Intentionality

INTENTIONALITY. - A philosophical term derived from intention, and today used predominantly to designate the order of knowability in its broadest sense of tendency (in-tendere) and contact between subject and object.

By intention is meant 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). However, it is common in philosophy to use the term to signify both the act of knowing (that is, the actual cognitive tendency of the subject toward the object) and, above all, the known object, which constitutes the formal term of actual knowing. This terminology is proper to realistic philosophy, and is already found with various nuances in St. Augustine, in the Arabs, in the medieval Scholastics and in particular in St. Thomas, who frequently calls prima intentio the object of direct or metaphysical knowledge, and secunda intentio the object of reflexive or logical knowledge. Contemporary Thomistic philosophy also uses the noun intention to indicate both the act and the object of knowing, and the adjective intentional to indicate everything that in any manner refers to the cognitive order, and in particular to the intellective order. It is in this sense that the abstract term i. means first of all cognitivity and intellectivity; and since knowledge is not possible without a fundamental likeness and mutual ordination between the knowing subject and the known object, the term i. also means the order or finality that mediates between subject and object and in particular between thought and reality.

Ancient and recent studies have brought to light the possibility of an integral theory of i., which in St. Thomas embraces a multiform problematic, and which develops coherently in the same order in which the individual parts of philosophy are articulated. Gnoseology is involved first of all, whose task it is to make explicit and defend the realistic nature of human knowing, and therefore to conclude that our intentional activity is naturally ordered to grasp as its proper object the real given in sense. Having thus established the legitimacy of the distinction between the intentional cognitive order and the real order, the theory of i. is enriched from the psychological point of view with the deeper explanation of the i. of the subject: the intentional union is brought about by the verbum mentis, whereby the intelligens in actu identifies itself with the intellectum in actu. In this sense the Thomistic i., immediate in the logical order, is brought about as mediation in the psychological order, insofar as the knower simultaneously touches « primo verbum et principaliter rem » (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 85, a. 2); a distinction this that is very important, because it allows us to understand how St. Thomas can coherently give the name of intentio both to the reality toward which the verb tends and to the verb by which the intellect tends toward reality, thus founding the distinction mentioned above between first and second intention. If the i. originates formally from the subject and in the subject, nothing however prevents the object too, by extension and correlation, from having to be called intentional. What the i. of the object is, is further determined by the philosophy of nature, whose task it is not only to verify the intuitive nature of sense, but also to establish the nature of the activity of material reality, which per medium comes to actualize sense. This « medium » is immediately originated by the complex of sensible agents, and therefore does not have that initial immateriality that must be attributed to sense. To explain the immateriality of sensation, the immateriality of the sensitive power suffices. However, it is not possible to reject outright the speculative intuition of St. Thomas, who saw in the « medium » an intentio fluens, as the proportionate fruit of the generic ordination that the complex of material agents has toward sense and intellect, and which is part of the harmonious mutual 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 surpass the study of immediate finalities in order to rise to the study of the ultimate end, utilizing all the resources of metaphysics, and in particular of the metaphysics of the intelligent and the intelligible. There is, it seems, a gnoseological path that can reach God by following the directive of created i.: not in the sense of the vain Cartesian attempt, of rising to God in order then to 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 cosmological i. can be found only in God, in whom Being and Thought are identified. This most pure divine Unity is participated 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 proportionally they are realized under the influence of the ultimate final Cause. In the ontic order every thing 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. In the logical order the same observation holds when the logical order is considered as a part of the ontic order. Insofar, however, as it is opposed to the ontic order, and is constituted as a distinct order, it must be said that every act of our knowledge intends formally its proper and immediate object and virtually the ultimate object, which we cannot reach except by demonstration. The ambition of Plato's lofty fantasy (who imagined 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 can sometimes 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 way to the i. of natural love, which strengthens and empowers all our activities.

The Thomistic theory of i., with its original and vigorous insights, brings multiple contributions to the philosophical problem of today. First of all it serves to bring to light how immediate realism knows how to 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 it enables us to show the fundamental intellectualism that pervades philosophical inquiry, it also allows us to understand and clarify the problem of i. as it is posed by Brentano (v.), Husserl (v.), Max Scheler (v.), down to the most recent currents of voluntarist and existential dynamism. It may be added that i. also means finality and appetite, and as such holds not only in the natural order, but also in the supernatural one. In this sense it may be concluded that theology too can legitimately develop its own theory of i., utilizing and analogizing the multiple contributions of philosophy.

Francesco Morandini