INTENTIONALITY. – A philosophical term derived from intenzione, now used predominantly to designate the order of knowability in its broadest sense of tendency (in-tendere) and contact between subject and object.
By intenzione is understood first of all the act of willing, that is, the actual tendency of the will toward its formal object, which is the good (v. INTENZIONE). In philosophy, however, the term is commonly used to signify both the act of knowing (that is, the subject’s actual cognitive tendency toward the object) and, above all, the known object, which constitutes the formal term
of the actual act of knowing. This terminology is proper to realistic philosophy, and is already found, with various nuances, in s. Agostino, among the Arabs, among the medieval scholastics, and particularly in s. Tommaso, who frequently calls the object of direct or metaphysical knowledge prima intentio, and the object of reflective or logical knowledge secunda intentio. Contemporary Thomistic philosophy likewise uses the noun intenzione to indicate both the act and the object of knowing, and the adjective intenzionale to indicate everything that in any way refers to the cognitive order, and particularly to the intellectual order. It is in this sense that the abstract term i. signifies first of all cognizability and intellectuality; and since knowledge is impossible without a fundamental likeness and reciprocal ordering between the knowing subject and the known object, the term i. also signifies the order or finality that intervenes between subject and object, and particularly between thought and reality.
Ancient and recent studies have brought to light the possibility of an integral theory of i., which in s. Tommaso embraces a multifaceted problematic and develops coherently according to the same order in which the individual parts of philosophy are articulated. It concerns first of all gnoseology, whose task is to make explicit and defend the realistic nature of human knowing, and hence to conclude that our intentional activity is naturally ordered to grasp as its proper object the real given in sense-perception. Once the legitimacy of the distinction between the intentional cognitive order and the real order has been established in this way, the theory of i. is enriched, from the psychological point of view, by the deeper explanation of the i. of the subject: intentional union is actualized through the verbum mentis, whereby the intelligens in octu is identified with the intellectum in octu. In this sense Thomistic i., immediate in the logical order, is actualized as mediation in the psychological order, insofar as the knower simultaneously touches « primo verbum e principaliter rem » (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 85, a. 2); a highly important distinction, because it makes it possible to understand how s. Tommaso can coherently give the name intentio both to the reality toward which the verb tends and to the verb through which the intellect tends toward reality, thereby grounding the distinction mentioned above between first and second intention. Although i. formally originates from and in the subject, nothing prevents the object, by extension and correlation, from also being called intentional. What the i. of the object consists in is further determined by the philosophy of nature, whose task is not only to establish the intuitive nature of sense, but also to determine the nature of the activity of material reality, which per medium reaches the point of actualizing sense. This “medium” originates immediately from the totality of sensible agents, and therefore does not possess that initial immateriality which must be attributed to sense. To explain the immateriality of sensation, the immateriality of the sensitive faculty is sufficient. Nevertheless, it is not possible simply to reject s. Tommaso’s speculative intuition, which saw in the “medium” an intentio fluens, a proportionate product of the ordinazione generica that the totality of material agents has toward sense and intellect, and which forms part of the harmonious reciprocal likeness of all the parts of the universe, insofar as the universe is constituted and develops under the influence of its first Ordainer and Mover. In this way the theory of i. is led to go beyond the study of immediate finalities and rise to the study of the ultimate end, making use of all the resources of metaphysics, and particularly of the metaphysics of the intelligent and the intelligible. There seems to be a gnoseological path that can reach God by following the direction of created i.: not in the sense of the vain Cartesian attempt to ascend to God and then descend to the quiddity of sensible things, which are the proportionate and immediate object of human knowledge, but in the sense that the ultimate explanation of the various aspects of human and co-
somological i. can be found only in God, in whom Being and Thought are identified. This most pure divine Unity is participated in by us in two distinct orders, the ontic order of being and the logical order of knowing. Just as both these orders are realized under the influence of the First Efficient Cause, so proportionately they are realized under the influence of the ultimate Final Cause. In the ontic order, everything tends toward its proportionate and immediate end, and tends toward it insofar as it is subject to the causality of the ultimate End, without which nothing would move. The same observation applies in the logical order when the logical order is considered as a part of the ontic order. Insofar as, on the other hand, it is opposed to the ontic order and constituted as a distinct order, it must be said that each of our acts of knowledge formally intends the proper and immediate object and virtually the ultimate object, which we can reach only by demonstration. The ambition of Plato’s lofty imagination (which conceived of an immediate or almost immediate participation of our intentional order in the subsistent Intelligible) can never be a philosophical truth: only faith teaches us that such may at times be the supernatural intuition of the mystic. This, however, does not prevent the philosopher from explaining how, once God has been found, the i. of natural knowing opens the legitimate path to the i. of natural love, which strengthens and enhances all our activities.
The Thomistic theory of i., with its original and vigorous insights, makes multiple contributions to the philosophical problem of the present day. First of all, it serves to show how immediate realism can harmonize the productive spontaneity of the subject with the normative activity of the object in the constitution of the concrete act of knowing. Secondly, while enabling us to demonstrate the fundamental intellectualism that pervades philosophical inquiry, it also makes it possible to understand and clarify the problem of i. BRENTANO, FRANZ (v.), HUSSERL, EDMUND (v.), Max Scherer (v.), and extending to the more recent currents of voluntarist and existential dynamism. It may be added that i. also signifies finality and appetite, and as such applies not only in the natural order but also in the supernatural order. In this sense it may be concluded that theology too can legitimately develop its own theory of i., making use of and analogically adapting the many contributions of philosophy.