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BOOK REVIEWS Theories de l'intentionnalite au moyen age. By DOMINIKPERLER. Paris: Librairie PhilosophiqueJ. Vrin, 2003. Pp. 157. 15€ (paper). ISBN 2-7116-1652-5. Ever since it was revived by Franz Brentano in the nineteenth century, intentionality, that is, the capacity of certain mental acts to be 'about' something or refer to something beyond themselves, has been widely regarded as 'the mark of the mental'-that by which we can speak of the inner life of the mind as distinct from the more basic interaction ofphysical causes and effects outside the mind. Brentano openly acknowledged the influence of Scholastic authors in developing his theory, which he called "intentional or mental inexistence [die intentionale (wohl auch mentale) lnexistenz]," as a result of which most philosophers today are aware of its medieval origins. What is less clear is how medieval thinkers themselves understood intentionality as part of their own efforts to develop a philosophical model of human cognition. This book explores medieval antecedents to Brentano via the contributions of three late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century philosophers on the topics of the immediacy, activity, and object of intentional acts (31-35). After an introductory chapter explaining the significance of the problem in the later Middle Ages, the author, Dominik Perler, devotes successive chapters to the theories of Peter John Olivi, Dietrich of Freiburg, and John Duns Scotus. Thomas Aquinas is mentioned, but only tangentially, as this debate did not come into full flower until a decade or so after his death, by which time it had also begun to recapitulate the growing intellectual opposition of Dominicans, who adoptedThomas'sAristotelianism, andFranciscans, who sided more closelywith the Augustinian tradition. The book is not exactly a scholarly study. It revises a series of lectures delivered by Perler at the Sorbonne in March and April 2002, evidence ofwhich survives in its clear, easygoing prose and occasional repetition of key points. But the effect is quite deliberate: "preserving the style and structure of the oral presentation, I have avoided a detailed discussion of the secondary literature," the reader is informed (7). Footnotes as well are limited to references to the primary texts and secondary literature ofa general or introductory nature. There is a short bibliography and a useful index. The introductory chapter, "Le probleme de l'intentionnalite au XIIIe siecle: Cadre historique et systematique," is an exemplary study of the difficulty of 469 470 BOOK REVIEWS determining the medieval antecedents of a modem problem: "if you want to analyze medieval theories," Perlerstates, "you must proceedlike an archaeologist and properly distinguish between the different layers presented by the texts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in order to see how they have been laid down" (19). A trite metaphor, perhaps, but apt in this case. Intentionality is among the numerous medieval philosophical artifacts that have been brought into modem debates as if dug up with a backhoe, with no sense of their connection to the materials thatsurround them and give them meaning. The fact is that medieval thinkers were not interested in intentionality because it would help them complete their phenomenological analysis of consciousness (cf. Husserl) or provide further ammunition against the dreaded proponents of AI (cf. Searle). Rather, they wanted to explain human cognition within the broadly Aristotelian and Neoplatonic constraints they inherited from the schools of late antiquity. When they discussed intentionality, it was usually in the context of their explanations of how an immaterial soul could be affected by material processes, how concepts are related to both linguistic expressions and the external world, and how the intellect actively contributes to the cognitive process. It is possible to finesse these discussions into what we now call philosophy of mind, but only with a great deal ofdexterity and care as distortion is inevitable. One key difference, Perler reminds us, is that, unlike Brentano, medieval philosophers regarded intentionality not as a purely internal or mental phenomenon (30), but a natural characteristic of mental acts (36)-an assumption that can look question-begging to modem readers used to distinguishing more sharply between the mental and the physical. By the same token, it would be a mistake to find in the materialist aspects of medieval theories of intentionality a...

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