ABSTRACT
One of the most detailed treatments of the will and of its role in intentional action can be found in Austro-German Phenomenology: questions about the will, its main features, and its relations with other experiences have occupied members of the phenomenological movement from its very beginning in the first decades of the 20th century. This chapter aims at reconstructing Dietrich von Hildebrand’s contributions to the philosophy of action and, in particular, his view about the will as presented in his dissertation. It outlines Hildebrand’s theory of intentionality by mainly focusing on his distinction between cognitive experiences and attitudes. The chapter discusses his phenomenology of the will and its relevance for a definition of the notion of intentional action. It talks about Harry Frankfurt and shows that, based on Hildebrand’s understanding of the will, many of his considerations about ‘A wants to X’ do not apply if the predicate ‘to want’ expresses a state akin to the ‘Wille’ in Hildebrand’s sense.
