Theory and History of Ontology (www.ontology.co)by Raul Corazzon | e-mail: rc@ontology.co

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Third Part: Cos - Gau

Contents of this Section

Bibliography

  1. Cosci, Matteo. 2023. "Brentano and Hillebrand on Syllogism: Development and Reception of the ‘Idiogenetic’ Theory." In Aristotle’s Syllogism and the Creation of Modern Logic: Between Tradition and Innovation, 1820s–1930s, edited by Verburgt, Lukas M. and Cosci, Matteo, 129-163. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

    "The seventh chapter presents Franz Brentano and Franz Hillebrand’s ‘idiogenetic theory’, a post-scholastic type of syllogistic theory involving acts of judging which were regarded as belonging as such to a special genus (idios genos) of psychical phenomena. The logical traits of the theory were first put forward by Brentano in his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874, first ed.) and then formally presented in Hillebrand’s Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse (1891). The most novel aspect of the theory was that all judgements were restated in existential form as single-membered assertions, or rejections, whose subject and predicate could be simpliciter converted. The proposal provoked numerous reactions. Particularly the last part of Hillebrand’s system, namely the extension about ‘double judgments’ (existential and predicative judgments bound together), was criticized by Husserl and Meinong, among others. But it also received active support from Brentano’s student Anton Marty. In his chapter, Matteo Cosci recalls the Leibnizian antecedent that showed the character of supposition of the existential import holding in the traditional square of oppositions. That assumption was a matter of concern for Brentano, who may have been aware of its formulation (possibly via Leibniz’s Difficultates Quaedam Logicae) in the process of developing his own reform of syllogistic on new, intentionalistic grounds. Aside from its intrinsic merits and originality, Brentano and Hillebrand’s ‘idiogenetic theory’ had a considerable impact in the fields of descriptive psychology, analytic philosophy and early phenomenology towards the end of the century – not to mention its relevance for the great current in logic inaugurated by Kazimierz Twardowski, prominent student of Brentano and the standard-bearer of his reform in Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century." (Introduction, p. 7)

  2. Crane, Tim. 2006. "Brentano's Concept of Intentional Inexistence." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, Mark, 20-35. New York: Routledge.

    Reprinted in: T. Crane, Aspects of Psychologism, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013, pp. 25-39.

    "First I will attempt to expound Brentano’s concept of intentional inexistence in its original 1874 context. This will enable us to eliminate some of the relatively superficial misunderstandings alluded to above.

    Then I will outline Brentano’s change of mind when he later came to write the appendices to his 1874 Psychology. Although any reasonably careful reading of the text will show that Brentano did in fact change his mind, it is not always clearly recognised in the discussions of Brentano’s thesis what it is that he changed it from. Third I will show how the tension between his earlier view and the later view of the appendices is in fact the tension which is responsible for the problem of intentionality as we have it today." (p. 20)

  3. Curvello, Flávio Vieira. 2016. "Franz Brentano’s Mereology and the Principles of Descriptive Psychology." Dialogue and Universalism no. 26:109-123.

    Abstract: I analyse Brentano s argumentative strategy from his lectures in the Deskriptive Psychologie and how he introduces and reframes his fundamental psychological theses. His approach provides us with

    the reasons why psychology can be distinguished into different domains of investigation and how the tasks of one of these domains the descriptive-psychological one imply a specific understanding about the structure of consciousness. Thereby a mereology of consciousness is developed, which offers the theoretical background to the aforementioned reframing of the Brentanian theses."

  4. ———. 2021. "Brentano on scientific philosophy and positivism." Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy no. 62:657-679.

    Abstract: "In this paper, I analyze Brentano’s fourth habilitation thesis, according to which the philosophical method should be none other than the natural scientific one.

    The meaning of this thesis can be initially assessed through an examination of Brentano’s views on the relationship between natural and human sciences. His arguments for methodological unity in this debate show that he actually argues for an overarching idea of scientific knowledge, which is not restricted to the fields already recognized as scientific, but which can also be applied to philosophical domain. A fuller comprehension of that idea is provided by Brentano’s writings on Comte’s positivism."

  5. Dainton, Barry. 2017. "Brentano on Phenomenal Unity and Holism." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger no. 142:513-528.

    "To provide anything approaching a complete picture of what Brentano is offering us here would mean engaging with some of the most distinctive (and inevitably) controversial aspects of his philosophy:the nature of “real unities” and “inner perception”, for example.

    I shall be touching on some aspects of these issues, albeit briefly, later on. For now I want to focus on just one important and distinctive element of his position. Returning to our total experience E, according to Brentano its constituents parts, e1, e2, e3 and e4 are phenomenally unified if and only if they are experienced by us as occurring together (or “inwardly perceived as existing together” as he puts it). Whereas Descartes appealed to co-instantiation within a substance to explain the unity of consciousness, Brentano appeals to a phenomenal relationship: contents or objects are unified in consciousness if they are experienced as existing together. Let us say (for obvious reasons) that experiences related in this way are co-conscious."

  6. de Boer, Theodorus. 1976. "The Descriptive Method of Franz Brentano: Its Two Functions and Their Significance for Phenomenology." In The Philosophy of Brentano, edited by McAlister, Linda Lopez, 101-107. London: Duckworth.

    Translated from the German by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle.

    Reprinted from the Proceedings of the XlVlh International Congress of Philosophy, 2—9 September 1968 (Vienna, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 191-9.

    "When Brentano published his lecture The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong(2) in 1889, he wrote in the foreword that ‘this work will develop some of the views that there set forth in my Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and will differ in fundamental respects from everything that has previously been said upon the subject. My readers will then be able to see, I hope, that I have not been idle during the long period of my literary retirement.’ There had, in fact, taken place an important change in Brentano’s thought during the period between 1874 and 1889. We would like to take this opportunity to direct attention to this and to ask in how far it signifies a further elaboration, a correction, or perhaps even a renunciation of his earlier views. This change in his views is reflected in the position that is now assigned to descriptive psychology. In 1874 it had only a subordinate function: it served as a preliminary for genetic psychology. All this is in line with the natural scientific character of Brentano’s philosophy. In 1866 he had defended the well-known thesis, ‘The true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences’." (p. 101)

    (...)

    "But by 1889 descriptive psychology had become an independent, autonomous science. The reason for this is the new function that it had acquired in the meantime - that of providing the foundations for the universally valid laws of the normative sciences: logic, aesthetics, and ethics. This is not psychologism, as Chisholm rightly points out, for Brentano strongly opposes the very attempt to make empirical generalisations the basis of apodictic laws for these sciences." (p. 102)

    (2). Trans. Roderick M. Chisholm (London and New York, 1969).

  7. Dewalque, Arnaud. 2013. "Brentano and the parts of the mental: a mereological approach to phenomenal intentionality." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences no. 12:447-464.

    Abstract: "In this paper, I explore one particular dimension of Brentano’s legacy, namely, his theory of mental analysis. This theory has received much less attention in recent literature than the intentionality thesis or the theory of inner perception. However, I argue that it provides us with substantive resources in order to conceptualize the unity of intentionality and phenomenality. My proposal is to think of the connection between intentionality and phenomenality as a certain combination of part/whole relations rather than as a supervenience or identity relation. To begin, I discuss some reasons for being a (neo-)Brentanian about the mind and briefly introduce the main characteristics of Brentano’s internalist description program. Then, I turn to the current “inseparatist” way of dealing with intentionality and phenomenality, focusing on the demand for unity coming from advocates of phenomenal intentionality. I suggest that the unity of the mind may be put in a new light if we put aside metaphysical–epistemological questions, go back to Brentano’s description program, and endorse his thesis that the mental is something unified in which various parts must be distinguished. In the last section, I draw some lessons from this approach, holding that, for any representational content R, R is (in Brentano’s terms) an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant state and that, for any qualitative aspect Q, Q is an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the

    relevant representational content R."

  8. ———. 2013. "Schema of the Brentano School intellectual progeny." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences no. 12:445.

    Abstract: "This schema gives an overview of the main branches and key members of the school of the German philosopher Franz Brentano (1838–1917)."

  9. ———. 2018. "Natural Classes in Brentano’s Psychology." Brentano Studien no. 16:111-142.

    Abstract: "This article argues that Brentano’s classification of mental phenomena is best understood against the background of the theories of natural classification held by Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill. Section 1 offers a reconstruction of Brentano’s two-premise argument for his tripartite classification. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the reception and historical background of the classification project. Section 3 addresses the question as to why a classification of mental phenomena is needed at all and traces the answer back to Mill’s view that psychological laws are class-specific.

    Sections 4 and 5 connect the second premise of Brentano’s argument to Comte’s principle of comparative likeness and Mill’s insistance that class membership is determined by the possession of common characteristics. And section 6 briefly discusses the evidence Brentano provides for the first premise."

  10. ———. 2019. "Brentano's Case for Optimism." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 111:835-847.

    Abstract: "Call metaphysical optimism the view that this world is the best of all possible worlds.

    This article addresses Franz Brentano’s case for metaphysical optimism. I argue that, although Brentano does not offer any conclusive argument in favour of the latter, he disentangles many related issues which are interesting in their own right. The article has five sections corresponding to five claims, which I argue are central to Brentano’s view, namely: (§1) metaphysical optimism is best spelled out as the view that this world is the only good among all possible worlds; (§2) the notion of “correct”—or “fitting”—love offers a criterion of the good and the test of inverted love offers a means to identify that which is good; (§3) pessimism has to be distinguished from pejorism, viz. the view that the non-existence of this world is preferable to its existence; (§4) there is something good involved in every “bad” thing, to the effect that pejorism is false; (§5) it is wrong to consider the value of something in isolation."

  11. ———. 2020. "The Phenomenology of Mentality." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 23-40. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Abstract: "This paper offers a phenomenological interpretation of Brentano’s view of mentality. The key idea is that mental phenomena are not only characterized by intentionality; they also exhibit a distinctive way of appearing or being experienced.

    In short, they also have a distinctive phenomenology. I argue this view may be traced back to Brentano’s theory of inner perception (henceforth, IP). Challenging the self-representational reading of IP, I maintain the latter is best understood as a way of appearing, that is, in phenomenological terms. Section 2 addresses Brentano’s claim that IP is one mark of the mental alongside intentionality. Sections 3 and 4 present support for a phenomenological interpretation of IP. And Section 5 briefly discusses two objections."

  12. ———. 2021. "Misleading Expressions: The Brentano-Ryle Connection." In Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School: Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy, edited by Dewalque, Arnaud, Gauvry, Charlotte and Sébastien, Richard, 95-118. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

    "Some linguistic expressions are misleading in the sense that they look as if they are about something while they actually are about something else.

    In this chapter I argue that Gilbert Ryle’s account of misleading expressions, which is rightly considered a milestone in the history of analytic philosophy, is continuous with Brentano’s critique of language. Not only did they identify roughly the same classes of misleading expressions, but their analyses are driven by a form of ontological parsimony which sharply contrasts with rival views in the Brentano School, like those of Meinong and Husserl. It is true that Brentano’s account, unlike Ryle’s, is put in terms of underlying mental phenomena. However, this difference, I submit, is mainly terminological and does not reflect any substantial disagreement.

    The chapter has four sections. Section 1 (‘Analysis’) suggests that Ryle and Brentano share a similar notion of analysis as paraphrase of misleading expressions. Section 2 (‘Two Senses of “About”’) spells out the notion of misleading expression by means of the surface-grammar/truth-conditions distinction, which I argue is implicit in their accounts.

    Section 3 (‘Ficta’) zooms in on a specific class of misleading expressions, namely expressions about ficta. Finally, Sect. 4 (‘A Moral About the Meaning of “Meaning”’) draws the consequences of what precedes for a correct understanding of the notion of meaning." (pp. 95-96)

  13. ———. 2021. "The Occamization of 'Meaning': Ryle and Brentano." Logique & Analyse no. 256:511-532.

    Abstract: "To Occamize a nominal expression N is to show that, despite grammatical appearances, N does not name, or denote, an entity. This article argues that the Occamization of ‘meaning,’ which was central to Gilbert Ryle’s meta-philosophy, had already been advanced by Franz Brentano. The core thesis of the article is that Brentano’s notion of ‘content,’ albeit different from that of linguistic rules, does a similar job of

    eliminating expendable entities. If the meaning of a linguistic expression is not an entity at all, then the question as to what kind of entity it is—what I shall call the Locke-Frege problem—turns out to be a pseudo-problem and is better dispensed with."

  14. ———. 2023. "On noticing transparent states: A compatibilist approach to transparency." European Journal of Philosophy:398-412.

    Abstract: "According to the transparency thesis, some conscious states are transparent or “diaphanous”. This thesis is often believed to be incompatible with an inner-awareness account of phenomenal consciousness. In this article, I reject this incompatibility. Instead, I defend a compatibilist approach to transparency. To date, most attempts to do so require a rejection of strong transparency in favor of weak transparency. In this view, transparent states can be attended to by attending (in the right way) to the presented world: that is, they are merely translucent. Here, I first argue that this understanding of transparency is too weak to qualify as a compatibilist view. Drawing on insights from Franz Brentano, I then describe a middle road between strong and weak transparency. The crucial idea is that, although transparent states cannot be attended to, they can be noticed (under suitable conditions). This view, I submit, allows supporters of inner awareness to commit themselves to a more interesting understanding of transparency—moderate transparency—that preserves the initial intuition underlying the transparency metaphor."

  15. Dewalque, Arnaud, Gauvry, Charlotte, and Richard, Sébastien, eds. 2021. Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School: Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave-Macmillan.

    Contents: 1. Arnaud Dewalque, Charlotte Gauvry, and Sébastien Richard: Introduction: Mind, Meaning and Reality 1

    Part I Brentano and Philosophy of Language 33

    2. Guillaume Fréchette: The Context Principle in Austro-German Philosophy 35; 3. Charlotte Gauvry: A Context Principle in Brentano? 57; 4. Denis Seron: Brentano and Mauthner on Grammatical Illusions 77; 5. Arnaud Dewalque: Misleading Expressions: The Brentano-Ryle Connection 95; 6. Hélène Leblanc: Sign and Language in Anton Marty: Before and after Brentano 119;

    Part II The Brentano School: Act, Meaning and Object 141

    7. Sébastien Richard: De Significatione: The Brentano-Ingarden Axis 143; 8. Olivier Malherbe: Meaning(s) in Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy of Language 169; 9. Denis Fisette: Overcoming Psychologism: Twardowski on Actions and Products 189; 10. Bruno Leclercq: Is the Content-Object Distinction Universally Valid? Meaning and Reference in Twardowski and Meinong 207; 11. Jan Woleński: Extensionality/Intensionality in Polish Philosophy of Language: From Twardowski to Ajdukiewicz 227;

    Part III Brentano’s Wider Legacy 243

    12. Maria van der Schaar: Modifying Terms and Modification in Husserl and the Brentano School 245; 13. Hamid Taieb: The Early Husserl on Typicality 263; 14. Basil Vassilicos: Wundt and Bühler on Gestural Expression: From Psycho-Physical Mirroring to the Diacrisis 279; 15 Kevin Mulligan: On Being Guided, Signals and Rules: From Bühler to Wittgenstein 299;

    Index 317-322.

  16. Drummond, John. 1998. "From Intentionality to Intensionality and back." Études Phénoménologiques no. 14:89-126.

  17. Dubois, James. 1996. "Investigating Brentano's Reism." Brentano Studien no. 6:283-296.

  18. Eaton, Howard Ormsby. 1930. The Austrian Philosophy of Values. Norman: University of Oklahoma Pres.

    Chapter One: Brentano’s Empirical Psychology, pp. 15-39.

    "The concept of values had long been regarded as being rather incidental to metaphysics, or else to economics, ethics, aesthetics or some other of the many social sciences which made use of it. It had been rather taken for granted, and had been, consequently, almost completely neglected as a field of speculative or scientific investigation. The present study is an attempt to analyze in considerable detail the value theories of a small group of men in Austria who did their best to remedy that state of affairs. We designate this group as the Second Austrian School, hinting at their intimate relations with the first Austrian School of economic theory. The founders of this school were Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, and Professor Christian von Ehrenfels, to whom we shall devote the major share of our attention.

    This school is of significance because of its attempt to rescue the abstract concept of values as such from its Cinderella-like subordination in the households of the various social sciences and establish it in its rightful place as an independent and coordinate department of philosophic thought. Of course it is not possible to study values quite independently of the particular value sciences; a value which is neither economic, ethic, esthetic, nor any other of the specific types of value seems to be unthinkable. This does not mean that the study of values is open only to economists, or ethicists, or students of aesthetics.

    It is becoming a matter of pressing concern to discover if there are any respects in which one can generalize concerning values simply qud values, regardless of metaphysical theory or connection with a social science." (p. 16)

  19. Fano, Vincenzo. 1993. "The categories of consciousness: Brentano's epistemology." Brentano Studien no. 4:101-130.

    Abstract: "The present investigation reformulates a few Brentanian ideas concerning what is mental. In particular, an attempt to define the categorial structure implicit in the notion of consciousness and in that of inner perception, keeping in mind their connections with external perception and with unconscious, is outlined. Within the mental field is observed a formal violation of some elementary rules of ontology and mereology, and such violation can be interpreted in terms of an infinite multiplicity of the mental field itself."

  20. Farrell Krell, David. 1975. "On the Manifold Meaning of Aletheia: Brentano, Aristotle, Heidegger." Research in Phenomenology no. 5:77-94.

    "In 1964 Heidegger cited as the persistent task of his thought the meaning of ἀλήθεια -no longer to be translated as "truth" but to be pondered as unconcealment or "the clearing that first grants Being and thinking and their presencing to and for each other."(4) Now one of the four senses ascribed to "being" in Brentano's dissertation on Aristotle is όν ώς ἀληθής "being in the sense of the true." Does Brentano's account of "being in the sense of the true" have significant bearing on Heidegger's response to the matter of his thinking, i.e. Aletheia as the unconcealment of beings in presence? This brief study tries to answer that question by offering (I) a general account of Brentano's thesis, (II) a detailed resume of its third chapter, concerning όν ώς ἀληθής, (III) a condensed treatment of Heidegger's aletheological notion of Being, and (IV) a summary of results and response to the question." (p. 79)

  21. Fischer, Kurt Rudolf, and Miller, Leon R. 1976. "Notes on Terrell's "Brentano's logical innovations"." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 1:95-97.

    "The purpose of Professor Terrell’s paper[*] is to bring to light some of the genuinely distinctive features of Brentano’s logical innovations through the development of a ‘Brentano-style’ notation and formal system. This method enables him to achieve a standard of explictness that is not to be found in the work of Brentano himself. The dangers inherent in such an approach are formidable; as many recent studies in the history of logic have amply demonstrated, the desire for formal clarity may easily result in a number of major distortions.

    Some inkling of the difficulty may be gleaned from Brentano’s claim that existents are individuals, but that reflection about individuals is always general. In Professor Terrell’s treatment, ‘thinking’ becomes ‘reference,’ and the terms of a Brentanist formal logic are, accordingly, general terms. These general terms are not functions constructed out of more primitive expressions, predicates and one or more individual expressions; they are primitives.

    As a result, the notion of substituting an individual constant for the variable in an expression such as ‘Fx’ is meaningless. Therefore, as Professor Terrell is well aware, any attempt to formalize Brentano’s logical theory in the familiar notation of the first-order predicate calculus is doomed to failure. However, Professor Terrell’s suggestions for surmounting these difficulties do not seem entirely successful." (pp. 95-96)

    [*] Franz Brentano's Logical Innovations (1976).

  22. Fisette, Denis. 2015. "Franz Brentano and higher-order theories of consciousness." Argumentos no. 7:9-39.

    Abstract: "This article addresses the recent reception of Franz Brentano’s writings on consciousness. I am particularly interested in the connection established between Brentano’s theory of consciousness and higher-order theories of consciousness and, more specifically, the theory proposed by David Rosenthal. My working hypothesis is that despite the many similarities that can be established with Rosenthal’s philosophy of mind, Brentano’s theory of consciousness differs in many respects from higher-order theories of consciousness and avoids most of the criticisms generally directed to them. This article is divided into eight parts. The first two sections expound the basic outline of Rosenthal’s theory, and the third summarizes the principal objections that Rosenthal addresses to Brentano, which I, then, examine in sections 4 and 5. In sections 6 and 7, I discuss Brentano’s principle of the unity of consciousness, and in section 8, I consider the scope of the changes that Brentano brings to his theory of consciousness in his later writings,which follow the 1874 publication of Psychology. I then draw the conclusion that Brentano’s theory rests on a view of intransitive and intrinsic self-consciousness."

  23. ———. 2018. "Franz Brentano and Auguste Comte’s Positive Philosophy." Brentano Studien no. 16:73-110.

    Abstract: "My aim in this study is to show that the philosophical program elaborated by Brentano in his Psychology is largely indebted to the research conducted by Brentano on British empiricism and Comte‘s positive philosophy during the Würzburg period (1866-1873). This research represents the starting point of, and backdrop to, the project for philosophy as science, which is at the heart of his Psychology, and sheds new light on the philosophical stakes of many debates he leads in that work. Furthermore, Brentano’s research informs us about his philosophical preoccupations during the Würzburg period, and simultaneously provide us with a new perspective on the evolution of his thought from his habilitation at Würzburg in 1866 to his arrival in Vienna in 1874. In this study, I propose to examine some of the factors that motivated Brentano¹s interest in Comte¹s philosophy and to evaluate the influence that the latter exerted on Brentano¹s thought during the Würzburg period and beyond."

  24. ———. 2019. "Brentano’s Lectures on Positivism and His Relationship to Ernst Mach." In Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence, edited by Stadler, Friedrich, 39-50. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Abstract: "Franz Brentano’s criticism of Mach in his lectures on Positivism (1893–1894)

    This paper is mainly about Brentano’s commentaries on Ernst Mach in his lectures “Contemporary philosophical questions” which he held one year before he left Austria. I will first identify the main sources of Brentano’s early interests in positivism during his Würzburg period. The second section provides a short overview of Brentano’s 1893–1894 lectures and his criticism of Comte, Kirchhoff, and Mill. The next sections bear on Brentano’s criticism of Mach’s monism and Brentano’s argument, based on his theory of intentionality, against the identification of mental to physical phenomena. The last section is about Brentano’s proposal to replace the identity relation in Mach’s theory of elements by that of intentional correlation. I conclude with a remark on the history of philosophy in Austria."

  25. ———. 2020. "Brentano and J. Stuart Mill on Phenomenalism and Mental Monism." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 251-267. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Abstract: "This study is about Brentano’s criticism of a version of phenomenalism that he calls “mental monism” and which he attributes to positivist philosophers such as Ernst Mach and John Stuart Mill. I am interested in Brentano’s criticism of Mill’s version of mental monism based on the idea of “permanent possibilities of sensation.” Brentano claims that this form of monism is characterized by the identification

    of the class of physical phenomena with that of mental phenomena, and it commits itself to a form of idealism. Brentano argues instead for a form of indirect or hypothetical realism based on intentional correlations."

  26. ———. 2020. "Introduction: Franz Brentano in Vienna." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 3-21. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    "But all this recent interest in Brentano’s philosophy cannot develop as much as many would like because, contrary to the writings of several of his students, including Husserl’s, only a fraction of Brentano’s writings is currently accessible to Brentano’s actual and potential readers. And many of his writings that are accessible through the editions of O. Kraus, A. Kastil, and F. Mayer-Hillebrand present major problems because of the editorial policies that prevailed in their editions. This editorial work has to be done all over again because Brentano’s writings have been systematically manipulated in order to promote Brentano’s late philosophical views.(17)

    Since 2008, the reedition of Brentano’s works published during his lifetime has been undertaken by Ontos Verlag (now de Gruyter),(18) supplemented by original introductions. Needless to say, the publication of numerous manuscripts, dictations, seminars, lecture notes, or Brentano’s abundant correspondence would greatly contribute to enhancing the contemporary interest in Brentano’s work." (P. 6, a note omitted)

    (17) Cf, Fisette/Fréchette (Eds.) (2013), Themes from Brentano, Section V, p. 359–418.

    (18) Brentano (2008–2018), Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, Berlin: De Gruyter.

  27. ———. 2021. "Remarks on the Architecture of Brentano’s Philosophical Program." In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 28-49. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

    "This paper is about Brentano’s philosophical program in Vienna and the overall architecture that holds together the main parts of his philosophy. My point of departure is the recent literature on the unity of Brentano’s philosophy, which has sometimes been understood as a “system” in the spirit of Kant and his successors, for example. I am particularly interested in the research program that he began to develop during his stay in Würzburg and that he exhibited upon his arrival in Vienna, namely in his inaugural address at the University of Vienna (Brentano, 1929a) and in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.

    (...)

    The aim of this study is to investigate, from a bird’s eye view, the main articulations of Brentano’s philosophical program." (p. 28, a note omitted)

  28. Fisette, Denis, and Fréchette, Guillaume, eds. 2013. Themes from Brentano. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Contents: Guillaume Fréchette: Introduction: Brentano’s Impact 9.

    Consciousness. Brentanian and Neo-Brentanian Perspectives.

    Denis Fisette: Introduction; Uriah Kriegel: Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis: No Representation Without Self-Representation 23; Johannes L. Brandl: What is Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness? Brentano’s Theory of Inner Consciousness Revisited 41; Mark Textor: Unity Without Self: Brentano on the Unity of Consciousness 67;

    Varieties of Intentionality.

    Guillaume Fréchette: Introduction 87; Guillaume Fréchette: Brentano’s Thesis (Revisited) 91; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski: Brentano and Aristotle on the Ontology of Intentionality 121; Laurent Cesalli: Anton Marty’s Intentionalist Theory of Meaning 139; Matjaž Potrc: Phenomenology of Intentionality 165.

    Ontology and Metaphysics.

    Guillaume Fréchette: Introduction 189; Werner Sauer: Being as the True: From Aristotle to Brentano 193; Wilhelm Baumgartner: Franz Brentano’s Mereology 227; Susan Gabriel: Brentano at the Intersection of Psychology, Ontology, and the Good 247.

    Critics and Heirs. The School of Brentano.

    Denis Fisette: Introduction 273; Denis Fisette: Mixed Feelings. Carl Stumpf’s Criticism of James and Brentano on Emotions 281; Olivier Massin: The Intentionality of Pleasures and Other Feelings. A Brentanian Approach 307; Riccardo Martinelli: Brentano and Stumpf on Tonal Fusion 339.

    Expositions and Discussions. Selected Materials and Translations.

    Denis Fisette: Introduction 359; Thomas Binder: There and Back Again. An Updated History of Franz Brentano’s Unpublished Papers 369; Franz Brentano: Abstraction and Relation, followed by Selected Letters to Marty 419; Guillaume Fréchette: Editorial Remarks: 421; Franz Brentano: Modern Errors concerning the Knowledge of the Laws of Inference 501; Franz Brentano: Moderne Irrthümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schließens 513.

    Index of Names 525-530.

  29. Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume, and Janoušek, Hynek, eds. 2020. Franz Brentano’s Philosophy After One Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism. Cham (SWitzerland): Springer.

    Contents: Denis Fisette, Guillaume Fréchette, and Hynek Janoušek: Preface V;

    Part I Descriptive Psychology and Philosophy of Mind

    1. Íngrid Vendrell Ferran: Brentano and the Birth of a New Paradigm in the Philosophy of Emotions 3; 2. Arnaud Dewalque: The Phenomenology of Mentality 23; 3. Denis Seron: Consciousness and Representation 41; 4. Maik Niemeck: Current Accounts of Subjective Character and Brentano’s Concept of Secondary Consciousness 55;

    Part II Brentano and Husserl

    5. Hynek Janoušek: Brentano’s Theory of Time-Consciousness in Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic 75; 6. Hamid Taieb: Husserl on Brentanian Psychology: A Correct Criticism? 87; 7. : Brentano, Husserl and Psychological Immanence 109;

    Part III Ontology and Metaphysics. On Reism

    8. Bruno Leclercq: Foundational Mereology as a Logical Tool for Descriptive Psychology 125; 9. Sébastien Richard: Are There Ideal Objects?: The Controversy Between Kotarbiński and Ingarden 149; 10. : Brentano on entia rationis and Linguistic Fictions 167;

    Part IV History of Philosophy

    11. Venanzio Raspa: Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories 185; 12. Emanuele Mariani: The Analogies of the Soul: Brentano, Aristotle and the Project of a Scientific Psychology 205;13. Laurent Cesalli: Brentano as a Historian of (Medieval) Philosophy 221; 14 David Torrijos-Castrillejo: F.J. Clemens and Some Aspects of Neo-Scholasticism in the Education of F. Brentano 231; 15. Josef Hlade: Brentano and Brain Research in His Time: His Criticism of Theodor Meynert’s Brain Theory 243;

    Appendix: Ontologische Fragen/Ontological Questions: A Treatise from Franz Brentano’s Manuscripts 261; Franz Brentano - Edited and Translated by Robin Rollinger;

    Index 341-345.

  30. Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume, and Stadler, Friedrich, eds. 2021. Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Contents: Part I Brentano and Austrian Philosophy

    1. Denis Fisette: Introduction: Franz Brentano in Vienna 3;

    Descriptive Psychology and Phenomenology: Brentano and Husserl

    2. Dagfinn Føllesdal: Brentano and Husserl on Intentionality 23; 3. David Woodruff Smith: Descriptive Psychology and Phenomenology: From Brentano to Husserl to the Logic of Consciousness 49; 4. Dermot Moran: Brentano’s Concept of Descriptive Psychology 73; 5. Guillaume Fréchette: Brentano on Phenomenology and Philosophy as a Science 101;

    Brentano and the Vienna Circle

    6. Hans-Joachim Dahms: Brentano’s Appointment to the University of Vienna 117; 7. Thomas Uebel: Intentionality in the Vienna Circle 135; 8. Christian Damböck: (Dis-)Similarities: Remarks on “Austrian” and “German” Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century 169;

    Brentano and the History of Philosophy

    9. Richard Schaefer: Learning from Lasaulx: The Origins of Brentano’s Four Phases Theory 181; 10. Anna Brożek: Franz Brentano and the Lvov-Warsaw School 197; 11. Mark Textor: How Many Terms Does a Judgement Have?Jerusalem Versus Brentano 235; 12. Denis Fisette: Brentano and J. Stuart Mill on Phenomenalism and Mental Monism 251;

    Documentation: Alfred Kastil and the Vienna Circle

    13.Alfred Kastil: Ist die Unterscheidung von Ganzheit und Summe eine sachliche? Bemerkungen zum Vortrage Prof. Schlicks „Über den Begriff der Ganzheit” 269; 14. Alfred Kastil: Franz Brentanos Kritik der Antimetaphysiker 289; 15. Moritz Schlick: Gestaltpsychologie 309;

    Part II General Part

    16. David J. Chalmers: Carnap’s Second Aufbau and David Lewis’s Aufbau 329; 17. Gergely Ambrus: Carnap and Wittgenstein on Psychological Sentences: 1928–1932. Some Further Aspects of the Priority-Dispute

    Over Physicalism 353; 18. Markus Arnold: Scientific Communities. A History of Theories and Concepts 387;

    Part III Reviews

    19. Georg Schiemer: Paolo Mancosu, Abstraction and Infinity. Oxford University Press, 2016 427; 20. Christopher Burke: Jordi Cat, Adam Tamas Tuboly (Ed.) Neurath Reconsidered: New Sources and Perspectives. Cham: Springer Nature, 2019 431;

    Index 437-441

  31. Føllesdal, Dagfinn. 1978. "Brentano and Husserl on Intentional Objects and Perception." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:83-94.

    Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus (ed.), Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982, pp. 31-41.

    "In order to shed some light upon the relationship between Brentano and Husserl, I shall discuss briefly their views on intentional objects and on perception. I have chosen to focus my comments on these two themes partly because they were central to their relationship and partly because they are also interconnected in a certain way that we shall look at. I will begin by saying a little about Brentano's views on intentionality. These views have been mentioned several times in the earlier papers of this meeting, and they will probably be brought up again in many of the later papers. I will then explain how Husserl tried to solve these problems. Afterwards I will go on to discuss some features of Brentano's view on perception, and I will finally show how Husserl here too starts out from Brentano, but modifies Brentano's ideas in such a way as to create a really quite different theory." (p. 83)

  32. ———. 2020. "Brentano and Husserl on Intentionality." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 23-48. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Abstract: "Brentano’s lectures attracted a large number of very gifted students who became fascinated with the idea of intentionality and developed it further in several different directions. Brentano followed up Aristotle’s view on our mind taking on the form of the object and he was particularly influenced by Thomas Aquinas’ approach. His students struggled with how to deal with acts without objects, for example hallucinations, and proposed different solutions. Husserl tried to agree with his teacher as far as he could. He even regarded agreement with one’s teacher as a duty, which could only be forsaken for very good reasons. But he thought he had such reasons. These led him to phenomenology, which is briefly presented in this paper. In a short appendix I use the connection between Aristotle and Husserl to examine the controversy between two prominent Aristotle scholars, Myles Burnyeat (1992) and Richard Sorabji (1974, 1992), and their many followers on both sides concerning the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of perception. The appendix was presented in lectures at conferences in 1995 and 1996, but never sent off for publication.

    It was published in Greek translation in 1997. In the following years, Burnyeat, who died on September 20, 2019, modified his view, probably without knowing about my criticism. As far as I know, Sorabji stands by his view."

    References

    Burnyeat, Myles. 1992. Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible? (A Draft). In Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty, 15–26. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Sorabji, Richard. 1974. Body and soul in Aristotle. In Philosophy 49, pp 63–89. Here quoted from the reprint in Michael Durrant, (Ed.), Aristotle’s De Anima in focus, London: Routledge, 1993.

    ———. 1991. From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of the Concept of Intentionality. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume, pp. 227–259.

  33. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2011. "Leibniz and Brentano on Apperception." In Natur und Subjekt. Vorträge 1. Teil, Proceedings of the ninth international Leibniz Congress, Hannover 2011, edited by Breger, H., Herbst, J. and Erdner, S., 351-359. Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft.

    "Whereas Leibniz is often seen as defending a traditional HOT-theory[*], Brentano is often believed to be offering a viable alternative, within the framework of HOT-theories, to the assumption that first-order and second order acts are distinct existences without compromising the core idea of HOT-theories, namely that the explanation of phenomenal consciousness to be reached rests on the cognitive level and not on

    the sensory level of our experience.

    One might, however, wonder how one single strategy concerning the explanation of consciousness relies on two philosophers who are in disagreement regarding consciousness.

    Brentano and Leibniz have indeed different views concerning the nature of perception as well as different views concerning the nature of consciousness and the possibility of unconscious perceptions. In this paper, I will address some of the difficulties of both these strategies by comparing Leibniz’s and Brentano’s concepts of apperception (Bewußtsein or inneres Bewußtsein in Brentano’s language). The view adopted here is quite wide. Due to shortage of space, I will have to put aside the numerous debates in the contemporary literature on Leibniz concerning the various meanings of apperception in his writings. In my view, both Leibniz’s and Brentano’s accounts of apperception are, as they stand, unsatisfactory regarding their contribution to a HOT-theory. In order to show this in more details, I will first start by contrasting their views of the nature ofperception and apperception. It will soon become clear that their respective views lead to distinct HOT-theories. In the conclusion, I will propose an interpretation of their theories in which they would both be able to contribute to one model of HOT-theories." (pp. 351-352)

    [*] Higher-Order-Theories.

  34. ———. 2013. "Kant, Brentano and Stumpf on Psychology and Anti-Psychologism." In Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des XI. Kant-Kongresses 2010, edited by Bacin, Stefano, Ferrarin, Alfredo, La Rocca, Claudio and Ruffing, Margit, 727-736. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    "In all the criticisms made by Franz Brentano against nineteenth-century philosophy, be it in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint or in his later writings, Kant undoubtedly occupies the place of honor. In Brentano’s view, Kant not only postulated without any justification synthetic a priori judgments, but he also instigated the phase of decadence that characterized German philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth century.

    Beyond these polemic affirmations that often attract attention, it is important to put things in perspective and investigate how such criticisms are construed and what their origins are. In the present paper, I focus more specifically on the reception of Kantian psychology by Brentano and his students. Certainly, Brentano’s rejection of Kantian psychology goes along with his total rejection of the synthetic a priori judgments.

    What I want to suggest here is that in the specific case of psychology, the hostile reception of Kantian philosophy in the school of Brentano is mainly due to a combination of two factors. The first is Kant’s rejection of psychology in the theory of knowledge. The second, which is correlative to the first factor, is the Brentanian rejection of Kant’s thesis on the impossibility of psychology becoming a science. In what follows, I investigate these two factors in detail, using as a case study the position advocated by Carl Stumpf in “Psychology and Theory of Knowledge”.(2) This work fully deserves to be discussed: Stumpf (1848–1936) was not only one of the most brilliant and influent students of Brentano, but his essay also played an important role in the school of Brentano, offering one of the rare printed confrontations with the Kantian and Neokantian positions on psychology." (pp. 727-728, a note omitted)

    (2) Stumpf, Carl: “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie”. In: Abhandlungen der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 19, 1891, 465– 516. All further references to this essay are abbreviated here as PE.

  35. ———. 2013. "Brentano’s Thesis (Revisited)." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 91-119. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    "In the following paper, I will first discuss a presupposition in Chisholm’s understanding of intentional sentences. This presupposition – namely, that intentional sentences are about intentional objects and that these objects possess a diminished form of existence – supports of course his reading of Brentano’s thesis, but there are good reasons, as I will try to show, to question this presupposition. As I will argue, Brentano was not in the first place arguing against reductionism, although he certainly would have disputed it: rather, he took the reality of the mental as it is given in experience, but wanted to identify a common ground shared by all mental phenomena which would still take into account the intrinsic diversity of mental phenomena. In this respect, intentionality was introduced as a feature that comes in different varieties and that still provides a golden thread to the unity of sensations, presentations, judgments, strivings, willings, desirings, etc., which constitute every man’s mental life." (pp. 92-93)

  36. ———. 2014. "Austrian Logical Realism? Brentano on States of Affairs." In Defending Realism: Ontological and Epistemological Investigations, edited by Cumpa, Javier, Jesson, Greg and Bonino, Guido, 379-400. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    Abstract: "In the following paper, I will discuss the motives behind Franz Brentano’s judgment contents and the strategies offered by him to support them, suggesting that most of these strategies—based on his treatment of true negative existential judgments—are not clearly compatible with the logical realism he often professed.

    More generally, I would like to suggest that although there definitely is a realist concern in Austrian philosophy introducing them to support states of affairs, reducing their introduction to a realist concern is misguided. As shown in the case of Brentano, states of affairs were not always introduced in order to answer the question of what makes our assertions true, but rather to provide a psychological account of judgments that would help distinguish between the two basic classes of acts: presentations and judgments. I argue that Brentano’s way of dealing with states of affairs shares some similarities with nominalists’ motivations and strategies for introducing states of affairs."

  37. ———. 2015. "Brentano’s soul and the unity of consciousness." Argumentos no. 7:65-76.

    Abstract: "In the following paper, I discuss Fisette’s reconstruction of Brentano’s view, according to which Brentano’s conception of consciousness and of its unity is based on the presupposition that consciousness has a bearer, i.e. the soul.

    First, I identify Fisette’s real target (sect.1) and challenge his conception of the mental agent as central to Brentano’s account (sect. 2 and 3). In section 4, I formulate some doubts about the sources used by Fisette, and, in section 5, I propose another reading of the relation between the unity of consciousness and the mental agent in the late Brentano."

    References

    Fisette, Denis. Franz Brentano and higher-order theories of consciousness, Argumentos, 7, 2015, pp. 9-39.

  38. ———. 2015. "Brentano’s Conception of Intentionality: New Facts and Unsettled Issues." Brentano Studien no. 13.

    "1. The unsettled issues in Brentano’s Thesis

    While Brentano’s thesis on intentionality definitely is his most important contribution to the philosophy of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, it is remarkable that it has been understood in so many different ways. It is well known that Chisholm (1955-56) saw in Brentano’s thesis a thesis about intentional sentences, and Quine a thesis “of a piece with the thesis of indeterminacy of translation” (Quine 1960, 221), two readings which were decisive in the philosophy of mind between the 1960s and the 1980s, where Brentano’s intentionality thesis was often considered to be the target par excellence of naturalism. Things changed between the 1980s and 1990s, when consciousness and intentionality regained some philosophical dignity, thanks most notably to the works of Searle. Building upon this, more recent works proposed another approach of the thesis, moving its focus from an anti-reductionist view of the relation between the mental and the physical to a more general view on the nature of mind. Among many interesting and stimulating reappraisals of Brentano’s thesis in this context, it is worth ìmentioning Tim Crane (1998), who developed Brentano’s thesis of intentionality as the mark of the mental into an intentionalist account of the mind, and Uriah Kriegel (2003a, 2003b, 2013), who suggested that the intentionality thesis comes together with a thesis on the self-representational nature of mental acts, akin to Brentano’s account of consciousness.

    From a historical and interpretive perspective however, the question of the true meaning of Brentano’s intentionality thesis seems to remain unsettled, even today. Three main issues, involved directly or indirectly in the interpretation of Brentano’s thesis on intentionality, remain particularly sensitive:" (p. 9)

    References

    Chisholm, R., 1955-56, “Sentences about believing”, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56, p. 125–148.

    Qune, W.v.O. Word and Object, Harvard, The MIT Press 1960.

    Kriegel, U., 2003a, “Consciousness and Intransitive Self-Consciousness. Two Views and an Argument”, in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 33, 103–132.

    ——, 2003b, “Is Intentionality dependent upon Consciousness?”, in Philosophical Studies, 116, 271–307.

    ——, 2013, “Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis”, in Fisette, D. and G. Frécehtte (eds.), Themes from Brentano, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 23–40.

  39. ———. 2017. "Content and Object in Brentano." The IfCoLog Journal of Logics and their Applications no. 4:3609-3628.

    "It has usually been maintained that Brentano’s theory of intentionality never actually distinguished between the content of an act and its object, and that the distinction was introduced by Meinong and Höfler (1890), then more systematically by Twardowski (1894), and later by Husserl (1900/1)."

    (...)

    "Recent research on Brentano’s lecture manuscripts from the 1870s and 1880s, however, has shown that Brentano discussed the distinction between content and object at length in the very lectures that were attended by Meinong, Höfler, and Twardowski.(4)"

    (...)

    "These limitations on Brentano’s concept of intentionality are particularly difficult to maintain when one considers his lectures on logic from the late 1860s and early 1870s, in which he clearly states and develops the distinction between content and object; moreover, his lecture notes on descriptive psychology from the mid- and late-1880s also basically follow the same concern, as did his logic lecture notes from the Vienna period.(5) One finds in these documents an explicit concern with the distinction itself and its application in a more general theory of intentionality.

    I will discuss these lectures and the quotes themselves in section 3. Before that, in section 2, I would like to suggest that Brentano’s own conception of philosophy speaks in favour of a more general reading of the intentionality thesis than the one suggested by Dale Jacquette’s “immanent intentionality” and by the sympathizers of the Chisholmian reconstruction of Brentano." (pp. 3609-3610)

    (4) 4This is for instance the case with the numerous lectures delivered by Brentano in Vienna between 1874 and 1891, most notably on logic, descriptive psychology, and ethics.

    (5) Some of this material will be published soon in Brentano (forthcoming).

    References

    [11] Brentano, F. (forthcoming), Deskriptive Psychologie und beschreibende Phänomenologie. Vorlesungen 1887/88 und 1888/89, Dordrecht, Springer.

    [18] Husserl, E. (1900/1), Logische Untersuchungen (in 3 volumes), Halle, Max Niemeyer.

    [23] Meinong, A., Höfler, A. (1890), Logik, Vienna, Tempsky.

    [27] Twardowski, K. (1894/1977), Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung, Vienna, Hölder. English translation: On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation, translated by R. Grossmann, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.

  40. ———. 2018. "Brentano on Perception." Hungarian Philosophical Review no. 62:13-33.

    "However, the standard reading of Brentano – according to which he believes that intentionality is a relation to an immanent object, and perception is a special case of intentionality – has a grain of truth, at least insofar as there are many passages from the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint that seem to support this reading. But as mentioned above, there are obvious problems with this reading when it comes to Brentano’s supposition of an external world directly responsible for what we see, hear, etc. Furthermore, Brentano’s criticism of phenomenalism(7) makes it difficult to champion a reading on which he appears to defend a variety of this same phenomenalism.

    In short, the common reading of Brentano’s thesis on intentionality attributes to him a suboptimal account of perception which does not fit with his critique of phenomenalism. Furthermore, it suggests that Brentano should be seen as a defender of the argument from illusion. But if causality is a relation that, according to him, operates between the external world and physical phenomena, and if the external world is not a simple theoretical posit but something of which perceiving agents are parts, then there must be a way in which, as perceiving agents, we are after all related with the external world." (p. 16)

    (7) See for example Brentano against Mach (Brentano 1988), but also Brentano’s lectures on positivism from 1894–95 (Brentano 1894–95), where he defends the view of a correlation between the seeing and the seen (against the identification proposed by Mach), advocating at the same time for the irreducibility of causality.

    References

    Brentano, Franz 1894/95. Positivismus. Kolleg 1894/95. Unpublished lecture notes. Manuscript O. Kraus. Prague, Masaryk Archives (Kraus IIIa19).

    Brentano, Franz 1988. Über Ernst Machs “Erkenntnis und Irrtum”. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1988.

  41. ———. 2018. "The 'Philosopher of Intentionality' a Century Later." Brentano Studien no. 16:13-21.

    "A commemorative issue of the Brentano Studien for the centenary is an unusual and challenging task: How could a commemorative volume on Brentano distinguish itself from any other issue of a journal that is dedicated to the philosophy of Brentano and publishes articles on Brentano as part of its mission?" (p. 13)

    (...)

    "In soliciting contributions to this volume, we followed three main streams: Brentano’s metaphilosophy, both from a historical and systematic perspective (section 1); his metaphysics and epistemology (section 2); and finally his relation to Aristotle, also from a historical and systematic perspective (section 3)." (p. 15)

  42. ———. 2019. "From Brentano to Mach. Carving Austrian Philosophy at its Joints." In Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence, edited by Stadler, Friedrich. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Abstract: "In many respects, Mach’s arrival in Vienna in 1895 marks the beginning of a new era in Austrian philosophy, paving the way for young philosophers and scientists like Hahn and Neurath and preparing the soil for the Vienna Circle.

    While this understanding of Mach’s contribution to the development of Viennese philosophy seems correct to an important extent, it leaves aside the role of Brentano and his school in this development. I argue that the Brentanian and Machian moments of Austrian philosophy are jointed. I propose a description of the nature of these joints based on institutional, methodological, and philosophical aspects of these phases, and suggest a diagnosis that supports what I take to be the right carving between these two moments."

  43. Frechette, Guillaume. 2019. "Brentano on Perception and Illusion." In The Philosophy of Perception: Proceedings of the 40th International Wittgenstein Symposium, edited by Limbeck-Lilienau, Christoph and Stadler, Friedrich, 119-134. Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Abstract: "Brentano’s philosophy of perception has often been understood as a special chapter of his theory of intentionality. If all and only mental phenomena are constitutively intentional, and if perceptual experience is mental by definition, then all perceptual experiences are intentional experiences. I refer to this conception as the “standard view” of Brentano’s account of perception. Different options are available to support the standard view: a sense-data theory of perception; an adverbialist account; representationalism. I argue that none of them are real options for the standard view. I suggest that Brentano’s conception of optical illusions introduces a presupposition that not only challenges the standard view – the distinction between the subjectively and objectively given – but that also makes his account more palatable for a naïve understanding of perception as openness to and awareness of the world."

  44. ———. 2019. "The Origins of Phenomenology in Austro-German Philosophy. Brentano, Husserl." In A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Shand, John, 418-453. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

    "Brentano is the backbone of Austro‐German philosophy for many reasons. He came to Austria in 1874, which he considered to be a favorable context to found a philosophical school;(2) he was instrumental in reintroducing Bolzano, the grandfather of Austro‐German philosophy, to Austrian philosophers; he trained or contributed to the training of many generations of Austro‐German philosophers, ranging from Carl Stumpf and Anton Marty to Alexius Meinong, Thomas Masaryk, Christian von Ehrenfels, Alois Höfler, Edmund Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski, Oskar Kraus and Schmuel Hugo Bergman; and he was an acknowledged influence on many philosophers ranging from Stout, Moore, and Heidegger to the Vienna Circle (the authors of the Manifesto) and many other late twentieth‐ and early twenty‐first‐century philosophers, on both sides of the analytic vs. continental divide. As the “grandfather of phenomenology”(3) resp. the “disgusted grandfather of phenomenology,”(4) but also as the key figure on the “Anglo‐Austrian Analytic Axis” (Simons 1986; Dummett 1988, p. 7), Brentano is at the source of the two main philosophical traditions in twentieth‐century philosophy. In this article, I will focus mainly on his place in nineteenth‐century European philosophy and on the central themes and concepts in his philosophy that were determinant in the development of the philosophy of his most gifted student: Edmund Husserl." (pp. 418-419)

    (2) On his philosophical appreciation of Austria, see for instance his inaugural lecture “On the Causes of Discouragement in the Philosophical Domain,” in Brentano (1929, p. 85ff.). See also his recollections in his letter to Bergman from 1909, published in Bergman (1946, p. 125).(...)

    (3) See Baumgartner (2003).

    (4) Ryle (1976).

    References

    Baumgartner, W. (2003). Franz Brentano: Grossvater der Phänomenologie. Studia Phaenomenologica 3: 15–60.

    Bergman, H. (1946). Briefe Franz Brentanos an Hugo Bergman. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 7: 83–158.

    Brentano, F. (1929). Über die Zukunft der Philosophie. Leipzig: Meiner.

    Ryle, G. 1976. “Disgusted Grandfather of Phenomenology” Times Higher Education Supplement, September 10: 15.

  45. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2020. "Descriptive Psychology: Brentano and Dilthey." Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science no. 10:290-307.

    Abstract "Although Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano apparently were pursuing roughly the same objective—to offer a description of our mental functions and of their relations to objects—and both called their respective research programs ‘descriptive psychology’, they seem to have used the term to refer to two different methods of psychological research.

    In this article, I compare analyses of these differences. Against the reading of Orth but also against a possible application of recent relativist accounts of the epistemology of peer disagreement to this case, I argue that their apparent shared objective is not enough to support an understanding of their views as two alternatives within a given historical or scientific context, or as a mutual peer disagreement. I show that the impression of a shared objective can be explained away as stemming from the influence of their teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, and I stress that the case of introspection strongly suggests

    that an account in terms of peer disagreement is not plausible. Finally, I conclude that the opposition between two traditions, Austrian philosophy and historicism, might be better suited to account for the dispute and its apparent common historical context."

  46. ———. 2020. "Brentano on Phenomenology and Philosophy as a Science." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 101-115. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Abstract: "I argue in this paper that Brentano’s grand project of philosophy as a science remained constant throughout his lifetime, from his habilitation thesis of 1866 to his last published writings. I suggest that this project has two main domains of application, namely, metaphysics and psychology. I focus on the application of the programme to psychology. According to my account, the project is based not only on the 1866 thesis that the method of philosophy is nothing other than the method of natural science (Thesis 4), as the standard reading of Brentano’s project suggests, but also on the thesis that philosophy should reject the distinction between speculative science and exact science (Thesis 1). I argue that the interplay between these two theses is present not only in Brentano’s early works, but also in his later lectures on descriptive psychology given in Vienna at the end of the 1880s. Not only does this explain why the grand project of philosophy remained constant, it also offers a more faithful account of the kind of investigation actually conducted by Brentano in the late 1880s – and later under the label of ‘phenomenology’, or descriptive psychology – than the one offered by the standard reading."

  47. ———. 2023. "Why does it matter to individuate the senses: A Brentanian approach." European Journal of Philosophy:413-430.

    Abstract: "How do we individuate the senses, what exactly do we do when we do so, and why does it matter? In the following article, I propose a general answer to these related questions based on Franz Brentano's views on the senses. After a short survey of various answers offered in the recent literature on the senses, I distinguish between two major ways of answering this question, causally and descriptively, arguing that only answers giving priority to description and to the classification involved in it are on the right track for a general answer to the related questions. In the second part of the article, I argue that Brentano's descriptive psychology is an attractive candidate for such an answer. His descriptive psychology provides a plausible account of the classification involved in description, in particular regarding the classification of sensory qualities. I close the article by briefly explaining how Brentano spells out the priority of descriptive answers over causal ones."

  48. Fugali, Edoardo. 2008. "Toward the Rebirth of Aristotelian Psychology: Trendelenburg and Brentano." In Psychology and Philosophy: Inquiries into the Soul from Late Scholasticism to Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Heinämaa, Sara and Reuter, Martina, 179-202. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Abstract: "The chapter studies the concepts of the self, the soul and the subject as they were developed around the first half of the nineteenth century in German philosophy presiding over the birth of psychology as a science. The topic is addressed by examining particularly the leading roles that Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg and Franz Brentano played in this development. Both thinkers worked out an original conception of the soul through recourse to Aristotle’s theories of the soul, combining them with insight stemming from the modern tradition of the philosophy of subjectivity, particularly Kantianism. The first part of the chapter explicates Friedrich Trendelenburg’s argument, that psychology constitutes an independent discipline, and show how his arguments contributed to the general discussion about the status of psychology. The second part consists of an explication of Franz Brentano’s reinterpretation of the Aristotelian tradition and provides a critical comparison between his position and that of Trendelenburg. The main argument of the chapter is that Trendelenburg had an important mediating role in the post-Aristotelian tradition, which developed further and culminated in idealistic theories of subjectivity and self-consciousness."

  49. ———. 2018. "Sensus Communis and Imagination as Precursors of Inner Perception in Brentano." Brentano Studien no. 16:305-334.

    Abstract: "Aim of this contribution is an inquiry about the double bind between both key notions of sensus communis (koiné aísthesis) and imagination in Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotelian psychology and in his later work. I will try to show how the treatment of these concepts prefigures Brentano’s theory of inner perception in its full-grown formulation. Strictly knit together with sensible imagination, as far as it allows for the coordination of the cognitive operations carried out by the proper senses and for establishing a level of metareflective awareness about them, sensus communis is defined as a modality of self-consciousness directly rooted in sense perception. Yet, at the same time, it provides for the genesis of a higher-order form of self-consciousness and of a structure of self-reference of all cognitive acts to their bearer. The theoretical issue at stake here consists in verifying if Brentano does really succeed in providing the adequate conceptual tools for the task of developing an unitary account of self-consciousness. This should be able to overcome the Cartesian-Kantian divide between the blind automatisms of sense perception and the empty certitude of a merely intellective awareness."

  50. Gabriel, Susan. 2013. "Brentano at the Intersection of Psychology, Ontology, and the Good." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, D. and Frechette, G. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    "In what follows I shall be painting with a broad brush, not without some trepidation, but with the end in view of showing an aspect of Brentano’s thought that can only be uncovered by connecting three large areas, namely, psychology, ontology, and ethics. Specifically I shall be considering these areas as they relate to Brentano’s natural theology, and in particular his theodicy or defense of God’s justice. Brentano took the optimistic view, that is, he thought it reasonable to believe, even though it could not be fully proved, that the evils in this world are or will be defeated by the good, and he thought it provable with an exceedlingly high degree of probability that there is an infinitely perfect necessary being, i.e., God. But I do not intend to present or examine the proofs for God’s existence here, much less to solve the problem of evil per se; rather, I hope simply to show how certain features of Brentano’s psychology, ontology, and ethics come together to allow Brentano to raise, and perhaps partially answer, the question of evil in a unique and thought-provoking way." (pp. 247-248, notes omitted)

  51. Gauvry, Charlotte. 2020. "Brentano on entia rationis and Linguistic Fictions." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

    Abstract: "In line with a rich and long tradition revived by Suárez, Brentano maintains that all non-determined entities have to be considered as non-beings. In this respect, he makes use of the concept of entia rationis. Interestingly, he suggests, at least since his 1901 letter to Marty[*], that these entities have to be considered not things or beings at all but “fictions,” more precisely, as linguistic fictions. The purpose

    of my text is twofold. First, I intend to clarify the status of linguistic fictions in Brentano. In particular, I will consider the extent to which they are connected or not with medieval theories of entia irrealia and entia rationis (Suárez). Secondly, I will emphasize the linguistic nature of those fictions and sketch some remarks on Brentano’s view on language and concepts."

    [*] in F. Brentano, Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 1977.

  52. ———. 2021. "A Context Principle in Brentano?" In Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School. Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy, edited by Dewalque, Arnaud, Gauvry, C. and Richard, Sebastian, 57-75. Cham, Switzerland): Palgrave.

    "The (historical) purpose of my chapter is to show that we are facing a paradox. Although considering Brentano as a ‘philosopher of language’ in the Frege-Wittgenstein sense is questionable—for reasons that I will dwell on below –, his dense and little-known manuscripts on language are full of ‘pragmatic’ insights, even fuller than Frege’s, Russell’s or the early Wittgenstein’s own works. Brentano actually anticipates some of the main claims of the later philosophers of ordinary language. The (systematic) purpose of this chapter is then to explore Brentano’s analyses on ordinary language in order to ask whether it makes sense to consider him a ‘contextualist’." (p. 58)

    (...)

    "Throughout this article, I will essentially focus on Brentano’s Logic manuscripts, which include the 1869–1871 Würzburg Lesson “Deduktive und Induktive Logik” (Ms. EL 80)—which was also taught in Vienna in 1875 and 1877 –, and the 1878–1885 Vienna Lesson “Die elementare Logik und die in ihr nötigen Reformen” (Ms. EL 72). Although still unpublished, these manuscripts are precious and provide a reliable source on Brentano’s work, contrary to the often quoted Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand’s compilation (see Brentano 1956), which includes numerous and not clearly identified fragments which are not from Brentano.

    Besides, although they cover almost twenty years, these lessons were all taught before Brentano’s so-called ‘reist’ turn and are thus rather homogeneous." (p. 59)

    References

    Brentano Franz. 1956. In Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil, ed. Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand. Bern: Francke.