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Intuition in Christian Philosophy1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
The object of this paper is to examine the concept of intuition and to determine what part, if any, it should play in Christian philosophy. It is a complex inquiry, and I shall have to save space by a certain economy of purely historical detail, and also, if you will allow me, by by-passing the vexed question of Revelation and Natural Theology. It seems to me that whatever the issue of this debate may prove to be, it will not prevent philosophers from plying their trade; and whether they, or some of them, are to be dignified with the title of Natural Theologians is a problem they can leave to others. The only remaining question is, whether it is lawful for a Christian minister to engage in philosophy. As philosophy is not an openly scandalous pursuit, and there is no canon against it, I take the answer to be “Yes.” I would have you regard this paper as an essay in philosophy and allow me to investigate certain aspects of human knowledge, and the light they throw on man's knowledge of God, without presupposing a self-revelation of God to man. Without presupposing, but also without excluding it; revelation cannot be a primary datum for the philosopher, but it may well turn out to be his only ultimately satisfactory conclusion.
Adopting this standpoint, we shall inevitably be traversing that current of thought which reached England about fifty years ago and which, with its eddies and counter-currents, is still a moving force: I mean the insistence on religious experience, and more particularly the analysis of religious experience by the methods of psychology. In practice this method tended to concentrate on the experiences of the individual, and to disregard the far richer store of experience which lay crystallized in historic documents and liturgies—except in so far as these acted as a stimulus to individual piety.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1949
References
page 119 note 1 Tusc. I, 30: “Mentis acies se ipsa intuens.”Google Scholar
page 119 note 1 De Consideratione II, 2, 5Google Scholar.
page 119 note 3 S.T. I, Q 14, a 14: “scientia visionis” is a commoner phrase.
page 119 note 4 Unusquisque potest animo intueri, se existere, se cogitare, triangulum terminari tribus lineis tantum, globum unica superficie & similia … Intuendum est, 2 & 2 efficere 4 …” Regulae III.
page 119 note 5 Λογικός is common in Aristotle: ή λογική (sc. τέχνη) occurs first in Cicero: Fin. I, 7, 22, cf. Tusc. iv, 14, 33Google Scholar.
page 120 note 1 Logic, Part II, Chapter 8.
page 120 note 2 Proceedings of the British Academy, 1941Google Scholar.
page 124 note 1 Cf. Tennant, , Philosophical Theology, especially p. 220 n.Google Scholar, where three senses are distinguished.
page 126 note 1 An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, p. 124Google Scholar.
page 127 note 1 Cf. Waismann, F. on “Vrerifiability” in Analysis and Metaphysics (Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume XIX)Google Scholar.
page 131 note 1 Some of these cases could be represented as mere alterations in our feelings towards a certain situation, but these are bound up with genuine recognitions of new truths, i.e. very general empirical propositions.
page 132 note 1 On the other hand, it admittedly fails to emphasize the importance of the will and of practical obedience in promoting knowledge; yet see § 5 above.