Franz Brentano

First published Wed Dec 4, 2002; substantive revision Wed Jan 30, 2019

Franz Clemens Brentano (1838–1917) is mainly known for his workin philosophy of psychology, especially for having introduced thenotion of intentionality to contemporary philosophy. He made importantcontributions to many fields in philosophy, especially to thephilosophy of mind, metaphysics and ontology, ethics, logic, thehistory of philosophy, and philosophical theology. Brentano wasstrongly influenced by Aristotle and the Scholastics as well as by theempiricist and positivist movements of the early nineteenth century.Due to his introspectionist approach of describing consciousness froma first person point of view, on one hand, and his rigorous style aswell as his contention that philosophy should be done with exactmethods like the natural sciences, on the other, Brentano is oftenconsidered a forerunner of both the phenomenological movement and thetradition of analytic philosophy. A charismatic teacher, Brentanoexerted a strong influence on the work of Edmund Husserl, AlexiusMeinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Kasimir Twardowski, Carl Stumpf, andAnton Marty, among others, and thereby played a central role in thephilosophical development of central Europe in the early twentiethcentury.

1. Life and Work

Franz Brentano was born on January 16, 1838 in Marienberg am Rhein,Germany, a descendent of a strongly religious German-Italian family ofintellectuals (his uncle Clemens Brentano and his aunt Bettina vonArnim were among the most important writers of German Romanticism andhis brother Lujo Brentano became a leading expert in socialeconomics). He studied mathematics, poetry, philosophy, and theologyin Munich, Würzburg, and Berlin. Already at high school he becameacquainted with Scholasticism; at university he studied Aristotle withTrendelenburg in Berlin, and read Comte as well as the BritishEmpiricists (mainly John Stuart Mill), all of whom had a greatinfluence on his work. Brentano received his Ph.D. from the Universityof Tübingen in 1862, with his thesisOn the Several Senses ofBeing in Aristotle.

After graduation Brentano prepared to take his vows; he was ordained aCatholic priest in 1864. Nevertheless he continued his academic careerat the University of Würzburg, where he presented hisHabilitationsschrift onThe Psychology of Aristotlein 1867. Despite reservations in the faculty about his priesthood heeventually became full professor in 1873. During this period, however,Brentano struggled more and more with the official doctrine of theCatholic Church, especially with the dogma of papal infallibility,promulgated at the first Vatican Council in 1870. Shortly after hispromotion at the University of Würzburg, Brentano withdrew fromthe priesthood and from his position as professor.

After hisHabilitation, Brentano had started to work on alarge scale work on the foundations of psychology, which he entitledPsychology from an Empirical Standpoint. The first volume waspublished in 1874, a second volume (The Classification of MentalPhenomena) followed in 1911, and fragments of the third volume(Sensory and Noetic Consciousness) were publishedposthumously by Oskar Kraus in 1928.

Shortly after the publication of the first volume, Brentano took a jobas a full professor at the University of Vienna, where he continued asuccessful teaching career. During his tenure in Vienna, Brentano, whowas very critical towards his own writing, did not pursue his plans tocomplete and publish the second and third volumes of hisPsychology, but preferred to publish shorter texts, most ofwhich were based on manuscripts for public lectures. The topics rangefrom aesthetics (Das Genie [The Genius],Das Schlechteals Gegenstand dichterischer Darstellung [Evil as Object ofPoetic Representation]) and issues in historiography toThe Originof the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, in which Brentano laid outhis views on ethics. The latter was Brentano’s first book to betranslated into English in 1902.

When in 1880 Brentano and Ida von Lieben decided to wed, they had toconfront the fact that the prevailing law in the Austro-HungarianEmpire denied matrimony to persons who had been ordained priests– even if they later had resigned from priesthood. Theysurmounted this obstacle by temporarily moving to and becomingcitizens of Saxony, where they finally got married. This was possibleonly by temporarily giving up the Austrian citizenship and, inconsequence, the job as full professor at the University. WhenBrentano came back to Vienna a few months later, the Austrianauthorities did not reassign him his position. Brentano becamePrivatdozent, a status that allowed him to go on teaching– but did not entitle him to receive a salary or to supervisetheses. For several years he tried in vain to get his position back.In 1895, after the death of his wife, he left Austria disappointed; atthis occasion, he published a series of three articles in the ViennesenewspaperDie neue freie Presse entitledMeine letzenWünsche für Österreich [My Last Wishes forAustria] (which soon afterwards appeared as a self-standing book), inwhich he outlined his philosophical position as well as his approachto psychology, but also harshly criticized the legal situation offormer priests in Austria. In 1896 he settled down in Florence wherehe got married to Emilie Ruprecht in 1897.

Brentano has often been described as an extraordinarily charismaticteacher. Throughout his life he influenced a great number of students,many of who became important philosophers and psychologists in theirown rights, such as Edmund Husserl, Alexius Meinong, Christian vonEhrenfels, Anton Marty, Carl Stumpf, Kasimir Twardowski, as well asSigmund Freud. Many of his students became professors in differentparts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Marty and Ehrenfels in Prague,Meinong in Graz, and Twardowski in Lvov (now Lviv), and so spreadBrentanianism over the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire, which explainsthe central role of Brentano in the philosophical development incentral Europe, especially in what was later called the AustrianTradition in philosophy.

Brentano always emphasized that he meant to teach his students tothink critically and in a scientific manner, without holdingprejudices and paying undue respect to philosophical schools ortraditions. When former students of his took a critical approach tohis own work, however, when they criticized some of his doctrines andmodified others to adapt them for their own goals, Brentano reactedbitterly. He often refused to discuss criticism, ignored improvements,and thus became more and more isolated, a development that wasreinforced by his increasing blindness.

Due to these eye-problems Brentano could not read or write any longer,but had his wife read to him and dictated his work to her.Nonetheless, he produced a number of books in his years in Florence.In 1907 he publishedUntersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie, acollection of shorter texts on psychology. In 1911 he presented notonly the second volume of hisPsychology from an EmpiricalStandpoint, but also two books on Aristotle: inAristotle andhis World View he provides an outline and interpretation ofAristotle’s philosophy. InAristoteles Lehre vom Ursprungdes menschlichen Geistes Brentano continues a debate with Zeller.This debate had started already in the 1860s, when Brentano criticizedZeller’s interpretation of Aristotle in hisPsychology ofAristotle and became quite intense and aggressive in theseventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.

When Italy entered war against Germany and Austria during World War I,Brentano, who felt himself a citizen of all three countries, movedfrom Florence to neutral Switzerland. He passed away in Zurich onMarch 17, 1917.

Brentano left a huge number of unpublished manuscripts, includingpoetry and letters on a wide range of philosophical topics in his lastdomicile in Zürich and in his summer-residence inSchönbühel bei Melk; some manuscripts were probably leftbehind in Florence. After his death, Alfred Kastil and Oskar Kraus, whowere students of Brentano’s former student Anton Marty inPrague, worked on theNachlass, transferring a good part of itto Innsbruck. Their attempt to set up a Brentano-archive was supportedby Tomas Masaryk, a former student of Brentano who had become founderand first President (from 1918 to 1935) of the Republic ofCzechoslovakia. As a result, in 1932 many of the original manuscriptswere moved to Prague where an archive was founded. Alas, due to thepolitical turbulences that were to came over central Europe theproject made it necessary to transfer the archive again. Substantialparts of theNachlass were transferred to different places inthe United States, some of it has later been brought back to Europe,especially to the Brentano-Forschungsstelle at the University of Graz,Austria, and the Brentano family archive in Blonay, Switzerland. (Fora detailed history of Brentano’sNachlass, cf. Binder(2013)).

Kastil and Kraus did succeed, however, to begin to publishposthumously some of the lecture notes, letters, and drafts he hadleft. They tried to present Brentano’s work as best as theycould, putting together various texts to what they thought wererounded, convincing works, sometimes following questionable editorialcriteria. Their work was continued by other, more careful editors, buthas by far not yet been completed: a much needed critical edition ofhis complete œuvre is still to be waited for.

2. Philosophy as a Rigorous Science and the Rise of Scientific Psychology

A central principle of Brentano’s philosophy, which shouldbecome widely accepted among Brentano’s students, was thatphilosophy should be done in a rigorous, scientific manner. Alreadyearly in his career, in the public defense of hisHabilitation in 1866, he stated 25 theses, the fourth ofwhich reads: “The true method of philosophy is that of naturalscience.” (contained in:ZP, 136, my translation)[“Verae philosophiae methodus nihil alia est nisi scientiaenaturarum”]. Brentano, thus, opposed the idea that therewas a unique method for philosophy and denied that there was a“first philosophy” that could unveil genuinelyphilosophical truths and thus play a privileged or foundational rolein the overall system of the sciences. According to Brentano,philosophy—and in particular philosophicalpsychology—should apply a method that is based on observation,description of facts, and induction; just like the (other) naturalsciences.

It has been suggested that Brentano’s fourthHabilitations-thesis makes him an advocate of a particularversion of the unity of the sciences, according to which there is aunity of method (cf. Haller 1993, 27) and that it stands in contrastto “Dilthey’s view according to which the so-calledGeisteswissenschaften or human or moral sciences wouldsomehow call for a special method of ‘understanding’ orVerstehen, as opposed to the ‘explanation’ of thenatural sciences.” (Smith 1994, 31). One has to be cautious notto overstate this point, though. While it is true that Brentano usesboth the terms “method” [methodus] and“natural science” [scientiae naturarum] in thesingular, there is strong evidence that he had a minimal understandingof what this method should exactly consist in. He never suggested thatall scientific disciplines could be reduced to other, more basicdisciplines, nor did he argue that all natural sciences should applyexactly the same method, nor that mathematization or the use of aformal language was indispensable for scientificity. For Brentano, amethod counts as scientific as long as it fulfills the minimalrequirements of applying observation, description of facts, andinduction. The specific methodological procedures applied in a givenscientific discipline depend first and foremost on the objectsstudied:

“Natural science, thus, requires in no way [...] that we shouldproceed everywhere in the same manner and in the way we do in thesimplest cases of mechanics. On the contrary, it teaches and instructsus to change our procedure [Verfahren] in accordance with theparticular nature of the objects” (ZP, 35, mytranslation).
[“Die Naturwissenschaft verlangt also keineswegs, [...]daß wir überall gleichmäßig und so, wie in deneinfachsten Fällen der Mechanik vorgehen sollen. Im Gegenteil,sie unterweist uns und übt uns darauf ein, der besonderen Naturder Gegenstände entsprechend unser Verfahren zuändern”]

Regarding formal methods he states: “Mathematical analysis,which is the main means of scientific progress in some areas ofnatural science, does not play nearly any role at all inothers.” (ZK 35, my translation) [“Diemathematische Analyse, die auf manchem Gebiet der Naturwissenschaftdas hauptsächliche Mittel des Fortschritt ist, spielt darumbekanntlich auf anderen so gut wie gar keine Rolle.”]Brentano has never made an attempt to introduce formal or mathematicalmethods in philosophy or psychology. On the contrary, he criticizedJohann Friedrich Herbart’s attempts to mathematize psychology,pointing out that Herbart’s mathematical deductions lackempirical foundation and therefore lose contact to the actualphenomena (cf.LW, 36). In another place where he discussesHerbart’s position, he states: “Alas, many believed thatwhere there is so much mathematical rigour, there must be exactscience” (GA, 53f, my translation). [“Leidermeinten viele, wo so viel mathematische Strenge zu finden sei,müsse exakte Wissenschaft gegeben sein.”] ForBrentano, any rigorous, scientific method had to be appropriate forthe observed phenomena; his position, thus, is closer to classicalempiricism and positivism than to the logical positivism as it wasdeveloped in Vienna a decade after his death.

Brentano’s views concerning the right method in philosophy wasof particular importance to his contributions to psychology, asalready the title of his main work,Psychology from an EmpiricalStandpoint suggests. Also there he argued that the rightprocedure consisted in observing and describing the relevant phenomenaand establishing the general laws on the basis of induction. Theparticularity of Brentano’s method lies in the fact thatpsychology is based mainly on observation that is performed from afirst person point of view. The psychologist draws on the intimateknowledge concerning her own current mental phenomena that she gainsthrough inner perception (which, as we shall see below, is to bedistinguished from inner observation). Brentano does not suggest,however, that these descriptions are infallible: as it is impossibleto live and describe a particular experience at the same time, alldescriptions of mental phenomena have to rely on memory and innerobservation.

“If the attempt to observe the anger which stirs us becomesimpossible because the phenomenon disappears, it is clear that anearlier state of excitement can no longer be interfered in this way.And we really can focus our attention on a past mental phenomenon justas we can upon a present physical phenomenon, and in this way we can,so to speak, observe it.” (PES, 26).
[“Wenn der Versuch, den Zorn, der uns bewegt, beobachtend zuverfolgen, durch Aufhebung des Phänomens unmöglich wird, sokann dagegen ein Zustand früherer Aufregung offenbar keineStörung mehr erleiden. Auch gelingt es wirklich, dem vergangenenpsychischen Phänomen so wie einem gegenwärtigen physischenmit Aufmerksamkeit sich zuzuwenden, und es in dieser Weise sozusagenbeobachten.” (PES, 49)]

Moreover, as inner perception and memory as sources of experience arelimited to one’s own mental life, they have to be complementedwith the “indirect knowledge of the mental phenomena ofothers” [“indirekte Erkenntnis fremder psychischerPhänomene”], which we can gain on the basis of the manifestbehavior we can observe in others, including their verbal behavior,i.e., when “a person describes them directly in words.”(PES 28) [“jemand geradezu in Worten siebeschreibt”] (PES 53).

Brentano’s approach, like that of other introspectionistpsychologists of the late nineteenth century, was harshly criticizedwith the rise of scientific psychology in the tradition of logicalpositivism, especially by behaviorists, who argue that empiricalpsychology must not make use of introspection, but only of data thatcan be obtained by the observation of the manifest behaviour of humanbeings from a third-person point of view. This should not obscure thefact that Brentano did play a crucial role in the process ofpsychology becoming an independent science. He distinguished betweengenetic and empirical or, as he called it,descriptive psychology, a distinction that is most explicitlydrawn in lecture notes form the mid-1880s that have been published inDescriptive Psychology (DP). Genetic psychologystudies psychological phenomena from a third-person point of view. Itinvolves the use of experiments and thus satisfies the scientificstandards we nowadays expect of an empirical science. Even thoughBrentano never conducted psychological experiments in laboratories, hevery actively supported the installation of the first laboratories forexperimental psychology in the Austro-Hungarian Empire – a goalthat was achieved by his student Alexius Meinong in Graz. Descriptivepsychology (to which Brentano sometimes also referredas “phenomenology” (cf.DP 137)) aims atdescribing consciousness from a first-person point of view. Its goalis to list “fully the basic components out of which everythinginternally perceived by humans is composed, and … [toenumerate] the ways in which these components can be connected”(DP 4). Brentano’s distinction between genetic anddescriptive psychology strongly influenced Husserl’s developmentof the phenomenological method, especially in its early phases. Butalready then Brentano could not approve of Husserl’s developmentfor it involved the intuition of abstract essences, the existence ofwhich Brentano denied. With his so-called “transcendentalturn” in the mid of the first decade of the twentieth century,Husserl alienated himself more and more from the Brentanian roots ofthe phenomenological method.

3. Brentano’s Theory of Mind

Brentano’s main goal was to lay the basis for a scientificpsychology, which he defines as “the science of mentalphenomena” (PES, 14) [“Wissenschaft von denpsychischen Erscheinungen”]. In order to give flesh to thisdefinition of the discipline, he provides a more detailedcharacterization of mental phenomena. He proposes six criteria todistinguish mental from physical phenomena (PES 61–77),the most important of which are: (i) mental phenomena are theexclusive object of inner perception, (ii) they always appearas a unity, and (iii) they are always intentionally directedtowards an object. (The other three criteria are: psychologicalphenomena – and only those – are presentations orphenomena based upon presentations; they seem to have no spatialextension; and have not only intentional, but also actual existence.)I will discuss the first two criteria in the next sub-section, and thethird in a separate sub-section below.

3.1 Inner Perception, Unity of Consciousness and the Tripartition of Mental Phenomena

All mental phenomena have in common, Brentano argues, “that theyare only perceived in inner consciousness, while in the case ofphysical phenomena only external perception is possible”(PES, 70) [“daß sie nur in inneremBewußtsein wahrgenommen werden, während bei den physischennur äußere Wahrnehmung möglich ist.”(PES 128)]. According to Brentano, the former of these twoforms of perception provides an unmistakable evidence for what istrue. Since the German word for perception (Wahrnehmung),literally translated, means “taking-true”, Brentano saysthat it is the only kind of perception in a strict sense. He pointsout that inner perception must not be mixed up with inner observation,which would require that one is having a mental act, the act ofobserving, that is directed towards another mental act, the actobserved. Inner perception, on the other hand, must not be conceivedas a full-fledged act that accompanies another mental act towardswhich it is directed. It is rather interwoven with the latter: inaddition to being primarily directed towards an object, every mentalact isincidentally directed towards itself as a secondaryobject. When I see a tree, for example, the primary object of myvisual experience is the tree. But I am also aware that I amseeing and not, say, hearing or touching the tree; I am, inother words, aware of the fact that I have a mental phenomenon that isdirected towards the tree. This is possible because one and the samemental phenomenon, my visual experience, is directed not only towardsits primary object, the tree, it isincidentally directedalso towards itself as a secondary object.

“The presentation of the sound and the presentation of thepresentation of the sound form one single mental phenomenon; it isonly by considering it in its relation to two different objects, oneof which is a physical phenomenon and the other a mental phenomenon,that we divide it conceptually into two presentations. In the samemental phenomenon in which the sound is present to our minds wesimultaneously apprehend the mental phenomenon itself. What is more,we apprehend it in accordance with its dual nature insofar as it hasthe sound as content within it, and insofar as it has itself ascontent at the same time.” (PES, 98)
[“Die Vorstellung des Tones und die Vorstellung von derVorstellung des Tones bilden nicht mehr als ein einziges psychischesPhänomen, das wir nur, indem wir es in seiner Beziehung auf zweiverschiedene Objekte, deren eines ein physisches, und deren anderesein psychisches Phänomen ist, betrachten, begrifflich in zweiVorstellungen zergliederten. In demselben psychischen Phänomen,in welchem der Ton vorgestellt wird, erfassen wir zugleich daspsychische Phänomen selbst, und zwar nach seiner doppeltenEigentümlichkeit, insofern es als Inhalt den Ton in sich hat, undinsofern es zugleich sich selbst als Inhalt gegenwärtigist.” (PES, 179)]

According to Brentano,every mental phenomenon is directedtowards itself as a secondary object; inner perception is, thus, aform of mechanism on the basis of which we become aware of our ownmental phenomena.

As a consequence, Brentano denies the idea that there could beunconscious mental acts: sinceevery mental act isincidentally directed towards itself as a secondary object, we areautomatically aware of every occurring mental act. He admits, however,that we can have mental acts of various degrees of intensity. Inaddition, he holds that the degree of intensity with which the objectis presented is equal to the degree of intensity in which thesecondary object, i.e., the act itself, is presented. Consequently, ifwe have a mental act of a very low intensity, our inner perception ofthe act or, as he puts it, our secondary consciousness of it will alsohave a very low intensity. From this Brentano concludes that sometimeswe are inclined to say that we had an unconscious mental phenomenonwhen actually we had a conscious mental phenomenon of very lowintensity.

Consciousness, Brentano argues, always forms a unity. While we canperceive a number of physical phenomena at one and the same time, wecan only perceive one mental phenomenon at a specific point in time.When we seem to have more than one mental act at a time, like when weare listening to a melody while tasting a sip of red wine and enjoyingthe beautiful view from the window, all these mental phenomena meltinto one, they become moments or, to stick with Brentano’sterminology, divisives of a collective. If one of the divisives endsin the course of time, e.g., when I swallow the wine and turn my eyesto the fireplace, but continue to listen to the music, the collectivegoes on to exist. Brentano’s views on the unity of consciousnessentail that inner observation, as explained above, is strictlyimpossible, for this would require us to have two distinct acts in thevery same moment. Of course it is possible torememberanother mental act one had a moment ago, or expect future mental acts,but due to the unity of consciousness one cannot have two distinctmental acts, one of which being directed towards the other, at thesame time.

The fact that we can be directed towards one and the same object indifferent ways allows Brentano to introduce a classification of mentalphenomena. He distinguishes three basic kinds: presentations,judgments, and emotions (which he refers to as “phenomena oflove and hate”). These are not three completely distinctclasses, though. Presentations are the most basic kind of acts; wehave a presentation each time when we are directed towards an object,be it that we are imagining, seeing, remembering, or expecting it,etc. In hisPsychology Brentano held that two presentationscan differ only in the object, towards which they are directed. Laterhe modified his position, though, and argued that they can also differin various modes, such as temporal modes (cf.PES 217 [Thistext is part of the appendix to the second part ofPES from1911 – for the German original cf. PES, vol II, 142]). The twoother categories, judgments and phenomena of love and hate, are basedon presentations. In a judgment we accept or deny the existence of thepresented object. A judgment, thus, is a presentation plus aqualitative mode of acceptance or denial. The third category, whichBrentano names “phenomena of love and hate,”comprises emotions, feelings, desires and acts of will. In these actswe have positive or negative feelings or attitudes towards an object.

Brentano’s tripartition of mental phenomena is a basic elementof his theory that remained central for his whole life. The fact thathe saw himself constrained to make minor adjustments shows thatBrentano did approach philosophy in a very systematic manner andalways had the bigger picture in mind. It can, thus, be taken asevidence that “in his mind Brentano was continuously refiningand chiseling away at a unified system, a system that harmonized andstabilized the bits and pieces in his messy literary state”(Kriegel 2017a, 29).

Moreover, his conception of secondary consciousness, in combinationwith this thesis of the unity of consciousness have had a strong echoin the philosophy of mind, in particular in the recent debateconcerning the nature of consciousness. It has been suggested thatBrentano’s notion of secondary consciousness (i.e., the thesisthat every mental phenomenon is incidentally directed also towardsitself as a secondary object) can provide the means to overcomehigher-order theories of consciousness that have been widely discussedin the late twentieth century. In this debate, the exact reading ofBrentano’s thesis was often at stake. Some philosophers havesuggested that Brentano’s view, according to which every mentalphenomenon is object of inner perception, was an early expression of ahigher-order perception theory of consciousness (cf., for example,Güzeldere 1997, 789). This interpretation, however, does not paydue attention to the fact that according to Brentano, inner perceptionis not a self-standing mental phenomenon of a higher level, but rathera structural moment ofevery mental phenomenon. Moreover,with his unity of consciousness thesis Brentano explicitly rejects thebasic assumption of all higher-order perception theories ofconsciousness, i.e., the idea that we can have two mental phenomena(of distinct levels) at the same time, one of them being directedtowards the other: higher-order perception theories postulate whatBrentano calls ‘inner observation’ (as opposed to innerperception), which according to him was impossible, as we have seenabove.

Accordingly, a number of recent interpreters have suggested thatBrentano was an advocate of a one-level account of consciousness:“Since the features that make an act conscious are firmlylocated within the act itself rather than bestowed on it by a secondact, this locates Brentano’s view as a one-level view ofconsciousness” (Thomasson, 2000, 192). This reading has givenplace to neo-Brentanian theories such as Thomasson’s adverbialaccount (cf. Thomasson 2000) or self-representational approaches (cf.,for example, Kriegel 2003a, b) that build on the thesis that“every conscious state has a dual representational content. Itsmain content is the normal content commonly attributed to mentalrepresentations. But it also has a (rather peripheral) specialcontent, namely, its own occurrence” (Kriegel 2003a, 480), whichthey take as Brentano’s central thesis. Moreover, Kriegelsuggests that for Brentano this self-representational aspect is anecessary condition for having a presentation (Kriegel 2013).

Other interprets have taken more cautious lines. Mark Textor (2006),for example, has stressed the ties between Brentano’s notion ofsecondary consciousness and his thesis of the unity of consciousness.A mental phenomenon, according to Textor’s interpretation ofBrentano’s theory, does not become conscious by representingitself, but rather by its beingunified or fused with animmediately evident cognition of it. Dan Zahavi, on the other hand,has insisted that Brentano does distinguish two levels of perception,which sheds doubts on the one-level interpretation: “It could beargued that Brentano’s claim that every conscious intentionalstate takes two objects, a primary (external) object and secondary(internal) object, remains committed to a higher-order account ofconsciousness; it simply postulates it as being implicitly containedin every conscious state” (Zahavi, 2006, 5). In short,Brentano’s distinction between primary and secondaryconsciousness “introduces some kind of level-distinction intothe structure of experience” (Brandl 2013, 61) but does notconceive of higher-perception as a full-fledged mental phenomenon atits own, which is why Brandl has recently proposed to regard it a‘one-and-a-half-level theory’ (Brandl 2013, 61f).

While the debate concerning the exact interpretation of his viewsconcerning secondary consciousness is still open, it underlines therelevance of Brentano’s contributions to contemporary philosophyof mind.

3.2 Intentionality

Brentano is probably best known for having introduced the notion ofintentionality to contemporary philosophy. He first characterizes thisnotion with the following words, which have become the classical,albeit not completely unambiguous formulation of the intentionalitythesis:

“Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what theScholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental)inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not whollyunambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object(which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanentobjectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as objectwithin itself...” (BrentanoPES, 68)
[“Jedes psychische Phänomen ist durch dascharakterisiert, was die Scholastiker des Mittelalters dieintentionale (auch wohl mentale) Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes genannthaben, und was wir, obwohl mit nicht ganz unzweideutigenAusdrücken, die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf einObjekt (worunter hier nicht eine Realität zu verstehen ist), oderdie immanente Gegenständlichkeit nennen würden. Jedesenthält etwas als Objekt in sich…” (Brentano,PES 124f)]

This quotation must be understood in context: in this passage,Brentano aims at providing one (of six) criteria to distinguish mentalfrom physical phenomena with the aim to define the subject matter ofscientific psychology – and not to develop a systematic accountof intentionality. The passage clearly suggests, however, that theintentional object towards which we are directed is part of thepsychological act. It is something mental rather than physical.Brentano, thus, seems to advocate a form of immanentism, according towhich the intentional object is “in the head,” as it were.Some Brentano scholars have recently argued that this immanent readingof the intentionality thesis is too strong. In the light of othertexts by Brentano from the same period they argue that hedistinguishes between intentional correlate and object, and that theexistence of the latter does not depend on our being directed towardsit.

When Brentano’s students took up his notion ofintentionality to develop more systematic accounts, they oftencriticized it for its unclarity regarding the ontological status ofthe intentional object: if the intentional object is part of the act,it was argued, we are faced with a duplication of the object. Next tothe real, physical object, which is perceived, remembered, thought of,etc., we have a mental, intentional object, towards which the act isactually directed. Thus, when I think about the city of Paris, I amactually thinking of a mental object that is part of my act ofthinking, and not about the actual city. This view leads to obviousdifficulties, the most disastrous of which is that two persons cannever be directed towards one and the same object.

If we try to resolve the problem by taking the intentional object tobe identical with the real object, on the other hand, we face thedifficulty of explaining how we can have mental phenomena that aredirected towards non-existing objects such as Hamlet, the goldenmountain, or a round square. Like my thinking about the city of Paris,all these acts are intentionally directed towards an object, with thedifference, however, that their objects do not really exist.

Brentano’s initial formulation of the intentionality-thesis doesnot address these problems concerning the ontological status of theintentional object. The first attempt of Brentano’s students toovercome these difficulties was made by Twardowski, who distinguishedbetween content and object of the act, the former of which is immanentto the act, the latter not (cf. Twardowski 1977). This distinctionstrongly influenced other members of the Brentano School, mainly thetwo students for who the notion of intentionality had the most centralplace, Meinong and Husserl.

Meinong’s theory of objects can best be understood as a reactionto the ontological difficulties in Brentano’s account. Ratherthan accepting the notion of an immanent content, Meinong argues thatthe intentional relation is always a relation between the mental actand an object. In some cases the intentional object does not exist,but even in these cases there is an object external to the mental acttowards which we are directed. According to Meinong, even non-existentobjects are in some sense real. Since we can be intentionally directedtowards them, they must subsist (bestehen). Not allsubsisting objects exist; some of them cannot even exist for they arelogically impossible, such as round squares (cf. Meinong 1981). Thenotion of intentionality played a central role also in Husserlianphenomenology. Applying his method of the phenomenological reduction,however, Husserl addresses the problem of directedness with his notionof ‘noema’ as intentional correlate of the act (for a moredetailed discussion, cf. the entry onHusserl).

Brentano was not very fond of his students’ attempts to resolvethese difficulties, mainly because he rejected their underlyingontological assumptions. He was quick to point out that he neverintended the intentional object to be immanent to the act. Brentanothought that this interpretation of his position was obviously absurd,for it would be “paradoxical to the extreme to say that a manpromises to marry anens rationis and fulfills his promise bymarrying a real person” (PES, 299). In later texts, hetherefore suggested to see intentionality as an exceptional form ofrelation. A mental act does not stand in an ordinary relation to anobject, but in a quasi-relation (Relativliches). For arelation to exist, both relata have to exist. A persona istaller than another personb, for example, only if botha andb exist (anda is, in fact, tallerthanb). This does not hold for the intentionalquasi-relation, Brentano suggests. A mental phenomenon can stand in aquasi-relation to an object independently of whether it exists or not.Mental acts, thus, can stand in a quasi-relation to existing objectslike the city of Paris as well as non-existing objects like the GoldenMountain. Brentano’s later account, which is closely related tohis later metaphysics, especially to his turn towards reism, i.e., theview that only individual objects exist, can hardly be considered asolution of the problem of the ontological status of the intentionalobject. He rather introduces a new term to reformulate thedifficulties.

3.3 Time-Consciousness

According to Brentano’s thesis of the unity of consciousness, wecan have only one mental phenomenon at a time. Next to this synchronicunity, however, there is also a diachronic unity of consciousness: mypresent mental phenomenon and the one I had just a moment or a fewminutes ago form a unity as well. This becomes particularly evidentwhen we consider cases in which we are intentionally directed towardstemporally extended objects such as melodies, movies, or goals in asoccer game.

Brentano regards time as a continuum of which only one point, thepresent moment, is real. As a consequence, mental phenomena do nothave temporal extension (very much like like mathematical points on aline). The question, now, is: how can mental phenomena, which do nothave any temporal extension, be directed towards objects that areextended in time? Can we be directed towards the melody, or onlytowards a (very small) temporal part of it? Brentano solves thisproblem by arguing that the object of a presentation does not vanishimmediately from consciousness in the moment the presentation is over,it is rather retained in consciousness for a short while. In order toexplain this process, he introduces the notion of “originalassociation” or “proteraesthesis”, which, as deWarren suggests, “occupies a notable place in the list ofBrentano’s conceptual innovations; in contrast to otherdistinguishing concepts of descriptive psychology ... it is withoutprecedence in the history of philosophy” (De Warren 2009,57f).

Brentano has reflected on time consciousness throughout his life, buthas never given a systematic exposition of his position that wouldgive it a static form. Rather, he has changed his position severaltimes, often to accommodate it to changes in his overall views. Basedon the testimonies of his students and manuscripts contained in theNachlass, we can distinguish different phases ofBrentano’s views on time-consciousness (cf. Fréchette2017).

According to hisearly view, time consciousness depends onthe mode of judgment. I can be intentionally directed towards a pastobject if I judge (correctly) that, say, “Caesar was stabbed onthe Ides of March, 44 B.C.”. The reason for characterisingtemporal differences as modes of judgments is probably the fact thatin language we express these temporal differences with the tense ofthe verb (past, present, future) – but the verb also serves toexpress our accepting or denying the existence of an object in ajudgment.

In hissecond phase, which he held from the early 1870s tothe early 1890s, Brentano introduced the notion of originalassociation. A mental phenomenon does not disappear from consciousnessfrom one moment to another, it is rather retained for a short periodof time. When I hear a melodya,b,c,d, for example, I first heara. When, in a secondmoment, I hearb,a still persists in myconsciousness, but is modified as “past”. When, anothermoment later, I hearc, bothb anda areretained in original association; now alsob is given as“past”, whilea is “pushed back” evenfurther into the past, as it were, etc. In this way, Brentano canexplain how the melody (as a whole) can be the intentional object of amental phenomenon: in each moment, the present and the (very) recenttones are given, but the latter are not given in the same way (or elsewe would not hear a melody, but we would hear all the tones at once;we would, in other words, not hear a melody, but a cacophony). Thetones that are past are given with temporal modifications –which do not further determine them, but rather modify theirontological status from real to not real. In this period Brentanoholds that two presentations can differ only in the object towardswhich they are directed; the continuously changing temporal moment,thus, is a modification of the objects. An object that sinks back intothe past undergoes, according to this view, continuousmodifications.

In the early 1890s Brentano modifies his views again, suggesting thatthe temporal modification is not a modification of the content, but ofthe attitude of acknowledgement in judgments. With this change,Brentano avoids problems of his earlier view: he no longer needs tosuggest that temporal modifications are parts of the intentionalobjects that are given in original associations, nor does he need toexplain how the real, present object can form a continuum with thepast objects that are not real.

In later years, Brentano makes further changes to his theory oftime-consciousness. Since temporal modifications can be observed alsoin mental phenomena that do not contain a judgment (for example whenone imagines vividly hearing a melody), he gives up his view that twopresentations can differ only in their intentional object and allowsfor modes of presentation – such as temporal modes. Finally, ina late manuscript that was dictated in 1915, Brentano introducesanother minor modification of his theory, suggesting that past objectscan be presented only inmodo obliquo, while present objectsare presented inmodo recto.

Brentano’s reflections on time-consciousness illustrate verywell his way of doing philosophy, but also the way in which his viewshave had an influence on others. As Oskar Kraus notes in hisRecollections (cf. Kraus 1919, 39), Brentano has vividlyengaged with the problem of time and the origins of time consciousnessthroughout his life. He presented it several times to students inclass and discussed i in letters with colleagues at different momentsin time. He never presented a systematic exposition of his views inpublication, though. As a result, Brentano’s views on the topicwere very dynamic, as he did not hesitate to revise them when heencountered problems or when changes in other parts of his overalltheory made it necessary. As he never published a systematic statementof his views on time-consciousness, interested scholars could learnabout it only from the expositions of Brentano’s students likeCarl Stumpf, Anton Marty, and in particular Edmund Husserl who,however, used Brentano’s views as departing point for their ownreflections, very often in an attempt to overcome the difficultiesinherent to the version of Brentano’s theory they wereacquainted with. Brentano’s own views were, thus, veryinfluential, but risked to become eclipsed by the contributions of hisstudents, who further developed them.

4. Logic, Ethics, and Aesthetics

According to Brentano, psychology plays a central role in thesciences; he considers especially logics, ethics, and aesthetics aspractical disciplines that depend on psychology as their theoreticalfoundation. He collocates these three disciplines in his largersystematic outlook by tying them to the three kinds of mentalphenomenon: presentations, judgments, and phenomena of love and hate,i.e., emotions. The “triad of theBeautiful, theTrue, and theGood ... [is] related to the threeaspects of our mental life” (PES, 203). Moreover, thethree disciplines essentially build on his views that presentationsare intrinsically valuable and that not only judgments, but alsoemotions can be correct or not correct.

Logic, according to Brentano, is the practical discipline that isconcerned with judgments; i.e. with the class of mental phenomena inwhich we take a positive or a negative stance towards the (existenceof the) object by affirming or denying it. In addition, judgments arecorrect or not; they have a truth-value. According to Brentano, ajudgment is true when it is evident, i.e., when one perceives (ininner perception that is directed towards the judgment) that onejudges with evidence. Brentano, thus, rejects the correspondencetheory of truth, suggesting that “a person judges truly, if andonly if, his judgment agrees with the judgment he would make if wewere to judge with evidence” (Chisholm 1986, 38).Notwithstanding this dependence on the notion of judgment, however,truth, for Brentano, is not a subjective notion: if one person affirmsan object and another person denies the same object, only one of themjudges correctly. (For a more detailed discussion of Brentano’scontributions to logic, cf. the entryBrentano’s Theory of Judgement.)

Ethics, on the other hand, is concerned with emotions or, as Brentanocalls them, phenomena of love and hate. Brentano sees a structuralanalogy between judgments and phenomena of this class: just likejudgments, that are either affirmative or negative, also emotionsconsist in taking a positive or a negative (emotional) attitudetowards an object: love or hate, inclination and disinclination, beingpleased and being displeased, etc. Moreover, just as (positive andnegative) judgments can be correct or incorrect, Brentano holds thatalso (both positive and negative) emotions can be correct orincorrect. An emotion is correct, according to Brentano, “whenone’s feelings are adequate to their object — adequate inthe sense of being appropriate, suitable, or fitting”(ORW, 70). [“Wer richtig liebt und haßt,dessen Gemüt verhält sich den Gegenständenadäquat, d.h. es verhält sich konvenient, passend,entsprechend” (USE, 76)]

If it is correct to love an object, we can say that it is good; if itis correct to hate it, it is bad:

“We call a thingtrue when the affirmation relating toit is correct. We call a thinggood when the love relating toit is correct. In the broadest sense of the term, the good is thatwhich is worthy of love, that which can be loved with a love that iscorrect.” (ORW, 18)
[“Wir nennen etwas Wahr, wenn die darauf bezüglicheAnerkennung richtig ist. Wir nennen etwas gut, wenn die daraufbezügliche Liebe richtig ist. Das mit richtiger Liebe zuLiebende, das Liebenswerte, ist das Gute im weitesten Sinne desWortes.” (USE 17)]

Not any experience of pleasure is taken into consideration, one needssome sort of evidence that the pleasure is correct. Brentanocharacterizes the relevant form of pleasure with the following words:“it is a pleasure of the highest form; it is thus the analogue ofsomething being evident in the sphere of judgment”(ORW, 22) [“Es ist ein Gefallen von jenerhöheren Form die das Analogon ist von der Evidenz auf dem Gebietdes Urteils” (USE 21)]. In this way Brentano avoids asubjectivist position. While it is true that correct pleasure is anemotion experienced by subjects, it is impossible that one person canevidently and correctly love an object and another correctly andevidently hate it. In some cases, pleasure or love might be misguidedby our prejudices, instincts or habits.

Brentano presented his reflections on ethics in a lecture in 1889. Themanuscript was published as a short monograph in the same year, anEnglish translation had appeared as early as 1902 and was, for a longtime, the only text by Brentano available in English. This mightexplain why Brentano’s views on ethics have received moreattention in English speaking countries than in central Europe. Inparticular, Brentano’s basic insight that moral and aestheticvalue are related to attitudes we take towards objects and that theselatter attitudes can be correct or incorrect, have had a revival inrecent years, as it has inspiredfitting attitude theories of value.

Aesthetics, finally, is based on the most basic class of mentalphenomena: on presentations. According to Brentano, every presentationis in itself of value; this holds even for those that become the basisof a correct, negative judgment or emotion.

“Every presentation, taken by itself, is a good and recognizableas such, since an emotion that is characterized as being correct canbe directed towards it. It is out of question that everyone, if theyhad to choose between a state of unconsciousness and the having of anypresentation whatsoever, would welcome even the poorest presentationand would not envy lifeless objects. Every presentation appears ofvalue in that it constitutes a valuable enrichment of life.”(GA, 144 [my translation])
[“Jedes Vorstellen ist aber, an und für sichbetrachtet, ein Gut und als solches erkennbar, weil sich eine alsrichtig charakterisierte Gemütstätigkeit darauf richtenkann. Ohne Frage würde jedermann, wenn er zwischen dem Zustandder Bewußtlosigkeit und dem Besitz irgendwelcher Vorstellungenzu wählen hätte, auch die ärmlichstebegrüßen und die leblosen Dinge nicht beneiden. JedeVorstellung erscheint als eine Bereicherung des Lebens vonWert.” (GA, 144)]

Thus, while judgments and emotions consist in taking either a positiveor a negative stance, the value of a presentation is always positive,but comes in degrees: some presentations are of higher value thanothers. Not every presentations is of particular aesthetic value,though; in order to be so, it has to become the object of an emotionin which one correctly takes a positive stance towards it. In short,according to Brentano, an object is beautiful if a presentation thatis directed at it arouses a correct, positive emotion, i.e., a form ofpleasure; it is ugly, on the other hand, if a presentation that isdirected at it arouses a correct, negative emotion, a form ofdispleasure.

Like secondary qualities, the aesthetic value is not an intrinsicproperty of the object but rather depends on the way we experience it.We tend to attribute beauty to the objects of experience, but strictlyspeaking, the experienced objects are neither beautiful nor ugly:

“When we call a girl beautiful, the term is used in a figurativesense. It is similar when we call objects that are outside of usgreen, red, warm, cold, sweet, bitter. All these expressions referinitially to what appears, and are then also transferred to that whichpossibly evokes in us this appearance by having an impact onus.” (GA 123 [my translation])
[“Wenn wir ein Mädchen schön nennen, so wird derName in übertragenem Sinn gebraucht. Es ist ähnlich, wiewenn wir Körper, die außer uns sind, grün, rot, warm,kalt, heiß, biter nennen. Alle diese Ausdrücke bezeichnenzunächst das, was erscheint, werden dann auch auf solchesübertragen, was unter Umständen auf uns einwirkend dieseErscheinungen hervorruft.” (GA 123)]

Even though Brentano’s views on ethics and aesthetics aresomewhat sketchy and not worked out in detail, we can note that histreatment of the three practical disciplines of logics, ethics, andaesthetics are unified by a common principle: the idea that judgmentsor emotions not only can be positive or negative, they can also befitting or appropriate to their object. Moreover, by tying the threedisciplines to his tripartition of mental phenomena (presentations,judgments, emotions), he also assigns them an exact collocation in hisoverall philosophical system. For these reasons, recent commentatorshave insisted in the systematicity of Brentano’s philosophy,arguing that he “was the last philosopher to have offered asystem in the sense of a structurally unified account of the true, thegood, and the beautiful.” (Kriegel 2017a, 29). Kriegelacknowledges, however, that “Brentano was not a systematicwriter” (ibid., 21). This shows in the fact thatBrentano saw his task mainly in sketching the basic views onaesthetics and ethics in lectures, but never presented a longer orsystematic treatise of these topics, which can be explained by hisconviction that science was a collective enterprise and by hisaversion of the cult of the genius that was widespread in his times.Brentano probably hoped that others would continue to work out thedetails within the parameters he had set. We know about his views onaesthetics and ethics only from lecture notes that have been cut,revised, and amended by his students, who typically did not bother todocument their substantial editorial changes in the published text.Moreover, Brentano never presented his philosophical position as asystem, probably because he did not want to be associated with Germansystem philosophers of the early and mid-nineteenth century. Thus, theclaim that Brentano was a system-philosopher is somewhat questionable,though he definitely was a systematic thinker in the sense that healways kept the overall picture in mind when working on a specificproblem.

5. Psychologism and the Historiography of Philosophy

The discussion of Brentano’s views on logic, ethics andaesthetics shows that his philosophy has strong psychologistictendencies. Whether or not one is to conclude that he does adopt aform of psychologism depends on the exact definition of the latterterm: Brentano vehemently rejects the charge of psychologism, which hetakes to stand for a subjectivist and anthropocentric position. At thesame time, however, he explicitly defends the claim that psychology isthe theoretical science on which practical disciplines of logic,ethics, and aesthetics are based. InLW he explicitly notesthat, like all other philosophical disciplines, also aesthetics isrooted in psychology and continues: “And similarly one couldshow for aesthetics and any other philosophical discipline thatseparated from psychology it would have to wither like a branch thatis detached from the trunk.” (LW, 39 [my translation])[“Und ähnlich ließe sich für die Aesthetikund jede andere Disciplin der Philosophie aufs leichteste nachweisen,daß sie, losgetrennt von der Psychologie, wie ein vom Stammlosgetrennter Zweig verdorren müsste.”] Hence,Brentano does adopt the form of psychologism Husserl seems to have hadin mind in theProlegomena to hisLogicalInvestigations, where he defines logical psychologism as aposition according to which:

… [T]he essential theoretical foundations of logic lie inpsychology, in whose field those propositions belong — as far astheir theoretical content is concerned — which give logic itscharacteristic pattern. … Often people talk as if psychologyprovided the sole, sufficient, theoretical foundation for logicalpsychology (Husserl 2001, 40).
[Die wesentlichen theoretischen Fundamente liegen in derPsychologie; in deren Gebiet gehören ihrem theoretischen Gehaltnach die Sätze, die der Logik ihr charakteristisches Geprägegeben. … Ja nicht selten spricht man so, als gäbe diePsychologie das alleinige und ausreichende theoretische Fundamentfür die logische Kunstlehre. (Husserl, 1900, 51)]

Brentano’s tendency to offer psychological explanations is shownalso in his approach to the history of philosophy, in particular inhis explanations of the mechanisms that explain the historicaldevelopment in this discipline. In his textThe Four Phases ofPhilosophy and Its Current State (1998) he defended themetaphilosophical thesis that progress in philosophy can be explainedaccording to principles of cultural psychology. According to Brentano,philosophical progress takes place in circles. He divides the wholehistory of philosophy in three periods (ancient, medieval, and modernphilosophy), each of which can, according to him, be subdivided infour phases. The first is a creative phase of renewal and ascendingdevelopment; the other three are phases of decline, dominated by aturn towards practical interests, by scepticism, and finally bymysticism. After the fourth phase, a new period begins with a creativephase of renewal.

Brentano has presented his model to a larger audience quite late inhis life, but he had come up with it very early in his career; CarlStumpf reports that Brentano first came up with this idea in 1860 andthat he used it in his lectures on the history of philosophy alreadyin Würzburg in the mid-sixties (cf. Stumpf 1919, 89f). While boththe historical accuracy of and the principles of cultural psychologythat gave rise to the model can be put in question (cf. Gilson 1976),it definitely tells the reader much about Brentano’s conceptionof philosophy and his vivid interest in its history. Brentano’sshort text can, thus, best be read as a simplifying narrative thatallows the author to explain his conviction that philosophy ought topursue of pure, theoretical interests and to express his fascinationfor philosophers like Aristotle, Thomas, or Descartes as well as hisdislike of Plotinus, Nicolas of Cues, Kant, Hegel, and Schelling.

6. Brentano’s Metaphysics

Even though Brentano worked on problems in metaphysics and ontologythroughout his life, he hardly published on these topics during hislifetime. The impact of his views is due to the fact that from hisearly lectures at the University of Würzburg on he discussed themwith his students, both in class and (especially in later years) incorrespondence.

Even though Brentano’s views have underwent considerable changesover the years, his general attitude can be characterized as sober,parsimonious, and (in the current use of the term) nominalistic; at nopoint did he admit the existence of universals, he rather relied onmereological principles to account for classical problems in ontology.

Brentano’s early metaphysics, which is the result of hiscritical reading of Aristotle, is a form of conceptualism. He doesdistinguish between substance and accidents, but argues that both arebut fictionscum fundamentum in re. With this, he wants tosuggest that they do not have actual existence, but that we can makejudgments about real things that are correct and contain references tosubstances and accidents. This view is closely connected to hisepistemic notion of truth, according to which the question of whethera judgment is true does not depend on its corresponding to reality,but rather on whether it can be judged with evidence. Brentanoelucidates the relation between a thing and its properties on thebasis of the mereological notions of “logical part” and“metaphysical part,” the former of which account forabstract, repeatable properties, the latter for the concreteproperties of a thing. Both are not considered to be denizens ofreality in a narrow sense, but rather fictions that have a foundationin reality. (For a reconstruction and discussion of the details ofBrentano’s early ontology, cf. Chrudzimski 2004).

After the introduction of the notion of intentionality in hisPsychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), Brentanostruggled to account for the ontological status of the intentionalobject. When he first introduces the notion, suggesting, as we haveseen above, that “[e]very mental phenomenon includes somethingas object within itself” (PES, 88), he seems to beinterested primarily in presenting a psychological thesis and does notseem to be overly worried with its ontological implications; at thispoint, the talk of an “immanent object” might have been amerefaçon de parler(cf. Chrudzimski and Smith, 2003,205). Soon Brentano finds himself in the need, however, to addressthis question and, as a result, to enrich the domain of objects in hisontology. He seems to admit that next to concrete things there areirrealia, that is, objects that to not really exist but havethe status of thought-objects or, as he puts it,entiarationis, that do not have an essence and do not stand in causalrelations. Brentano does not systematically elaborate his ontologicalposition in this period, we rather find a bundle of ideas of which hedid not seem to be fully convinced. This underlines that theformulation of these views was not made with the intention to make acontribution to ontology, but rather to reply to concerns that haveemerged from his introduction of the notion of intentionality.

In his late philosophy, from 1904 on, Brentano rediscovers the virtueof ontological parsimony and takes up the main insights of hisconceptualist period, developing (and radicalizing) them to a form ofreism, according to which the only items that exist are individual things(res). “While young Brentano tried to ontologicallyplay down certain ways of speaking, late Brentano tried to eliminatethem from philosophical discourse” (Chrudzimski 2004, 177) [mytranslation. “Der junge Brentano versuchte gewisseRedeweisen ontologisch zubagatellisieren, der späteBrentano versuchte sie aus dem philosophischen Diskurs zueliminieren”] . He abandons the notion ofirrealia, which he now regards as linguistic fictions, andcontinues to deny the existence of universals or abstract entities.Instead, he conceives both substances and accidents as real thingsthat are related to one another by a particular mereological relation:an accident does not only ontologically depend on the substance, italso contains the substance as a part without, however, containing anysupplementary part. A white table, accordingly, is an accident thatcontains the table as a part. If we were to paint it red, the whitetable would cease to exist and the red table would come into existence– the continuity between the two being guaranteed by the table,which was part of the white table and is now part of the red table.

Brentano’s ontology is known to a broader audience only throughposthumously published works that were edited by his late studentsOskar Kraus and Alfred Kastil, who considered his late position mostimportant and accordingly put less emphasis on Brentano’searlier phases. Only recently the development of Brentano’sviews on ontology has gained more attention, mainly through the workof scholars who were able to study unpublished manuscripts in thearchives (cf., for example, Chrudzimski 2004). This underlines oncemore the need of a critical edition of Brentano’s entireNachlass, which would make it possible for a broader audienceto critically assess the development of Brentano’s views inontology.

7. The Impact of Brentano’s Philosophy

7.1 Early Reception: The Brentano School

Brentano’s contributions to philosophy were widely discussedamong philosophers and psychologists at the end of the nineteenth andthe beginning of the twentieth century. Moreover, he had a strongimpact on an impressive number of students who became famousphilosophers on their own right. Often, these philosophers arereferred to as the “School of Franz Brentano,” (cf.Albertazzi e.al. 1996) in order to underline that all of them drewexplicitly (and when not explicitly, then recognizably) onBrentano’s work. All members of the school have becomeacquainted with Brentano’s philosophy in his lectures or throughconversation or correspondence with him, but they form a quiteheterogeneous group that did not make attempts to jointly develop ashared position: there was no general acceptance of a specificunifying doctrine of the “School”, nor did its membersmake attempts to unite forces and cooperate on specific projects. Whatunites the School is a vivid interests in the topics that Brentanodiscussed in his lectures, first and foremost in psychology and in theidea that philosophy should adopt a rigorous, scientific method (cf.Dewalque 2017a, b). In fact, it was Brentano’s methodologicalmaxim that has raised the interest in most members of the school inthe first place, cf., for example, Stumpf (1919) and Husserl (1919),both of who suggest that Brentano’s conception of philosophy asa rigorous science had a decisive impact on their decision to pursue aprofessional career in philosophy.

Brentano’s influence on students has seen different phases thatare loosely connected to the places where he taught. In his earlyyears in Würzburg (1866–1873), Brentano became noted mainlyfor his attempt to renew philosophy on the basis of a rigorous,scientific method. His most important students at the time,Carl Stumpf andAnton Marty, made a significant academic career in their own right. As Brentanowas not yet appointed professor and could, in consequence, not yetsupervise PhD theses, both completed their PhD with Lotze inGöttingen. Stumpf then held positions in Prague, Halle, Munich,and Berlin, where he founded a psychological laboratory and gavedecisive impulses for the development of Gestalt psychology. AntonMarty became professor at the University of Prague and had a stronginfluence with his work on the philosophy of language. Both Stumpf andMarty developed their own positions and deviated locally fromBrentano’s views, but they remained faithful followers whocontinued to acknowledge the influence that Brentano has had onthem.

When Brentano took up teaching at the University of Vienna in 1874,his lectures soon became very popular among students. In the firstyears, Thomas Masaryk (who later became the first president of theCzechoslovakia),Alexius Meinong, Alois Höfler, andChristian von Ehrenfels attended Brentano’s lectures. In the years after 1880 (whenBrentano had lost his chair and was teaching asPrivatdozent,which meant that he could no longer supervise PhD theses) FranzHillebrand,Edmund Husserl, andKazimierz Twardowski studied with him. Unlike Stumpf or Marty, Brentano’s studentsin Vienna encountered a mature professor who had hisopusmaximum already published. Their relation to Brentano, inconsequence, was less that of a friendship, and more that between astudent and a renowned professor. Soon many of them have felt the urgeto overcome Brentano’s influence and define their own,independent philosophical position – and possibly form a schoolin their own right. In particular Meinong and Husserl, who areprobably the most famous representants of Brentano’s school,came to have a rather troublesome relation to their former teacher. Itis not by accident that both used the term “BrentanoSchool” only to distance themselves from it.

In 1895, when Brentano gave up his position asPrivatdozentin Vienna and moved to Florence, he gave up teaching and could nolonger exert a direct influence on students. In this period, thecenter of the Brentano school moved to Prague, where Anton Marty heldregular meetings with interested students, among them Oskar Kraus andAlfred Kastil. These second-generation members of the Brentano school– who are often called “Brentanoten” or“orthodox Brentanists” – stayed very faithful toBrentano’s philosophy, (in particular to his last, reistic phasethat they knew first-hand). They saw it as their main task to preserveBrentano’s view and to defend them against the developmentsintroduced by Husserl and the early phenomenologists as well as thoseintroduced by Meinong and other members of the Graz School,respectively. After Brentano’s death in 1917, they tried to setup and archive for Brentano’sNachlass and publishtexts from it posthumously. While in the first years they achievedconsiderable results, not at least due to the help of the Czechpresident Jan Masaryk, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938forced them into emigration and so brought an end to the BrentanoSchool.

7.2 Recent Reception: Rediscovering Brentano

Brentano’s impact in a larger philosophical audience was sooneclipsed by that of his students who founded philosophical traditionson their own: Husserl started thephenomenological movement, Meinong the Graz school, Twardowski theLvov-Warsaw School. As a result, in the second half of the twentieth century Brentano wasoftenmentioned as the philosopher who had (re-)introducedthe notion of intentionality, as “grandfather” of thephenomenological movement, or for his influence on early analyticphilosophy, but his own philosophical views and arguments were hardlydiscussed.

There are notable exceptions to this tendency, though. RoderickChisholm, for example, made a continuous effort to showBrentano’s significance to contemporary philosophy by adoptinghis results in his own contributions to the philosophy of mind, butalso in presentations of various aspects of Brentano’s thought(cf. Chisholm 1966, 1982, and 1986). Moreover, in recent decades thetradition that is often referred to as “Austrianphilosophy” has gained increasing interest in a broaderphilosophical audience, which is due mainly to the work of RudolfHaller, Barry Smith, Peter Simons, and Kevin Mulligan, among others.By showing the systematic relevance of Brentano’s (and otherAustrian philosophers’) contributions to problems discussed inontology, logic, the theory of emotions, or consciousness, they couldcounteract the tendency to reduce Brentano’s contributions tothe introduction of the notion of intentionality.

It is quite interesting to note, however, that in the last two decadesthe philosophical contributions of Brentano have gained a new life asan increasing number of philosophers from different fields arerediscovering and elaborating on different themes fromBrentano’s work. His contributions to the philosophy of mindhave been taken up and play a central role in the debate concerningthe nature of consciousness and the relation betweenconsciousness and intentionality, theunity of consciousness andtime-consciousness; his views on ethics have been inspiredfitting attitude theories of value, which analyze ethical value in terms of correct or incorrect forms ofapproval or disapproval. Moreover, the recent centenary ofBrentano’s death (2017) has given occasion to a number ofconferences and publications that put Brentano’s contribution atthe center of attention (cf., for example, Kriegel 2017). This showsthat the interest in Brentano’s systematic contribution tophilosophy is still strong and vivid.

DP	Descriptive Psychology
GA	Grundzüge der Ästhetik
LW	Meine letzten Wünsche fürÖsterreich
ORW	The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong
PES	Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint / Psychologie vomempirischen Standpunkt
USE	Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis
ZP	Über die Zukunft der Philosophie – quotedfrom the 1929 ed.

Works (in German)

Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Briefe und Abhandlungen aus demNachlass, ed. by F. Mayer-Hillebrand, Bern: Francke, 1952.
Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes,Leipzig: Veit & comp., 1911 [Available online] (2nd ed., intr. by Rolf George, Hamburg: Meiner, 1980).
Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung, Leipzig: Quelle& Meyer, 1911 [Available online] (2nd ed., intr. by Rolf George, Hamburg: Meiner 1977).
Briefe an Carl Stumpf 1867–1917, ed. by GerhardOberkofler, Graz: Akademische Drucks- und Verlagsanstalt, 1989.
Deskriptive Psychologie, ed. by R. Chisholm and W.Baumgartner, Hamburg: Meiner, 1982.
Das Genie, Leipzig: Dunker und Humblot, 1892. [Available online]
Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, ed. by FranziskaMayer-Hillebrand. Bern: Francke, 1963.
Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Philosophie im christlichenAbendland, ed. by Klaus Hedwig, Hamburg: Meiner, 1980.
Geschichte der Philosophie der Neuzeit, ed. by KlausHedwig, Hamburg: Meiner, 1987.
Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik, ed. by FranziskaMayer-Hillebrand, Bern: Francke, 1956.
Grundzüge der Ästhetik, ed. by FranziskaMayer-Hillebrand, Bern: Francke, 1959.
Kategorienlehre, ed. by Alfred Kastil. Leipzig: Meiner,1933.
Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil, ed. by FranziskaMayer-Hillebrand, Bern: Francke, 1956.
Meine letzten Wünsche für Österreich,Stuttgart: Cotta, 1895. [Available online]
Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Raum, Zeit undKontinuum, ed. by Stephan Körner and Roderick Chisholm,Hamburg: Meiner, 1976.
Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vomNous Poietikos, Mainz: Verlag von Franz Kirchheim, 1867. [Available online]
Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Leipzig: Duncker& Humblot, 1874. [Available online]; (2nd, enl. ed. by Oskar Kraus, 1924, Leipzig: Meiner).
Religion und Philosophie, ed. by Franziska MayerHillebrand, Bern: Francke, 1954.
Das Schlechte als Gegenstand dichterischer Dastellung,Leipzig: & Humblot, 1892. [Available online]
Über Aristoteles, ed. by Rolf George, Hamburg:Meiner, 1986.
Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, Wien: Hölder,1893. [Available online]. Reprinted in:Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, ed. byOskar Kraus, Leipzig: Meiner 1929; 2nd edition, intr. by PaulWeingartner, Hamburg: Meiner, 1968.
Über Ernst Machs “Erkenntnis undIrrtum”, ed. by Roderick Chisholm and Johann Marek,Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.
Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie, Leipzig: Dunker undHumblot, 1907. [Available online]
Versuch über die Erkenntnis, ed. by Alfred Kastil,Leipzig: Meiner, 1925. (2nd enl. ed. by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand,Hamburg: Meiner, 1970).
Die Vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicherStand, Stuttgart: Cotta, 1895. [Available online]. Posthumous edition, ed. by Oskar Kraus, Leipzig: Meiner, 1926.
Vom Dasein Gottes, ed. by Alfred Kastil, Leipzig: Meiner,1929.
Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewußtsein, (Psychologievom empirischen Standpukt, vol. 3), ed. by Oskar Kraus, Leipzig:Meiner, 1928.
Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, Leipzig: Dunker &Humblot, 1889 [Available online], (2nd. ed. by Oskar Kraus, Hamburg: Meiner 1921).
Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene,(Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, vol. 2), Leipzig:Duncker und Humblot, 1911. [Available online]
Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nachAristoteles, Freiburg: Herder, 1862. [Available online]
Wahrheit und Evidenz, ed. by Oskar Kraus, Leipzig:Meiner, 1930.
Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht, Wien:Hartleben, 1876. [Available online]
Werkausgabe: sämtliche veröffentlichteSchriften (10 vols.), Frankfurt: ontos (in publication).

Works (English Translations)

Aristotle and His World View, transl. by R. George andR.M. Chisholm. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
Descriptive Psychology, transl. by Benito Müller,London: Routledge, 1995.
The Foundation and Construction of Ethics, transl. byElizabeth Schneewind, New York: Humanities Press, 1973.
“The Four Phases of Philosophy and Its Current State”,B. Mezei and B. Smith (eds.)The Four Phases of Philosophy,Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.
On the Existence of God, transl. by Susan Krantz,Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987.
On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, transl. byRolf George, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, transl.by Cecil Hague, Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1902 [Available online], (2nd transl.The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong,by Roderick Chisholm and Elizabeth Schneewind, London: Routledge,1969).
Philosophical Investigations on Space, Time, and theContinuum, transl. by Barry Smith, London, New York: Croom Helm,1988.
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, transl. by A.C.Rancurello, D.B. Terrell, and L. McAlister, London: Routledge, 1973.(2nd ed., intr. by Peter Simons, 1995).
The Psychology of Aristotle, transl. by Rolf George.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
Sensory and Noetic Consciousness. Psychology from an EmpiricalStandpoint III, transl. by M. Schättle and L. McAlister.London: Routledge, 1981.
The Theory of Categories, transl. by Roderick Chisholmand Norbert Guterman, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981.
The True and the Evident, transl. by Roderick Chisholm,Ilse Politzer, and Kurt Fischer. London: Routledge, 1966.

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