Intuition and pre-understanding in philosophical discourse

The paper deals with the substantiation of the role of pre-understanding in cognition and its relationship with scientific intuition within the philosophical discourse. Pre-understanding is construed as the fundamental category of philosophical hermeneutics and epistemology that empowers to draw an analogy between pre-understanding and intuition especially in view of the elucidation of their role in rational scientific quest. Such an aspect of research allows taking a broader view of an issue of the relationship between rational and extra-rational in the process of cognition which is examined on the fundamental level. The conclusion implies that in understanding the specific nature of scientific cognition the important role is played by such notions as “open rationality” and especially by “intellectual intuition”. Just on the level of displaying intellectual intuition, as it shown in paper, a correlation of pre-understanding and intuition becomes apparent to its full extent.