Intentionality in medieval and baroque scholasticism

Abstract

The article presents a brief overview of intentional problems in the medieval and baroque schololasticism. It describes the current state of research in this field, proposes a peri­odization of the development of intentional ideas and outlines the characteristics of each period. In the 13th–14th centuries, intentional terminology and concepts were formed in the function of the needs of Trinitarian theology and theology of creation, only secon­darily descending to the philosophical level. The subordination of the intentional devel­opments to theological needs explains their “homelessness”, the absence of the doctrinal place assigned to them. However, at that time the main questions that contemporary in­tentional philosophy would be addressing were already formulated. The extremely poorly studied period from the middle 14th to the late 16th centuries was marked by an increased interest in the problems of reference. The third and most mature stage of scholastic inten­tionality falls on the Baroque era: the early 17th – middle 18th centuries. During thas pe­riod the embracing notion of intentional life was formulated, and the intentional problems as a whole were fixed in the science of the soul, where they gradually took the form of systematic intentional theories. In that time the intentional toolkit finds its active applica­tion to the epistemology and metaphysics. The article concludes with a hypothesis that it was Baroque intentional concepts that served as a source or at least the closest analogue of Brentano’s intentional ideas.