I. To the Question

8. I reply:

First we must see what is meant by this term ‘intention’.

For ‘to intend’ states ‘to tend to another’. This can be taken generally, either that a thing has from another that it tends toward it, or that it has it from itself ‘moving itself toward it’. - A thing can also tend toward something as toward a present object or as toward a distant or absent limit.

9. In the first way intending belongs to any power with respect to its object.

10. In the second way intending is more properly taken for that, namely, which tends toward another and is not drawn to it but draws itself to it; and in this way intending cannot belong to any natural power but only to a free one, because - according to Damascene Orthodox Faith chs.36, 41 - “a non-free appetite is drawn and does not draw,” and so it is in the case of every natural power.

11. Taking ‘to intend’ more properly in this [second] way, then, namely as it states ‘to tend of oneself to another’, it will belong principally to a free power; but since to will freely belongs to the whole of free choice, which includes intellect and will (according to the third opinion in d.25 [not in the Ordinatio but the Lectura]), to intend will also belong to the whole of it (and this if to intend is taken most properly), and it will not belong to anything with respect to its object but with respect to its end. And since in the case of every volition - according to Anselm [On Truth ch.12, “Just as every will wills something, so it wills for the sake of something... So every will has a ‘what’ and a ‘why’.”] - it is possible to take a ‘what’ and a ‘why’, to intend does not regard the ‘what’ but the ‘why’, namely to the extent it states a tending toward something as distant through something as through a means.

12. Intention therefore will be an act of free choice by reason of will, and it will be an act of it with respect to what it wills. And if there is the same act of willing for what is willed and for that because of which it is willed, the same act will be use and intention; but if there is a different act, intention will state formally the act by which it tends to the end and materially the act of using by which it refers another thing toward that end.