Boris Asaf'ev and the Soviet Musicology - E-thesis

does not result the absolute truth about the content of things. It possesses only relative
knowledge and symbolic character. Thus Bergson reacts negatively towards the
teleological view. Nevertheless, he gives a high valuation to intellectual knowledge in
the sphere of practical reality. Bergson states that besides positive knowledge there is
yet absolute knowledge, which is attainable through intuition. 253 Intuition can fulfil
those assignments that intelligence can not. It is peculiar intellectual sympathy “by
means of which we penetrate the inner of the object” to be able to pour together its
individuality, consequently inexpressible in general understandings of the environment,
and to comprehend it as a personal being. 254 Losskij writes that according to Bergson
[t]he intuitive knowledge attains the cognizable object immediately as a whole and thus
the different indivisible sides of an object appear as a basis of the whole and from the
whole. Secondly, the intuitive knowledge is the contemplation of the very things to their
genuine content and thus it possesses an absolute character, meanwhile the rational
knowledge consists of symbols and consequently, possesses a relative character. Thirdly,
the intuitive knowledge gives at once the whole endless richness of the content of an
object, meanwhile rational knowledge only wants to exhaust the object, forcing one to
build an endless line of general understandings that are connected to each other.
Naturally, it is clear that this kind of line never remains complete. 255
Finally and fourth of all, Bergson states that the creative changeability (la durée), the
instability of reality, is given in intuition, whereas the general knowledge is achieved
through the rational knowledge which is considered to be only static, general state of
objects. The assignment of intuition is thus to reach the most ‘doing’ of object. In order
our consciousness to coincide with an object in its being, it is required that it looks aside
from the readiness (tout fait) and concentrate upon what is being created (se faisant).
“We use intuition first of all for penetration to the hiding-place of our ego, our
personality, and we discover that with a help of it we can open the most important
questions of philosophy of mind, for example question about free will, which reminds
eternal puzzle for intelligence.” 256
253 Ibid.
254 Ibid., pp. 17–18.
255 Ibid.
256 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
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