UNIT 12
Intuition shifts
03-09-2024
In Unit 12 we explore intuition’s relation to the present and past. We thus demonstrate how Hitchens at times orients his dominant intuition towards present matters and sometimes even to past events.
THEORETICAL ORIENTATION
It seems necessary to address the general misconception that intuition is all about future possibilities. While intuition is very much about possibilities, Jung nowhere limits intuition to the future. Intuitives can orient their dominant function just as well towards a pressing problem that needs an immediate solution. Jung says for instance: “When you are in an absolute fix, an intuition can show you the hole through which you can escape.” (C.G. Jung Speaking, 1980, p. 320) Furthermore, Jung says that intuition “points to the possibilities, the whence and whither which lie within the immediate facts.” (E. A. Bennet, C.G. Jung, p. 77) “Immediate facts” refer to any relevant accidental facts which are put forward, including facts about past events. Facts are immediate when they are being considered irrespective of whether they are new or old.
DEMONSTRATION OF INTUITION SHIFTS
Please study the selection of relevant self-representations
This section provides an opportunity to differentiate Hitchens’ focus on present or past matters depending on the relevant self-representation.
DEMONSTRATIONS
01
The Four Horsemen
Extract
Book: pp. 52-3 [From the third par. on p. 52: “I don’t think many of them ever let themselves contemplate the question … ‘What if I am wrong?’”… to the end of the first par. on p. 53: “A lot of people live by keeping two sets of books.”]
Hour 1 of 2
URL: 00:14:55 to 00:15:42 timer
Hitchens:
“There is, indeed, a prayer: ‘Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.’”
Book: p. 53
Hour 1 of 2
URL: 00:15:29 timer
Analytic commentary
In this example we see Hitchens orient his intuition towards a present matter. When Dennett states that: “...scientists ask themselves all the time: ‘What if I’m wrong?’”, he implies that the religious people do not likewise confront themselves with this question. Hitchens begs to disagree, and points to a present fact about [Christian] religious people who also feel challenged ― but by their unbelief: “There is, indeed, a prayer: ‘Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.’” Note the verb is in this reference. Hitchens’ irrational intuition orientates to present-day accidental facts which aid in widening the narrower scope of Dennett’s rational judgment.
02
Extract
Book: pp. 46-7 [From the last par. on p. 46: “I used to run into this when I was younger, in arguments with members of the Communist Party…” to the end of the first par. on p. 47: “…I find it in many cases almost an exactly analogous argument.”]
Hour 1 of 2
URL: 00:06:36 to 00:07:13 timer
Hitchens:
“But certainly, if anyone had said to me … I would have said…”
Book: pp. 46-7
Hour 1 of 2
URL: 00:06:58 timer
Analytic commentary
In elaborating on the matter about the members of the Communist Party, Hitchens intuits: “if anyone had said to me ... I would have said ...” He thus directs his intuition to an event in the past.
03
Extract
Book: pp. 68-9 [From the last par. on p. 68: “No religious person has ever been able to say what Einstein said ― that if he was right, the following phenomenon would occur…” to the end of the same par. on p. 69: “…willing to place their reputation and … their life on the idea that it would be.”]
Hour 1 of 2
URL: 00:36:39 to 00:37:09 timer
Hitchens:
“No religious person has ever been able to say what Einstein said...”
Book: p. 68
Hour 1 of 2
URL: 00:36:39 timer
Analytic commentary
Note Hitchens’ statement that no religious person “has ever been able” to say what Einstein did. Here Hitchens’ intuition again points to a past event.
04
Extract
Book: pp. 126-8 [From the fourth par. on p. 126: “Yes. Read Franklin on what the Quakers were like…” to the end of the last par. of p. 127: “…and probably because it doesn’t have a papacy that can tell it to stop something, make an edict saying...”]
Hour 2 of 2
URL: 00:52:25 to 00:55:10 timer
This extract provides numerous clear examples of how Hitchens orientates his intuition to past events:
Hitchens:
“I would have then said that Quakerism was actually quite a serious danger to the United States.”
Book: p. 126
Hour 2 of 2
Hitchens:
“... the moment where everything went wrong ... That’s where the human race took its worst turn ... Christianity would never have happened if that hadn’t happened and nor would Islam. I have no doubt there would have been other crazed cults and so forth, but there might have been a chance to not destroy Hellenistic civilization.”
Book: p. 127
Hour 2 of 2
Hitchens:
“I would have certainly said in the 1930s that the Catholic Church was the most deadly organization, because of its alliance with fascism, which was explicit and open and sordid.”
Book: p. 127
Hour 2 of 2
URL: 00:54:39 timer
ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY
The exercise above clearly demonstrates how Hitchens at times orients his dominant intuition towards present matters and at other times to past events. The possibilities which intuition perceives are not limited only to the future. Hitchens considers possibilities in the actual facts irrespective of whether these relate to past or present events.