Wow, the guy obviously didn't know much about intuition, nor did he probably understand feelings or instincts well.
Oh, no, I disagree! If you had taken any classes with him, you'd think very different. But you can't judge on just that one statement. And that is the point.
So if you cannot explain the meaning of love, that means you don't know it? If you cannot explain to another person why you have a feeling that someone hates you, then it can't be true since you don't know the answer?
No no. He said, "You don't know it
enough." That's the point. If you needed to explain every feeling, thought, idea you would be spending your life explaining (and that's a sad commentary on INFJ's if I ever heard one). But the really big answers, the really big questions, you can't settle for a vague conception. And certainly, in academia, you can't just start to formulate an idea and stop with that. You need to go all the way. Besides, can you imagine how frustrating it would be for a professor to try to grade answers to questions like "What does it mean to be?" with "I kinda like it."?
This is BS that rationalists try to pass off as philosophy.
I've heard that before, so I understand the sentiment. I once tried to argue that philosophy ought to be a core class taught from fifth-grade on, and was told that was ridiculous with a similar statement as yours. And you're
not wrong. But I think you're not completely right either.
Another quick anecdote: Since I had taken several classes with this professor, I knew a little more of his background. As an undergrad, he was incredibly intelligent and went to Stanford University in the 60's, and immediately gravitated to philosophy. But, he hated the way they taught it. He said he found himself in a classroom, with a stodgy professor holding up a spoon on the first day and asking "What is this?" and telling everyone that gave an answer they were wrong and weren't thinking hard enough. He felt, as you do, that was BS. "What is thing?" directed towards a spoon is not a big question. Things like metaphysics drove him crazy; they pose as intellectuals and philosophers, but they don't actually have a concrete idea.
That was what taught him to demand an
answer to these questions, not mere raised eyebrows and knowing smirks and claims that the professor understands it on a level that the student can't hope to approach without years of staring at spoons.
He left Stanford in a huff and moved to Germany, where he studied directly under Hans Gadamer and even met an aging Heidegger before he died. He co-authored several books with Gadamer and wrote many of his own that were widely acclaimed. When he moved back to America, he found he was highly sought after by top universities to teach, and eventually landed a great position at Harvard. He taught for a year, and encountered EXACTLY the same problem he had fled Stanford because of.
I met and learned from him at a state university, and he taught there not because he couldn't get a better-paying job in a major world-renowned school, but because he
wouldn't. And I really was lucky for that.
So, bottom line: don't be wooed by your intuition to think that it is the polar opposite of sensing and should be given even accord. It is not and should not. In nearly everything you do, including love and hate, you need to incorporate both intuition and sensing, and if you don't you are selling yourself and those activities short.
Sorry to be so long winded. I feel strongly about this, though, and hope my perspective helps a little bit.
