intentum

Intentum is a Latin noun meaning intention, purpose, or design. It is a neuter noun derived from the verb intendere, “to stretch toward” or “to aim at.” The form intentum is the neuter singular, and its use is primarily literary, legal, and scholastic. In classical authors the more common terms for intention are propositum and intentio; intentum appears more often in Latin medical, legal, and theological texts where it denotes the act of aiming at a desired end or the thing intended. Today the term is rarely used outside scholarly Latin, and in modern English this concept is usually expressed as “intent” or “intention.”

In philosophical and moral contexts, intentum is used to refer to the mental aim directing an action, sometimes contrasted with the act itself or with the outcome (finis) and with the will (voluntas). Medieval scholastics discussed intention as a factor in moral evaluation, analyzing how the agent’s intent could affect the righteousness or wrongness of an act, independently of its external consequences. The term thus occupies a place in discussions of moral psychology and the formal logic of intention, alongside related terms such as intentio and propositum.

See also: intentio, propositum, voluntas, finis.