A Note: Aquinas on Intentions

A NOTE: AQUINAS ON INTENTIONS COMMENTATORS ON THE works of St. Thomas Aquinas have traditionally distinguished between ' first intentions' and ' second intentions.' In this paper I shall argue that, althought the distinction between first and second intentions is entirely consistent with the thought of Saint Thomas, it is not the case, given what Thomas actually says, that all concepts can be classified as either first intentions or second intentions. The distinction between first and second intentions is perhaps presented most simply by Mortimer J. Adler: a first intention is " that which is conceived " and a second intention is "the concept." 1 Joseph Bobik gives a more complete account: " First intentions are meanings or concepts derived from, or at least verified in, extramental, or real things," 2 " second intentions are concepts about certain sorts of relations among anything and everything (words, concepts, things) involved in the human way of knowing." 8 I have not found that Thomas uses the expressions 'first intention ' and ' second intention ' in distinguishing between two kinds of objects of concepts. But it clearly is Thomas's position that concepts have for objects not only external things but also concepts themselves and what we could call cognitive processes of the mind: . . . because the intellect reflects upon itself, according to this same reflection it understands its own understanding and the species by which it understands.4 1 M. Adler, Problems for Thomists: The Problem of Species (New York: 1950), p. 13. • J. Bobik, Aquinas on Being and Essemce (Notre Dame, Indiana: 1965), p. 17. 8 Ibid., p. 56. • Sum. Theol., I, 85, fl ad Resp. All quotations from St. Thomas appearing in this paper are my own. I have been helped in making them by available standard translations. 303 304 RALPH W. CLARK In his theory of concepts Thomas uses the term ' intention ' (intentio) with two primary meanings. 1. A concept is intentional in its being. All concepts are intentional beings in that they are forms, images, or representations of things, existing in minds and not in things. 'Intentional being ' has the same meaning as ' being of reason.' 5 2. A concept is intentional in the manner in which it gives us things and is related to these things, as distinguished from what is formally the same in concept and things. Thomas gives a number of examples of the intentional in this .sense. Most important , things are individual, but known universally; hence, the universality of our concepts is intentional: The universals can be considered in two ways. First, insofar as the universal nature is considered simultaneously with the intention of universality. Since the intention of universality, that is, the relation of one and the same to many, comes from the intellect's abstraction, it is necessary that according to this mode the universal is posterior . . . In another way it can be considered according to the nature itself, . . . the intention of universality is consequent upon the mode of understanding, which is by abstraction.6 . . . universals insofar as they are universals exist only in the soul. However, the natures themselves, to which befall the intention of universality (i.e., which are conceived universally), exist in things.7 There are two primary ways that we conceive a thing universally : as a species or as a genus. We conceive a thing as a species when we conceive it universally as a fully determinate substance; we conceive a thing as a genus when we conceive it universally and indeterminately as a substance.8 In both cases •See In IV Meta., 4, 574, In 11 De Anima, 22, 553, De Spirit. Creat., I, ad 11, and Sum. Theol., I, 56, 2, ad 3. •Ibid., I, 85, 3, ad 1. See also In VII Meta., VII, 13, 1571, and Sum. Cont. Gent., II, 92, 6. For a discussion of the universality of concepts, see my paper, " St. Thomas Aquinas's Theory of Universals," The Monist, LVIII (1974), pp. 163-172.. 7 In II De Anima, 5, 380. 8 See De Ente et essentia, III. A NOTEi: AQUINAS ON INTENTIONS 305 .the mind adds something to the nature which it apprehends.9 Since concepts are universals, concepts are not of other concepts as individuals, but rather are...