Phenomenology 2005

Volume 4, Issue Part 2, 2007

Selected Essays from Northern Europe Part 2

B. M. Mezei
Pages 515-543

Plato, Husserl, and Theistic Intentionality

In what follows I offer a comparison between two significant instances of the doctrine of intentionality, the view of Plato, and that of Edmund Husserl. My purpose is to show four things. (1) I shall argue that the notion of intentionality goes back to Plato. (2) I argue too that the notion of Platonic intentionality entails the notion of personal intention. (3) While Platonic intentionality is theistic in a certain way, Husserlian intentionality is not. (4) This omission in the Husserlian conception of intentionality is due to an unsolved problem in Husserlian metaphysics.