Charles Girard

Brentano famously claimed that intentionality is one of the marks of the mental and that he found his concept of intentionality in the Middle Ages. It is now known that intentionality does not constitute a mark of the mental in medieval thought: scholars have shown that extra-mental things also display intentionality. In addition to this argument based on extra-mental things, I argue that some medieval theories do not present intentionality as a feature of all mental acts. Moreover, I argue that certain medieval theories differ in another way from Brentano’s conception of intentionality: when presented with intentionally related objects (e.g., my past cognition of the rose), mental acts prove unable to focus freely on one or the other object (the act or the rose).

This paper compares the theories of Hervaeus Natalis and Franz Brentano on intentionality. It considers three questions: the status of the intentional object, the question of the definition of the intentional relation, and the identification of the mark of the mental. Throughout the study, the analysis of Aristotle’s works serves as a tertium comparationis between the two authors. Although the comparison reveals some similar approaches to the matter, it shows distinct strategies regarding the distinction between what is mental and what is not.

Recent research has established that in his De secundis intentionibus, Hervaeus Natalis reacted to views of the modist thinker Radulphus Brito. Historians have noted several points of disagreement between Hervaeus and Radulphus, but I maintain more precision is needed. I argue that the core of the dispute is found in two points: first, a disagreement on what to call 'intention'; second, a disagreement regarding the process through which things lead to the formation of our universal concepts (genera, species, etc.). I argue that this second point shows a profound shift regarding the root of universal concepts.

In the Physics, Aristotle says that there is no change associated with the category of relatives. In this paper, I examine a widespread but neglected strategy that medieval thinkers use to understand Aristotle’s claim. According to this strategy, which I label initial presence, if there is no change in the category of relatives, it is because the relation-properties are already present in their subject as soon as the properties on which relation-properties are founded exist. Appreciating the importance of this strategy is crucial not only for understanding medieval theories of relation but also for assessing the credibility of arguments used in the secondary literature to interpret medieval texts, in particular a well-known passage from Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the Physics.

Si pour Trendelenburg les catégories aristotéliciennes sont rattachées au discours, et ensuite par le biais des notions aux choses, il en va différemment pour une part non négligeable du commentarisme médiéval du treizième et du début du quatorzième siècle. Pour cette part, un présupposé réaliste est à l’œuvre : les catégories semblent d’abord ramener aux choses, puisque ce sont des choses. Dans cette optique, l’antique question de la détermination du skopos des Catégories, ou de leur enjeu, se réduit à une question de délimitation de champs disciplinaires : si les catégories sont des choses, de quelle discipline relève la science catégoriale? Cet article se propose d’étudier la réponse-type apportée à cette question par cette tradition réaliste en prenant principalement appui sur les textes de Raoul le Breton.

Hervaeus Natalis distinguishes two types of items that can have esse obiective in the intellect: objects of acts of intellection (man, this cat, etc.) and properties unapprehended by these acts, or background properties (being a species, being a particular, etc.), that are beings of reason. Yet, his conception of the esse obiective of objects evolved. First, he had a neutral conception of esse obiective: items presenting themselves to the intellect are cognized, transparently, without being altered in the process. Later, he developed an ontologically committing conception of the objective being of objects: items presenting themselves to the intellect take on rational being (esse rationis) as such. This evolution transpires because Hervaeus introduces intentional relations as what makes the cognized item be objectively in the intellect and includes them within the class of background properties (being of reason). Both these conceptions manage to account for our access to extra-mental things.

The article deals with four questions that are, in general, present at the beginning of commentaries to the Book of six principles : 1. To what discipline does the treatise belong ? 2. What is the subject of the treatise and under what mode is it considered ? 3. Why is this treatise set apart from Aristotle’s Categories ? 4. Why speak of “principles” there ? Commentaries of the second half of the thirteenth century and of the beginning of the fourteenth century are taken under consideration (unedited for the most part).

The chapter aims at reconstructing Gregory of Rimini's view on universals in absence of the full-bodied treatment Gregory himself promised in his work. According to Gregory, there is nothing universal outside the mind, and universal concepts are made-up on the basis of prior cognitions. In absence of Gregory's explicit statements of the matter, I argue that these concepts must most probably be qualities in the mind that are really distinct from acts of cognition and remain in the mind even if they are not targeted by an actual act of cognition.

The categories of acting and undergoing are not really examined in the Aristotelian treatise. This article aims at showing how the anonymous author of the Book of six principles analyses them in trying to fill this void. By doing so, the article underlines how this analysis philosophically relates to some technical problems discussed in the neo-platonician exegetic tradition of Aristotle’s Categories. It makes reference to some thir-teenth- and fourteenth- century commentaries on the Book of six principles both to present how this text was interpretated and to give a glance at how the conceptions of these two categories came to evolve.

According to Franz Brentano, every mental act includes a representation of itself. Hence, Brentano can be described as maintaining that: reflexivity, when it occurs, is included as a part in mental acts; and reflexivity always occurs. Brentano’s way of understanding the inclusion of reflexivity in mental acts entails double intentionality in mental acts. The aim of this paper is to show that the conjunction of and is not uncommon in the history of philosophy. To that end, the theories of two medieval thinkers, namely, Walter Chatton and Durand of Saint-Pourçain, are presented. The repeated conjunction of and paves the way for a more general distinction than that between subjectivist and objectivist theories of reflexivity, namely, one between automatic theories of reflexivity and apperceptive theories of reflexivity.