Sensuous and rational knowledge and its understanding in epistemology

Traditionally, knowledge is understood as the process of interaction between a subject and an object that helps determine the content of reality - that is, what is, could be, was and will be. In culture, the symbol of this process can be found the figure of the soothsayer Tiresias from the Odyssey. When studying this type of human activity, one of the main antinomies arises: how do the sensory and rational cognition relate. This problem is most sharply expressed in Nietzsche: he contrasted such phenomena as the tragic and the Socratic, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. This same confrontation appears in Leo Shestov, as the opposite of "Athens" and "Jerusalem." The whole history of philosophy is permeated with the opposition between discursive and intuitive, and attempts to unite them into a whole.

The language of philosophy in most cases is multi-layer, and therefore in the concepts of "sensory" and "rational" cognition, several meanings can be singled out. A ratio is understood as logical thinking associated with certain forms, predefined formulations (concepts, judgments, definitions, axioms). This kind of thinking is most often analytical, it uses inductive and deductive methods. As a rule, the rational view of comprehension of the world tends to natural and social order, he prefers a way of conceptual-discursive understanding, and his main achievement is a set of methods and forms that are principles of scientific research. True, modern philosophy, such as Feyerabend, suggests that there are several types of rationality.

Sensory cognition and its forms, such as sensation, perception and representation, are predominantly combined with a non-rational phenomenon. One of its components is the irrational, which in turn is divided into an instinctive reaction to the world (it can also be made the subject of research) and some dark, empty, antagonistic to the mind impulses. Next comes the unconscious (subconscious), which is a special sphere, different from the phenomena that are undergoing comprehension. His first existence was guessed by Leibniz, who called it "dark perceptions." Then German Romantics turned to this phenomenon, having guessed in it a natural source of creativity. According to Freud, this is a powerful, opposing force that you can try to control with the help of psychoanalysis.

Sensuous and rational cognition, their analysis and understanding, are connected with the study of such an interesting concept as intuitive. There are many types of intuition that can approach logical thinking, or completely do not come into contact with it. There is a rational heuristic - this is a kind of cognition, when the truth is revealed to the subject not gradually, but suddenly, at once. The method of cognition, occurring as if in a leap, is called intellectual intuition, and scientific insight (insight) is an element of a rational approach to the study of the problem. In fact, this is another form of rational cognition. By intuition, we understand the artistic model of comprehension of the world, different from the scientific one, and the mode of human being, and even a certain kind of values (from the point of view of Husserl and Scheler they are revealed not through the mind, but in acts of love or hate, for example, idiosyncrasy).

Depending on time, place of action, concrete philosopher, there are different theories that justify how the sensory and rational cognition are correlated. However, in general, they can be divided into three groups - 1) concepts that believe that these two kinds of cognitive activity completely deny each other; 2) theories that not only oppose but also differentiate the spheres of their application and 3) teachings that try to find a single source for both forms of cognition, as well as options for their interaction and integration. Such a division is also characteristic of the philosophy of culture, where we see both the opposition of the two under the guise of Life and Spirit, experience and reflection, eidos and logos, contemplation and concept, heart and head, and attempts to reduce them to a single denominator.