Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

This is the being of reason about which the logician properly treats, insofar as such a relation is discovered through the ordering of concepts, and is considered by the logician. Thus St Thomas says in Metaphysics IV, lect. 4¹ that “being of reason is properly said of those intentions which reason discovers in the things considered, such as the intention of genus, species, and the like”; and this kind of being of reason is properly the subject of Logic.

WE MUST THEREFORE PRESUPPOSE what we said in book I of the Summulae about terms of first and second intention.² Here “intention” is taken not as an act of will, distinct from choice and directed to an end, but as an act or concept of the intellect, which is called intention in a general sense because it tends toward something else, namely an object. Just as one concept is formal and another objective—that is, the cognition itself or the thing cognized—so one intention is formal and another objective. The objective intention is the relation of reason itself attributed to the thing cognized; the formal intention is the concept by which it is formed. For example, when we conceive animal as superior to its inferiors, the universality inhering on the side of animal is called objective or passive intention, while the concept by which animal is so conceived is called formal intention. Thus formal intention, as distinguished from objective intention, is one thing; the formality of second intention, inhering on the side of the object cognized, is another. The latter is always something of reason, since it results from cognition; the former is a real act.

This is called second intention by contrast with first, as if one said a second state or condition of the object. An object can be considered in two states: first, as it is in itself, whether as to existence or quiddity; second, as it is in apprehension. This state of being in cognition is second relative to the state of being in itself, which is first, because just as knowability follows upon entity, so being known follows upon the being it has in itself. Thus the affections or formalities belonging to a thing insofar as it is in itself are called first intentions; those belonging to it insofar as it is known are called second intentions. Since it belongs to Logic to direct things insofar as they are in apprehension, Logic per se considers second intentions, which belong to things as known.

FROM THIS IT FOLLOWS FIRST that not every relation of reason is a second intention; nevertheless, every second intention, formally taken and not merely fundamentally, is a relation of reason, not a real form or an extrinsic denomination, as some wrongly think.

The first part is clear: although every relation of reason results from cognition, not every such relation denominates a thing only in the state of being known, which is the second state. Some denominate it even in the state of existence outside cognition. Thus the relation of Creator and Lord denominates God as existing, not God as known; likewise to be a teacher or judge. For a man is not a teacher or judge as known, but as existing; these relations therefore denominate in the state of existence.

Observe here that although cognition is the cause from which a relation of reason results—as is common to every being of reason—and a relation of reason therefore necessarily requires cognition in order to belong to and denominate a subject, cognition does not always make the object itself a suitable and fitting recipient of that denomination, so that it belongs to it only in the state of being known. This occurs only with second intentions. Thus the relations of Creator and Lord, judge and teacher, require cognition to cause such relations when they denominate a subject, but not cognition that constitutes the subject in a state of being known and thereby makes it capable of receiving that denomination. But being a genus or species not only presupposes cognition causing such relations; it also presupposes cognition that makes the subject abstracted from its inferiors, and the denomination falls upon the thing so abstracted.

The second part is expressly stated by St Thomas in Opusc. 42, ch. 12³, where he says that second intentions are properties belonging to things because they are in the intellect; and in De potentia, q. 7, a. 9⁴, that they “follow the mode of understanding”; and in Metaphysics IV, lect. 4⁵, that they belong to things as cognized by the intellect. They are therefore not real forms, but forms of reason.

This is evident both because the nature of genus, species, and the other universals consists in the relation of superior to inferior, which cannot be real relations, since then a universal would formally exist on the side of the thing; and because these intentions presuppose being known as their foundation. A genus, for instance, presupposes that the thing is abstracted from its inferiors, and belongs to it by reason of that abstraction. It therefore presupposes the extrinsic denomination of something known and abstracted; it is not formally that extrinsic denomination itself, much less a real form. For then these intentions would descend to the singulars, in which they would be found really, rather than only in abstraction from singulars. The act of the intellect itself is a real act, but it is not the objective second intention now under discussion; it is the formal intention from which the objective one results.

IT FURTHER FOLLOWS that although a first intention, taken absolutely, must be something real or something belonging to a thing in the state of reality—otherwise it would not be simply first, since what is real always precedes and is prior to what is of reason—it is nevertheless possible for another second intention to be founded even upon a second intention. In that case the founding second intention assumes something like the condition of a first intention relative to the other one founded upon it, not because it is simply first but because it is prior to the one it grounds.

Since the intellect can reflect upon its own acts, it can reflectively know a second intention itself and found another second intention upon it. Thus the intention of genus attributed to animal, in turn, can, as known, ground a second intention of species, insofar as the intention of genus is a kind of predicable species. The second intention founded in this way denominates the prior, founding intention, which is why genus is formally genus and denominatively species. It often happens with these second intentions that one is formally such in itself, while denominatively it is another as known. Nevertheless all are called second intentions; one is not a third or fourth intention, because all belong to the object as known, and being known is always the second state of a thing. Since one intention, insofar as it grounds another, assumes something like the condition of a first intention relative to it, the intention founded upon it is always called second.

YOU WILL SAY: A second intention regards a first as its correlative, since “second” is said by relation to “first”; therefore it regards it as a terminus, not as a foundation. Again: a second intention is predicated of its foundation, as “Man is a species,” but a second intention is not predicated of a first, since “A first intention is a second intention” is false. Therefore it is not founded upon one.

The answer to the first point is that a second intention does not regard a first as a correlative in the manner of a terminus, but in the manner of a subject to which it is attributed and which it denominates, or in which it is founded. It is thus said by reference to a first as subject, not as terminus. A relation is said to be ordered to an absolute as subject or foundation, not as correlative—unless it assumes the character of a terminus and so becomes something relative or correlative rather than a subject, as we shall say in the category of relation. Likewise the formal correlative of a second intention is always some second intention, as genus is correlative to species and vice versa.

To the second point, a second intention is predicated of a first concretely, as white is predicated of man, but not abstractly. Thus “Man is a species” is true, while “A first intention is a second intention” is false. Second intentions can also be signified by an abstract name, both commonly by the term “second intention” and particularly by terms such as “universality” and “genericity.” These signify only the form of reason in the abstract; they do not directly signify the subject or thing in which they are founded, but signify it obliquely, just as “whiteness” in the abstract implies a body obliquely, since it is a quality of a body.

IF YOU ASK how many kinds of second intention there are and how it is divided, the answer is that every relation is divided according to its proximate foundation, or the reason for its being founded, as we shall say in the category of relation.⁶ A relation of reason, formed in the likeness of a real relation, is therefore rightly divided by its foundations. Since the foundation of a second intention is a thing as known and as subject to the state of apprehension, the division of second intention is also taken according to the different ordering of what is known, for the ordering of which the second intention is formed. Since the first operation of the intellect is ordered and directed in one way, the second in another, and the third in another, second intention is divided according to the different orderings of these operations; and in each operation there is a different intention according to the different order in which it can be directed.

Thus in the first operation there is the intention of a term, ordered as a part of an enunciation and syllogism, under which are contained various intentions of parts, such as the account of a noun, verb, and other terms. There is also the intention of universality as a superior predicable, itself divided into the various modes of universality, such as genus and species, corresponding to the intention of subjecthood, as found in an individual and other inferior predicates.

In the second operation there is the intention of an utterance, divided into various modes of perfect and imperfect utterance. Again, a proposition, one of the perfect utterances, is divided into affirmative and negative and the other divisions explained in book II of the Summulae.⁷ A proposition in turn grounds other second intentions, which are its properties: opposition and conversion, pertaining to the whole proposition; and supposition, ampliation, predicate and subject, and other similar properties of the parts of a proposition, as explained in the same book.⁸

Finally, in the third operation there is the intention of consequence or argumentation, divided into induction and syllogism; induction into ascent and descent; and syllogism into its various modes and figures, discussed in the same place.⁹