Pojem intuitívneho poznania vo vrcholnej scholastike (The Concept of Intuitive Cognition in High Scholasticism)

Intuitive cognition is a scotistic reply to an ancient idea of the primacy of universality, which was also a basic belief of scholastic philosophy. Scotus rejected the separation of cognition of individuals and cognition of universals which assigned the former to senses and the latter to intellect.In intuitive cognition, John Duns Scotus proposes a theory of intellectual cognition of individuals based on conceptual realism. It required postulating a new principle of individuation – haecceitas. Intuitive and abstractive cognition are two parallel ways of grasping a reality. The intuitive one is much more perfect but we are not endowed with it fully in this state, so we are reliant on a low-grade abstraction.William Ockham struggled another way. His idea of intuitive cognition led to nominalism and became the main motive for it. After all, there is no metaphysical complexity in individual things; the only existing beings are individuals. Intuitive cognition is the main approach to reality while abstraction is possible only because it builds on intuition. There is no need for any species, because our intellect is capable of grasping reality directly – without any mediation. Universal concepts are products of nothing but our mind.