A Treatise of Master Hervaeus Natalis, the Doctor Perspicacissimus

As almost everyone knows, the notion of intentionality comes from the Middle Ages. What is less known is that Hervaeus Natalis, OP (d. 1323) was the first one explicitly to consider it as such. Even less known is the fact that he came to it not immediately from the Aristotelian De Anima, but rather from the division in Aristotle's Metaphysics between "being as being" and "being as true." Least of all known is the fact that Hervaeus, who uses the term "intentionality" in the present work 235 times, regards its significance as a relation of reason which runs in the direction of known or knowable to knower. Apart from its exceedingly obscure Latin style, what particularly makes this work difficult to understand is its multi-layered reflection on things and non-things, its reflection on Hervaeus' thinking itself, and its reflection on his thinking about his thinking about things and non-things. These volumes present a first critical Latin edition and an English translation of an important, but very difficult to read and understand, medieval treatise.