Conception of intuition: From the western philosophy, science, and religion to traditional Vietnamese philosophical thought

Abstract

© 2020, Slovenska Vzdelavacia Obstaravacia. All rights reserved. Intuition is one of the unique human powers to quickly and directly realize the truth of things without any rational analysis or logical thinking process. However, intuition has not really been properly stressed in Western rationalist philosophy. In this article, based on analyzing some conceptions on intuition in the history of Western philosophy, science and religion, we give some comparative interpretations on intuition from traditional Vietnamese philosophical thoughts, especially Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism… to show that (1) intuition is a universal term that is valid not only in Western philosophy but also in Eastern philosophy, particularly in Vietnamese philosophical thought; (2) intuition is understood in traditional Vietnamese philosophical thoughts mainly as irrational, mystical intuition, and (3) this view has certain similarities to some irrational conceptions in Western philosophy in the twentieth century and today. Since this topic has been scarcely discussed in the academic literature, especially in terms of East-West comparison, the aim of our study is to offer a comparative analysis of existing views and their historical roots.