The Philosophical Foundations of Le Royaume
What is “intentional thinking”?
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“The rule is lived and actualized in our lives first by deliberate thinking, i.e., “intentionality,” second by sacrifice, i.e., the abnegation of our will in pursuing this intentionality, and thirdly by “knowing” the objective truth inherent in that which we seek. The result is our “being” in union with the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse. We desire to think as they think, to desire what they desire, and to go where they are in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” ~ The Rule of Le Royaume.
What does "intentionality" mean? Why does our rule relate specifically to St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse, and why do we desire to abandon ourselves to them? More abstractly, why do we think "away" from ourselves and "toward" others we call by name?
Thinking with intentionality in our model means precisely to think away and to think toward. "Thinking away" implies goodwill. "Thinking toward" implies a "whom" we direct our charity toward. The "abnegation of our will" means the act of our intentionality: thinking toward the "other" with a desire to follow in their footsteps. Stating the name places our intentional intellect and abnegated will, that is, our heart, at the doorstep of the other, ready to be received.
Intentionality means that we do this purposefully, with intuitive "knowing," phenomenological knowledge, and surety of the goodness of the other. Likewise, their goodwill is shared with us intentionally on their part. The relationship becomes reciprocal and elevates us in a Platonic, Dionysian manner, using symbolic theology to guide us from the world we know through our natural senses to the hidden supernatural world we intuit with our spiritual insights.
In sum, our rule implies that we intentionally open ourselves in a spirit of goodwill toward those who are good. We intentionally abnegate ourselves, our existing orientations, to be drawn by them, not solely by their ideas. They lead us to the source of their goodness, who is God. "The other" who draws us is known by a name, and this relationship is not bound by natural space and time. It is, as we said, a supernatural relationship.
Our model is based on supernatural human relationships through whom we unite ourselves to God. "Others" are drawn to Heaven, and we seek Heaven through their glorified being, not simply through their thoughts or ideas. Mystical union draws us upward in a manner we could never accomplish by merely studying the other. Exploring the other is necessary but grounded in the natural; union with the other draws us to them and is grounded in the supernatural. One does not construct a natural model to climb to Heaven, as those who built the Tower of Babel attempted; one is drawn to Heaven by those "reaching down to draw back up." We do not seek earthly abstract ideas as our path to Heaven; we seek "the others" by name who reach down to draw back up those of us with hearts of goodwill. Intentional thinking is funneled through the supernaturally glorified "other" who leads us to the "what is it?" (our primary spiritual question) that we seek through them, a movement of intellect and will we call "spirituality."
In this manner, we call intentional thinking a way to union with God. It is thinking by way of both Thomist Aristotelianism and Augustinian Platonism. It is thinking that passively allows a "drawing upward" in a union of hearts as a way of "becoming" until we entirely "are." Its foundation is goodwill.
“We reach God, she says, not only through faith and contemplation but ‘by thinking,’ using ‘logical reasoning’ both from the world without (as in St. Thomas's ‘five ways’) and from the world within (‘the way of St. Augustine’) when we see the need for being that upholds our own- moreover, God's existence is a ‘purely formal conclusion.’ “
~ Edith Stein. Introduction to Potency and Act (The Collected Works of Edith Stein) (Kindle Locations 73-75). Kindle Edition.