Abstract

The historical origin of the concept of ‘intentionality’, as is well-known, is very remote, dating back to the age of scholastic philosophy. In the epistemological theories worked out by medieval thinkers, from Thomas Aquinas up to the latest minor exponents of the nominalistic trend, the concept of ‘intentio’ is very often to be found, there playing a role of undoubtedly primary importance. Sometimes it means the universal ‘concept’ abstracted by the human understanding from sense datum; sometimes, instead, both the act through which human intelligence directs itself towards the object of its cognition, the material ‘thing’, and the reflective act by virtue of which it refers to its subjective representation of the external ‘res’. In any case, it evidently turns out to be a fundamental function of any knowing whatsoever.