Roderick Chisholm provides, in different places, two formulations of Brentano's thesis about the relation between the psychological and the intentional: (1) all and only psychological sentences are intentional; (2) no psychological intentional sentence is equivalent to a nonintentional sentence. Chisholm also presents several definitions of intentionality. Some of these allow that a sentence is intentional while its negation is nonintentional, which ruins the prospects of defending the more plausible and interesting thesis (2). A generalization of the notion (...) of logical independence to any number of mutually independent sentences permits a revision of Chisholm's criteria of intentionality that ensures that a sentence is intentional on a criterion exactly when its negation is as well. (shrink)

Proponents of physical intentionality argue that the classic hallmarks of intentionality highlighted by Brentano are also found in purely physical powers. Critics worry that this idea is metaphysically obscure at best, and at worst leads to panpsychism or animism. I examine the debate in detail, finding both confusion and illumination in the physical intentionalist thesis. Analysing a number of the canonical features of intentionality, I show that they all point to one overarching phenomenon of which both the mental and (...) the physical are kinds, namely finality. This is the finality of ‘final causes’, the long-discarded idea of universal action for an end to which recent proponents of physical intentionality are in fact pointing whether or not they realise it. I explain finality in terms of the concept of specific indifference, arguing that in the case of the mental, specific indifference is realised by the process of abstraction, which has no correlate in the case of physical powers. This analysis, I conclude, reveals both the strength and weakness of rational creatures such as us, as well as demystifying the way in which powers work. (shrink)

: Philosophers in the analytic and phenomenological traditions have interpreted Brentano's intentionality thesis, and his empirical psychology more generally, in significantly different ways. Disregarding Brentano's distinctive psychological method, analytic philosophers have typically read him as a philosopher of mind, and his intentionality thesis as a contribution to the Cartesian project of clarifying the distinction between the mental and the physical. Phenomenologists, while more attentive to his method, tended to read Brentano as merely Òon the wayÓ to (...) a truly phenomenological approach. I offer a third reading of Brentano thesis, one that attends to both the motivating concerns and the distinctive methodological features of his psychological project. (shrink)

Collected in this volume are ten essays on Islamic philosophy, some of which have appeared before. The topics range from historical observations on the Islamic-European transmission of ideas to detailed examinations of Arabic developments in logic. The most comprehensive discussion of the latter concerns the theory of temporal modalities as found in Avicenna, al-Qazwini al-Katibi, et al. Of much wider interest is the inquiry into the Arabic concern with the notion of "existence." The author surprises the reader here by pointing (...) out that Al-Farabi was the first to deny that existence is an attribute; that Brentano's notion of "intentional inexistence" was anticipated by both Avicenna and Averroes; that certain teachings of al-Qazwini al-Katibi accord exactly with Russell's work concerning vacuous definite descriptions. The work as a whole provides considerable evidence for Rescher's thesis, fully articulated in the final essay, that "there is no such thing as an Arabic philosophy" but only "Greek philosophy carried forward in an Arabic-language setting." Indicative of this is the correspondence between Avicenna's formulation of the "logic of questions" and the Aristotelian table of categories. Another example is the commentary of Ibn al-Salah on Book II of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. More familiar is the syncretistic Arabic adaptation of the doctrines of Timaeus and De Caelo; this influence is discussed at length with respect to Al Kindi's cosmology. In summation, this author's work fills a number of gaps in the continuity of logical development from the Ancient-Medieval period to that of the early Renaissance.--W. S. (shrink)

Perhaps the philosophical thesis most commonly associated with Brentano is that intentionality is the mark of the mental. But in fact Brentano often and centrally uses also what he calls ‘inner perception’ to demarcate the mental. In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Brentano’s conception of the interrelations between mentality, intentionality, and inner perception. According to this interpretation, Brentano took the concept of mind to be a natural-kind concept, with intentionality constituting the underlying nature of the mental (...) and inner-perceivability serving as the concept’s reference-fixer. (shrink)

Brentano's Thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental is central to analytic philosophy of mind as well as phenomenology. The contemporary discussion assumes that it is a formulation of an analytic definition of the mental. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. According to Brentano, many philosophical concepts can only be elucidated by perceiving their instances because these concepts are abstracted from perception. The concept of the mental is one of these concepts. We need to understand (...) Brentano's Thesis accordingly: It is a piece of advice on how to become introspectively aware of the distinctive feature of mental phenomena. On this understanding of Brentano's Thesis standard objections to it no longer arise. (shrink)

Brentano is perhaps most famously renowned for his re-deployment of Scholastic terminology of ‘intentional act’ and ‘intentional object’ in the elaboration of his novel science of ‘descriptive psychology’ in the mid-1870s and 1880s. In this re-deployment, however, Brentano adapted the original Scholastic meanings of both of these terms. Thus Brentano advanced not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality.1 These theses, however, are often not properly distinguished, and consequently they are more often confused. Nevertheless, once the two theses are distinguished, (...) Brentano’s basic descriptive-psychological tenet of the intentionality of consciousness is more readily understandable on its own terms. Whether Brentano’s descriptive-psychological tenet is entirely acceptable philosophically, or not, of course, is another matter but this presupposes understanding in a straightforward sense what Brentano’s doctrine is. In this article, I will be concerned mainly with Brentano’s re-introduction of ‘what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874),2 even though it is Brentano’s (second) thesis on ‘intentional act’, one that he developed after his 1874 publication, that is more generally well known and examined. While acknowledging that many versions of ‘Brentano’s thesis’, as it is usually (and loosely) referred to by commentators today, have been re-worked in modern philosophy of mind, this article focuses attention on some of the main points of convergence and deviance between the original Scholastic concept and Brentano’s ‘new’ concept of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, Franz Brentano is known mostly for his thesis that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental.’ Among Brentano scholars, there are also lively debates on his theory of consciousness and his theory of judgment. Brentano’s theory of will and emotion is less widely discussed, even within the circles of Brentano scholarship. In this paper, I want to show that this is a missed opportunity, certainly for Brentano scholars but also for contemporary philosophy of (...) mind. Brentano’s accounts of the will and of emotion are, I will argue, both insightful, creative, and surprising, on the one hand, and strikingly plausible, upon reflection, on the other. (shrink)

Abstract: Brentano’s conception of scientific philosophy had a strong influence on his students and on the intellectual atmosphere of Vienna in the late nineteenth century. The aim of this article is to expose Brentano’s conception and to contrast his views with that of two traditions he is said to have considerably influenced: phenomenology and analytic philosophy. I will shed light on the question of how and to what extent Brentano’s conception of philosophy as a rigorous science has had an impact (...) on these two traditions. The discussion will show that both took their liberties in the interpretation of the thesis, a move that allowed them to liberate themselves from Brentano’s inheritance and to fully develop their own philosophical positions. (shrink)

Among historians of philosophy it is often taken for granted that the “Brentano school” was one of the influential philosophical movements at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century – but Brentano’s own contributions are often eclipsed by that of his direct students. This invites to reflect on the nature of and the unity within the school. Since Brentano’s conception of a rigorous, scientific philosophy had a strong impact on his students, it has been argued (...) that this conception constitutes a unifying element in an otherwise heterogeneous group. The scope of this article is to shed light on this thesis and to show its limits. I argue for a differentiated view: the Brentano school is best seen not as a compact movement, but as a heterogeneous group of scholars who approached, in a given historical and geographical period, similar topics in very similar ways. (shrink)

Franz Brentano's remarks on theodicy presuppose both his ethical and his metaphysical views. But he does not tell us precisely how his ethics and his metaphysics are supposed to relate to one another. Indeed, the two appear to be irreconcilable. So I try to show how Brentano's solution to the problem of evil can disclose to us the relation between his ethics and his metaphysics. First I discuss those of his ethical principles which I take to be relevant (...) to theodicy, namely, that mental activity is indefeasibly good in itself, and that in practical decisions only one choice is good. Then I explain the relevant metaphysical doctrines, concerning the substance-accident relation and the principle of sufficient reason. I then raise the general problem of evil, as well as the specific problem for Brentano. And finally I explicate and defend his theodicy, both in terms of what he clearly states and in terms of what we can infer from his writings on what is good and evil, on what exists, and on the nature of God. (shrink)

Franz Brentano took exception to the classic statement of the correspondence theory of truth, the thesis: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus. His reasons for objecting to it, and his proposed revision of the thesis, are interesting considered in themselves as well as for the light they shed on Brentano's view of the relation between the thinker and the world. With regard to the former, it is shown how Brentano analyzes the adaequatio thesis word by word (...) in order to demonstrate what he takes to be its fundamental incoherence. With regard to the latter, it becomes apparent, by contrast with the Thomistic understanding of the adaequatio thesis, that Brentano's revision of it in the direction of a phenomenological theory of truth also involves a revised understanding of the nature of the thinker or knower. (shrink)

In recent years, Brentano’s theory of consciousness has been systematically reassessed. The reconstruction that has received the most attention is the so-called identity reconstruction. It says that secondary consciousness and the mental phenomenon it is about are one and the same. Crucially, it has been claimed that this thesis is the only one which can make Brentano’s theory immune to what he considers the main threat to it, namely, the duplication of the primary object. In this paper, I argue (...) that the identity reconstruction is untenable, and I defend an alternative, which I name the unity reconstruction. According to the unity reconstruction, secondary consciousness is a real part of the mental phenomenon it is about, and hence is distinct from it. I contend that this thesis does not in itself lead to the duplication of the primary object, and that what should be blamed is rather a controversial thesis about the intentional structure of secondary consciousness—a thesis which Brentano ultimately abandoned. (shrink)

This paper will present an analysis of the relational aspect of Brentano’s last theory of intentionality. My main thesis is that Brentano, at the end of his life, considered relations (relatives) without existent terms to be genuine relations (relatives). Thus, intentionality is a non-reducible real relation (the thinking subject is a non-reducible real relative) regardless of whether or not the object exists. I will use unpublished texts from the Brentanian Nachlass to support my argument.

On July 14, 1866 Franz Brentano stepped up to the pulpit to defend his thesis that “the true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences”. This thesis bound his first students to him and became the north star of his school, against the complex background of the progress and specialization of the natural sciences as well as the growth and professionalization of universities. I will discuss the project of the renewal of philosophy as (...) science in the School of Brentano and how this aimed to provide a scientific foundation for the humanities independently from the natural sciences, while preserving the unity of science. Through his well-known re-introduction of the concept of intentionality as criterion to distinguish internal and external perception, Brentano was able to supply an empirical foundation for the Geisteswissenschaften. While philosophy would use the method of natural science, its domain would not be nature, but consciousness: a full-blooded science of the mind that did not require a reduction to the physical in order to be scientific. Brentano’s science of consciousness was empirical, but not experimental, and relied on subjective methods, but was not introspective. Brentano’s students Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl and others came to occupy important chairs in philosophy throughout Europe. While they were certainly not all orthodox followers, they adapted and spread his theories far and wide in the schools and movements they founded and influenced: Gestalt psychology, Prague linguistics, phenomenology, etc.. Moreover, the 19th century idea of scientific research as a collaborative and collective achievement led to a division of labor in Brentano’s school. Each of his students was meant to work out a part of the greater whole: Stumpf, the philosophy of sound and music; Marty, language; Meinong the history of philosophy; Husserl, mathematics; etc. Yet all of them also contributed to the shared project of the renewal of philosophy as science and discussed the (foundational) relation of philosophy to other sciences in programmatic works. Though often forgotten and overlooked due to contingent historical circumstances, the scientific paradigm of the School of Brentano was very fruitful and highly influential in philosophy and the human sciences in general, throughout the second half of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Yet it is relevant then as now to preserve the independent scientific dignity of the humanities. (shrink)

Brentano plays a paradoxical role in the history of philosophy. He is the key transitional figure between two antithetical traditions: although a profound influence to phenomenology, Brentano himself was inspired by the positivism of Comte and Mill. While his students found in his teachings both a reason and the means to combat the spirit of positivism, Brentano himself believed "the true method of philosophy was nothing other than the method of the natural sciences." The incoherence of his historical role is (...) reflected in his own development. After his retirement, Brentano developed a psychological theory of apriori knowledge intended to explain how analytic judgments can be ampliative, and he ascribed this kind of knowledge to all sciences. A consensus exists that this squares poorly with the empiricism of his Psychology or his positivist manifesto. But the model Brentano employed to explain the workings of apriori knowledge was nothing other than his own methodology in descriptive psychology, elaborated in the influential lectures of the late 1880's: a mereology of consciousness as a synchronous manifold. And this was only a formalization of the method he had practiced in Book Two of his Psychology, where the basic kinds of mental phenomena and the laws of their coexistence are described. The late theory of apriori knowledge is therefore nothing more than a fine-grained psychological analysis of what was meant by "description" all along. Even in the Psychology this description generates what Brentano would later call apriori knowledge. For among the "parts" of consciousness distinguished by a synchronous mereology are not only "separable parts", but also "inseparable parts" which are distinguishable, but not really capable of existing separately. To each such distinction corresponds a law of necessary interconnection. To describe their mode of interconnection is to know apriori that they cannot exist apart. Thus, it is the theory of "distinctions" which allows an empirical description to have apriori validity. In this respect Brentano is rehabilitating a Scholastic tradition in order to make a positive, but non-trivial science of synchronous manifolds possible. But in so doing, he invents phenomenology: the positive, but apriori valid description of the possible and necessary structures of conscious experience. Continuity in Brentano's own development can therefore be affirmed, and even the subsequent development of phenomenology is seen to have its origin in a radical form of empiricism. (shrink)

Unlike the first English translation in 1974, this edition contains the text corresponding to Brentano's original 1874 edition.

The paper argues that Brentano was the exponent of a methodological monism, which is based on the requirement that science should be grounded on experience, and not on a speculative-idealistic principle, as in the case of German idealism. In Brentano’s psychological writings, this methodological requirement concretized in two different theses: The method of psychology is identical with the method of natural science; The method of psychology is inspired by the method of natural science. The thesis of this study is (...) that an important part of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is elaborated in accordance with T1. By contrast, Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology illustrates the subsequent decision to give up this idea. In its place, the aforementioned requirement is elaborated in the spirit of a methodological particularism that recommends the scientist elaborate his methods according to the specificity of the phenomena under investigation and to the difficulties that need to be overcome when approaching them. (shrink)

La médecine change de visage. Le progrès dans les sciences médicales a modifié l’aspect des maladies. La relation médecin-malade se désagrège. Le phalanstère médical est agité par la contestation. Tous ses membres, malades, médecins et non-médecins sont assujettis aux contraintes de l’Economie de la Santé. Les paradoxes qui obscurcissent la vie médicale appellent des solutions nouvelles. L’enseignement n’est plus réservé aux futurs médecins mais aussi, à travers l’Education sanitaire, aux futurs malades que sont les gens bien portants. La part qui (...) se déroule en Faculté n’est plus qu’une préparation à la Formation permanente. La recherche n’est plus réservée seulement à un étroit sérail, mais s’inscrit dans les préoccupations de tous au service de tous. L’informatique offre au médecin le moyen le plus sûr de faire rayonner le savoir et de mieux organiser le service public qu’est aujourd’hui la médecine. L’hôpital enfin est appelé à devenir le foyer de toutes les activités médicales, la « Maison » du malade aussi bien que celle du médecin. Le paradoxe du médecin est celui de la médecine tout entière. Il est l’occasion de faire naître un autre malade, un autre médecin pour une autre médecine et d’assurer le passage de l’éthique médicale vers une éthique de santé. (shrink)

In this article (1) I extract from Brentano’s works (three) formal arguments against “genealogical explanations” of ethical claims. Such explanation can also be designated as “naturalism” (not his appellation); (2) I counter these arguments, by showing how genealogical explanations of even apodictic moral claims are logically possible (albeit only if certain unlikely, stringent conditions are met); (3) I show how Nietzsche’s ethics meets these stringent conditions, but evolutionary ethics does not. My more general thesis is that naturalism and intuitionism (...) in ethics need not be mutually incompatible. (shrink)

This book contains the definitive statement of Franz Brentano's views on meta physics. It is made up of essays which were dictated by Brentano during the last ten years of his life, between 1907 and 1917. These dictations were assembled and edited by Alfred Kastil and first published by the Felix Meiner Verlag in 1933 under the title Kategorienlehre. Kastil added copious notes to Brentano's text. These notes have been included, with some slight omissions, in the present edition; (...) the bibliographical references have been brought up to date. Brentano's approach to philosophy is unfamiliar to many contemporay readers. I shall discuss below certain fundamental points which such readers are likely to find the most difficult. I believe that once these points are properly understood, then what Brentano has to say will be seen to be of first importance to philosophy. THE PRIMACY OF THE INTENTIONAL To understand Brentano's theory of being, one must realize that he appeals to what he calls inner perception for his paradigmatic uses of the word "is". For inner perception, according to Brentano, is the source of our knowledge of the nature of being, just as it is the source of our knowledge of the nature of truth and of the nature of good and evil. And what can be said about the being of things that are not apprehended in inner perception can be understood only by analogy with what we are able to say about ourselves as thinking subjects. (shrink)

In this article (1) I extract from Brentano’s works (three) formal arguments against “genealogical explanations” of ethical claims. Such explanation can also be designated as “naturalism” (not his appellation); (2) I counter these arguments, by showing how genealogical explanations of even apodictic moral claims are logically possible (albeit only if certain unlikely, stringent conditions are met); (3) I show how Nietzsche’s ethics meets these stringent conditions, but evolutionary ethics does not. My more general thesis is that naturalism and intuitionism (...) in ethics need not be mutually incompatible. (shrink)

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) is a key figure in the development of Twentieth Century thought. It was his work that set Husserl on to the road of phenomenology and intentionality, that inspired Meinong's theory of the object which influenced Bertrand Russell, and the entire Polish school of philosophy. ^Descriptive Psychology presents a series of lectures given by Brentano in 1887; they were the culmination of his work, and the clearest statement of his mature thought. It was this later period which proved (...) to be so important in the work of his student, Husserl. This is the first English translation of his work. Benito Muller has added a concise introduction which places Brentano within the history of philosophy and psychology, and locates his influence in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This paper is about the question: what is it for a mental state to mean (or present) something as an intentional object? This issue is addressed from a broad perspective, against the background of Brentano’s philosophical programme in Psychology from an empirical standpoint, and the controversy between the proponents of a non-canonical interpretation of Brentano’s theory of intentionality, and the so-called orthodox interpretation advocated namely by R. Chisholm. My investigation is divided into six parts. In the first section, I explain (...) the meaning and function of the notion of phenomenon in light of Brentano’s philosophical programme, and I briefly elucidate the notion of physical phenomenon which, in Brentano’s Psychology, constitutes the primary object of consciousness. In the next two sections, I look at two aspects of Brentano’s criticism of the identity thesis that he attributes to British empiricism, namely the psychological aspect, which concerns the identification of the two classes of phenomena, and the metaphysical aspect relating to the relationship between physical phenomena and the reality of an extramental world. Once this double distinction will be established, I will turn to the relation of intentional objects to presentations and put forward the hypothesis that intentional objects are conceptually dependent upon presentations and that this dependence rests, in turn, upon the content of the mental phenomena. The next step concerns Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects, and one of the main non-orthodox arguments against the canonical interpretation, namely that the latter conflates primary and secondary objects. In this context, I examine a second hypothesis: that the secondary object, or intentional correlate of an act, is an intentional content, which is distinct both from the intentional object and from the reality to which it relates, and I maintain that the intentional content has the function of mediating the mental acts’ relation to their objects. Finally, I shall examine some objections against the hypothesis of intentional content in Brentano’s Psychology, and I will conclude with a brief commentary on the bearing of this investigation with regard to the interpretation of the genesis of Brentano’s theory of intentionality, before and after the reistic turn of his philosophy. (shrink)

Franz Brentano is a key figure in the development of Twentieth Century thought. It was his work that set Husserl on to the road of phenomenology and intentionality, that inspired Meinong's theory of the object which influenced Bertrand Russell, and the entire Polish school of philosophy. ^Descriptive Psychology presents a series of lectures given by Brentano in 1887; they were the culmination of his work, and the clearest statement of his mature thought. It was this later period which proved to (...) be so important in the work of his student, Husserl. This is the first English translation of his work. Benito Muller has added a concise introduction which places Brentano within the history of philosophy and psychology, and locates his influence in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This paper presents the Spanish translation of the only two texts of Franz Brentano which deal specifically with St. Thomas Aquinas. The first text is a section about St. Albert the Great and Aquinas in an article published during Brentano’s youth, “The History of Ecclesiastical Sciences” (1867). The second text is an article, “Thomas Aquinas” (1908), written at the end of his life. Both texts reveal the immense value that Brentano saw in Aquinas. They also show that he regarded Aquinas (...) mainly as an important interpreter of Aristotle rather than as a philosopher in his own right. Brentano’s approach here also gives us some insight into his own conception of philosophical hermeneutics. The differences between the two texts are evident; for instance, in the second one, there is a Brentano’s manipulation of Aquinas’ thought to justify his leaving the Catholic Faith. The texts are also preceded by a little introduction of mine. Original titles: «Geschichte der kirchlichen Wissenschaften», in: Johann Adam Möhler (ed.), 'Kirchengeschichte', Band 2 (Regensburg: Manz, 1867), pp. 550-556 and «Thomas von Aquin», 'Neue Freie Presse' 15683 (18/4/1908): 1-5. (shrink)

This book contains the definitive statement of Franz Brentano's views on meta physics. It is made up of essays which were dictated by Brentano during the last ten years of his life, between 1907 and 1917. These dictations were assembled and edited by Alfred Kastil and first published by the Felix Meiner Verlag in 1933 under the title Kategorienlehre. Kastil added copious notes to Brentano's text. These notes have been included, with some slight omissions, in the present edition; (...) the bibliographical references have been brought up to date. Brentano's approach to philosophy is unfamiliar to many contemporay readers. I shall discuss below certain fundamental points which such readers are likely to find the most difficult. I believe that once these points are properly understood, then what Brentano has to say will be seen to be of first importance to philosophy. THE PRIMACY OF THE INTENTIONAL To understand Brentano's theory of being, one must realize that he appeals to what he calls inner perception for his paradigmatic uses of the word "is". For inner perception, according to Brentano, is the source of our knowledge of the nature of being, just as it is the source of our knowledge of the nature of truth and of the nature of good and evil. And what can be said about the being of things that are not apprehended in inner perception can be understood only by analogy with what we are able to say about ourselves as thinking subjects. (shrink)

Expanding on the theory of ethics first posited by Brentano in The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong this re-issued work, first published posthumously in 1952, is based on series of lectures on practical philosophy, given at the university of Vienna from 1876 to 1894. The English-speaking reader will find it interesting to examine the step-by-step development of Brentano’s ethical theory, his extensive critique of British moral philosophers, and his unusually detailed section on casuistry.

First published in English in1966, _The True and The Evident_ is a translation of Franz Brentano’s posthumous _Wahrheit und Evidenz_, edited by Oscsar Kraus. The book includes Brentano’s influential lecture "On the Concept of Truth", read before the Vienna Philosophical Society, a variety of essays, drawn from the immense wealth of Brentano’s unpublished material, and letters written by him to Marty, Kraus Hillebrand, and Husserl. Brentano rejects the familiar versions of the "correspondence theory of truth" and proposes to define the (...) true in terms of the evident. In criticising the metaphysical assumptions presupposed by the correspondence theory, he sets forth a conception of language and reality that has subsequently become known as "reism". (shrink)

Franz Brentano is recognised as one of the most important philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This work, first published in English in 1988, besides being an important contribution to metaphysics in its own right, has considerable historical importance through its influence on Husserl’s views on internal time consciousness. The work is preceded by a long introduction by Stephan Körner in collaboration with Brentano’s literary executor Roderick Chisholm. It is translated by Barry Smith.

This is an index (prepared by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand) of Brentano manuscripts held at Harvard's Haughton Library.

This essay explores Aristotle’s conception of the active intellect or nous poiētikos. The earliest, medieval, and most recent interpretations of this concept are discussed. It is argued that even Aristotle’s immediate disciples disagreed in their conception of the active intellect, nor was there any more unanimity in the Middle Ages. According to Trendelenburg, the difficulty of the Aristotelian doctrine lies in the fact that the nous is sometimes said to be so intimately connected with the other faculties of the soul (...) that it appears to be incapable of existing without them. When it is viewed the highest nous, as nous poiētikos, it is separated from the rest of human nature and contrasted with it as something higher and its ruler. (shrink)

Le texte traduit ici est tiré d’un recueil réunissant plusieurs écrits du philosophe allemand Franz Brentano (1838-1917) et publié en 1925 par son disciple Alfred Kastil sous le titre Essai sur la connaissance. La pièce maîtresse du recueil est un manuscrit de Brentano intitulé « À bas les préjugés ! », portant le sous-titre : « Une exhortation pour inciter l’époque actuelle à renoncer, dans l’esprit de Bacon et de Descartes, à tous les a priori aveugles » (1903). Nous avons (...) traduit la première partie de ce texte, dans laquelle Brentano s’attaque simultanément au common sense du philosophe écossais Thomas Reid et aux jugements synthétiques a priori d’Immanuel Kant. Cet extrait constitue l’un des rares documents dans lesquels Brentano expose sans détours son opposition radicale à un certain kantisme et, plus largement, à toute forme de constructivisme. Brentano s'attaque à l'idée kantienne du synthétique a priori, en jetant les bases d'un programme gnoséologique dont l'axe central est l'exhibition des sources empiriques de nos concepts fondamentaux (substance, cause, être, nécessité, etc.). Ce programme sera développé à son tour par Carl Stumpf ('Erkenntnislehre', 1939). (shrink)

This volume presents a critical edition of the previously unpublished correspondence between Franz Brentano and Gustav Fechner along with a detailed introduction to provide context. A total of 11 letters discuss in detail Brentano's critical arguments against Fechner s psychophysics in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.".

Here, for the first time in English, is Franz Brentano’s The Teaching of Jesus, a compendium of texts Brentano assembled for publication shortly before his death that constitute a frank, public settling of accounts with the Christian religion. Originally conceived by Brentano as a volume that might help others similarly led to doubt the doctrines of Christianity, the book is remarkably free of bitterness or spitefulness. On the contrary, what makes the book of singular importance, especially now, is its careful (...) attempt at taking stock of the positive and negative influence Christianity has had in history. This text appeals to those researchers and scholars interested in the work of Franz Brentano and his work on the philosophy of religion, in this case, Christianity. (shrink)

Cette dissertation légendaire de Franz Brentano , éditée à Fribourg en 1862, prend pour fil conducteur de son interprétation de la « métaphysique » comme science de « l’être en tant qu’être » le leitmotiv : « l’être se dit pluriellement ». Mais quelle en est alors la signification directe et unitaire?L’ambition de Brentano est de reconstituer une doctrine dont il s’agit à la fois de montrer et de sauver la conhérence. Le primat accordé à l’acceptation catégoriale de l’être amène (...) à restituer un « arbre généalogique » des catégories dont le chatoiement correspond strictement à la diversité des modes de prédication de la « substance première ». Même si la question reste posée de savoir si la plurivocité de l’être se ramène essentiellement à la diversité catégoriale, ou si, au contraire, les catégories n’illustrent qu’une pluralité restreinte, au sein d’une acceptation de l’être dont elles déclinent les « modalités » ou les « figures », mais dont rien ne dit qu’elle serait souveraine, cette magistrale initiation demeure un jalon incontournable dans l’histoire de la réappropriation moderne d’Aristote et du problème que pose la constitution d’une ontologie. (shrink)

Dans cet article de 1869, il s’agit pour le jeune Brentano (1838-1917) de convaincre ses lecteurs de la viabilité de la philosophie positive et de montrer qu’elle ne représente pas une menace pour le théisme. C’est ce qui explique, en partie du moins, l’attitude conciliante que Brentano adopte à l’endroit du positivisme de Comte même là où ce dernier défendait des positions sensiblement différentes des siennes sur la religion. Brentano réinterprète le rejet de la problématique des causes en montrant que (...) c’est plutôt le « pourquoi » de la causalité qui échappe à la science. Il montre que le mot phénomène n’a pas le même sens chez Kant et chez Comte. Il commente la loi des trois états, dont il critique le caractère linéaire. Enfin, il envisage pour la psychologie une place que Comte lui refuse. (shrink)

Contemporain de la crise de la philosophie de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, Brentano a voulu contribuer à sa renaissance en revenant à ses sources aristotéliciennes. Husserl a reconnu sa dette - celle de toute la phénoménologie -, et Heidegger aussi, envers ce philosophe autrichien en qui ils voyaient celui qui les avait conduits à la philosophie. Dans sa Psychologie du point de vue empirique, il avait défendu la thèse de l'intentionnalité des faits de conscience et esquissé une théorie (...) de l'évidence. Fondamentale pour l'ensemble de sa philosophie, et en particulier pour penser la rectitude ou la correction du jugement et des sentiments d'amour et de haine, cette théorie ne sera pleinement élaborée qu'en 1889 dans L'Origine de la connaissance morale. Cette conférence, et celle, contemporaine, relative à l'évidence, ainsi que l'ensemble des dictées posthumes qui s'échelonnent de 1889 à 1915 permettent d'en saisir la nature et l'évolution. Récusant aussi bien le kantisme que l'utilitarisme, L'Origine de la connaissance morale sera discuté par les membres du Cercle de Vienne et inspirera, outre Husserl, la phénoménologie morale de Max Scheler. Brentano ne s'est pas contenté d'exposer le versant éthique de sa pensée sans lui donner une assise dans la sphère de la logique : c'est le rôle dévolu à La Doctrine du jugement correct qui invite, de son côté, à une réforme d'autant plus radicale de la logique qu'elle met en question la théorie prédicative traditionnelle du jugement. (shrink)