Intention occupies a contested and generative position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a grammatical problem, a moral category, a therapeutic technique, and a depth-psychological challenge to conscious self-knowledge. Ricoeur’s extended analytical treatment in ‘Oneself as Another’ dominates the theoretical terrain, distinguishing three irreducible uses of the term — acting intentionally, acting with an intention, and intending-to — while pressing Davidson and Anscombe on their suppression of temporality and agent-reference in the formation of intention. Against this analytic backdrop, Hadot illuminates the Stoic inheritance: for Marcus Aurelius and the tradition he represents, intention (intention morale) carries a transcendent value that infinitely exceeds the objects to which it is applied. Dihle traces the pre-philosophical roots in Greek legal thought, where intention was assessed through knowledge of means and ends rather than good or ill will — a genealogy that shapes all subsequent theories of moral responsibility. Frankl’s logotherapeutic deployment of paradoxical intention reveals a clinically practical dimension: forced intention paradoxically subverts the goal it pursues, demanding therapeutic reversal. Hillman’s archetypal perspective reframes intention through the lens of the daimon and telos, questioning whether intention belongs to the ego at all. Gallagher introduces the neuroscientific complication: a sense of agency requires not only intention but awareness of intention — and the two are dissociable, as schizophrenic phenomenology makes plain.
nothing distinguishes the intention for the future (I am going to take a walk) from that of an estimate of the future (I am going to be sick) or from that of an order (you are going to obey me).
Ricoeur establishes the core analytical problem: surface grammar underdetermines the meaning of intention, necessitating a tripartite conceptual distinction among its uses.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
The formation of an intention is just this unconditional judgment… ‘intending and wanting belong to the same genus of pro-attitudes expressed by value judgements’.
Ricoeur critically examines Davidson’s identification of intention with ‘all-out judgment,’ arguing this move restores suppressed temporal and agent-referential dimensions that earlier analysis had evaded.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
l’intention a en elle-même une valeur qui transcende infiniment tous les objets, toutes les « matières » auxquelles elle s’applique, objets et matières qui sont en soi indifférents.
Hadot articulates the Stoic thesis that moral intention possesses intrinsic transcendent value, rendering all objects to which it is applied merely indifferent matter.
, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 1995thesis
l’intention a en elle-même une valeur qui transcende infiniment tous les objets, toutes les « matières » auxquelles elle s’applique, objets et matières qui sont en soi indifférents.
Duplicate passage confirming Hadot’s central claim that Stoic moral intention infinitely exceeds its objects in value, constituting the locus of all genuine good.
, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 2002thesis
the temporal dimension should not be taken into account in the analysis of intention and whether the intention-with-which… is not in this respect a weak, even mutilated, form of intention-to, for which the delay between intention and action is essential.
Ricoeur argues that the adverbial use of intention is a deficient form of the forward-looking ‘intention-to,’ which essentially includes temporal delay and agent-reference.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes.
Frankl’s logotherapeutic axiom: hyper-intention is self-defeating, producing the inverse of the desired result and motivating the technique of paradoxical intention.
, Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946thesis
Paradoxical intention can also be applied in cases of sleep disturbance. The fear of sleeplessness results in a hyper-intention to fall asleep, which, in turn, incapacitates the patient to do so.
Frankl demonstrates the clinical application of paradoxical intention across diverse neurotic presentations, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and sleep disturbance.
, Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946thesis
the attestation of the intentional aim is not the work of some ‘very queer and special sort of seeing eye in the middle of the acting’… attestation escapes sight, if sight is expressed in propositions held to be true or false.
Ricoeur argues against Anscombe that the first-person avowal of intentional aim belongs to the order of attestation rather than propositional truth, pointing toward a phenomenology of self-knowledge.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
intention was assessed, in its legal relevance, according to the amount of knowledge the delinquent had… The good or ill will which may have led him in his actions… is clearly not indicated in that terminology.
Dihle traces the Greek legal genealogy of intentionality, showing that early usage equated intention with knowledge of circumstances rather than with will or moral disposition.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis
Frith’s analysis relies, not just on an intention to act (move or think), but an awareness of the intention to act, and he defines this awareness as a case of ‘metarepresentation’.
Gallagher presents Frith’s neuropsychological thesis that normal agency requires meta-representational awareness of intention, the disruption of which accounts for schizophrenic alienation.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005thesis
an action is itself experienced as owned, but the source of the action, an intention or command, is disowned… Having an intention, or having a sense of agency, is not crucial to having a sense of ownership for movement.
Gallagher establishes the dissociability of intention and ownership in bodily movement, demonstrating that the sense of agency is phenomenologically distinct from mere proprioceptive ownership.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting
by treating the intention as an adverb modifying the action, it is possible to subordinate it to the description of the action as a completed event.
Ricoeur reconstructs Davidson’s strategy of privileging the adverbial use of intention, exposing its consequence of subordinating future-directed intending to past-tense action description.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
where it really matters, intention may drop out entirely… the relation between intention and moral [responsibility is complex].
Hannah invokes literary examples — Billy Budd, Oedipus — to challenge the moral primacy of intention, arguing that tragic cases reveal how outcomes can wholly eclipse intentional states.
, Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination as Developed by C. G. Jung, 1981supporting
The idea of telos gives value to what happens by regarding each occurrence as having purpose. What happens is for the sake of something. It has intention.
Hillman reframes intention archetypal-teleologically through the concept of telos, arguing that events carry intention as inherent purposiveness rather than as conscious mental state.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
if it is so powerful as to fatefully determine school expulsion and childhood illnesses, what do we mean by ‘intention’? Has it a final end in view, even an image of fulfillment and a date of death?
Hillman radically interrogates the concept of intention from the perspective of the acorn theory, pressing toward a transpersonal and daimonic understanding that exceeds ego-agency.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
the second reason is the concern to provide an intelligible transition between intentional action (in the sense of an action done intentionally) and action done with the intention.
Ricoeur maps the evaluative dimension of intention onto the desirability character of practical reasoning, linking the motivational and the normative without importing moral categories prematurely.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
contradictory intentions which he constantly produces, very much like the man who has not accepted the salutary message but knows, from conscience or Law, what God expects him to do.
Dihle reads Paul’s theology of flesh and spirit as a doctrine of conflicting intentions, situating pneumatic and carnal intentionality within a theological anthropology of divided will.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
can we grasp intention as such in order to pass our moral judgement? Can we evaluate an action according to moral criteria?
Dihle identifies the absence of a will-concept in post-Hellenistic Platonism as the structural reason why ancient philosophy could not adequately theorize moral intention as such.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
Much of human behavior is intentional. We are almost constantly deciding how to spend our time and energy… there is little doubt that we are volitional, goal-directed beings.
Pargament affirms the empirical-psychological thesis that human behavior is predominantly intentional and goal-directed, grounding religious coping in the volitional structure of human motivation.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
attempts to derive the constraining force of the obligation to keep one’s promises from the monologic structure of intention… marking the progressive reinforcement of intention.
Ricoeur engages Robins’s account of promising to question whether the obligatory force of commitment can be derived from the monological structure of intention alone.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
such disclosure necessarily involves the intentional activity of consciousness. The point of the transcendental phenomenological reduction is to gain access to this activity and the constitutional role it plays.
Thompson situates Husserlian intentional activity within the transcendental framework, where intentionality constitutes the disclosure of reality rather than merely representing it.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007aside
tendencies of which a speaker knows nothing can express themselves through him and that I can deduce them from various indications.
Freud grounds his theory of parapraxes in the claim that unconscious tendencies — intentions unknown to the speaker — express themselves through slips, displacing intentionality below the threshold of consciousness.
, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917aside