Heidegger's critique of Husserl's and Brentano's accounts of intentionality

Inspired by Aristotle, Franz Brentano revived the concept of intentionality to characterize the domain of mental phenomena studied by descriptive psyc hology. Edmund Husserl, while discarding much of Brentano's conceptual fram ework and presuppositions, located intentionality at the core of his scienc e of pure consciousness (phenomenology). Martin Heidegger, Husserl's assist ant from 1919 to 1923, dropped all reference to intentionality and consciou sness in Being and Time (1927), and so appeared to break sharply with his a vowed mentors, Brentano and Husserl. Some recent commentators have sided wi th Heidegger and have endorsed his critique of Husserl and Brentano as stil l caught up in epistemological, representationalist approaches to intention ality. I argue that Heidegger is developing Husserl, focusing in particular on the ontological dimension of intentionality, not reversing or abandonin g his account. Heidegger's criticisms of representationalism merely repeat Husserl's. Furthermore, I argue that Husserl's account of cognitive intenti onality, which recognizes the importance of the disinterested theoretical a ttitude for scientific knowledge, has been underestimated and misunderstood by Heidegger, who treats scientific cognition as a deficient form of pract ice. In short, Heidegger is more dependent on Husserl than he ever publicly acknowledged.