Two faculties: intellect analyzes inert matter from outside in separable parts; intuition grasps living reality from inside, holistically and in time.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
Intellect is built for inert matter. It measures, categorizes and breaks things into separable pieces from outside; at ease only with the discontinuous and dead, it cannot grasp life.
Put simply Bergson: the intellect is made for lifeless matter. It measures, sorts and breaks things into separate pieces from the outside. At ease only with what is cut up and dead, it cannot grasp life.
Intuition, instinct in sophisticated form, is molded to life itself: it grasps reality from inside, whole and at one stroke, not in represented pieces, and it belongs to time.
Put simply Bergson: intuition, a refined form of instinct, is shaped to fit life itself. It grasps reality from the inside, whole and all at once rather than piece by piece, and it belongs to time.
Intuition completes intellect rather than rejecting it, and consciousness needs both. Rely on mechanistic intellect alone, though, and you get an impoverished world drained of creativity.
Put simply Bergson: intuition completes the intellect rather than rejecting it, and the mind needs both. But rely on the machine-like intellect alone and you get a poorer world, drained of creativity.
Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
BergsonMechanism treats nature as a machine: isolate each part, understand it, reassemble. Applied to life, that reaches only the parts and yields a thin, derivative picture of the whole. L7 · 28:07
BergsonIntellect is built for inert matter. It measures, categorizes and breaks things into separable pieces from outside; at ease only with the discontinuous and dead, it cannot grasp life. L7 · 39:12
Intellect is the faculty whose analytic partition of matter yields mechanism; fine for machines, blind to life.
GoetheGoethe's charge against Mendelssohn: he treats beauty as an entomologist treats a butterfly, pinning it down until its color pales and nothing living is left. L2 · 46:35
BergsonIntellect is built for inert matter. It measures, categorizes and breaks things into separable pieces from outside; at ease only with the discontinuous and dead, it cannot grasp life. L7 · 39:12
Analytic intellect, like the pinned butterfly, cannot grasp the living wholeOur inference
BergsonIntellect is built for inert matter. It measures, categorizes and breaks things into separable pieces from outside; at ease only with the discontinuous and dead, it cannot grasp life. L7 · 39:12
BeauvoirSexuality, for Beauvoir, cannot be absorbed into the social order: eroticism is "a revolt of the instant against time," and trying to channel or exploit it risks killing it. L16 · 41:15
Shore sees Bergson's influence in Beauvoir's view that live spontaneity cannot be disposed of like inert matter: eroticism is a realm of freedom.
Terms that appear in the same claims.