Intentionality and Consciousness

The cardinal principle of Intentionality, pioneered in contemporary Philosophy by Brentano, is that Consciousness is essentially Consciousness of an object, i. e. it challenges theories that hold that having an object is extrinsic to the fundamental structure of Consciousness. One main debate in Intentionality concerns the nature of the object of Consciousness, e. g. Husserl believes that it is constituted within Consciousness, whereas Sartre insists that any object of Consciousness pre-exists Consciouness. However, less clear for Intentionality is the status of a potentially related principle--that Consciousness is necessarily the Consciousness of a Subject, in the possessive sense of 'of'. For example, Sartre explicitly derives Being-for-itself from the Intentional Principle, i. e. it is the Consciousness of Consciousness that is implicit in the Consciousness of an object. Hence, he constructs Selfhood on the basis of the fundamental Intentional relation. But such Selfhood is essentially anonymous, so the Intentional Principle does not warrant the further instantiation of the For-itself as an upsurge from a specific In-itself. Instead, any such instantiation presupposes the second Principle cited above, i. e. that Consciousness is an attribute of some subject, which Sartre does not invoke. So, the status of the latter Principle is unclear in Sartre's Ontology. But, that he attempts to link the For-itself to a specific In-itself, at minimum, demonstrates the insufficiency of the Intentional Principle as a definition of Consciousness, as well as contests any presumption that Consciousness is the subject of its object, i. e. that it is not a relation between a subject and an object, nor an emergent dimension of a pre-existing subject-object relation.