GA17:200 – intencionalidade (Intentionalität)

Ad 2. It becomes abundantly clear, already on the basis of what we have said relative to the diversity of the paths, that the cogito   is regarded differently by Descartes   than it is by Husserl  . Descartes interrogates the cogito first in the position of the point of departure as “my being” with a view to whether it is a certum, a res, that satisfies the regula generalis. By contrast, Husserl does not   interrogate the cogito with a view to whether it satisfies some norm  ; instead he sees it positively. In a positive   way he seeks a basic structure and sees it in what he designates as intentionality. He views consciousness positively with respect to this decisive factor of its structure. But for the entire further problematic of consciousness, that has a definitive significance: the intentionality itself of consciousness is not some sort of condition of the ego  , but instead in this “directing itself-at” [ “ Sichricht en-auf  ”], that at which it is directed [das Worauf   des Gerichtetseins] is also given. Intentionality is not to be construed as a peculiarity of mental processes; instead it is to be given as a manner in which something is encountered, in such a way that what is encountered comes into view along with the encountering: the “directing itself-at” in unison with its specific “at which” [Worauf], That is the fundamental sense of what, from the outset, is meant by intentionality, so that in the [phenomenological] attitude, in one with the cogitare, the cogitatum is thus given as the entity in the manner in which it is respectively encountered for the access to it and dealings with it.

With this discovery of intentionality, for the first time in the entire history of philosophy, the way is explicitly given for a radical ontological research. [GA17DOD:200]