Intuition, Reason, and Derrida’s Postmodernism

A Tract Book

By

Anthony J. Fejfar

© Copyright 2006 by Anthony J. Fejfar

Derrida’s postmodernism involves linguistic deconstruction. The

underlying premise of this postmodernism is that reality is based upon

ideas. This type of idealism seems to suggest that all knowledge is

conditioned upon an act of interpretation of the knower. For the

postmodern, then, reality does not exist independently of the knower.

Critical Realism, or Critical Thomism, on the other hand argues that

reality, at least in part, exists independent of any knower. The idea is that

Substantial Form, structures all Reality, and provides a basis for knowing,

outside the mind of the interpreter. Aristotelians believe in Substantial

Form, and substantial forms, metaphysically, while, Platonist believe in the

World of the Immutable Platonic Forms, sometimes known as the World of

the Forms. Because an immutable platonic form exists for an actually

existing tree, and because a substantial form exists for an actual existing

tree, the actual existing tree, as well as the idea of, “tree,” to some degree

exists independently of any knower.

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 I would argue that the forms, whether substantial, or platonic,

oscillate or vibrate. They are like columns of light-sound-feeling, which

manifest probabilistically. Thus, the forms must be intuited. Intuition is a

very important cognitive faculty. Intuition operates non-locally to provide a

connection of what Bergson describes as “intellectual sympathy” between

the object of knowing, and the knowing itself. Real knowing involves an

Intuition both of the forms, as well as an Intuition of the particular object

itself. I know the tree in my backyard to be a tree, precisely because, as

Zen would tell us, I have an immediate intuition of the tree, and going

beyond Zen, the form itself.

Remember, because the forms can be “added to, but not subtracted

from, rearranged, but not changed,” the world of the forms is only

moderately conservative, and in some sense could be considered,

progressive. Reason, then, is objective, or authentically subjective, in part

because we intuit both the forms and the object itself, immediately.

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 Bibliography

Aristotle, The Metaphysics

Bergson, Henri, Introduction to Metaphysics

Plato, The Republic