Johannes Heinrichs' Thomistic Roots
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Connection
Johannes Heinrichs (b. 1942), whose work we treat extensively in Chapter 17a, began his philosophical education at the Jesuit philosophical college in Pullach near Munich. For six years he studied Thomistic philosophy – not as a historical curiosity, but as a living form of thought.
This training is decisive for Heinrichs’ later work. He discovered in Thomas something most modern interpreters overlook: a reflection-ontology that precedes modern philosophy.
“Intentio” in Thomas
The key term is “intentio.” In Thomas it means: the orientation of the mind toward something. Every act of cognition is intentional – it is always cognition of something. But – and this is decisive – the mind can also direct itself toward itself: “intentio reflexa.”
Heinrichs shows: this structure of self-reflexivity is already present in Thomas – long before Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel. Modern reflective philosophy invents nothing new; it makes explicit what was implicit in Thomas.
Why a Thomist Became a Hegelian
For Heinrichs, the move from Thomas to Hegel is not a rupture, but a development. Thomas thought reflection – but did not systematically unfold it. Hegel achieved this unfolding.
Heinrichs’ project combines both: Thomas’s ontological grounding and Hegel’s systematic unfolding.
[Treated in detail in Ch. 17a]
—