Bergson distinguishes between “intelligence” and “intuition” . Intelligence is regulated on matter, that is to say, it allows knowledge, Intelligence is the faculty that certain living beings (human beings) have. to act on matter through tools and to know certain objects through their relationships, so above all through space. "
Intuition, on the other hand, is regulated over time. Analysis operates on the still while intuition is placed in mobility or, which amounts to the same thing, in duration. Therein lies the clear line of demarcation between intuition and analysis . It transcends the closed frameworks that intelligence creates in order to appropriate the world, and seeks within life a source of knowledge. Bergson thus opens the way to a new metaphysics, by affirming that the real, in its origin, is knowable. “It is in the experience, sensitive, temporal, immediate, that there must be intuition or not at all. But if intuition is given, it then delivers the characters of a reality, without any relativity due to our senses or our knowledge,metaphysics : the criterion of duration is then the intrinsic guarantee of the metaphysical scope of intuition. It is on this point that Bergson is opposed to Kant , by bringing back within the "matter" of "sensitive intuition" its form (time), the very concepts of understanding (with intuition of matter based intelligence), and especially the great metaphysical experiences of the self, the world and of God, inaccessible to the philosopher as such, experience mystical 39 . "
Definition of intuition: Bergson defines it as "the sympathy by which one transports oneself to the interior of an object to coincide with what is unique and consequently inexpressible".
Intuition is not opposed to the intelligence. If intuition is different from intelligence, it is not opposed to it. Intuition is only possible after a long intellectual effort, like a synthetic re-entry of data analyzed by intelligence. Moreover, intuition can only be communicated with the help of intelligence. This is why philosophy is indeed, in its mode of exposition, a reasoning.
Additional summaries of Bergson:
Time and Free WillMatter and memory
Laughter
Creative evolution
The two sources of morality and religion
