ABSTRACT
The Introduction presents the concept of intentionality as a philosopher's term for investigating the capacity of consciousness to be about objects. After tracing the term's history back to medieval scholastics and to its renaissance in the work of Franz Brentano, it is shown to play a central role in the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. It is argued that Sellars takes his cue not from Brentano but from Kant, in whom he finds clues to a transcendental methodology. Sellars' project is thus shown to belong to the tradition of transcendental philosophy, interested in uncovering the conditions of possibility for intentional directedness. This approach to reading Sellars is demarcated against current strands of research. A survey of the history of Sellars scholarship reveals three waves of reception and details pertinent desiderata for a systematic study of his account of intentionality. This is followed by a prospective characterisation of how each desideratum is taken up in the individual chapters of the book.
