The Concept of Intuition and its Role in Plato and Aristotle

The subject of the article is intuition and its role in philosophical cognition in Plato and Aristotle. The main problem concerns the rationality of intuitive knowledge. Plato is the heir of the Parmenidean doctrinal tradition of being and cognition. According to him, intuition is the immediate perceiving of ideas. This may be supernatural intuition or rational intuition. The first is perceiving ideas seen before birth, the second is recollection of knowledge or cognition of ideas in the mind. The aim of intuitive knowledge is the definition of the essence. Plotinus is the successor to Plato’s theory of supernatural intuition. Aristotle used intuition to formulate the first principles of science or to define the goals of activity. Each type is characterised by common features, such as directness, comprehensiveness of cognition and obviousness. There are differences between the types of intuition. First of all, they concern whether the object is natural or supernatural, its intersubjectivity, and the sources of intuitive cognition. In the case of intersubjectivity, Aristotle introduced a confirmation procedure concerning some of principles known intuitively. The idea of confirmation is forced by accusations against, for example, the principle of non–contradiction, which made Aristotle present a certain extra–intuitive way for it to be substantiated.