Intentionality (Intentionalität)

Abstract

The concept of intentionality is a central concept in the phenomenological school, as it describes one of the main features of conscious experience: its being directed at something or its being about something. Husserl inherits a discussion over representations without object from Brentano’s school and he first approaches the topic in the unfinished work Intentional Objects (1894). It is in the Logical Investigations (1900/1901) where Husserl develops a first theory of intentionality, thematizing intentional experiences, or acts, that have intentional contents and intentional objects, which are left outside the stream of consciousness and the phenomenological description. This theory is modified with the introduction of the method of the transcendental reduction, that allowsHusserl to formulate the second theory of intentionality in Ideas I (1913). According to this theory, the intentional object becomes part of the stream of consciousness and thus can be phenomenologically described. It is thematized under the notion of «noema», that is the objective correlate of the «noesis». The kind of intentionality developed in these works is objectifying intentionality, which Husserl complements with the thematization of impressional intentionality, peculiar to the consciousness of the «pregiven» world and to the «prereflexive» relation of the subject with itself. This kind of intentionality is thematized with the analysis of the embodied subject and time consciousness, in the husserlian stage of genetic phenomenology. We finish the article with a brief indication of the reception of the concept in the phenomenological school after Husserl and in the analytic philosophy.

Key words: Intentionality, consciousness, experience, representation, Husserl, noema.