 it is, Maritain says, an awareness of the reality of one’s being—one which is decisive and has a dominant character. This view of intuition is not, then, that of a hunch or quick insight; neither is it (Maritain continues) the same as Bergson’s. It has an intellectual character, is a grasp of something that is intelligible, and requires “a certain level of intellectual spirituality” (1934 [1939: 49]). Maritain claims that this intuition of being is something which escaped Kant (1934 [1939: 48]) and many subsequent philosophers until, perhaps, the arrival of the existentialists. 