---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: ! 'Adorno terminology: intentio recta and intention obliqua'

wordpress_id: 1457
wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/2011/09/06/adorno-terminology-intentio-recta-and-intention-obliqua/
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categories:
- Academia
- Philosophy
- Theodor Adorno
tags:
- academia
- Philosophy
- definition
- latin
comments:
- id: 6583
  author: Yuri
  author_email: yuricoutinho7@hotmail.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: ! 'Very helpfull, just the clarification I was looking for.

    I guess all people reading the Negative Dialectics should join strengths somehow!
    I told my Epistemology teacher I had begun reading it and he sort of congratulated
    me, just for trying... Either he underestimated my capacity - understandably -
    or the book is a real challenge... It''s probably both!

    Thanks, anyway, and good studies!'
- id: 6678
  author: Alex O
  author_email: alexandra.oliver@gmail.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: ! "Interesting! How did you trace the reference in Adorno to Hartmann?\r\n\r\nIt
    remains unclear to me whether Hartmann intends this as two modes of attention
    or (as in Kant) a metaphysical explanation for human experience? In Kant, the
    noumenal / phenomenal distinction is clearly not a difference between two kinds
    of perception or attention."
- id: 6679
  author: Martin Paul Eve
  author_email: martin@martineve.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: ! "Hi Alex,\r\n\r\nI'm not convinced that it is a sound referent given
    Adorno's aversion to several strains of phenomenology; indeed, if you have a better
    prior usage of these terms (perhaps in relation to Kant?), then I'd love to hear
    them.\r\n\r\nMethodologically, as this was peripheral to my research, I performed
    a Google Books search on the two terms and found that the main source, and indeed
    oldest source -- Samuel Otto's A foundation of ontology: a critical analysis of
    Nicolai Hartmann -- seemed to be on Hartmann. As I said, I could be wrong here!"
- id: 6695
  author: Jacob Morris
  author_email: jacobamorris@gmail.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: Thanks for this possible explanation.  I was just reading "On Subject and
    Object," which is another location where Adorno uses these terms.  Your post helps.
---
<p>Reading <i>Negative Dialectics</i>, I was unable to track down a succinct, suitable definition of the terms "intentio recta" and "intentio obliqua", first appearing on page 69 of the Ashton translation.</p>
<p>It turns out the phrases are derived from the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Hartmann">Nicolai Hartmann</a> who introduced the terms to correspond to the Scholastics' <i>intentio prima</i> and <i>intentio secunda</i>. The <i>intentio recta</i>, therefore, is the state when cognition focuses upon the true object, while <i>intentio obliqua</i> is a state of consciousness which focuses upon the image of the object in the intellect.</p>
<p>In the neo-Kantian schema, this refers to whether we know the thing-in-itself ("intentio recta") or the image of the thing ("intentio obliqua").</p>
<p><i>Featured image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/peroshenka/">Пероша</a> under a CC-BY-NC license.</i></p>