intuition: Anschauung ('intuition') is by origin a visual word, from anschauen ('to intuit, look, view') and schauen ('to see, view, look'). It often means a 'view' or 'conception' (hence Weltanschauung, 'world-view'). But it entered philosophical German with Eckhart for the Latin contemplatio, in the sense of the activity or result of contemplating something, especially the eternal and divine. Anschauung implies immediate, non-discursive contact with the object, and the total absorption of the subject in it.
In later philosophy, Anschauung has two broad senses: first, intellectual contemplation, e.g. of Platonic Ideas (the Greek theoria, 'contemplation, speculation'); second, sensory impression or sensation. Kant argued that all human Anschauung is sensory (sinnlich): thought requires objects, and objects can be given only by intuitions. But the understanding with its concepts can only 'think' intuitions and objects, not provide them. They can be given only by objects' affecting our senses. Kant allowed the possibility of an intellektuelle Anschauung, which supplies an object without sensory assistance. But intellectual intuition, which amounts to creating an object simply by thinking of it, is, on Kant's view, reserved for God alone.
Kant's attempt to confine Anschauung to the sensory was challenged from two directions. First, critics such as Hamann and Herder attacked his sharp separation of intuition and concepts. Goethe speaks of an 'intuition (Anschauen) of inner creative nature' which attains to the 'prototype' or the Idea(Intuitive Judgment, 1817). Such intuition apprehends a phenomenon as a whole together with the interrelations of its parts. It does not dispense with concepts, but it is contrasted with analytical conceptual thought. Second, Fichte argued that the philosopher becomes aware of the pure I by an act of intellectual intuition. Schelling adopted this idea, and when his Absolute ceased to be the I and became a neutral Identity, that too, he held, is grasped by intellectual intuition.
Sensory intuition, on Hegel's view, involves the transformation of what is
sensed (das Empfundene) into an external object (Enc. III
§448A.). Art presents the absolute in the Form of sensory intuition, in
contrast to Conception (Vorstellung), the form of Religion and to
Thought, the form of Philosophy. In early works, especially DFS, Hegel
espoused Schelling's idea of a 'transcendental' intuition that unites
opposites, such as Nature and Spirit. But later he criticized intellectual
intuition, because it is immediate, and, unlike conceptual cognition, does not
display the logical presuppositions and structure of the object. Intuition,
even of Goethe's type, though it enables us to see things as a whole, rather
than piecemeal, can only be a prelude to cognition (e.g. Enc. III §449A.). Nevertheless, Hegel's logic, since it is non-empirical thought
about thoughts, somewhat resembles intellectual intuition in Kant's sense.
Unlike Kant, Hegel has no qualms about assimilating man to God.
(Abbreviation: DFS = Difference between the Systems of Fichte and Schelling)
