An intentional term or an intentional object? On the late scholastic parallels to modern intentional philosophy

Abstract

This article considers three different approaches to the question of the term, or matter, and object of the intentional act, as elaborated within the post-medieval 17th-century scholasticism. According to the first approach (Jesuits), the term of the act is actually identical with the act itself. It is called verbum mentis (mental word) or conceptus formalis (formal concept), while what is held the object of direct knowledge is a thing external to it. Another approach (late Thomists) assumes the term of the intentional act to be really distinct from the act itself and to serve as instrumental sign (‘an immediately cognoscible sign’) of the external object (thing). According to the third approach (Stephanus Spinula), the term coincides with the immediate object of the intentional act and functions as the immanent, or formal, object. As to the external thing, it rests the ‘material’ object of cognition, which lies beyond direct human cognitive access. Such positions, formulated among scholastic philosophers, resonate with what was to appear within the Brentano school at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries; this presents both a historical and a properly philosophical interest. The author brings under examination philosophical texts from 17th century which are rarely given any attention by the scholars.