Theory and History of Ontology (www.ontology.co)by Raul Corazzon | e-mail: rc@
ontology.co
This part of the section Ontologists of 19th and 20th centuries includes the following pages:
Franz Brentano Ontology and His Immanent Realism
Selected bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Franz Brentano:
Studies in English
Fifth Part: Kri - Moh (Current page)
Franz Brentano. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Complete PDF Version on the website Academia.edu
Kriegel, Uriah. 2013. "Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis: No Representation Without Self-Representation." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 23-40. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
"Section 8 of Chapter 2 of Part II of the Psychology reads: “A Presentation and the Presentation of that Presentation are Given in One Mental Act.” Thus Brentano appears fully committed, in a considered way, to the idea that there could be no representation without self-representation. To my mind, this is Brentano’s most striking thesis: that the very possibility of representing an apple, say, depends on the possibility of self-representing to represent an apple.
In what follows, I want to argue that this claim, which sounds odd to our modern sensibilities, is actually deeply insightful.
(...)
"The plan for the rest of the paper is as follows. In §2, I will argue that there could be no representation-of without representation-to.
There can be token representations-of that are not representations-to, but they must betoken a type of representation some tokens of which are both representations-of and representations-to. In §3, I will offer an analysis of “x represents y to z” according to which it means (more or less) that z has a representation of x representing y. In §4, I will note that this generates a regress of representations which can only end with self-representing representations. If my thought of the Sydney Opera House represents both the Opera House and itself, then it is both a representation-of and a representation-to without requiring the postulation of any further representation. The upshot is that there could be no representation without self-representation: in a world without self-representing representations there would be no representation at all. Brentano’s most striking thesis is true." (pp. 24-25)
———. 2015. "How to Speak of Existence: A Brentanian Approach to (Linguistic and Mental) Ontological Commitment." In Themes from Ontology, Mind, and Logic: Essays in Honor of Peter Simons, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, 81-106. Leiden: Brill.
Summary "To a first approximation, ontology is concerned with what exists, metaontology with what it means to say that something exists. So understood, metaontology has been dominated by three views: (i) existence as a substantive first-order property that some things have and some do not, (ii) existence as a formal first-order property that everything has, and (iii) existence as a second-order property of existents’ distinctive properties. Each of these faces well-documented difficulties.
In this chapter, I want to expound a fourth theoretical option, which unfortunately has remained ‘under the radar.’ Th is is Franz Brentano’s view, according to which to say that X exists is not to attribute a property at all (first- or second-order), but to say that the correct attitude to take toward X is that of accepting or believing in it."
———. 2015. "Thought and Thing: Brentano's Reism as Truthmaker Nominalism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 90:153-180.
"Introduction
The ontological theory of the later Franz Brentano is often referred to as ‘reism.’
But what exactly is reism, and how is it related to modern-day nominalism?
In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Brentano’s reism as a specific variety of nominalism. This variety, although motivated by distinctly modern concerns about truthmakers, adopts a strategy for providing such truthmakers that is completely foreign to modern nominalism. The strategy rests on proliferation of coincident concrete particulars. For example, ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Socrates is Greek’ are made true, respectively, by wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates, where wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates are two coinciding but numerically distinct concrete particulars (which also coincide with Socrates)." (p. 153)
———. 2016. "Brentano's Latter-day Monism." Brentano Studien no. 14:69-77.
Abstract: "The recent literature on the metaphysics of material objects has featured extensive discussion of monism, the thesis that the world as a whole – the cosmos – is the only material object, or at least the only fundamental material object. A notable byproduct of the growing interest in monism has been a rather energetic reexamination of historical forms of monism. Philosophers whose monist metaphysics has earned serious reconsideration include Parmenides (Rea 2001), Spinoza (Goff 2012, Guigon 2012), the British idealists (Schaffer 2010b) and some of the latter’s American counterparts (Zimmerman forthcoming). One philosopher whose monistic musings have not yet been excavated as part of this general movement, however, is Franz Brentano. In a single known document – a dictation from 30 January 1915 (when he was 77 and completely blind) – Brentano develops what appears to be a version of monism about the material world. This brief note offers a presentation of Brentano’s specific version of monism, and of his master argument for it."
———. 2016. "Brentano’s Mature Theory of Intentionality." Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy no. 4:1-15.
Abstract: "The notion of intentionality is what Franz Brentano is best known for. But disagreements and misunderstandings still surround his account of its nature. In this paper, I argue that Brentano’s mature account of the nature of intentionality construes
it, not as a two-place relation between a subject and an object, nor as a three-place relation between a subject’s act, its object, and a ‘content,’ but as an altogether non-relational, intrinsic property of subjects. I will argue that the view is more defensible than might initially appear."
———, ed. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School. New York: Routledge.
Contents: Uriah Kriegel: Introduction 1;
Part I: Brentano’s Philosophy
1. Thomas Binder: Franz Brentano: Life and Work 15; 2. Uriah Kriegel: Brentano’s Philosophical Program 21;
1.1: Mind
3. Denis Seron: Brentano’s Project of Descriptive Psychology 35; 4. Tim Crane: Brentano on Intentionality 41; 5. Mark Textor: Brentano on Consciousness 49; 6. Barry Dainton: Brentano on the Unity of Consciousness 61; 7. Guillaume Fréchette: Brentano on Time-Consciousness 75; 8. Olivier Massin: Brentano on Sensations and Sensory Qualities 87; 9. Uriah Kriegel: Brentano’s Classification of Mental Phenomena 97; 10. Uriah Kriegel: Brentano on Judgment 103; 11. Michelle Montague: Brentano on Emotion and the Will 110; 12. Gianfranco Soldati: Brentano on Self-Knowledge 124,
1.2: Metaphysics
13. Werner Sauer: Brentano’s Reism 133; 14. Susan Krantz Gabriel: Brentano on the Soul 144; 15. Wojciech Żełaniec: Brentano on Time and Space 150; 16. Hamid Taieb: Brentano on Properties and Relations 156;
17. Johannes L. Brandl: Brentano on Truth 163; 18. Denis Seron:: Brentano on Appearance and Reality 169; 19. Alessandro Salice: Brentano on Negation and Nonexistence 178;
1.3: Value
20. Jonas Olson: Brentano’s Metaethics 187; 21.Lynn Pasquerella: Brentano’s Normative Ethics 196; 22. Wolfgang Huemer: Brentano on Beauty and Aesthetics 202; 23. Ion Tănăsescu: Brentano on Genius and Fantasy 210; 24. Richard Schaefer: Brentano’s Philosophy of Religion 216;
Part II: The Brentano School
25. Arnaud Dewalque: The Rise of the Brentano School 225; 26. Arnaud Dewalque: The Unity of the Brentano School 236;
2.1: Brentano’s Students
27. Laurent Cesalli and Kevin Mulligan: Marty and Brentano 251; 28. Denis Fisette: Stumpf and Brentano 264; 29. Johann Christian Marek: Meinong and Brentano 272; 30. Maria E. Reicher: Ehrenfels and Brentano 283;
31. Dermot Moran: Husserl and Brentano 293; 2.2: Arianna Betti: Twardowski and Brentano 305;
2.2: Students’ Students and Further Influences
33. Hynek Janoušek and Robin Rollinger: The Prague School 313; 34. Guillaume Fréchette: Bergman and Brentano 323; 35. Arianna Betti: Brentano and the Lvov-Warsaw School 334; 36. Wilhelm Baumgartner: The Innsbruck School 341; 37. Maria van der Schaar: Brentano, Stout and Moore 349; 38. Dale Jacquette: Chisholm and Brentano 358;
Notes on Contributors 365; Brentano Bibliography 368; Brentano Bibliography—Archival Material 371; References 372; Index 395-399.
———. 2017. "Brentano's Philosophical Program." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 21-32. New York: Routledge.
"Franz Brentano was not a systematic writer, but he was very much a systematic thinker.
Through his manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, dictations, and occasional published writings, one can discern a systematic, unified approach to the true, the good, and the beautiful. My goal here is to articulate explicitly this approach, and the philosophical program it reflects. The exercise requires going over big stretches of terrain with some efficiency; I will go just as deep into Brentano’s approaches to the true, the good, and the beautiful as is required to make explicit their structural unity.
The basic idea behind Brentano’s program is that there are three distinctive types of mental act that proprietarily target the true, the good, and the beautiful. To understand the true, the good, and the beautiful, we must obtain a clear grasp (i) of the distinctive mental acts targeting them and (ii) of success in such targeting. According to Brentano, the true is that which it is correct, or fitting, or appropriate to believe; the good is that which it is correct/fitting to love or like or approve of; and the beautiful is that with which it is correct/fitting to be delighted.(1) The next three sections develop and (do the minimum to) motivate each of these claims." (p. 21)
(1) The term Brentano prefers in this context is Richtig, most naturally translated as “correct” or “fitting.” But in one place he offers a number of synonyms—konvenient, passend, and entsprechend (Brentano 1969: 74)— which are more or less interchangeably translatable as “appropriate,” “suitable,” “fitting,” and “adequate.”
References
Brentano, Franz (1969). The Origins of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Trans. R. M. Chisholm and E. H. Schneewind. London: Routledge.
———. 2017. "Brentano's Classification of Mental Phenomena." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 97-102. New York: Routledge.
"In Chapter 3 of Book I of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano articulates what he takes to be the four most basic and central tasks of psychology. One of them is to discover the “fundamental classification” of mental phenomena. Brentano attends to this task in Chapters 5–9 of Book II of the Psychology, reprinted (with appendices) in 1911 as a standalone book (Brentano 1911a). The classification is further developed in an essay entitled “A Survey of So-Called Sensory and Noetic Objects of Inner Perception,” published posthumously in Brentano 1928/1981b, as well as in a 1907 dictation entitled “Loving and Hating,” reprinted in Brentano 1969." (p. 97)
References
Brentano, Franz (1911a). Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. All references are to the 1924 edition.
Brentano, Franz (1969). The Origins of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Trans. R. M. Chisholm and E. H. Schneewind. London: Routledge.
Brentano, Franz (1981b). Sensory and Noetic Consciousness. Trans. M. Schättle and L. L. McAlister. London: Routledge.
———. 2017. "Brentano on Judgment." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 103-109. New York: Routledge.
" “Judgment” is Brentano’s term for any mental state liable to be true or false. This includes not only the products of conceptual thought, such as belief, but also perceptual experiences, such as seeing that the window was left open. “Every perception counts as a judgment,” writes Brentano (1874: II, 50/1973a: 209). Accordingly, his theory of judgment is not exactly a theory of the same phenomenon we today call “judgment” but of a larger class of phenomena, one (perhaps the main) species of which is what we call “judgment”. Even if we keep thisin mind, though, the profound heterodoxy of Brentano’s theory of judgment is still striking.
(...)
Here I present this unified core of this highly original theory of judgment, which can be captured in terms of three main theses. The first is that, contrary to appearances, all judgments are existential judgments (§1). The second is that the existential force of judgment is indeed a force, or mode, or attitude— it does not come from the judgment’s content (§2). The third is that judgment is not a propositional attitude but an “objectual” attitude (§3)."
References
Brentano, Franz (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
———. 2017. "Brentano’s Concept of Mind: Underlying Nature, Reference-Fixing, and the Mark of the Mental." In Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy, edited by Lapointe, Sandra and Pincock, Christopher, 197-228. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
"1 Introduction
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 chapter, I offer a new interpretation of Brentano’s conception of the interrelations among 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." (p. 197)
———. 2017. "Brentano’s Evaluative-Attitudinal Account of Will and Emotion." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger no. 142:529-558.
"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 and creative, on the one hand, and strikingly plausible, upon reflection, on the other.
The contemporary literature on emotion is considerably larger and more contentious than that on the will. Accordingly, I will start with Brentano’s theory of the will, and demonstrate its plausibility against the more peaceful background of current-day discussions of desire (§1). Importantly, however, Brentano offers a somewhat unified account of will and emotion, so I will attempt to leverage the apparent plausibility of his account of will to argue for a similar plausibility in his account of emotion (§2). This will lead to the question of how will and emotion should be distinguished within the unified account – something Brentano has very interesting things to say about (§3)." (p. 529)
———. 2018. Brentano's Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value. New York: Oxford University Press.
"This is a book about the late-nineteenth-century/early-twentieth-century Austro-German philosopher Franz Brentano. It attempts to present Brentano’s philosophical system, especially as it pertains to the connection between mind and reality, in terms that would be natural to contemporary analytic philosophers; to develop Brentano’s central ideas where they are overly programmatic or do not take into account philosophical developments that have taken place since Brentano’s death a century ago; and to offer a partial defense of Brentano’s system as quite plausible and in any case extraordinarily creative and thought-provoking.
Why write a book about Brentano? For me personally, the primary motivation to study Brentano in detail has been the combination of creativity and plausibility I have found in his work. It seems to me filled with gems that are not so much under-appreciated as virtually unknown by contemporary analytic philosophers. To convince the reader of this is the mandate of the bulk of this book." (p. 1)
———. 2018. "Belief-that and Belief-in: Which Reductive Analysis?" In Non-Propositional Intentionality, edited by Gzrankowski, Alex and Montague, Michelle, 192-213. New York: Oxford University Press.
"On the face of it, some of our psychological attitudes are propositional and some are objectual.
(...)
Very few philosophers have held that in fact no attitudes are propositional—that all are objectual. Perhaps Hume held this view. One philosopher who certainly did is Franz Brentano. Brentano explicitly writes that ‘All mental references refer to things’ (Brentano 1911, 291), where a ‘thing’ is an individual object or concrete particular.
His argument for this cannot be appreciated without a detailed account of his entire philosophy of mind. Short on space, here I will restrict myself to his case for the thesis that judgment is an objectual attitude. This thesis would already be of first importance, since judgment and belief are customarily taken to be the paradigmatic propositional attitudes. This seems antecedently very plausible: you can love Jane, but
you cannot judge Jane (in the relevant sense) or judge that Jane. And yet, I will argue, Brentano’s case for an objectualist account of judgment is surprisingly compelling.
Although the case has some local holes in it, I will argue that they can be filled reasonably satisfactorily.
I start, in section 2, with some background on Brentano’s notion of judgment, as it emerges from his classification of mental states. In section 3, I offer an initial exposition of his objectualist account of judgment for analytic philosophers. In section 4, I reconstruct and tighten Brentano’s case for the objectualist account. In section 5, I consider some key objections." (pp. 192-193)
References
Brentano, F. C. (1874) Psychology from Empirical Standpoint, ed. O. Kraus, tr. A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and L. L. McAlister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973).
Brentano, F. C. (1911) Appendix to the Classification of Mental Phenomena. In Brentano 1874.
———. 2018. "Brentano’s Dual-Framing Theory of Consciousness." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 97:79-98.
Abstract: "Brentano’s theory of consciousness has garnered a surprising amount of attention in recent philosophy of mind (Thomasson 2000, Caston 2002, Hossack 2002, 2006, Kriegel 2003a, 2003b, 2009, Thomas 2003, Smith 2004, Zahavi 2004, Drummond 2006, Textor 2006, 2013). Here I argue for a novel interpretation of Brentano’s theory that casts it as more original than previously appreciated and yet quite plausible upon inspection. According to Brentano’s theory, as interpreted here, a conscious experience of a tree is a mental state that can be simultaneously thought of, or framed, equally accurately as (i) an awareness of a tree or (ii) an awareness of an awareness of a tree."
References
Caston, V. 2002. ‘Aristotle on Consciousness.’ Mind 111: 751–815.
Drummond, J. J. 2006. ‘The Case(s) of (Self-)Awareness.’ In U. Kriegel and K. Williford (eds.), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Hossack, K. 2002. ‘Self-Knowledge and Consciousness.’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102: 163–181.
Hossack, K. 2006. ‘Reid and Brentano on Consciousness.’ In M. Textor (ed.). The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy. London: Routledge.
Kriegel, U. 2003a. ‘Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an Argument.’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33: 103–132.
Kriegel, U. 2003b. ‘Consciousness, Higher-Order Content, and the Individuation of Vehicles.’ Synthese 134: 477–504.
Kriegel, U. 2009. Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, D. W. 2004. ‘Return to Consciousness.’ In his Mind World: Essays in Phenomenology and Ontology (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Textor, M. 2006. ‘Brentano (and some Neo-Brentanians) on Inner Consciousness.’ Dialectica 60: 411–432.
Textor, M. 2013. ‘Brentano on the Dual Relation of the Mental.’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12: 465–483.
Thomas, A. P. 2003. ‘An Adverbial Theory of Consciousness.’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2: 161–185.
Thomasson, A. L. 2000. ‘After Brentano: A One-Level Theory of Consciousness.’ European Journal of Philosophy 8: 190–209.
Zahavi, D. 2004. ‘Back to Brentano?’ Journal of Consciousness Studies 11: 66–87.
———. 2022. Franz Brentano: An Invitation to Philosophy.
Available for downlad at PhiArchive: https://philpapers.org/rec/KRIFBC
"The article is written to be understood without any background in philosophy, and in fact may double as an introduction to the various branches philosophy itself. Each section covers Brentano’s core ideas in one branch of philosophy, starting with the briefest exposition of the branch itself. This exposition occurs before the subsections of each sections begin, and may be skipped by more advanced readers. Note also that the sections are fairly modular, so the article need not be read in its entirety to make sense. For instance, sections 2-5 constitute something of a self-standing text, as do sections 5-8." (p. 4)
———. 2022. "The Epistemology of Intentionality: Notional Constituents vs. Direct Grasp." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Published online: 07 May 2021.
Abstract: "Franz Brentano is well known for highlighting the importance of intentionality, but he said curiously little about the nature of intentionality. According to Mark Textor, there is a deep reason for this: Brentano took intentionality to be a conceptual primitive the nature of which is revealed only in direct grasp. Although there is certainly textual support for this interpretation, it appears in tension with Brentano's repeated attempts to analyze intentionality in terms of ‘notional constituents’ – aspects of intentionality which cannot come apart in reality but which can be conceptually distinguished. After bringing out this tension, I explore some options for resolving it, ultimately offering my own favored interpretation."
———. 2023. "Précis of Brentano’s Philosophical System." European Journal of Philosophy:455-457.
"The purpose of my book Brentano’s Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value (henceforth, BPS) is to reconstruct Brentano’s attempt to answer his question, present a partial defense of the answer, offer some potential improvements on it, and also point to persistent difficulties it faces.
Below, I (a) speed-explain Brentano’s self-imposed constraint and its motivation, (b) reconstruct Brentano’s account of the real in light of it, and (c) reconstruct Brentano’s corresponding account of the valuable. These three tasks correspond roughly to BPS’s three parts: ‘Mind,’ ‘Being,’ and ‘Value.’"(p. 455)
Kroon, Frederick. 2013. "Intentional Objects, Pretence, and the Quasi-Relational Nature of Mental Phenomena: A New Look at Brentano on Intentionality." International Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 21:377-393.
Abstract: "Brentano famously changed his mind about intentionality between the 1874 and 1911 editions of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (PES).
The 1911 edition repudiates the 1874 view that to think about something is to stand in a relation to something that is within in the mind, and holds instead that intentionality is only like a relation (it is ‘quasi-relational’).
Despite this, Brentano still insists that mental activity involves ‘the reference to something as an object’, much as he did in the 1874 edition of PES. The question is what Brentano might have meant by this, given that he rejects a relational account of intentionality. The present paper suggests an answer. It draws on recent work on pretence theory to provide a model of Brentano’s notion of the quasi-relational nature of mental phenomena, as well as of the notion of mental reference to an object, and argues that the model helps to explain why Brentano might have been able discern a clear continuity between the views of the 1874 and 1911 editions of PES, despite the differences."
Kujundzic, Neb. 2012. "The Power of Abstraction: Brentano, Husserl and the Göttingen Students." Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale no. 16:191-200.
Abstract: "A quick look into the index of Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint reveals that all references to “abstract terms” occur only in the appendix (taken from Brentano’s “Nachlass” essays).
What should we make of this? Was it the case that the inquiry into abstract, as well as non‐existent, objects came as an afterthought to Brentano? Or was he all too aware of the consequences of such investigations?
Furthermore, was it largely the absence of such inquiry that prompted Husserl and his early students in Göttingen, such as Daubert and Reinach, to develop a deep ontological commitment to entities he refers to as “abstract” or “ideal”?"
Küng, Guido. 1986. "Brentano and Ingarden on the Experience and Cognition of Values." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:57-67.
Land, J. P. N. 1876. "Brentano's Logical Innovations." Mind no. 1:289-292.
"It will hardly be necessary to mark the passages of Mill's writings which may have led the Austrian Professor to his starting-point.
Let me observe at once that the main feature of his reconstruction of logical doctrine consists in reducing all categorical propositions to what he calls existential propositions, doing away with the familiar distinction between subject and predicate terms. Where we say Some man is sick, he gives as a substitute, There is a sick man.
Instead of No stone is alive, he puts There is not a live stone. On the other hand, he proposes to improve on the statement Some man is not learned by welding together the negative and the predicate term, and asserting There is an unlearned man. Finally, All men are mortal is to be expressed in his system There is not an immortal man. That is to say, he simply affirms or denies the existence of some object having either two positive qualifications, or one positive together with one negative." (p. 289)
Leclercq, Bruno. 2020. "Foundational Mereology as a Logical Tool for Descriptive Psychology." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 125-148. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.
Abstract: "Franz Brentano maintains that consciousness is experienced as a whole and can only be analyzed into “components” through theoretical distinctions. And he claims that some mereology provides the conceptual tools required by such a holistic conception of mind. But of course, this cannot be classical extensional mereology, for which wholes are nothing but the sum of their parts. Brentano’s conception of mind requires some “foundational mereology” like the one Husserl sketched in his third Logical investigation. In the present paper, we use Gilbert Null’s formalization of this foundational mereology in order to investigate the possible relations between what Brentano names the “primary” and “secondary” acts and distinguish thereby several theoretical stands that can be taken on this point, some of them being close to Brentano’s own views and some of them challenging it."
References
Null, G. 2007a. The Ontology of Intentionality I. Husserl Studies 23: 33–69.
———. 2007b. The Ontology of Intentionality II. Husserl Studies 23: 119–159.
Leung, Ka-Wing. 2021. "Intra‐mental or intra‐cranial? On Brentano's concept of immanent object." European Journal of Philosophy no. 29:1039-1059.
Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to elucidate Franz Brentano's concept of immanent object through his own words and from his own perspective. The prevalent account of Brentano's revival of intentionality, his initial failure to distinguish between object and content, and his wrong-headed immanentism, is largely derived from his students. Brentano's objection to it, although well known, is seldom heeded. In fact, plenty of guidelines have been provided by Brentano himself in his writings on how his concept of immanent object is to be understood. I begin with his distinction between two senses of “object,” which, I argue, must be clearly set apart from distinction between two modes of object. I then examine three different interpretations of the term “in-existence”: the locative, the inherentist, and the objective interpretation. In the end, after dismissing the first two interpretations, I argue that Brentano is best understood as maintaining an objective and deflationary account of mental in-existence."
Libardi, Massimo. 1996. "Franz Brentano (1838-1917)." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 25-79. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
"Still today, reconstruction of Brentano' s thought is haphazard and incomplete.
A first difficulty arises because so little of his work has found its way into print; a lack of source material exacerbated by the fact that much of his vast NachlaJ3 has never been published. (14)
One reason for the comparative neglect of Brentano's thought is that he concentrated on questions which the text-books on nineteenth-century philosophy dismiss as minor, focusing their attention instead on theories and thinkers who drew their inspiration from the dissolution of the idealist systems or from the intricacies of neo-Kantianism. Brentano stands at the confluence of currents of thought - such as the Aristotelian Renaissance or, at least in certain respects, Italian pragmatism - which have been pushed into the background by the current interpretation of the history of philosophy.
When Brentano was engaged in writing the two volumes of Psychologie, his intention was to follow it with four further books giving more detailed treatment to the properties of and the laws pertaining to the three fundamental classes of psychic phenomena, and to the relationships between psychic and physical phenomena. His project never came to fruition, however, and today commentators use Psychologie 1 to denote Oskar Kraus's 1924 edition of Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, which includes volume 1 and chapters 1-4 of volume 2 of the 1874 Psychologie. Psychologie 2 denotes Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene, the second edition by Oskar Kraus, which contains published and unpublished essays from Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene of 1911 and chapters 5-9 from the second volume of the 1874 Psychologie plus some appendixes. Psychologie 3 is used ot denote Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein (taken from the Nachlass) in its 1968 edition by Mayer-Hillebrand." (p. 29)
Łukasiewicz, Dariusz. 2007. "Brentano's theory of judgment and the Lvov-Warsaw School." Ruch Filozoficzny no. 1:33-47.
"I will discuss the reception of Franz Brentano’s philosophy in Poland, in particular, the reception of Brentano’s ideas among representatives of the Lvov - Warsaw School. However, I would like to confine myself to some Brentano’s ideas: his conception of judgment and its philosophical consequences. I will do this, firstly, because it might be perhaps interesting to find in Brentano’s heritage one idea which is on the one hand the most characteristic to Brentano and, on the other hand, exerted wide and essential influence on the Polish philosophy. Secondly, the conception of judgment in itself assumes, or implies, theories of truth, values, knowledge, theories of objects, and it also has importance for philosophical foundations of logic." (p. 33, a note omitted)
Macnamara, John. 1993. "Cognitive psychology and the rejection of Brentano." Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour no. 23:117-137.
"In Psychology from an empirical standpoint Franz Brentano presented a concept of cognitive psychology that contrasts sharply with present day concepts of the subject. It is my theme that Brentano came much closer than modern psychologists to a true understanding of cognition. The psychological community turned its back on Brentano partly because it failed to comprehend him and partly because Brentano’s cognitive psychology did not fit in with strong positivist currents that swept psychologists in a different direction. Besides there was a concerted effort by the next generation of psychologists to make psychological research fit the model of biological research. As a result much of what has passed and still passes as cognition misses the heart of the matter. One way forward is to re-examine Brentano’s ideas and contrast them with those which at present hold sway. This will, I believe, not only lead to a juster appreciation of the situation but it will also indicate how cognitive psychology ought to be studied. Here I will concentrate on the first part of this task, on an examination of Brentano’s thought, and only adumbrate the implications for the study of cognition." (p. 117)
Marchesi, Andrea. 2019. "Brentanian Inner Consciousness and the Infinite Regress Problem." Dialectica no. 73:129-147.
Abstract: "By “Brentanian inner consciousness” I mean the conception of inner consciousness developed by Franz Brentano. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to present Brentano’s account of inner consciousness; second, to discuss this account in light of the mereology outlined by Brentano himself; and third, to decide whether this account incurs an infinite regress. In this regard, I distinguish two kinds of infinite regress: external infinite regress and internal infinite regress. I contend that the most plausible reading of Brentano’s account is the so-called fusion thesis, and I argue that internal infinite regress turns out to be inherent to Brentanian inner consciousness."
———. 2022. "A Systematic Reconstruction of Brentano’s Theory of Consciousness." Topoi no. 41:123-132.
Abstract: "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 arguethat 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."
Margolis, Joseph. 2001. "Reflections on intentionality." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 131-148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
"In fact, Brentano provides a masterly clarification of his account of intentional “activities” in the Appendix to The Classification of Mental Phenomena (in effect, the new title for Book Two of the Psychology), which was prepared for inclusion in the 1911 edition (and is included in the English translation of the Psychology). This was the principal source, for instance, on which Tadeusz Kotarbinski was led to affirm (in his generous way) that “Brentano was the first to develop a reistic philosophy, more than a decade before the system had a name.”(7) Kotarbinski was right in what he says here: the matter is quite important, as we shall see, in simplifying Brentano’s general account in the best sense, as well as in distinguishing Brentano’s best view (by my own persuasion) from the views of a bewilderingly diffuse army of subsequent discussants who have taken the notion into extravagant conceptual thickets." (pp. 132-133).
(7) Tadeusz Kotarbinski, “Franz Brentano as Reist,” in, ed., Linda L. McAlister, The Philosophy of Brentano (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1976), p. 200.
Marques de Carvalho, Joelma. 2015. "Franz Brentano’s higher-order theories of consciousness." Argumentos no. 7:77-84.
Abstract: "This article aims at giving a brief comment on Denis Fisette’s interpretation of Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness by Franz Brentano, where consciousness has been seen as a form of intransitive self-consciousness being intrinsic to the agent. In agreement with that interpretation, I want to present a few more basic arguments in order to support that assumption such as, for example, some epistemic thoughts by Brentano given in his books Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874) and Die Deskriptive Psychologie (1982). The present paper has been divided into five sections. The first section deals with the initial understanding of psychology in Brentano. Section two deals with the concepts of consciousness and intentionality. In the third section, the classification of mental phenomena will be presented. Section four refers to the concept of descriptive psychology or phenomenology and finally, I will show the consequences of Brentano’s epistemic and ontological arguments related to his concept of consciousness."
Marras, Ausonio. 1974. "The Scholastic roots of Brentano's conception of intentionality." Rassegna di Scienze Filosofiche no. 1:213-226.
Reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 128-139.
"The aim of this paper is to show, contrary to Spiegelberg’s contention, that there is in fact a very intimate connection between the two conceptions of psychological phenomena contained in Brentano’s previously quoted passage[*], although no attempt shall be made here to determine the extent to which Brentano was actually aware of this connection. I shall hold, essentially, that the idea of reference to an object not only is not incompatible with the scholastic idea of intentional inexistence, but is in fact constitutive of that very idea. I shall also attempt to discredit an assumption which I believe underlies Spiegelberg’s comments in the quotation before the last quotation, and that is that the doctrine of intentional inexistence commits scholastic thought to some form of immanentistic epistemology (opposed, at least in spirit, to Brentano’s ‘realistic’ epistemology), in that it fails, allegedly, to give a coherent account of the independent existence of the object known." (pp. 129-130)
[*] Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, English edition edited by Linda L. McAlister, trans. D.B. Terrell, Antos C. Rancurello, and Linda L. McAlister (London and New York, 1973), p. 88.
Martin, Wayne M. 2008. Theories of Judgment: Psychology, Logic, Phenomenology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 3 § 5: Thetic logic, pp. 63-73.
"We shall return below to consider the contribution of the phenomenological tradition to the problems of judgment, but our interest here is rather in Brentano’s work as a logician. Brentano’s logical doctrines have not been widely discussed, and the neglect is in retrospect explicable. His most detailed logical writings were published only posthumously in 1956, and his influence and accomplishment in this area, though significant, were doubly eclipsed: first by his role in the emergence of a distinctively phenomenological school, and then by the broader logical revolution to which Brentano had contributed but which ultimately overswept him.
(Brentano’s main logical doctrines were first set out in 1874, and his calculus was elaborated in detail by 1877; Frege’s Begriffsschrift was published in 1879.) Nonetheless, Brentano’s logical accomplishments merit our attention. Why? Because in Brentano’s logic the dispute over the logical representation of existential judgments turns subversive, directly challenging the longstanding characterization of judgment as synthesis.
Brentano and his collaborators formulated the first modern system of inference that systematically eschewed any appeal to judgment as a synthesis of representational content." (p. 63, a note omitted)
(34) For some exceptions to the general neglect of Brentano’s logic, see Chisholm 1982, and important discussions by Simons 1984 and 1987, and the Italian logician Roberto Poli 1993, 1998. By contrast, important studies of the reform of logic in this period leave Brentano entirely out of account (Dummett 1993, Willard 1984), and Barry Smith’s account of Brentano’s contributions to the tradition he calls ‘‘Austrian Philosophy’’ (1994) skims over Brentano’s logical contributions. Two essays by Burnham Terrell (1976, 1978) deal with Brentano’s treatment of quantification; for replies see Fischer and Miller 1976 and Chisholm 1976. Perhaps the most intriguing appropriation of Brentano’s logical proposals is Kuroda 1972, which uses Brentanian logic in the analysis of Japanese syntax, and is still regularly cited in linguistics research. See, e.g., Sasse 1987, Ladusaw 1994, McNally 1997, 1998.
References
Brentano, Franz. 1870–77: Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, published posthumously in an edition edited by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (Bern: Francke, 1956)
_________ 1874: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig: Dunker und Humblot); citations refer to the pagination of the English translation by L. McAlister et al. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)
———. 2010. "Fichte's Logical Legacy: Thetic Judgment from the Wissenschaftslehre to Brentano." In Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, edited by Waibel, Violetta L., Breazeale, Daniel and Rockmore, Tom, 379-406. Berlin: de Gruyter.
"It is not usual to think of Fichte as a logician, nor indeed to think of him as leaving a legacy that shaped the subsequent history of symbolic logic. But I argue here that there is such a legacy, and that Fichte formulated an agenda in formal logic that his students (and their students in turn) used to spark a logical revolution. That revolution arguably reached its culmination in the logical writings of Franz Brentano, better known as a founding figure of the phenomenological movement. In logical writings that were published only posthumously, but that were fully elaborated in the decade prior to the publication of Frege's Begriffschrift, Brentano (together with his collaborator Anton Marty) developed a radically innovative logical calculus that was explicitly designed to overthrow the orthodox logical analysis of judgment and inference. At the center of this revolution was the notion of thetic judgment [thetische Urteil], a form of judgment upon which Fichte had insisted in the first published version of the Wissenschaftslehre, and which his students subsequently set out to accommodate within the framework provided by Kant's general logic. But thetic judgment proved resistant to such assimilation, and it was left to Brentano to use the analysis of thetic judgment in his attempt to topple a long-standing logical tradition.
In what follows I reconstruct the main episodes in this century-long drama in the logical theory of judgment. My discussion is divided into four sections. I begin with a review of Fichte's most explicit call for logical revolution, together with his introduction of the notion of thetic judgment, set against the backdrop of an anomaly within Kant's logical commitments. In the second section I trace the logical treatment of this anomaly among Fichte's philosophical progeny, in particular Johann Friedrich Herbart and Moritz Drobisch. The third section explores Brentano's position, and his more radical solution to the anomaly bequeathed by Kant. In the final section I return to Fichte, to consider to what degree these subsequent developments remained faithful to the logical agenda Fichte had projected." (pp. 379-380)
Massin, Olivier. 2018. "Brentanian Continua." Brentano Studien no. 16:229-276.
Abstract: "The paper presents, criticizes and proposes some fixes to Brentano’s theory of continuity (that is, absence of gaps). Brentano’s key idea is that continua consists of boundaries (and not of points) and that their continuity is guaranteed by the coincidence of these boundaries. After having presented Brentano’s account, I argue that it is beset by two main problems. First, if continua consist only of coinciding boundaries, continua can never be extended. Second, if continua involve coinciding boundaries, there must be some underlying continua in which such a coincidence takes place. But then the continuity of such underlying continua remains unaccounted for.
To fix these two problems, I argue that we should distinguish the question of the continuity of what is in space and time, from the question of the continuity of space and time themselves. While the continuity of what is in space and time is correctly explained by boundary-coincidence (along Brentano’s lines), I suggest that the continuity of space and time themselves is explained not by boundary-coincidence but by a primitive relation of continuity (at which Brentano appears to hint in more neglected places)."
Massin, Olivier, and Hämmerli, Marion. 2017. "Is Purple a Red and Blue Chessboard? Brentano on Colour Mixtures." The Monist no. 100:37-63.
Abstract: "Can we maintain that purple seems composed of red and blue without giving up the impenetrability of the red and blue parts that compose it? Brentano thinks we can. Purple, according to him, is a chessboard of red and blue tiles which, although individually too small to be perceived, are together indistinctly perceived within the purple. After a presentation of Brentano’s solution, we raise two objections to it. First, Brentano’s solution commits him to unperceivable intentional objects (the chessboard’s tiles). Second, his chessboard account fails in the end to explain the phenomenal spatial continuity of compound colours. We finally sketch an alternative account of compound colours, which, while holding fast to their phenomenal compoundedness and to the impenetrability of colours, avoids introducing inaccessible intentional objects and compromising on the continuity of the purple. According to our proposal, instead of being indistinctly perceived spatial parts of the purple, red and blue are distinctly perceived nonspatial parts of it."
Mayer-Hillebrand, Franziska. 1963. "Remarks Concerning the Interpretation of the Philosophy of Franz Brentano: A Reply to Dr. Srzednicki." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 23:438-444.
"I feel it necessary to comment upon Dr. J. T. Srzednicki's article in the March, 1962, issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, in which he sets forth his interpretation of the correct way of editing Franz Brentano's scientific manuscripts and of making the philosopher's teachings known in wider areas. Srzednicki criticizes in particular the way in which A. Kastil and I have attempted to reproduce Brentano's trains of thought; he refers to Kastil's Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos (Francke-VerlagB, ern 1951) and to my edition of Brentano's Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil (Francke-Verlag, Bern 1956)."
(...)
"As editor of the Brentano manuscripts since Kastil's death in 1950, I believe it to be my duty to place the merits of my revered teacher, A. Kastil, into the proper light, as well as to explain the method which I, in referring to Brentano's explicit wish, used in Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, and to reject Srzednicki's criticisms." (p. 438)
McAlister, Linda Lopez. 1970. "Franz Brentano and intentional inexistence." Journal of History of Philosophy no. 8:423-430.
"Franz Brentano, in his important early work Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), maintains that all human experience is divided into two classes: mental phenomena and physical phenomena,(1) It is then incumbent upon him to show how these two classes of phenomena are to be distinguished one from another.
In Book II, Chapter 1, of the Psychologie, he devotes himself to this task, and in the course of the chapter he surveys several different ways of making out the distinction.
After enumerating examples of mental phenomena and of physical phenomena, he searches for defining characteristics of mental phenomena. He finds several characteristics which he thinks all mental phenomena have and all physical phenomena lack or vice versa, but far and away the most important of these, in Brentano's estimation, and the one whdch has aroused the most interest on the part of later philosophers, is what he calls "intentional inexistence,"(2) (or merely "intentional existence"; the prefix "in-" does not indicate negation but rathor location, indicating existence in the mind)." (p. 423)
(1) i Oskar Kraus, e.d., 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1924), I, 109.
(2) Psych. I, 137.
———. 1975. "Chisholm and Brentano on intentionality." The Review of Metaphysics no. 28:328-338.
Reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 151-159.
"I believe, however, that Chisholm’s interpretation of Brentano’s intentionality doctrine is not wholly accurate, and that while the doctrine he sets forth as Brentano’s is an interesting and provocative one, it gives a
misleading impression of what Brentano’s views actually were, by obscuring almost entirely the specific nature of the question Brentano was trying to solve, and by misreading the answer Brentano gave. If only for the sake of historical accuracy a corrective should be given, but of course, taking another look at Brentano’s particular way of construing the mind/body problem and the solution he put forth may also prove to be suggestive in its own right.
In this paper I will first show that there is no textual basis for theinterpretation of Brentano’s intentionality doctrine that Chisholm gives, and I will discuss briefly how, in light of that fact, Chisholm might have thought that there was. Then I will point out instances in which the version of intentionality that Chisholm attributes to Brentano conflicts with other views that Brentano held at the time. Out of these discussions emerges a different interpretation of Brentano’s intentionality thesis, and, I hope, a more accurate one." (p. 152)
———, ed. 1976. The Philosophy of Brentano. London: Duckworth.
Contents: Editor's Introduction VII-IX; Oskar Kraus: Biographical sketch of Franz Brentano 1; Carl Stumpf: Reminiscences of Franz Brentano 10; Edmund Husserl: Reminiscences of Franz Brentano 47; Étienne Gilson: Brentano's interpretation of medieval philosophy 56; Lucie Gilson: Franz Brentano on science and philosophy 68; E. B. Titchener: Brentano and Wundt: empirical and experimental psychology 80; Roderick Chisholm: Brentano's descriptive psychology 91; Thomas De Boer: The descriptive method of Franz Brentano: its two functions and their significance for phenomenology 101; Herbert Spiegelberg: Intention and intentionality in the Scholastics, Brentano and Husserl 108; Ausonio Marras: Scholastic roots of Brentano's conception of intentionality 128; Roderick Chisholm: Intentional inexistence 140; Linda McAlister: Chisholm and Brentano on intentionality 151; Roderick Chisholm: Brentano's theory of correct and incorrect emotion 160; George Edward Moore: Review of Franz Brentano's The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong 176; Gabriel Franks: Was G. E. Moore mistaken about Brentano? 182; Tadeusz Kotarbinski: Franz Brentano as Reist 194; D. B. Terrell: Brentano's argument for Reismus 204; Hugo Bergmann: Brentano's theory of induction 213; Oskar Kraus: Toward a phenomenognosy of time consciousness 224; Bibliography of the published writings of Brentano: 240; Bibliography of works on Brentano: 248; Index of names 255; General Index 259-262.
———. 1979. "A Quasi-Brentanian Theory of Objects." The Journal of Philosophy no. 76:662-663.
"Recently there has been renewed interest in developing theories of nonexistent objects from such people as the Routleys and Terence Parsons. They often say they are reviving or reconstructing Meinong's Theory of Objects. What they then proceed to do is to reconstruct only a small fragment of his theory.
Parsons, for example, calls his a "quasi-Meinongian" theory, but then says, "The theory I want to discuss here is expressly limited to concrete objects, some of which exist and some of which do not" (655)."
(...)
"Parsons offers no justification for this limitation. If he did, he might want to argue that concrete objects are the only possible objects of mental acts. Such arguments were developed by Brentano in reaction against Meinong's theory of objects in the early part of the century. In fact, Parsons' theory seems to me more accurately described as a "quasi-Brentanian theory" than as a "quasi-Meinongian" one. That is because Brentano's later philosophy, which is called Reism, can be viewed, like Parsons', as a theory of objects which is limited to concrete objects, both existent and nonexistent." (p. 662)
References
Terence Parsons, The Methodology of Nonexistence, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 76, No. 11, (Nov., 1979), pp. 649-662.
———. 1982. The Development of Franz Brentano's Ethics. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
"There are two major periods in the philosophical thought of Franz Brentano (1838-1917).
(...)
Similarly, there are two distinct discernible periods in Brentano's thought concerning ethical theory. Unfortunately, Brentano's ethical writings have never been presented in such a way that this development from the earlier to the later period would be apparent. On the contrary, the manner in which Brentano's ethical works have been edited serves to obscure the fact that there was such a development rather than exhibit this fact. Only one work on ethics was published during Brentano's lifetime, his lecture Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis,(2) wherein he expounds what I shall call his earlier ethical theory. His later moral philosophy, which began to evolve around the turn of the century, and which reflects the changes taking place in his philosophical thought generally, was not set out by Brentano in any published or polished form. It can, however, be pieced together from references in letters and in papers from his extensive Nachlass.(3) It is also reflected in a work published posthumously under the title Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik. (4) It is the form of editing adopted for this book which does so much to obscure the development of Brentano's ethics. The text is basically that of Brentano's lectures on ethics delivered at the University of Vienna between 1876 and 1894, and so it represents in a more detailed form than does Ursprung Brentano's early ethical philosophy. But Professor Mayer-Hillebrand and Professor Alfred Kastil, who worked on this material before her, have chosen to incorporate into this early text Brentano's later ethical views as well, and they have apparently tried to edit out all those sections of the early text which do not agree with these later views. In short they have tried to turn an early text into a later one by virtually rewntmg it in places. The resulting book is, needless to say, somewhat misleading, for it gives the impression that Brentano had expounded the same ethical theory throughout his life.
In this dissertation I shall try to erase this impression by tracing the development of Brentano's ethics from the earlier to the later period. For the early period my main sources are Ursprung andmicrofilms of the early ethics lectures. I have used Grundlegung when its text has not been altered significantly by the editors to conform to Brentano's later views. This entailed checking the entire text against the microfilms of the original lecture notes.(5)
When the text had been altered in Grundlegung, I relied on the original texts. For Brentano's later ethical theory I relied mostly on the materials from the Nachlass especially upon a recently published selection of later letters and essays entitled Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, edited by Professor Mayer-Hillebrand.(6)
In addition to tracing the development of Brentano's ethics and trying to analyze the reasons behind this development, I have tried to present background information concerning his methodology, psychology, epistemology, etc. sufficient for an understanding of his philosophy. I give interpretations of those passages which seem to me to call for further elucidation and I include critical commentary on the major ethical positions Brentano espouses and on some other points as well." (pp. 1-3)
(2) (Leipzig, 1889) - hereafter cited as Ursprung. All references are to the 3rd edition, Oskar Kraus, ed. (Leipzig, 1934).
(3) The papers, fragments, dictations, etc. left unpublished by Brentano at his death have been preserved on twenty-seven rolls of microfilm by the philosopher's son Dr. J.C.M. Brentano and the Franz Brentano Foundation. See Dr. Brentano's article "The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano", Revue International de Philosophie,XX, No, 78 (1966), 476-484.
(4) Ed. Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (Bern, 1952)--hereafter cited as Grundlegung. Translated as The Foundation and Construction of Ethics, Elizabeth Huges Schneewind (London, 1973).
(5) I am indebted to the Franz Brentano Foundation for making these films available to me by presenting them as a gift to the Olin Library, Cornell University.
(6) (Bern, 1966).
———. 2004. "Brentano's epistemology." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 149-167. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
"In this chapter, I will set out what I take to be the basic tenets of Franz Brentano’s epistemology. This seemingly simple task is a crucial one because virtually every other aspect of Brentano’s philosophy uses his epistemology as a starting point and is structured in the same way. As the title of his major published work, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, suggests, Brentano saw himself as an empiricist; his account of knowledge, belief and other epistemological concepts is therefore constructed from the building blocks, so to speak, of the phenomena of experience." (p. 149)
McDonnell, Cyril. 2006. "Brentano’s Revaluation of the Scholastic Concept of Intentionality into a Root-Concept of Descriptive Psychology." Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society:124-171.
Abstract: "It is generally acknowledged that it is principally due to Brentano and his students, in particular Husserl, that the medieval-scholastic terminology of ‘intentional act’ and ‘intentional object’ re-gained widespread currency in philosophical circles in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This paper examines Brentano’s original re-introduction and revaluation of the Scholastic concept of intentionality into a root-concept of descriptive psychology. It concentrates on (1) Brentano’s modification of the Scholastic concept of object-relatedness of the will to depict the object-relatedness of all psychical-act experiences in consciousness, (2) Brentano’s modification of the Scholastic concept of the abstracted form of sense residing intentionally in the soul of the knower to depict the directly intended object of
consciousness, and (3) the significance of these modifications for understanding what commentators now call ‘Brentano’s thesis’. It notes that Brentano develops not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality both of which are entirely unScholastic. It also notes, however, that part of the original meaning of the metaphysical distinction that the Scholastics drew between ‘intentional indwelling’ (inesse intentionale) and ‘real being’ (esse naturale) continues to play a critical role in Brentano’s revision of the concept of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) and in his lecture courses delivered at Vienna University on Descriptive Psychology (1887-91), and that this part of the original meaning of the Scholastic concept of intentionality remains both alive and intact in Brentano’s 1874 study and in Husserl’s (in)famous transcendental reduction of Ideas I (1913). Thus the paper argues that identifying what Brentano accepts, rejects, and adds to the original Scholastic concepts of ‘intentional act’ and ‘the intentional indwelling of an object’ cannot be evaded in the proper elucidation and evaluation of ‘Brentano’s thesis’."
———. 2006. "Brentano’s Modification of the Medieval-Scholastic Concept of ‘Intentional Inexistence’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874)." Maynooth Philosophical Papers no. 3:55-74.
Abstract: "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."
(1) According to Herbert Spiegelberg: ‘It is true that when he [Brentano] uses the adjective “intentional” [in his 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, qualifying the kind of existence characteristic of the objects of consciousness, as is evident from the context] he still betrays traces of the scholastic doctrine about the immanence of the object known within the soul. But it was this very doctrine about the immanence of the object of knowledge in the soul which Brentano came to reject during what Brentano scholars call the crisis of immanence (“Immanenzkrise”) of 1905.’ The Phenomenological Movement: a Historical Introduction (3rd revised and enlarged edition, with the collaboration of Karl Schuhman, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), p. 48, note 19. Thus it is possible for Brentano, whilst rejecting the immanent object theory of intentionality, to still defend the ‘intentional acts’ of consciousness after 1905, though ‘as far as I [Spiegelberg] can make out, even the term “intentional” disappears from Brentano’s psychological vocabulary (ibid.).’
(2) Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. by Antos. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell & Linda L. McAlister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973; Routledge, 1995), p. 88—henceforth abbreviated as PES in notes; Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig, 1874).
———. 2015. "Understanding and Assessing “Brentano’s Thesis” in Light of His Modification of the Scholastic Concept of Intentionality." Brentano Studien no. 13:153-181.
Abstract: "This paper investigates Brentano’s modification of the Scholastic concept of intentionality in his elaboration of his thesis on the intentionality of consciousness. It argues that though ‘Brentano’s thesis’ cannot be fully understood without reference to the original Scholastic concept, Brentano also gives this concept new meaning in his elaboration of not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality, one concerning the intentional indwelling of an object in consciousness and another concerning the relatedness of psychical-act experiences to their objects, both of which are entirely unscholastic."
———. 2017. "Brentano’s New Understanding of Psychology in Light of His Reading of English Empiricists." Brentano Studien no. 15:263-290.
"In this article, I wish to examine some of the main ideas that Brentano borrowed in part or in full from those ‘most eminent English psychologists of the empiricist school’(8) that are of most relevance to an understanding and evaluation of Brentano’s new view of ‘psychology’ ‘from an empirical standpoint’. Of pivotal importance to the ‘investigations’ which Brentano unfurls in PES [Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint] is a distinction which he draws between the ‘inner perception of physical phenomena’ and ‘outer perception of physical phenomena’, a distinction, as we shall see, he found in the ‘English empiricists’ whom he read. This has an important bearing on understanding Brentano’s famous re-introduction and appeal to ‘what the Scholastics of the Middle-ages called the intentional (or mental) in-existence of an object’ as the mark of ‘our own psychical phenomena’ in Book II ‘Psychical Phenomena In General’ of PES because, as Brentano explicitly remarks, ‘no physical phenomenon [by comparison to our own psychical phenomena] exhibits anything like it’.(9) In this article, therefore, I will first address the main reasons for Brentano’s general change of views about the science of psychology and then assess the significance of the ‘English empiricists’ in understanding and evaluating his use of the concept of intentionality to distinguish ‘psychical phenomena’ from ‘physical phenomena’." (p. 265)
(8) PES, p. 145. See, also, pp. 13–14, p. 80, and p. 94.
(9) PES, pp. 88–89.
Melandri, Enzo. 1987. "The 'Analogia Entis' according to Franz Brentano: A Speculative-Grammatical Analysis of Aristotle's 'Metaphysics'." Topoi no. 6:51-58.
"It is to Brentano's credit that he, developing a well-known thesis of Trendelenburg, radicalized the indirect way in which Aristotle addresses the ontological problem, to repropose it in terms which it is not abusive to define of speculative grammar. Trendelenburg(4) would have been the first one to notice, among the moderns, that in Aristotle if one thing is essentially predicated of another so that name and concept of the predicate applies to it, then this occurs in a grammatically different form than if the predicate merely gives its name to the subject without being of the essence of the subject. (5)
And it is Brentano himself who speaks of Trendelenburg's peculiar ability to exploit the "speculative content" of the ancient thinkers by starting with the affinity that such content often has with the grammatical peculiarities of "linguistic forms". (6)" (p. 52)
(4) 4 A. Trendelenburg, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, I, Berlin 1846, in F. Brentano, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, Freiburg im Breisgau 1862, Ch. V, § 15.
(5) F. Brentano, op. cit., p. 185. F. Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, ed. and transl, by R. George, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, University of California Press, 1975 pp. 123-24.
(6) Op. cit., ib.
Mendelovici, Angela. 2021. "Brentano on Phenomenal and Transitive Consciousness, Unconscious Consciousness, and Phenomenal Intentionality." European Journal of Philosophy no. 1:1-10.
Abstract: "In Brentano’s Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value, Uriah Kriegel argues that Brentano’s work forms a “live philosophical program” (p. 14, italics omitted) that contemporary philosophy has much to learn from and that is promising and largely correct. To this end, Kriegel argues that Brentano’s notion of consciousness is the contemporary notion of phenomenal consciousness, that Brentano’s rejection of unconscious mentality is a grave mistake that can be fairly neatly excised from his overall view, and that Brentano’s notion of intentionality is the contemporary notion of phenomenal intentionality. This paper raises some doubts about these claims, suggesting that Brentano’s notion of consciousness might more closely align with the contemporary notion of transitive consciousness than with that of phenomenal consciousness, that Brentano’s rejection of unconscious mentality cannot be so easily excised from his overall view but that it is not such a grave mistake, and that Brentano’s notion of intentionality may not be that of phenomenal intentionality but rather that of generic abountness. I wrap up by considering the extent to which we might agree with Kriegel that Brentano’s work forms a live philosophical program that contemporary philosophy has much to learn from."
Méndez-Martínez, Jorge Luis. 2020. "Sound Ontology and the Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time." Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology no. 9:184-215.
Abstract: "Both Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl addressed sound while trying to explain the inner consciousness of time and gave to it the status of a supporting example. Although their inquiries were not aimed at clarifying in detail the nature of the auditory experience or sounds themselves, they made some interesting observations that can contribute to the current philosophical discussion on sounds.
On the other hand, in analytic philosophy, while inquiring the nature of sounds, their location, auditory experience or the audible qualities and so on, the representatives of that trend of thought have remained silent about the depiction of sound and the auditory phenomena in the phenomenological tradition. The paper’s intention is to relate both endeavours, yet the perspective carried out is that of analytic philosophy and, thus, I pay special attention to conceptual analysis as a methodological framework.
In this sense, I first explain what sound ontology is in the context of analytic philosophy and the views that it encompasses—namely, the Property View (PV), the Wave View (WV) and the Event View (EV)—. Secondly, I address the problems it entails, emphasising that of sound individuation. In a third section, I propose the possibly controversial conjunction of a “Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time” (for short “Brentano-Husserl analysis”) and outline the commonalities of both authors, without ignoring its discrepancies. My main focus is Husserl’s 1905 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins. While addressing the Brentano-Husserl analysis, I elaborate on the problem of temporal and spatial extension (Raumlichkeit and Zeitlichkeit, respectively) of both consciousness and sound. Such comparison is a key one, since after these two developments, one can notice some theoretical movements concerning the shift of attention from sounds to the unity of consciousness, and how they mirror each other. After examining the controversial claims concerning the temporal and spatial extension of both consciousness and sound, I argue in the concluding paragraphs that while considering the accounts of sound ontology, the Brentano-Husserl analysis would probably endorse a Property View and that this could have interesting consequences for the issue of Sound Individuation."
Mezei, Balasz. 2000. "Brentano and Husserl on the History of Philosophy." Brentano Studien no. 8:81-94.
Abstract: "A particular subject-matter in Franz Brentano's philosophy is his approach to the history of philosophy. I shall consider the evolution of his concept of the history of philosophy, the sources of this concept, and, finally, its relationship to Edmund Husserl's understanding of the history of philosophy. Brentano's scheme of the four phases of the history of philosophy can serve as a principle of evaluation of what comes after Brentano's era in the history of philosophy."
Mezei, Balasz, and Smith, Barry. 1998. The Four Phases of Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
With an Appendix: The Four Phases of Philosophy and Its Current State by Franz Brentano, pp. 81-111.
"In what follows we shall introduce the English translation of what is perhaps Brentano's most important text on the history of philosophy. In our introduction, we shall analyze Brentano's conception of what he called "the four phases of philosophy"; we shall show the origin of his theory and the problems it was designed to address; and we shall demonstrate that Brentano's theory can be applied to at least one line in the history of philosophy after Brentano's time.
That Brentano developed his own theory of the history of philosophy is not widely known. This theory is summarized in a short essay entitled "The Four Phases of Philosophy", published in 1895 and translated here as an Appendix. Brentano believed that the history of philosophy displays a regularly recurring pattern and can thus be divided into successive periods, each of which can be considered as an organic whole of a precisely determined form.
Such periods are for instance the period of classical Greek philosophy ending with Aristotle, the medieval period up to but not including Descartes, and the period of modem philosophy beginning with Descartes and ending with Hegel and other classical 'German idealist' thinkers. In each such period, Brentano argues, four phases can be distinguished: the first phase is that of intensive philosophical development, of scientific results and scientific interest; the second phase is dominated by practical interest; the third phase is that of increasing scepticism which gives way, in the end, to a last phase, in which philosophy becomes a mere branch of literature which has no scientific relevance at all." (pp.1-2)
Milkov, Nikolay. 2023. Hermann Lotze’s Influence on Twentieth Century Philosophy. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Chapter 4: Lotze and Brentano, p. 77-91.
"That the roots of Brentano’s “revolution in philosophy” are deeper than has commonly been recognized is further evidenced by what he took for granted in his writings. This is most notably seen when spelling out the ways his positions on various topics related to the views of leading 19th-century German philosophers whose doctrines were so widely familiar in the literature of the time that he felt it unnecessary to identify them by name. A telling example is Jakob Friedrich Fries, who anticipated Brentano’s—and, actually, also Lotze’s—rejection of the widely held notion that perception consists in a combination of ideas. Fries also anticipated Brentano by identifying “assertions” with perception, a consequential epistemological move that Alfred Kastil first pointed out over a century ago (1912, pp. 52 f.), and one we shall take up in due course (in § 3.1 below). It was evidently Lotze again, who was the medium of Fries’ influence on Brentano on this count.
Such shared thought-determinations and theoretical outlooks attest to the interrelations among the various currents in 19th-century German philosophy. Multiple lines of influence enabled Kastil, who edited three volumes of Brentano’s writings (1921, 1925, and 1933), to trace a variety of similarities between Fries and Brentano, findings which he presented in a book of 352 pages published in the neo-Friesian journal Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule, New Series (1912)."
References
Kastil, Alfred (1912): “Jakob Friedrich Fries’ Lehre von der unmittelbaren Erkenntnis”. In: Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule Neue Folge 4. No. 1, pp. 5–336.
Brentano, Franz (1921): Die Lehre Jesu und ihre bleibende Bedeutung. Alfred Kastil (Ed.) Leipzig: Felix Meiner.
Brentano, Franz (1925): Versuch über die Erkenntnis. Alfred Kastil (Ed.) Leipzig: Felix Meiner.
Brentano, Franz (1933): Kategorienlehre. Alfred Kastil (Ed.) Leipzig: Felix Meiner.
Moder, Gregor. 2019. "Ontology of touch: from Aristotle to Brentano." In The Language of Touch: Philosophical Examinations in Linguistics and Haptic Studies, edited by Komel, Mirt. New York: Bloomsbury.
"Before presenting an attempt at an ontology of touch, I want to point out that ontology has always been closely related to the study of language. This is not simply the claim that any ontological consideration must necessarily be expressed by some language and within some language, and is therefore inevitably limited by that particular language. That would define the relationship between language and being only by way of negation. On the contrary, metaphysics, both ancient and modern, has consistently acknowledged that language determines being in an affirmative, productive, or constructive manner."
(...)
"Within Aristotle’s body of work, the relation between language and ontology is perhaps even more clear in his logical work, Categories, which is preoccupied to an extent with categorizing things that are (ta onta). In concordance with Metaphysics, the central category of being is substance; it is the only independent one, and all other categories—like quality and quantity—are relative to substance." (pp. 55-56, a note omitted)
(...)
"At this point, we shall depart from Aristotle’s ontology. In order to explain movement, he had to give up the mathematical concept of a point, which seems a very high price to pay. Instead, we will look to Aristotle scholars, particularly to Franz Brentano, who revisited the problem and proposed a solution that bridges the gap between a plenist ontology and the mathematical representation of movement in dimensionless points. In effect, what Brentano suggests is nothing short of a miracle: a concept of a point-in-movement, of a continuous point, and therefore of a point capable of touch." (p. 67)
Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1972. The Concept of Intentionality. St. Louis: Warren H. Green.
Part One, Chapter 1. Brentano's Concept of Intentionality, 3; 2. Chisholm and the Brentano Thesis 25-35.
"Whatever mightT have been the history of the concept of intentionality before Brentano(1), there is no doubt that modern philosophy owes it to him to have both drawn attention to the centrality of this concept for philosophy of mind and given it a formulation which is essentially original. However, since Brentano gave his historic formulation, philosophy has moved ahead; and his concept has been criticised, refined and amended, sometimes beyond recognition, by those who profess allegiance to him. The history of this concept after Brentano is a fascinating story, and forms part of the theme of this book: though the main purpose of this study is not historical survey but systematic understanding. I begin, in this chapter, by taking a close look at the first chapter of the second Book of Brentano's Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (2) ." (p. 3)
(1) For the history of the concept of intentionality, see: Spiegelberg, F. "Der Begriff der Intentionalitat in der Scholastik, bei Brenteno und bei Husserl," Philosophische Hefte, Vol. V, 1936, 75-91; and Moreau, J. "The Problem of Intentionality and classical thought," International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. I, 1961 ,215-234.
(2) Brentano, F. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol. 1, Leipzig, 1924.
Montague, Michelle. 2017. "A Contemporary View of Brentano’s Theory of Emotion." The Monist no. 100:64-87.
Abstract: "In this paper I consider Franz Brentano’s theory of emotion. I focus on three of its central claims: (i) emotions are sui generis intentional phenomena; (ii) emotions are essentially evaluative phenomena; (iii) emotions provide the basis of an epistemology of objective value. I argue that all three claims are correct, and I weave together Brentano’s arguments with some of my own to support them. In the course of defending these claims, Brentano argues that ‘feeling and will’ are united into the same fundamental class. I summarize two of his arguments for this claim, what I call ‘the nature of desire’ argument and ‘the transition’ argument. I show how a central plank of these arguments relies crucially on Brentano’s epistemology of value."
———. 2023. "Brentano's theory of intentionality." European Journal of Philosophy:445-454.
Abstract: "Chapters Five through Nine of Book Two of Brentano's 1874 Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint were republished in 1911 with a substantive Appendix of Brentano's remarks. In the Appendix Brentano makes a significant addition to his theory of intentionality. In particular, he introduces new modes within the mode of presentation itself. These new modes are needed to account for our thinking about anything in a relational structure (in recto and in obliquo modes) and for our thoughts about time (the temporal mode). I want to suggest that in the end Brentano simply takes relations to be different kinds of modes."