Brentano and Other Philosophers

This study seeks to identify a coalition of philosophy and literature in the work of Franz Kafka, and begins with a grounding of his output in the philosophical context from which it emerged. This relatively under-researched philosophical backdrop consists in Kafka's study, at university and in a discussion group, of philosophical positions derived from the "descriptive psychology" of Franz Brentano. Kafka was hence conversant with several philosophical agendas, notably those of logic, Gestalt psychology, and a nascent form of phenomenology, which (...) all derived their impetus from Brentano's work. The initial issue, therefore, is that of assessing the extent of a purported influence of such theories on Kafka's texts. What emerges as a "strategy" of Kafka's work is the aesthetic exploitation of such positions; a tactic which constitutes an almost parodistic subversion of these early forms of phenomenological thought. Thus on the one hand it is implied that the narrative technique of Kafka's work, and in particular the representation of consciousness and its "world", is derived from Brentanian thought, and on the other that this influence is modulated in a specific direction, which renders these texts so singularly amenable to post-structuralist thought. My project consequently proceeds to examine the post-structuralist response to Kafka while juxtaposing this analysis with the grounding of his work in proto-phenomenology. Central to this stage of the study are Blanchot, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari, and the scrutiny of their perspectives will be organized by the themes of authorship, interpretation, power, and desire. The exploration of the "deconstructive" standpoint, represented primarily through Blanchot and Derrida, will be guided by an account of why such a stance seems to be accommodated so readily by Kafka's work, and also of the extent to which his texts could be said, on the basis of the influence of Brentanian thought, to resist such appropriation. (shrink)

BRENTANO'S CLAIMS ABOUT INTENTIONALITY DO NOT BEAR SOLELY\nON A CONCERN WITH THE POSITIVE NATURE OF MENTAL STATES.\nTHEY ALSO HAVE NO BEARING ON THE PROBLEM OF MENTAL/MATERIAL\nIDENTITY. PART OF THEIR POINT IS JUST TO OPPOSE A CERTAIN\nVIEW ABOUT THE PROPER OBJECTS OF AWARENESS, NAMELY THAT\nINSOFAR AS WE ARE AWARE OF OBJECTS THEY HAVE AN EXISTENCE\n"IN THE MIND." BOTH HUME AND DESCARTES HELD SUCH A VIEW. AN\nEXAMINATION OF THE NOTIONS OF "IDEA" AND "OBJECTIVE\nREALITY" SHOWS THE INACCURACY OF REGARDING DESCARTES AS A\n"REPRESENTATIVE REALIST." (...) WHAT REPRESENTS EXTERNAL NATURES\nIN THE MIND IS JUST THOSE NATURES THEMSELVES INSOFAR AS\nTHEY EXIST IN THE MIND. (shrink)

In Principia Ethica Moore expresses his great admiration for Brentano's ethical writings, and a comparison between Moore and Brentano reveals that their ethical theories have much in common. But they disagree fundamentally on the metaphysics of intrinsic value. Moore adopts an abstract realist position, whereas Brentano interprets intrinsic value by reference to “correct love” : that which is good is that which merits correct love. Brentano's position has many advantages over that of Moore ; but it raises the question as (...) to what it is for love to be “correct”. Brentano simply relies on our experience at this point, comparing our experience of the evidence of certain judgements with our experience of the correctness of certain loves. But this no longer seems tenable. I suggest that one might try to construct an alternative account of “correct love” by drawing on other themes from Moore : his “defence of common Sense” and his thesis of the “supervenience” of the moral on the natural ; but I conclude that it is difficult to see how such an alternative account can be completed without some understanding of the general reliability of our natural sentiments, and that such an account seems bound to lead in the direction of the kind of ethical naturalism which Brentano repudiated. (shrink)

Phenomenologists call for the abandoning of all philosophical theorizing in favor of a descriptive study of the "things themselves" as they are given. On its face, such a study of appearances would appear to have little to contribute to ontology, traditionally understood as the science of being and its most fundamental categories. But phenomenologists have not hesitated to draw ontological conclusions from their phenomenological investigations. Phenomenology and its ontological pretensions have come under attack, however, from philosophers of a wide variety (...) of persuasions . ;The project of this dissertation is to re-examine the relationship of phenomenology, conceived as a philosophical method, to ontology. I proceed by undertaking systematic critical examinations of the attempts of thee central figures in the phenomenological tradition to arrive at categorial ontological results upon the basis of phenomenological investigations. At issue are Brentano's descriptive psychological studies of so-called mental phenomena in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , Husserl's static transcendental phenomenological study of the structures of pure consciousness in Ideas I, II, and III, and Sartre's phenomenological ontology of consciousness in Being and Nothingness. For each of these cases, I attempt to ascertain the precise way in which the application of phenomenological methods gives rise to specific ontological claims or "results". In none of these cases, I argue, does the thinker in question succeed in producing ontological assertions in a sufficiently phenomenological fashion. All, that is, depart to some extent from the phenomenological ideal of an ontology arrived at in accordance with an unprejudiced examination and description of "the things themselves". In the final chapter I ask whether the particular failures of these thinkers to have formulated ontological claims in a phenomenologically satisfactory manner implies the general failure of all phenomenological approaches to ontology. I argue that while principled reasons can be given why a truly phenomenological ontology must remain an unattainable ideal, it is an ideal that philosophers ought not abandon. (shrink)

Both Franz Brentano and his pupil Carl Stumpf, in their psychology, laid stress to the description and analysis of psychical phenomena, or functions, in order to get a taxonomy of mental acts. In their logic, they undertake the proof of whether empirically given knowledge is logically necessary.

Il est bien connu que, dans la Ve Recherche Logique, Husserl critique la théorie brentanienne du jugement. Son problème est de définir le “porteur” de vérité auquel le jugement donne une valeur de vérité. Un tel projet le conduit très près du propositionalisme bolzanien. Alors la théorie phénoménologique du jugement apparaît comme une sorte de compromis entre la psychologie brentanienne de l’acte et un point de vue purement sémantique hérité de Bolzano. La question demeure de savoir si une telle conciliation (...) est possible sans un tournant transcendantal. (shrink)

In several manuscripts, written between 1894 and 1897, Twardowski developed a new theory of judgement with two types of judgement: existential and relational judgements. In Zur Lehre he tried to stay within a Brentanian framework, although he introduced the distinction between content and object in the theory of judgement. The introduction of this distinction forced Twardowski to revise further Brentano'stheory.His changes concerned judgements about relations and about non-present objects. The latter are considered special cases of relational judgements. The existential judgements (...) are analysed in a Brentanian way; whereas relational judgements are analysed in a Brentanian way only as far as the act is concerned, but not when it comes to the object: the object of a relational judgement is a relationship. With this notion of relationship Twardowski comes close to introducing a concept of state of affairs for the object of (relational) judgements. (shrink)

Le but du présent essai est de montrer la différence entre la phénoménologie descriptive et la phénoménologie transcendantale en ce qui concerne la per­ception et la constitution du sens objectif de l’expérience. La conception générale qui anime notre travail peut être caractérisée comme « néo-brenta­nienne ». -/- Nous ne visons pas à une exposition complète de la théorie de la synthèse passive telle qu’elle est développée principalement dans le volume XI des Husserliana1. Notre but n’est pas de faire un résumé (...) de cette doc­trine2, mais d’en comprendre certains points critiques. -/- Ce que Husserl appelle « la sphère de la passivité » (der Sphäre der Passivität)3 est en fait un titre générique pour une série de problèmes particulièrement riches. Elle fait écho aux thèmes centraux de la phénoméno­logie husserlienne : la structure du remplissement, le rapport entre représen­tations vides et représentations intuitives, le rapport entre sens et intuition, la constitution de l’objet, la genèse de nos concepts et finalement le continu perceptif et son unité. Comme la passivité au sens qui nous intéresse re­couvre un champ plus large que les concepts de synthèse passive et d’inten­tion passive, nous nous bornerons à interroger seulement certains passages de l’œuvre husserlienne, notamment les recherches sur la constitution dans les Ideen II (Hua IV) et le cours sur les synthèses passives (Hua XI). Il faudra rappeler que, s’étendant de la VIe Recherche logique — le sensible et l’intel­ligible, le rapport entre la réceptivité et la spontanéité — et la découverte du concept de monde de la vie (Lebenswelt), la question de la passivité est, au fond, quelque chose qui traverse comme un fil conducteur toute l’œuvre de Husserl. Toutefois, malgré l’attention accordée par Husserl à la passivité de la conscience, nous voudrions suggérer dans ce travail que (1) son idée de la pensée humaine n’est rien d’autre que l’idée d’une expérience qui, en tant que remplissement du sens, est nécessairement liée à l’activité de l’esprit ; (2) et que cette idée n’est pas seulement une abstraction de ce que nous appelons « expérience », mais qu’elle empêche une véritable description des actes de conscience par rapport au réel, le réel n’étant jamais quelque chose que le sens peut saisir dans sa totalité4. Dans l’optique husserlienne, la raison présente une aspiration à l’unité5 que notre perception semble incapable de satisfaire. La transformation transcendantale de l’intentionnalité brentanienne implique une relation au réel telle qu’elle porte en elle, dans sa structure, un sens implicite. La possibilité de saisir ce sens « caché » dans les profondeurs des actes mentaux est précisément ce que nous allons mettre en question dans le présent essai. (shrink)

In dem hier edierten dritten Teil des Würzburger Vorlesungszyklus und den ergänzenden Texten des Anhangs zeichnet Brentano die Grundlinien der philosophischen Systeme der Neuzeit nach. Die überwiegend negative Bewertung der neuzeitlichen Systeme orientiert sich in der Wahl der Kriterien der Kritik an dem Denker, den Brentano den "Mann aller Zeiten" nennt, an Aristoteles.

Den 1905 gefaßten Plan einer Gesamtdarstellung der Aristotelischen Lehre brachte Brentano nicht mehr zur Ausführung. Die hier erstmals veröffentlichten Vorarbeiten aus den Jahren 1908 bis 1911 für die Abhandlung »Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung« bieten einen detaillierten Einblick in das Aristoteles-Bild des späten Brentano.