Relational Intentionality: Brentano and the Aristotelian Tradition

This book approaches the issue of intentionality in Brentano and of its ancient and medieval origins by focusing on one of the central characteristics of the intentional act: its relational aspect. In 1874 in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , Brentano put great emphasis on this aspect: every psychic phenomenon has a "relation to an object." According to Brentano, however, there is not just one relation to the object, but three: 1. intentionality (or the mind's mere aboutness), 2. causality, and 3. reference (understood as a specific sort of similarity between a mental act and an existing object). Brentano was not the first philosopher who distinguished these three relations: he identifies the same distinction in Aristotle. Whether or not one accepts the validity of Brentano's interpretation of Aristotle, there can be no doubt that it is broadly true of the Aristotelian tradition as a whole: beginning in antiquity, throughout the Middle Ages, and into the early modern era, followers of Aristotle made a distinction, sometimes between intentionality and causality, and sometimes-in a way that constitutes a precedent for Brentano's interpretation-between intentionality, causality, and reference. In short, various thinkers inspired by Aristotle, among them Brentano, have maintained that the following relational aspects of a mental act must be distinguished: 1. having an object, 2. having a cause, and 3. having an object that exists. The present work analyzes Brentano's psychological theory and determines his place in the Aristotelian tradition on the basis of this tripartition; by doing so, it also aims at contributing to a better understanding of the way our mind relates itself to objects.