Table of contentsUnderstanding intuitionIntuition in The Sound and the FuryConclusionUnderstanding of intuitionIntuition is considered the simplest feeling in the world. The simplicity of the intuition becomes much clearer when reading Friedrich Nietzsche's essay On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. Nietzsche clarifies Bergson's notion of intuition by placing it in the context of history. His argument is that history, whether individual or communal, is useful to a certain extent, but that all great deeds are accomplished when the agent, if only for a moment, forgets all that history. that he knew and becomes “non-historical”. Therefore, no matter how much importance we place on knowledge of history, "we must... regard the ability to perceive non-historically to some extent as the most important and fundamental to the extent where it constitutes the foundation on which only something just, healthy” and that’s great, something truly human can grow. "Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayOn the other hand, Henri Bergson, in his essay, An Introduction to Metaphysics, attempts to place absolute knowledge in the debate between rational and empiricist philosophy, his essay is very complex The intuition he speaks of seems out of reach for an ordinary person. "inside an object to coincide with what is unique and therefore inexpressible in it. No matter how many times we analyze an object, we cannot truly understand it until we have done it intuitively." . The surprising similarity between Bergson's moment of intuition and Nietzsche's non-historical moment can be clearly seen when we compare the two philosophers' notions of the fleeting duration of these moments. .. by... imagination, solidify duration once it has passed... this operation is accomplished on the frozen memory of duration” (Metaphysics, 30). Nietzsche posits essentially the same thing about a non-historical moment when he writes: "The non-historical resembles an enveloping atmosphere in which only life is generated only to disappear again with the destruction of this atmosphere" (History, 11 ). A non-historical moment, like a moment of intuition, can only be expressed in terms of the past, and yet it is in these moments of our lives that we discover the greatness of things or accomplish the greatest actions. From a historical point of view, these are moments of greatness that the ages remember, but from a personal point of view, they are moments in our daily lives that push us forward, remind us that there is great things to do and see. Without these moments of insight, we never really know anything but reduce everything to symbols. Moreover, without those moments when we forget everything except what is right in front of us, as Nietzsche tells us, we can “like the true student of Heraclitus, barely dare to finally lift a finger.” Or, more simply, we cannot obtain any satisfaction in our life. Intuition in The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner himself knows a thing or two about intuition, otherwise he would never have been able to write a character who completely lacks knowledge. of it. Jason Compson is the literary equivalent of a man who has never had a moment of insight, never experienced a moment where he was able to forget the rest of his life. Faulknershown clearly through Jason's inability to perceive any emotion or existential moment in life and, therefore, his need to reduce all of these moments to their crudest symbols. What makes Jason such an ingenious character is further illuminated by Nietzsche, who posits that the only way to live without the need for moments of ahistoricity is to be superhistorical. The superhistorical man is the one who realizes the "non-historical atmosphere in which every great historical event occurred." It has no non-historical moments, nor does it need history: "the past and the present are one and the same thing, typically similar in all their varieties...and have eternally the same meaning" . Moreover, he has no need of the future; As Nietzsche tells us, if asked, no one would want to repeat the previous ten years of their life, but most would give the reason for their answer as the hope that the next ten years will be better. The superhistorian, on the other hand, “does not see salvation in the process, but for him the world is complete and reaches its end at every moment.” He wouldn't relive the last ten years because they will be exactly the same as the next ten. Faulkner's Jason Compson attempts to compensate for his lack of intuition by being a superhistorian, and yet he is constantly burdened by the past. Without having experienced an unhistorical moment, but still unable to let go of the past, Jason is doomed to be unhappy and to make others unhappy as well. The very structure of the Jason section in The Sound and the Fury is emblematic of his inability to experience intuition. The chapter, like those surrounding his brothers Benjy and Quentin, follows Jason throughout a day. Unlike Benjy for whom time has no meaning, or Quentin whose notion of time is so intuitive that he must commit suicide to escape it, for Jason time is only its most obvious symbol, 'clock. In class, we called Jason's problem the maniacal linearity of time. An unhistorical moment is one in which we waste time entirely; time, at least the conscious time of the clock, is of no importance and has no meaning, because it is only a symbol. Since Jason is a man who has never experienced a moment outside of time, he is entirely dependent on this symbol. He doesn't understand why anyone would distrust the clock, as becomes clear when his boss looks at his watch and then at the watch at the town courthouse. Jason says, "[you] should have a dollar watch...It won't cost you so much to believe it's a lie" (Sound, 306). He constantly reminds the reader of what time it is: “Around ten o'clock, I went up front. There was a drummer there. It was a few minutes to ten” (237). Each hour has a programmed meaning for Jason and we soon learn that ten o'clock is when the stock market reports arrive at the town's telegraph office. As the two aforementioned examples make clear, Jason is as obsessed with money as he is with time. Yet Jason doesn't take chances with money; he doesn't take any risks with anything. Nietzsche postulates that every great action requires non-historical moments to conceive it: "no artist will paint his picture...nor any people [will] achieve their freedom without first having desired it and struggling to obtain it in... . a non-historical condition” ( History, 11). Since Jason never strives to achieve an unhistorical condition, he never risks or achieves anything great. The stock market occupies Jason’s thoughts and yet he says, “I never risk much at a time” (Sound, 238). Jason never had a moment of confidence, it'swhy he doesn't even trust the symbol he relies on. Money, for Jason, is the symbol of everything he has lost, while also being the only thing he lives for. Money is only a rough symbol of an object's value, and yet for Jason, who depends entirely on symbols, it is the most reliable judge. This is evident when a man walks into his store to buy a ham wire. Jason is annoyed that the man spends so much time "deciding whether he wants a twenty-cent ham rope or a thirty-five-cent ham rope." He advises the man to take the most expensive machine, but when the man asks how he, who is not a farmer, knows which is best, Jason replies, "[because] they don't charge thirty -five cents for it... That's how I know it's not as good" without any inner notion of value. , Jason must rely entirely on currency symbols to determine which machine is best. More worryingly, Jason uses this currency symbol of value to characterize his relationships and emotions. Love is the simplest way to narrate a non-historical moment, because it is probably the most widely experienced form of intuition. Nietzsche actually uses love in his essay to “illustrate by example” what is not historical: “think of a man shaken and torn by a powerful passion for a woman... how his world is changed! Jason has never experienced this passion and can therefore only assimilate love with symbols. His only lover is a whore from Memphis named Lorraine. He trades money for sex instead of a real relationship which, as anyone who has experienced any form of love knows, could not be quantified. When Lorraine, who clearly has an affinity for him, sends him a letter complaining that Memphis is no fun without him and that she misses him. Jason, unable to imagine the emotion of desire, reflects, “I think he misses me. Last time I gave him forty dollars” (Sound, 240). Love for Jason is only worth the dollars and cents he puts into it. Jason has no more intuition of family love than of the passionate love of a woman. Caddy, who knows her brother well, offers him fifty dollars for a chance to see his little girl. After asking her to give him a hundred dollars, Jason holds the baby near the window of a moving car, while Caddy waits outside. When she goes to beg him to give her another chance to see the baby and asks him how much it will cost this time, he replies: "Well, if a look through a window was worth a hundred...". Jason, having no ideal of love himself, even quantifies the love between mother and child. This inability to feel love is no clearer than when he recalls a scene from his father's funeral. In his memory, he watches the gravediggers fill the grave, "as if they were applying mortar or building a fence, and I started to feel a little funny." There are two aspects of this quote that show Jason's profound lack of conscious emotion: the images of the construction of the mortar and the fence, two mundane scenes, are not those one would usually use to describe the profound sorrow to see his father's grave filling up. Even after an argument with a relative, the sight of one's grave evokes more moving comparisons. Second, Jason comments that watching this scene makes him feel "funny"; A page later, after seeing Caddy for the first time since she left their home, standing at the grave of their deceased father, Jason begins to feel "funny again". Jason could be experiencing any number of emotions, and yet in both cases his inability to feel them, let alone express them, is evident with the useabstracted from the word “funny”. It's clear that Jason is affected by his father's death. Mr. Compson was an alcoholic and died of an alcohol-related illness. Jason makes it very clear that he never drinks: "I would as easily swallow gasoline as a glass of whiskey." Yet he does not recognize his father's memory and in fact diminishes, whenever he can, any connection with his father. This tendency to diminish the importance of his personal past is Jason's attempt to be superhistorical. This aforementioned Nietzschian term could be called a super-intuition of history. A superhistorian is so aware that history is just a collection of unhistorical moments, that he sees no need to use it to help his present, nor the need to change it for the future: " he who adopted [this point of view] could no longer be tempted to continue living and cooperating with history” (History, 12). After all, if the past and the present form only a “static structure…of unchanged meaning,” then what is the point of working toward a future that will soon be the present and will be the same as the present past. Throughout the Jason section of The Sound and the Fury, he makes comments that seem to be those of an unambiguous superhistorian. In fact, the chapter begins and ends with the phrase "once a slut, always a slut" (Sound, 223, 329). Who he is referring to is unclear; Either way, Jason's lack of faith in people's ability to change is evident. Jason is most superhistorical when talking to others or making general comments about race and gender. He condemns the entire Jewish population, saying, "It's just the race. You will admit that they produce nothing. They follow the pioneers to a new country and sell them clothes." The man he is speaking to suggests that Jason is not even referring to Jews, because even stereotypically, this statement makes no sense. However, this is precisely the point of the superhistorian, all cultures are fundamentally the same: "[s]ince hundreds of different languages ​​correspond to the typically fixed requirements of men, so that one who understood these requirements could not learn nothing new from all these demands. languages” (History, 13). So the Jews could just as easily be the Armenians, as Jason's companion suggests, or the Buddhists, because to the superhistorian they are one and the same. Jason uses this superhistorian logic to convince his mother that she should burn a check that Caddy sent for her daughter. Quentin. What his mother doesn't know is that the check she is burning is a fake and that Jason is stealing the money for himself. Although she has been repeating the same ritual for years, this time she questions her actions and tells Jason she will swallow her pride and leave that check intact. To which he replies: “what's the point of starting now, when you've been destroying them for fifteen years... If you continue to do it, you haven't lost anything” (Sound, 273). If no moment in history truly changes its course, then why bother deviating from routine or trying to improve one's situation. Additionally, Jason seems to be saying that if no one ever makes the story better, then what he has to say or do really doesn't matter. consequence. When his boss tells him that he knows that Jason has been doing shady things with his mother's money, Jason explains that there is no point in trying to stop his boss from reprimanding him: "when a man s "sinking into a rut, the best thing you can do is let him stay there". Additionally, when his boss expresses concern over Jason's recurring headaches and suggests he go see a dentist , Jason said to himself: “It’s curious that,.