Prima intentio — the first intention — is, in scholastic usage, a concept that refers to objects existing outside the mind and to their properties. The concept horse is a first intention insofar as it is directed at real horses; the concept substance, insofar as it grasps real substances. First intentions are the concepts with which cognition follows the naturally existing things.
Thomas Aquinas develops the distinction in his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and in the Summa theologiae; Hervaeus Natalis (†1323) systematizes it in De secundis intentionibus into the foundational doctrine of scholastic logic. The distinction is not psychological but logical-ontological: it concerns the direction in which a concept points — toward things or toward other concepts.
First intentions are the tools of objective knowledge. With them the mind grasps the world as it is. They differ from second intentions (concepts about concepts — such as species, genus, property), which have logic itself as their object. Both have their place, but they must not be confused: whoever takes a logical concept for a determination of the thing commits a category mistake.
In the personhood ontology the distinction is operative: person, insofar as directed at concrete human beings, is a first intention. Concept of person, insofar as related to the concept person, is a second intention. This level of reflection corresponds to the act-structure that recurs in phenomenology as the noesis-noema correlation, and in modern cognitive science as metacognition (Cleeremans, Frith).
Ontological classification: Opposite concept: second intention.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Scriptum super Sententiis I, dist. 2, q. 1; Summa theologiae I, q. 13.
- Hervaeus Natalis: De secundis intentionibus. Paris c. 1300.
See also
Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.