Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of Faith) whose work strongly influenced not only students Edmund Husserl,

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

, Tomáš Masaryk,

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as ...

Alexius Meinong Alexius Meinong Ritter von Handschuchsheim (17 July 1853 – 27 November 1920) was an Austrian philosopher, a realist known for his unique ontology. He also made contributions to philosophy of mind and theory of value. Life Alexius Meinong ...

, Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Kazimierz Twardowski, and Christian von Ehrenfels, but many others whose work would follow and make use of his original ideas and concepts.

Life

Brentano was born at , near Boppard. He was son of Christian Brentano, brother of

Lujo Brentano Lujo Brentano (; ; 18 December 1844 – 9 September 1931) was an eminent German economist and social reformer. Biography Lujo Brentano, born in Aschaffenburg into a distinguished German Catholic intellectual family (originally of Italian desce ...

, and paternal nephew of Clemens Brentano and

Bettina von Arnim Bettina von Arnim (the Countess of Arnim) (4 April 178520 January 1859), born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was a German writer and novelist. Bettina (or Bettine) Brentano was a writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual art ...

, and of Gunda (née Brentano) and Friedrich von Savigny. He studied philosophy at the universities of Munich, Würzburg,

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

(with Adolf Trendelenburg) and Münster. He had a special interest in

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

and scholastic philosophy. He wrote his dissertation in 1862 at

Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...

under the title ''Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles'' (''On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle''). His thesis advisor was

Franz Jakob Clemens Franz Jacob Clemens (4 October 1815 – 24 February 1862) was a German Roman Catholic Church, Catholic philosopher, a layman who defended the Catholic Church even on theological questions. Life Clemens was born in Koblenz. After spending some t ...

. Subsequently, he began to study theology and entered the seminary in Munich and then Würzburg. He was ordained a Catholic priest on 6 August 1864. In 1866 he defended his

habilitation thesis Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

, ''Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom Nous Poietikos'' (''The Psychology of Aristotle, in Particular His Doctrine of the Active Intellect'', published 1867), and began to lecture at the University of Würzburg. His students in this period included, among others, Carl Stumpf and Anton Marty. Between 1870 and 1873, Brentano was heavily involved in the debate on

papal infallibility Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope when he speaks '' ex cathedra'' is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine "initially given to the apos ...

in matters of Faith. A strong opponent of such dogma, he eventually gave up his priesthood and his tenure in 1873. He remained, however, deeply religious and dealt with the topic of the existence of God in lectures given at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna. In 1874 Brentano published his major work, '' Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint''. From 1874 to 1895 he taught at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...

, Austria-Hungary. Among his students were Edmund Husserl,

, Tomáš Masaryk,

, Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Kazimierz Twardowski, and Christian von Ehrenfels and many others (see School of Brentano for more details). While he began his career as a full ordinary professor, he was forced to give up both his Austrian citizenship and his professorship in 1880 in order to marry Ida Lieben (Austro-Hungarian law denied matrimony to persons who had been ordained priests even if they later had resigned from priesthood), but he was permitted to stay at the university only as a '' Privatdozent''. After the departure of Twardowski back to Lwów and the death of his wife in 1894, Brentano retired and moved to

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

in 1896, where he married his second wife, Emilie Ruprecht, in 1897. He transferred to

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Zürich ...

at the outbreak of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, where he died in 1917.

Work

Intentionality

Brentano is best known for his reintroduction of the concept of intentionality—a concept derived from scholastic philosophy—to contemporary philosophy in his lectures and in his work ''Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt'' (''Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint''). While often simplistically summarised as "aboutness" or the relationship between mental acts and the external world, Brentano defined it as the main characteristic of ''mental phenomena'', by which they could be distinguished from ''physical phenomena''. Every mental phenomenon, every psychological act has content, is directed at an object (the '' intentional object''). Every belief, desire etc. has an object that they are about: the believed, the desired. Brentano used the expression "intentional inexistence" to indicate the status of the objects of thought in the mind. The property of being intentional, of having an intentional object, was the key feature to distinguish psychological phenomena and physical phenomena, because, as Brentano defined it, physical phenomena lacked the ability to generate ''original intentionality'', and could only facilitate an intentional relationship in a second-hand manner, which he labeled ''derived intentionality''. Brentano introduced a distinction between genetic psychology (''genetische Psychologie'') and descriptive psychology (''beschreibende'' or ''deskriptive Psychologie''): in his terminology, genetic psychology is the study of psychological phenomena from a third-person point of view, which involves the use of empirical experiments (satisfying, thus, the scientific standards we nowadays expect of an empirical science). (This concept is roughly equivalent to what is now called empirical psychology,Dale Jacquette (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Brentano'', Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 67. cognitive science, or " heterophenomenology", an explicitly third-person, scientific approach to the study of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

.) The aim of descriptive psychology, on the other hand, is to describe consciousness from a first-person point of view. The latter approach was further developed by Husserl and the phenomenological tradition.

Theory of perception

He is also well known for claiming that ''Wahrnehmung ist Falschnehmung'' ('perception is misconception') that is to say perception is erroneous. In fact he maintained that external, sensory perception could not tell us anything about the ''de facto'' existence of the perceived world, which could simply be illusion. However, we can be absolutely sure of our internal perception. When I hear a tone, I cannot be completely sure that there is a tone in the real world, but I am absolutely certain that I do hear. This awareness, of the fact that I hear, is called internal perception. External perception, sensory perception, can only yield hypotheses about the perceived world, but not truth. Hence he and many of his pupils (in particular Carl Stumpf and Edmund Husserl) thought that the natural sciences could only yield hypotheses and never universal, absolute truths as in pure logic or mathematics. However, in a reprinting of his ''Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte'' (''Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint''), he recanted this previous view. He attempted to do so without reworking the previous arguments within that work but it has been said that he was wholly unsuccessful. The new view states that when we hear a sound, we hear something from the external world; there are no physical phenomena of internal perception.

Theory of judgment

Brentano has a theory of judgment which is different from what is currently the predominant ( Fregean) view. At the centre of Brentano's theory of judgment lies the idea that a judgment depends on having a

presentation A presentation conveys information from a speaker to an audience. Presentations are typically demonstrations, introduction, lecture, or speech meant to inform, persuade, inspire, motivate, build goodwill, or present a new idea/product. Presenta ...

, but this presentation does not have to be predicated. Even stronger: Brentano thought that predication is not even necessary for judgment, because there are judgments without a predicational content. Another fundamental aspect of his theory is that judgments are always

existential Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...

. This so-called existential claim implies that when someone is judging that S is P he/she is judging that some S that is P exists. (Note that Brentano denied the idea that all judgments are of the form: S is P nd all other kinds of judgment which combine presentations Brentano argued that there are also judgments arising from a single presentation, e.g. “the planet Mars exists” has only one presentation.) In Brentano's own symbols, a judgment is always of the form: ‘+A’ (A exists) or ‘–A’ (A does not exist). Combined with the third fundamental claim of Brentano, the idea that all judgments are either positive (judging that A exists) or negative (judging that A does not exist), we have a complete picture of Brentano's theory of judgment. So, imagine that you doubt whether midgets exist. At that point you have a presentation of midgets in your mind. When you judge that midgets do not exist, then you are judging that the presentation you have does not present something that exists. You do not have to utter that in words or otherwise predicate that judgment. The whole judgment takes place in the denial (or approval) of the existence of the presentation you have. The problem of Brentano's theory of judgment is not the idea that all judgments are existential judgments (though it is sometimes a very complex enterprise to transform an ordinary judgment into an existential one), the real problem is that Brentano made no distinction between object and presentation. A presentation exists as an object in your mind. So you cannot really judge that A does not exist, because if you do so you also judge that the presentation is not there (which is impossible, according to Brentano's idea that all judgments have the object which is judged as presentation). Kazimierz Twardowski acknowledged this problem and solved it by denying that the object is equal to the presentation. This is actually only a change within Brentano's theory of perception, but has a welcome consequence for the theory of judgment, viz. that you can have a presentation (which exists) but at the same time judge that the object does not exist.

Legacy

The young Martin Heidegger was very much inspired by Brentano's early work ''On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle''. Brentano's focus on conscious (or phenomenal) intentionality was inherited by Carl Stumpf's Berlin School of experimental psychology, Anton Marty's

Prague School The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...

of linguistics, Alexius Meinong's Graz School of experimental psychology, Kazimierz Twardowski's Lwów School of philosophy, and Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Brentano's work also influenced

George Stout George Frederick Stout (; 1860–1944), usually cited as G. F. Stout, was a leading English philosopher and psychologist. Biography Born in South Shields on 6 January 1860, Stout studied psychology at the University of Cambridge under J ...

,Liliana Albertazzi, ''Immanent Realism: An Introduction to Brentano'', Springer, 2006, p. 321. the teacher of

G. E. Moore George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...

and

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

Bibliography

;Major works by Brentano in German * (1862) ''On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle'' (''Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles'' (

doctoral thesis A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: ...

))
online
* (1867) ''The Psychology of Aristotle'' (''Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom Nous Poietikos'' (

written in 1865/66))
online
* (1874) ''Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint'' (''Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt'')
Online
** (1924–25) ''Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt.'' Ed. Oskar Kraus, 2 vols. Leipzig: Meiner. Franz Brentano Archiv Graz
/ref> * (1876) ''Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht'' (a work against

Plotinus Plotinus (; grc-gre, Πλωτῖνος, ''Plōtînos''; – 270 CE) was a philosopher in the Hellenistic tradition, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher wa ...

)
Online
* (1889) ''The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong'' (''Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis'')
1902 English edition online
* (1911) ''Aristotle and his World View'' (''Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung'') * (1911) ''The Classification of Mental Phenomena'' (''Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene'') * (1930) ''The True and the Evident'' (''Wahrheit und Evidenz'') * (1976) ''Philosophical Investigations on Space, Time and Phenomena'' (''Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Raum, Zeit und Kontinuum'') * (1982) ''Descriptive Psychology'' (''Deskriptive Psychologie'') ;''Collected Works'' * ''Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften in zehn Bänden'' (''Collected Works in Ten Volumes'', edited by Arkadiusz Chrudzimski and Thomas Binder), Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag (now Walter de Gruyter). ** 1. ''Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte — Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene'' (2008) ** 2. ''Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie'' (2009) ** 3. ''Schriften zur Ethik und Ästhetik'' (2010) ** 4. ''Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles'' (2014)

References

External links

Franz Brentano website

"Franz Brentano and Cornelio Fabro. A forgotten chapter of the Brentanian reception"
* *

– Contains a list of the English translations of Brentano's works * *
The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong by Franz Brentano
at Project Gutenberg
"Franz Brentano Archiv" (Franz Brentano Papers) at Graz University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brentano, Franz 1853 births 1917 deaths 19th-century essayists 19th-century German male writers 19th-century German philosophers 20th-century essayists 20th-century German male writers 20th-century German philosophers 20th-century male writers Aristotelian philosophers Austrian philosophers Catholic philosophers German consciousness researchers and theorists Continental philosophers Empiricists Epistemologists German male essayists German male non-fiction writers German people of Italian descent German psychologists German Roman Catholics Historians of philosophy Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Metaphysicians Ontologists People from Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis People from the Rhine Province Phenomenologists Philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Philosophy academics University of Münster alumni Academics of the University of Vienna University of Würzburg alumni University of Würzburg faculty