直觉与生命——柏格森、梁漱溟、熊十力的直觉概念之比较

Bergson,Liang Shuming,and Xiong Shili on the Concept of Intuition

20世纪上半叶,柏格森哲学对中国哲学家梁漱溟、熊十力均产生了较大影响。在哲学方法论方面,三位哲学家都认为,在科学所使用的知性方法之外还有着一种更高级的方法,即直观或者直觉。他们都认为,通过科学和知性主义的方法不足以真正地把握生命和人生,只有直觉才有可能把握生命。三位哲人的直观概念的差异体现为三种不同的认识态度:梁漱溟的“直觉”更接近审美态度;熊十力的“直觉”是一种宇宙论视角下的伦理态度;柏格森的“直观”则更接近一种反思的态度。

In the first half of the 20th century, Henri Bergson’s philosophy of life and his intuitive methodology greatly influenced Liang Shuming and Xiong Shili, two modern Neo-Confucians. This article attempts to reveal the range of consensus and divergence among these three philosophers concerning the intuitive method. Their concepts of intuition will also be examined. For Bergson, intuitive thinking means thinking in duration.Duration is defined through contrast with the space, where space represents the intellectualism of modern philosophy that Bergson fiercely criticized. Negatively, intuition is an analytic method beyond science;positively, it is sympathy with the thing itself. Liang Shuming was once a great fan of Bergson. He situated intuition as a cognitive capacity between sensation and understanding. For him, intuition signifies something more than sensation. This diverges from Bergson’s concept of intuition that intuition is superior than understanding. However, Liang also holds to a conception of the universe as animate that is only epistemically accessible through intuition, which approximates Bergson’s view on intuition. Xiong Shili’s concept of intuition is closely related to his monistic ontology, which holds that phenomena in the world are functions of substance.He supported two epistemic methods, intuition for knowing the substance and understanding for knowing the phenomena. He agrees with Bergson in that both the self-cognition of consciousness and the knowledge about the origin of the universe are accessible through intuition. Criticizing modern scientism, all three philosophers agree that intuition is different from the types of understanding that science employs, and that life and the universe are only accessible to intuition and not to science and intellectualism. However, because Liang and Xiong’s concept of intuition has its origins in Buddhism, the understanding of intuition that they hold transcend concepts and language, whereas Bergson insists that the mediation of concepts and language are indispensable for intuition. The different views on intuition held by these three philosophers can be characterized as three different epistemic attitudes: an aesthetic attitude for Liang, an ethical attitude in terms of cosmology for Xiong, and a reflective attitude for Bergson.