Sources of the concept of intention

The concept of intention played a key role in the discussions of epistemological, logical, and semantic questions in later medieval philosophy. The significantly different use of ‘intention’ in other fields such as ethics or natural philosophy is not at issue here.

‘Intention’ in the relevant sense is associated with two concepts that occur already in the writings of Al-farabi and Avicenna, where they are associated with the words “m'qul” and “ma'na”, both of which were translated into Latin as ‘intention’. In his commentary on the first chapter of Aristotle's De interpretation Al-farabi understands by “ma'qui” — his translation of the Greek word ‘noēma’- a concept or a thought that has to be examined by the logician in two respects: in its relation to things outside the soul and in its relation to words. “Ma'qul” means nearly the same as “ma'na”, which appears already in Al-farabi's De intellectu et intellecto and was later used by Avicenna to signify the reality of the known considered as known. Thus “ma'qul”, ma'na, or intentio is that which is immediately before the mind, whether the object of the intention is outside the mind (in which case the intention is a first intention) or itself an intention (in which case the intention is a second intention). The distinction between first and second intentions was prefigured in Al-farabi's theory of abstraction.