Challenge.

[SolitaryWalker]

I challenge you all to come up with the most lucid examples of the quintissence of Ni, Fi, Fe and Ne in Literature and philosophy.

I shall post my findings to represent some of the qualities of those functions.

But for now, I will just post the one about the Fi.

This is an excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard's Journal. I have typed him as an INFP.


?There is something missing in my life, and it has to do with my need to understand what I must do, what I must know-except, of course, that a certain amount of knowledge is presupposed in every action. I need to understand my purpose in life, to see what God wants me to do, and this means that I must find a truth which is true for me, that I must find that Idea for which I can live and die. For what would it profit me if I found the so-called ?objective truth?, if I worked through all the systems of philosophy and were able to analyze them and expose their inconsistencies; what would it profit me to develop a political theory and combine all the intricate details of politics into a complete whole, and so construct a world for the exhibition of others but in which I did not live; what would it profit me if I develop the correct interpretation of Christianity in which I resolved all the internal problems, if it had no deeper significance for me and for my life; what would it profit me if truth stood before me cold and naked; indifferent to whether I recognized her or not, creating in me paroxysms of anxiety rather than confident devotion???

[AcidGoethe]

Nietzsche, INTJ

Ni:


The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, since they are denied the chance of waging the struggle for existence with horns or the fangs of beasts of prey. In man this art of simulation reaches its peak: here deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself?in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eye glides only over the surface of things and sees "forms"; their feeling nowhere lead into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, a game of blindman's buff on the backs of things. Moreover, man permits himself to be lied to at night, his life long, when he dreams, and his moral sense never even tries to prevent this?although men have been said to have overcome snoring by sheer will power.


What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms?in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.


Source: "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense." http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/tls.htm

[Ivy]

This is a neat topic.

Here is a passage from Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley, which I think encapsulates the "a ha!" moment of Ni.

Edit: I think Mary Shelley was probably INFJ, but the character Viktor Frankenstein who has the following revelation was probably INTJ.


In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analysing all the minutia of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me--a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised, that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.

Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils.

[Nightning]

Is it just me? Or does Ni functions by self-enquiry?

Anyways, great topic... unfortunately I am not well versed enough in literature to contribute.

[Ivy]

Is it just me? Or does Ni functions by self-enquiry?

Anyways, great topic... unfortunately I am not well versed enough in literature to contribute.

http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/introvertedintuiting.html


Introverted iNtuiting involves synthesizing the seemingly paradoxical or contradictory, which takes understanding to a new level. Using this process, we can have moments when completely new, unimagined realizations come to us. A disengagement from interactions in the room occurs, followed by a sudden ?Aha!? or ?That?s it!? The sense of the future and the realizations that come from introverted iNtuiting have a sureness and an imperative quality that seem to demand action and help us stay focused on fulfilling our vision or dream of how things will be in the future. Using this process, we might rely on a focal device or symbolic action to predict, enlighten, or transform. We could find ourselves laying out how the future will unfold based on unseen trends and telling signs. This process can involve working out complex concepts or systems of thinking or conceiving of symbolic or novel ways to understand things that are universal. It can lead to creating transcendent experiences or solutions.

[AcidGoethe]

I prefer this definition myself:

http://greenlightwiki.com/lenore-exegesis/Introverted_Intuition


Introverted Intuition is a way of orienting yourself to your environment by consciously attending to the expected interpretations of things. In this manner of orientation, you hold agnostic about whether those interpretations are true. You view them as expected interpretations, nothing more. Your world is a world of expected interpretations defined by others; you navigate through those interpretations and use them without regard to whether they're true, always keeping the interpretations separate in your mind from the actual objects.

For example, whereas from an Extraverted Sensation perspective, you might feel very impressed upon meeting a man wearing a fancy Italian suit (signs call forth a natural response and need no interpretation); from an Ni perspective, you would consciously say to yourself that he's wearing an Italian suit and this is supposed to make you think he's wealthy or upper-class or really has his act together or something like that, and therefore is supposed to make you feel impressed (signs and what they mean are connected only arbitrarily). Whether he really does have his act together is a matter upon which you reserve judgement. Consequently you don't feel impressed. You merely note the expected interpretation as no less a part of your environment than the suit itself.

Without knowing the expected interpretations of a system--the way signs are interpreted within that system, and the expected responses that make the system work--you can't get oriented via Ni. The expected interpretations must be stabilized and clear to you. Then you can comment from an outside perspective, or see ways to respond to the signs that violate the system's assumptions, or simply know how to operate the thing. First you have to get "outside" it, then you can deal with it. The process of "getting outside it" can take a long time. As you identify expected interpretations, you find yourself uncovering ever more and more hidden assumptions, and you feel the need to distance yourself from those, too, before you get your hands dirty or draw a conclusion.

[Nightning]

Without knowing the expected interpretations of a system--the way signs are interpreted within that system, and the expected responses that make the system work--you can't get oriented via Ni. The expected interpretations must be stabilized and clear to you. Then you can comment from an outside perspective, or see ways to respond to the signs that violate the system's assumptions, or simply know how to operate the thing. First you have to get "outside" it, then you can deal with it. The process of "getting outside it" can take a long time. As you identify expected interpretations, you find yourself uncovering ever more and more hidden assumptions, and you feel the need to distance yourself from those, too, before you get your hands dirty or draw a conclusion.

That precisely describes how Ni works for me! Thank you for sharing that.

I was just commenting before how INXJs have a typical writing/thinking style. The need to pose questions to self in order to orientate Ni down the path you want to explore.

[Ivy]

I prefer this definition myself:

http://greenlightwiki.com/lenore-exegesis/Introverted_Intuition

That's neat. I Ni all the time according to that definition.

I'm trying to synthesize the two in some way, because the cognitive functions can't be so opaque that they would generate two such unaligned definitions, can they? Or else it would all pretty much be whatever the individual thinks it should be, and that's kind of the definition of bunk science, isn't it?

Granted, they are fairly opaque to me, some of them. But that's why I'm not making a website with definitions on it.

[SolitaryWalker]

Is it just me? Or does Ni functions by self-enquiry?

Anyways, great topic... unfortunately I am not well versed enough in literature to contribute.

Yes, Ni is the most introspective function. It perceives ideas in terms of how they relate to the self, Ne thinks in terms of how the self relates to ideas. So indeed self-inquiry was an appropriate term to use here.