Intuition in Eastern and Western Philosophy

Generally speaking, Eastern philosophy regards intuition as a sound method of gaining knowledge; Western philosophy does not. There are exceptions to these generalizations in both cases---e.g., Mohism in the East and the mystic philosophies in the Westbut in both cases these sharply diverge from the more influential philosophies. This fact constitutes an interesting problem; it also poses an outstanding difficulty in the way of a harmonious interadjustment of Oriental and Occidental philosophy. And the first task which must be carried out, if any reconciliation of East and West may become possible here, is clearly and adequately to explain this difference. The purpose of the following paragraphs is to contribute toward such an explanation. My hope in particular is to show that the difference rests in the main on divergent but compatible presuppositions. It is important at the start to avoid confusion as to what in this context is meant by our key term. Intuition is a very ambiguous word, covering various processes which are supposed by some thinker or other to yield knowledge. Perhaps the only characteristics possessed in common by those of its meanings which would be taken seriously today are: first, that the method is analogous in its directness and immediacy to sense perception; but, second, that it is nonetheless different from sense perception. Now, most of the processes which exhibit these two characteristics are not relevant to our theme. Mere hunches or snap judgments about this or that matter are no more respectable in Eastern than in Western philosophy, and, although many Indian thinkers accept some forms of extrasensory perception as trustworthy, their disclosures are not regarded as of crucial philosophical significance. We are concerned with intuition, not as a supernatural phenomenon giving information on particular matters which might be learned about in other ways, but as a mode of apprehension which supervenes on the ordinary methods of knowledge and is supposed to reveal truths which could not be disclosed by any other means, truths peculiarly important for

Epistemology · Intuition · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy