessment. They maintained that the specific nature of philosophy is, in fact, the intuitive discovery of its initial propositions.

p The high assessment of the cognitive significance of intuition given by the rationalists, and also some empiricists of the 17th century (John Locke), implied no belittlement of logic, logical deduction and proof; rationalism’s ideal was the mathematical method. It would therefore be a crude mistake to regard the rationalists as intuitionists. Such an approach would mean that any acknowledgement of the cognitive significance of intuition implies acceptance of the positions of intuitionism.

p Intuitionism is an irrational doctrine, interpreting intuition as an alogical act of cognition of irrational reality. Henri Bergson held that Kant had performed an outstanding service in proving the impossibility of intellectual intuition. But Bergson went on to deduce from this something that Kant himself had never thought of: that the only possible intuition is superintellectual intuition, which forms the basis of the specifically philosophical vision of the world. The intellect, Bergson said, is essentially practical in its origin and function, its business is "to guide our actions. The thing that interests us in actions is their result; the means matter little as long as the goal is attained.”  [139•1  Stressing the link between intellect and the material world of objects, which, according to Bergson, is lifeless and static, the French intuitionist argued that the basis and 140 origin of all things is pure duration, whose byproducts are matter and intellect. It is this nonmaterial duration, this metaphysical time that is perceived through intuition.  [140•1 

p Bergson assumed that the basis of any great philosophical system is "primary intuition”, which the philosopher then tries to express as a system of deductions. The intuitive vision of the world, however, cannot be adequately expressed through logic, it is "something simple, infinitely simple, so extraordinarily simple that the philosopher has never been able to express it. And this is why he has been talking all his life. He could not formulate what was in his mind without feeling obliged to correct his formula, and then to correct his correction.”  [140•2 

p Bergson’s mistake lies not in his belief that "primary intuitions" are the initial propositions of philosophy. He is wrong because he interprets intuition as the irrational cognition of the irrational, ruling out all possibility on principle of any other, non-intuitive path to the initial philosophical proposition, or any possibility of its adequate logical (theoretical) expression, i.e., 141 deduction, proof, elucidation. In the actual history of philosophy things have been far more complicated than this. When Thales declared that everything originates from water, he cited facts in support of his theory (so we are told by Aristotle) and deduced logical arguments, but this, of course, is not enough. Facts and arguments are aided by intuition, which it would be more correct to call, despite Bergson, not primary but secondary, because it is based on experience and knowledge. Even so, facts and knowledge were obviously not enough to provide the foundation of a fundamental philosophical belief.

p Lack of empirical and theoretical data is characteristic not only of the philosophy of the ancient world. Philosophy seeks to know the general forms of the universe, whereas the data at its disposal are always historically limited and in this sense insufficient. "Mankind therefore,” Engels writes, "finds itself faced with a contradiction: on the one hand, it has to gain an exhaustive knowledge of the world system in all its interrelations; and on the other hand, because of the nature both of men and of the world system, this task can never be completely fulfilled. But this contradiction lies not only in the nature of the two factors—the world, and man—it is also the main lever of all intellectual advance, and finds its solution continuously, day by day, in the endless progressive evolution of humanity... .”  [141•1 

p Thus, the synthesis of empirical and scientific knowledge in general can never be complete. It is this that gives the philosophical (and also the natural scientific) conception of the whole, the 142 general, the infinite, the intransient, the character of a hypothesis which, even in those instances when it actually does synthesise the scientific data of its time, constantly demands correction and development in the light of new scientific discoveries.

p The philosopher, as distinct from the natural scientist, cannot stop thinking about the universal, the infinite, the intransient, the whole, and so on. Even if he renounces “metaphysics” and deliberately concentrates on research into, say, only epistemological problems, he is bound to be confronted even in this field with the task of theoretical synthesis, the formulation of conclusions that have general and necessary significance, and such synthesis and the conclusions it entails can never be founded on the full abundance of empirical data that they require. On closer examination it turns out that this difficulty occurs in all fields of theoretical knowledge, since induction always remains incomplete and the universality of a law formulated by natural science is proved not so much theoretically as confirmed in fact. But it is also theoretically conceivable that there are facts that do not confirm this law. Natural scientists can afford to ignore this because there is an unlimited number of phenomena that proceed according to the given law, the universality of which is qualitatively limited and, if necessary, may be quantitatively limited as well.  [142•1  It is a different matter in 143 philosophy, which aspires to know that which is most general and unlimited both qualitatively and quantitatively.

p The productive ability of the imagination, which Kant regarded as fundamental to the process of cognition, plays, in philosophy at any rate, a leading role if, of course, this ability is interpreted materialistically and not as the a priori mental construction of an empirical entity, independent of any empirical data and preceding them. Kant denied that intellectual intuition, which he saw as a rationalist illusion regarding the ability of “pure” reason, could have knowledge going beyond the limits of experience. In this sense intellectual intuition is indeed impossible. However, the concept of intellectual intuition need not be interpreted in the spirit of 17th century rationalism, which Kant rightly opposed. Modern science allows us to trace intuition scientifically, as an inseparable element of the creative imagination of the scientist, that is to say, imagination based on facts, knowledge and searching inquiry.

p Thus Marxist philosophy is opposed to intuitionism not because intuitionism acknowledges the existence of intuition while dialectical materialism denies it. "As a fact of knowledge every form of intuition is an undeniable reality, existing in the sphere of cognition for all who are concerned in this field,” writes V. F. Asmus. "But as a theory of facts of knowledge, every theory of intuition is a philosophical theory, idealist or materialist, metaphysical or 144 dialectical.”  [144•1  Hence it is a question not of whether there does or does not exist a specific cognitive ability that differs essentially from the consistent logical deduction of a series of inferences, but of how such reflection of reality is possible, how it relates to the experience and knowledge of the individual knower. If Newton, as legend has it, did notice an apple fall from a tree and "all of a sudden" discover the law of universal gravity, this intuition of his must obviously have been preceded by prolonged consideration of a whole range of problems, such as Galileo’s discovery of the law of the equality of the velocities of all falling bodies, great and small. So the problem lies in correct interpretation of the fact of intuition, which is always to be found in the history of cognition, and in discovering the possibilities of applying scientific, critical methods of inquiry and testing to this cognitive ability.  [144•2 

p The notion of intuition as immediate perception of truth, a notion upheld both by the rationalists of the 17th century and the anti-rationalist 145 intuitionists, is obviously untenable because the history of natural science and philosophy furnishes countless instances of mistaken intuition. "Reliance on so-called intuition has too often turned out to be misleading,” observes Hans Reichenbach.  [145•1  Mario Bunge in his serious study Intuition and Science thoroughly criticises idealist conceptions of intuition and then deals concretely with the forms of intuition, which manifest themselves in sensory perception, imagination, " accelerated deduction”, appreciation and so on. He condemns the idealist cult of the intuition and opposes both overestimation and underestimation of this form of cognition, to which science owes not only great discoveries but also numerous mistakes. One can hardly disagree with Bunge’s conclusion: "The various forms of intuition resemble other forms of knowing and reasoning, in that they must be controlled if they are to be useful. Placed between sensible intuition and pure reason, intellectual intuition is fertile. But out of control it leads to sterility.”  [145•2 

p Thus there is nothing more deceptive than the belief that intuition is infallible. This truth is indirectly acknowledged even by the intuitionists, since each one of them is convinced that he, as distinct from other philosophers (including intuitionists), has a monopoly right to intuitively perceived truth. The assertion that intuition’ is the specific organon of philosophy indicates recognition of the fundamental impossibility of scientific philosophy. Intuition, as I see it, occupies no bigger place in philosophy than in 146 theoretical science, creative art or invention. But perhaps it makes sense to speak of a specific kind of philosophical intuition, just as we speak of the peculiar intuition of the artist? It would be absurd to deny the peculiarity of the philosophical form of knowledge but even less convincing to say that it is no more than philosophical intuition. Analysis of philosophical doctrines leads to the conclusion that the relative unity of the philosophical form of knowledge embraces certain essential differences, oppositions and contradictions. Whereas some philosophers, at any rate subjectively, proceed from intuitive beliefs, others on the contrary take the facts established by science or everyday experience as their point of departure.

p The psychology of philosophical creativity is an entirely uninvestigated field, but the available odd assortment of facts (philosophers’ own accounts of how their ideas took shape, for instance) offers no factual grounds for admitting the existence of a special kind of philosophical intuition. Such an admission is demanded by the intuitionists who refer us to their own philosophical creativity, but even if we accept their declarations as evidence we can only allow intuition a special role in their particular philosophical work. Most philosophers, however, are not intuitionists, but opponents of intuitionism.

p Scientific analysis of the testimony of the intuitionists, no matter how sincere they themselves may be, reveals an obvious underestimation of the extent to which they have been influenced by other philosophers, philosophical traditions, scientific data, definite historical conditions, and so on. Ideas that took shape in intuitionist doctrines under the obvious influence of other 147 theories that as a rule are not intuitionist are constantly interpreted as "primary intuitions”, completely independent of all previous philosophical development. This is particularly striking in Bergson himself. His basic ideas were formed under the influence of the irrationalist tradition in Germany and France; his "metaphysics of becoming" interprets irrationally the principle of development that gained almost universal even if superficial recognition in philosophy and natural science at the close of the 19th century. Analysis of Bergson’s attitudes to Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Dilthey, Maine de Biran, Boutroux, Darwin and Spencer, and to the advocates of natural scientific materialism, would undoubtedly reveal as minimal the role of intuition in the creation of his system, which has often been described as the most original in the history of philosophy.

So intuition, like speculation, is a specific feature of the philosophical form of knowledge, although both these peculiarities of cognition are present in any theoretical inquiry.  [147•1  Evidently there are no grounds here either for inferring the existence of any features of philosophical thought that are peculiar to that mode of thought alone. 148 Once again it is a matter of the degree to which speculation and intuition are employed by philosophy. The scale varies considerably, however, in different philosophical doctrines and at different stages in the historical development of philosophy.