CLEMENT GREENBERG
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recognize
the same colors, noises, surfaces, tastes, and smells in much the
same way, whether or not they react to them in the same way or apply
exactly the same words to them. And they also agree that two plus two
equals four, and that when they look into themselves they can remember
certain things that other people in the position to decide will agree took
place. On the basis of these kinds of agreement we are able to communi–
cate with one another and embark confidently on chains of inference or
reasoning. The results of
esthetic
intuition are not that universally agreed
upon, not that self-evident, therefore cannot be reasoned from as confi–
dently, and do not provide so reliable a basis for communication.
Sensory and introspective intuition-which I'll call intuition in the
primary mode-is required for survival as well as for communication.
Esthetic intuition is not. Intuition in the primary mode is instrumental; it's
a means to ends other than itself, ends that incl ude and go beyond survival,
far beyond it, but which are still external ends. Esthetic intuition contains
within itself its own ends and purposes, its own self-sufficing satisfactions.
Primary intuition furnishes data for action and re-action, for identification
and classification; it leads to possibilities and consequences; it founds use–
ful
knowledge. Esthetic intuition gives matter, substance, but not data; it
stops with itself, hangs up on itself, rests in itself, and is valued for itself.
Nor can its results, unlike those of primary intuition, be abstracted from
itself. In esthetic intuition means and ends fuse indissolubly. Esthetic intu–
ition is all that esthetic intuition is about. It's its own value. And all that
esthetic intuition can intuit is value,just as all that primary intuition can
intuit is properties (to adopt G. E . Moore's distinction).
The difference between primary and esthetic intuition is not blurred
by the fact that the former is a necessary precondition to the latter: that you
do have to be sentient in the primary mode in order to have experience in
the esthetic mode. That is, that if you don't have use of your senses, or are
incapable of registering what goes on inside you, you're not only unable
to survive, but are also unable to have esthetic experience. It still remains
that, in order to experience anything esthetically, you have to make a def–
inite shift from the mode of primary intuition into that of esthetic
intuition.
Yet any and everything that can be intuited in the primary mode can
also be intuited, experienced, in the esthetic one. Which means that any
and everything that enters perception and/or consciousness can be experi–
enced esthetically. But even more: what consciousness itself generates can
be experienced esthetically; I mean mental processes like reasoning and
generalizing, though these are not intuitive in themselves. In short, there's
nothing that we can be aware of in any way that we can't also be aware of
or intuit esthetically.
