Intentionality means consciousness is always directed toward something beyond itself.
Evidence
20 In love, something is loved: Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 88. … 21 ‘To wrest oneself’ and ‘in a nice warm room’: Sartre, ‘A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology: intentionality’, in Critical Essays (Situations I) 40–6, this 42–3 (originally published in 1939). — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1186
Categorization
- DEFINE: Brentano’s intentionality doctrine — every mental act is about something — is the foundational definition at the heart of both phenomenology and existentialism.
- XREF: Sartre’s essay on Husserlian intentionality is a canonical accessible text worth flagging for orientation to the movement. — connects to: Consciousness has no content because it is always directed outward at objects — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 129; Consciousness is necessarily consciousness of something, always self-consciousness through its object; Intentionality means the mind’s constant aboutness, not deliberate purpose — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 152 (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Consciousness is necessarily directed at a being other than itself
#corroborates(0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 151 - Consciousness transcends toward the meaning of being, not being itself
#expands(0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 154 - Intentionality grounds existentialist freedom by dissolving any fixed inner nature
#expands(0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 157 - Intentionality displaces the subject by merging it with the world
#complicates(0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 408 - Consciousness freely chooses itself as not being the Other.
#qualifies(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 775 - Consciousness is a duality that is unity, irreducible to the in-itself
#expands(0.72)