Esse intentionale is the scholastic name for the mode of being in which the form of an object exists in the knowing mind. When a human being thinks a horse, the form of the horse exists intentionally in his mind — without duplicating its natural existence in the horse itself. Thomas von Aquin develops this doctrine in the Summa Theologiae I, qq. 84–85, and in his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima: the senses and the intellect receive the form of things — spiritualiter et immaterialiter, spiritually and without matter.
The contrary notion is esse naturale, the natural existence of the same thing outside the mind. The horse in the meadow has esse naturale; the form of the thought horse has esse intentionale. Cognition is possible because one and the same form can exist in two modes of being — in actuality and in the mind. This identity-in-form is what makes thoughts directed toward the world: what exists in the mind is not a copy but the form itself, now in another mode of being.
From the scholastic doctrine of esse intentionale, Franz Brentano (1874) derived the modern notion of intentionality. The reference to Aristotle and the medieval intentio stands behind Brentano’s thesis that the mental is characterized by directedness-toward-something. Husserl and Edith Stein carried this line forward phenomenologically.
The doctrine of esse intentionale is likewise the key to the distinction between original and derived intentionality: only a mind that receives the form has original intentionality. A computer that manipulates symbols contains no form in the sense of esse intentionale — it produces only marks that are form for us.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: mode of being; contrary notion: esse naturale.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, qq. 84–85; Sentencia libri De anima, lib. III.
- Brentano, Franz (1874): Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. (German)
- Hervaeus Natalis: De secundis intentionibus. Paris ca. 1300.