Themes from Brentano [1 ed.] 9789401209939, 9789042037427

Citation preview

Themes

from

Brentano

STUDIEN ZUR ÖSTERREICHISCHEN PHILOSOPHIE Gegründet von Rudolf Haller Herausgegeben von Mauro Antonelli BAND XLIV

Themes

from

Brentano

Edited by Denis Fisette and

Guillaume Fréchette

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013

Die Reihe wird gemeinsam von Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam - New York und dem Verlag Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg herausgegeben. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3742-7 E-BOOK ISBN: 978-94-012-0993-9 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013 Printed in the Netherlands

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: BRENTANO’S IMPACT Guillaume Fréchette I. CONSCIOUSNESS. BRENTANIAN AND NEO-BRENTANIAN PERSPECTIVES Introduction Denis Fisette

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17

Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis: No Representation Without Self-Representation Uriah Kriegel

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What is Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness? Brentano’s Theory of Inner Consciousness Revisited Johannes L. Brandl

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Unity Without Self: Brentano on the Unity of Consciousness Mark Textor II. VARIETIES OF INTENTIONALITY Introduction Guillaume Fréchette Brentano’s Thesis (Revisited) Guillaume Fréchette

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87 91

Brentano and Aristotle on the Ontology of Intentionality Arkadiusz Chrudzimski

121

Anton Marty’s Intentionalist Theory of Meaning Laurent Cesalli

139

Phenomenology of Intentionality Matjaž Potrč

165

6

Table of Contents

III. ONTOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS Introduction Guillaume Fréchette

189

Being as the True: From Aristotle to Brentano Werner Sauer

193

Franz Brentano’s Mereology Wilhelm Baumgartner

227

Brentano at the Intersection of Psychology, Ontology, and the Good Susan Gabriel IV. CRITICS AND HEIRS. THE SCHOOL OF BRENTANO Introduction Denis Fisette

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273

Mixed Feelings. Carl Stumpf’s Criticism of James and Brentano on Emotions Denis Fisette

281

The Intentionality of Pleasures and Other Feelings. A Brentanian Approach Olivier Massin

307

Brentano and Stumpf on Tonal Fusion Riccardo Martinelli

339

Table of Contents V. EXPOSITIONS AND DISCUSSIONS. SELECTED MATERIALS AND TRANSLATIONS Introduction Denis Fisette

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359

There and Back Again. An Updated History of Franz Brentano’s Unpublished Papers Thomas Binder

369

Abstraction and Relation, followed by Selected Letters to Marty Franz Brentano

419

Editorial Remarks Guillaume Fréchette

421

Abstraction and Relation

431

Selected Letters to Marty

449

Abstraktion und Relation

465

Ausgewählte Briefe an Marty

483

Modern Errors concerning the Knowledge of the Laws of Inference Franz Brentano

501

Moderne Irrthümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schließens Franz Brentano

513

INDEX OF NAMES

525

INTRODUCTION: BRENTANO’S IMPACT GUILLAUME FRÉCHETTE

Curiously enough, although it has been almost hundred years since Franz Brentano’s death, there seems to be no consensus on his impact on the philosophy of his time, and, more generally, on 20th-century philosophy. The different diagnoses about Brentano’s impact range from pure “invisibility”1 to being “among the most important …philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries”.2 Brentano is sometimes mentioned as a philosopher who had an “undoubted and far-reaching philosophical influence”.3 But the nature of this impact similarly has no consensus: sometimes, the “strong and consistent influence that Brentano’s writings … have had on subsequent thinkers” is assessed,4 while others rather see in Brentano a philosopher who had an “influence almost exclusively through his lecture courses”.5 These descriptions of the nature of Brentano’s influence actually address two different aspects of this influence. It is true to say that Brentano’s influence on Austro-German philosophy was diffused almost exclusively through the notes of his lecture courses and by his students. His lectures on metaphysics, for instance, were never published, but widely diffused among his students. Husserl, Meinong, Marty, Stumpf, Twardowski, and many others had copies of Brentano’s lectures notes and used them extensively for their own courses and publications.6 Moreover, his students only sparsely quote 1

See Poli (1995). Jacquette (2004). 3 Schuhmann (2004). 4 Tassone (2012, 2). 5 Schuhmann (2004). 6 It became a problematic issue among Brentano’s students as to whether they were acknowledging the influence of Brentano in their publications correctly. The best example of this is the publication of Alois Höfler and Alexius Meinong’s Logics in 1891, for which Anton Marty acted as an anonymous referee, giving a very negative 2

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Brentano’s own publications. Stumpf in one of his biographies of Brentano evokes the reason for this: It is very awkward to have to refer to lectures or even conversations in order to explain to the reader the assumptions one uses as a starting point; it is even more awkward to attack points of view which came from your teacher and which you can no longer share, if these points of view are not available in printed form. How great is the possibility for misunderstanding and inaccuracy! How far, in any case, does the right to cite another’s views extend when they are views that the originator himself has not published and may have even renounced altogether or in part in the meantime? Personal separation for years must necessarily bring about transformations in thought on both sides, which make complete mutual understanding difficult. (Stumpf 1919/1976, 145/43)

The possibility of misunderstanding the master’s view, together with Brentano’s reluctance to publish, necessarily restricted the influence he exerted on his students to a corpus of lecture notes that were cited indirectly. In this context, it is fair to say that the impact of Brentano on philosophy is also measurable through the impact of some of the works of his students, at least those who were influenced in this way: Husserl’s Logical Investigations, Meinong’s Theory of Object, Twardowski’s On Content and Object of Presentations, Ehrenfels’ On Gestalt-Qualities are all works that indirectly exhibit the influence of Brentano’s lectures notes. In this sense, the impact that Brentano had on Austro-German philosophy, mostly through his direct students, doesn’t come from his publications but from his teaching.7 The specificity of this Austro-German channel of influence certainly plays an important role in the fact that, between the 1930s and the 1950s, with exception of a few ‘grand-students’ of Brentano (the students of Brenreview of the book, and even insinuating that the book was plagiarised from Brentano’s lecture notes. It is still unclear how Meinong discovered that Marty was the author of the review, but it is fair to say that it was Marty’s review that caused the break between Marty (and with him the whole orthodoxy of the school of Brentano) and the Meinongians. On this episode, see Fisette and Fréchette (2007, 55f.). 7 The ‘historical background’ presented in the Vienna Manifesto by the members of the Vienna Circle also makes clear not only that they were deeply influenced by the philosophy of Brentano and his school, but also that this influence was essentially mediated by the teachings of Brentano and his students (in the case of the Vienna Circle: Alois Höfler).

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tano’s students) who were actively doing research and cultivating Brentano’s influence, the presence of Brentano in Austrian and German philosophy remained relatively negligible. Brentano’s impact on philosophy followed a different course outside the German-speaking world. In France, Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology were the main channel of reception and discussion of Brentanian ideas. The works of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Lévinas addressed Brentanian issues mainly from the angle of Husserlian subjectivity or Heidegger’s philosophy of Dasein. The reception of Brentano in the English-speaking world was considerably different: As early as 1876, the Scottish theologian and philosopher Robert Flint published a review of the Psychology in the first issue of Mind, which was then later discussed in the next issue of the journal by the Dutch orientalist and philosopher Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land (Land 1876). In 1879, the French psychologist Théodule Ribot discussed the ideas of Brentano in his (Ribot 1879). The British psychologist Titchener, a few years after his studies under Wundt’s supervision in Leipzig, also discussed Brentano’s Psychology in 1898.8 Brentano’s works were later introduced to Italy by Vailati, who published a number of articles on Brentano – in Italian – at the turn of the century.9 At about the same time, influenced by their teacher, Stout, in Cambridge, Russell and Moore became acquainted with Brentano’s philosophy. Stout’s Analytic Psychology, from 1896, deals extensively with Brentano’s psychology and adopts many of Brentano’s positions. Russell and Moore knew the book well.10 One can even find, in Moore (1899), echoes of the Brentanian distinction between the content of a belief or judgement and the object it is directed upon, a distinction that Moore opposes to Bradley.11 The first English translation of Brentano’s work was instigated by a student of Brentano, Anton Marty, who convinced his British student Cecil Hague, then in Prague, to prepare a translation of Vom 8

See Titchener (1898). See Albertazzi (2006, 27ff.). 10 Russell read the book “as soon as it came out” (see Griffin 1991, 34); Moore also read Stout’s book “with a great deal of attention.” In addition, Russell attended Stout’s lectures on the history of philosophy in 1893/94, as Moore did two years later. See Griffin (1991, 33). 11 This distinction is still unclear in Brentano (1874), but it might have been mediated through Twardowski (1894). See van der Schaar (1996) on the influence of Brentano’s student Kazimierz Twardowski in Cambridge. 9

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Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (Brentano 1889). The translation was published in 1902. A year later, it was positively reviewed by Moore (1903). Russell, however, cam into contact with Brentanian philosophy through his reading of Meinong and his correspondence with the Grazer philosopher from 1899 up to ‘On Denoting’ of 1905. He could have encountered Brentano in his reading of Stumpf (1873) as early as 1897.12 Russell (1899) discusses Meinong’s critique of Fechner’s interpretation of Weber’s law, as well as his theory of complexes and assumptions and his theory of object, in numerous papers published in Mind between 1899 and 1905.13 Russell later came back to Brentano’s theory of intentionality in his Analysis of Mind, proposing a critique of the Brentanian distinction between the physical and the psychical based on his monism. In Analysis of Mind, Russell pays tribute to Brentano, presenting his Psychology – in 1921 – as “still influential” and as “the starting-point of a great deal of interesting work.” It was here that the famous ‘intentionality quote’ was given in English for the first time. A second wave of influence came through Gilbert Ryle in England and Roderick Chisholm in North America. In the 1930s, Ryle had published numerous reviews on the newest publications coming from the phenomenological movement. Ryle labelled his own work ‘phenomenology’, albeit in a very restricted sense, although he disagreed with Merleau-Ponty’s affirmation that they both, at bottom, agreed.14 It was Russell’s Analysis of mind that led Chisholm to Brentano and Meinong.15 In the early 1950s he published a number of reviews of recent work in the field of phenomenology, and, at the behest of Ayer, delivered a lecture in London on ‘Sentences about believing’. In this lecture, he defended Brentano’s thesis about the irreducibility of intentionality. In many of his publications, Chisholm discusses Brentanian and Meinongian ideas, advocating the view that the reference of language has to be understood on the basis of the 12

See Russell (1897). On the relation between Russell and Meinong, see Simons (1992). 14 This disagreement was expressed at the Royaumont Colloquium on analytic philosophy in 1958. On the Ryle/Merleau-Ponty episode, see Beck (1962, 7). 15 See Chisholm (1997, 13). As a matter of fact, there actually is a direct connection between Brentano and Chisholm, and in some sense, Chisholm could be called Brentano’s grand-grand student (Urenkelschüler), since he attended Hocking’s courses, who was an early student of Husserl in Göttingen. See Chisholm (1997, 5). 13

Introduction: Brentano’s Impact

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intentionality of thought. Chisholm’s focus on the irreducibility of intentional sentences had a decisive influence on the further reception of the so-called ‘Brentano thesis’.16 In 1960, Quine interpreted Brentano in light of Chisholm, seeing in Brentano’s thesis a claim about the indispensability of intentional idioms. Quine’s rejection of the ‘Brentano thesis’, together with Wittgenstein’s influence on the development of the philosophy of mind in the 1970s, played an important role in bringing programmes of naturalization to prominence in philosophy of mind. In the early 1980s the Churchlands called for the elimination of intentional concepts and the concepts of a ‘folk psychology’ that should make way for advances in neuroscience. Others still, like Searle, were closer to the spirit of Brentanian descriptive psychology. In Europe, in the late 1970s, three young British scholars – Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons, and Barry Smith – contributed significantly to the reactivation of Brentano’s philosophy, and of Austrian philosophy more generally, by promoting its analytical ontological realism against the background of conv entionalism and anti-realism that were dominant in British philosophy at the time.17 Brentano’s presence in contemporary philosophy has benefited from these various receptions, both in Europe and in North America, to the extent that Brentanian or even ‘Neo-Brentanian’ views are now defended and discussed in philosophy of mind, value theory, ontology and theories of knowledge. Furthermore, the various contributions to this volume give good testimony to the vitality of Brentano’s philosophy. The particular history of his reception in 20th and 21st-century philosophy should, therefore, not be interpreted as the history of his invisibility, as has been suggested, but rather as a testimony to the wide and various long-term influence he has exerted upon analytic philosophy and phenomenology. At a time when philosophy oscillated between idealism (in Germany), empiricism, utilitarianism (in Great Britain) and positivism (in France), Brentano favoured an analytic and descriptive approach, influenced mainly by Aristotle and medieval 16 Chisholm not only did a great deal of work in Brentanian studies, but he also did much for the conservation, edition and publication of Franz Brentano’s posthumous writings. At the end of the 1950s, Chisholm met with John Brentano, the son of Franz Brentano, and arranged to publish these manuscripts, with the help of Georg Katkov (a grand-student of Brentano from Prague), William Kneale and Stephan Körner. Several volumes to whose edition he contributed were published by Meiner, and he instigated many translations of Brentano’s work in English. 17 See their Programmschrift: Mulligan, Simons & Smith (1984).

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philosophy. He saw from early on the importance of practicing philosophy with the same rigor as any other scientific investigation.18 These central features of philosophical investigation were identified by Brentano more than thirty years before Moore and Russell abandoned idealism, a few years before Frege’s Begriffsschrift, and thirty years after the publication of Bernard Bolzano’s Theory of science. His contribution, located at the source of both early analytic philosophy and phenomenology – or, following Simons (1986), on the ‘Anglo-Austrian Analytic Axis’ – is in this context clearly visible. His invisibility, if we can call it that, has more to do with his marginalization from both the analytic and continental philosophy of the 1950s, as a mere ‘forerunner of the phenomenological movement’,19 a ‘precursor of Husserl’,20 or, as Ryle calls him in relation with his philosophical offspring, the ‘disgusted grandfather of phenomenology’.21 ***

This volume gathers together fourteen new essays, which are grouped into five sections: Consciousness (I), Intentionality (II), Ontology and Metaphysics (III), the school of Brentano (IV) and a selection of original manuscripts and correspondence from Brentano’s Nachlass (V). These sections are not intended to cover Brentano’s whole philosophy, but merely to give an insight in three core issues of his philosophy (sections I to III) that are determinant in most, if not all, of his work. Although Brentano was not a systematic philosopher in the classical sense, his thought has systematic features that are addressed in the three first sections: 1) the epistemological priority of inner perception over outer perception, which is the basis of his theory of evidence, and which also plays a central role in his theory of consciousness; 2) his conception of intentionality as the mark of the 18

See his habilitation viva of 1866, as reprinted in Brentano (1929). See Spiegelberg (1965, 27). Brentano’s disciples certainly have their share of responsibility for the confusion about the nature of Brentano’s contribution. 20 Farber (1943, 11). Both Spiegelberg and Farber remained true to the late Husserl’s account of the (un)importance of Brentano for phenomenology: according to Husserl, “Brentano remained far from a phenomenology in [his] sense” and “did not see the essence of intentional analysis”. See Husserl (1980, 51). Unsurprisingly, this reading of the history of phenomenology was later advocated by Heidegger, who candidly remarked that “in a certain way, Husserl’s teacher Brentano had already noticed intentionality” (Heidegger 2001, 146). 21 Ryle (1976). 19

Introduction: Brentano’s Impact

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mental, which is at the basis of his conception of perception in general, but also of sensations, cognition and valuation and 3) his ontological conception of the mind and the world as mereological structures, which underlies not only his philosophy of mind and his metaphysics, but also his ethics and his logics. The last two sections deal with the posterity of Brentano’s philosophy from two different perspectives: in section IV, the legacy of Brentano’s account of sense perception and feeling is discussed, while the history of Brentano’s unpublished manuscripts is discussed in section V. This section also presents an edition of a manuscript from 1899 on relations, along with the letters from Brentano to Marty which discuss this manuscript. The last part of section V contains the text of a public lecture given by Brentano on the laws of inference. This edited material is presented both in English translation and in the German original. References

Albertazzi, L. 2006. Immanent Realism. An Introduction to Brentano. Dordrecht: Springer. Beck, Leslie. 1962. ‘Avant-Propos’, in Cahiers de Royaumont. La Philosophie analytique. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Brentano, F. 1889. Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. —— 1902. The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong. London: A. Constable & Co. —— 1929. Über die Zukunft der Philosophie. Leipzig: Meiner. Chisholm, R. 1997. ‘My Philosophical Development’ in L.E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm. Chicago: Open Court. Farber, M. 1943. The Foundation of Phenomenology. Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Griffin, N. 1991. Russell’s Idealist Apprenticeship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heidegger, M. 2001. Zollikon Seminars. Protocols, Conversations, Letters. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. 1980. Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences. Third Book of the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Jacquette, D. 2004. ‘Introduction: Brentano’s Philosophy’ in D. Jacquette (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-19. Land, J.P.N. 1876. ‘Brentano’s Logical Innovations’ in Mind 1: 289-292. Moore, G.E. 1899. ‘The Nature of Judgment’ in Mind 8: 176-193. —— 1903. ‘Review: The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong’ in International Journal of Ethics 14: 115-123. Mulligan, K., P. Simons & B. Smith. 1984. ‘Truth-Makers’ in Philosophy and Phe-

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nomenological Research 44: 287-321. Poli, R. 1995. ‘The Brentano Puzzle: An Introduction’ in Poli, R. (ed.), The Brentano Puzzle. London: Ashgate, 1-13. Ribot, T. 1879. La psychologie allemande contemporaine. Paris: Alcan. Russell, B. 1897. An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— 1899. ‘Review of A. Meinong, Über die Bedeutung des Weber’schen Gesetzes’ in Mind 8: 251-256. —— 1921. The Analysis of Mind. Lonon: Allen and Unwin. Ryle, G. 1976. ‘Disgusted Grandfather of Phenomenology’, in Times Higher Education Supplement, 10th September 1976, p. 15. Simons, P. 1986. ‘The Anglo-Austrian Analytic Axis’ in J.C. Nyíri (ed.) Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein. Zur Tradition der österreichischen Philosophie. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 98-107. —— 1992. ‘On What There Isn’t: The Meinong-Russell Dispute,’ in P. Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 159-191. Spiegelberg, H. 1965. The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff (2nd edition). Stumpf, C. 1873. Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung. Leipzig: Hirzel. —— 1919. ‘Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano’, in O. Kraus (ed.), Franz Brentano, zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre. Mit Beiträgen von Carl Stumpf und Edmund Husserl. Munich: Beck, 85-149. —— 1976. ‘Reminiscences of Franz Brentano’ in L. MacAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Franz Brentano. London: Duckworth, 10-46. Tassone, B. 2012. From Psychology to Phenomenology. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Titchener, E. 1898. ‘The Postulates of a structural psychology’ in Philosophical Review 7: 449-465. van der Schaar, M. 1996. ‘From Analytic Psychology to Analytic Philosophy: the Reception of Twardowski’s Ideas in Cambridge’ in Axiomathes 7: 295-324.

1 CONSCIOUSNESS. BRENTANIAN AND NEO-BRENTANIAN PERSPECTIVES INTRODUCTION (DENIS FISETTE)

The three papers grouped in this section illustrate the growing interest in philosophy of mind and cognitive science for the theory of consciousness developed by Franz Brentano in the second book of his Psychology of an Empirical Standpoint. This interest is on a par with the current debates surrounding the so-called problem of consciousness. This problem has been at the focal point of philosophers’ concern for the past thirty years and it concerns both the difficulties related to its definition as well as the scientific explanation based on the descriptive apparatus of the theories currently available on the market.1 It is also known as the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, to use D. Chalmers’ well-known expression, mainly because of the resistance offered by (phenomenal) consciousness to a scientific explanation from the perspective of cognitive science.2 Faced with this problem, some philosophers have developed theories of consciousness inspired in part by Brentano’s theory of consciousness, thereby highlighting its relevance and value in light of current debates on consciousness. David Rosenthal has for example emphasized the innovative nature of Brentano’s theory of consciousness with respect to modern theories since Descartes, and in a recent article, he argues that the originality and breakthrough of Brentano’s views on consciousness rests on his characterization of mental states as conscious states: … it was rare until Brentano’s time to describe mental states as conscious at all. Even though Descartes and Locke were plainly writing about the property we describe as a state’s being conscious, they did 1 2

Cf. Fisette and Poirier (2000). Chalmers (1995).

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Denis Fisette not say that our mental states are all conscious, but rather that we are conscious of all our mental states.” 3

Indeed, this is one of the theses formulated by Brentano at the beginning of the second chapter of the second book of his Psychology and this thesis is an important piece of his theory of primary and secondary objects. Some philosophers of mind refer explicitly to Brentano as a precursor to their own theory. This is true primarily of Uriah Kriegel who characterizes his self-representational theory of consciousness as neoBrentanian.4 In his contribution to this volume (‘Brentano's Most Striking Thesis: No Representation Without Self-Representation’), he claims that Brentano’s theory is currently one of the main options in philosophy of mind: In recent years, it has turned out that Brentano still has much more to teach us. His account of consciousness in terms of self-directed intentionality has been developed and defended by a variety of authors, and is now among the leading options for a philosophical theory of consciousness in analytic philosophy of mind.5

Brentano’s opponents recognize that his theory of primary and secondary objects is akin to a higher-order theory of consciousness, but argue at the same time that it is vulnerable to most of the objections raised against the latter and it is therefore not a reliable alternative for solving the problem of phenomenal experience.6 Many of these objections are in line with the criticism that D. Moran has addressed to Brentano in his article ‘Brentano’s Thesis'. Moran argues that “Brentano’s views as a whole are best understood as a continuation of the Scholastico-Cartesian tradition” and “did not progress much beyond a refined and nuanced Cartesianism in his account of the mind and its intentional relations”.7 In a more recent article entitled ‘Back to Brentano?’,8 Dan Zahavi has reviewed the ins and outs of this return to 3

Rosenthal (2009, 4). See Kriegel (2003a; 2003b) and Kriegel and Williford (2006). 5 This volume, p. 39. 6 See Güzeldere (1997, 789); Siewert (1998, 357-358); Zahavi (1998, 130-131; 2004, 73; 2006, 7); Caston (2002, 754); Textor (2006); Gennaro (1996, 27-9). See also Janzen (2008) and Gennaro (2012). 7 Moran (1996, 27). 8 Zahavi (2004); see also Siewert (1998, 197) for a similar criticism of Brentano based 4

Introduction to Section I

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Brentano’s theory of consciousness and has argued that neo-Brentanian theories are hampered with the same problems that were criticized many years ago within the phenomenological tradition inspired by Husserl. Zahavi believes that if, as most theorists of consciousness do, we aim at a genuine theory of pre-reflective selfawareness, we ought to turn our attention to philosophers such as Husserl, Sartre or Merleau-Ponty because they truly contributed in their own way to the study of the qualitative and phenomenal dimension of consciousness. In response to these objections, other philosophers have argued that these discussions on the viability of the Brentanian theory of consciousness with regard to current debates on qualia and phenomenal consciousness presuppose that we have a reliable interpretation of Brentano’s views on consciousness. But opinions diverge on this issue. Indeed, while Kriegel claims that Brentano defended a selfrepresentational theory of consciousness,9 others identify it with a theory of higher-order thoughts or with an adverbial theory of consciousness.10 Hence the urgent need to revisit Brentano’s Hauptwerk. This task has been undertaken by two recognized Brentanian scholars in their contributions to this book, i.e. Johannes Brandl and Mark Textor. In his article ‘What is pre-reflective self-awareness? Brentano's theory of inner consciousness revisited,’ Brandl disagrees with the interpretations of Brentano’s theory that are in line with higherorder theories of consciousness and argues, against Brentano’s critics, that Brentano advocated a theory of pre-reflective self-awareness in the chapters of his Psychology devoted to the analysis of consciousness. Another important dimension of Brentano’s theory that is barely considered in these discussions is his doctrine of the unity of consciousness which, as shown by Textor in his article ‘Unity Without Self: Brentano on the Unity of Consciousness,’ constitutes a fundamental principle of his theory of consciousness and is therefore inseparable from the solution he proposed both to the problem of duplication and to that of regression.11 Textor emphasizes particularly the originality of Brentano’s conception of the unity of consciousness on what he calls the ‘conscious-of trap.’ This is what Kriegel calls Brentano’s most striking thesis : “that conscious states are conscious in virtue of self-representing (and to that extent that self-representation is the essence of consciousness).” (this volume, 24). 10 Thomasson (2000). 11 See also Textor (2006). 9

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with regard to Hume’s bundle theory and argues that Brentano’s key concept is that of fusion, which has been developed by his student Carl Stumpf. All these discussions about the ins and outs of Brentano’s theory of consciousness raise a more general question regarding Brentano’s conception of the mind as a whole. In his classical paper ‘Two Concepts of Consciousness,’ Rosenthal has shown convincingly that the conception that one has of the mental determines in general the way one defines consciousness. Rosenthal himself advocates an intentionalist conception of the mind and seeks to reduce consciousness to an intentional relation between a higher-order thought (i.e. the content of a propositional attitude) and a lower-order state that it takes as its object. Within Brentanian studies, the received view since R. Chisholm is that Brentano’s key concept is that of intentionality, which he had the merit of having reintroduced in the vocabulary of philosophy and which still remains today a key concept in philosophy. Hence, what is sometimes called intentionalism or ‘Brentano’s thesis’ according to which intentionality is the fundamental characteristic of the mind. However, it is one thing to recognize Brentano’s merit of having reactualized the notion of intentionality, it is quite another to make it Brentano’s main thesis. For, as shown in the recent reception of Brentano’s philosophy, this intentionalist reading do not take into account other principles of his theory of consciousness, which is the central topic of the second book of his Psychology and where Brentano introduces his concept of intentionality. In addition, the work of Brentano on consciousness after the publication of his Psychology in 1874 provides further arguments against this interpretation. Textor and Kriegel offer significant corrections to Chisholm’s thesis, the first emphasizing the importance of the principle of the unity of consciousness within the general conception of the mind in his Psychology, and the second by attributing to Brentano the co-extension thesis of the mind and the conscious (“no mental state can be non-conscious”). They acknowledge, however, that this picture of Brentano’s theory raises several problems and leaves open several questions for further study of Brentano’s theory of consciousness.

Introduction to Section I References

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Caston, V. 2002. ‘Aristotle on Consciousness’ in Mind 111: 751-815. Chalmers, D. 1995. ‘Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness’ in Journal of Consciousness Studies 2: 200-219. Crane, T. 1998. ‘Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental’ in A. O’Hear (ed.), Contemporary Issues in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Fisette, D. and P. Poirier 2000. Philosophie de l’esprit. État des lieux, Paris: Vrin. Gennaro, R. 2012. The Consciousness Paradox: Consciousness, Concepts, and Higher-Order Thoughts, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Güzeldere, G. 1997. ‘Is consciousness the perception of what passes in one's own mind?’ in N.J. Block et al. (eds), The Nature of consciousness. A philosophical Debate, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 789-806. Janzen, G. 2008. The reflexive Nature of Consciousness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kriegel, U. 2003a. ‘Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an Argument’ in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33: 103-132. —— 2003b. ‘Consciousness, Higher-Order Content, and the Individuation of Vehicles’ in Synthese 134: 477-504. Kriegel, U. and K. Williford (eds.). 2006. Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Moran, D. 1996. ‘Brentano's Thesis’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 70: 1-27. Rosenthal, D. 1986. ‘Two Concepts of Consciousness’ in Philosophical Studies 49: 329-59. —— 2009. ‘Concepts and Definitions of Consciousness’ in W. P. Banks (ed.) Encyclopedia of Consciousness, Amsterdam: Elsevier. Siewert, C. 1998. The Significance of Consciousness, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Textor, M. 2006. ‘Brentano (and Some Neo-Brentanians) on Inner Consciousness’ in Dialectica 60: 411-432. Thomasson, A. 2000. ‘After Brentano. A One-Level Theory of Consciousness’ in European Journal of Philosophy 8: 190-209. Zahavi, D. 1998. ‘Brentano and Husserl on Self-Awareness’ in Études phénoménologiques 27: 127-168. —— 2004. ‘Back to Brentano?’ in Journal of Consciousness Studies 11: 66-87. —— 2006. ‘Two Takes on a One-level Account of Consciousness’ in Psyche 12: 1-9.

BRENTANO’S MOST STRIKING THESIS: NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT SELF-REPRESENTATION URIAH KRIEGEL

(UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, IJN PARIS)

1 Introduction: Theses from Brentano It is well-known that Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental (Brentano 1874 Book II Ch.1), though it is less clear whether ‘mark’ talk is supposed to underlie merely an extensional claim or a stronger, “intensional” claim. The extensional claim would be that all and only mental states are intentional states. The stronger claim would be that mental states are mental in virtue of being intentional. Unfortunately, the text itself does not appear to decisively support one interpretation over another, though arguably the tenor of Brentano’s discussion suggests the stronger claim: intentionality is the essence of mentality. It is much less known that Brentano also held a thesis of coextension between the mental and the conscious. Obviously, no non-mental state could be conscious. But interestingly, Brentano also argues for the converse: no mental state can be non-conscious. Thus the final Section 13 of Chapter 2 of Book II of the Psychology reads as simply: “There is no unconscious mental activity.” This was not a striking thesis at the time, mind you: Freud’s “The Unconscious” was not to appear for another forty years (Freud 1915).1 It follows, in any case, that the mental, the conscious, and the intentional or representational were all co-extensive for Brentano. A much more striking Brentanian thesis concerns the nature of consciousness itself. Over the past decade, several partially interpre1

It is sometime claimed that Leibniz’s petites perceptions were a pre-Freudian introduction of the unconscious, but upon examination this is not all that plausible. It is much more plausible that the petites perceptions were perceptual experiences in the periphery or “fringe” of consciousness.

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tive works have appeared that cast Brentano as a forerunner of current-day self-representational theories of consciousness, according to which a mental state is conscious when, and only when, it represents itself in the right way (see, e.g., Caston 2002, Kriegel 2003). Brentano himself does not typically put things in terms of representation, but instead in terms of presentation (Vorstellung) and intentionality. In keeping with the current-day tendency to use the terms “intentionality” and “representation” synonymously, however, we may safely take a passage as this to mean that every conscious state self-represents (Brentano 1874: 153-4): [Every conscious act] includes within it a consciousness of itself. Therefore, every [conscious] act, no matter how simple, has a double object, a primary and a secondary object. The simplest act, for example the act of hearing, has as its primary object the sound, and for its secondary object, itself, the mental phenomenon in which the sound is heard.

Here as before, there is no decisive textual evidence that the claim is not merely extensional – that all and only conscious states happen to self-represent. But the tenor of the discussion suggests a stronger thesis – that conscious states are conscious in virtue of self-representing (and to that extent that self-representation is the essence of consciousness). So now we have a four-way coextension in Brentano: intentionality/representation, mentality, consciousness, and self-representation are all coextensive to him. The coextension of the first and last of these is particularly surprising, however: Why would representation coextend with self-representation? Why would the very existence of one order of representation (namely, first-order) be conditioned by the existence of another order of representation (second-order)? Brentano is not shy about this claim of coextension. 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

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to our modern sensibilities, is actually deeply insightful. The insight can be briefly illustrated as follows. When I consciously think of the Sydney Opera House, I am in an internal state that represents the Sydney Opera House to me. The state thus instantiates two representation relations: it bears a representation-of relation to the Opera House and a representation-to relation to me. Although virtually all work on mental representation in the past century has focused on the nature of the representation-of relation, little if any illumination has been offered on the representation-to relation and its connection to representation-of. A close examination of the connection between these two relations reveals, first, that in some sense there could be no representation-of without representation-to, and secondly, that representation-to is plausibly implemented in self-representation. 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. 2 No representation-of without representation-to The notion that there could be no representation-of without representation-to might strike the reader as a non-starter. The world is awash with natural signs, and these can legitimately be said to represent what they do even if there is nobody to whom they represent. The rings on the tree’s trunk represent the tree’s age, the traces in the snow represent the culprit’s path, etc. Moreover, as Dretske (1988: 55) notes, what such natural signs represent is independent of what they are taken to represent. The tree rings would represent the tree’s age even if nobody took them to represent the tree’s age (or anything at all for

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that matter). They would represent the tree’s age even if everybody took them to represent the tree’s height (or took them to be non-representational). There may be a subtle fallacy in this reasoning, however. An ant strolling about a deserted island’s beach may form the inscription “cat” in the sand, and some rocks on Venus may accidentally be arranged “cat”-wise. We have no trouble saying that these structures represent cats, but we realize that, in and of themselves, there is nothing about these “cat” structures to make them mean cats in English rather than lizards in a language yet to be invented. These are instances of what we may call “representation by courtesy.”2 What is representation by courtesy? The “cat”-ly inscriptions represent what they do, and at all, only because they are graphically typeidentical to other inscriptions. There is, moreover, an asymmetry between these inscriptions and, say, my own deliberate “cat” inscriptions. The former represent because the latter do, but not conversely. In other words, the former represent by courtesy of the latter. Thus the token Venutian rock formation represents cats only because it betokens a type of representation some tokens of which represent cats. It follows that if those other tokens did not represent, the Venutian rock formation would not represent either. In general, we may construe representation-by-courtesy as follows: R1,…,Rn represent by courtesy of Rn+1,…,Rn+n just in case (i) R1,…,Rn belong to the same representation type as Rn+1,…,Rn+n, (ii) R1,…,Rn would not represent if Rn+1,…,Rn+n did not, and (iii) it is not the case that Rn+1,…,Rn+n would not represent if R1,…,Rn did not. It is very likely to turn out that (iv) Rn+1,…,Rn+n are paradigmatic or “core” tokens of the representation type to which they and R1,…,Rn belong. This may or may not force us to add this explicitly as a fourth condition, a condition of “paradigmaticness.” With the notion of representation-by-courtesy in mind, we may wonder whether unseen, undiscovered tree rings represent tree ages merely by courtesy of the discovered and seen tree rings. This would mean that representations-of that are not also representations-to represent only by courtesy of representations-of that are also representations-to. If so, the former would not represent if the latter did not. The slogan “No representation-of without representation-to” 2

The fitting label is due to Jenann Ismael.

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should not be read, then, as the thesis that every token representationof must also be a representation-to. Rather, the thesis is that every token representation-of must betoken a representation type some tokens of which (perhaps paradigmatic ones) are both representations-of and representations-to.3 In the remainder of this section, I argue for this thesis. When we look at a duck-rabbit picture, it represents to us a duck and a rabbit (though not simultaneously). Suppose Smith has suffered a duck-related childhood trauma that causes her to repress all incoming duck-related information. It is reasonable to say that the same picture represents a rabbit to Smith, but does not represent a duck to her. Unlike Smith, Jones simply suffered a brain lesion and consequently cannot recognize ducks. To her too, the picture represents a rabbit but not a duck. Importantly, in the case of Jones we may suppose that it is nomologically impossible for her to recognize the duck representation in the picture. Suppose now that there were pictures of an animal which it was nomologically impossible for any human to recognize as such. More generally, imagine a natural sign S of a signified entity E, such that it is nomologically impossible for all humans to recognize that S signifies E. Worse, imagine it is nomologically impossible for any nomologically possible sentient creature to recognize S as signifying E. Does S represent E? I entreat the reader to consult her own intuition, but mine is a categorical No. If it be accepted that S does not represent E, despite bearing the right informational/teleological relation to E, the question arises, Why is S not a representation of E? The only plausible answer seems to be that S is not a representation of E because it is not, and cannot in principle be, a representation of E to anyone. It appears, then, that S cannot be a representation of E if it is nomologically impossible for S to be a representation of E to some nomologically possible sentient creature. Thus the nomological possibility of representation-to is a necessary condition for actual representation-of. It is quite improbable that there is a natural-sign type all of whose actual tokens do not represent to anyone even though its nomologically possible tokens do. But suppose there is. It is still the case that 3

If we accept the fourth condition on representation-by-courtesy, we may also formulate the thesis (or a nearby one), more economically, as follows the claim that every paradigmatic token of representation-of is also a representation-to.

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these tokens are representations-of only because they belong to the same type as the nomologically possible tokens that are also representation-to.4 Furthermore, the converse does not hold: it is not the case that the nomologically possible tokens that are also representations-to are representations-of because they belong to the same type as the actual representation-of that are not also representations-to. It follows that the actual representations-of represent only by courtesy of the relevant nomologically possible representations-of. It might be objected that our tentative fourth condition on representation-by-courtesy does not hold here. The relevant nomologically possible tokens cannot be paradigmatic, precisely because they are merely possible. However, the assumption that actuality is necessary for the status of paradigm is misplaced. There are no actual perfect circles, only possible ones. Yet perfect circles are surely the paradigms of circularity. In the case of natural representations, it likewise seems that those that represent what they do to someone are paradigmatic. Another objection would be that there are different notions of representation, some of which may require little more than brute covariation relations. In philosophical contexts, “representation” is used technically, and so can surely be used, in some context, in that sort of thin sense. This objection is grounded in a correct observation but misapplies it. It is correct that the notion of representation is technical and can be used in any number of ways. But there is only one sense of representation that concerns me here, namely, the sense in which it can be said to capture intentionality. The discussion in the present is not interested in every possible notion of representation, but in the notion that is of relevance to Brentano’s most striking thesis, which is a thesis about intentionality.5 4

One view, by no means implausible, is that tokens of a natural sign type which has no actual tokens that are representations-to are not representations-of. On this view, representation-of requires not only nomologically possible representation-to, but also actual representation-to. Although I find this view plausible, I will not commit to it here. 5 Moreover, to the extent that we are liberal in our usage of “representation,” just as we can devise a thin sense of representation that would require very little, so we can devise a thick sense on which representation-of is impossible without representationto by stipulation.

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There is also a more principled methodological reason for giving center stage to this thicker notion of representation. After all, this is the only form of representation we really know from the first-person point of view – the only form of representation we are personally acquainted with, if you will.6 Other forms of representation are theoretical constructs and can thus deploy all manners of technical notion of representation. But the notion of representation that captures intentionality is not merely a theoretical construct. It is something we are directly acquainted with, and which we take to have the status of representation not merely in a purely theoretical or technical sense. 3 What is representation-to? As mentioned in §1, discussions of representation have focused on representation-of to the virtual exclusion of representation-to. As a result, we have a very murky notion of representation-to to work with. In this section, I will try to say something constructive about representation-to. A minimalist might attempt to account for representation-to simply in terms of ownership. For a state or feature to represent something to someone is simply for that state or feature to represent what it does and be a state or feature of the relevant “someone.” On this account, “x to represent y to z” can be analyzed as follows: (i) x represents (is a representation of) y and (ii) x occurs in z (or: x “belongs to” z in the appropriate sense). The minimalist account is highly implausible. The tree rings (i) represent the tree’s age and (ii) are a feature of the tree, but they do not represent the tree’s age to the tree. So conditions (i) and (ii) can be fulfilled even when representation-to does not occur. Conversely, the tree rings do not represent the tree’s age to the tree, but they do represent the tree’s age to Tania the botanist. Yet they are not a state or feature of Tania. So representation-to can occur even when condition (ii) is not satisfied. Note, more generally, that representation-to comes in two varieties: one where x is an internal state of z and one where it is not. As I think of the Sydney Opera House, my thought represents the Opera House to me. And as I look at my postcard of the Sydney Opera House, the postcard represents the Opera House to me. Both cases involve repre6 This consideration is inspired by a similar methodological principle due to Georgalis (2006).

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sentation-to, but clearly they are crucially different. We may call the first variety first-person representation-to and the second third-person representation-to. It is reasonable to expect that the two varieties would require two different accounts. After all, they seem to be slightly different phenomena. In particular, the first-person variety seems somehow more fundamental than the third-person one. At the same time, it is reasonable to expect that there will be something in common in the two accounts, since there is something in common in the two phenomena accounted for. It should therefore be a constraint on the adequacy of an account of representation-to that it accounts for this commonality.7 A modified minimalist account might restrict the analysans to conscious and/or sentient creatures. So “x represents y to z” is to be analyzed as (i) x represents y, (ii) x occurs in z, and (iii) z is a conscious and/or sentient creature.8 Nothing represents anything to trees, but internal states of conscious/sentient creatures may represent to them. This analysis is still implausible. For one thing, it does not address the possibility of third-person representation-to. As we noted, in such representation-to condition (ii) is not satisfied. In fact, however, the account is unsuccessful even as an account of first-person representation-to only. States of a conscious and sentient creature’s skin, say, can represent some environmental feature without representing it to the creature. Thus, Brown’s goosebumps represent that the ambient temperature is below 6ñC. The state of being goosbumped thus (i) represents the ambient temperature and (ii) occurs in Brown, and (iii) Brown is a conscious and sentient creature. Yet it does not represent the temperature to Brown. (At least this is so if we stipulate that, throughout her life, Brown remains unaware that her goosebumps constitute the natural sign they do.) Moreover, even if we restrict ourselves to mental internal states, conscious and sentient creatures have unconscious states that repre7

Thus, if someone held that the minimalist account is at least a good analysis of firstperson representation-to, we would protest that it makes no room for a commonality with third-person representation-to. There is, of course, also the problem discussed above, that the tree rings do not represent the tree’s age to the tree even though the minimalist analysis’ conditions are satisfied. 8 I use ‘and/or’ here as short for formulating what are in fact two separate analyses, one requiring z to be conscious, the other requiring him or her to be sentient.

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sent, but not to them. Blain the blindsight patient has an unconscious perceptual representation of an orange in his left visual field. Blain’s perception (i) represents the orange and (ii) occurs in Blain, and (iii) Blain is a conscious and sentient creature. Yet clearly it does not represent the orange to Blain.9 A more sophisticated account of representation-to will focus on the use to which representations are put. When the tree rings represent the tree’s age to Tania, at least part of what is involved is that Tania can use the tree rings as a representation of the tree’s age. She can use that information, e.g., to make inferences, decisions, etc. Likewise, my thought, which represents the Sydney Opera House to me, is poised for free use in action guidance, reasoning, deliberation, etc. An internal state can thus be said to represent to the subject when it is poised for this sort of use by the subject. The analysis here offered is basically this: x represents y to z iff (i) x represents y and (ii) z can use x as a representation of y. One advantage of this use-based account of representation-to is that it identifies a commonality of the first-person and third-person varieties. At the same time, the use will be cashed out differently in each case. In the case of third-person representation-to, the representation is “used” somewhat as a tool is used. The subject “uses” the representation as she may use a hammer. In the case of first-person representation-to, the use is rather a matter of the representation’s functional role: x represents y to z when x has the right functional role in z’s mental life. Interestingly, it was once popular to account for representation-of in terms of functional role. That was the idea in functional role semantics.10 Beyond the variety of technical problems this approach faced, ultimately it came up against the principled problem that “functional role semantics” appears to be an oxymoron: functional role is a matter of relations among mental states, whereas semantics, represen9

The same holds for tacit beliefs. Tacitus believed that 1374.67 is greater than 873.92. His belief (i) represented the fact that 1374.67>873.92 and (ii) occurred in Tacitus, and (iii) Tacitus was a conscious and sentient creature. Yet the belief did not represent the fact that 1374.67>873.92 to Tacitus in any non-technical sense. At least this is so if we stipulate that, throughout his life, Tacitus never became aware of this tacit belief. Searle (1992) claims that tacit beliefs could not be anything but brute neurophysiological states. If so, Tacitus’ tacit belief is no different from his goosebumps. Unconscious brain states and skin states are exactly the same in the respect. 10 See Field (1977), Loar (1981), Harman (1982), Block (1986), Brandom (1994).

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tation-of, is a matter of relations to (typically) extra-mental entities. It appears impossible to get the latter out of the former. Since representation-to is not fundamentally a matter of relation to extra-mental entities, a functional role account of representation-to is much more plausible. In particular, one may employ functional role semantics that incorporate a “consumer semantics” component.11 This view considers as the key aspect of a representation’s functional role its availability for consumption by certain cognitive modules. Presumably, the account would designate as central the representation’s availability to an executive control module, or perhaps focus on the representation’s global availability to a number of high-level modules. The use-based account does run into a principled problem of its own. Having a certain functional role is a dispositional property, but being a representation-to seems to be a manifest, hence non-dispositional, property. Thus, for a mental state to be poised for use, it need not actually be used; for it to be available to certain modules, it need not actually be availed of by them. But representing something to someone is not just a matter of things possibly happening. Something does actually happen when my thought represents the Sydney Opera House to me. So representation-to cannot amount to nothing more than functional role, since a non-dispositional property cannot amount to a mere disposition. In fact, it is quite likely that representation-to is the categorical basis of the relevant functional role. My thought of the Sydney Opera House is poised for free use by me because it represents what it does to me, not the other way round.12 Another problem with the use-based account is that, despite initial appearances, it actually fails to account for the commonality of firstand third-person representation-to. Although we can employ the word “use” for both, it does not seem to be in the same sense. In the case of third-person representation-to, “use” is employed literally: the tree rings’ representation of the tree’s age is indeed used as a hammer might. But in the case of first-person representation-to, “use” is employed most certainly metaphorically. I do not “use” my thought’s 11 This is the semantics favored by Carruthers (2000 Ch. 9); see Millikan (1984, 1989) for consumer semantics proper. 12 To my mind, the same problem afflicts functional role accounts of representationof. Functionalists assume that a representation acquires its representational content in virtue of its functional role. But this quite obviously puts the cart before the horse. More plausibly, a representation acquires the functional role it does precisely because of the representational content it has.

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representation of the Opera House as I might a hammer. Perhaps when I consciously and deliberately make inferences on the basis of my thought, I could be said to “use” it in a literal sense. But such conscious, personal-level inferences account for a marginal part of the relevant functional role. In the face of these problems, I would like to make what may sound on first hearing like a silly suggestion: a representational account of representation-to. The idea is to account for representation-to purely in terms of representation-of. Thus, the fact that the tree rings represent the tree’s age to Tania lends itself quite naturally to the following interpretation: Tania has a representation of the tree rings’ representation of the tree’s age. More generally, x represents y to z iff (i) x is a representation of y and (ii) z has a representation of x’s representation of y. Now, for z to have a representation of x’s representation of y is for z to have, or be in, some internal state w, such that w represents x’s representation of y. So the overall analysis may be stated as follows: x represents y to z iff (i) x is a representation of y and (ii) z has a(n internal state) w, such that w is a representation of x’s representation of y. A general argument for the representational account is this: x may be said to represent y to z only if z is aware of x’s representation of y; awareness of something requires representation of it (for example, I cannot be aware of a table without having an internal representation of it); therefore, x may be said to represent y to z only if z has a representation of x’s representation of y. Condition (ii) in the representational account does not require – though it may be strengthened to do so – that z’s representation be propositional or conceptual. As (ii) stands, it does not require that z have a representation that x represents y, nor even that z have a representation of x as a representation of y. The representation of x’s representation of y may perfectly well be altogether non-conceptual. But should we come upon a good reason to introduce a stronger requirement – say, that the representation be conceptual – we could readily tweak (ii) to make it so. 4 The necessity of self-representation One advantage of the representational account is that it successfully accounts for the commonality between first- and third-person representation-to. When my postcard represents the Opera House to me,

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this is because I have a representation of the postcard’s representation of the Opera House. And when my thought represents the Opera House to me, this is because I have a representation of my thought’s representation of the Opera House. This raises an immediate worry, however. The account appears to lead straightforwardly to a vicious regress, at least for first-person representation-to. When x represents y to z, this is because z has (or is in) an internal state w, such that w represents (is a representation of) x’s representation of y. But given that representation-of requires representation-to, we may expect w not just to represent what it does, but to do so to z. And off we are on a regress. Once the specter of regress afflicts first-person representation-to, it is bound to haunt third-person representation-to as well. Let us suppose that the tree rings represent the tree’s age to a machine whose function is to garner and process information on trees’ age. The rings represent as they do because the machine has a representation of the tree rings’ representation of the tree’s age. The machine may in its turn represent what it does to Blain the blindsighted. It would do so in virtue of Blain’s unconscious perceptual representation of the machine’s representation of the tree rings’ representation of the tree’s age. This unconscious perceptual representation may represent what it does to Nora the neuroscientist, who is observing Blain’s brain with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The unconscious representation represents as it does because Nora has a representation of Blain’s representation of the machine’s representation of the tree rings’ representation of the tree’s age. But it may then be the case that Nora’s representation represents what it does to Nora. The chain of third-person representations-to thus comes to an end with a first-person representation-to. So if a vicious regress does afflict Nora’s firstperson representation-to, the affliction will transmit to all those thirdperson representations-to chainlinked thereto. It might be thought that this looming regress problem could be skirted by purely technical considerations. Recall, the thesis argued for in §2 was not that every token representation-of is also a representation-to. We have allowed there to be token representations-of, perhaps very many of them, that are not representations-to. If so, z’s internal state w, which is a representation of x’s representation of y, need not necessarily be a representation to z. Thus, when my thought represents the Opera House to me, I must have a representation of my

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thought of the Opera House, but that second-order representation need not represent what it does to me. This technical resolution of the regress problem seems somehow unsatisfactory, however – as though it does not get to the root of the issue. After all, if the second-order representation does not represent anything to me, if it is characterized by the sort of ‘blindness’ of brute representations-of, it is hard to see how the first-order representation would inherit its representation-to component therefrom. Internal states that represent but not to their subject are akin to the representations the blindsighted hosts somewhat impersonally. Such an impersonal representation seems ill-suited to bestow the representation-to status on my thought of the Opera House. Relatedly, recall that although we allowed representations-of to be such even when they are not representations-to, we allowed them to be representations-of only by courtesy. It is difficult to see how a fullblown representation, which is both a representation-of and a representation-to, can be such in virtue of being ‘represented’ by something that is a representation only by courtesy. (I use inverted commas around “represented” precisely because the representation in question is only such by courtesy.) Moreover, there is nothing in the above technical consideration to preclude the chance occurrence of an infinite chain of representations. Although we have allowed representations-of to not be representations-to, we have also allowed them to be representations-to. Even if the likelihood that a particular thought of mine would implicate an infinity of higher-order representations is negligible, this is a purely contingent matter. There is thus a nomologically possible world in which my thought represents the Opera House to me in virtue of a second-order representation-of that happens to be also a representation-to, the second-order representation is a representation-to in virtue of a third-order representation-of that also happens to be a representation-to, and so on ad infinitum. The infinite regress is thus nomologically possible. Furthermore, a regress may be vicious enough without being infinite. The possibility, whose likelihood is not negligible, that a thought of mine would implicate, say, six orders of representation, is problematic. It is problematic because it is empirically implausible that we may happen to entertain six orders of representation on a particular occasion of thinking of an opera house.

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For all these reasons, we should not rest content with the technical resolution of the regress problem, but instead seek a resolution that is not so shrouded in suspicion. I turn now to such a resolution. We said above that when x represents y to z, z must have a token representation w of x’s representation of y. Our discussion thus far has assumed that it must be the case that w ≠ x. But this is precisely the assumption that generates the regress. If we allow that in (some) cases of first-person representation-to w = x, the regress does not get started. For then x represents y to z because (i) x represents y and (ii) x represents x’s representation of y. No second-order representation is introduced, so the regress is stopped at its second step. Thus, my thought represents the Sydney Opera House to me in virtue of the facts that (i) the thought represents the Sydney Opera House and (ii) the thought represents that it, itself, represents the Sydney Opera House.13 On this view, what is involved in a token x representing y to z is x’s falling under two distinct types of representation-of: the type Representation-of-y and the type Representation-of-representation-of-y.14 The latter type can perfectly well be betokened by a token state that does not betoken the former type. In that case, no self-representation comes into play. That is in fact what happens when w ≠ x. There, w betokens the type Representation-of-representation-of-y but not the type Representation-of-y, and so does not self-represent. The emerging picture involves representations-of that are also third-person representations-to in virtue of being represented by further representations-of in a chain of representations that ends in representations-of that are first-person representations-to; these are first-person representations-to in virtue of being representations of themselves. Thus representation-to bottoms out in representation-of, but of a very special kind, namely, self-representation. The outcome can thus be captured in the slogan ‘No representation without selfrepresentation.’ This picture raises problems of its own. An immediate set of questions arises in connection with the very notion of self-representation. 13 I do not mean to suggest that the representation must represent itself as itself. (Perhaps it will turn out that it does, but we ought not commit to this until a compelling argument is offered.) Also, although I am using the propositional form here (with the ‘that’ clause), this is inessential and can be rid of readily. 14 This is in fact Caston’s (2002) view of conscious representations: they are token representations that betoken two representational types in such a way that they become self-representing.

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What is self-representation? What does it mean for a thought to represent itself? What representations are self-representing? How does a representation come to self-represent? Addressing all these questions would be impossible here (see Kriegel 2009 for partial addressing of many). But note that the Brentanian thesis that all and only conscious states are self-representing would be eminently relevant here. For it would cast conscious experiences as the stopgaps of regress, bestowing representational status on all those representations-of chainlinked to them. This line of reasoning suggests a tight connection between consciousness and representation, of the sort proponents of the so-called ‘Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program’ seem to have in mind (see Kriegel 2012 for a collection of relevant essays). Other kinds of mental states have at times been offered as self-representing. Burge (1988) argued that “cogito-like” thoughts are selfrepresenting (or have a second-order content “locked onto” their firstorder content). Shoemaker (1996) claimed that certain “available” beliefs self-represent (they perform “double duty” as first-order beliefs that p and second-order beliefs that one believes that p). Such cogitolike thoughts or available beliefs may turn out to be conscious states, but in any case they could serve as stopgaps themselves.15 If there are mental states that are self-representing, there must be a way they come to self-represent and there must be a possible account of what it means for them to self-represent. Such an account would ultimately have to be provided if we are to fully understand representation-to and representation-of. But for present purposes it suffices we note simply that the account must exist. That would suggest that the questions raised above do not point to inherent defects in the picture proposed here, but should rather be thought of as invitations to elaborate the model. Another sort of objection may be that the original regress problem has only been replaced by another. Consider x’s representation, not of y, but of its own representation of y. Does x represent its own representation of y to z, or not? If it does, then it would seem that it must do so in virtue of representing its own representation of its own representation of y. If it does not, then it is still hard to see how such an ‘impersonal’ representation of the fact that x represents y can bestow a 15 A view of this sort was also held by Thomas Reid (see Lehrer 1989, Hossack 2002), who held that all sensations are self-representing.

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representation-to component on x. One response to this dilemma is to embrace the new regress but note that it is only a regress of types, not of tokens, and as such is less vicious. Even if we agree that x represents not only its own representation of y, but also its own representation of its own representation of y, its own representation of its own representation of its own representation of y, and so on, it still remains the case that x is a single token state. And we must realize that falling under a type, or betokening a type, is not some sort of activity that a token might be said to expend energy on. There is no extra “cognitive burden” involved in betokening three types rather than two or an infinity rather than five. At the same time, there is certainly something odd about the notion of an infinitely typed thought. Intuitively, there has to be something about a token in virtue of which it betokens the types it does. Thus if a token mental state betokens infinitely many representational types, there should be something about that token that makes it the case that it betokens the representational type of the 837th order, and it is hard to see what that would be.16 A better response employs the token/type distinction as well, but differently. When we contemplated the “technical” resolution of the regress problem above, we were uncomfortable allowing a representation-of to qualify as a representation-to in virtue of being represented by a representation-of that is itself not a representation-to. We were uncomfortable allowing this mainly because representations-of which are not also representations-to represent only by courtesy. Observe, however, that being a representation by courtesy (or not) is not a property of representational types, but rather of representational tokens. So, once a token becomes a representation-to in virtue of betokening a second-order representation type in a way that makes it self-representing, it does not represent only by courtesy, but in and of itself. We may thus allow that x represents y to z in virtue of representing its own representation of y, since it represents its own representation of y in and of itself and not merely by courtesy. This may suggest an “attenuation” of the representational analysis 16

Nonetheless, the regress of types must be deemed at least more acceptable than the regress of tokens. Thus, some people may hold that every token necessarily betokens an infinity of types, since it betokens indefinitely many disjunctive types. Thus, if a creature betokens the type Cat, it also betokens the type Cat-or-dog. Others, however, may reject this notion, claiming either that there are no disjunctive types or that the tokening of a disjunctive type is not just a matter of tokening one of the disjunct types.

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of representation-to offered in §2: x represents y to z iff (i) x represents y, (ii) z has a(n internal state) w that represents x’s representation of y, and (iii) w represents not merely by courtesy. On the other hand, this analysis would strip some third-person representations-to of their status as such. A more cautious analysis would rest on a disjunctive third condition: x represents y to z iff (i) x represents y, (ii) z has a(n internal state) w that represents x’s representation of y, and (iii) either (a) w represents not merely by courtesy, or (b) there is a z*, such that w represents x’s representation of y to z*. 5 Conclusion: Brentano the teacher Husserl once wrote a touching essay entitled “Reminiscences of Franz Brentano” (see McAlister 1977 Ch.2), which offers a warm and respectful portrait of someone who for him was clearly first and foremost a teacher. It is well-known that Brentano taught a whole generation of leading philosophers, including Husserl, Meinong, Twardowski, Stumpf, Marty, and others. At one time, later generations were interested in Brentano’s mostly for his thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental, and sometimes also for his insistence that intentionality cannot be understood in physical terms. In recent years, it has turned out that Brentano still has much more to teach us. His account of consciousness in terms of self-directed intentionality has been developed and defended by a variety of authors, and is now among the leading options for a philosophical theory of consciousness in analytic philosophy of mind. In this paper, I have argued that there may be yet another deep and insightful lesson we have in store from Brentano, one that connects the very possibility of representation to self-representation. Unlike most work on mental representation over the past century, Brentano’s thinking on the subject is attune to the fact that mental representation involves crucially not only a representation-of relation, but also a representation-to relation. Attention to this relation of representation-to opens the door to a number of surprising and important theses about the nature of mental representation; not least the notion that there would be no representation without self-representation.

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Block, N. 1986. ‘Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology’ in Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10: 615-677. Brandom, R. 1994. ‘Reasoning and Representing’ in Michael, M. and J. O’LearyHawthorne (eds) Philosophy of Mind. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 159-178. Brentano, F. 1874. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Edited by O. Kraus. English edition L. L. McAlister (tr. A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and L. L. McAlister). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. Burge, T. 1988. ‘Individualism and Self-Knowledge’ in Journal of Philosophy 85: 649-63. Carruthers, P. 2000. Phenomenal Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Caston, V. 2002. ‘Aristotle on Consciousness’ in Mind 111: 751-815. Field, H. 1978. ‘Mental Representation’ in Erkenntnis 13: 9-61. Georgalis, N. 2006. ‘Representation and the First-Person Perspective’ in Synthese 150: 281-325. Harman, G. 1982. ‘Conceptual Role Semantics’ in Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 23: 242-256. Hossack, K. 2002. ‘Self-Knowledge and Consciousness’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102: 163-181. Kriegel, U. 2003. ‘Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an Argument’ in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33: 103-132. —— 2009. Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP. —— (ed.) 2012. Phenomenal Intentionality: New Essays. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP. Lehrer, K. 1989. Thomas Reid. London: Routledge. Loar, B. 1981. Mind and Meaning. London: Cambridge UP. McAlister, L. 1977. The Philosophy of Brentano. New York: Humanities Press. McGinn, C. 1988. ‘Consciousness and Content’ in Proceedings of the British Academy 76: 219-239. Reprinted in N.J. Block, O. Flanagan, and G. Güzeldere (eds), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997. Millikan, R. G. 1984. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. —— 1989. ‘Biosemantics’ in Journal of Philosophy 86: 281-297. Searle, J. R. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Smith, D. W. 1986. ‘The Structure of (Self-)Consciousness’ in Topoi 5: 149-156.

WHAT IS PRE-REFLECTIVE SELF-AWARENESS? BRENTANO’S THEORY OF INNER CONSCIOUSNESS REVISITED JOHANNES L. BRANDL

(UNIVERSITY OF SALZBURG)

1 Introduction A common distinction drawn in philosophical theories of self-awareness is the distinction between reflective and pre-reflective ways of being aware of oneself. The distinction goes by many names. Pre-reflective self-awareness is also called ‘non-objectual’, ‘nonobjectifying’, ‘non-observational’, ‘non-thematic’, ‘non-conceptual’, ‘intrinsic’, ‘implicit’, ‘tacit’, ‘low-level’ or simply ‘basic’ self-awareness. The terminology varies with the philosophical traditions in which this idea has been nurtured. In one form it originated in German Idealism and in German Romantic philosophy where it plays a central role in the works of Fichte, Hölderlin, Novalis and Schelling.1 Another version of it emerged – or re-emerged – in the writings of Husserl, Scheler, Sartre and the ensuing phenomenological tradition.2 Finally and most recently, philosophers taking a naturalistic approach employ a similar distinction when they refer to simple forms of self-awareness in pre-verbal children and in nonhuman animals.3 It is not just the terminology that varies however. Given the huge differences in doctrine between these traditions it is unlikely that they converge in that particular case on a single idea. We should rather expect to find as many different conceptions of pre-reflective selfawareness as there have been reasons for drawing such a distinction. 1 This tradition has been reconstructed and given a modern shape in the work of Dieter Henrich (1966) and Manfred Frank (1991). 2 The phenomenological approach to pre-reflective self-awareness is elaborated and defended in the work of D. Zahavi (1999, 2005) and S. Gallagher (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008). 3 A naturalistic bottom-up approach to self-awareness is taken, for instance, by Jose Bermúdez (1998) and Gottfried Vosgerau (2009).

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Yet another source to which one can turn here is the work of the 19th century philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano. His attempt to provide a systematic foundation for the idea of pre-reflective selfawareness will be reconsidered in what follows. That Brentano should play a seminal role in this context may need no further explanation. It is well known that Brentano had a formative influence on phenomenology, providing it with the theoretical background from which Husserl and his successors took off. This makes Brentano’s view important from a historical point of view. In addition to that, however, I will argue that there are also systematic reasons for revisiting his writings on this matter.4 In my view, Brentano had a conception of pre-reflective self-awareness that was both more sophisticated and less mysterious than many of the accounts one can find elsewhere. This includes the recent self-representational theories of consciousness that have been developed in a neo-Brentanian spirit.5 Despite this renewed interest in Brentano, I think that the main virtue of his theory of inner consciousness has been overlooked. Brentano conceived of self-awareness as a phenomenon that initially provides very little insight into the mind and only gradually turns into an epistemically clear form of self-awareness. This makes his theory not just interesting from a phenomenological point of view but also from a naturalistic perspective, or so I shall argue. The plan of the paper is as follows. I begin with Brentano’s definition of mental phenomena (section 2) and his idea that mental phenomena have a distinctive internal structure (section 3). I then consider what inner consciousness contributes to this structure by clarifying two distinctions with which Brentano operates here: the distinction between primary and secondary objects (section 4), and his distinction between inner perception and inner observation (section 5). The main step in my interpretation will then consist in pointing out that inner perception and inner observation need not be conceived as two distinct cognitive faculties. Rather we can think of them as one faculty that gives rise to gradually different forms of self-knowledge 4 I am following here other recent interpreters that have pointed out the systematic significance of Brentano’s view. See Thomasson (2000); Smith (1986, 2004); Soldati (2005); Janzen (2006) and Textor (2006). 5 A collection of papers that attempt to revive Brentano’s ideas within the contemporary framework of a representational theory of consciousness has been published by U. Kriegel and K. Williford (2006). The intricacies of this approach are clearly set forth and developed further by Kidd (2011).

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(section 6). In the remaining part of the paper I will then exploit this interpretation for rebutting two objections that have been raised against Brentano’s theory. David Rosenthal has argued that Brentano’s model rests on a Cartesian premise and should therefore be replaced by a proper higher-order theory of consciousness (section 7). Others, including Henrich, Frank and many phenomenologists have questioned Brentano’s treatment of the regress-problem and on that basis suggested that Brentano’s model of consciousness should be replaced by a strictly one-level theory (section 8). I will argue that both objections miss their target because Brentano’s fits neither the mould of a higher-order nor of a one-level theory. 2 Intentionality: clearing the ground Brentano is famous for a doctrine that was not his own invention. I am referring of course to his doctrine of the intentional nature of mental phenomena, as it is stated in the often quoted passage of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874/1995). This is not to suggest that Brentano was hiding his sources, as he explicitly mentions them: “the Scholastics of the Middle Ages”, he says, already held the view that “every mental phenomenon is characterized by what [they] called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object” (ibid., p. 88). Brentano picks up this idea and makes it the foundation of his characterization of the mind. By following this Scholastic lead, he thinks that psychology can remain neutral on the question concerning which entities are capable of instantiating mental phenomena. Psychology, he suggests, can be defined as “the science of mental phenomena”, without mentioning a bodily or mental substance that instantiates such phenomena. Brentano thereby closes – at least for the moment6 – the door to a theory of the self. The objects of investigation in his Psychology are the mental acts of perceiving, thinking, and feeling, not a self that perceives, thinks and feels. Yet one should not conclude thereby that Brentano also closes the door to a theory of self-awareness. He spends two entire chapters (chapters II and III of the second book) on setting forth an account of ‘inner consciousness’. Although Brentano refrains from using the term ‘self-awareness’ (i.e. ‘Selbstbewusstsein’), these 6

Brentano intended to re-open this door in a later volume of his Psychology dedicated to the metaphysics of the mind (see Brentano 1874/1995, p. xv). He never finished this project, however, and I will not engage with this aspect of his philosophy here.

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chapters contain what we now call a theory of ‘pre-reflective’ selfawareness.7 This will become clearer as we go along. First, however, some clarifications of Brentano’s doctrine of intentionality are in order. When one interprets Brentano’s intentionality thesis literally, it says that mental phenomena contain intentional objects. These are not ordinary objects that may or may not exist in a spatio-temporal world, but mental images, ideas or concepts that we know to exist in the mind-dependent realm of our consciousness. Many interpreters have claimed however that Brentano’s doctrine involves no commitment to such intra-mental objects. Since I find these interpretations contrived, I prefer to take Brentano literally and accept that his notion of intentionality includes the category of immanent objects.8 Yet in opting for an immanentist interpretation, I am not proposing that Brentano is a full-scale immanentist who denies our minds the power to direct its attention to mind-independent objects. That, too, would be a serious distortion of his view. Brentano was convinced he could block this counter-intuitive consequence by understanding the images and concepts that exist “in” our minds as making up the content of our mental acts, without also being their targets. That means to acknowledge that Brentano always drew a clear distinction between mental acts, their immanent content, and whatever objects they are directed at.9 It has been suspected that Brentano missed this crucial distinction because he often uses the terms ‘content’ and ‘object’ interchangeably. Brentano’s specific interests may explain this unfortunate aspect of his terminology, however. He defended what we now call an ‘internalist’ view of knowledge. From this perspective, one can be certain that mental acts and the ideas and concepts contained in them exist, but one cannot be certain that any objects exist in the external world or that they have the properties attributed to them in experience. This concern for what is certain or immediately evident may be reflected in his tendency to switch from ‘object’-talk to ‘content’-talk. But Brentano does not lose sight of this distinction when he 7

Brentano still uses the term ‘self-awareness’ in his Psychology, but only when quoting or referring to other writers he is discussing, e.g. Maudsley (p. 25, 27, 43), Horwicz (p. 36), Comte (p.40), Bain (p.59), Hamilton (p. 90), Lange (p. 133). Page references are to the 1874/1995 translation. 8 I have argued for such a literal interpretation in Brandl (2006). 9 The textual evidence supporting this claim is reviewed in Rollinger (2008).

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is concerned with judgements that can be made only with a certain probability because they go beyond the content of our experience.10 Another feature of Brentano’s doctrine of intentionality that has caused some confusion is his restricted use of the term ‘mental’. Brentano applies this term only to conscious phenomena, i.e., to the realm of experience. No room is left in his theory for intentional states that are not experienced by the subject. But what about mental states that influence our behavior although we are not aware of this influence or even of their existence? Why does Brentano rule out that such states exist and that they can satisfy the criterion of intentionality? There is a simple historical explanation why Brentano had no eye for the unconscious. His Psychology belongs to the era before Freud and therefore still in the grip of the Cartesian conception of the mind according to which the mind is by definition aware of all its states. Brentano’s view would thus be fundamentally opposed to the functionalist conception of the mind that has recently replaced the Cartesian conception. Fortunately, we can move beyond this historical perspective and adopt a more charitable interpretation of Brentano on this point. Again, it is the internalist perspective that does the trick. This perspective is not incompatible with the functionalist view, which allows that intentional states may be conscious or unconscious. Adopting this perspective just means to give priority to states that are part of consciousness. This decision to give priority to conscious states can be justified by the fact experiences are commonly understood as the paradigmatic examples of mental states. If one takes this line, there is no need to deny the reality of unconscious states that are both ‘mental’ and ‘intentional’. Admittedly, this was not the line taken by Brentano, but it is a charitable way of “updating” his theory without doing damage to it. Having cleared the ground so far, I now turn to Brentano’s theory of inner consciousness. This theory is very complex and so I will present it in several stages. 3 The inner structure of conscious experience Intentionality is a characteristic feature of mental phenomena according to Brentano, but it is not the only one. Brentano discusses at length 10

A simpler reason for this switch in terminology may be that everything is an object since the term ‘object‘ denotes the most general category in ontology. So why not call the immanent content of a mental act an object too?

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also a number of other features. Mental phenomena, Brentano claims, are also characterized by the fact that they are all based on a limited number of simple presentations, what Hume called ‘impressions’. Another feature is that all mental phenomena appear to us “as a unity”, i.e. as part of one consciousness (ibid.). And last but not least, they are all “perceived in inner consciousness” (Brentano 1875/1995, p. 91). This is not a random list for Brentano. In his view, all these features have a common source.11 Although Brentano does not put it this way, I think one can identify this common source as the internal structure of our experience. Intentionality is the most prominent feature of experience because it is so immediately connected with this internal structure. The other features require further analysis and may therefore be considered to be aspects of this structure that can be derived from its intentional foundation. Since the term ‘structure’ does not belong to Brentano’s own vocabulary, we need to make sure that our use of this term fits his theory. What could structure mean for Brentano? It must be something different from complexity, at least if we think of complex mental states as states that involve other states. Brentano insists that even the most elementary experience is “structured” by having distinctive parts. The example he often uses to illustrate this is the example of hearing a sound. Despite being the simplest experience one can think of, Brentano claims that it contains the following three discernable elements: a sound (= S), the hearing of a sound (= H), the inner awareness of hearing a sound (= A). This tripartite analysis of experience is the backbone of Brentano’s theory of inner awareness. The analysis itself, it must be admitted, is not very illuminating. One cannot use it to explain what inner awareness means since it would be circular to appeal here to a structure whose description makes use of this very term. The theory envisaged

11

This may not be true for another feature that Brentano mentions, namely that we perceive mental phenomena as ‘unextended’. One might take this to be a reason to omit this feature from Brentano’s list.

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here will become informative only if some independent explanation is given what it means for an experience to be structured in this way. I will consider in the next three sections what Brentano has to offer to meet this challenge. Before I turn to that, however, let me mention an important point about Brentano’s view of perception. As the above example shows, Brentano’s analysis of perception contains an element that qualifies as a sense datum. It is the first element in the tripartite structure, which Brentano also calls a “physical phenomenon“, the sound S in the present case. Yet, Brentano’s theory is not a sensedatum theory that reduces perception to a relation between a subject and a sense datum. The very point of his analysis seems to be that more is involved in a simple experience than just being related to a sense datum. In order to hear the sound of the doorbell, for instance, one must not only be aware of the physical phenomenon, but also of the perceptual process which makes one aware of the sound. If one reduces experience to the presence of a sense datum, what is left is no experience at all. Hearing a sound would then be nothing more than receiving auditory information, like a blindsight patient receives visual information without seeing anything in the proper sense of the term. By generalizing this point about perception, we arrive at a doctrine that Tomis Kapitan has called ‘the ubiquity of self-awareness’ (see Kapitan 1999). In Brentano’s terminology this doctrine says that there is no conscious experience, which does not include within its structure the element of inner awareness. Thus we can see how the idea that all mental phenomena have a complex inner structure prepares the ground for a theory of pre-reflective self-awareness. 4 Primary and secondary objects In Book II of his Psychology, Brentano opens the discussion of inner consciousness by drawing attention to the inhomogeneous use of the term ‘consciousness’. He first sets aside the moral meaning of the term when speaking about feelings of guilt or conscience. Brentano’s concern is with the epistemic usage. Taken in this sense, he says, ‘consciousness’ refers to the immediate knowledge that subjects have of their own mental phenomena. This specific type of consciousness Brentano singles out by the term ‘inner consciousness’, which he often uses interchangeably with ‘inner perception’. At this point one might expect Brentano to give an account of firstperson knowledge as it pertains to our own mental states. But he treats

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these epistemological issues only in passing. Although he frequently refers to the self-evidence of inner consciousness, he does not say much about the source or the nature of this evidence.12 This lack of epistemological concern will play an important role later when I defend Brentano against the objection that his account of inner consciousness is simply an outgrowth of his Cartesian thinking. This said, I will set aside here the epistemological allusions that accompany Brentano’s text. I take him to make a plain grammatical observation about how we use the term ‘conscious’ when he says: “There are undoubtedly occasions, when we are conscious of a mental phenomenon while it is present in us; for example while we have the presentation of a sound, we are conscious of having it” (Brentano 1874/1995, 126). Reflecting on such an experience, we may ask ourselves: “Do we have several heterogeneous presentations or only a single one?” The natural response here is certainly to count two acts of presentation with two different objects: the sound (S) and the hearing of the sound (H). Brentano dismisses this answer, pointing out its phenomenological consequences: if these presentations were different, the sound would be presented twice over in a single experience. “Yet this is not the case”, Brentano says, “rather, inner experience seems to prove undeniably that [these two alleged presentations are connected] in such a peculiarly intimate way that its very existence constitutes an intrinsic prerequisite for the existence of [the presentation of the sound]” (ibid., 127). Although the argument has a strong Cartesian flavor, Brentano is picking up here an idea that goes back to Aristotle’s treatise De anima, a work he had examined in detail in his second academic thesis (Brentano 1867/1877). His point is that the question “How many presentations are involved when we are conscious of hearing a sound?” requires the same treatment as Aristotle’s question: “How many senses are involved in a perceptual experience?” Since only a single sense is needed, Aristotle concluded that the sense of sight is also the sense by which we are experientially aware that we see. (De anima, 425b13f.). Brentano then simply draws the further conclusion that only a single presentation occurs if only a single sense is involved. We must therefore assume that a single act of perception can 12

Brentano addresses this question in his writings on truth and evidence. See Brentano (1930/1966)

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be directed simultaneously at two different objects in the tripartite structure of a single experience. But how is this possible? Here Brentano draws on another Aristotelian idea. While we are hearing a sound (S), he says, we also perceive the hearing of the sound (H) “incidentally” (en parergo). The sound may therefore be called the primary object of the experience, while the experience itself apprehends itself “alongside” as a secondary object. This is how the experience of hearing a sound now splits up into three distinctive elements, with the inner awareness of hearing a sound (A) accompanying the sound and the hearing of the sound. In the following passage Brentano drives this point home: In the same mental phenomenon in which the sound is present to our minds we simultaneously apprehend the mental phenomenon itself. What is more, we apprehend it in accordance with its dual nature insofar as it has the sound as content within it, and in so far as it has itself as content at the same time. We can say that the sound is the primary object of the act of hearing and the act of hearing is the secondary object. (Brentano 1874/1995, p.127f.)

Many commentators have been puzzled about this enigmatic loop in Brentano’s theory. How can a presentation be its own intentional object? It does not become much clearer when we are told that a presentation can take itself as a secondary object. This just underlines the mystery involved. Lifting this mystery has remained a challenge for all neo-Brentanist theories, including the recent wave of selfrepresentational theories mentioned earlier. For Brentano, the hard problem here is to understand this inner awareness in terms of his notion of ‘intentional inexistence’. It is already difficult to understand that this is not just a simple relation between an act and its immanent object, since we have to take into account the distinction between the content and the object of an experience. Now we also have to make sense of the claim that this ‘inexistence’ can be reflexive. But what does it mean to say that a mental act can intentionally inexist in itself? There can be no doubt that Brentano was very much aware of this problem and he certainly did not want his theory to remain in this regard mysterious. There is one more distinction that Brentano could appeal to at this fundamental point: the distinction between inner perception and inner observation.

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5 Inner perception and inner observation As I already mentioned, Brentano uses the term ‘inner consciousness’ interchangeably with ‘inner perception’. Each concept may shed light on the other, and Brentano exploits this fact in both ways. Sometimes he treats inner consciousness as the basic notion, when he explains inner perception as a “perception in inner consciousness” (Brentano 1974/1995, p. 91). Typically, however, his explanations proceed in the opposite direction, as for instance in the following remark: “Just as we call the perception of a mental activity which is actually present in us ‘inner perception’, we here call the consciousness which is directed upon it ‘inner consciousness’ (ibid., p. 101). Brentano appeals here to a basic notion of ‘inner perception’ that is independently characterized by its epistemic features: “its immediate, infallible self-evidence” (ibid., p. 91). Either way, Brentano seems deeply committed here to the Cartesian presumption that introspection is the ultimate source of our knowledge. But his commitment is weakened by the fact that he at the same time emphasizes the limits of introspection. Brentano notes that psychologists typically mean by this act a deliberate attempt to study one’s own mind from a first-person perspective. This is the type of introspection that has been justly criticized as an unreliable (or even impossible) method of psychological research. Brentano forestalls such criticism by pointing out that he uses the term ‘inner perception‘ [‘innere Wahrnehmung’] in a stricter sense. It refers to a structural element of every conscious experience, not to an additional mental act directed at such an experience. Therefore Brentano introduces a second term – ‘innere Beobachtung’ (inner observation) – for this additional, second level awareness. And he points out that introspection taken in this sense is not a very trustworthy source of knowledge since it is susceptible to failures of memory (Brentano 1874/1973, p. 29).13 So far this distinction just seems to be a strategic move in defending the Cartesian ideal of immediate self-evidence. Brentano rescues this idea by restricting it to cases of inner perception. Introspection in this 13

Following the English translation of the Psychology, Brentano scholars often use the term ‘introspection’ to signify only what Brentano calls ‘inner observation’, thus drawing a terminological line between ‘inner perception’ and ‘introspection’. This seems to me an unnecessary move that would deprive us of a common term for both inner perception and inner observation. The term ‘introspection’ naturally includes both, and so I will use it in this wider sense here.

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narrow or ‘proper’ sense then remains a form of infallible access to presently experienced mental states, and in providing such knowledge it also remains “the primary and essential source of psychology” (ibid.). There is a problem with this interpretation, however. It can be sustained only if Brentano is talking here about two distinct faculties: fallible inner observation and infallible inner perception. This is the assumption that I now want to question in order to motivate a different interpretation of the distinction between inner perception and inner observation. The contentious claim of my alternative interpretation will be that there is only a single faculty involved here. This is contentious because Brentano seems to distinguish explicitly between two faculties when he says in the Psychology that “one of the characteristics of inner perception is that it can never become inner observation” (Brentano 1874/1995, p.91). It may be, however, that Brentano is just saying here that the specific characteristics of inner perception depend on the specific conditions given in experience itself, not on a distinct mental faculty. I will argue that this interpretation of the distinction between inner perception and inner observation provides a bitter fit for Brentano’s actual view. Let us take a closer look at the two criteria that Brentano employs in drawing this distinction. 1. The first criterion is attention. While observing an object requires that one pays “full attention” to the object, Brentano claims that inner perception makes it “absolutely impossible” that one turns one’s attention to the mental state that one perceives. His example here is a feeling of anger that one can inwardly perceive, but that decreases or even vanishes as soon as one pays attention to it (Brentano 1874/1995, p. 29f). 2. The second criterion is time. Brentano relies here on cases of ordinary perception that require that an object must be currently present to be perceived. Similarly, one can perceive a mental act only by inner perception as long as this very act is present to the mind. As Brentano puts it: the inwardly perceived act must be simultaneous with the act of perceiving it. This restriction does not hold for observation because we can observe how objects change over time. We do this by recalling from memory previous experiences and compare them with our present ones (cf. Brentano 1874/1995, pp. 34ff.).

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Do these criteria support the view that inner perception and inner observation are distinct mental capacities? I do not think so. The fact that inner perception requires no attention does not warrant this conclusion. We commonly perceive objects without paying attention to them, for instance, when we hear the humming of the refrigerator but notice it only when the humming suddenly stops. No one would suggest, however, that in such cases of subliminal perception we make use of a different faculty. These are ordinary perceptions that go unnoticed. There is a single faculty at work here in conditions that may or may not draw our attention to what we perceive. Something similar can be said about the criterion of time. There may be an intuitive contrast between acts of perception that are instantaneous, and observations that take time and must therefore rely on memory. But memory also plays a role in instantaneous acts of perception by providing schemata for recognizing what we perceive. Without the help of memory I could not see a tree as a tree. Observing a tree requires in addition that I also keep track of the way in which the tree changes while I am observing it. This will require some monitoring of my perceptual experiences as they change with the object that I am observing. The condition that one keeps focused on the same object makes observation a much more complex process. But it is still a form of perceiving objects and not a completely different faculty that we exercise in observing things. The two criteria that Brentano uses for distinguishing inner observation from inner perception therefore suggest that in this case too only one faculty may be involved. If inner perception occurs under conditions that make it extremely easy to access one’s own mental states, this may explain its relative simplicity as well as its apparent self-evidence. By contrast, the relative complexity and unreliability of inner observations may be explained by the fact that these observations take place under conditions that make us susceptible to errors of self-interpretation. In this way the two criteria can be helpful for distinguishing “easy” from “difficult” cases of introspection without postulating two distinct cognitive faculties. If this interpretation is on the right track, then some widespread assumptions about Brentano’s conception of inner consciousness will have to be revised. In particular, it will be difficult to find in Brentano justification for the claim that pre-reflective self-awareness is a phenomenon sui generis that can be sharply distinguished from reflective

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self-awareness. But is this just speculation or is there also textual evidence for this? In the next section I will discuss the few passages that suggested to me this alternative interpretation. 6 Indistinct awareness of oneself At first glance, it may seem unlikely that Brentano considered the distinction between inner perception and inner observation as a merely gradual difference in how well we perceive our own mental states. If there is nothing more to it, why would Brentano put so much emphasis on this distinction in his Psychology, and how could he make it a fundamental pillar in his epistemology? But there are other cases where Brentano also changed his mind about the nature of a classification he considered to be fundamental. A notable example is his classification of mental phenomena, which takes presentations and judgments to be two fundamentally different kinds of mental acts. While this remained Brentano’s official view, he also considered the possibility that there is no sharp line in nature that distinguishes presentations and judgments (see Brentano 1903/1987). There may be a continuum of intermediary cases that connects these two categories. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that inner consciousness may be another phenomenon that forms a continuum according to Brentano. One also must not forget that Brentano’s Psychology was an unfinished project, which he constantly revised and expanded.14 In the second edition, published in 1911, Brentano included a selection of essays with “supplementary remarks”. In one of these essays – entitled “On Mental Reference to Something as a Secondary Object” – he returns to the topic of inner consciousness. He first recapitulates his central claim that the intentional reference to an object can take different forms, giving again credit to Aristotle’s observation that one can apprehend objects either in a primary or in secondary manner (Brentano 1911/1995, pp. 275f.). Then he adds the following remark: Not everything which is apprehended is apprehended explicitly and distinctly. Many things are apprehended only implicitly and confusedly [...] Sensible space is alternatively full and empty in one place and 14

These revisions lead to Brentano’s new project of a pure ‘descriptive psychology’. In the context of this project Brentano mainly focussed on inner perception which he describes as the immediate noticing of one’s own mental phenomena. See Brentano (1982/1995).

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Johannes L. Brandl in another, but the individual full and empty places are not clearly differentiated. If this is true of physical phenomena, something analogous is true of the mental activity which refers to it. Thus we have in this case, and in many others elsewhere, mental activities which are not explicitly perceived in all of their parts. Inner perception, is rather, confused. (Brentano 1911/1995, p. 277)

This strikes me as a profound idea that Brentano adds to his previous account of inner consciousness. While it does not contradict anything he said before, it opens a new perspective. Brentano is now suggesting that underlying the distinction between primary and secondary objects, and hence also between inner perception and inner observation, we find a continuum of experiences that are basically of the same kind. This seems to me the natural way to understand his comparison with sensory perception. The sensory field contains more parts than we are able to differentiate. Which parts we perceive depends on our discriminatory abilities. If discrimination is weak, much of the sensory field will be perceived only implicitly or indistinctly. When discrimination improves, more aspects of this field become visible to us. What, then, does it mean in this model to distinguish between primary and secondary objects? It may just mean this: when we experience the world, the objects that our discriminatory capacities reveal are the primary objects of our intentional acts, whereas the secondary objects are apprehended only indistinctly. In a later manuscript on the nature of the self Brentano applies the same idea. He therefore changes the example of hearing a sound to the slightly more complex case of hearing a chord: [T]here is a two-fold way in which a thing may be said to be an object of awareness: it may be explicit and distinct or it may be implicit and indistinct. If one hears a chord and distinguishes the notes which are contained in it, then one has a distinctive awareness of the fact that he hears it. But if one does not distinguish the particular notes, then one has only an indistinct awareness of them. [...]. Self-awareness, too, is sometimes distinct and sometimes indistinct. (Brentano 1933/1981, p.117)

This passage is remarkable for several reasons. First, Brentano removes here any doubt that his concept of inner consciousness is indeed a concept of self-awareness. This was somehow unclear since Brentano carefully avoided in his Psychology the use of terms like self

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and self-awareness. His goal was to develop a metaphysically “pure” theory of mental phenomena without mentioning as far as possible an entity that could be called a self. But his plan was, as I mentioned above in section 2, to lift this constraint in later parts of this work. The passage above shows how natural this transition would have been, since his notion of inner consciousness provided Brentano already with a basic conception of self-awareness. The passage also reveals that Brentano allows self-awareness to vary on a scale: it can be more or less distinct.15 This goes against the presumption that inner consciousness is all we need to gain mental self-knowledge. Brentano here rejects this presumption, and he provides a good reason for doing so: self-awareness can be less than fully developed. The passage quoted above continues as follows: If a person feels a pain, then he is aware of himself as one that feels the pain. But perhaps he does not distinguish the substance, which here feels pain, from the accident by means of which the substance appears to him. It may well be that animals have only [such] an indistinct self-awareness. (Ibid.)

Brentano could have mentioned also children in this connection. Young children also have a more primitive form of self-awareness compared to the reflective capacities of adults. Even if Brentano leaves much implicit here, a plausible way of interpreting his remarks would seem to be the following: animals and children have only an indistinct self-awareness because they do not have the capacity to apprehend their own mental states as primary objects in inner observation. They can apprehend them only as secondary objects, which means that they have only a pre-reflective form of self-awareness. So, what is pre-reflective self-awareness according to Brentano? If my interpretation is correct, his basic point is that we should not think of it as a mental phenomenon completely different from reflective self-awareness. There are not two kinds of self-awareness to be distinguished here. Although a distinction can be drawn between inner perception and inner observation, in doing so we describe just one 15

In saying that Brentano “allows” self-awareness to vary by degree, I only want to suggest that this is consistent with what he says. Brentano himself only speaks of two ways in which an object can be grasped, namely either distinctly or indistinctly. This makes it easier to integrate this new distinction with the older one between the intentional relation to a primary object and to a secondary object.

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mental capacity of self-perception that makes us aware of our own mental life in different degrees. In the remaining part of this paper I want to elaborate this interpretation further by connecting it to the current discussion between onelevel and higher-order theories of consciousness. 7 Objections from a higher-order perspective Representational theories have played a central role in recent work on the nature of consciousness (see Seager 1999). Much of this work has been devoted to exploring the phenomenal features of sensory experience. The theoretical stance taken by representational theories is more general however. The aim of such theories is to show that all aspect of consciousness can be adequately explained within this approach. This includes also self-awareness in all its many forms. Whether or not one subscribes to the ubiquity thesis according to which every perceptual experience includes a pre-reflective form of self-awareness, the mere fact that self-awareness of this form exists puts it on the agenda for representational theories. Brentano’s Psychology is widely acknowledged in this context as containing an early version of a representational theory of consciousness. But how exactly does Brentano’s theory fit into this contemporary framework? This has turned out to be a delicate question of interpretation. While some scholars take Brentano’s theory to be a precursor of a higher-order theory of consciousness, others interpret it as an early version of a one-level theory. I will argue here that both interpretations are unsatisfactory, partly for exegetical reasons and partly because they make Brentano’s theory vulnerable to objections that seem to me to miss their target. I will therefore use these objections here to reveal the weaknesses of these interpretations and then to show how my alternative interpretation may do better. I first consider two objections that have been raised against Brentano’s theory from a higher-order perspective. For my purposes here it will not matter whether this perspective is fleshed out in terms of a perceptualist or a non-perceptualist model of higher-order representations (see Lycan 1996, Carruthers 2000). It also will not matter whether one takes consciousness to arise from occurrent or from merely dispositional higher-order states. I set aside here these (important) questions for the sake of argument. The objections I want to address are objections raised specifically by David Rosenthal, and so I

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will use his higher-order thought theory (HOT theory for short) as a background for my discussion (see Rosenthal 2005). Let us go back again to Brentano’s original example of hearing a sound. The three components that make up this conscious experience according to Brentano may be translated into a HOT theory as follows: the sound (= S) a perceptual representation of the sound (= PR) a higher-order thought with the content that one currently perceives a sound (= HOT) Let us suppose that this is a plausible way of interpreting Brentano’s example. Then we need to consider what relations obtain between these three elements, in particular between the higher-order thought (HOT) and the perceptual representation of the sound (PR). If we follow Rosenthal’s own theory, this relation is constrained by only one condition: the thought and the perceptual representation have to occur “roughly simultaneously”. This is not so in the case of Brentano’s theory. Brentano requires this relation to be much stronger. We therefore need to consider how these further constraints that Brentano places on this relation might be captured within the framework of a higher-order thought theory. This is where Rosenthal’s criticism sets in. He argues that these further constraints are unjustified because they arise from a Cartesian conception of the mind (see Rosenthal 2005, p.35ff.). Like Descartes, Brentano takes mental states to be necessarily conscious. Therefore he needs to make this relation tighter in order to rule out that the firstorder component and the higher-order component might come apart. But why should we rule this out? It is quite possible that one hears a sound without having any thoughts about this hearing event. And conversely, it is possible to think about perceiving something without actually doing so. This is exactly what we should expect from a representational theory, and it is a virtue of such theories that they thereby overcome this Cartesian prejudice. Instead of demanding a closer relationship here we should drop the Cartesian premise that motivates this demand. I do not think that this objection has much force. As I indicated earlier, there is a way of understanding Brentano’s decision to identify

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mental phenomena with conscious experiences that does not ground this decision in a problematic Cartesian doctrine. It suffices to say that conscious mental states and experiences are the prototypical cases of mental phenomena. In principle, Brentano could therefore make room in his theory for unconscious thoughts and even unconscious perceptions. This would not damage his theory decisively. Most importantly, it would not remove his reasons for requesting a relation stronger than a mere temporal overlap between the first-order and the higher-order components of an experience. Something more is needed here to produce a unified conscious experience, Brentano would say. But Rosenthal has another, more profound objection to Brentano’s theory. He argues that Brentano relies on a principle of individuating mental states which is implausible (see Rosenthal 2005, p.65ff). In order to show this, Rosenthal compares mental acts with linguistic acts. He points out that speech acts can be individuated in either two ways: according to their truth-conditions or according to their performance conditions. For instance, the statements ‘It is raining’ and ‘I believe it is raining’ differ in truth conditions, but they have the same performance conditions. Whenever I sincerely assert ‘It is raining’, I could also sincerely say ‘I assert that it is raining’, and conversely. Nevertheless my first statement will be false and the second true if it is not raining. This shows that two statements with the same performance condition can differ in their truth conditions. Does something similar hold for mental acts? According to Rosenthal, this is what Brentano tacitly presupposes: “He [i.e. Brentano] maintains that my hearing a sound and my thought that I hear it are one and the same mental act. And he goes on to insist that the very content of that perception must be contained in the content of any higher-order thought about it, thus reasoning from performance conditions to mental content. Accordingly, he concludes, every mental state is, in part, about itself” (Rosenthal 2005, p.65). Rosenthal’s argument against Brentano here is this: consider the first-order thought with the content [It is raining] and the second-order thought with the content [I believe it is raining]. These are doubtless different thoughts. Why should anyone think that one could grasp them in a single mental act? In making this claim, Brentano must be confused. He correctly saw that both elements are needed for making up a conscious experience, but he simply went too far in requesting that these elements have to be part of a single mental act. Higher-order

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thoughts can give rise to conscious experiences without having to be part of such an experience. This objection does have force. It is not decisive against Brentano’s theory however, because its force depends on an assumption to which Brentano is not committed. Rosenthal assumes in this objection that a conscious experience requires a higher-order thought with an articulated content that is expressible in a sentence of the form ‘I am now experiencing such and such’. This assumption makes it so implausible to say that one and the same mental state can at the same time represent a sensory quality and a higher-order content. It now becomes important that Brentano discards this assumption, as we have seen. He allows mental states to have an “indistinct” intentional content, which clearly implies that it is not sufficiently articulated to be expressible in language. Mental states of this kind may therefore be individuated according to their functional role or “performance condition”, not in terms of a finer grained set of truth-conditions. Rosenthal could reply that it still does not make sense to say that the same mental state can have the functional role of an experience and also the functional role of a higher-order thought directed at this very experience. No criterion of individuation can merge these two states together because this would mean to confuse a higher-order representation with its own object. But why not consider this to be problem of the higher-order approach that need not arise for Brentano’s theory. The merging of mental states becomes quite plausible if this “fusion” occurs at the level of content.16 If a subject does not clearly distinguish between her experience of hearing a sound and the sound she experiences, she is simply not in a position to form a higher-order thought about her experience. While she may be aware of her experience, she has no clear conception of what she is experiencing. That removes the ground for attributing to her a higher-order thought in addition to her experience. We might say that integral to her experience is an act of inner monitoring that does not yet produce fullfledged higher-order thoughts. 8 An objection from a one-level perspective Higher-order representations are an important tool in our mental toolbox. But are such metarepresentational capacities needed for 16 This idea of “fusing together” first-order and higher-order states is also emphasized by Mark Textor in his reconstruction of Brentano’s theory. See Textor 2006.

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having a simple conscious experience? Advocates of one-level theories hold the view that such abilities are dispensable in explaining the nature of conscious experience (see Dretske 1995, Tye 1995). Following their line, scholars have pointed out that the correct way to understand Brentano’s theory from a contemporary perspective is to interpret it as a one-level theory (see Thomasson 2000, Smith 2004). Two reasons make it attractive to conceive of Brentano’s theory in this way. On the one hand, advocates of a one-level interpretation point out that higher-order explanations of consciousness face a number of serious problems. It would therefore be simply uncharitable to project such a theory into Brentano’s writings. Since I do not want to engage in a discussion of higher-order representational theories here, I will ignore this possible defense of a one-level interpretation. Instead, I want to comment briefly on another issue that divides the advocates of a one-level interpretation. The issue is whether Brentano’s theory is successful in dealing with a problem that is known as “the regress problem” (see Brentano 1874/1995, p. 124). Higher-order theorists like Rosenthal dismiss this problem as yet another residue of the Cartesian tradition. In their view, the problem vanishes as soon as one accepts that higher-order states may be completely unconscious. Once this is granted, second-order thoughts need not be accompanied by a third-level thought, and so on. Only conscious mental states depend on the presence of a higher-level mental representation. Whether or not this is a viable response to the problem does not matter here. It is a solution that was not available to Brentano, and so, it seems, he needed a one-level theory to fix this problem. But critics of Brentano have pointed out that Brentano’s solution, though ingenious, may not be effective (see Zahavi 1998, 2004, 2006; Drummond 2006). The details of this discussion are complicated, and the arguments are often far from clear. Basically, the objection seems to be that in order to block this regress one needs an account of prereflective self-awareness that does not “inflate” the intentional structure of mental states. Brentano’s theory is still vulnerable to this problem because he adds further objects into the internal structure of an experience. Another way to understand the objection is to compare it with an argument that Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank use in criticizing the subject-object model of consciousness. This model, so their objection goes, can only explain what it means to be conscious of objects outside our own minds, but misses the basic self-directed

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awareness that we have of our own mental states (see Frank 1991). Similarly, Zahavi argues that one cannot explain the inner consciousness contained in our experiences by simply adding some further component to the structure of these mental states (Zahavi 2004, 2006). Since the objection is not very clear, it is hard to respond to it. I will therefore only briefly mention two recent proposals to which one might appeal here: One proposal starts by defending Brentano’s principle of individuating mental acts. Uriah Kriegel has taken up this line and uses it as a cornerstone for his own self-representational analysis of the nature of consciousness (see Kriegel 2003a, 2003b, Kriegel & Williford 2006). Other defenders of Brentano have gone a step further. They concede to the phenomenological critique that a purely representational explanation of self-awareness will not remove the threat of a regress. One therefore needs to enrich such theories with a non-representational element. When Brentano says that in hearing a sound we are aware not only of the sound but also aware of the hearing of the sound, this statement includes a non-representational use of the term ‘being aware of’. Although the term occurs twice in this statement, the only relation it describes is the relation between the subject and the object he or she perceives. If one searches here for another representational, or even self-representational relation, one is mislead by the grammar of this term. The best way to combat this is to paraphrase the above statement as follows: in hearing a sound we are aware of the sound in a conscious mode; or simply: we are consciously aware of this sound (see Smith 2004). This is not the place to discuss these proposals in detail. Whatever their merits may be, however, the question is whether they can fully remove the doubts nurtured by the regress problem. The following consideration might show why this still remains a challenge for any neo-Brentanist theory. It seems that no theory that retains the core features of Brentano’s theory of inner consciousness can be a strictly first-order theory. The distinction between primary and secondary objects, which is central to Brentano’s theory, introduces some kind of level-distinction into the structure of experience. Perhaps, the best way to describe this peculiar feature of Brentano’s theory in a representational framework is to classify his theory as “one-and-a-half-

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level” theory.17 Once a level-distinction is admitted, however, worries about the regress will re-appear. So neo-Brentanists face a dilemma: either they opt for a strictly one-level approach that does not adequately capture the nature of Brentano’s theory, or they have to admit that no fully satisfactory response to the regress problem can be given within the limits of Brentano’s theory. Is there a way out of this dilemma? I am not sure. But the interpretation that I have advocated opens up for us here another way out. It shows that there is a way of interpreting Brentano’s theory that does not allow this dilemma to arise in the first place. How does this work? The line one can take here is this: the important point that other interpretations overlook is that according to Brentano our inner awareness, like any awareness, can be more or less distinct in picking out objects from a certain domain. We can therefore say that we are aware of our mental states to a higher or lesser degree. When this degree is high, we can focus on our experiences as primary objects, when it is low, we can only be aware of them as secondary objects. There are two levels involved here – a primary and a secondary awareness – but this distinction is of a completely different nature and thus does not threaten to start an infinite regress. 18 It is clear from the second book of Brentano’s Psychology that he took the regress problem very seriously. His initial solution was simply to say that a mental state can take itself as secondary object. This response has the flavor of an ad hoc solution. However, when one reconsiders this solution in the light of his later distinction between distinct and indistinct forms of awareness, one can see how this idea may be embedded in a more general epistemological context. This makes Brentano’s response to the regress problem more powerful, without forcing his account of inner awareness into the mould of a one-level representational theory. 9 Conclusions In this paper I have been concerned with a pair of ideas that have engaged philosophers in various traditions: the idea that self17 Representational theories that are of this intermediary type have been recently proposed by Robert Lurz (2003), Uriah Kriegel (2006, 2009), and Rocco Gennaro (2006). 18 A response to the regress-objection along these lines has also been suggested by Kenneth Williford. See Williford (2006).

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awareness can take on a reflective and a pre-reflective form, and the idea that a form of pre-reflective self-awareness is built into the very structure of our conscious experiences. Brentano’s Psychology incorporates both ideas. I have tried to explain the two major tools that Brentano uses in his theory of inner awareness: the distinction between primary and secondary objects and the distinction between inner perception and inner observation. Both distinctions have given rise to different interpretations, and they have invited several objections. By interpreting these distinctions from a new angle, I showed how certain presuppositions on which these objections rest can be questioned and how these objections may thus be dispelled. Of course, there are many questions about pre-reflective selfawareness that Brentano’s theory does not answer or even tries to answer. My goal was to highlight just one feature in Brentano’s theory that in my view lifts it above its rivals. This core idea is that inner consciousness is not necessarily a clear form of self-awareness. From an empirical point of view, this is a great advantage of his theory because in many domains we find forms of self-awareness that are less than clear: when we look at the way in which we use perceptual information to control our actions, in the way in which we use knowledge to control our emotions, in the way in which we use our memory to reconstruct our own past, and in the way in which we project our own future. In all these cases, we find experiences that have the semi-reflective structure that Brentano describes in his theory. Acknowledgement: This paper was written as part of the European Science Foundation’s EUROCORES Program CNCC, and was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project I94-G15.

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—— 2006. ‘The same-order monitoring theory of consciousness’ in U. Kriegel & K. Williford (eds.): Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 111-142. —— 2009. ‘Self-Representationalism and Phenomenology’ in Philosophical Studies 143: 357-81. Kriegel, U. and K. Williford (eds.). 2006. Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Lurz, R. 2003. ‘Neither Hot Nor Cold: An Alternative Account of Consciousness’ Psyche (online), 8 (1). Lycan, W. 1996. Consciousness and Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Rollinger, R. 2008. ‘Brentano’s Psychology and Logic and the Basis of Twardowski’s Theory of Presentations’ in The Baltic Yearkbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, Vol. 4. [online]. Rosenthal, D. 2005. Consciousness and Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Seager, W. 1999. Theories of Consciousness. An Introduction and Assessment. London: Routledge. Smith, D.W. 1986. ‘The Structure of (Self-)Consciousness’ in Topoi 5: 149-165. —— 2004. Mind World. Essays in Phenomenology and Ontology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soldati, G. 2005. ‘Brentano on Inner Perception, Intrinsic Truth and Evidence’ in M.E. Reicher and J. Marek (eds.) Experience and Analysis. Vienna: ÖBV & HPT, 63-73. Textor, M. 2006. ‘Brentano (and Some Neo-Brentanians) on Inner Consciousness’ in Dialectica 60: 411-32. Thomasson, A. 2000. ‘After Brentano: A One-Level Theory of Consciousness’ in European Journal of Philosophy 8: 190-209. —— 2006. ‘Self-Awareness and Self-Knowledge’ in Psyche 12 (2). Tye, M. 1995. Ten Problems of Consciousness. A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vosgerau, G. 2009. Mental Representation and Self-Consciousness. Paderborn: Mentis. Williford, K. 2006. ‘Zahavi versus Brentano: A Rejoinder’ in Psyche 12 (2). [online] Zahavi, D. 1998. ‘Brentano and Husserl on Self-Awareness’ in Études Phénoménologiques 27/28: 127-68. Zahavi, D. 1999. Self-Awareness and Alterity. A Phenomenological Investigation. Evanston: Northwestern University. —— 2004. ‘Back to Brentano?’ Journal of Consciousness Studies 11: 66-87. —— 2005. Subjectivity and Selfhood. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. —— 2006. ‘Two Takes on a One-level Account of Consciousness’ in Psyche 12 (2). [online]

UNITY WITHOUT SELF: BRENTANO ON THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS1 MARK TEXTOR

(KING’S COLLEGE LONDON)

Kein Nebeneinander. Brentano 1 Introduction Franz Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) stands at the beginning of the phenomenological tradition. It contains many topics and theses that his students will further discuss, develop and defend. Among them is Brentano’s attempt to articulate the distinction between mental phenomena such as judgements, emotions, perceptions, etc. and physical phenomena such as colour, heat, force, etc. According to him, all mental phenomena are directed upon something: in a judgement something is judged, in a perception something is perceived, in an act of love something is loved. Brentano himself says that all and only mental phenomena have an intentional object that exists in them (Brentano 1874 I, 125 (68)).2 No physical phenomenon is so directed. This thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental, as it is now framed, is well-known and often discussed. (See, for example, Crane 1998.) However, for Brentano himself there is not the mark of the mental; rather there are several, of which intentionality is the most distinctive one (See Brentano 1874 I, 137 (75)).3 Further 1 I would like to thank the participants of the seminar on Aristotle and Brentano that MM McCabe and I taught together in 2011 and MM herself for feedback. I am also grateful to Stephen Barker, Will Bynoe, John Callanan, Keith Hossack, Jessica Leech and Nick Jones for comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Guy Longworth and Guillaume Fréchette for written comments. 2 References to the English translation in brackets. 3 See also Brandl, this volume, p. 48.

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distinguishing marks of the mental are that all and only mental events really exist and are perceived by inner sense with evidence. Last but not least is a distinguishing mark that Brentano calls ‘unity of consciousness’ (‘Einheit des Bewusstseins’). One can distinguish the mental and the physical in term of the notion of unity as follows: When we perceive colour, sound, warmth, odour simultaneously, nothing prevents us from assigning each one to a separate thing. In contrast we are compelled to take the manifold of corresponding acts of sensing, seeing, hearing, sensing the warmth and smelling, and with them the simultaneous willing, feeling and thinking, as well as the inner perception, which provides us with knowledge of all of them, to be parts of a unified phenomenon, in which they are contained, and to take them to be a single unitary thing. (Brentano 1874 I, 136. (74): In part my translation. References to the English translation in brackets.)

Colour etc. are phenomena, that is, things that appear to us. If we can perceive some phenomena simultaneously without being compelled to take them to belong to one thing, they are physical. In contrast, if the simultaneous perception of some phenomena compels us to assign them to one thing, they are mental. Later in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint Brentano will no longer use the notion of compulsion: The unity of consciousness, as it can be known with evidence through inner perception, consists in the fact that all mental phenomena which occur within us simultaneously such as seeing and hearing, thinking, judging and reasoning, loving and hating, desiring and shunning, no matter how different they may be, all belong to one unitary reality if only they are inwardly perceived as existing together; that they are phenomena that are parts of one mental phenomenon, the elements of which are neither distinct things nor parts of distinct things but belong to a real unity. This is what is necessary for the unity of consciousness; nothing further is required. (1874 I, 232 (126). In part my translation.)

In this paper I will focus on the stronger thesis that every simultaneously perceived mental phenomenon belongs to one unity. What Brentano called the unity of consciousness is a feature of our mental life at a time; he is not concerned with unity over time. Brentano leaves open the questions whether there is unity of consciousness

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over time and if there is, what it consists in. His aim is to articulate the distinction between mental and physical phenomena and not to analyze what it takes to have one mental life over time. The unity of consciousness has also to be distinguished from the particularity of a consciousness or mind (see Marty 2011, 33-4). The mental phenomena of each and every conscious being form a unity; the unity of consciousness is not what distinguishes one consciousness from another one. The assumption that all the mental phenomena that I am conscious of belong to one unity is also neutral with respect to the relation of this unity to a body. If there were not a one on one correlation between minds and bodies, but a many to one relation, the assumption of the unity of consciousness could still hold (Brentano 1874, I, 240ff (128f) and Marty 2011, 32). Brentano’s marks of the mental have been received differently. The thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental was and still is central to discussions in the philosophy of mind. By contrast, the view that only mental phenomena are real and that we are infallible about them has not had many supporters. Finally, Brentano’s thesis that a particular kind of unity is a mark of the mental has been neglected in discussions. In this paper I will expound and assess Brentano’s view that mental phenomena exhibit a distinctive kind of unity. Brentano attempts to explain the unity of consciousness without assuming the existence of an owner of mental phenomena, that is a soul, self or mental substance.4 What does the unity of consciousness consist in if it does consist in the fact that one and the same self has the mental phenomena? After outlining the Humean background of this question I will develop and assess Brentano’s answer. 2 The Humean background: unity without ownership We think that our surroundings contain many natural ‘bundles’ of properties. Right in front of me is a bundle of being green, being a book, being square etc. What binds these properties into one bundle? Common sense answers: one thing that is on the table, which is a book, green and square. Such bearers of properties are traditionally called ‘substances’. The same substance can have different properties 4

Brentano will later change his view and acknowledge the existence of a mental substance. See his manuscript ‘Von der Seele’. In this paper I am only concerned with the position articulated in his Psychologie.

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at the same time and can have different, incompatible properties at different times. In the realm of mental events and states we find something that is analogous to bundles of properties. There is a bundle of a visual perception of a computer screen, an auditory perception of a tapping noise, a desire for a coffee right here, right now. What binds these mental events and states into one bundle? What binds other mental events and states into different bundles? The Ownership View is analogous to the one about bundles of properties: simultaneous mental phenomena form one bundle if, and only if, they belong to one and the same mental substance: a soul or a self.5 Now if there are mental substances, they do not have mental acts in the sense that my book has a particular colour. Mental acts are not properties like colours. ‘Having’ is here therefore not the ‘having’ of property instantiation; it is cashed out in term of ontological dependence (See Hume 1739/40, 233 and Brentano 1874 I, 8 (4)). Mental substances support mental events and states: the latter depend for their existence on a mental substance, while the mental substance can exist independently of the particular mental states and events it has. A substance, in turn, is ‘something which may exist by itself’ (Hume 1739/40, 233). In the case of mental phenomena there is in addition to the ontological bundling problem an epistemic one: mental phenomena are not only unified, they also strike us as unified.6 The Ownership View explains this by assuming that we are aware of a mental substance when we consider ourselves ‘from the inside’. For instance, Descartes remarked that when he considers himself, the thinking thing that he is, he cannot distinguish parts in himself, he recognizes himself as one and whole (unam et integram) (Descartes 1641, AT 85). According to the Ownership Answer, one mental substance can be the ontological substrate of different mental states and events. These events and states appear to the soul as aspects of itself, but not as parts. The Ownership View is the way we intuitively think about the unity of consciousness. But in his Treatise on Human Nature Hume 5

See Parfit (1984, 249ff.) Sometimes the owner of mental states is said to be a person (Oaklander 1987, 527.) This assumption seems unwarranted. For not every possessor of mental states is a person, that is, a rational thinker that can consider himself as himself. For example, Marty (2011, 32) holds that a Leibnizian monad can exhibit unity of consciousness. It is at best doubtful whether a monad is a person. 6 On this, see Rosenthal (2003, 327).

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raised serious objections against the Ownership View. These objections set the stage for Brentano’s contribution to the topic. I will therefore expound Hume’s objections in the rest of this section. Hume used the blanket term ‘perception’ to cover all mental goings-ons. He famously wrote about ‘his’ perceptions: [H1] All these [perceptions] are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may be separately consider’d, and may exist separately, and have no need of any thing to support their existence. After what manner, therefore, do they belong to self; and how are they connected with it? [H2] For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. (Hume 1739/40, 252)

We can set the scene for further discussions by highlighting the main points of Hume’s argument. I have split up the above passage into (H1), an ontological argument, and (H2), an intuition that directly contradicts Descartes’. I will address each in turn. (H1) is a reprise of an argument Hume had presented in the previous chapter of the Treatise (Hume 1739/40, 233). It goes as follows: (P1) (∀x,y) (x is distinguishable from y → x can exist without y & vice versa) (P2) (∀x,y) (x and y are perceptions → x and y are distinguishable) (P3) (∀x,y) (x is a non-perception & y is a perception → x and y are distinguishable) (C1) (∀x,y) (x and y are perceptions → x can exist without y & vice versa) (C2) (∀x,y) (x is a non-perception & y is a perception → x can exist without y & vice versa) (C3) Every perception is a substance, that is, something which can exist by itself. No perception needs a bearer. And if no bearer is needed, it is unmotivated to introduce a bearer of perceptions, a self, as the unifier of different perceptions.

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In (H2) Hume argues further that we do not perceive a bearer of perceptions. The only things we are ever aware of are perceptions. If we have no perception of a self, we cannot form the idea of a self, argues Hume. Hence, the Ownership View can answer neither the ontological nor the epistemological question. Hume himself tried to replace the Ownership View by a causal theory. Some perceptions belong to the same bundle if, and only if, they are similar and/or have caused each other (Hume 1739/40, 261f). But this proposal is open to well-known counter-examples. If causation is a form of regularity, Hume cannot rule out that my perceptions cause your perceptions (See Stroud 1977, 125). Your anger can cause my anger, but your anger and mine do not belong to the same bundle of perceptions. Hume himself was unsatisfied with the causal view: […] all my hopes vanish when I come to explain the principles that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. (Hume 1739/40, 645-6)

In recent times Parfit has presented a different answer to the problem of bundling simultaneous perceptions: Just as there can be a single memory of just having had several experiences, such as hearing a bell strike three times, there can be a single state of awareness both of hearing the fourth striking of this bell and of seeing ravens fly past the bell-tower. Reductionists claim that nothing more is involved in the unity of consciousness at a single time. (Parfit 1984, 250-1)

Parfit takes different mental acts to form a bundle if there is a single state in which one is aware of them. But this proposal leads to a dilemma. Let us designate the hearing of the first strike of the bell as h and the seeing of the ravens flying past the bell-tower as b. The first horn: the consciousness of both h and b is not unified with the act in which one is aware of both. Therefore there is only a partial unity of consciousness. The second horn: there is a further single state that is an awareness of h and b and the awareness of both h and b. However, one would need a further act to unify these four mental acts and so on. We are faced with a regress (See Oaklander 1987, 257 and Siewert 2001, 547). This regress is an explanatory regress and therefore vicious. We never arrive at a complete explanation of the unity of

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consciousness if the unity of consciousness requires a single state of awareness that is directed upon one’s simultaneous mental acts. For this reason a good answer to the mental bundling problem should avoid the assumption of a single ‘bundling’ act. 3 Brentano on collectives and unities Enter Brentano. Just like Hume, Brentano cannot find a self (See Brentano 1874, Book I, 15 (7)). In his Deskriptive Psychologie (1887, 10 (13)) he explicitly agrees with Hume that our ‘clearest and immediate experience’ does not reveal a self, a bearer of perceptions.7 We have an awareness of mental acts, but not of a mental substance that has them. Brentano goes on to list his disagreements with Hume. The most important point for our purposes is that Brentano rejects Hume’s view that our consciousness is a bundle: (b)…. A ‘bundle’, strictly speaking, requires a rope or wire or something else binding it together. In the case of human consciousness it is out of the question that there is something of this sort, or even just something analogous to it. Yet if we take the expression more loosely, if we take it to denote only a multitude of things located side-by-side, clinging to, or merely touching one another, then we have to reject Hume’s description as an essentially distorted picture of consciousness. (c) No being side-by-side. (d) no multitude of things, but most unambiguously a single thing, embracing the whole of an actual human consciousness. (Brentano 1887, 11 (14))

Why is Hume’s description of the unity of consciousness distorted? Because in assuming that our consciousness at a given point in time can be described as a bundle Hume begs an important question. Let me explain. A bundle is a paradigmatic example of what Brentano calls a collective.8 A collective is a plurality: it is not one, but many things. 73 pieces of wood arranged in a particular way are a bundle. Each of the pieces of wood is a separate or distinct existence: it can exist by itself. 7

See also Mulligan & Smith (1985, 632-3). On the distinction between collectives and unities see Smith (1995, 44f). 8 See also Schaffer (2010, 7) on pure heaps.

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(‘jedes ein Ding für sich’, Brentano 1874 I, 225 (122)). The pieces of wood can exist without the bundle, but the bundle cannot exist without the pieces of wood: it is the pieces of wood arranged in a particular way. If the bundle of wood loses some pieces of wood, it does not survive, but a new bundle succeeds it. According to Hume, if the perceptions p1 and p2 are related by a causal chain, there is a bundle comprising them. Just as some pieces of wood arranged in a particular way are the bundle of wood, the causally connected perceptions are the bundle. Collectives are to be contrasted with unities. A unity is one thing in which one can distinguish a plurality of parts, but one cannot start with the parts and compose them to form a unity. Kant summed this conception up rather nicely. A unity is divisible, or has parts that can be differentiated; but it is not built up (zusammengesetzt) out of them; for ... the parts are only possible as a result of division (die Theile [sind] nur durch Theilung möglich). (Quoted in Bell 2001, 11)

Brentano suggestively calls the ‘parts’ of a unity ‘divisive’.9 Divisives are parts that can only be arrived at by dividing a whole. The whole is in this case prior to the parts. Philosophers have given different examples for unities and divisives:10 (1) An organism and its organs. (Aristotle, Hegel) (2) A spatial continuum and its spatial parts. (Aristotle, Brentano) (3) A proposition and its constituents. (Kant, Frege) (4) The universe and everything else. (Bradley) The models of unities suggested by (1) and (2) correspond to different answers to the question why the whole is prior to the parts. Consider (1). A heart is one of the divisives of an organism. For it can only exist if it is part of the organism. A severed heart is not a heart; it is a ‘corpse’ of a heart. A heart depends for its existence and identity on the other parts of the organism and therefore on the whole organism. Hence, the heart is a divisive of an organism; it is not an object in itself. 9

See Smith (1995, 45). See Schaffer (2010, sec. 1.1.).

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Contrast (1) with (2). In a spatial continuum one can distinguish parts, for example, the half (quarter) of a line. This part can exist independently of the other parts of the line and of the line itself. The spatial parts are posterior to the line because the line is not actually composed of them. One reason that makes this view plausible is that there is no principle reason that singles out one decomposition of the line in spatial parts as the right one. All decompositions are equal, so no decomposition specifies the parts from which the line is composed. This distinction between different kinds of unities and divisives is important for understanding the internal problems of Brentano’s view. To anticipate: if consciousness is a unity, it is rather like a spatial continuum. The parts in which it can be divided can exist by itself. But Brentano’s arguments aim to show that consciousness is a unity like an organism that contains divisives which cannot exist by themselves. In fact the organism-organ model guides Brentano’s and Brentanians’ whole thinking about psychology. For example, Brentano’s student Marty said in his lectures: Descriptive psychology is a quasi-anatomy of mental life [Seelenleben], related to the anatomy of the human body as undertaken by the biologist. The biologist too must decompose the human body into its most simple organs, components, tissues, only on the basis of this anatomy can the physiologist develop a theory of the functions of these organs. In a completely analogous way descriptive psychology is an anatomy, namely a microscopic anatomy. (Marty 2011, 5-6. My translation)

Biology and descriptive psychology are alike in starting with a unity and trying to discern components in it. Brentano frames the question of the unity of consciousness in terms of the opposition between a unity and a collective: In the case of complex mental states, do we have to assume a collective of things, or does the totality of mental phenomena, in the most complex as in the simplest [act], belong to one thing in which we can only discern divisives as parts? (Brentano 1874 I, 223 (121). I have changed the translation.)

His answer affirms the second conjunct. Contra Hume, consciousness is not a bundle of perceptions. We need to start with the whole of consciousness and discern parts in it. According to Brentano, the

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problem of ‘collecting’ prior perceptions into a bundle does not arise in the first place. Brentano therefore adds a new entry to the list: (5) A total mental state of a person at a time and the mental acts that comprise it. How does Brentano argue for this view? I will start by discussing an argument that helps us some, but not all, of the way. Considering this argument will help us to understand the problems Brentano tries to solve. 4 The anti-duplication argument In the chapter ‘Further Consideration about Inner Consciousness’ that precedes the chapter ‘About the Unity of Consciousness’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano presents an argument in favour of the conclusion that every mental act is a unity whose parts are not distinct existences, hence divisives: modifying a term from Caston (2002) I will call it The Anti-Duplication Argument. The argument goes, in outline, as follows: if I am consciously hearing a tone, I am simultaneously aware of two objects, the tone heard and the hearing of the tone. This seems to require two ideas (judgements): one concerning the tone; one concerning the hearing of the tone. But if there are two ideas or judgements, the tone will be represented twice, once as the exclusive object of the first-order judgement, the hearing; a second time as the partial object of a judgement about the hearing of the tone. ‘Yet’, says Brentano, ‘this is not the case. Rather, inner experience seems to prove undeniably that the idea [Vorstellung] of the sound is connected with the idea of the idea of the sound in such a peculiarly intimate way that its being, if it obtains, contributes inwardly to the being [innerlich zum Sein der anderen beiträgt] of the other. This suggests that there is a peculiar interweaving [eigentümliche Verwebung] of the object of inner idea and the idea itself, and that both belong to one and the same act. We must in fact assume this.’ (Brentano 1874 I, 127 (98). My translation)

It is obvious that the exclusive object of the hearing is the partial object of the consciousness of the hearing. The simplest way to account for the fact that the first- and second-order ideas (judgements)

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share the same object is to take the first-order one as sharing a part with the second-order idea (judgement).11 Burge has given a good description of this peculiar interweaving of first- and second-order mental acts: When one knows one is thinking that p one is not taking one’s thought (or thinking) merely as an object. One is thinking that p in the very event of thinking knowledgeably that one is thinking it. It is thought and thought about in the same mental act. (Burge 1986, 654)

Brentano concludes that the two mental acts form ONE unity: The idea of the sound and the idea of the idea of the sound form one single mental phenomenon, it is only by considering it in its relation to two different objects, one of which is a physical phenomenon and the other a mental phenomenon, that we divide it conceptually into two ideas. (1874 I, 127 (98). In part my translation.)

Later he sums up his results by saying that the first- and second order acts are ‘parts of a unified real being’ (1874 I, 221 (155)). The conclusion that the mental acts form ONE unity is not warranted by Brentano’s premises. To be an awareness of the idea of the tone C is part of what it is to be the idea of the idea of the tone C. Hence, the idea of the idea of the tone cannot exist with the idea of the tone existing. But the necessary connection between the idea of the idea and the idea itself is only one-sided: the former depends on the latter, but not the other way around. For, prima facie, the hearing of the sound can exist by itself. Even if there were no idea of the idea of the tone C or any other act founded upon the hearing of the tone, the hearing would exist. Compare this to one of the paradigmatic examples of a unity of divisives: an organism. A heart can only exist if it is part of the organism. A severed heart is not a heart. But a mental act that does not found further mental acts is still a mental act. Hence, it is not a divisive of a unity of the same kind as the organism. The same problem arises quite generally. Let us assume that all simultaneous mental acts are divisives of one unity in that each de11

See Siewert (2001, 554). For an account of the Aristotelian background see Caston (2002, 768ff), and Brandl in this volume, p. 51f. See also Kriegel (2003) who proposed that the first- and second -order act are identical. In recent work, Kriegel has revised this view.

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pends for its existence on the unity. On the organism-organ model this is the case because the different organs are mutually ontologically dependent. But such a mutual dependence obtains at best between some elements of consciousness. Brentano is fully aware of this: This assumption [the unity of consciousness] has its difficulties. If all simultaneous mental acts never were anything but divisives of one and the same unified thing, how could one of them be independent of another one? And yet this is the case: neither in their coming nor in their ceasing to be they are tied to each other. Consider, for instance, hearing and seeing: sometimes the first occurs without the second and the second without the first, and if they exist simultaneously, one perhaps goes out of existence while the other continues to exist. (1874 I, 224 (122). In part my translation)

Seeing a banana and hearing a bang are ontologically independent of each other. Hence, we cannot take these acts to be divisives of a unity because they are mutually ontologically dependent. In later works Brentano goes on to compare the elements of consciousness with the parts of a spatial continuum: Yet, even though these parts [the elements of consciousness] never occur side by side like the parts of a spatial continuum, many amongst them can in some way actually be separated from one another like the parts of a spatial continuum. (1887, 12 (15))

To sum up: the Anti-Duplication Argument shows at best that mental acts form a unity because they are ontologically dependent on each other. But, as we have seen, if there is a unity of consciousness it must allow for ontologically independent parts. Can Brentano show that simultaneous mental acts form such a unity? In Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, he provides two further arguments to which I will now turn. 5 The comparative judgement argument The model for the Comparative Judgement Argument can be found in De Anima 3.2. (426b17ff).12 Aristotle argued that ‘it is not possible to judge separate things by separate means’. The separate means are the 12 Plato gives a similar argument in Theatetus 184 e-185d. Thanks to Guy Longworth for this observation.

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separate senses that can only perceive their special properties; sight colour, touch tactile properties etc. Now Aristotle observes that we also make non-inferential judgement concerning the special objects of different senses. A paradigmatic example is the comparative judgement that this colour is more intense than that note. How is that possible? Aristotle answered that there is one common sense that can perceive properties of different senses and issues in comparative judgements. Brentano tries to exploit a similar idea in arguing for the conclusion that simultaneous mental acts are divisives of a unity.13 He makes this idea clear through an analogy. Consider a blind man and a deaf man. It seems absurd to say that they can compare colours and sounds. Why? Because a cognition which compares them is a real unity, but if we combine the acts of the blind and the deaf man, we always get a mere collective and never a unitary real thing. … Even if they lived permanently in the same house, indeed, even if they, like Siamese twins or even more so, had truly and inseparably merged, this would not make the assumption any more plausible. (1874 I, 227 (123). In part my translation)14

A non-inferential comparative judgement seems to require ONE thing to be simultaneously aware of the sound and the colour. The existence of the non-inferential judgement that this colour is more intense than that sound cannot be explained by listing judgements of, say, a visual part and an auditory part of a mind. The existence of the comparative judgement does not however require that the auditory and the visual perception ontologically be dependent upon each other. Hence, if this argument is accepted, Brentano has shown that mental acts are divisives of a unity in a similar sense in which points are divisives of a spatial continuum. How convincing is the Comparative Judgement Argument? It is true that the making of a non-inferential comparative judgement cannot consist in the visual part making a vision-based judgement and the auditory part making a hearing-based judgement. However, so far Brentano has not excluded the possibility that the judgement is the 13

See also Siewert (2001, 544-5) and Smith (1995, 45). The original English translation wrongly translates ‘zusammenwachsen’ (‘merge’, ‘adnate’) as ‘growing up together’ (zusammenaufwachsen’). 14

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joint upshot of two non-judgemental acts of both parts. The visual and the auditory part both contribute to the comparative judgement and the judgement depends ontologically on each of them and on relations that obtain between them. Since the judgement depends on both, it does not depend on either part individually. Hence, a collective of mental faculties can make non-inferential comparative judgements if the parts of the collective are properly coordinated. Brentano’s argument does not show that non-inferential comparative judgements require a real unity. Some collectives may not be able to make non-inferential comparative judgements. This does not show that a collective can never make such judgements if its parts are properly related. Brentano’s student Anton Marty responded to this point in his lectures on descriptive psychology: Many coins can have a value that the single coin lacks. Similarly it is perhaps possible that several atoms have together a consciousness which does not belong to each single atom. The answer is again simple: the value is not a real property, but a consciousness is a real property. And it is true of real properties that an individual real property can only belong to one individual. (Marty 2011, 31)

Marty proposes that real properties cannot be properties that several things jointly have. Many things can at the same time be red, but they are not jointly red. If a is red, it is red independently of the redness of other things. However, the property of being worth 15000 pounds can only be had by many coins taken together (at least given the value of the coins I know of). It is a property that can only be had by a plurality of coins. If mental acts can depend on a plurality of things, the Comparative Judgement Argument does not get off the ground. Does Marty give us a good reason to rule out that mental acts can depend on a plurality? No. First, in Brentano’s ontology, consciousness is not a property; it is a mental act. Second, why should an act not be a joint act of a collective? The King’s Singers sing jointly in a way none of them could sing individually. Yet, the singers and their activities are ontologically primary; they are not divisives of a unity. Coordinated in the right way their activities have a joint property that none individually has. 6 The simultaneity argument Can Brentano do better? He gives us a further argument:

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When someone thinks of and desires something, or when he thinks of several primary objects at the same time, he is conscious not only of the different activities, but also of their simultaneity. When someone hears a melody, he recognizes that he has an idea of one note as occurring now and of other notes as having already occurred. When a person is aware of seeing and hearing, he is also aware that he is doing both at the same time. Now if we find the perception of seeing in one thing and the perception of hearing in another, in which of these things do we find the perception of their simultaneity? Obviously, in neither of them. It is clear, rather, that the inner cognition of one and the inner cognition of the other must belong to the same real unity. And from our previous investigations we know that what applies to the inner cognition of mental activities also applies to these activities themselves. Consequently, it seems that we are justified in concluding that neither kind of complexity can ever prevent us from regarding the totality of our mental activities as a real unity. (Brentano 1874 I, 227-8 (123-4))

Let us work through Brentano’s argument. Let us assume for reduction purposes that the mental acts with which we are concerned do not belong to a unity, but a collective. Brentano assumes that there are objects to which the acts belong in order to illustrate this assumption. Now if there is a hearing of a at t and a seeing of b at t, there is at t an immediate consciousness of the simultaneity of hearing a and of seeing b. Assume for reduction purposes that the hearing of a at t is an act of object 1 and the seeing of b at t is an act of a different object, say, 2. Of which object is the immediate consciousness of the simultaneity of hearing a and of seeing b an act? Brentano answers: it is an act neither of object 1 nor of object 2. This seems plausible enough, but Brentano’s conclusion that it is an act of a unity that comprises object 1 and object 2 does not follow. Why should the immediate consciousness not jointly belong to object 1 and object 2? Again Brentano seems to rest his case on an assumption for rejecting properties and acts that belong jointly to several things. To sum up: so far Brentano has not offered us a convincing reason for the thesis that all simultaneous acts are divisives of a unity. His main problem is to argue that ontologically independent mental acts belong to one unity that is prior to them.

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7 Beyond Brentano: from ontological dependence to fusion Brentano’s students Carl Stumpf and, in his early work, Edmund Husserl continue where Brentano left off. They try to find an answer to the question in which sense ontologically independent mental acts are divisives of a unity. Husserl’s Logical Investigations contain an interesting response to this problem. If we are concerned with the unity of consciousness, says, Husserl, we are concerned with the unity of the concrete phenomenological whole whose parts are [1.] either moments which ground each other when they coexist, that is demand each other’s existence or [2.] pieces [Stücke] which ground through their own nature forms of unity. These forms of unity belong to the content of whole as really indwelling moments. (Husserl 1913 II/1, 356. (88). My translation)

Now this is quite a mouthful, so let us work slowly through it. Husserl calls ontologically dependent parts ‘moments’ and ontologically independent parts pieces ‘Stücke’. Husserl responds to the problems that arose for Brentano’s view of the unity of consciousness by proposing a disjunctive account of the unity of consciousness: 1. If x and y are mental acts that ontologically depend on each other, no further unification is needed. They are divisives of one unity. 2. If x and y are self-subsisting mental acts, their nature is such that it grounds forms of unity. Again no owner or bearer of mental phenomena is needed, although the mental acts are ontologically independent. With 2. Husserl goes beyond Brentano. The main work in 2. is done by the notion of forms of unity. What is this? The key-concept is that of a fusion of some things. Brentano talked frequently about the fusion of ideas (See Brentano 1874 I, 18ff (9ff)). Brentano’s pupil Carl Stumpf further explored this concept of fusion and Husserl builds on Stumpf’s work. To illustrate the general idea, consider an example provided by Husserl. All the elements of a chatter of starlings are mutually ontologically independent and there is no reason to say that they are ontologically dependent on the chatter. Stumpf and Husserl say that the starlings fuse (verschmelzen) into a chatter. The notion of fusion has intuitive content. Just imagine a number of starlings coming together and forming, fusing into, a chat-

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ter. In general, the fused elements can exist independently of the fusion, nonetheless a fusion is a unity, not just a collective (sum): [In a fusion] the elements are not changed at all, but a new relation between them comes about, that creates a more intimate unity as that between members of a mere sum whose unity often consists only in the fact that its members are added to each other (one can add together the most heterogeneous and unconnected things, for instance and affect and an apple). (Stumpf 1890, 64. My translation. See also Husserl 1891, 231)

Why are they fused things a unity? If some ontologically independent things have collectively a plural property that distinguishes them from their surroundings, they appear to us as more than ONE thing, yet not as a sum of several things. They are fused. This appearance is a reason why we use collective nouns such as ‘flock’, ‘herd’, ‘crowd’, ‘alley’ and, last but not least, ‘bundle’ and ‘heap’ (See Husserl 1901, 203-4). Take the starlings. If they come together into a chatter, they form no new object, but they come to have collectively a new property that no starling individually has. This collective property collects the starlings into a chatter because it distinguishes them from their surroundings. Husserl calls such collective properties ‘figural Momente’; I will translate this term as ‘configuration properties’. If some things jointly have a configuration property, they are fused and we can count them as one. Configuration properties are forms of unity; Husserl will also aptly call these properties ‘unity moments’ (Einheitsmomente) (Husserl 1901 II/1, 234-5). Stumpf applied a similar idea to mental phenomena. In order to count a plurality of perceivable objects as one unity, we need a perceivable collective property that distinguishes these objects from their surroundings. Which unity moment grounds the fact that we count some mental phenomena as one unity? Stumpf provided an answer for sensations: All sensory qualities [Empfindungsqualitäten] enter, when they change from successive to simultaneous qualities, not only into a relation of simultaneity, but also in a further relation, as a consequence of which they appear as parts of a sensory whole [Empfindungsganzen]. Successive sensations form as sensations a mere sum, simultaneous ones form as sensations already a whole. (Stumpf 1890, 64. My translation.)

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Consider the following model as an illustration. You hear the notes C, E, G successively. If there is not an additional unifying plural property, you have three notes and three auditory experiences. Now you hear the notes C, E, G played at the same time. What happens is that they are fused, you hear only one chord, C major. The notes are ontologically independent, yet the mere fact that they are heard simultaneously fuses them. They strike us as one thing in which the parts can be distinguished. It is a law of psychology says Stumpf that simultaneous experiences are harder to distinguish than successive ones. The unifying collective property is that the experiences are simultaneously experienced. Tye helps us in illustrating the notion that Stumpf has in mind: There is something it is like to experience the smell of the sea air, for example; and there is something it is like to experience the colour of the see; but there is also something it is like to experience these things together. (Tye 2007, 290)

According to Stumpf, if some experiences are simultaneous, ‘it is impossible not to experience them as a whole, to experience them as not being fused’. (Stumpf 1890, 65. My translation.) Consider again the chord. If you hear a C major, you hear simultaneously three notes, but it takes effort and training to distinguish them by hearing. There is an experiential sense in which the whole is prior to the parts. This is in line with one aspect of Brentano’s notion of unity of consciousness that he neglects in his discussion of the unity of consciousness. He wrote in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint: [W]e emphasized as a distinguishing characteristic the fact that the mental phenomena which we perceive, in spite of all their multiplicity, always appear to us as a unity, while physical phenomena, which we perceive at the same time, do not appear in the same way as parts of a single phenomenon. (Brentano 1874 I, 137 (75). In part my translation)

Simultaneous mental phenomena are not only parts of a unity, they also appear to us as a unity. Stumpf’s notion of fusion provides a plausible way to understand this idea for mental phenomena like experiences.

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Now Stumpf vacillates between experiences (Empfindungen) and experienced qualities (Empfindungsqualität). What is then fused, the experiences or the experienced quality? The correct answer seems to be both: when I have an experience of the freshness of the air simultaneously with an experience of the colour of the sea, there is a complex experience in which I am aware of the simultaneity of both these qualities. The experience is more than the conjunction of the individual experiences for, as Tye puts it, ‘a conjunction of two experiences isn’t itself an experience at all’ (Tye, 2007, 291). Stumpf outlined a promising proposal on how experiences are unified. It is a law of psychology that simultaneous experiences are parts of a complex experience, of a sensory whole. Neither a relation of ontological dependence nor an owner of the experiences is needed for this kind of unity. If Brentano is right about the unity of consciousness, Stumpf’s law of psychology is a special instance of a more general law: whenever we are conscious of simultaneous mental phenomena, whether they are sensory or not, we are conscious of their simultaneity. We can only have such a consciousness of simultaneity if there is one complex mental act that comprises the simultaneous acts and such a mental act cannot be a sum of mental acts. Now the more general law Brentano needs seems to me neither self-evident nor supportable by philosophical argument only. Hence, I leave it to the proponents of Brentano’s proposal to supply further evidence for it. Here I am content with having made the nature of Brentano’s view clear.

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Bell, D. 2001. ‘Some Kantian Thoughts on Propositional Unity’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supp. 75: 1-16. Brentano, F. 1874. Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt (1874) (two volumes), Hamburg 1955: Meiner. Trans.: Psychology from An Empirical Standpoint, London 1995: Routledge (trans. L. MacAlister). —— 1887. Deskriptive Psychologie, Hamburg: Meiner 1982. Trans.: Descriptive Psychology, London 1995: Routledge (trans. B. Mueller). —— (unpublished) ‘Über die Seele’. Burge, T. 1988. ‘Individualism and Self-Knowledge’ in The Journal of Philosophy 85: 649-664. Caston, V. 2002. ‘Aristotle on Consciousness’ in Mind 111: 751-815. Crane, T. 1998. ‘Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental’ in A. O’Hear (ed.) Contemporary Issues in the Philosophy of Mind. The Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43: 229-251. Descartes, R. 1641. Meditations on First Philosophy, in: Oeuvres De Descartes, 11 vols., edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1983. Hume, D. 1739/40. A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Husserl, E. 1891. Philosophie der Arithmetik. Husserliana 12. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff 1970. —— 1913. Logische Untersuchungen. Reprint of the Second Edition. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. English translation by D. Moran, London: Routledge 2001. Kriegel, U. 2003. ‘Consciousness and Intransitive Self-Consciousness’ in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33: 103-132. Marty, A. 2011. Deskriptive Psychologie. Ed. by M. Antonelli and J. Marek. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Mulligan, K., Smith, B. 1985. ‘Franz Brentano and the Ontology of Mind’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45: 627-644. Oaklander, N. 1987. ‘Parfit, Circularity and The Unity of Consciousness’ in: Mind, 525-9. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenthal, D. 2003. ‘Unity of Consciousness and the Self’ in Proceedings of Aristotelian Society Proceedings 103: 325-52. Schaffer, J. 2010. ‘The Internal Relatedness of All Things’ in Mind 119: 341-76. Siewert, C. 2001. ‘Self-Knowledge and Phenomenal Unity’ in Noûs 35: 542-568. Smith, B. 1995, Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago/LaSalle: Open court. Stroud, B. 1977. Hume. London: Routledge & Kegan. Stumpf, C. 1890. Tonpsychologie II. Leipzig: Hirzel. Tye, M. 2007. ‘The Problem of Common Sensibles’ in Erkenntnis 66: 287-303.

2 VARIETIES OF INTENTIONALITY INTRODUCTION (GUILLAUME FRÉCHETTE)

Definitely his most important heritage in 20th and 21st-century philosophy, intentionality takes a central place in Brentano’s thought. His source of inspiration lies in Aristotle’s explanation of sensations in De Anima, where sensing is explained by the reception, by the senseorgans, of ‘form without matter’ (424a18). Brentano also took two other ideas from Aristotle when developing his own concept of intentionality: first, the thesis that perception is a special kind of capacity (paschein), not exhausted in its being actualized, a ‘preservation of that which is potential by something actual which is like it, as potency is related to actuality’ (417b2-7); second, the thesis that the actualized object of sense-perception is within the senses (426a2-4). In 1867, Brentano uses these theses to formulate a first version of the intentionality thesis, namely that colors and temperatures exist ‘objectively’ in the perceiver. In 1874, in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, he develops a second, augmented version of the intentionality thesis, bringing in two new features: first, he attributes this ‘objective’ or ‘intentional’ inexistence to other forms of mental functions: presentings, judgings, lovings and hatings all have something as an object; second, he argues that these mental functions are about these objects. Brentano then generalizes the first feature in a well-known thesis: intentionality is the mark of the mental. Brentano’s generalization is one of the two reasons why intentionality became the core of all philosophy of mind written after 1874. The second of the two reasons is only partly a Brentanian one, and has to do with the generalization of the second feature, resulting in the following thesis: all intentionality is aboutness. Brentano himself never operated the generalization of the second feature, although his reception in the analytic philosophy of the 20th century is largely based on this

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generalization.1 The following four papers deal with different aspects of Brentano’s intentionality thesis. In ‘Brentano’s thesis (Revisited),’ I propose to look back at one of the most influential receptions of Brentano’s thesis, namely Chisholm’s, and to identify the background hypothesis at play in this interpretation of the thesis. I argue that Chisholm, but also Kraus and many other readers of Brentano, tend to mask a distinction between the content and the object of the intentional relation. I argue that Brentano does make such a distinction, contrary to the general opinion. In fact, I argue, Brentano uses this distinction at many stages of his philosophy, and it reflects a distinction between two very distinct features of intentionality, which he tries at many stages of his career to bring together: the inclusion relation (being intentionally in someone’s act) and directedness or aboutness, which are two distinct intentional aspects in our mind’s life. I argue that the standard readings of Brentano’s thesis conflate both elements. In ‘Brentano and Aristotle on the Ontology of Intentionality’, Chrudzimski tries to dismantle the opinio communis, according to which Brentano borrowed many of his ideas from the Stagirite. Along with Kraus, Chisholm and Smith, Chrudzimski holds the thesis that Brentano was committed to a rich ontology of intentionality in the 1890s. Following this conception, Brentano held the view that there is always an object in an intentional relation, but that this object is an immanent object with a special kind (or as Smith puts it, a ‘diminished kind’) of existence. This ‘diminished kind of existence’ of the intentional object x is exemplified as a modified property of x, i.e. the centaur has the property of being a horse – the very same property had by Bucephalus – ‘in a modified sense’. Churdzimski does see a parallel between this conception of intentional properties and Aristotle’s account of sense-perception. In both cases, red (or the property of being a horse) are ‘in some sense’ in the content of presentation (or, in Aristotle’s case, in the soul). In both cases, acts are intentional because of mediating entities and because of the non-standard relation of exemplification. However, as he suggests, the account of intentionality exposed in the Habilitationsschrift of 1867 is distinct both from Aristotle’s account in De Anima and from 1

On the second generalization, see for instance the first sentence of Dennett and Haugeland (1987), but more generally McGinn (1982), Searle (1983) and Dennett (1989). For a more recent defense, see the first sentence of Montague (2010).

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Brentano’s later account of intentionality. He argues that Brentano defended, in 1867, a representational theory of intentionality, such that the representational properties of the postulated entity are different from the identifying properties of the genuine object of reference. Therefore, Chrudzimski concludes, Brentano was not defending an Aristotelian theory of intentionality. Although Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint deals at length with the nature of intentionality, Brentano doesn’t say much there about the intentional structure of acts of meaning. Most of his insights on the nature of acts of meaning are presented in his lectures on logics, but Brentano obviously never felt the need to expose his insights on these matters in published form. Certainly one reason for this is that Anton Marty, one of his most dedicated students, worked and published extensively in philosophy and psychology of language. Throughout his career, Marty developed an extensive and detailed treatment of meaning intentions largely influenced by Brentano. Marty’s works on meaning therefore constitute a reliable source in Brentanian philosophy of language, although they introduce original Martyan elements, as Laurent Cesalli shows in ‘Marty’s Intentionalist Theory of Meaning’. For Marty, meaning is primarily a matter of intentions, and, more precisely, of speaker’s intentions, closely related to Grice’s psychological semantics. Following Brentano’s theory of inner consciousness on this point, Marty characterizes meaning by a twofold intention: the speaker’s primary intention to influence (or steer) someone’s inner life, and another secondary intention to indicate his inner life. Cesalli shows that this distinction is the key element in Marty’s account, which locates his theory in the realm of psychological theories of meaning, but which at the same time proposes what Cesalli calls a ‘middle way’ through the identification of an objective moment in the function of indication. Cesalli concludes that the intentional character of meaning is an essential trait of Marty’s theory, but that contrarily to Husserl, Marty’s concept of intention has a practical dimension which is missing both in Husserl’s and in Brentano’s theories. The last paper of this section deals with the contribution of phenomenal experience to the intentional relation. In ‘Phenomenology of Intentionality’, Matjaž Potrč engages in a reflection on the kind of view defended by Brentano regarding the relation between phenomenal experience and intentionality. According to Potrč, Brentano

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defends a ‘narrow’ conception of phenomenology, i.e. the phenomenal properties of experience don’t depend on what goes on ‘outside the head’ of the experiencer. Following Potrč’s line of thought, it is on the basis of this ‘narrow’ conception of phenomenal experience that Brentano bases his idea of intentional directedness, therefore formulating an influential account of inseparatism as regards the relation between phenomenal experience and intentionality, a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind.2 Discussing the possible senses of narrowness of experience involved in Brentano’s account of the mental, Potrč remarks that Brentano’s late reism excludes an account of narrowness in terms of possible worlds. In the last part of his paper, he proposes an account of narrowness in the lines of Russell’s theory of acquaintance which would, in his view, correspond best with Brentano’s late reism. References:

Dennett, D. and J. Haugeland. 1987. ‘Intentionality’ in R.L. Gregory (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dennett, D. 1989. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press Horgan, T. and J. Tienson. 2002. ‘The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality’ in Chalmers, D.(ed.), Philosophy of Mind. Classical and Contemporary Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 520-533. Kriegel, U. (ed). 2012. Phenomenal Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. 1982. The Character of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montague, M. 2010. ‘Recent Work on Intentionality’ in Analysis 70: 765-782. Searle, J. 1983. Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2

On inseparatism, see also Horgan and Tienson (2002) and more recently Kriegel (2012).

BRENTANO’S THESIS (REVISITED) GUILLAUME FRÉCHETTE

(UNIVERSITY OF SALZBURG)

1 Introduction What is the intentionality thesis actually about? Needless to say that the famous intentionality quote from Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint gave rise to many different glosses on how to understand what is meant there by intentionality. Since the 1950s, it has often been referred to as a theory about the irreducibility of the mental to the physical.1 This conception owes much to Chisholm’s interpretation of Brentano’s thesis in 1957, according to which the thesis could be expressed in terms of the irreducibility of intentional sentences in the context of psychological descriptions: We may … re-express Brentano’s thesis … by reference to intentional sentences. Let us say (1) that we do not need to use intentional sentences when we describe nonpsychological phenomena…But (2) when we wish to describe perceiving, assuming, believing, knowing, wanting, hoping, and other such attitudes, then either (a) we must use sentences which are intentional or (b) we must use terms we do not need to use when we describe nonpsychological phenomena (Chisholm 1957, 172f.)

Three years later, Quine reacted to Chisholm’s interpretation in a comment that would shape much of the further reception of the socalled ‘Brentano thesis’, making it a thesis “of a piece with the thesis of indeterminacy of translation” (Quine 1960, 221) and more particularly a thesis about the irreducibility of the mental to the physical and about the reality of the mental as well:

1

A short survey of this kind of reading is proposed by Moran (1996, 1-2).

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Guillaume Fréchette One may accept the Brentano thesis as either showing the indispensability of intentional idioms and the importance of an autonomous science of intention, or as showing the baselessness of intentional idioms and the emptiness of a science of intention. My attitude, unlike Brentano’s, is the second. (Quine 1960, 221)

According to Quine, Brentano was wrong to the extent that he appealed to the indispensability of intentional idioms to show the indispensability of mental objects and attitudes. To use intentional idioms in the Quinean way is simply to “postulate translation relations as somehow objectively valid though indeterminate in principle relative to the totality of speech dispositions” (ibid.). Quine’s reception of Brentano’s thesis and the conception of intentionality that came with it had an important influence on Davidson, who took the indeterminacy of translation of intentional idioms as the basis for his anomalous monism.2 That things, actions or events are said to be intentional simply means that “we can describe [them] in a certain vocabulary – and the mark of that vocabulary is semantic intentionality” (Davidson 1987, 46). Chisholm’s direct and indirect influence on Quine and Davidson ultimately had the effect of quickly making Brentano’s thesis on the intentionality as the mark of the mental a thesis on the intentionality as the mark of some idioms or vocabulary about the mental – a thesis about intensionality. Although this interpretation has proven fruitful in discussions about physicalism, it remains questionable whether Brentano’s thesis on intentionality as the mark of the mental is really a thesis about the irreducibility of the mental to the physical, and more particularly, whether a reformulation of the intentionality thesis in terms of intentional sentences is really appropriate. 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 2

See Davidson (1980, 149) for an explicit acknowledgment of this.

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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. My reading of the ‘Brentano thesis’ differs from Chisholm’s in that I take intentionality to be a generic feature that is displayed very differently by different mental phenomena. In my view, it does not simply consist in a discriminatory feature which distinguishes the mental from the physical. Furthermore, I do not think that the intentionality quote implies that the direction toward an object and the intentional containment of an object in an act amount to the same thing. Although these two predicates are rightly attributed to intentional acts, they express different intentional properties, as I will try to show. My point here is based in part on Brentano’s own use of the terms ‘direction’ (Richtung) and ‘content’ (Inhalt), which supports the distinction suggested between the two predicates. I will leave here open the question as to whether Brentano really did have in mind the distinction that I am proposing. I only want to show that there are benefits to read Brentano with this distinction in mind. One of these benefits concerns the problematic issue of the intentionality of sensations. Already a few years after the publication of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano’s thesis about the intentionality of sensations was rejected by some of his students, among them Stumpf and Husserl, for not being able to account for the distinction between sensory and non-sensory content. According to them, there is no intentional object to be found in sensory contents. Chisholm (1989) also made a similar point, disputing the claim that Brentano attributed intentionality to sensations. Following Chisholm, Brentano rather wanted to say that truths about sense qualities are actually truths about the self or person which senses these qualities.3 As I want to show, focusing on the distinction between direction and content as two distinct intentional properties allows us to answer some objections made by some of Brentano’s students, most notably Husserl and Stumpf, concerning the intentionality of sensations. Since there is also some textual evidence that show that Brentano had in mind different conditions (and not merely different descriptions of the 3

Chisholm (1989, 5).

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same condition), my current proposal can be seen as a defense of Brentano’s position against some of his students, and indirectly as a defense for the thesis of the intentionality of sensations. 2 The Intentionality Quote Let us start with the Intentionality Quote, as it is the basis of the discussions which are of interest to us here: Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, relation to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as a reality), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. (Brentano 1995, 68)

Since Husserl, it has been customary to divide this quote into 3 different theses4: (T1) Every mental phenomenon is characterized by the direction toward an object and its immanent objectivity. (T2) The object (of a mental phenomenon) is not a reality. (T3) Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. Following this analysis, the Intentionality Quote would involve a psychological thesis (T1) on the nature of the intentional relation, coupled with an ontological thesis (T2) on the nature of the object of the intentional acts, supplemented with a thesis on the different ways these relations may occur through diverse intentional correlations: presenting/presented, judging/judged, etc. (T3). (T1) seems at least ambiguous since it expresses both the directionality of intentional acts and their property of containing something as object. Whether these two expressions are synonymous or simply correlative, is an issue I will later discuss, but (T1) as it stands clearly involves more than a 4

See Husserl (1901, 366f.) and Smith & MacIntyre (1982, 48).

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psychological thesis. (T2) is also problematic since it is a negative thesis. It does not tell us what the object of a mental phenomenon is, it simply tells us that it is not a reality. As for (T3), it might express two things: either it is simply a thesis about different modes under which one might be in relation to an intentional object, or it is a thesis about different intentional correlations (acts and their correlates), and in that sense (T3) – or at least the second part of it – would not necessarily concern intentional objects but simply intentional correlates. Taken together, (T1) and the first part of (T3) seem to express two criteria that are necessary in order for an act to be intentional: (C1): an act x is intentional iff x is a relation between a thinker and an intentional object (C2): an act x is intentional iff x contains something in itself as an object (i.e. contained object, or ‘content’). By symmetry and transitivity, this makes the right parts of (C1) and (C2) equivalent: x is a relation between a thinker and an intentional object iff x contains something in itself as an object. Are (C1) and (C2) simply equivalent propositions or are the terms ‘intentional object’ and ‘content’ in (C1) and (C2) synonymous, making the propositions intensionally equivalent? To my knowledge, there is no explicit acknowledgment of the intensional equivalence of (C1) and (C2) in Brentano’s writings, but this of course does not preclude the plausibility of the synonymy thesis. In my view, Chisholm’s reading of Brentano’s thesis presupposes the synonymy thesis: the right parts of (C1) and (C2) are not only equivalent propositions given that, following his view, the terms ‘intentional object’ and ‘content’ in (C1) and (C2) are synonymous and (C1) and (C2) are intensionally equivalent.5 In the first case, the alleged synonymy of ‘intentional object’ and ‘content’ in (C1) and (C2) is the presupposition for the thesis that the object of an intentional act is always a content, i.e. an immanent object. In the second case, the intensional equivalence of (C1) and (C2) leads to the thesis that ‘intentional relation’ and ‘intentional inclusion’ are synonymous expressions. I will later return to this specific consequence that results from the intensional equivalence of (C1) and (C2), but we can simply add here that the expression ‘content’ is 5

Interestingly, we find in Dennett (1969, 21-22) an interpretation of (C2) in terms of propositional contents and of (C1) in terms of presented objects.

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used here to stress the containment expressed in (T3). Whether the content is the same thing as the intentional object is a question I will discuss later, but I am just presuming here that (T1) and (T3) are different theses. Chisholm’s interpretation of (C1) and (C2) as co-extensive is confirmed also by his interpretation of (T2). According to (T2), since the object of the mental phenomenon is not a reality, it should only enjoy a kind of diminished existence. This is the conclusion presented in Chisholm (1960) and (1967): Brentano’s use of the expression ‘intentional inexistence’ (he didn’t use the term ‘intentionality’) may also suggest an ontological or metaphysical doctrine concerning the types of being or existence. Did he mean to say that, in order for us to direct our thoughts toward objects that do not exist, such objects must be available to us in at least some kind of ‘inexistence’? If he was inclined to accept any such realm of 6 being in 1874, he explicitly rejected it in his later writings.

Intentional inexistence, the mode of being of immanent objects, is therefore seen as a Mode of being (intentional inexistence, immanent objectivity, or existence in the understanding) that is short of actuality but more than 7 nothingness.

This characterization of intentionality was decisive for Chisholm’s formulation of the criteria by which sentences that are used intentionally are distinguished from sentences that are not. If the objects of all intentional acts enjoy a diminished form of existence in the mind, it is easy to see that intentional sentences, like Mary is thinking about a centaur are failing existential generalization. The quantified version of (a), ∃x(x is a centaur & Mary is thinking about x)

6 7

Chisholm (1960, 4-5). See also Chisholm (1957, 169). Chisholm (1967, 201).

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is simply false. It is also easy to see that sentences about intentional objects will not be immune to the failure of the substitution of coreferring terms salva veritate. If Mary believes that Cicero was a great emperor but does not know that Tully is the same person as Cicero, her sentences about Cicero and Tully will be sentences about two different (immanent) objects. By stating both the synonymy of ‘object’ and ‘content’ and the intensional equivalence of (C1) and (C2), Chisholm built an influential theory of intentionality and reference inspired by Brentano, thereby developing Brentano’s criterion for distinguishing between the mental and the physical – only mental acts have the property of being intentional – into an argument against the reduction of mental properties to physical properties. But the interpretation of (T2), which is presupposed here, is more problematic and tends to conflate existence with reality, which Brentano strictly separates. According to him, realities are individual substances. The reality of an individual substance obtains independently of its existence: both chairs and centaurs are real since both are bodies, although only chairs exist. By saying that the object of a mental phenomenon should not be understood as a reality, Brentano is therefore not committed to the conclusion drawn by Chisholm that intentional objects enjoy a diminished form of existence. In my view, he simply means that the object of a mental phenomenon should not be understood as an individual substance, which amounts to say that the question of its existence or non-existence is irrelevant. In other words, the object of a mental phenomenon is a non-real entity; an entia rationis, or an irrealia as Brentano usually labels this kind of entity.8 If Chisholm’s reading of (T2) is unsatisfactory regarding what Brentano really intended with this thesis, then it is hard to see which role the synonymy thesis should play, if it does not fulfill anymore the role it was supposed to (namely to give the basis for Chisholm’s reading of (T2)). 3 Intentional object, content and thought-object As we noted in the last section, the synonymy of ‘intentional object’ (also called ‘immanent object’) and ‘content’ and the intensional 8 I therefore disagree with Antonelli (2002, 22) who reads (T2) as affirming “that objects of thought can be not only concrete realities, ‘things’ in the strict sense of the word, but also unreal entities and entia rationis.”

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equivalence of (C1) and (C2) advocated by Chisholm means that the object of an intentional act is always a content. According to Chisholm’s interpretation of Brentano, the immanent object then serves as a mediator to the external object, the object of the outside world, regardless of there being one. Beside their trivially distinct immanent objects, the presentation of a centaur and the presentation of a horse simply differ in respect to the highly probable absence of an external object in the first case. In that case, the act is directed towards something which is simply not there, but it has its direction thanks to the immanent object. Chisholm’s idea runs as follows: (1) an actual intentionally inexistent unicorn is produced when one thinks about a unicorn; (2) one’s thought, however, is not directed upon this actual intentionally inexistent unicorn; and yet (3) it is in virtue of the existence of the intentionally inexistent unicorn that one’s 9 thought may be said to be directed upon a unicorn.

What is precisely the ontological nature of the intentional object in that case? As Sauer (2006, 7) remarked, there are two ways of interpreting the ontological nature of the intentional object following this reading of the Intentionality Quote, and more specifically of (T1), of the synonymy of ‘object’ and ‘content’ (or ‘thought-object’, as used by Sauer) and the intensional equivalence of (C1) and (C2): (T1a): When one thinks of a thing A that, if it exists spatio-temporally, is an entity independent of consciousness, then the intentional object is the modified mental counterpart of A, the entia rationis thought, that is the intentional correlate. (T1b): One and the same thing may exist in two different ways: as a simple object of thought or in spatio-temporal reality. Therefore, every object of thought exists in the first sense and some of them exist also in the second sense. According to Sauer (2006), the mistake of Chisholm (but also of Kraus and Smith)10 is to interpret (T1) with the presupposition that (T1a) and (T1b) are expressing the same thing and seeing the inten9

Chisholm (1967a, 11). See Smith (1994, 41) and Kraus (1919, 26).

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tional object as having “a diminished form of existence”. I agree with Sauer that Brentano’s formulation of (T1) does not imply this conclusion. I also agree with him that Brentano never held neither (T1a) nor (T1b). This is basically the point of the remark made to his student Marty in a letter of 1905, where Brentano emphasizes that by an object of a presentation (Objekt der Vorstellung) I meant what it is that the presentation is about, whether or not there is anything outside the mind corresponding to the presentation. It has never been my view that the immanent object is identical with ‘object of presentation’ (vorgestelltes Objekt). The presentation does not have a “presented thing” as object, it has ‘the thing’ as object. For example, the presentation of a horse does not have a ‘presented horse’ as object, it has ‘a horse’ as object (immanent object, i.e. the only one to be properly named object). However, this [immanent] object need not exist. The person thinking may have something as the object of his thought even though that thing does not exist. Of course it has long been customary to say that universals, qua universals, ‘exist in the mind’ and not in reality, and such like. But this is incorrect if what is thus called ‘immanent’ is taken to be the ‘contemplated horse’ (gedachtes Pferd) or ‘the universal as object of thought’ 11 (gedachtes Universale).

Brentano’s own confusing terminology, even in this very important clarification, certainly played a role in the ‘absurdities’ attributed to him by some of his former students. Let us simplify this terminology a little. Following this remark, the so-called ‘object of presentation’ (also called ‘content’, ‘object of thought’, or simply ‘correlate’) is the (non-real) correlate of the (real) act and should not be confused with 11

Brentano (1930, 87-8). English translation (significantly modified) in Brentano (1966, 51). Interestingly, we find a very similar remark in an earlier unpublished letter of 1891 from Brentano to Marty, where Stumpf is accused of confusing the correlate with the intentional object: “I found out that [Stumpf] believed that ‘red’ and ‘presented red’, ‘man’ and ‘presented man’ are one and the same […]. I clarified the issue the best I could […] and proposed him to think once more about the arguments […]” (“Ich fand, dass [Stumpf] glaubte, ‘Rot’ und ‘vorgestelltes Rot’, ‘Mensch’ und ‘vorgestellter Mensch’ seien eins und dasselbe. […] Ich legte ihm die Sache, so gut ich konnte, klar […] und bat ihn schließlich, für sich allein noch einmal die Argumente zu überdenken”). This letter quite discredits Kraus’ (1930, 192) reading of the 1905 letter, according to which Brentano conceived of the immanent object as a correlate, but wasn’t able anymore in 1905 to remember his own earlier view correctly.

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the ‘immanent object’. We will call the first simply ‘content’, and the second the ‘intentional object’ to avoid further confusions. For every act of presentation p, there is a content cp such that not only p and cp are interdependent, but also that being aware of p also means to be aware of cp, and the other way round as well. Presenting a horse or a unicorn does not make an ontological difference in that respect, since the correlation holds between the act and its correlate: the presentedhorse or the presented-unicorn. This correlate (or ‘content’) should be seen only as a modified distinctional part of the act of presenting a horse. It is not, according to Brentano in the Psychology, the primary object of the act, but belongs (as a modified distinctional part) to the secondary object of the act.12 The correlate as a modified distinctional part of the act is therefore distinct from the unmodified ‘immanent object’. These are two distinct kinds of entities, the first being nonreal and the second real, but this distinction does not imply a distinction with respect to different modes of existence. 4 Centaur cases If Brentano does not defend (T1a) nor (T1b) he still has to provide an explanation for centaur cases: How can a judgment like the one voiced by “there are no centaurs” both be true and about centaurs? If the judgment is about centaurs, then these must have the same kind of existence than horses, tables and chairs. But then, negative existential judgments about horses, tables and chairs should be true as well. It seems that two other options are available: either such judgments are about intentional centaurs (with a diminished kind of existence), or they are not about centaurs at all. Contrarily to Chisholm, I do not think that they are about intentional centaurs. Or at least, I do not think that Brentano found much interest in such a solution. Many elements in Brentano’s writings confirm this attitude. He proposed in his career different strategies to address the centaur cases: in some writings, he suggested to regard negative existential judgments as a rejection of some entia rationis (the presented-centaur) or as the rejection of negative states of affairs (the non-existence of the centaur).13 In 1911, a true negative existential judgment like the one 12

See for instance Brentano’s argument against the thesis that the concept of a tone is a relative concept, which provides sufficient support to this statement. See Brentano (1874/1995, 185/101). 13 See Brentano (1930, 133) and Srednicki (1965, 79).

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voiced by the assertion “there are no centaurs” is best rendered by the following assertion: “someone who judges that there are non-centaurs judges correctly”. The negative entities supposed here are then simply fictions, comparable to Aristotle’s strategy concerning the indefinite names (onoma aoriston).14 Brentano was not very clear about the right solution to adopt concerning negative existential judgments. In 1885, in a lecture on logic, he preferred to say that they simply do not have any object.15 If Brentano was never really satisfied with the solutions he developed concerning negative existential judgments, I believe that the way these judgments are treated remains an exceptional case in his theory, and not a paradigmatic case, as it is often considered to be and as it is treated as such by Chisholm.16 If intentional inexistence is not a diminished kind of existence, then there is a distinction to be made between the being-object of intentional objects and their existence: the intentional object ‘is-anobject’ independently of the acceptance or the denial of its existence.17 The centaur cases and the specific treatment of judgments about their existence or non-existence are interesting cases from the perspective of the second issue, but they show no specific particularity when considered from the perspective of the first issue. A clear illustration of this is to be found in Brentano’s letter to John Stuart Mill of 1873, partly reproduced in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint: The proposition, ‘A centaur is a poetic fiction,’ does not imply, as you rightly point out, that a centaur exists, rather it implies the opposite. But if it is true, it does imply that something else exists, namely a po14

See Brentano (2008/1995, 417/231). Even if his conception would have allowed him to overcome this problem, Bolzano too left a place in his theory for purely negative presentations (rein verneinende Vorstellungen), a subcategory of objectless presentations expressed by indefinite terms (onoma aoriston). See Bolzano (1837, 416f. and 421 (volume 1)); Bolzano (1837, 48 (volume 2)); Bolzano (1837, 220f. (volume 4)). 15 See Brentano (EL81, 13550): “one has to distinguish 1) between the object of the presentation and the presentation […] and 2) between the object of the judgment and the judgment […] the formers are often missing (like in the case of the true negative judgment)” “([m]an muss unterscheiden 1) zw[ischen] dem Object d[er] Vorstell[un]g u[nd] der Vorstell[un]g […] 2) ebenso zw[ischen] d[em] Object d[es] Urtheils u[nd] dem Urtheil […] Die ersteren fehlen oft.([wie] beim wahren negativen Urtheil)”. 16 For a different interpretation of Brentano’s theory of the contents of judgment, see Mayer-Hillebrand (1959, 320f.). 17 I use the expression ‘to be-an-object’ in order to underline the fact that one cannot deduce from ‘x is-an-object’ that x is, or exists.

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Just recall that for Mill, such propositions indicate that the copula ‘is’ does not always express existence, therefore distinguishing between two uses of the ‘is’, merely nominal in the case of centaurs and existential in the case of judgments about existing things. Brentano’s answer to Mill was an attempt to convince him that this distinction was unnecessary and that there is only the existential use of the copula. In the centaur cases, it is simply that the predicate ‘is a poetic fiction’ does not function attributively, as predicates usually do, but in a modifying way, as predicates like ‘is dead’ or ‘is painted’ do. The modifying function of the predicate is such that it does not predicate the thing which the sentence seems to be about, but something else. In the centaur cases, Brentano tells us that such sentences acknowledge the existence of ‘something which existed merely in one’s thought, but not in reality’ (etwas, was bloß in der Einbildung, nicht aber in Wirklichkeit bestehe). It would of course be tempting to characterize this ‘existing merely in one’s thought’ as some kind of diminished existence, as Smith does and as the English translation suggests. However, this characterization goes completely against what Brentano aims at in his argument against Mill, since accepting two kinds of existence would still leave us with two uses of the copula. If Brentano’s point against Mill is supposedly right, then one should avoid this characterization. Brentano’s point against Mill is not isolated from the way he regards the centaur cases, as shown by his treatment of judgments like the one voiced by the assertion: ‘Jupiter is a non-Ens’.19 But the centaur cases are more problematic when one considers them from the perspective of true negative existential judgments. Here, Brentano’s solutions are multiple and the issue is complicated.20 But we can sum it up the following way: in order for a judgment to be true, it has to be evident. Brentano accepts two kinds of evidence, what he calls axiomatic evidence and the evidence of inner perception. It is on the basis 18

Brentano (1995, 70). Brentano (1995, 170). 20 I discuss this issue in Fréchette (2011). 19

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of the first kind of evidence that a judgment like “There is no A that is a non A” is true. The true judgment voiced by ‘lions exist’ is best formulated by ‘whoever judges that lions exists judges rightly (correctly)”. On the other hand, a true judgment like “centaurs do not exist” means that whoever judges that centaurs exist judges falsely (incorrectly)”. True negative existential judgments are true since they express the rejection of someone who judges so-and-so. Therefore, in the case of true negative existential judgments, Brentano is not defending the thesis that we do reject the existence of centaurs: negative existential judgments are simply the rejection of the existence of something else. His way of dealing with judgments about centaurs shows that Brentano is not confusing existence with reality: centaurs are real, but rejecting their existence does not mean that one takes a stance (accepting or rejecting) on their existence. If he would defend a view as the one Chisholm attributes to him, he would have no need to propose this particular treatment of centaur cases. The so-called centaur cases and the treatment reserved to them by Brentano show that two issues should be distinguished when considering intentional objects: their being-object and their existence. Centaurs are intentional objects as are tables and chairs insofar as they are objects of a presentation, but presenting a centaur is by no means an indication of its existence. The problem of the existence of centaurs appears only from the point of view of judgments: an agent without any judicative abilities would simply not be able to deal with this problem, since the concept of existence, according to Brentano, only appears upon reflection on judgments.21 Considering both the distinction between intentional object and content discussed in the previous section and the particular treatment of centaur cases offered by Brentano, we could summarize his view as follow: (a) there is a distinction between the act-correlate and the intentional object: the first is a distinctional modified part of the act and the second is a non-real (demodified) counterpart of the correlate; (b) That (C1) and (C2) are extensionally equivalent does not imply the synonymy of the terms ‘object’ and ‘thought-object’ (or ‘content’): (C1) is a thesis about the intentional object, while (C2) is a thesis about the correlate. These two ‘conditions’ are merely a description of what is involved in every intentional act, they are not intensionally equivalent; (c) the question about the existence or non-existence of 21

Brentano (2008/1995, 233/163).

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intentional objects is a question that arises on the level of judgments, not on the level of presentations. There is nothing structurally distinct between the presentation of a red patch and the presentation of a centaur:22 both have intentional objects which are indistinguishable (from the point of view of the presenter) from the modified mental counterparts, or intentional correlates. From the point of view of the person who presents these objects (and only present them, without judging about them or evaluating them), the intentional correlates necessarily (and trivially) have the same ontological status, since the act of presenting does not allow for modalities or qualities. The question of existence or non-existence cannot be raised from the standpoint of the presenter, and therefore the distinction between content and object cannot be made from that perspective. As to (T2), if we distinguish between existence and reality, (T2) cannot be seen, as Chisholm and Husserl suggested, as a thesis about the ontological status of the intentional object, but merely as a thesis about the intentional object as being an irrealia. This is basically what the negative formulation aims at. The following diagram illustrates our last remarks:

According to our interpretation of the theory, for every act of presentation, there is a correlate to the act and an intentional (or immanent) object. As we have already said, to be-an-object is not a diminished kind of existence: that intentional objects ‘are-objects’ makes them simply a kind of entity, an irrealia, distinct from the secondary object, 22

Husserl (1901/2001, 299/99) formulated the very same idea.

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which is a realia. Brentano, at least before the reistic turn, recognized both realia and irrealia in the ontology of the act. This means that to present a centaur and to present a horse both involve the real correlates and the intentional objects. But does this mean that centaurs and horses both exist under the same mode? If it were the case, Brentano would believe that judgments expressed by sentences like ‘there are no centaurs’ are true judgments. He could not have this belief if horses and centaurs would exist under the same mode. This is basically the line of reflection that supported much of the interpretations inspired by Chisholm and which argued for a second mode of existence for intentional objects. In my view, this move is unnecessary as shown by Brentano’s own conception of centaur cases. On the right side of the diagram, we find the external object, which is the cause of the intentional object. Conversely, the intentional object is a sign of the external object.But it should be stressed here that the external object is in no sense an element of the intentional relation. In sum, when I have presentation of some white unicorn, there is only one proper relative, the presenting; the object named by ‘the white unicorn’ is an improper relative of the presenting construed by demodification of the non-real correlate. However, this analysis is possible only at the judicative level. 5 An objection One could naturally object to this reconstruction that having both a correlate and an intentional object seems to be overloading the theory: if the distinction between correlate and intentional object is only the result of our critique of the synonymy thesis, then we still must show why this distinction is important in Brentano’s theory. As we will see, this distinction becomes crucial when one takes into account the nature of inner perception and the importance of other classes of acts like judgments and acts of will or desire. Brentano’s basic idea about inner perception is that our mental acts are both object-directed and self-directed (or ‘innerly perceived’). When I hear a tone, my act is directed upon the tone (the intentional object, which is the primary object), but it is also self-directed. The secondary object of my hearing is the hearing itself with its correlate. Since there is no unconscious consciousness according to Brentano, every mental act is accompanied by inner perception.

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In his letter to Marty, he sketches an argument, which one can already find in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, in order to show the importance of this distinction. We can reconstruct this argument in the following way: if the immanent object and the correlate were one and the same thing, the (primary) object of the hearing would be a heard tone, and therefore the concepts of tones, colours (but also every other concept of intentional object) would simply be relative concepts, whose parts are relative to what is seen, heard, imagined, etc. The detail of the argument ad absurdum runs as follows:23 suppose the tone would be same as the heard tone; the heard tone would be the primary object of the act of hearing and a correlate as well; correlates being also part of the object of inner perception, the hearing of the tone would be (together with its correlate) the primary object of the hearing of the tone, and not its secondary object; therefore, we could not think anything at all except relations to ourselves and to our thoughts, and this is undoubtedly false.24 This argument aims to show that one needs a distinction between the correlate and the intentional object if one is to defend the thesis that intentional objects are not merely relations to one’s own thoughts, i.e. if the intentional object is not merely a part of the act. In order to accept this argument, one must of course accept the thesis that inner perception accompanies every mental act. It is not the place here to evaluate if Brentano’s reasons to support this thesis are justified, but since it is quite obvious that he held this thesis his whole life, there is no point questioning it here.25 Moreover, since this argument involves inner perception, it shows quite well that the distinction between the correlate and the intentional object goes hand in hand with the acknowledgment of the inner perceivability of mental acts. Up to now, what I wanted to stress is that there are good reasons to support the view that Brentano did not regard the expressions ‘content’ and ‘intentional object’ as synonymous. Since the ‘content’ (or correlate, to stick with our terminology) is no real part of the object 23

I take the formulation of the argument from Sauer (2006), who discusses two different versions of it. 24 Brentano (2008/1995, 150/101). 25 See the first section of Brentano (1995) on inner consciousness, which precisely argues extensively against unconscious consciousness. But see also his conception of superposed acts in Brentano (1995/1982). His Theory of Categories (Brentano 1933/1981), written in the late period, also confirms this position.

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(the ‘intentional object’ in our terminology) – it is a distinctional part of the intentional object in a modified sense – (C1) and (C2) as such just cannot be intensionally equivalent in a determinative (nonmodifying) sense. Therefore, it would make good sense to see (C1) and (C2) as expressing two different conditions. Two further considerations should help to support this reading: first, Brentano’s thesis on the intentionality of sensations and the actual use of the expressions ‘direction’ and ‘content’, which also seems to show that Brentano did not consider (C1) and (C2) as intensionally equivalent. 6 Intentionality of sensations It has often been underlined that Brentano’s conception of intentionality, which entails that pains, horses and unicorns are all intentional objects in the same sense, faces some difficulty when it comes to the object of sensations. One of Brentano’s first students, Carl Stumpf, made this point very early: he disagrees with Brentano’s theory which holds that what characterizes the sensing of pain is the intentional inexistence of its object. According to Stumpf, Brentano neglects the distinction between sensing (empfinden) and presenting (vorstellen).26 According to him, there is a categorial distinction between these two classes (you can localize your pain, but you cannot localize your memory of it, for instance) that Brentano fails to underline. What unites these categories is not their intentional character, but their dependence upon sensory perception. According to Stumpf, intentionality is therefore a property of only some mental acts, namely of those which are based on some presenting. Husserl made a similar point a few years later. If we are to understand intentionality as the direction toward an object, as Brentano suggested, we should first avoid the mistake of empiricism whereby the attributes of the sensations (the colour as seen, the tone as heard) are confused with the properties of objects. According to Husserl, Brentano’s theory makes this mistake and it is therefore not able to account for the difference between the fact that I see a painting by Yves Klein and that I perceive some unordered blue patches27. Husserl’s response to Brentano’s account is to say that while I am directed toward the painting, I am merely experiencing the sensory contents. 26 27

See for instance Stumpf (1916). See Husserl (1901/2001, 694f./335f.).

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My seeing a painting is intentional, but my experiencing a sensory content is not. What these objections have in common is that they show the difficulty of attributing an intentional direction to sensations, a position that Brentano would be forced to admit if he holds that every mental act is intentional.28 But is this really his position? To my knowledge, he does not offer any specific argument for the directedness of sensations, although he offers many (indirect) arguments for the intentionality of sensations. Following his view, sensations have as a primary object a sense-quality and are their own secondary object. To see a blue patch is to have a localized sense-quality of blue as a primary object and to be conscious of seeing it. Sensory pleasure and displeasure are constituted slightly differently: feeling pain not only consists in having a localized sense-quality (and being conscious of it), it also means feeling some displeasure regarding this sensation. Or in other words, the feeling of pain has a sensation (or better: a sensing) as intentional object, while the sensation of pain itself has only a sense-quality as intentional object.29 Sensations (or sensings), being mental phenomena, are intentional as well. As we have said before, Brentano does not offer any specific argument for the intentional character of sensations other than their categorization as mental phenomena. Just as mental phenomena are fully intentional, so too are sensations. But it would be rather counterintuitive to say that they are directed toward something. Indeed, in the absence of an explicit argument for the directedness of sensings, it is reasonable to question the claim. If one claims the intensional equivalence of (C1) and (C2), as Chisholm does and as Smith seems to do as well, one should be bound to say that assertions like: my sensing of an itch in my foot has a localized sense-quality as intentional object and my sensing of an itch in my foot is directed toward a localized sensequality as intentional object 28 29

See in particular his criticism of Hamilton in Brentano (1995, 68f). See Brentano (1995, 164).

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are intensionally equivalent. But I see a difficulty in this, since two meanings of ‘direction’ seem to be involved here: First, it seems odd, at least prima facie, to say that my toothache is about an object in the same sense as my wish to smoke a cigarette is about a cigarette, but according to their reading of Brentano’s thesis, they should say both of the toothache and the wish that they are about something. Accepting the synonymy thesis leads to the consequence that there must be something that sensations are about. Second, the direction involved in (b) seems rather to be a direction toward a location, more specifically, a body part. In other words, it seems that the talk of directedness of sensations is based on a misunderstanding: it makes good sense to say that my sensing of an itch is directed toward my foot, but this sense of ‘direction’ is certainly not the same as the directedness of my wish to smoke a cigarette. The directedness of sensings depends basically (and exclusively) on the location of the sense-quality in the body, whereas it seems that the directedness of my wish involves the kind of directedness discussed above. Therefore, it seems odd to take the term ‘direction’ in (b) as meaning the same thing as ‘relation’ in (C1) or ‘direction’ in (T1). While the synonymy thesis is bound to this reading of the intentionality of sensations, Brentano himself – at least to my knowledge of his works – does not seem to hold the strong thesis that all intentionality is directional. On the contrary, he accepts different classes of intentional attitudes (presentings, judgings, lovings and hatings), which gives a good indication in my view that he was not advocating for the thesis that intentionality only comes in one kind. If one accepts that different varieties of intentionality are referred to in the Intentionality Quote, then there are a few alternatives to the problem of the directedness of sensations and to the synonymy thesis: One could leave aside either one or the other condition of the synonymy thesis: leaving out (C1) would mean that intentionality is directedness and only directedness. On the other hand, leaving out (C2) would lead to the view that in order for some mental act to be intentional, it needs to contain something as an object. Spelling out intentionality solely in terms of directedness30 makes it difficult to 30

I take aboutness to be one form of directedness, but I do not take a stance here on the particular case of aboutness, but stick with directedness in general. The main reason is that aboutness is often understood in terms of semantic content, while Brentano has a much wider conception of directionality than aboutness understood in

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give an account of the intentionality of sensations. Therefore, it is no surprise to see Husserl develop such an account and rejecting the intentionality of sensations.31 On the other hand, spelling out intentionality solely in terms of some kind of containment of an object in a subject gives an interesting model of the intentionality of sensations, which is close not only to much of what Brentano has written, but also to his main source of influence: Aristotle.32 But it certainly is a remote sense of intentionality that barely copes with the originality of the concept developed by Brentano. Two more nuanced options seem interesting here: the first is developed by Tim Crane under the label of ‘weak intentionalism’. According to Crane, all mental states are intentional and directed toward an object. The problematic case of bodily sensations is then just slightly different than beliefs, but structurally similar to them: in the sensation, something is sensed namely the body.33 In other words, the sensation is directed toward the part of the body where this sensation is felt. The idea behind this thesis is that bodily awareness (being aware of one’s own pain sensation, for instance) is a kind of perceptual experience. Since perception is intentional, so too are sensations. Or to put it in Martin’s words: “in having bodily sensations, it appears to one as if whatever one is aware of through having such sensation is a part of one’s body”.34 In the context of Brentano’s theory, I see two difficulties with this account: first, we are still left with the problem of using the term ‘direction’ both in the sense of a location and in a non-locational sense. The second difficulty is the absence, in Crane’s account, of an epistemological distinction between inner and outer perception. He argues that mental phenomena are intentional but refuses the distinction between inner and outer perception. This appears most clearly in his treatment of bodily sensations: for him, bodily sensations are a that sense. This was the dominant view in the philosophy of mind of the 1980s. See for instance the first sentence of Dennett and Haugeland (1987), but more generally McGinn (1982), Searle (1983) and Dennett (1989). 31 Husserl (1901). 32 The main source of influence is Aristotle, De Anima, 2.11, 423a27-424b10. Brentano (1867, 79f.) interprets Aristotle’s view that the senses receive the form without its matter as meaning that the objects of sense perception are objectively (objectiv) contained in the agent. 33 See Crane (1998). 34 Martin (1995, 269).

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form of awareness (of one’s own body). This is because attending to a sensation of pain in my ankle for instance is necessarily dependent on focusing on (or an awareness of) my ankle as a part of my body: in Brentanian wording, in order for me to have an inner perception of my sensing, I must first have an outer perception of the location of the sense-quality which would be an awareness of the part of the perceived world but which would have the same epistemic value as inner perception. While I find this treatment of bodily sensations attractive in itself, it would hardly be an attractive option for Brentano, since the epistemic superiority of inner perception is left aside. According to Brentano, felt location belongs to outer perception: it would be a contradiction for him to attribute to it a kind of awareness which is exclusive to inner perception.35 This epistemic superiority being one of the core distinctive features of mental phenomena, along with intentionality, another solution should be found in order to reassess the intentionality of sensations from a Brentanian standpoint. The alternative I am proposing here is (again) to reject the synonymy thesis: more specifically in the case of sensations, it would mean to reject the directionality of sensations while still maintaining the distinction between inner and outer perception and the classification of acts. But it would also mean to add a specification regarding presentings and sensings which might not be explicitly formulated in Brentano’s writings, but which would be perfectly compatible with the spirit of his ideas. Why reject the directionality of sensations? It might help to underline that the concept of direction implies the concept of an alternative (or at least an opposite) direction. I can love or hate expensive bottles of wine, I can accept or reject that it is raining, but there is no ‘opposite direction’ when it comes to presenting or sensing. It would 35

Brentano has only one concept of awareness which he refers to as ‘inner consciousness’ or ‘inner perception’. It is quite probable that he would have rejected the idea of bodily awareness put forward by Crane, since he rejected a very similar idea by Lotze (see Brentano’s critique of Lotze in Brentano 1995, p. 192f.). In a nutshell, Lotze’s theory of local signs provides an account of our qualitative perception of spatially extended sensations in which the distinction between feelings and sensations plays a crucial role: bodily feelings enjoy a relative independence from sensations which allows the formers to account for the subjectivity of our experience by letting sensations out of the explanation. For Brentano, localization results exclusively from sensations and there is no other epistemic access to it other than inner perception (of sensings).

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certainly make sense for Brentano to say that my sensing of pain in my foot is directed to this one part of my body, but not because all mental states are directed towards perceived parts of the world (Crane): only to the extent, and quite indirectly, that I am accepting (and not rejecting) that my foot hurts. Taking my sensing of pain in isolation, or taking my presentation of a red patch, or even of a centaur, in isolation, does not give me any alternative direction. Following this idea, to sense a pain in my foot and to love expensive bottles of wine are both intentional acts, but they are intentional on a very different basis: what they have in common from a descriptive standpoint is that their object is contained in themselves, but only my loving of expensive bottles of wine has a direction. The obvious objection here is to say that this account would still be a departure from Brentano’s theory, since according to him, the nonsynonymy of ‘content’ and ‘intentional object’ applies to all acts, from sensings to wishings. So a distinction between the direction of the pain and the correlate of the act of feeling pain would be required. To answer this objection I will just recall that the argument supporting the distinction between ‘content’ and ‘intentional object’ is an argument based on inner perception. Perception, and therefore inner perception, is a judgment. So in order to distinguish between the content (the correlate) and the intentional object, a judgment is needed. In other words, there is no descriptive distinction between the content and the intentional object in an isolated presenting without inner perception. It is through inner perception that I make this distinction. But inner perception involves a judgment. 7 Direction and content My proposal is certainly unorthodox, but it is not so far-fetched when one considers Brentano’s use of the terms ‘direction’ (Richtung) and ‘content’ (Inhalt) in his Psychology. While ‘content’ is mostly, but not exclusively, used for contexts concerning sensory contents, the term ‘direction’ (Richtung) seems to appear almost exclusively in contexts of mental acts of higher order, like judgments and acts of love and hate. The occurrences of Richtung and gerichtet sein in the Psychology are not so numerous and are easy to list: – the ‘direction of the will’ in Aristotle’s De Anima, the directions of feelings and desires (Gefühlsrichtungen) (2008, 21, 69, 268);

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– the direction towards an object (Richtung auf ein Object) (2008, 106); – the direction (of inner consciousness) towards our own mental activities (Brentano 2008, 118); – the direction of the act of sensation towards the physical phenomena, which is its primary object (Brentano 2008, 164).36 – the direction of two mental activities toward the same primary object, like seeing and hearing or presenting and desiring. (Brentano 2008, 177; 182); – the direction of striving (Streben) (Brentano 2008, 198); – the direction of desire and love toward an object (Brentano 2008, 223; 278); – the direction of acceptance and rejection towards a presented object (Brentano 2008, 243); acceptance and rejection are modalities of the direction (Brentano 2008, 269); – the direction of will and affection (Brentano 2008, 258); – the direction of the presentation of inner consciousness (Brentano 37 2008, 286).

In sum, there seems to be textual evidence for the individual and separate treatment of the predicates ‘…is directed toward_’ and ‘…contains _ as object’. Besides, it is worth noting that Brentano never uses the expression ‘Richtung auf einen Inhalt’ nor ‘gerichtet sein auf einen Inhalt’ (to be directed toward a content). The fact that a mental activity contains an object is at least partly different from the fact that a mental activity is directed towards an object, although in some cases they might be indistinguishable. I think that this is the case with the class of presentations (including sensings): there is a sense of speaking of the direction of a presentation, but only to the extent that this presentation is taken as a part of a larger whole which includes a judgment. When taken in isolation, presentations just do not seem to show any direction. This would also explain in part the confusion between the correlate of the act and the intentional object, since on the level of presentations, the distinction between both of them simply do 36

This is the only use of ‘direction’ in relation with sensations. There are also three other indirect uses of the term ‘direction’ in the Psychology: a) there is no unconscious will that would be directed toward bodily movements (Brentano 2008, 133); b) the falsity of Mill’s and Bain’s view according to which the hearing is directed toward itself as object and identical with the heard (pp. 140, 141, 147); c) Brentano’s criticism of the view that inner perception has the same direction as outer perception (p. 184).

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not appear to be evident. In brief, what I propose here are two things: 1) as for the distinction between (C1) and (C2), taken as a distinction between kinds of intentionality, it only appears when one takes mental acts as a whole and not in isolation. An isolated description of the presentation act does not give us the distinction between the correlate and the intentional object. From the standpoint of the isolated description, to say that a presentation is directed towards an object (intentional object) or that it contains something within itself as objects (correlate, content) just seems to amount to the same thing. 8 Final remarks In short, the idea that I am proposing here is to distinguish between two kinds of intentional properties. I do not claim that this was exactly what Brentano had in mind in his Psychology, especially regarding sensations. It is more of an alternative view that, I think, is able to preserve important insights from Brentano’s Psychology while providing an answer to the objections made to him by his students, most notably by Stumpf and Husserl, regarding the intentionality of the sensations. My main target was the synonymy thesis, namely the thesis according to which ‘direction’ and ‘inclusion’ are two synonymous terms that express one and the same characteristic of intentional acts. While many commentators of Brentano, among them Chisholm and Smith, tend to understand Brentano’s thesis as implying the synonymy, I showed that there are good reasons to question the synonymy claim. First, it presupposes that the expressions ‘intentional object’ and ‘content’ are synonymous as well. As I have tried to show, there are good reasons to believe that Brentano was against the synonymy of these two expressions, not only because there is written evidence that indicates this, but also because Brentano needs the distinction between non-real correlates of acts (what I called ‘contents’) and intentional objects, many of which are real (tables, chairs, centaurs, etc.). Second, I suggested that there is no textual evidence that should lead us to regard Brentano’s treatment of centaur cases as paradigmatic cases for his conception of intentionality. By stating that the intentional containment of an object in an act is the same thing as the intentional relation between a thinker and an intentional object, proponents of the synonymy thesis are led to see (T3) as a mere specification of (T1), thereby refusing the distinction between inten-

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tional object and content (or ‘correlate’). Therefore, centaurs, like any other intentional object, must combine the two following (often) incompatible properties: being the non-real correlate of an act being a real object Their way of avoiding the incompatibility is to understand (i) in the sense of a diminished kind of existence: according to this reading, (i) centaurs have a diminished kind of existence and (ii) they are real. Therefore, in their view, Brentano would solve Russell’s third puzzle by saying that it is not self-contradictory to deny the existence of centaurs since in that case, is not a non-entity which is the subject of the proposition ‘The centaur Chiron does not exist’ but a ‘diminished entity’, an intentional object with a diminished kind of existence. This reading is misleading, as I stressed: the different solutions proposed by Brentano to the treatment of centaur cases shows on the contrary that he never actually found a satisfactory solution for the treatment of true negative existential judgments. Moreover, most of his solutions try precisely to avoid positing intentionally existing centaurs as the basis of the true negative existential judgment. And when they do posit such entities, there is no indication in the respective writings that this treatment should be generalized to all intentional objects. My proposal, with respect to that case, was to distinguish between the being-object of centaurs and the denial of their existence: I might be presenting a centaur without taking a stance on its existence or nonexistence. In that case, the fact that my presentation has an intentional object has no existential significance. The question of existence only comes into question with higher-order cognitive and affective acts like judgings, wishings, etc. Therefore, not only should one limit the extension of the problem of the existence of intentional objects to the realm of judgings and affective acts: Brentano’s treatment of centaur cases, understood in this way, shows that he accepts, on the level of presentations, that there is always both a correlate and an intentional object, but on the level of judgings, he refuses most of the time to use these intentional objects in order to solve Russell’s third puzzle. I proposed to regard Brentano’s different suggestions (put forth throughout his career) for the treatment of centaur cases as different attempts to avoid the treatment of intentional objects as having a

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‘diminished form of existence’ (Smith), his point against Mill being precisely to avoid two different meanings of the copula. Rather, what his treatment of centaur cases shows is that Brentano remained true most of his life to the distinction between existence and reality: that centaurs are real does not imply that they exist. By rejecting (rightly) the existence of centaurs, I am not implicitly introducing their existence which I then reject: the concept of existence appears to him only at a higher level of mental acts, namely judgments: as I have stressed, a Brentanian agent without judicative ability would not be able to discriminate between centaurs and chairs regarding the issue of their existence. Therefore, Brentano’s actual treatment of centaur cases may be seen according to a certain view as an indication of the synonymy thesis, but there is as much evidence that the centaur cases suggest precisely his stance against the synonymy thesis. Third, I then added a further consideration directed against the synonymy thesis: I presented a further objection to the distinction between correlate and intentional object, based on Brentano’s account of inner perception. If the correlate and the intentional object were one and the same (and if we accept that every mental act is an object of inner perception), the distinction between the primary (the sensed blue) and the secondary object (my sensing of the blue together with its correlate) would disappear. Inner perception being a core feature of all mental phenomena, it is better to stick with it. Fourth, I addressed a problematic issue for the proponents of the synonymy thesis: the intentionality of sensations. If one is to accept the synonymy thesis, one has to admit that sensations have a direction in the same sense than that of higher-level mental acts. I suggested that this was counter-intuitive, thereby providing another reason to go against the synonymy thesis without leaving completely the spirit of Brentano’s thesis. The solution was, here again, to see the two features of ‘intentional direction’ and ‘intentional inclusion’ as two distinct features which are not always both discerned in every mental act: sensations include an intentional object, but it is impossible from the point of view of the sensing agent to discriminate between the intentional object (what it is directed toward) and the correlate (what it contains). What are the benefits of revisiting Brentano’s thesis in the way that I have proposed? First, it allows for a reading of Brentano’s oeuvre which is not fully determined by his change of mind, which occurred

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around 1900, concerning the possibility of presenting (and judging about, wishing, etc.) intentional objects which are not real. According to my reading, core features of the intentionality thesis like (C1) and (C2) do not have a reistic import as they do according to Chisholm. It allows therefore for some continuity in Brentano’s understanding of intentionality. Second, it defuses somewhat the objections made by Husserl and Stumpf concerning the intentionality of sensations, thereby offering an alternative view which complies with Brentano’s thesis on the intentionality of sensations. Third, it readjusts somewhat the focus of the Brentano’s thesis: admittedly, intentionality has much to do with intensionality, but it would be a mistake to assess Brentano’s thesis from the point of view of semantics. Reassessing the intentionality of sensations in a way which does not refer to a semantic approach (like Chisholm 1989) certainly is closer to Brentano’s spirit. Fourth, I think that distinguishing direction from content gives a more contrasted account of what was meant in the intentionality quote, showing that there was more to Brentano’s concerns than simply providing an account of semantic content and a theory of reference, as it is often considered to be the case since Chisholm. Lastly, I think that the account proposed here is less restrictive from a hermeneutical standpoint, since it takes into account the different theses held by Brentano. Whether this really reflects Brentano’s account is another question, but it certainly tries to remain true to Brentano’s spirit.38

38

I would like to thank Arek Chrudzimski, Denis Fisette, Kevin Mulligan, and Peter Simons for their comments on different versions of this paper. Thanks also to the Social Sciences and Humanities Reseach Council of Canada (Grant 756-2009-0557) for its support.

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Antonelli, M. 2002. ‘Franz Brentano, the “Grandfather of Phenomenology” and the Spirit of the Times’ in A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology world-wide, Foundations, Expanding dynamics, Life-engagements. A guide for research and study. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 11-29. Bolzano, B. 1837, Wissenschaftslehre (4 volumes). Sulzbach: Seidelsche Buchhandlung. Brentano, F. (unpublished), EL81: Fragment über Logik, Manuscript, Houghton Library, Harvard University. —— 1867/1978. Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom nous poietikos. Mainz: Franz Kirchheim. —— 1874/1995. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Reedition 2008, (ed. Antonelli), Frankfurt. Ontos. English translation: Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, London: Routledge (2nd edition 1995). —— 1982/1995. Deskriptive Psychologie, Hamburg: Meiner. English translation: Descriptive Psychology, London: Routledge. —— 1933/1981. Kategorienlehre, Leipzig, Meiner. English translation: Theory of Categories, Nijhoff: Den Haag. —— 1930/1966, Wahrheit und Evidenz, Leipzig: Meiner. English translation: The True and the Evident, Oscar Kraus (ed.), translated by Roderick Chisholm, Ilse Politzer, and Kurt R. Fischer, New York: Humanities Press. Chisholm, R. 1957. Perceiving. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. —— (ed.) 1960. Realism and the Background of Phenomenology. New York: Glencoe. —— 1967. ‘Intentionality’ in Edwards, P. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. London: MacMillan. —— 1967a. ‘Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Intentional’ in E. Lee and M. Mandelbaum (eds.). Phenomenology and Existentialism. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1-23. —— 1989. ‘The Objects of Sensation : A Brentano Study’ in Topoi 8: 3-8. Crane, T. 1998. ‘Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental’ in A. O’Hear (ed.), Current Isssues in Philosophy of Mind (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 229-251. Davidson, D. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford, Oxford University Press. —— 1987. ‘Problems in the Explanation of Action’ in P. Pettit, R. Sylvan & J. Norman (eds.), Metaphysics and Morality. London: Blackwell. Dennett, D. 1969. Content and Consciousness. London: Routledge. —— 1989. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press Dennett, D. and J. Haugeland. 1987. ‘Intentionality’ in R.L. Gregory (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fréchette, G. 2011. ‘Contenu et objet du jugement chez Brentano’ in Philosophiques 38: 241-261. —— (forthcoming). ‘Austrian Realism? Brentano on states of affairs’ in G. Bonino, J. Cumpa, G. Jesson (eds.) Defending Realism, Frankfurt: Ontos. Husserl, E. 1901/2001. Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Theil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Halle: Niemeyer. English translation: Logical Investigations. Volume 2. London: Routledge.

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Kraus, O. 1919. ‘Franz Brentano. Leben und Werke’ in Kraus O. (ed.). Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre. Munich: Beck, 1-84. —— 1930. ‘Anmerkungen des Herausgebers’ in Brentano 1930/1966, 166-220. MacIntyre, R. and D.W.Smith. 1982. Husserl and Intentionality. A Study of Mind, Meaning and Language. Dordrecht: Reidel. Martin, M.G.F. 1995. ‘Bodily Awareness: A Sense of Ownership’ in J.-L. Bermudez, N. Eilan and A. Marcel (eds.) The Body and the Self. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Mayer-Hillebrand, F. 1959. ‘Franz Brentanos ursprüngliche und spätere Seinslehre und ihre Beziehungen zu Husserls Phänomenologie’ in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 13: 316-339. McGinn, C. 1982. The Character of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moran, D. 1996. ‘Brentano’s Thesis’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes: 70: 1-27. Quine, W. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Sauer, W. 2006. ‘Die Einheit der Intentionalitätskonzeption bei Brentano’ in Grazer philosophische Studien 73: 1-26. Searle, J. 1983. Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, B. 1994. Austrian Philosophy. The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Open Court: Chicago. Srzednicki, J. 1965. Franz Brentano’s Analysis of Truth. Nijhoff: Den Haag. Stumpf, C. 1916. ‘Apologie der Gefühlsempfindungen’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 75: 1-38.

BRENTANO AND ARISTOTLE ON THE ONTOLOGY OF INTENTIONALITY ARKADIUSZ CHRUDZIMSKI

(UNIVERSITIES OF SALZBURG AND SZCZECIN)

It is often claimed that Brentano’s rediscovery of intentionality has been strongly influenced by Aristotle. Brentano himself stressed repeatedly his affinity to Aristotle1 and this self-interpretation was by no means restricted to the theory of intentionality. In fact, Brentano seemed to believe that almost all of what he had discovered during his most influential years (1874–1895) has its more or less remote roots in the philosophy of Aristotle.2 Yet if we carefully compare the picture of intentionality that is to be found in Aristotle’s De Anima with Brentano’s theory of immanent objects, we find more differences than similarities. The truth is that Brentano developed a quite different ontology of intentionality, and his references to Aristotle should be seen as a conventional homage to his master rather than as something of substance that could help us to understand better Brentano’s own theory. What Brentano in fact took from Aristotle was rather his way of doing philosophy and certain isolated ideas, but certainly not theories in their entirety.3 1 The theory of immanent object In this section, I am going to sketch Brentano’s theory of intentionality insofar as it introduces immanent objects as a special kind of ontological category. But, strictly speaking, there is no single theory of intentionality in Brentano. It is well known that the late Brentano 1

Cf. e.g. Brentano (1874/1924, 124f.); Brentano (1982, 26). Cf. e.g. his frequently cited letter, in Brentano (1977, 291). 3 This is true even of Brentano’s early metaphysics, as developed in his Lectures on Metaphysics from 1867 (manuscript M 96). Cf. Chrudzimski (2004, ch. 3) and Chrudzimski and Smith (2004, 197-204). 2

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(after 1904) rejected immanent objects understood as a special ontological category as well as all entities that did not belong to the catecategory of things, but the young Brentano (1862–1874) was also typically very far from such ontological extravagances as to regard intentional objects as a kind of special category. In formulating his early theory of intentionality, he often referred to the Scholastic, mainly Scottist, tradition and its theory of the ens objectivum. According to this tradition, when a conscious subject is thinking of an object, he can be said to have this object objectively in his mind. But such a reference to an “objective mode of being” was intended to have no ontological consequences.4 It is not excluded that even in the Psychology from an Empirical Point of View (1874) – a book considered to be the locus classicus of the theory of immanent objects – the notion of “having something immanently as an object”5 is still to be interpreted in the same ontologically neutral fashion.6 Nonetheless, Brentano’s manuscripts provide us with overwhelming evidence that in his later lectures, held around 1890,7 he regarded immanent objects as entities that have to be taken ontologically seriously. This is Brentano’s ontology of intentionality on which I want to concentrate in this section.8 What does this theory teach us? Suppose a particular subject (John) is thinking of a particular object (let it be a highly poisonous mushroom which for some unclear reasons is placed in his refrigerator). When we are philosophically uneducated, we are tempted to think that there must be some straightforward relation between John (or John’s mind) and the mushroom in question. But the philosophers of intentionality tell us that such a picture would be far too simplified. First of all, in order to be able to think of ‘the highly poisonous mushroom in my refrigerator’ (call it HPM for short), there need not exist any HPM at all. Imagine that John only dreamt that he collected such a mushroom in a forest and put it in his refrigerator. Or imagine that yesterday he really had it, but, unknown to him, early in the morning his wife threw it away (reasonably 4

Cf. Perler (2002, 228). Brentano (1874/1924, 124). 6 Dieter Münch, Mauro Antonelli and Johannes Brandl all advocate this view. 7 This can be seen in the Logic Lectures from the late 1880’s (manuscript EL 80), in the lectures on Descriptive Psychology from 1890/91 Brentano (1891/1982), and in the lecture On the Concept of Truth from 1889 Brentano (1889/1930). 8 Cf. Chrudzimski (2004, ch. 4). 5

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enough). If you want, you can even imagine that the HPM has just been annihilated by one of those deceptive Cartesian demons that some epistemologists find so fascinating. Indeed, we can create thousands of scenarios in which there is no HPM at all and in spite of this, John is still thinking “about it”. This is one of the reasons why we need a theory of intentionality. Many theories of intentionality introduce at this point an extra entity which has to replace the common-sense object of reference before the subject’s mind; and Brentano’s theory belongs to these. Brentano argues that the common-sense object of reference need not exist and even in such a case, an intentional state still retains its relational character because in each intentional state, we have an immanent object before our minds. The reason why an appropriate immanent object appears before the subject’s mind every time he is thinking about something is that the immanent objects are literally “produced” by our thinking. Immanent objects are conceived by Brentano as entities that are ontologically dependent on the conscious acts in which they are thought of. But if all that is said so far is true, we now seem to be in trouble. What we wanted to explain is John’s thinking of a certain particular mushroom, but what we now get as a target object of John’s intention is some very peculiar entity that, as we just seen, is ontologically dependent on John’s mental acts. It seems to be a huge categorical mistake to think that such an entity could ever be in John’s refrigerator. But doesn’t this theory assume that John is precisely thinking this? Yes, Brentano’s theory indeed entails this strange consequence, and his answer to the above difficulty is that the immanent object before John’s mind can indeed, in a sense, be in his refrigerator. As we could imagine, the secret of this theory lies in the three words “in a sense” employed above. An immanent object, which is present in John’s thinking of the HPM, is indeed a mushroom, it is indeed highly poisonous, and it is indeed in John’s refrigerator. The immanent object before John’s mind has indeed all these properties. But the sense of being (or of having a property) expressed by the copula in the above description is a non-standard one. According to Brentano’s theory, immanent objects have all the properties that are ascribed by their subjects to the intended objects of reference, but they

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have these properties in a modified sense.9 Following Zalta who developed a similar theory, I will call this non-standard sense in which immanent objects have their properties encoding.10 We see that what Brentano is proposing here is a distinction between two senses of the copula to which correspond the two modes of having properties. Real horses have the property of being-a-horse “normally”, while an immanent centaur has this very same property in a modified sense. Let us represent Brentano’s theory with the following diagram:

The subject of the intentional state, depicted in our diagram on the left side, is thinking about the poisonous mushroom, which we find on the 9

Cf. Brentano (1891/1982, 26/27). Cf. Zalta (1988, 16f.).

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right side. There is between them an intentional pseudo-relation represented by a big arrow. That it does not belong to the regular extensional relations is clear from the fact that in order to obtain the intentional state, the reference object need not exist. However, within the framework of Brentano’s theory, this pseudorelation has been replaced by another, this time fully extensional, relation. I refer here to the relation IMM obtaining between the conscious subject and the immanent object. To be in an intentional state means for Brentano to have an immanent object before one’s mind, and this “having” is symbolised in our notation as standing to the appropriate immanent entity in the relation IMM. Now, the immanent objects should, as it were, ‘replace’ the common-sense objects of reference. They have to ‘represent’ them for conscious subjects. The mechanism underlying this representation consists in an immanent object’s having the property φ in a modified sense, which the conscious subject ascribes to his intended object of reference. We call this property the identifying property because it is the property with the help of which the reference object is ‘picked up’ or ‘singled out’ from the rest of the universe (of course, provided there is an appropriate object of reference at all – the condition that, as we know, need not be fulfilled). If there is an object which has the identifying property φ in the standard, non-modified sense, then we have a case of successful reference. In terms of our diagram, it means that the relation REPR obtains between the immanent object and a certain object in the world. Brentano’s theory can thus be summarised as follows: Subject S refers intentionally to object O, iff (i) there is an object x such that x stands to S in an immanence relation (x is immanent to S); (ii) x has in a non-genuine, modified sense all the properties S attributes to O; and (iii) if there is an object x which in the standard, non-modified sense has all the properties that S attributes to O, then x represents y (and, of course, in this case the object y is O). Otherwise there is no O. 2 Aristotle’s theory Is this theory Aristotelian? In order to evaluate Brentano’s selfassessment, one of course has to determine in the first place what is Aristotle’s ‘true’ theory of intentionality, and then compare it with the theory of immanent object outlined above. My reconstruction of Aris-

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totle’s theory will be based on his investigations On the Soul (better known under the latinized title: De Anima). Aristotle himself did not of course speak of immanent objects in the sense outlined in the first section. Nevertheless, he formulated the theory of intentionality involving the claim that a perceived property has a non-standard mode of being within the perceived subject. A soul which is intentionally directed at something red takes, according to Aristotle, the ‘form’ of a red thing (i.e. the redness), leaving behind its ‘matter’, and thus becomes – as Aristotle tells us – ‘in a sense’ red.11 Aristotle’s medieval commentators called this kind of being ‘intentional’, and this way of speaking was indeed one of the sources that inspired Brentano.12 Is then the theory of immanent objects described above nothing more than the old Aristotelian idea expressed in new terms? There is indeed an important feature which the theory of immanent objects shares with the Aristotelian theory of intentionality. It consists in the introduction of a non-standard kind of exemplification. When Aristotle tells us that a soul which is intentionally directed at something red becomes ‘in a sense’ red, then the simplest and most straightforward way of interpreting him is to assume that he is distinguishing here between two modes of exemplification and claiming that the same property of being red, which is normally exemplified by red things, will be non-standardly exemplified by any subject who is intentionally directed at something red. Also, the thesis that the mechanism of intentional reference involves the identity of properties makes this theory similar to Brentano’s views. According to Aristotle, this is the very same identifying property (in our example, the property of being red) which, on the one hand, can be possessed by the reference object and, on the other hand, is directly accessible to the subject’s mind (by being nonstandardly exemplified by this very subject). In this respect, both Brentano’s theory of immanent object and Aristotle’s theory differ sharply from the representational theories, which I will discuss later. But there is also an important difference. According to Aristotle, it is not an intentional object, but a human soul which becomes “in a sense” red. This means that it is the soul which exemplifies the relevant property in a non-standard sense. And, since the soul is according 11 12

Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 424a 11–17. Cf. Brentano (1874/1924, 125).

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to Aristotle the very form of a human being (i.e. that aspect of a conscious subject which makes it into what it is), one can say after all that this is a conscious subject considered as a whole, which exemplifies the relevant property in the non-standard sense. Let us call this mode of exemplification “exemplification*”. Accordingly, the Aristotelian picture of the intentional reference would look like this:

The similarities between Aristotle and Brentano can be summarised as follows: (i) Both introduce entities which mediate the intentional reference. (ii) Both assume that this is the very same property that, on the one hand, stands before the subject’s mind and, on the other hand, can be exemplified by the reference object. (iii) Both introduce a certain non-standard mode of exemplifying properties.

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And here are the differences: (i) mediating entities (ii) cognitive accessibility of the identifying properties (iii) non-standard exemplification

Brentano immanent objects only as encoded by immanent objects via relation IMM

Aristotle ‘bare’ properties ontologically directly by exemplification*

encoding

exemplification*

Needless to say, interpreting Aristotle is an extremely challenging task. What I have said here is just a first approximation and I do not claim that this construal is the only possible one. In particular, it is possible to claim that the Aristotelian being ‘in a sense’ should be interpreted in terms of intentional objects (this was, as it seems, the interpretation of Brentano in his Psychology)13 or that having ‘in a sense’ the property φ amounts, in the end, to having (in the normal standard sense) another property (say,ψ), as some scholastics seem to interpret him.14 According to the first interpretation, Aristotle’s theory would simply be a disguised expression of a theory of immanent objects. According to the second, it would amount to the theory of mental representation which we shall soon analyse. I believe that what Aristotle actually said justifies neither of these interpretations. What he has said suggests the picture which I have sketched above with the nonstandard exemplification of a property by a human soul as an ontologically primitive notion. In comparison with the theory of immanent objects, Aristotle’s theory introduces a similar complication in the most primitive metaphysical concepts (a primitive non-standard kind of exemplification), but structurally it looks much simpler, as it involves neither the category of immanent objects nor the relation IMM. Ontological simplicity is of course a prima facie advantage, but there seems to be real benefits to introducing immanent objects as ‘bearers’ of identifying properties. Consider the following problem. Within the framework of our theory of intentionality, we want to be able to distinguish between two situations: (i) a simultaneous thinking of two different things: a red thing and a triangular thing; (ii) a think13 14

Cf. Brentano (1874/1924, 125). Cf. Perler (2002, 70f.).

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ing of something which is both red and triangular. The theory of immanent objects provides a straightforward answer to the question as to where the relevant difference lies. In the case of (i), we have before our mind two immanent objects, each of which encodes only one of the aforementioned properties. In the case of (ii), we have only one immanent object, encoding both redness and triangularity. Aristotle puts forth no answer to this problem. At first sight, it seems that in both cases the Aristotelian subject must exemplify* both redness and triangularity.15 This is why I prefer the theory of immanent objects. But regardless of our sympathy or antipathy toward the Brentanian or Aristotelian approach, we see that we have here two quite different ontologies of intentionality. 3 The theory of ens objectivum An analysis of the phenomenon of intentionality which seems closer to the theory of immanent objects is the medieval theory of the ens obiectivum, developed mainly by Duns Scott and his school. This theory states that in all cases of intentional reference, the object which is intentionally referred to is provided with an “objective” being “within the subject’s mind”. The object is thus “objectively” in the subject’s mind, regardless of whether or not it also has “real” being in the extra-mental world. The metaphor of “being in the mind” refers here not only to the object’s cognitive accessibility, but also to its ontological dependence on the thinking subject. The object in question has the objective mode of being only insofar as it is thought of. What distinguishes the theory of the ens obiectivum from the Aristotelian picture is the fact that one speaks here of the objective existence of the object of reference, and not of a non-standard mode of having the identifying property. What is objectively in the subject’s mind is thus a red apple, not the redness and the applehood. Structurally, this theory is indeed much more similar to the theory of immanent objects outlined above, but we do also find here some crucial differences. First of all, the theory of the ens obiectivum says 15

There are of course various ways of reconstructing this difference within the Aristotelian framework, but they would all deprive the Aristotelian picture of it initial attractive simplicity. E.g. we can introduce compound properties and differentiate between “a’s exemplifying* [F+G]” and “a’s exemplifying* [F] and a’s exemplifying* [G]”, or we can introduce “plural modes” of exemplification* and similarly distinguish between “exemplifying* (jointly) (F and G)” and “exemplifying* F and exemplifying* G”.

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nothing about any non-standard sense in which entia obiectiva should have their properties. It may sound strange, but an apple, which is objectively in a subject’s mind, is supposed to be an apple in the absolutely standard sense of the word “is”. What saves this theory from an overt absurdity is the thesis that the objective mode of being which an apple enjoys within the subject’s mind involves no ontological commitment. The expression entia obiectiva, was introduced merely to serve as a convenient façon de parler, which did not expand our ontology.16 Brentano’s theory of immanent objects, outlined in the first section, does not claim this. It regards intentional objects as a full-fledged ontological category. Their mode of being is by no means “weaker” than the mode of being that is characteristic of tables and cats; and this was precisely the reason why it was necessary to introduce a nonstandard mode of exemplification. The similarities between the theory of immanent objects and the theory of ens obiectivum thus consist in the fact that: (i) both theories introduce mediating entities that have an identifying property, and (ii) both treat these mediating entities as ontologically dependent upon the conscious subjects that use them. The differences between them may be summarised as follows: immanent objects (i) how mediating encoding entities have their identifying properties (ii) what is the kind standard, ontologically of being character- committing being istic of mediating entities

ens obiectivum standard exemplification

ontologically non-committing “objective” being

The picture of intentionality proposed by the proponents of entia obiectiva looks like this:

16

This ontological neutrality was a characteristic of Duns Scott’s theory. However, some of his followers saw this rather as a disadvantage. Cf. Perler (2002, 228).

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The two characteristic features of the ens obiectivum theory are: (i) the fact that the mediating entities have their properties in the normal sense, and (ii) the fact that their mode of being is quite different from the mode of being characteristic of the citizens of the real world. Both features make this theory similar to the theory of intentionality developed by Alexius Meinong. According to Meinong, a subject who imagines a Golden Mountain must have before his mind an entity which has the property of being a Golden Mountain. Furthermore, this entity has the relevant property in the absolutely standard sense. Meinong’s copula is not ambiguous.17 In these two respects, Meinong’s theory is thus like the theory of the ens obiectivum. There is also another aspect which makes them similar. To avoid postulating a real Golden Mountain, Meinong introduces 17

On this topic, cf. Reicher (2001).

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objects that have a very special ontological status. In a(n) (in)famous remark, he says that the objects, which in every intentional state stand before a subject’s inner eye, are “beyond being and non-being”.18 How to interpret this kind of being is a very difficult question,19 but the most interesting way is probably to construe it as an ontologically non-committing one.20 But there is also an important difference between Meinong and proponents of the theory of objective mode of being. While the supporters of the ens obiectivum theory construe their ontologically neutral, objective existence as a subject-dependent kind of being (as a being “in the subject’s mind”), Meinong’s objects, which are “beyond being and non-being”, are conceived as radically mind-independent. If there were no conscious subjects, there would be, according to the Scottists, no entia obiectiva either. In contrast, according to Meinong, the world would still be populated in this case by strange entities that are “beyond being and non-being”. As mentioned before, the model of intentionality employed by the young Brentano resembles the theory of ens obiectivum much more than the ontologically full-blown theory of immanent objects. It is also very characteristic of the late Brentano who rejected all entities that did not belong to the category of things that he tried to persuade his students that he never held the theory of immanent objects of the type outlined in section 1.21 True enough, there is indeed overwhelming textual evidence that Brentano developed in his lectures something along the lines of what is put forward in section 1, but it is equally true that the corresponding developments were never published by him. It is therefore not excluded that the ontologically articulated theory of section 1 figured in Brentano’s thought only as a kind of hypothesis that he tested during his lectures, but never fully accepted and finally explicitly rejected. So it is not excluded that the theory of

18

Cf. Meinong (1904). Cf. Chrudzimski (2005). 20 On such an interpretation cf. e.g. Routley (1980). 21 Cf. e.g. the widely cited letter to Kraus: “Es ist aber nicht meine Meinung gewesen, daß das immanente Objekt = ‘vorgestelltes Objekt’ sei. Die Vorstellung hat nicht ‘vorgestelltes Ding’, sondern ‘das Ding’, also z.B. die Vorstellung eines Pferdes, nicht ‘vorgestelltes Pferd’, sondern ‘Pferd’ zum (immanenten d.h. allein eigentlich Objekt zu nennenden) Objekt. Dieses Objekt ist aber nicht. Der Vorstellende hat etwas zum Objekt, ohne daß es deshalb ist.” Brentano (1977, 119f.). 19

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ens obiectivum sketched in the present section must be regarded as Brentano’s ‘official’ doctrine until 1904. 4 The representational theory sensu stricto As indicated, Brentano had a tendency to interpret the Aristotelian theory of intentionality in the vein of Scholasticism. But it is by no means clear that the ens obiectivum construal always prevailed, and this fact further complicates the question of Brentano’s own assessment as an Aristotelian. In his Habilitationsschrift, which was explicitly devoted to Aristotle’s philosophy of mind, we find an interesting analysis that suggests another interpretation. It begins with a summary of the doctrine of the ens obiectivum as applied to Aristotle. Brentano says explicitly that, following the schoolmen, he uses the notion of objective existence as a tool22; and he attributes to Aristotle the view that the perceived object has an objective mode of being within the perceiver’s mind. But after this claim, he says something strange, something that changes the whole picture. Every time a conscious subject perceives an object A, we read, it is not A itself, but rather “an analogue” of A which is in the subject’s mind. This “analogue” (call it A*) only represents the genuine objects of reference for the subject. What is the mechanism underlying this representation? A* has some properties which vary in a systematically dependant way upon the changes in the properties of A and only in this way can the subject (who has A* and not A within his mind) know something about the changes in A.23 What we find here is definitely neither (1) the ontologically substantial theory of immanent objects, nor (2) Aristotle’s theory as sketched above in section 2. But it also does not resemble (3) the theory of the ens obiectivum. Brentano speaks here neither of any special mode of exemplification, which excludes theories (1) and (2), nor of any special mode of being, which excludes (3). What we get instead is a theory of representing entities, (i) whose mode of existence is ontologically-committing and (ii) which have their representing properties in the standard, non-modified sense of the copula. These two aspects already distinguish this theory from all the theories that we have seen so far. But there is still another, much more important, aspect in which it differs from the others. According to the 22 23

Cf. Brentano (1867, 80). Cf. Brentano (1867, 94). Brentano doesn’t use the word ‘representation’.

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current position and in opposition to all the theories analysed above, (iii) the representing properties of the postulated entity are different from the identifying properties of the genuine object of reference. In this sense, the theory of mental representation in Brentano’s Habilitationsschrift can be termed a representational theory, while the three theories analysed earlier can be called presentational ones (as they assume the identity of the representing and the identifying properties). But as the word “representational” is nowadays used in a very broad sense, I will call the present theory the representational theory sensu stricto. It may be illustrated by the following diagram:

Of course, we find here some similarities to the earlier theories. The subject is directed at the reference object by means of standing in a certain relation to a certain postulated entity. We still call this relation

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IMM. If there is an appropriate object of reference in the world, then the representing entity stands in relation to this object by way of REPR. But there is also a big difference. The representational theory sensu stricto introduces two kinds of properties (representing and identifying ones) and stipulates a peculiar ‘connecting’ relation between them (REPR*). This connecting relation becomes one of the central elements of this picture of intentionality. In the “presentational” theories, the identifying property φ has been directly “put before the subject’s mind” (either as an encoded property of the intentional object, or as an exemplified property of the ens obiectivum, or as a “bare” property exemplified* by the subject’s soul), but in the representational theory sensu stricto the identifying property φ is accessible only via the representing property ψ and the connecting relation REPR*. 5 Conclusion We may now try to answer the question as to why Brentano classified his theory as Aristotelian in spite of the formidable structural differences between his theory of immanent objects and the Aristotelian approach as outlined in sections 1 and 2. It seems that he did so basically for two reasons. First of all, he had a tendency to regard the entire spectrum of medieval theories of intentionality reaching from the Scottist theory of the ens objectivum to the theory of inner language of William of Ockham as varieties of the Aristotelian view.24 True enough, one could hardly find a single medieval philosopher who would not consider himself a true Aristotelian (and quite often even as the only true Aristotelian), but we know very well today that to see all these subtly distinct theories as species of one homogeneous Aristotelian genus would amount to an obvious oversimplification. Nonetheless, Brentano seemed to see things this way and since his early theory was very similar to the theory of the ens objectivum, he automatically interpreted it as Aristotelian. Moreover, we have seen in section 4 that he sometimes interpreted the theory of the ens objectivum (and a fortiori Aristotle’s theory as he saw it) as a species of the representational theory sensu stricto! This is 24

Cf. e.g. Brentano (1874/1924, 124f.) where he lumps together Aristotle, Neoplatonists, and many schoolmen.

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almost certainly a huge mistake, but Brentano really made it in his Habilitationsschrift. The first reason why Brentano could claim that his theory of intentionality was Aristotelian in nature thus lies, roughly speaking, in the vagueness of his picture of Aristotle’s theory. The second reason is more interesting. Even while operating within the framework of his mature theory of immanent objects, as sketched in section 1, Brentano believed himself to be able to find an Aristotelian counterpart to the idea of having properties in a non-standard mode, which as we have seen, is absolutely central to his ontology of immanent objects; and he was certainly right. This is of course the Aristotelian non-standard exemplification. As we have seen, within the framework of Aristotle’s theory we do find another non-standard exemplification other than that of encoding, which is characteristic of the Brentanian account of immanent objects, but the idea of distinguishing various copulas was indeed one of those isolated (but nonetheless very important) elements that Brentano took from his master.

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Binder, T., R. Fabian, U. Höfer and Jutta Valent (eds.). 2001. Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Philosophie an der Universität Graz. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. Brentano, F. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg i. Br.: Herder [Dissertation]; reprint: Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag 1984. —— 1867. Die Psychologie von Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom nous poietikos. Mainz: Kirchheim[Habilitationsschrift]; reprint: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1967. —— 1874/1924. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt vol. I. ed. by O. Kraus, Leipzig: Meiner [1st ed. 1874]. —— 1889/1930. ‘Über den Begriff der Wahrheit’ in: F. Brentano, Wahrheit und Evidenz, ed. by O. Kraus, Hamburg: Meiner: 3–29. —— 1891/1982. Deskriptive Psychologie, ed. by Roderick M. Chisholm and Wilhelm Baumgartner, Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1977. Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Hamburg: Meiner. Chrudzimski, A. 2004. Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. —— 2005. ‘Drei Versionen der Meinongschen Logik’ in Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 59: 49-70. Chrudzimski, A. and B. Smith. 2004. ‘Brentano’s Ontology: From Conceptualism to Reism’ in: D. Jacquette, (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 197–219. Meinong, A. 1904. ‘Über Gegenstandstheorie’ in: Gesamtausgabe, ed. by R. Haller and R. Kindinger, vol. II, Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt 1971, 481-535. Perler, D. 2002. Theorien der Intentionalität im Mittelalter, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Reicher, M.E. 2001. ‘Die Logik der Intentionalität: Meinongs Eigenschaftsarten und Mallys duale Kopula’ in: T. Binder et al. (eds.) 2001, 219-234. Routley, R. 1980. Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond. An Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items. Canberra. Zalta, E. 1988. Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intentionality. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

ANTON MARTY’S INTENTIONALIST THEORY OF MEANING LAURENT CESALLI

(UNIVERSITIES OF LILLE AND GENÈVE)

As a theory of meaning1 based on Brentano’s descriptive psychology, Marty’s philosophy of language clearly qualifies as a ‘theme from Brentano.’ This is not to say, however, that nihil est in Marty quod non prius fuerit in Brentano. On the contrary, as we shall see, Marty develops a highly original theory of language in general, and of meaning in particular. But there is no doubt that there would not be any Martyian Sprachphilosophie without Brentano’s published (and unpublished) works.2 Marty’s favourite expression for the field of research to which he devoted his life is descriptive Bedeutungslehre – a terminological choice which clearly expresses the (trivial) idea that the essence of language resides in meaning. Perhaps less trivial, although quite natural given his philosophical pedigree, is Marty’s idea that meaning is primarily a matter of intentions, and more precisely, of speakers’ intentions. Today’s philosophers of language will immediately think of Grice and Searle as advocates of such an intentionalist conception 1

In order to avoid the ambiguities inherent to the topic of this study, we adopt the following five terminological conventions: ‘meaning’ stands for meaning in its general senses (that is: i) a theoretical category, as in ‘theory of meaning’ or in the translations of ‘Bedeutungslehre’, ‘Zeichensein’, and ii) what a linguistic expression means, as in ‘the meaning of Bedeutung’); ‘indication’ stands for ‘Kundgabe’ as opposed to Bedeutung; ‘steering’, for ‘Bedeutung’ as opposed to Kundgabe; ‘intentional’ (with a small i) for ‘absichtlich’, and ‘Intentional’ (with a capital i) for what belongs to, or has to do with, intentionality as the mark of the mental. 2 Anton Marty (Schwyz 1847 – Prague 1914) belongs with Carl Stumpf to the first generation of Brentano’s pupils. On Marty’s philosophy and his position within the Brentanian tradition, see Kraus (1916); Raynaud (1982); Mulligan (ed.) (1990); Spinicci (1991); Smith (1994, ch. 4); Albertazzi (1996,83-108); Chrudzimski 1999; Rollinger (1999, ch. 7); Fisette & Fréchette (2007, 144-60); Baumgartner, Fügmann & Rollinger (eds.) (2009); Cesalli (2009); Rollinger (2010b).

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of meaning,3 but the fact that its modern roots lie in a rather obscure thinker like Marty remains widely ignored.4 In the very first book of Marty – Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache (1875) – one finds the general idea that what leads human beings to develop something like a language was their will (and thus their intention) to communicate with each other by way of disclosing and influencing their inner life.5 This also comes to light in the slogan ‘absichtlich aber planlos’6 which characterises Marty’s so-called ‘empirico-teleological’ conception of language: there is only an actual, concrete and immediate motivation for speaking, namely communication, but there is not (and there never was) a rational plan of how this communicative intention should be realized: Every single step of language formation was performed consciously insofar as it was yielded by the intention of communication [Absicht der Verständigung] (...); however, each of the language-builders 3

Such a parallel was already pointed out by Liedtke 1990 (see also Liedtke, forthcoming). 4 See for example Dale (1996, 29-80) who, in his reconstruction of the historical roots of the Gricean program mentions Victoria Welby as a starting point. Welby is indeed a defender of an intentionalist theory of meaning: “There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the Sense of a word, but only the sense in which it is used – the circumstances, state of mind, reference, ‘universe of discourse’ belonging to it. The Meaning of a word is the intent which it is desired to convey – the intention of the user” (Welby (1903, 5) my italics), but Marty formulated his own ideas regarding that matter much earlier (and even earlier than Welby’s first formulation of her theory – see Welby (1893)). Marty seems unaware of Welby’s works. One should note, however, that there are also medieval intentionalist theories of meaning, for example in Roger Bacon’s De signis (written in 1267) – see Rosier-Catach (1994); Rosier-Catach (2004); Marmo (2010); Cesalli (2011). 5 “Person A, who has often intentionally executed movements and saw other ones occur in himself, in certain mental states [and] independently of his will, will connect by habit with the perception of similar movements of person B the presentation of corresponding psychical phenomena (...). Person A and person B will mutually attribute their externalizations to psychical life and also especially to the will to bring about such and such a convenience, to ward off this pain, etc. Simply by the fact that both interact with the external world, but also directly in many ways, it is fitting that they have effect on each other” (Marty (1875, 65 and 67) transl. Rollinger (2010a, 178 and 179) slightly modified). See also Stumpf’s review of Marty (1875): “Der Verfasser findet als Mittel der primitivsten Mittheilung: absichtliche Wiederholung unwillkürlicher Aeusserungen (z.B. eines Schreies) und gewisser willkürlicher Handlungen (z.B. Schwingen der Faust), nachdem man die Reactionen Anderer auf beides früher gelegentlich beobachtet hatte” (Stumpf (1876, 178), my italics). 6 See for example Marty (1908, 89).

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thought but of the immediate need [to communicate], and none of them (...) had an idea, neither of the whole, nor of the final result, and even less of the method (...) followed during the construction. (Marty 1916:157)7

Marty’s book on the origins of language is one of the few works he wrote from a genetic (as opposed to a descriptive) point of view 8. Remarkable for our purpose is the fact that the essential feature of language – i.e. meaning – is accounted for in terms of the same psychological category as the one accounting for the very origin of language: (proto)speakers’ intentions are responsible for the apparition and development of language as well as for the meaning of linguistic expressions. Marty’s philosophy underwent some drastic changes between 1875 and the publication of his opus maius in 1908 – the first volume of the Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie –, the major modification being his rejection of the (originally Brentanian) doctrine of the immanent objects of psychical phenomena.9 What remained constant, however, is Marty’s intentionalist approach to language and, thus, to semantics. 1 What is an intentionalist theory of meaning? An intentionalist theory of meaning explains what it is for linguistic expressions to have meaning in terms of the psychological category of intention. The meaning of a given declarative sentence S, for example, is neither an object (immanent, transcendent, concrete, or abstract), nor the mere use(s) of S, nor the truth-conditions of S; rather, S means what speakers intend when uttering it.10 In contemporary literature, 7 Marty’s general characterization of language reads: “the intended indication of psychical life by sounds, in particular by sounds which are not understandable by themselves, but only by convention and habit” Marty(1940, 81). 8 The other major pieces of descriptive philosophy of language are the article series on linguistic reflexes and nativism published between 1884 and 1892, as well as the impressive Anhang of nearly 200 pages Marty adds to his Untersuchungen of 1908. The piece is mainly dedicated to the refutation of Wundt’s nativist ideas about the origins of language. 9 Marty changed his mind between 1904 and 1906. Brentano himself had considered rejecting the doctrine of immanent objects as early as 1893 – see Chrudzimski (2004, 199); Cesalli (2009, 171, n.73). 10 On the different options considered by the main post-Bolzanian theoreticians of meaning, see Marconi (1997); Lycan (2000, part II); Chrudzimski (2002); Mulligan

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the most prominent advocates of intentionalist semantics are H.P. Grice and J. Searle. Against the causalist account of meaning given by C.L. Stevenson,11 Grice insists that S’s meaning is not derivable from (or reducible to) some causal power belonging to S, but rather essentially depends on what the speaker intends in uttering it.12 More precisely, the meaning of S is analyzed in three nested intentions of speakers regarding an audience A: (i) the intention that A produces a certain response to S; (ii) the intention that A recognizes that the speaker has intention (i); (iii) the intention that A fulfils (i) on the basis of its fulfilment of (ii).13 Searle proposes an analysis of meaning which is inspired by Grice’s intentionalist program, but diverges from it on an important point: according to Searle, meaning is indeed a matter of speakers’ intentions, but, contrary to what we have in Grice, the moment of communication is not essential to meaning.14 One has to distinguish the meaning intention (“the intention to speak meaningfully in words”) from the communication intention (“the intention to communicate that meaning to a hearer”).15 Normally, however, one speaks with the intention to communicate, and in such a case, the following intentional pattern is at work, according to Searle: in uttering S, the speaker intends (i) to utter a correct sentence in a given language with its conventional meaning; (ii) S to have conditions of satisfaction, namely, the truth conditions of S; (iii) the hearer to recognize (ii), his 2011. Famous tenants of alternative theories are: the first Brentano and Twardowski (mental, i.e. immanent objects); Frege and the first Wittgenstein (transcendent, concrete objects) Bolzano and the first Husserl (transcendent, abstract objects); the second Wittgenstein (uses); Davidson (truth-conditions). 11 According to Stevenson (1944, ch. 3), the meaning of S is its tendency to produce a certain attitude in an audience, as well as its tendency to be produced (in the speaker) by this very attitude – see Grice (1989, 215). Here, we have causal relations between attitudes and S, S being an effect as well as a cause. According to Grice, however, if S has a causal power at all, it is not essential with respect to its meaning. See Grice (1989, 221). 12 Grice (1989, 220). 13 Grice (1989, 92). Intention (i) is what Grice calls the speaker’s primary intention. We may thus consider intentions (ii) and (iii) to be the speaker’s secondary intentions. 14 Searle (1999, 141): “The key to understanding meaning is this: meaning is a form of derived intentionality. The original or intrinsic intentionality of a speaker’s thought is transferred to words, sentences, marks, symbols, and so on.” 15 Searle (1999, 144).

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recognition of (ii) to occur by means of his recognition of (i) and of his knowledge of the language at stake. Another advocate of intentionalist semantics who does not consider communication to be congenital to meaning is P.F. Strawson. Although he insists against Austin that convention alone does not suffice to account for speech acts (in some cases, the speakers’ intentions have to be taken into account as well),16 Strawson clearly rejects the idea that communication is essential to meaning.17 Regardless of the issue concerning the essential or merely optional character of communicative intentions, the common feature of intentionalist theories of meaning is that linguistic expressions primarily have meaning insofar as they are used to serve speakers’ intentions. This is not to say that speakers’ intentions exclusively determine meaning, but that such intentions must be taken into account in the elucidation of the phenomenon of meaning – in short, meaning is primarily speaker meaning. 2 Marty on what meaning is Marty defends a theory of meaning which has much in common with Grice’s psychological semantics.18 Martyian meaning is essentially speaker meaning and thus, it depends primarily on the speakers’ inten16

Strawson (1964). “As far as the central core [of meaning, determined by the rules which determine truth-conditions] is concerned, the function of communication remains secondary, derivative, conceptually inessential” Strawson (1971, 144). For a detailed and carefully contextualized discussion (and rejection) of the communicative dimension of Grice’s account, see Davies (1992) (with abundant literature). Davies insists on noncommunicative intentions such as the intention to indicate one’s belief, something which is quite close to Marty’s indication, i.e. the speaker’s immediate (but secondary) intention of manifesting his own inner life – see below, section 2. 18 See Liedtke (1990). Liedtke also points to differences between Marty’s and Grice’s accounts of meaning. While the main similarity between the two theories consists in the “assumption that the meaning of an utterance (...) is to be found in its function (...) to produce an effect in the hearer (...), [an effect] caused by the hearer’s recognition of certain psychological phenomena in the speaker”, they differ in that “according to Grice, the hearer is to understand the speaker’s intention to induce an effect in him. According to Marty this effect is produced in the hearer as he recognizes the immediately expressed psychological phenomenon” Liedtke (1990, 43-44). Although, as we shall see, something like intention-recognition must be part of Marty’s account, it is clear that Marty’s speaker’s intentions aren’t reflexive: the speaker’s intentions do not themselves appear in what is intended by the speaker. By contrast, two of Grice’s intentions (the intentions ii and iii listed above, p. 144) are reflexive. 17

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tions. Meaning is analyzed in terms of a twofold intention: on the one hand, the (speaker’s primary) intention to steer (or influence) foreign inner life; on the other, the (speaker’s secondary) intention to indicate his inner life. The latter intention leads to what Marty calls Kundgabe (indication), the former to what he calls Bedeutung (steering), and steering is always mediated by indication19: the steering of foreign inner life is only possible through the indication of one’s own inner life.20 We shall now have a closer look at the key passages in which Marty formulates his theory. Let us start from the global picture, and work the details backwards:21 We said that language (...) is primarily understood as the intentional indication [absichtliche Kundgabe] of inner life. However, what is primarily intended in this indication is a corresponding influence [Beeinflussung] of foreign inner life. As a rule, one indicates one’s own presentations, judgments, emotions etc., in order to trigger presentations, judgments and emotions in another psychical being, and indeed, ones which are analogous to one’s own. (Marty 1908:22)

How does Kundgabe work exactly? Indication is that way of being a sign which is exemplified in inferring the occurrence of lightning from the perception of thunder. Thus, indicating is the function exer19

Strictly speaking, the mediation of steering by indication only holds for statements and Emotive (linguistic expressions of phenomena of interest): actual speech always consists in sentences (or in expressions semantically equivalent to sentences), and never in the uttering of isolated terms (this is why Landgrebe, in his outstanding exposition of Marty’s philosophy of language, calls names or Vorstellungssuggestive ‘theoretische Autosemantika’, while sentences are called ‘praktische Synsemantika’) see Landgrebe (1934, 33-4). The latter remains theoretically possible, though, and in such a case, indication cannot properly be said to be a means of influencing foreign inner life, but is merely a secondary effect (parergon) of the uttered expression – cf. Marty (1908, 491). 20 The two central passages in Marty’s Untersuchungen where he addresses the question of the nature of meaning in general are Marty (1908, 280-7) (Vorläufiges über das Bedeuten im allgemeinen, where Marty gives a positive exposition of his view), and Marty (1908, 490-501). (the first paragraphs of the chapter entitled Ergänzendes über das Bedeuten im allgemeinen, where Marty mainly criticizes alternative views). 21 We shall distinguish quite a lot of steps in the process of what meaning is, according to Marty. Not every one of those steps is explicitly isolated and described as such by Marty. However, we believe that the passages we will quote or refer to offer sufficient grounds for such a reconstruction.

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cised by a natural sign, and this semantic role is fulfilled in unintentional situations as well as in intentional ones: Where we have to do with an unintentional indication of our inner life, for example, with an unintentional shout, (...) [in] such a case, to mean and to be a sign means only to indicate something and to make it known [zu erkennen geben], just as one says of thunder that it is a sign of electric discharge, and of dark clouds that they are a sign of rain. / (...) Just like an involuntary shout, the voluntary uttering of a name or of a statement indicates a piece of the speaker’s psychical life (...). (Marty 1908, 280-4, my italics)22

In other words, whenever A indicates B, A is a justified motive for the assumption of B: “das Zeichen ist ein berechtigtes Motiv für die Annahme des Bezeichneten.”23 Here, Marty makes a crucial remark: although ‘being a motive’ can describe the ‘practical’ relation obtaining between acts of the will (wanting the aim is a motive for wanting the means), it can also be used to describe the ‘theoretical’ relation obtaining between an antecedent and a consequent [Erkenntnisgrund und -folge], and whereas the former relation is causal, the latter is not.24 Furthermore, non-causal motivation can be objective (sachlich), e.g. when a law is a motive for the validity of another one, or epistemic, e.g. when the motive is an Erkenntnisgrund – what we would call a reason. Thus it often happens that what is objectively posterior is epistemologically prior, e.g. when the knowledge of a given phenomena motivates the knowledge of its cause.25 Now, for something to be a justified motive for the assumption of something else – i.e. for something to be a sign in the sense of indication – is nothing but being the antecedent of a possible correct inference (Marty speaks of the hearer – let’s call him H – as drawing a conclusion [Schluss] from the sign): the utterance 22 However, the analogy between intentional and unintentional indication is not total: intentional indication involves a specific moment of blind, instinctive, or primitive judging Marty calls ‘Deuten’, Marty (1908, 291) – on that topic in Marty and Brentano, see Fréchette (forthcoming). 23 Marty (1908, 281). 24 Cf. Marty (1908, 281-3). More precisely, the non-causal relation of Erkenntnisgrund und -folge holds between the contents of an antecedent judgment and of a consequent judgment. 25 In such a case, the relations of being an objective motive and of being an epistemic motive connect the same terms, but run in opposite directions.

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S: ‘Socrates exists’, when uttered, is an objective motive for the assumption of the judgment J0: Socrates exists in the utterer – let’s call him U; when heard and understood by H, S is an epistemic motive for the hearer to draw such a conclusion. When H does make such an inference, he actually performs two acts of judging J1: S is uttered by U and J2: U has formed J0.26 But in such a process of inference, causal as well as non-causal elements are at work: Independently of how they are objectively related, we call certain judgment contents ‘epistemic motive and consequence’ [Erkenntnisgrund und -folge] when the corresponding acts of judging stand in a relation of existential, and more precisely, of causal motivation [Seinsund speziell Realgrund]. In contrast to the concept of existential motive [Seinsgrund], the concept of epistemic motive [Erkenntnisgrund] is thus applied to certain contents of judgment only with respect to the fact that one of the corresponding acts of judgment is produced [erzeugt] by the other. (Marty 1908:282, my italics)27

26

For the fact that acts of judging are involved in the meaning process regardless of the type of linguistic expression considered, see Marty (1918b, 70). Whenever indication is at work, the hearer judges, at least in a way – cf. Fréchette (Forthcoming). The same is not true of the other type of mental mediation – the so-called inner linguistic form – which we will not discuss here, because, as Marty tirelessly repeats, it does not belong to meaning proper – see Marty (1918b, 67-76), as well as Marty (1908, 13450). On Marty’s theory of inner linguistic form, see Funke (1924). 27 Further, Marty talks about “the relation between the as antecedent efficient conclusive-judgment, and the thereby produced conclusive-judgment” [“Verhältnis des als Prämisse wirksamen und des dadurch erzeugten Schlussurteilens”] Marty (1908, 283).

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Thus, when indication takes place and functions properly, S is the object of the perception-based judgment J1 in H, a judgment which itself causes a second judgment J2 in H. J1 and J2 stand in a relation of antecedent to consequent, which means that the content C1: that S is uttered by U of J1 epistemologically motivates (“ist ein berechtigtes Motiv für”) the content C2: that U formed J0 of J2. In sum, then, J1 is the cause of J2 because J1 is also a reason for H to form J2. What is exactly the role played in indication by the intention of U? In the case we consider here, U’s (secondary) intention I2: to indicate J0 causes his uttering S. Thus S existentially depends on I2. But I2 plays no role in the cognitive value of S – S is semantically independent of I2. The fact that S efficiently indicates J0 is independent of I2, just as thunder indicates lightning independently of anybody’s will or intention.28 The situation changes radically when one considers the second stage of Marty’s analysis of meaning, namely steering (or Bedeutung). In that case, the semantic value of S is essentially dependent on U’s other (and primary) intention I1: that H should perform an act of judgment analogous to J0.29 Here are the relevant passages: (...) this way of being a sign, the indication of one’s own inner life, is not what is solely and primarily intended in voluntary speech. Rather, 28 Marty notes that although indication is an essential moment in the analysis of meaning, it often disappears (or practically disappears) from the focus of our attention [Achtsamkeit] when we actually speak, a phenomenon which is essentially due to the power of habit [Gewohnheit] – cf. Marty (1908, 491). 29 Here ‘analogous’ means: ‘having the same quality and content’.

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Laurent Cesalli what is primarily intended is a certain influence on, or steering of [Beeinflussung oder Beherrschung], the foreign inner life in the hearer. (Marty 1908:284) (...) in the case of voluntary speech, and thus in the case of statements as well, we always have to do with a twofold way of meaning [Bezeichnen]: something which is primarily, and something which is secondarily intended, and correspondingly, something which is mediately intended, and something which is immediately intended. And just as we use the term ‘to express’ [Ausdrücken] or ‘to intimate’ [Äussern] for the latter, so, we want (as a rule) to use the term ‘to mean’ [Bedeuten] and ‘meaning’ [Bedeutung] in order to designate the mediately and primarily intended sign-giving [Zeichengebung]. (Marty 1908:286) That a linguistic means [Sprachmittel] has the meaning (or meaningfunction), say, of a statement, means therefore: as a rule, it [i.e. the statement] is aimed (and, to some extent, also able) to suggest or trigger a certain judgment in the hearer. (Marty 1908:286) (...) a statement means that, as a consequence of the indication of a certain judgment by the speaker, the hearer should as well perform a judgment (...). (Marty 1908:289) (...) the indication of my act of presenting [or judging] always remains the means of triggering an act of presenting [or judging] in the hearer, and this second function of a name [or statement], which we call its steering belongs to it only in a mediated way and in virtue of its first function which we called its indication.(Marty 1918:69, my italics)

That steering is mediated by indication seems to amount to the following: the obtaining of indication is a justified motive for the obtaining of steering. Several steps have to be distinguished here. In the context of a standard use of language,30 H’s inferring J2 from J1 is a justified motive for him to form

30

This is something which is presupposed by Marty: in a descriptive perspective – and such is his perspective in the Untersuchungen of 1908 – one considers how language works in a community of speakers who already use a language and understand each other. As we noted, however, the content of the description is directly dependent on what happened genetically, that is: the way language works is a “trace” (or symptom) of the way it originated and developed.

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J3: U intends to let me know that he formed J0. This is the H’s recognition of U’s secondary intention I2. Again, in virtue of the same contextual situation (i.e. the standard use of language), H is further lead to form J4: U intends me to form a judgment analogous to J0. This is the H’s recognition of I1 by means of his recognition of I2. And again, in virtue of the same contextual situation and its cooperative nature, H is finally led to form J5 (= J0). Contrary to what is the case in indication, S is existentially independent of the relevant intention concerning steering (i.e. I1); but S’s semantic value directly depends on I1: the recognition of I1 is an epistemic motive for H to form J5. Is there a causal relation between I1 and J5? No: an intention in U cannot cause anything in H. However, the content of I1 can well be an epistemic motive (or reason) for H to form J5. This non-causal relation of motivation between I1 and J5 explains how misunderstandings are possible (and, as a matter of fact, are the rule). To be a reason for forming a certain psychical phenomenon is something different from being a cause of a certain psychical phenomenon: there is no ‘mechanical’ relation between what is recognized when an intention is recognized – namely, the intention’s content, or the reason – and the psychical phenomena formed by the subject for that reason. What about the relation between I1 and I2 in steering? Since indication (as what is immediately but secondarily intended by U) is the means of steering (as what is mediately but primarily intended by U), I1 appears to be a causal motive for I2: as Marty says, the wanting of the aim is a motive for the wanting of the means in a causal sense31. In sum, an intention can cause another intention, and a judgment another judgment within the same thinking subject; but when a second thinking subject comes into the picture, the mental acts of the first, if recognized, can only function as motives (in the sense of reasons) for him or her to act in a certain way. Furthermore, I1 and I2 are different 31

Cf. Marty (1908, 281).

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in character: whereas I2 is an informative intention, I1 is clearly a normative one.32 3 Marty on what meaning is not The central claim of Marty’s analysis of meaning is that the two functions of indicating and steering are always co-present, and always clearly distinct: to mean something by a linguistic expression always involves a mediate and an immediate sign-giving [Zeichengebung]. On this basis, Marty criticizes four alternative accounts of meaning. i) Arnauld, Lancelot, and Wundt – the splitting of the concept of meaning. A first erroneous approach consists in assigning a certain meaning function to certain types of linguistic expression, and another meaning function to another type of expression. Such is for example the case in La grammaire générale et raisonnée, where certain expressions, like names, are said to mean [signifient] the objects of thoughts while others, like verbs, are supposed to mean the form and mode of our thoughts.33 To speak of ‘meaning’ in both cases amounts to making an equivocal use of the central notion of semantics. Wundt makes an analogous mistake in claiming that what distinguishes statements [Aussagen] and orders [Befehle] from questions is that the former contain expressions of belief and will, whereas the latter prompt [Auffordern] to such expressions. Thus, Wundt assigns an indication-like function to statements and orders, and a steering-like function to questions.34 Here Marty remarks that both the moments of urging and containing belong to the semantics of orders and questions. This last criticism neatly shows why (and in which sense) Marty’s Bedeutungslehre qualifies as a ‘pragmatic semantics’. Regardless of the type of expression considered, Martyian meaning is a matter of intentions centred on actions, namely the one performed by the speaker, and the one to be triggered in the hearer (‘containing’ and ‘urging’ always come together): Voluntary speech is a special kind of action whose ultimate aim is to trigger certain psychical phenomena in other beings. (Marty 1908, 284) 32 The central idea that meaning involves an essential normative moment will be taken up and developed by E. Ahlman whose monograph of 1926 bears the eloquent title Das normative Moment im Bedeutungsbegriff – see Mulligan 2011 (forthcoming). 33 Marty (1908, 491) – cf. Arnauld & Lancelot (1810, 270). 34 Marty (1908, 492) – cf. Wundt (1900, 132).

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ii) Martinak – the tendency to map steering on indication. Whereas Arnauld, Lancelot and Wundt work with an ambiguous notion of meaning, Martinak makes another type of mistake: he takes meaning in an extremely general sense to the effect that the specificity of linguistic meaning is not adequately captured by his theory. According to Martinak, whenever something like ‘A means B’ obtains, we have to do with “the coordination [Zuordnung] of one state of affairs A with another state of affairs B”.35 More precisely, [the] common kernel of all cases of meaning [Bedeuten] turns out to be nothing but the coordination of two objective states of affairs [a coordination which is] mediated by the corresponding psychical terms of the succession [Daten der Abfolge]; as a rule, the state of affairs which is psychologically given first (...) is called a sign, the one which is psychologically given later and is inferred [erschlosssen] is called the meaning [Bedeutung]; the former – the sign – points towards [weist über sich hinaus] the latter, the meaning. Martinak (1901, 12)

This scheme holds, according to Martinak, for all cases of meaning – i.e. the one he calls ‘real’ [reales Bedeuten], where the coordination of A and B is necessary, and the one he calls ‘intentional’ [finales Bedeuten], where this coordination depends on intention [Absicht]. Thus, ‘meaning’ means exactly the same in linguistic meaning (which is nothing but a subclass of intentional meaning) as in non-linguistic meaning. According to Marty, Martinak’s unitary and oversimplified model prevents him from grasping the essence of linguistic (as opposed to non-linguistic) meaning.36 iii) Bolzano: Bedeutungen as Platonic entities. Is steering possible without indication? Marty’s answer is clearly negative: the two moments are always co-present in fact, even if they are not always the object of our distinctive attention. In some very special situations, however, one can talk about steering without indication. Marty identifies four cases37: i) deceiving or simulation; ii) artificial use of isolated names (so called theoretical Autosemantika); iii) perchance steering (the ‘words’ carved in wood by the bostrichus typographus); iv) surrogacy (this case is not specifically linguistic and belongs rather 35

Martinak (1901, 6). Marty (1908, 492, n. 1). The same point is made by Schuchardt in his insightful review of Martinak (1901), see Schuchardt (1902). 37 Marty (1908, 493-4). 36

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to the class of natural signs such as the clouds as signs for rain). In this context, the case of solitary thinking [einsames Seelenleben] is also discussed by Marty, and identified as an instance of case iv) 38. All these cases, however, are considered as deviant or irrelevant. A more serious alternative is offered by the view that meaning is indeed possible in solitary thinking in virtue of the grasping of some ideal entity which would be the abstract correlate of any meaningful linguistic expression. Here, Marty evokes Bolzano’s Vorstellungen and Sätze an sich, but dismisses them as philosophical fictions39: since there are no such ideal entities, they cannot play any explanatory role. iv) Locke (?): the reduction of steering to indication. In a radical reaction to Platonizing, objectivist theories of meaning, one could adopt a psychologistic stance, and consider meaning as consisting exclusively in the indication of thoughts, and nothing else. Marty mentions this possibility only en passant and without linking it to any particular thinker40. This seems to suggest that he holds this theory for a mere possibility which is not to be taken too seriously, but Marty’s short characterization of such a position is akin to the traditional account of Locke’s conception of meaning41 – an account which has been shown to be highly inaccurate, however42. Marty’s ‘middle way’: the objective moment of indication. The contrast between Bolzano’s objectivist, and (possibly) Locke’s subjectivist accounts provides Marty with the opportunity to describe his own position as a well balanced one. As a matter of fact, Martyian meaning entails an objective moment:

38

The case of someone talking (aloud) to himself, however, is a perfectly standard one: the “earlier self” indicates his inner life to the “later self” in order to influence his inner life. See Marty (1908, 494-5). 39 Marty (1908, 495). According to Bolzano, a Satz an sich or an objective sentence is the content of a statement or of a judgment. See Bolzano (1984, 70-2 – Wissenschaftslehre, I, §19), it is as well the sense of a statement (Bolzano 1975:§ 2), and the objective meaning of a statement (Bolzano 1935, 62-3). In this context, one would have expected a discussion of Husserl’s Bedeutungsspezies or of Frege’s Sinne, but Marty does not mention them. 40 Marty (1908, 495). 41 “Words in their primary and immediate Signification, stand for nothing but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them (...)” (Locke 1828, 291 – Essay III, ii, §2). 42 See Lenz (2008, 9-22), where one finds an instructive presentation of the traditional account and its refutation in recent literature.

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However, the truth seems to lie in the middle. Linguistic means [Sprachmittel] do not merely indicate the psychical life of the speaker in a subjective-immediate way; they are primarily intended to trigger mediately corresponding psychical states in the hearer; and we call this function, as well as the content of those to-be-triggered psychical states, the meaning [of linguistic means]. (Marty 1908, 496)

Thus, indication is analysed with respect to a subjective and an objective moment. The subjective moment is indication as intended by the speaker’s secondary intention, i.e. the indication of his inner life; the objective moment is the grasping of the content of the indicated psychical phenomenon (when the hearer knows that the speaker has formed, say, a certain judgment, he also thereby grasps its content). Marty calls the objective moment of indication ‘meaning in the strict sense’ [Bedeutung im engeren Sinne] as opposed to steering [Bedeutung im weiteren Sinne] which is what is intended by the speaker’s primary intention, i.e. the triggering of a certain judgment in the hearer: We said that in a broad sense, statements mean as a rule that the hearer should perform an act of judging whose matter and quality are identical to those of the act of judging which, by the utterance, is indicated as taking place in the speaker. In a narrower sense, however, (...) one also calls something else the meaning of the statement (...): the statement indicates the content of the judging and, in this sense, means it. (Marty 1908, 291-2)

v) Husserl: Bedeuten as consisting in special acts of ‘giving’ and ‘filling’. Husserl’s theory of meaning is not criticized by Marty for its Platonic tendencies, but for its idea that a word’s having meaning essentially depends on two kinds of special ‘meaning acts’: a meaning-giving act or a meaning-intention [bedeutungverleihender Akt or Bedeutungsintention] in virtue of which a sound formally possesses meaning [ist ein sinnbelebter Wortlaut] on the one hand, and, on the other, a meaning-filling act [Bedeutungerfüllender Akt] which is not essential to the sign-character of the linguistic expression at stake, but ‘fills’ its meaning-intention to the effect that the sign thereby gets an

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actual relation to an object.43 Marty’s criticism here concerns what one could call the unilateral character of Husserl’s account. Marty observes that a linguistic expression can be used by a speaker to trigger a certain thought in a hearer, a thought which the speaker does not himself actually entertain; therefore, it cannot be sufficient to appeal to acts of the speaker to account for the meaning of linguistic expressions.44 A remark made by Marty about the term ‘Bedeutungsintention’ clearly shows that he is aware of the radically different meanings of his and Husserl’s use of the term ‘Intention’: for Marty, ‘Bedeutungsintention’ means ‘Bedeutungsabsicht’ (i.e. the speaker’s primary intention); for Husserl, it means something like ‘being Intentionally oriented towards something with respect to meaning’ – in short, Absichtlichkeit is not Intentionalität: But of course one does not have to think here [i.e. in the case of a Bedeutungsintention] of a special way of the ‘Intentional relation’ [‘intentionale Beziehung’] to the object, [a relation] which would constitute the essence of meaning; and the ‘filling’ of this intention is not again such an Intentional relation; rather this [i.e. the Bedeutungsintention] is nothing but a desire [Begehren] to bring about certain mental states, [a desire] with respect to which the occurrence of what is desired – namely: the effective steering of foreign inner life – stands as a possible fulfilment. (Marty 1908, 497)

In sum, regarding the intentionalist character of Marty’s semantics, two observations can be made on the basis of the critical remarks made by the Swiss philosopher. i) In opposition to Martinak’s tendency to give a parallel analysis of ‘real’ and ‘intentional’ meaning, Marty’s account shows that the intentional character of linguistic meaning is not accidental, but essential to it. According to Marty, ‘Bedeuten’ in ‘reales Bedeuten’ and in ‘finales Bedeuten’ is an equivocal term – in the case of linguistic meaning, as Marty shows, intentions are constitutive of meaning itself. ii) In opposition to Husserl, Marty’s talk of meaning-intention (primäre Intention)45 refers to a phenomenon of the will or practical intention [Absicht], whereas 43

Cf. Husserl (1980:II.1, 37-42) (Logische Untersuchungen I, §9-10); cf. as well Husserl (1980:II.1, 171-2) (Logische Untersuchungen II, §26) and Husserl (1980:II.1, 407-8= (Logische Untersuchungen, V, §19). 44 Marty (1908, 496-7. 45 Cf. for example Marty (1908, 22, 285, 382).

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Husserl’s understanding of meaning-Intentions (Bedeutungsintention) has nothing to do with any phenomenon of interest – it is a purely theoretical attitude [Intentionalität, Meinen]. 4 Brentano and the (early) Marty on meaning When in 1908, Marty explains what he means by ‘meaning’, and provides a detailed analysis of this central category in terms of indication and steering (Kundgabe and Bedeutung), he notes that he already defended such a view twenty-four years earlier in the first of his articles on subjectless sentences – a claim which is confirmed by a careful reading of the texts.46 In a recent paper on Marty’s early philosophy of language, R. Rollinger stresses the dependence of Marty’s early (i.e. prior to 1900) Bedeutungslehre on Brentano’s logic of the seventies and eighties.47 The same idea is expressed in his very useful monograph and anthology of 2010 on Marty’s philosophy of language. There, Rollinger adds that he disagrees with the author of the present study on the claim that although Marty found a lot of inspiration and philosophical material in Brentano, his pragmatic-semantic account of meaning is nonetheless original.48 In this last section, I shall defend my claim of 2009 on the basis of Rollinger’s edition of the manuscript EL 80 containing Brentano’s logic of the late 1880s.49 But before that, let us have a look at how Brentano himself appreciates the situation. In his letter of January 3rd, 1916, to Oskar Kraus, reacting to his reading of the proofs of Marty’s Raum und Zeit (to be published posthumously by Kraus in the same year), Brentano addresses the issue of his doctrinal relationship to Marty and considers, among other things, his views on language: 46

Cf. Marty (1908, 286); Marty (1918, 67-70). Of course there are some differences between the account of 1884 and that of 1908, but the main theoretical line (i.e. the elucidation of the very nature of meaning) remains unchanged. 47 Rollinger (2009); see as well Chrudzimski (2002, 204, n. 7) where this dependence is mentioned but not explained. The main sources are, for Brentano, the manuscript EL 72 (Die elementare Logik und die in ihr nötigen Reformen, 1884-1885) and EL 80 (Logik, late 1880s); and for Marty, the series of seven articles Über subjektlose Sätze und das Verhältnis der Grammatik zu Logik, 1884-1885, republished in Marty (1918a, 3-101 and 116-307). 48 Rollinger (2010b, 25, n. 55), which refers to Cesalli (2009, 132-3). 49 Rollinger’s edition is available online at .

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Laurent Cesalli Already in Marty’s first writings I had intervened in a decisive way. With the approval of Stumpf, Marty had developed a totally different view on the origin of language, something he had disclosed to me in our correspondence. In my reply, I wholly rejected this view and drew his attention to a theory I considered to be correct and which he, with his characteristic love for truth, embraced immediately and had followed constantly since then. (...) Many other things about which we lately disagreed were not discovered by him (...). As far as fundamental issues are concerned, [Marty’s] originality is thus wholly restricted to the recent speculations [i.e. on the nature of space and time] which, I regret to have to say, are thoroughly mistaken. (Brentano 1977, 2878)

Those lines, written by Brentano two years after Marty’s death (and just about one year before his own), patently contrast with the following passage quoted (but not dated) by A. Kastil in his foreword to the second volume of Marty’s Gesammelte Schriften: Indeed, just as Marx without Lasalle, I would perhaps, without Marty, have remained unknown to a broader audience. That he, as a consequence, is considered to be a thinker of little originality would not mislead him; not more than I would be misled if one would want to see me as a dependent thinker simply due to my praise of Aristotle. (...) Thus, it is truly by malice that one saw in Marty a thinker deprived of autonomy (...). (Brentano, in Kastil, 1918: VIII)

The least one can say is that Brentano is not particularly clear concerning Marty’s intellectual originality. When he does deny it, though, – as in the first passage quoted above –, he mentions Marty’s theory of the origin of language (i.e. the empirico-teleological view), and ‘many other things’ on which both thinkers disagreed, namely: the ontology of the irrealia and the relational conception of intentionality (both rejected by the late Brentano and maintained by the late Marty).50 But the very conception of what meaning is, is not mentioned, neither as a point of discord, nor as something Marty would have borrowed from his teacher. Addressing the question of what names and statements mean, Brentano observes, that names and statements display different semantic features. Names mean contents of psychical phenomena 50

On Brentano’s evolution regarding these topics, see Chrudzimski 2001 and Chrudzimski 2004.

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(i.e. immanent objects) through which they name (possible) transcendent objects: So once again: what do names designate [bezeichnen]? The name designates in a certain way a presentation’s content as such, [i.e.] the immanent object. In a certain way [names designate] that which is presented by the content of a presentation. The former is the meaning [Bedeutung] of the name. The latter is that which the name names. Of it we say that the name comes to it [kommt ihm zu]. It is that which, when it exists, is the external object of the presentation. One names under the mediation of meaning. (Brentano, EL 80:13.016[1]13.018[5])51

Statements, for their part, mean, but do not name anything. Nonetheless, they entertain a semantic relation both to the content of the judgment they express – and those contents are what they mean –, and to (possible) transcendent objects: On statements. What do they designate [bezeichnen]? 1. As we raised that question for names, we distinguished between what they mean [bedeuten] and what they name [nennen]. Here, as well, we make a distinction, but not the same one. They [i.e. the statements] mean [bedeuten], but they do not name. 2. Like names, they entertain a twofold relation, a, to the content of a psychical phenomenon as such, and b, to possible external objects. The former is the meaning [Bedeutung]. 3. But in such a case, the phenomenon at stake in not a presentation, but a judgment. The judged [Geurteilte] as such is the meaning [Bedeutung]. (Brentano, EL 80:13.020[1]-13.020[5])52 51 See also the following passage: “Concerning names, the question of their meaning [was sie bedeuten] arises. They mean: 1. Not themselves; 2. Not the act of presenting or the presentation [Vorstellung]; 3. Not what is presented as being presented. 4. But [they] seem also not to designate [bezeichnen] things. a) For many names are not names of things. They are fictions, e.g. Jupiter. b) Hoc animal and hic homo would not have a different meaning. 5. They mean something presented [ein Vorgestelltes], but not as presented; rather [they mean it] as that, as what it is presented [als das, als was es vorgestellt wird]. From there a) and also b) are explained, for there, a thing is given [liegt vor], but under the mediation of different presentations” (Brentano, EL 80:13.001[3]-13.002[7]). 52 See also the following passage: “The names name [nennen], while the statements state [sagen aus]: It therefore does not follow that, because the names mean [bedeuteuten] the objects of the psychical phenomenon of which they are the expression, the same is also true of statements: that these must therefore mean [bedeuten] the objects of the relevant judgments” (Brentano, EL 80:13.127[4], transl. Rollinger 2009, 85).

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Those passages are extremely rich, and we cannot engage here into a point by point comparison with Marty’s position. For our purpose, it will perhaps be sufficient to make the following short observations: i) There is no analogue in Brentano for the essential analysis of meaning in terms of the two functions of indication and steering (Kundgabe and Bedeutung) which, according to Marty, equally apply to names and statements. ii) It is true that Brentano distinguishes two semantic moments in the case of names, as well as in the case of statements, but he insists on the different character of this distinction in both cases. In Marty, by contrast, there is just one, uniform distinction, applying to both types of expression. iii) However, the two semantic moments distinguished by Brentano in the case of names do have an analogue in Marty, but it refers to the distinction between meaning and naming (Bedeuten and Nennen), and not between indication and steering (Kundgabe and Bedeutung). iv) And one of the two semantic moments – namely the first one, which Brentano calls Bedeutung – distinguished in the case of statements does have an analogue in Marty, but it is the objective moment of indication, or what Marty calls ‘meaning in the strict sense’ [Bedeutung im engeren Sinne] (i.e. the content of judgment), and not meaning proper (or in a broad sense). v) Finally, for both names and statements, Brentano’s answer to the general question of what they mean reads: the content of a psychical phenomenon – a claim which is absent from Marty’s theory.53 Although the pragmatic-semantic analysis of Bedeutung does not appear in Brentano’s answer to the general question of what names and statements mean, there is a remarkable passage in which Marty’s view seems indeed to be prefigured by Brentano.54 The passage concerns the meaning of statements. Here, Brentano talks of a statement’s 53

There are potentially misleading passages in Marty’s early writings, where one could get the impression that he actually thinks that what is meant by a linguistic expression is the content of a psychical phenomenon. For example Marty 1918b, 67: “(...) zwischen dem äusserlich wahrnehmbaren Zeichen und seiner Bedeutung, d.h. dem psychischen Inhalt, den es in dem Angeredeten erwecken will.” But in such cases, ‘Inhalt’ means ‘Seeleninhalt’, i.e. that which is in the soul – in other words: the psychical phenomena themselves, and not their contents – see ibid.: “(...) im Hörer den Seeleninhalt (Vortsellungen, Urteile, Gefühle, usw.), auf den es in Wahrheit abgesehen ist, herbeizuführen (...).” 54 Brentano, EL 80:13.127[1]-13.132. This is precisely the passage on which Rollinger bases his non-originality claim (see Rollinger 2009, 84-6).

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indicating [ist ein Zeichen dafür, gibt kund] that a speaker forms a certain judgment; further, he says that a statement means [Bedeutet] the content of the judgment it indicates, and characterizes this content as follows: (...) the linguistic expression of the judgment obviously indicates in a twofold manner: 1) the judgment whose expression it is, 2) by means of the judgment, that the object is to be judged in a certain manner, to be accepted or rejected, in a word: the content of the judgment. (Brentano, EL 80:13.132, transl. Rollinger 2009:86, my italics)

Thus, besides the moment of indicating (Kundgabe), we also have here something that reminds us of an important element of steering (Bedeutung) as described by Marty; more precisely, we find in this passage the idea that meaning involves a normative moment: in hearing a statement, the hearer understands that he should judge so and so. Nonetheless, I believe that the two normative moments in Brentano and Marty are fundamentally different. Whereas, according to Brentano, the norm is the content of the indicated judgment, Marty introduces it as the content of the speaker’s (primary) intention. In short: what distinguishes Marty’s from Brentano’s account of meaning is the fact that the former is an intentionalist theory, whereas the latter, in spite of strong prima facie indications, is not.55 5 Conclusion i) Marty’s Bedeutungslehre is an intentionalist theory because the key explanatory concept in his analysis of the phenomenon of linguistic meaning is that of intention (Absicht). For one thing, language is essentially intentional – language is “the intended indication of inner life by sounds”;56 for another, the essential feature of language – i.e. meaning – is analyzed in terms of (speaker’s) intentions: the secondary intention I2 of indicating (Kundgabe) one’s own inner life, and the 55 Intentions play no role in Brentano’s account (and they are absolutely crucial in Marty). Furthermore, the communicative moment seems to pop up only accidentally in Brentano’s account, whereas in Marty, it is bound to be (genetically and descriptively) at the heart of the theory. It is true that Brentano characterizes language as having “the primary purpose of communicating thoughts” (see the passage of EL 72 quoted by Rollinger 2009, 83), but this basic (and correct) intuition does not play a significant role in his theory of meaning proper. 56 Marty (1940, 81) (text quoted above, p. 143, n. 7).

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primary intention I1 of steering (Bedeutung) foreign inner life. Indication and steering are what speakers intend when they speak. Besides a bearer (or subject), I2 and I1 have contents, play roles, and are related. The content of I2 (“to indicate such and such psychical phenomenon”) is informative in character, whereas I1 has a content (“that such and such psychical phenomenon should be formed”) which is normative in character. The role of I2 is causal with respect to the utterance produced by the speaker, and is null with respect to the semantic value of what is uttered; I1 plays the role of an epistemic motive (a reason) for the hearer to form a certain psychical phenomenon – in other words: I1 plays a crucial (but non causal) role with respect to the semantic value of what is uttered. The relation between I1 and I2 is that of a practical, causal motivation – it is the relation of “wanting the means in virtue of wanting the aim”: I1 qualifies as primary because its obtaining causes the obtaining of I2. ii) In comparison to alternative accounts of meaning, Marty’s intentionalist Bedeutungslehre presents the decisive advantage of working with a univocal concept of meaning which is wide enough to apply to every type of linguistic expression (against Arnauld, Lancelot and Wundt), and sufficiently specified to pick out linguistic phenomena from the mass of semiotic phenomena (against Martinak); furthermore, it successfully takes the middle way between the objectivist and subjectivist extremes represented – according to Marty – by Bolzano and Locke respectively; finally, it sharply distinguishes between the intentional (volitive) and Intentional (cognitive) aspects of meaning, thereby yielding a theory which takes into account the fact that Intentionality plays a fundamental role in meaning, and the empirical evidence of what actually happens when people talk to each other (against Husserl): Marty’s Bedeutungslehre is a pragmatic semantics. iii) Although the Martyian theory of meaning would be unconceivable without Brentano’s thought and power of inspiration, Marty’s Bedeutungslehre is highly original with respect to what he could find in his master’s works. The gist of his account does not consist in its being massively based – and thus, obviously dependent – on Brentanian descriptive psychology, but, as we have tried to show, in the insight that a particular type of psychical phenomenon – namely intentions – is the keystone of that complex institution called ‘human language’.

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Ahlman, E. 1926. Das normative Moment im Bedeutungsbegriff. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Albertazzi, L.1996. ‘Anton Marty 1847-1914’ in Albertazzi, Libardi, Poli (eds.) 1996, 83-108. Albertazzi, L., M. Libardi and R. Poli (eds.) 1996. The School of Franz Brentano, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Arnauld, A. and C. Lancelot. 1810. Grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port Royal. Pairs: Bossance et Masson. Baumgartner W., D. Fügmann and R. Rollinger (eds.). 2009. Die Philosophie Anton Martys, Dettelbach: J.H. Röll [Brentano Studien 12]. Bolzano, B. 1975. Einleitung zur Grössenlehre, ed. J. Berg, Suttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann Holzboog. —— 1984. Philosophische Texte. ed. by U. Neemann, Stuttgart: Reclam. Bolzano, B. and F. Exner. 1935. Der Briefwechsel B. Bolzano’s mit F. Exner, ed. E. Winter, Prague: Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences. Brentano, F. (late 1880s): Logik, manuscript EL 80, ed. R. Rollinger, [online at http://gandalf.uib.no/ Brentano/texts/el/logik/norm/] —— 1977. Die Abkehr vom Nichrealen, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand, Hamburg: Meiner. Cesalli, L. 2009: ‘Martys philosophische Position innerhalb der österreichischen Tradition’ in Baumgartner et al. (eds.) 2009, 121-181. —— 2011: ‘M&Ms – Mentally Mediated Meanings’ in Reboul 2011 (ed.) [online publication]. Cesalli, L. and J. Friedrich (forthcoming): Anton Marty, Karl Bühler: philosophes du langage, Basel: Schwabe. Chrudzimski, A. 1999. ‘Die Intentionalitätstheorie Anton Martys’ in Grazer Philosophische Studien 57: 175-214. —— 2001. Die Intentionalitätstheorie beim frühen Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer. —— 2002. ‘Von Brentano zu Ingarden. Die phänomenologische Bedeutungslehre’ in Husserl Studies 18: 185-208. —— 2004. Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Dale, R. E. 1996. The Theory of Meaning, univ. dissertation, The City University of New York [on line at: https://webspace.utexas.edu/deverj/personal/test/theoryofmeaning.pdf]. Davies, W. 1992. ‘Speaker Meaning’ in Linguistics and Philosophy 15: 223-253. Fisette D. and G. Fréchette. 2007. Husserl, Stumpf, Ehrenfels, Meinong, Twardowski, Marty. A l’école de Brentano, de Würzbourg à Vienne. Paris: Vrin. Fréchette G.(forthcoming). ‘Fixieren, Deuten, Bestimmen. Éléments de psychologie descriptive de Marty à Bühler’ in Cesalli & Friedrich (forthcoming). Funke Otto, Innere Sprachform. Eine Einführung in A. Marty’s Sprachphilosophie. Reichenberg i. Br.: Sudetendeutscher Verlag Franz Kraus. Grice H. P. 1948. ‘Meaning’, in Grice 1989, 213-223. —— 1989: Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Husserl E. 1980. Logische Untersuchungen II.1, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Kastil A. 1918. ‘Vorwort’ in Marty 1918a, VII-XXI. Kraus, O.1916. ‘Martys Leben und Werke. Eine Skizze’ in Marty 1916a, 1-68. Landgrebe, L.1934. Nennfunktion und Wortbedeutung. Eine Studie über Marty’s Sprachphilosophie. Halle: Akademischer Verlag.

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Lenz, M. 2008. Lockes Sprachkonzeption, Berlin: W. De Gryuter. Liedtke, F. (forthcoming): ‘Autosemantische Sprachmittel – Zeichenfunktion – Sprechakte. Leur definition et classification chez Marty, Bühler (et Searle)’ in Cesalli & Friedrich (eds.). Anton Marty, Karl Bühler: philosophes du langage, Basel: Schwabe. Liedtke, F. 1990. ‘Meaning and Expression: Marty and Grice on Intentional Semantics’ in Mulligan (ed.) 1990, 29-49. Locke, J. 1828. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, London: Thomas Tegg. Lycan, W. G. 2000. Philospohy of Language. A contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge. Marconi, D. 1997. La philosophie du langage au xxe siècle. Transl. M. Valensi Paris: L’éclat. Marmo, C. 2010. La semiotica del XIII secolo. Milano: Bompiani. Martinak, E. 1901. Psychologische Untersuchungen zur Bedeutungslehre. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth. Marty, A. 1875. Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache. Würzburg: A. Stuber. —— 1884-1892: ‘Über Sprachreflex, Nativismus und absichtliche Sprachbildung’ in Marty 1916b, 1-304. —— 1908. Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie. Halle a. S.: M. Niemeyer. —— 1916a. Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. I.1, ed. J. Eisenmeier, A. Kastil, O. Kraus, Halle a. S.: M. Niemeyer. —— A. 1916b. Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. I.2, ed. J. Eisenmeier, A. Kastil, O. Kraus, Halle a. S.: M. Niemeyer. —— 1918a. Gesammelte Schriften Bd. II.1, ed. J. Eisenmeier, A. Kastil, O. Kraus, Halle a. S.: M. Niemeyer. —— 1918b. ‘Über subjektlose Sätze und das Verhältnis der Grammatik zur Logik und Psychologie’ in Marty 1918a, 3-101, 116-307. —— 1940. Psyche und Sprachstruktur. Mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen herausgegeben von O. Funke. Bern: A. Franke. Mulligan, K. (ed.) 1990. Mind, Meaning, and Metaphysics. The Philosophy and Theory of Language of Anton Marty. Dordrecht: Kluwer. —— 2011. ‘Significations primaires et secondaires’ third of the Hughes Leblanc Conferences gathered under the title “Wittgenstein et ses prédecesseurs austro-allemands’ in Philospohiques 38. Raynaud, S. 1982. Anton Marty, Filosofo del Linguaggio: Uno strutturalismo presaussuriano. Roma : La goliardica editrice. Reboul A. (ed.) 2011. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, online publication, http://www.philosophie.ch/kevin/festschrift/. Rollinger R. 1999. Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano, Dordrecht: Kluwer. —— 2010a. Philosophy of Language and Other Matters in the Work of Anton Marty. Analysis and Translations. Amsterdam: Rodopi. —— 2010b: ‘Introduction’ in Rollinger 2010a, 3-130. Rosier-Catach I. 1994. La parole comme acte. Sur la grammaire et la sémantique au xiiie siècle. Paris: Vrin. —— 2004. La parole efficace. Signe, rituel, sacré, Paris: Seuil.

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Schuchardt H. 1902. ‘E. Martinak, Psychologische Untersuchungen zur Bedeutungslehre’ in Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie 23: 204-8. Searle J. 1999. Mind, Language and Society. Philosophy in the Real World, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Smith B. 1994. Austrian Philosophy. The Legacy of Franz Brentano, Chicago / La Salle: Open Court. Spinicci P. 1991. Il significato e la forma linguistica. Pensiero, esperienza e linguaggio nella filosofia di Anton Marty. Milano : Franco Angeli. Stevenson C. L. 1944. Ethics and Language. New Heaven: Yale University Press. Strawson P. F. 1964. ‘Intention and Convention in Speech Acts’ in The Philosophical Review 73: 439-60. ——1971: ‘Meaning and Truth’ in Strawson, Logico-Linguistic Papers, Aldershot: Ashgate, 131-145. Stumpf C. 1876. ‘Ueber den Urspung der Sprache. Von Dr. Marty, Prof. d. Philosophie in Czernowitz. Würzburg, 1875’ in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 68: 172-91. Welby V. 1893. ‘Meaning and Metaphor’ The Monist 3: 510-525. —— 1903. What is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance London: Macmillan & Co. Wundt W. 1900. Die Sprache, vol. I, part 2 of the Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF INTENTIONALITY MATJAŽ POTRČ

(UNIVERSITY OF LJUBLJANA)

1 Brentano’s thesis Brentano’s thesis deserves an evaluation in respect to the relation between consciousness/phenomenology and intentionality. It is well known that Brentano introduced the thesis of intentionality into the modern philosophical landscape. In every thought, something is thought about; and in every desire something is desired. So mental phenomena are characterized by there being intentional directedness at some content or some object. The very fact that intentionality is characteristic of mental phenomena brings consciousness into the forefront, for mental phenomena are generally thought to be conscious in nature. So there has to exist an important relation between intentionality and consciousness. Consciousness is a topic which has recently been widely discussed. Often, it is characterized as the qualitative what-it’s-like experience, e.g. the qualitative experience of tasting this particular brand of tea, the qualitative experience of looking at that shade of green, the experience of being myself, or maybe the qualitative experience of being a bat. Conscious experience has also recently been referred to as phenomenology. This may appear confusing at first, for phenomenology is a historical philosophical movement that was promoted by Husserl, but whose origins may actually be traced back to Brentano. In contrast, phenomenology, as it applies to the mental, rather refers to the qualitative what-it’s-like dimension of experiences. In other words, phenomenology in this sense is consciousness, so that one may talk of consciousness/phenomenology. Brentano introduced both intentionality and consciousness into contemporary discussions, thereby combining medieval Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions. Recently, a debate about the relation between

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intentionality and consciousness/phenomenology developed in philosophical community, without that Brentano would be necessarily studied in this respect.1 In what follows, we will first present the debate about the consciousness/phenomenology and intentionality relation, such as it appears in recent philosophical discussions. We will focus on some of the ways to interpret consciousness/phenomenology, and we will ask which of these would be appropriate to provide support for intentionality. We will concentrate on the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, such as it has been articulated together with the intentionality of phenomenology thesis. We will not refer to Brentano in the first part of the paper. Precisely in this manner, we will prepare the ground for asking reasonable questions about how Brentano considered the relation between consciousness/phenomenology and intentionality. We will argue that he himself actually defends the genuine phenomenology of intentionality thesis. But first let us now turn to the formulation of this thesis without explicitly referring to Brentano. In fact, as we will try to demonstrate in the second part of the paper, this first part may also be read as an argumentative reconstruction of Brentano’s view on the phenomenology of intentionality. 2 Phenomenology of intentionality is introduced as a thesis against separatism Intentionality is understood here as intentional directedness. If I think about the cat, I happen to be mentally directed at the cat, and not at something else, such as a dog. The nature of this directedness may be understood as involving the object ‘cat’ or even the content ‘cat’. We are sympathetic to the content-friendly interpretation of intentionality. But this shall be discussed later. At this introductory stage, we can assert intentionality to be mental directedness at an object or at content. Phenomenology is understood here as qualitative or a what-it’slike experience. If I see green grass, there is a qualitative what-it’slike experience of seeing green grass, which is different in respect to the qualitative what-it’s-like experience of touching white snow. The intentional object or content is then the green grass, whereas the intentional directedness is the qualitative feeling that accompanies the specific content which happens to be entertained. Often, phenomenol1

Horgan, Potrč, and Tienson (2002) may be one of the exceptions though.

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ogy or conscious experience is described with cases involving such experiences as what-it’s-like to feel pain, or qualitatively experiencing the presence of the color green. It is often presumed that phenomenology, as we have just stated, accompanies intentional directedness. This is the basis for what may be called the separation thesis, which argues that phenomenology and intentionality do not tend to come into existence together. If this were the case, there would not be any substantial connection between them. As I think about the cat, according to this view, there is my intentional directedness at the cat. Although quite without any real substantial or even constitutive relationship to the intentional directedness, an accompanying phenomenological quality also appears, which typically goes with entertaining thoughts about cats and which happens to be different than qualities that arise when one entertains cognitive or emotional experiences relating to, say, dogs or spiders. Thus according to separatism, no substantial relation exists between intentionality and phenomenology. With respect to phenomenology itself, separatism views it as being without any intentional directedness (Potrč 2002). Separatism is thus a joint thesis which maintains that phenomenology is separated from intentionality and that intentionality comes about in separation from phenomenology. Separatism is opposed to both the phenomenology of intentionality and the intentionality of phenomenology theses (Horgan and Tienson 2002). It asserts that each intentional act is basically supported by phenomenology, and also that each phenomenological act is basically supported and constituted by its intentional directedness. So my intentional thought about the cat is constitutively supported by phenomenology or qualitative consciousness. The phenomenology that arises with the cat-thought does not simply accompany this thought, but in fact makes it possible. Without a phenomenological basis, there would not be any intentional directedness. If noticing the color green or feeling the sensation of pain are examples of what-it’slike, phenomenological experiences, then these are not themselves without intentional directedness. Phenomenological experiences necessarily accompany directedness in the experiential space, for example I feel pain at a specific location of my body. It should be emphasized that the intentional directedness of phenomenological experiences is not just something that somehow accompanies them. Intentional directedness happens rather to be the supportive component that allows

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phenomenological experiences to be there. There is no pain without an intentional space at which its experience happens to be directed. This is what in a general way the intentionality of phenomenology thesis claims. In the following section, we will focus on the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, tackling first of all the questions as to what kind of phenomenology is adequate for supporting intentional directedness. 3 Which kind of phenomenology is able to support intentional directedness? Once we accept the thesis that phenomenology is intrinsic to intentional directedness, and that it does not just somehow contingently accompany it, the question arises about what kind of phenomenology is required to support intentional directedness. We will look at some possible candidates in a moment. But for now, a specific characteristic of phenomenology should be briefly introduced. Phenomenology, we claim, is narrow: the qualitative phenomenological experience may well be shared by myself and by my brain in a vat considered as an experiential duplicate. Let us presume that I have an external world and that my brain in a vat’s experiential duplicate hasn’t. We can still perfectly well both share our experiences, so that in this respect the external world happens to be put in parentheses, as one could argue. Perhaps one may initially argue in favor of an intentional relation that is wide, and which therefore refers to the external world. This is at least the manner in which causal or teleological renderings of intentional relation tend to proceed. It seems much more plausible, on the other hand, to assert that phenomenology or qualitative conscious experience may be characterized by what is proper to my inner psychological life, without any appeal to the external world. And if one takes a further look at how matters stand, then it may be the case that intentional directedness, if it is constitutively supported by phenomenology, will itself turn out to be narrow, thereby subverting the wide interpretation of intentionality. Once one agrees with this assertion as well, the question is then which kind of narrowness one should accept in order to account for intentional directedness, i.e. which kind of narrowness is required for the phenomenology of intentionality to come into the picture, thereby allowing intentionality to be effectively present.

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We will take a look at two ways one may interpret the narrowness of phenomenology. The first interpretation is motivated by its opposition to the referential view of realism, against which it argues by making use of phenomenology’s aspectual nature and by appealing to possible worlds. But there is yet another view of the narrowness of phenomenology, which is opposed to the first interpretation. This approach appropriates the actual world. The experiential world, as an actual whole, then underlies the kind of phenomenology which can effectively support intentional directedness. We will indeed argue that it is only this second holistic and actualist view of phenomenology that can support intentionality, thereby accounting for the very possibility of the phenomenology of intentionality. Be it as it may, the question can be framed in terms of what kind of narrow phenomenology fits the phenomenology of intentionality thesis. 4 Narrowness One view about phenomenology asserts its narrowness with the help of aspects, which may be introduced through possible worlds in opposition to the referentialism of realism. Let us consider a plausible proposal about how to construe narrowness as a necessary feature for phenomenology. If there is a cat out there in the world, this has to be a fact about the external world. There is a causal externalist relation then in which I am positioned in respect to the cat. Such an external causal relation also supports my utterance of the word “cat”. If I say “cat”, then I try to refer to the cat. Obviously, this externalist and referential view of how language functions does not support phenomenology and narrowness; as it was not formulated with both in mind. In fact, quite the contrary, it is by excluding both phenomenology and narrowness that we obtain a realist interpretation of the world. According to this view, I can always verify in the external and causally effective world whether the objects of reference to which I try to refer with the terms of my language actually exist. If I say that “there is a cat over here”, but I then verify whether this is the case, and I find out that it is not, i.e. that there is no cat in the targeted region of the world right now, one may speak here of referential failure. Obviously, all these considerations support neither narrowness, nor phenomenology. So it may be suggested that the current picture of the referential and realist view of the language-relation should be disputed if our wish is to bring narrow-

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ness and phenomenology into the picture. A direct relation between language and the world, or between mind and world in the case of intentional relations, will not do. Instead, we may wish to introduce an indirect relation into the picture. Aspects seem to present themselves as likely candidates in this respect. Instead of “the cat”, which here functions as a direct referential expression, we may introduce descriptions such as “the nice animal here in vicinity”, “my pet creature”, “the feline inhabitant of our house”. These descriptions do not capture the referent directly, but rather provide several aspects, which point indirectly to a feature in the world. We can claim that we are not concerned with the referent anymore, but with several senses, that capture aspects, and not with the referential relation between language and the world. This indirect relation to the world, from the side of language or then again from the side of the mind through intentionality, seems to be much more tailored to narrowness and therefore to phenomenology than is the direct realist’s picture of the world. The main thing to avoid for someone concerned with promoting phenomenology or consciousness is a realist picture of the world and a direct referential relation to the world, which language and thought are supposed to engage in. In other words, the real actual world and reference to it should be avoided in favor of an approach which insists more on indirect possible worlds. These possible worlds are able to capture the referential or intentionally-directed aspects and through this, they may lead the way to narrowness and phenomenology. Why would possible worlds be related to narrowness? Because they are removed from the actual world and from its direct relation, and narrowness seems precisely to involve an indirect relation in that it is not aimed at external referents. Why would possible worlds be linked to phenomenology? For several reasons: phenomenology is narrow and therefore indirect, at least it does not seem to consist in a direct relation to the external world of realism and to the entities that reside in it. Thus, possible worlds seem to render in an appropriate way narrow phenomenology in the aspectual sense. Possible worlds in fact take actuality to be just one of several mediated realms; and in these mediated realms, there seems to be at least room for narrowness and phenomenology, which happen to be excluded from direct external relations. The story may be told in such a manner as to allow us to indulge in the history of philosophy. Although in what follows, there will be

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mentioning of some historical figures, no meticulous textual adequacy is intended. Terms will simply be explained and used in the manner as we understand them. But overall historical adequacy is still upheld with respect to the broad outline of the main ideas and figures that represent them. The aspectual approach may be captured by embracing Fregean senses, as opposed to Russellian referential relations. The Morning Star and the Evening Star present two aspectual senses of one single worldly referent, i.e. the planet Venus. The first sense reveals its aspectual characteristic of appearing in the sky in the morning, whereas the second shows the aspect of the same planet as it appears in the evening. In this respect, both senses are rather epistemic and therefore not based on ontological concerns. They do not refer to what realistically exists out there in the world, quite independently of observers. Rather, they aim at providing epistemic access to whatever is there in the world. Putting stress on these aspectual features somehow treats the external world as if it were in parentheses, thereby allowing the epistemic aspectual characteristics to appear in the foreground. In any case, this seems to pave the way for narrowness in contrast to an externalist approach. This is why Fregean senses, in contrast to Russellian reference, seem better suited to provide an account of narrow phenomenology. Notice that Russell, in his theory of descriptions, embraced a realist approach. The point of the theory of descriptions is to look at the world, in the referential realm, in order to determine whether there are in fact entities that happen to be referred to in language by a given sentence. A sentence such as “The actual king of France is bald” seems to point or refer to an entity which is an actual king of France, thereby attributing a certain property to him. The analysis of language provided by the theory of descriptions is a tool which helps us to determine whether the sentence is meaningful. It is certainly meaningful in that it articulates and transmits an idea, that is, the content expressed by the sentence. But the task of the theory of descriptions is to analyze this and to see whether the analyzed elements do indeed correspond to reality – whether whatever the linguistic reference aims at has a referent in the world. Analysis reveals that the sentence has three elements which are presupposed in it: a) that an entity exists; b) that this unique entity is the actual king of France; and c) that this entity possesses a certain property, namely that of being bald. The analysis lays bare the elements that were presupposed in what the sentence asserted; without

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this analysis, these presuppositions would never be explicitly stated. Now, when these elements are explicitly stated by means of analysis, we may undertake the task of verifying whether there is in fact such an entity as the king of France in the actual world, just as the sentence has presupposed. By turning to the realist approach to the actual world, we then discover that such an entity does not exist. We may thus say that the existential presupposition has proven to be misleading. Now, this shows that Russell adhered, as a criterion, to the realistic actual world as the underlying stuff at which philosophical analysis points. We are therefore not looking at some fictional world, but at the actual world, the natural world of realism, to see whether assertions in language have any weight. Notice that by emphasizing actuality, the actual realistic world, Russell was arguing against the view that there are also other modes of existence besides the actual realistic one. The view that Russell was attacking was supported by Meinong, who introduced other kinds of existence besides that of the actual realist world. According to the Meinongian theory of objects, every intentional directedness has some object, but only a small subset of these objects are actual. So not only there are actual objects or entities in the sense of realism, but also possible and narrative objects. The actual king of France is a case in point, for he has existence as an entity that comes into being through narration. Despite being a fictional entity, he nevertheless has a kind of existence, namely the existence in the realm of fiction. In addition to the present and actual objects of realism, there are fictional objects and, for that matter, possible objects. Meinong thus expanded the realm of existents which now encompasses a lot more than just the present and actual stuff of realism. But the directly present and actual stuff certainly does not seem to be narrow, which is precisely the view embraced by Russell. In contrast, the fictional stuff, realms of possible worlds and similar objects are closer to the indirect and aspectual nature of narrow phenomenology. This is why, if we are to be sympathetic to phenomenology and to embrace its narrow nature, we should prefer to appeal to aspects, Fregean senses, and possible worlds, including other non-realist realms, such as fictional multi-layered entities, thus staying with the indirect features and not with the direct referential stuff. We therefore have an account of how to make use of the narrow phenomenological stuff against the actualist view of the world upheld by realism.

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Notice that such an anti-realist proposal, which is ultimately sympathetic to narrow phenomenology, is embraced by some proponents of consciousness. For example, Chalmers defends in ‘Ontological Anti-Realism’ a view which embraces abstract entities, possible worlds and other similar features while at the same time claiming that all things considered, he is not committed to their ultimate existence. In ‘Propositions and Attitude Ascriptions: A Fregean Account’, he also defends the Fregean account against the Russellian realist account in a way that supports narrow phenomenology and opposes the actualist view of realism. And in the “Index” of his The Conscious Mind (1996), Chalmers refers to possible worlds, without mentioning the actual world. It seems that in all of these cases, he aims at providing an account of narrow consciousness or phenomenology that opposes the Russellian view of approaching the question. Fregean senses and possible worlds therefore stand against the Russellian view of reference. 5 Narrowness and intentional directedness The narrowness of phenomenology, understood in terms of aspects and possible worlds, does not however provide sufficient support for intentional directedness. We should now return to our main question, namely whether this aspectual and possible worlds friendly, anti-realist approach to consciousness or phenomenology is able to provide a kind of phenomenology that accounts for intentional directedness. Our answer to this question is no. In order to see why this is the case, we should return to our phenomenology of intentionality thesis. With this thesis, we have claimed that phenomenology does not just accompany intentional directedness – which is a mark of separatism – but rather is constitutively present as the very possibility of intentional directedness. The narrowness, as conceived by the anti-realist aspectual phenomenology, rejects the influence of the actual world. The actual world is thereby understood as a real and external world. So, the aspectual view of narrowness and phenomenology is promoted in opposition and thereby in respect to the realist actual world. This kind of narrowness is obtained through its property of being indirect, just as Fregean senses are considered indirect in respect to the Russellian reference. Now, the realist world certainly does not offer a basis for

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the phenomenological support of intentionality, for the simple reason that it does not care about phenomenology at all. The question is whether aspectual narrowness is able to provide phenomenological support for such intentional directedness. Aspects, such as Fregean senses, which are close to descriptions as opposed to referents, are just indirect in respect to these referents. But there is actually no significant impact of phenomenology or of consciousness involved in this indirect approach. Fregean senses correspond quite well to their referential basis in that they do not provide any qualitative phenomenological stuff. But notice that even if phenomenology were to be involved in the aspectual indirect approach, intentional directedness could still be guaranteed without it. In the best-case scenario, it would just accompany intentional content. The description “our feline pet” which indirectly captures its referent “cat”, seems to have phenomenology just in this accompanying sense. Notice that the appeal to aspects, such as senses, provides local targeting of the referent. Each description or sense captures just one local way of pointing at the referent. But such a local environment does not provide a phenomenology that is strong enough to push us in the direction of intentionality. On the other hand, the aspectual approach has shown that global support would not do either, where the global world is understood in an external realist sense. This is what the aspectual way of approaching matters has shown. 6 Narrowness and experiential world The appeal to the narrow phenomenology of the entire actual experiential world is needed in order to account for the appropriate support of intentional directedness. What is needed for the relation of intentional directedness to get off the ground? If there is only a causal relation present between a thought and its referent, it seems then that there is not any real support for the agent to be intentionally directed at the referent. So we may say that in fact we are intentionally directed neither at the referent nor at the external object, but at the content. And the question is then what pushes us to engage in this kind of directedness. It certainly does not seem to be an external relation, for we cannot see any real direction that leads us from purely causal and externally conceived forces to intentionality. The external causal relation seems to be too restricted

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and locally constrained to be able to deliver the needed intentional directedness. Let us now turn to aspects as candidates that may support intentional directedness. Aspects, with descriptions as their linguistic equivalents and with senses as their mental equivalents, are broader in nature, for they expand the involved local environment. Aspects or senses are indirect in contrast to the immediate directness of causal relation; they thereby involve a larger portion of the environment in possibly supporting the intentional relation. But it is still questionable whether they provide any real support or the needed push for somebody to think about something else. Perhaps the aspectual senses may invite one to be intentionally directed at a certain entailed aspect, but this is not to say that they provide resources for someone to be able to be directed at something at all. As we have just noted, there is no special phenomenology involved in aspects or senses. Moreover, if there would be any involvement, it would be too local to provide the needed push. Due to their very indirect nature, senses that involve an aspectual story have perhaps taken us away from the needed engagement for intentional directedness. If this is the case, then we need something that is more directly involving and engaging for the intentional relation to get off the ground. And this is supported by the common sense intuition that there should be some background in order for intentional directedness to be possible. Such a background may well be specified in terms of morphological content (Horgan and Potrč 2010; Potrč 2008). But although this point is important insofar as it promotes the cognitive background in the way just considered, it would overall just specify some of the cognitive mechanisms related to it. The supportive role of phenomenology in what we call the phenomenology of intentionality would not yet however be specified. So we need the background and more specifically, the phenomenological background in order for the phenomenology of intentionality to function. Such a phenomenological background, with the necessary engagement required for intentional directedness to be present, may come about if we depart from the indirect approach related to aspects or senses, as a way to escape direct externalist referentialism towards indirect phenomenology. In order to achieve this, we had to reject externalist referential actualism and thus approach aspects and possi-

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ble worlds as opposed to the actual worlds which are compatible with these aspects and senses. How to depart from this story so that we can proceed along the path that is needed here? At this point, we can take another cue from the history of philosophy, as we have done above. Our first attempt at obtaining a phenomenology and its narrowness came out of a reaction to the referential and actualist view of the world held by externalism, along the lines of the Russellian theory of descriptions’ metaphysical underpinnings. In opposition to possible worlds and their metaphysical grounding, Russell clings to the actual world of realism and to the provable existence of the referred to/described entities in it. Now, in his theory of descriptions, Russell certainly defended a realist and externalist view of the world in order to verify the existential presuppositions that are involved in descriptive propositions. It is usually forgotten though that Russell had developed at the same time an epistemological approach along the lines of the former view, i.e. an account of knowledge by acquaintance. It is thus not enough that entities should exist in the world in order for referential expressions to be true; one also has to have a direct epistemic access to these entities, and this is exactly what the relation of acquaintance is about. Notice that acquaintance involves the epistemic engagement of the experiential subject. Now, what does the current situation amount to? On the one hand, we have Russell’s referential and actualist view of the world based on realism and externalism, but, on the other hand, we have at the same time an account of acquaintance considered in terms of direct epistemic involvement with the world. The theory of descriptions substantially involves the theory of acquaintance. But why? Here is a possible answer, which will also provide a different view of narrow phenomenology, and which will hopefully be adequate for our purposes. We have said that aspects and senses trying to provide narrowness which is needed for phenomenology went against Russell’s metaphysical realism and actualism. But through the epistemic component of acquaintance, actualism may now come back into the picture, and this means that we can return to the world. This goes against the account of narrowness which involves aspects and senses and which was introduced in order to dismiss the realist’s world. As the world now returns onto the stage, it is not the world of realism anymore. Rather, it is an acquaintance related experiential world.

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Such a world is indeed narrow because it is an experiential world. It also involves globality as it is a whole world – and this is precisely the trait that was overlooked by the account of narrowness and phenomenology based on aspects or Fregean senses. Being holistic and narrow, we may then claim that this acquaintance induced experiential world as an actual phenomenological world, and that such a world can provide the needed environment to account for intentional directedness. The narrow and holistic phenomenological background does not just accompany cases of intentional directedness, such as in the case of my thinking about the cat. Indeed, it constitutes the very presupposition for such an intentional relatedness to be there. It is the background that allows me to think about the cat or to have any other intentionally directed act for that matter. The phenomenological background is not the content itself. It is rather the qualitative push that enables one to be directed at a specific content. We are still dealing with actualism, but it is not the realist kind. Instead it is an experiential actualism along the lines of the Russellian theory of acquaintance. This is an actualism which involves the whole world: a holistic and actual experiential world. Such a world is transglobal, for it is neither local, nor simply global. Rather, it is a phenomenologically constituted, narrow and actual world. By introducing this transglobal actual holistic experiential world, we have obtained the needed environment, i.e. the phenomenological narrow environment, which allows the directedness of the intentional content to be possible. Nothing less is needed in order for intentional directedness to be present. The experiential transglobal phenomenological environment is appropriate for the phenomenology of intentionality. Common sense would also agree that an act directed at intentional content is not possible without the whole world implicitly supporting it in the background, a point that Wittgenstein would endorse. It is simply the agent, who inhabits the whole experiential world, which is able to be intentionally, mentally directed at something. The whole world however is not explicitly there in every case of intentional directedness. Rather, it is the necessary experiential background that implicitly supports such directedness. The transglobal approach to narrowness encompasses the whole experiential world insofar as it transcends local and global environments and provides the appropriate phenomenology for the phenomenology of intentionality.

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7 Sam and Dave in the actual world People who are sympathetic to consciousness or phenomenology made a mistake in conceiving its narrowness in terms of aspectual and Fregean senses. Consider that there are Sam and Dave in the actual world, and that I see them slightly in the distance without recognizing which of the figures is Sam and which is Dave. But I am in a direct relation to them in the actual world. Now I only know that either Sam is the father of Dave, or that Dave is the father of Sam. What do I do? I am referring to whoever I am in a direct manner, and I am attributing a property to him, which may be misguided or which may actually fit. As I am in the actual world, no aspect or Fregean-like sense may help me out here. This account provides us with a criticism of narrowness considered as local and aspectual phenomenology. We must also elucidate the actualism of the holistic experiential world in order to provide an adequate account of the phenomenology of intentionality. 8 Brentano and the phenomenology of intentionality Thesis After having taken a look at the phenomenology of intentionality thesis in the broad overall framework of current philosophical discussions, we may now ask some questions about this thesis in relation to the work of Brentano: Does Brentano defend the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, or does he prefer separatism? Does Brentano endorse narrowness in the broad sense of the identity between my experiential world and that of my brain in a vat’s experiential duplicate? If he defends the phenomenology of intentionality thesis – does Brentano conceive the narrowness of phenomenology in terms of aspectual, Fregean senses or possible worlds of an indirect kind in contrast to the realist assumption of referentialism? If Brentano does not accept the aspectual or possible world understood in the terms of indirect narrowness – what is his criticism of the indirect narrowness of aspectual sense (Frege), or of the possible world view based on indirect narrowness (Meinong)? What pushes Brentano from local and global view to a transglobal conception of narrowness, articulated in relation to the actual and holistic experiential world? This would be the active phenomenologi-

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cal narrowness’ ability to support intentional directedness by functioning as the background. These questions follow a decision tree of several positions leading to a construal of Brentano’s views about the phenomenology of intentionality. They can serve as our guide into the investigation of Brentano’s central notion of intentionality, pointing out the need for its gradual phenomenological enrichment. Our claim is thus that Brentano defended the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, and not simply the intentionality thesis. His intentionality thesis is actually a thesis about the phenomenology of intentionality. 9 Does Brentano defend the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, or does he prefer separatism? We may start with the basic question, which introduces distinction between the bare intentional thesis and the phenomenology of intentionality thesis. At the outset one needs to state again that Brentano introduced intentionality into contemporary discussions, thus rejuvenating an Aristotelian and medieval notion. In every thought, something is thought about, and in every desire something is desired. Therefore there is no further question whether Brentano is committed to the intentionality or mental directedness thesis. But it is interesting that he combined the Aristotelian relation of intentionality with the Cartesian view of consciousness. This may provide an explanation as to why Brentano embraced not only intentionality, but the phenomenology of intentionality. There is not just the bare intentional relation, whatever this may mean. Intentionality comes onto the stage as supported by consciousness/phenomenology. One cannot separate Brentano’s Cartesianism from his Aristotelianism. The question whether Brentano defends only the intentionality thesis, or also accepts the phenomenology of intentionality thesis may therefore be reformulated in terms of whether consciousness or phenomenology is regarded as important for intentionality. The answer to this question is yes, for Brentano considers the intentional relation to be constitutively and reflexively intertwined with, as one may say, reflexive consciousness: the intentional relation cannot be realized, or better to say it cannot get off the ground unless the intentional directedness is ensured by the constitutive reflexive support of consciousness. If I am intentionally directed at the cat, if I have a catrelated thought, this can only happen because while I am intentionally

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directed at the content or at the object, I am also reflexively conscious of this directedness. This is the view of the intentional relation in Brentano that has been repeatedly pointed out to me by Wilhelm Baumgartner. There is this intentional relation, but since we are in the realm of mental phenomena and we can talk about mental intentional directedness, the intentional relation must constitutively be supported by the fact that it is entertained by an agent, who is involved in conscious reflexive directedness precisely at the very moment when there is an act of intentional directedness. When one analyzes the intentional phenomenon, one may thus talk of the mereological constitution of mental phenomena. With respect to this, Brentano’s reistic phase may be construed in the following manner: a mental phenomenon is an accidental whole with substance as its only proper part. Take any of my intentional acts, such as my thought about the cat. This kind of thought is accidentally there; there is no a priori necessity for me to entertain it. But in order for me to be able to entertain it, there must necessarily be a substance-support at the heart of every mental phenomenon: the substance involves phenomenology/consciousness as the very possibility of a mental phenomenon such as my thought to be there. (Potrč 1995) This very fact proves that Brentano adopted the phenomenology of intentionality thesis. Brentano says the following about the intentional relation: “As in every relation, two correlates can be found here. The one correlate is the act of consciousness, the other is that which it is directed upon” (Brentano 1995: 23). The close intertwining of intentionality, on the one hand, and of consciousness/phenomenology, on the other, shows that Brentano’s conception of intentionality avoids separatism. For Brentano intentionality and consciousness/phenomenology come together, or else they would not be there at all. So it would be wrong to concentrate just on the intentional relation, without referring at all to consciousness, for this would bring in such separatist conceptions of intentionality as the causal or teleological account of intentional directedness, which does not assign any crucial role to consciousness/phenomenology. But Brentano certainly does not embrace approaches such as these. Also quite clearly, phenomenology/consciousness for him is not just an accompanying feature as separatism maintains. The whole experiential world is involved in phenomenology, with its actualist and implicit effectivity.

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Brentano is clearly opposed to separatism as he explicitly stresses the importance and the constitutive role of consciousness in supporting the intentional relation. Here is the famous passage where he introduces intentionality: Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (and also mental) inexistence of an object, and what we would call, although not in entirely unambiguous terms, the reference to a content, a direction upon an object (by which we are not to understand a reality in this case), or an immanent objectivity. Each one includes something as object within itself, although not always in the same way. In presentation, something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired, etc. This intentional inexistence is exclusively characteristic of mental phenomena. (Brentano 1874: 115116)

The passage just quoted may support various interpretations. We will only point out here what fits with our phenomenology of intentionality approach. Yes, there is intentional directedness, but Brentano repeatedly stresses that it is a matter of appearing in the realm of the mental. So, whatever is presented, thought or desired is therefore part of the mental realm. It has its existence within mental phenomena. And a mental phenomenon may exist only if it is supported in its essence by consciousness/phenomenology or in other words, if it happens to be entertained by a conscious agent. Thus the object, which Brentano is interested in, only exists as inhabiting the mental, phenomenologically supported realm. If the passage just quoted is read carefully, it supports the view that Brentano introduced the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, and not just the bare intentionality thesis which is perhaps compatible with separatism. We will argue in what follows that by focusing on mental phenomena, Brentano’s approach may also be given a narrow interpretation. 10 Brentano and narrowness Does Brentano defend narrowness in the broad sense of an identity between my experiential world and that of my brain in the vat’s experiential duplicate? The very importance that Brentano assigns to phenomenology/consciousness shows that he does not embrace a view based on

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external relations and that he rather embraces a view of narrowness, i.e. a perspective that emphasizes the conscious and experiential world. Therefore he would actually accept the equivalence between my experiential world and that of my brain in a vat’s experiential duplicate. As we have just stated, Brentano’s account involves mental phenomena. These are mental phenomena whose very existence depends on the fact that they are supported by consciousness/phenomenology. Nothing in the famous quote, which we have just stated, refers to the importance of the external world. If there is objectivity, it is immanently there, namely it appears as immanent to mental phenomena. But these, as we argued, need to be grounded in phenomenology/consciousness for Brentano. This more than supports the fact that it is reasonable to interpret Brentano as endorsing the view of the equivalence between my experiential world and my brain in a vat’s experiential duplicate world. The brain in a vat thought experiment excludes external reality, at least in the methodological sense so that one may genuinely focus on the realm of the mental. If such is the case, then each intentional act will be seen as an experiential act constituted by consciousness/phenomenology. This is then the basis for concentrating on the mental experiential realm. So Brentano’s approach supports a narrow account, whereby the external world is excluded, as well as the equivalence between my experience and my brain in a vat’s duplicate experience. An additional explanation may be helpful here though. I like the passage in which Brentano says something like this: after all, he says, we should not deny the existence of the external world, which is there independently of our experiences. (“Die Existenz einer von uns unabhängingen Welt werden wir uns aber nicht leugnen lassen.”) In this regard, Brentano somehow ironically affirms methodological limitation on what is internal to our experiences and on what might be an equivalence between my experiential world and my brain in a vat duplicate's experiential world. A brain in a vat, after all, does not need to deny the existence of the external world, a point which was exploited by Putnam. The thought experiment simply helps us to concentrate on what is essential in an account of mental phenomena. A brain in a vat has an experiential world, and therefore possesses all the phenomenology and intentionality, as well as the phenomenal intentionality that I have, all in hoping that I myself am not in the brain in a vat situation.

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Yes, Brentano supports narrowness, and he is committed to a complete view of the phenomenology of intentionality just as it were possessed by a brain in a vat. We do not need to further indulge into skepticism at this moment. Here is a quote from Brentano which confirms our interpretation: “Not only have we shown that in fact none of our evident perceptions relates to the external objects. We also have shown that such perceptions are not possible at all, be it in our own case or in the case of some other thinking being.” (Brentano, 1981)

11 Narrowness, possible worlds, and referentialism If Brentano defends the phenomenology of intentionality thesis – does he conceive the narrowness of phenomenology in terms of aspectual, Fregean senses or possible worlds of an indirect kind in contrast to the realist assumption of referentialism? We have seen by now that Brentano defends the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, and thus the intertwining, on the one side, of phenomenology/consciousness, and on the other, of the intentional relation. In concentrating on conscious experiences, he also defends the thesis of narrowness, i.e. the absence of the external world’s involvement into phenomenological and/or into intentional relation. The question now is in what manner does Brentano construe this narrowness. If he would argue against the importance of a direct relation with the external world concerning intentionality, he would have to invoke senses or aspects as rather indirect construals that would lead to narrowness. But this is not the case, as among other things, he explicitly rejects the existence of all dependent entities, such as aspects or senses, most clearly during his reistic phase. According to his reistic view, there are only things such as “there-is-this-thinkingthing”, or “there-is-this-cat-thinking-thing”, where the mentioned thing is a conscious or a content centered entity. Thus again, there are no dependently existing entities, such as presentations or thoughts. There are only conscious things, such as “a-thinking-think-right-nowand-here”. As both Fregean senses and possible worlds are dependent entities, Brentano would not accept them. Brentano does not argue against the existence of an external world, existing independently of our experiential and mental realm. As we have mentioned, he ironically admits the existence of such a world, while strictly focusing on an analysis of mental phenomena. This is

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why he is also not interested in promoting mental phenomena as aspects that would be determined in respect to the existing entities of the external world. Each mental phenomenon is endowed with substantial phenomenology. It is to be studied independently of the external world, whose existence again does not need to be denied. But this is not a big deal. The essential point concerns the adoption of the phenomenology of intentionality thesis. So there is no considerable argument against the assumption of referential realism in Brentano. What about possible worlds? All possibilities would be, according to Brentano, measured by the actuality of the immediate and experiential phenomenological world. Every mental appearance needs to have phenomenology as its basis, i.e. the conscious what-it’s-like quality of being entertained by an agent, who is a conscious substance. Possibilities are thus measured by the actuality of phenomenological experiences. 12 Indirect narrowness? If Brentano does not accept indirect narrowness in terms of aspects or possible worlds – what would then be his criticism of indirect narrowness in the sense either of aspectual senses (Frege) and of possible worlds (Meinong)? By adopting the phenomenology of intentionality thesis, Brentano proves to be an actualist. He is interested in mental phenomena and in the actual experiential world as supported by consciousness. So he would not accept possible worlds. Notice that possible worlds introduce indirect narrowness, that is, indirect if measured against the actual world. We have also stated that Brentano rejects the existence of dependent entities. This may mean that he only accepts independent entities, such as mental phenomena. Brentano’s reistic phase is perhaps the clearest with respect to this. Whoever embraces reism does not endorse indirectly and, therefore, independently existing entities, and these include Fregean senses. Fregean senses are aspects, which are perhaps potentially infinite in their number, in respect to the existence of referents. The Morning Star and the Evening Star are two senses that aim at the same referent, which exists in the external world independently of them. But senses are dependent in respect to this referent. Notice also that Brentano does not argue against the realist’s external world; he is just not concerned about it, and he somewhat puts it in

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parentheses, which allows him to adopt not an indirect form of narrowness, but an engaged view of narrowness. Aspects, senses and possible worlds do not fit with the evidential engagement of actualism, such as it is found in Brentano’s analysis of mental phenomena. Brentano does not agree with the Meinongian theory of objects either, for he does not think that objects are what the intentional relation is directed at. We have seen that objects are for him inexistent in that they reside in phenomenologically supported intentional relations. However they are not external objects. Rather, the intentional relation targets contents. We should point out an important fact at this stage. In a way similar to Frege, who presupposes the existence of the referent in the external world in relation to which senses come to be as dependently existing entities, Meinong is perhaps not only committed to the externally existing referents, but still tries to preserve a direct referential relation to objects. Meinong is namely committed to the objectual relation of direct reference, no matter what. He takes seriously the suggestion, which is alluded in Brentano’s famous remark on intentionality, that every mental phenomenon is directed at something, which means, according to Meinong, an object. Brentano however was not committed to the existence of objects. He was interested in an analysis of phenomena on the basis of the phenomenology of intentionality thesis. This is why the difference between content and object ultimately did not really matter to him. Brentano was also not interested in defending a correspondence theory of truth in relation to something which is ultimately real. This is different than Meinong, who is really committed to such a project. There has to be a direct referential relation, i.e. a direct relation to an object, even if this object does not exist in external reality. Precisely in order to safeguard the conception of truth as direct correspondence, Meinong introduces several strata of objects. These objects may be conceived as possible worlds, with their ontological reality. It is acceptable for Meinong that these objects are evidentially supported by consciousness. But they are still ontologically dependent entities; there is no independent realm in which they would have a strictly actual existence, as in the case of Brentano. By introducing several strata of objectual realms, Meinong introduces possible worlds as dependent entities in opposition to the single and actual world, which would rather coincide with the (monistic) reism that Brentano proposes. At the end of his Theory

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of Categories, Brentano, among other things, presents a monistic view of the world. 13 Phenomenological narrowness and intentional directedness What pushes Brentano from a local and global to a transglobal conception of narrowness, based on the actual and holistic experiential world? This would be the active phenomenological narrowness’ ability to support intentional directedness by functioning as the background. Let us get back to basics again. One may say that it is in fact Brentano who introduced the notion of intentionality into contemporary philosophical discussions, as indicated in previously reported quote. But in order for the intentional relation to function at all, Brentano needed an appropriate support. We may perhaps first try to obtain it in respect to the external referential relation. But this goes against Brentano’s strict focus on mental phenomena. So the external world should be put in parentheses at this stage, and a more indirect approach should be suggested. An aspectual approach involving Fregean senses or Meinongian objectual strata is proposed here. Aspects do not suppose phenomenological quality, and they are possibilist, thereby countering Brentano’s evidentialist actualism. A more engaging and broader phenomenological environment is needed to support the intentional relation. In the end, it turns out that it is only the really broad transglobal experiential world that is able to support intentional relation. In other words, a cognizer should inhabit the whole experiential world in order for him to be able to entertain intentional relations. Zombies are therefore without intentional directedness. The first narrowness that one may encounter while searching for the basis of the intentional relation is local, i.e. the separatist kind of narrowness, where phenomenology comes in independent, accompanying chunks. But this will not do. One must therefore try to broaden the search for an appropriate phenomenology in the way of aspects and other dependent entities. At this point, we are still concerned with an environment that is local since the whole world will not do either. Only if the whole world is conceived as experiential can the intentional relation function. This is the transglobal world, which is needed for intentionality. Such is our reconstruction of Brentano’s itinerary, proving that the phenomenology of intentionality is really needed for intentionality to be there.

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Let us repeat some points that we have encountered during our inquiry. Since Brentano does not endorse narrowness in terms of aspects, which is neither phenomenological nor really narrow, for it is a case of indirect narrowness, he must therefore support the other kind of narrowness: the narrowness based on the holistic and actual experiential world. The phenomenology that is actually involved here is transglobal: it does not simply encompass the world, but the holistic experiential world, which means that phenomenology/consciousness is really implied by it. It is only this kind of phenomenology which is able to account for intentional directedness, that therefore confirms the basic and constitutive phenomenal intentionality to which Brentano is really committed. In order to get intentional directedness off the ground, Brentano needs the kind of phenomenology involving the whole experiential world, functioning as the implicit background in support of intentional acts. This again proves that Brentano defends the phenomenology of intentionality thesis.

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Baumgartner, E. (ed.) 1996. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Dettelbach: Roell Verlag. Brentano, F. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot. —— 1995. Descriptive Psychology. London: Routledge. —— 1981. Sensory and Noetic Consciousness. London: Routledge. ——1981a. The Theory of Categories. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Press. Chalmers, D. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. —— 2009. ‘Propositions and Attitude Ascriptions: A Fregean Account’. Online: http://consc.net/papers/propositions.pdf —— 2010. ‘Ontological Anti-Realism’. Online: http://consc.net/papers/ontology.pdf Frege, G. 1892. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100: 25-50. Horgan, T. and Potrč, M. 2010. ‘The Epistemic Relevance of Morphological Content’ in Acta Analytica 25: 155-173. Horgan, T. and Tienson, J. 2002. ‘The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality’ in D. Chalmers, (ed.) Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. New York: Oxford University Press. Horgan, T., Potrč, M. and Tienson, J. (eds.) 2001. Origins: The Common sources of the Analytic and Phenomenological Traditions. Spindel Conference 2001, Vol. XL, Supplement, The Southern Journal of Philosophy. Meinong, A. 1960. ‘The Theory of Objects’ in R.M. Chisholm (ed.) Realism and the Background of Phenomenology. Glencoe IL: Free Press. Potrč, M. 1995. Pojavi in psihologija: psihološki spisi. Ljubljana: ZIFF. —— 2002. Intentionality of Phenomenology in Brentano. In Horgan, T., Potrč, M. and Tienson, J. (eds.) Origins: The Common sources of the Analytic and Phenomenological Traditions. Spindel Conference 2001, Vol. XL, Supplement, The Southern Journal of Philosophy: 231-67. —— 2008. ‘The World of Qualia’ in E. Wright (ed.) The Case for Qualia. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 109-124. Russell, B. 1905. ‘On Denoting’ in Mind 14: 479-493. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. London: Blackwell Publishing.

3 ONTOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS INTRODUCTION (GUILLAUME FRÉCHETTE)

Towards the end of the 1860s, Brentano started work on his metaphysics. The first outcomes of this work are his lectures on metaphysics, which Brentano gave in Würzburg between 1867 and 1873. There are many different versions of these lectures, which were given five times in Würzburg (and also many times in Vienna) under different titles (as ‘selected topics in metaphysics’). Besides Brentano’s own lecture manuscripts, there are also a great amount of lecture notes taken by his students. These lectures notes played a central role in the diffusion of Brentano’s metaphysics among many generations of students, since they were copied and transcribed by a large number of them. Husserl, for example, who never attended a lecture in metaphysics by Brentano, had written down his own copy from the lecture notes of other students, and had a fairly good knowledge of their content. The Würzburger metaphysics were divided in four main parts; 1) the apologetics of the knowledge of reason against the sceptics and the criticists (also called ‘transcendental philosophy’); 2) ontology; 3) theology and 4) cosmology. In his transcendental philosophy, Brentano discusses the skeptical objections against inner and outer perception, against axioms, induction, and knowledge in general. Ontology is called the ‘special metaphysics’ and deals with a) the manifold meanings of being; b) the parts of being and c) its causes and principles. The second part (b) is further subdivided into i) physical parts; ii) logical parts; and iii) metaphysical parts. This special metaphysics is the ground for the next two parts of his general metaphysics, namely theology and cosmology. In his theology, Brentano discusses the first cause of being and of reality, and discusses classical proofs of the existence of God. The last part,

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cosmology, deals with the world as a whole – its unity, multiplicity, and teleology. Brentano’ early metaphysics has been much influenced by Aristotle’s world view and Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of Aristotle.1 In ‘Being as the True’, Werner Sauer focuses on one important aspect of this early influence, namely Brentano’s development of Aristotle’s concept of being as the True. Sauer’s thesis is that Brentano’s account of Being as the True, in his PhD dissertation of 1862 – according to which Being as the True and Being in the sense of the copula are homogenous – in fact resulted from Aquinas’ commentary of Metaphysics Δ.7 in terms of the existential ‘is’. After discussing in detail Aquinas’ interpretation of Aristotle’s metaphysics, in which the commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true is interpreted by Aquinas in terms of an existential use of ‘to be’, Sauer points out that Brentano relied heavily on Aquinas’ commentary of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Thus, in order to harmonize Aquinas’ commentary of E.4, which actually is about being as the True, with the commentary of Δ.7, Brentano saw it necessary to deal with being as the True in terms of being in the sense of the copula. Brentano’s early account of the plurivocity of being (in the sense of the categories and in the sense of the True) therefore owes more to Aquinas than to Aristotle himself, and its abandonment five years later in his lectures on Metaphysics of 1867 should be seen more as a return to Aristotle than as a rejection of the Aristotelian doctrine. These lectures are also the point of departure of Wilhelm Baumgartner’s article ‘Franz Brentano’s Mereology’, which stresses the centrality of Brentano’s mereology for his ontology of things and mind, but also for his account of scientific history. Baumgartner offers a panorama of the different stages and applications of Brentano’s conception of the relations between the whole and its parts, showing the width of the scope of Brentano’s analyses. These influenced many generations of philosophers, among them Stumpf (psychology of tone), Ehrenfels (Gestalt qualities), Husserl (formal ontology) Twardowski (ontology) and Meinong (theory of object). Most of the works in ontology and mereology from the Lvov-Warsaw School, founded by Twardowski, were written indirectly under the influence of Brentano’s ontology.2 The same can be said of the works of the 1 2

See Brentano (1977, 291). See Stumpf (1883); (1890), Ehrenfels (1890), Husserl (1901), Twardowski (1894)

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Gestalt psychologists from the schools of Berlin and Graz, as well as the Prague linguistic circle.3 The last of the three papers of this section ties in with Baumgartner’s presentation of Brentano’s mereology as an overarching principle in his philosophy, discussing this principle from two other metaphysical points of view, namely theology and cosmology. As we mentioned, theology was addressed in Brentano’s early Würzburger lectures on Metaphysics. This third section of the lectures dealt with two basic questions: I) the existence of God (vom Dasein Gottes) and II) his properties (wie Gott ist).4 The last part of his Metaphysics, cosmology, dealt with five different considerations: a) multiplicity and unity in the world: the whole as goal of the parts; b) Progress in the world: finality as goal of history; c) degrees in the world; the higher as goal of the lower; d) finitude of the world in numbers and quantities; and finally e) evil in the world. In her paper, Susan Gabriel explores the role of mereology in connection with these two metaphysical issues, more precisely with the existence of God (theology) and the problem of evil (theodicy).5 She focuses on the reistic period in Brentano’s writings, suggesting that reism is the logical result of Brentano’s commitment to the epistemic priority – the ‘cogito’ –, coupled with its ontological priority. Reism, together with the endorsement of the Thomistic thesis of the convertibility of being and the good, have a strong consequence on Brentano’s views of theodicy: the “one-who-judges, and one-who-loves or one-whohates may be mistaken or even perverse and evil, yet each of these retains as a one-sidedly-separable proper part an entity that is good in itself, the thinker, the substantial subject of presentation.” Here also, Brentano’s conception of the problem of evil harmonizes with the overarching principle of his philosophy: the theory of whole and parts. But again, the philosophy of Aquinas proves here to be key in his appreciation of Aristotle’s philosophy.

and Meinong (1904). On Brentano and Leśniewski, who was a central figure in the Lvov-Warsaw school, see Simons (2006). 3 On the influence of Brentano on the school of Berlin and Graz and on the Prague linguistic circle, see Fisette and Fréchette (2007, 49ff.) 4 See Brentano (1867, 31758). 5 At least in the early Würzburg lectures on Metaphysics (Brentano, 1867), theodicy is dealt with as a part of cosmology.

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Brentano, F. 1867. Vorlesungen über Metaphysik. Manuscript M96. Houghton Library (Harvard University, Cambridge MA). —— 1977. Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, Hamburg: Meiner. Ehrenfels, C. 1890. ‘Über “Gestaltqualitäten”’ in Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie 14: 249-292. Fisette, D. and G. Fréchette. 2007. ‘Le legs de Brentano’, in Fisette, D. and G. Fréchette (eds.), À l’école de Brentano. De Würzburg à Vienne. Paris: Vrin. Husserl, E. 1901. Logische Untersuchungen. Halle: Max Niemeyer. Meinong, A. 1904. ‘Über Gegenstandstheorie’ in Meinong, A. (ed.) Untersuchungen zur Gegesntandstheorie und Psychologie. Leipzig: Barth, 1-50. Simons, P. 2006. ‘Things and Truths: Brentano and Leśniewski, Ontology and Logic’ in Chrudzimski, A. and D. Łukasiewicz (ed.). Actions, Products, and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. Stumpf, C. 1883. Tonpsychologie, vol. I. Leipzig: Hirzel. —— 1890. Tonpsychologie, vol. II. Leipzig: Hirzel. Twardowski, K. 1894. Vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung. Vienna: Hölder.

BEING AS THE TRUE: FROM ARISTOTLE TO BRENTANO WERNER SAUER

(UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ)

Attentive readers of Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotle’s being as the true, on hōs alēthes, in his dissertation of 1862, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, will not fail to notice therein rather peculiar, if not perplexing features. The central aim of this paper is to show that to understand what Brentano’s account of being as the true is actually concerned with in its overall intention, it must be read in light of Thomas Aquinas’ views on the topic. This paper consists of six sections. In section 1, the stage is set. Section 2 presents in brief outline an exposition of Aristotle’s own account of being as the true in Metaphysics Δ.7. In section 3, we consider Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true insofar as it provides Brentano with an important premise for his own interpretation of that passage. Section 4 turns to Aquinas, and focuses in particular on his reading of the Δ.7 passage in his commentary on the Metaphysics. Then in section 5, Brentano himself comes into the picture, and it will be shown that what in his interpretation of Aristotle’s being as the true strikes the reader as rather peculiar is due to his attempt to defend Aquinas’ account in the context of contemporary Aristotle scholarship. Finally, section 6 attempts to show that the conception of being as the true in Brentano’s dissertation already prefigures, so to speak, the doctrine of judgments which he then presents in the Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt of 1874.1 1 In past years, I had the benefit of engaging in lengthy discussions with Mauro Antonelli on the topic of this paper, from which I have profited a great deal; unfortunately, he himself in his 2001 study did not address Aquinas’ connection to Brentano’s 1862 interpretation of being as the true, presumably because he was prevented from doing so by the already very wide spectrum covered by his study,

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1 Before his reistic turn, Brentano equates Aristotle’s being as the true with being in the sense of what exists. As he puts it succinctly in a 1889 text: “... on hōs alēthes, i.e. in the sense of what exists (d.h. im Sinne des Existierenden)” (Brentano 1974, 48). A more detailed account is presented in the fragment bearing the title ‘Das Seiende im Sinne des Wahren’, in which with explicit reference to Aristotle, he draws the following distinction: When Aristotle distinguished the meanings of being, he distinguished between being in the sense of the essential (des Wesenhaften), i.e., substance and essential properties, and being in the sense of the true (des Wahren), of the factually given (des tatsächlich Gegebenen). This latter concept needs explanation. It is not opposed to the concept of essential being in this way that they would exclude each other. On the contrary, no essential being would be an essential being if it were not anything factually given as well. Everything which is, is, insofar it is, a being in the sense of the true, the factually given, and of course there cannot be an essential being there being not (das es nicht gibt) (Brentano 1974, 30).

Brentano then proceeds to give as an example of what is merely a being as the true, the case of the thought-of-thing (ens rationis, Gedankending). For instance, the sun is a being as the true which is also an essential being, whereas the thought-of-sun (the so-called intentional correlate of the thinking of the sun) is not an essential being, but nevertheless a being as the true, i.e. an existing item, because there is a thought-of-sun as long as someone is thinking of the sun (even if there were no sun). Thus, Brentano sets up the following scheme: being in general = being as the true, i.e. in the sense of what exists, divided into essential being, Wesenhaftes what is only a being as the true

thereby not allowing him to further address what would have been in this context a mere detail (but see the important reference to Aquinas on p.255f). In contrast, Tanasescu’s inattention to the Aquinas connection in his otherwise interesting 2002-03 paper, which deals exclusively with Brentano’s 1862 account of being as the true, is difficult to understand.

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Brentano refers to Aristotle’s Met. Δ.7, but the scheme that he extracts from that text appears strangely remote from it. In this chapter of Book Δ of the Metaphysics, Aristotle gives his well-known fourfold classification of being: 1) coincidental being (on kata symbebēkos, ens per accidens); 2) being in virtue of itself (on kath’ hauto, ens per se), i.e. being in the categories (substance, quality, quantity, etc.); 3) being in the sense in which “ ‘to be’ (to einai) and ‘is’ (to éstin) signifies that it is true” (1017a31), i.e. what is then called on hōs alēthes in the brief recapitulation of the Δ.7 classification at the beginning of E.2; and finally, 4) potential and actual being (dynamei and entelecheiāi on). To be sure, there is a superficial fit in that Brentano’s essential being corresponds to Aristotle’s on kath’ hauto, categorial being, and that of course Aristotle too distinguishes being as the true from the former: but the crucial difference is that the few lines in which Aristotle deals with being as the true do not give the slightest indication that this mode of being is supposed to cover categorial being as well. On the other hand, Brentano’s scheme is practically the same as the distinction between two ways being (ens) is spoken of, which occurs frequently – and also usually with reference to Aristotle, that is, again, to Met. Δ.7 – in the writings of Aquinas; for instance, in the beginning of chapter I of his early treatise De Ente et Essentia: As the philosopher in book V of the Metaphysics says, being per se is spoken of in two ways: in one way inasmuch as it is divided by the ten categories, in the other inasmuch as it signifies the truth of propositions.2 The difference between them is that in the second way anything can be called a being about which a [true] affirmative proposition can be formed, even if it posits nothing in reality (etiam si nihil in re ponat), and in this way privations and negations are called beings: for we say that negation is opposed to affirmation, and that blindness is in an eye. But in the first way only what posits something

2

It appears strange that Aquinas subsumes both categorial being and being which “signifies the truth of a proposition” under the heading “ens per se”, as these are clearly separated by Aristotle. Aquinas does this again in his commentary on the Metaphysics (in Met.) written much later, see in Met. V. 9, 889. (The reference is to Book, Lectio and to paragraph in the Marietti edition of the commentary on Metaphysics). The reason for this peculiarity lies in the somewhat unclear structure of Met. Δ.7. However, with respect to our topic, this is of no concern, and can be ignored altogether.

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In other places Aquinas also associates with each of these two ways a specific question. The second way concerns “the question whether it is (an est), and in this way evil is, just as blindness is (caecitas est)”, which makes plain that being taken in the second way is being in the sense of what exists. In contrast, being in the first way refers to “what not only answers the question whether it is, but also answers the question what it is (quid est)”3 which is to say that only these beings, that is, those relating to the categories, have a quiddity, i.e. an essence. Any categorial being is a being in the second way too, but not vice versa. Thus we arrive at the following scheme: being (ens) in general, that about which a true affirmation can be formed, or alternatively, that which answers the question ‘An est?’, i.e., that which exists, falling into two classes, viz., being as divided by the categories, answers also the question ‘Quid est?’, posits something in reality (first-class beings)

does not answer the ‘Quid est?’ question, posits nothing in reality, e.g., privations and negations (second-class beings4)

The only difference between Aquinas’ scheme and Brentano’s is then that Aquinas does not equate being in the sense of what exists with being as the true, that is, ens quasi verum: such would be the mode of being which he says, echoing Aristotle’s Δ.7 1017a31 dictum, “signifies the truth of propositions”, but he sets aside being in this sense in favour of being regarded as that which can be the subject of a true affirmation, and does not, in contrast to Brentano, call being in this sense, which relates to the ‘An est?’ question, also ens quasi verum. There can hardly be any doubt that Brentano originally derived his scheme not directly from Aristotle, but from Aquinas, especially in view of the fact that it was the Doctor Angelicus and not Aristotle who was the true master of his early thinking; at that time, it was the 3

See Quaest. Disputatae de Malo qu.1 art.1 ad 19. This convenient characterization of the two classes of beings is taken from Kenny, 2002, 3. 4

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Saint’s Summa Theologiae that held in his view the place of honour of “the systematic masterpiece of all times” (Brentano 1867, 554). With respect to the only difference between the two schemes, Brentano takes, in his dissertation of 1862, the additional step of regarding being in the sense of what exists in terms of ‘being as the true’. But to fully understand what occurs in the interpretation of Aristotle’s being as the true in Brentano’s 1862 work, we must undertake preparatory steps, beginning with the passage on being as the true in Met. Δ.7 itself. 2 Here are the few lines 1017a31-35 that are devoted by Aristotle in Met. Δ.7 to being as the true, quoted in full and translated as literally as possible: Again, ‘to be’ (to einai) and ‘is’ (to éstin) signify that it is true (hoti alēthes), and ‘not to be’ that it is not true but false, alike in the case of affirmation and of negation (epi kataphaseōs kai apophaseōs), as for instance: that it is Socrates musical (hoti ésti Sōkratēs mousikos), that this [i.e., Socrates is musical] is true (hoti alēthes touto); or, that it is Socrates not pale (hoti ésti Sōkratēs ou leukos), that it is true (hoti alēthes); on the other hand, not is the diagonal commensurable (ouk éstin hē diametros symmetros), that it is false.

We should mention, as a textual note, that in the last line, 1017a35, the codices state ‘asymmetros’ instead of ‘symmetros’: ‘symmetros’ is suggested by Alexander’s reading (see section 3), which has been accepted by many modern Metaphysics editors including Ross who, in his magisterial edition, argues convincingly that it “is required by the sense”.5 Ancient Greek has a use of the verb ‘to be’, ‘einai’ which has come to be called its veridical use: according to this use, ‘esti’, ‘is’, is equivalent to ‘is true’ or ‘is the case’. An example of the veridical use of ‘to be’ appears in the beginning of the Posterior Analytics where Aristotle speaks of the knowledge presupposed by teaching and learning, giving the example of the tertium non datur; we hold for example, 5 Ross 1953 I p.309. Ibid., clxiii, Ross argues that Alexander’s commentary on the Metaphysics represents a third independent Metaphysics text, which existed during his time apart from the two that can be inferred from the major manuscripts.

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Werner Sauer that for every proposition either to affirm it or to negate it is true (hoti hapan ē phēsai ē apophēsai alēthes), that it is (hoti ésti). (I.1 71a13f.)

This ‘hoti ésti’, ‘that it is’, means ‘that it is true’. Now, the mode of being exhibited by the veridical use of ‘to be’ might be approached in the following way. The on kath’ hauto of Met. Δ.7 correlates with word questions such as what is X ? – a human (substance); how is X qualified or what is its quality ? – pale (quality); and so on. Then, in order to obtain being as the true, we turn to sentential questions: in posing a sentential question to someone, we ask that he or she should assert its content as true or reject it as false. In a brief way, this can be done, to restrict ourselves to an affirmative case, by uttering ‘yes’, or ‘it is true’/‘it is the case’; the Ancient Greek could to the same effect utter ‘ésti’, which a quite close equivalent would be the Germanism ‘so it is’: Is S P ? / Is S not P ? – ésti, [so it] is. With ‘ésti’ for an answer, the content of the interrogative sentence appears to be framed as a being, and since this ‘ésti’ means ‘is true’, the being in question will be being as the true. Thus, in the case of the content of sentences such as S to be /not to be/ P (or that S is /is not/ P), to be is to be true. This approach of course differs from what the passage of Met. Δ.7 says concerning being as the true. To link things up, we should note that the linguistic devices just used for asserting the content of a question as true are expeditious devices, so to speak, which allow us to assert what is asked without having to repeat it in the corresponding declarative sentence, what we do when giving the answer in full: (a) It is the case [or: it is true] that Socrates is musical. But the prefix ‘it is the case that’ in (a) is unnecessary, since what it is meant to convey can also be conveyed by the declarative sentence itself, to which it is attached. As Frege remarked, the truth claim resides “in the form of the declarative sentence” (1892, 150), no matter whether we write (a) or simply ‘Socrates is musical’. In spoken language we can often leave it to the context to determine whether we use the sentence itself to assert its content as being true. In written

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language we may for this purpose give the copula an emphatic position: (b) It is Socrates musical – ésti Sōkratēs mousikos where the copula of course does not assert Socrates, but the content of the whole sentence whose copula it is to be true: the scope of its role as an assertion sign is the entire sentence formed by it in its purely copulative role. In this respect, we may present what is said about being as the true in Met. Δ.7 in the following way.6 First, “‘ésti’ signifies that it is true, both in affirmation and negation”: (A) Is Socrates musical? –

(B) Is Socrates not pale? –

(Yes, so it is), it is Socrates musical, ésti Sōkratēs mousikos: ‘ésti’ “signifies that this: Socrates to be musical, is true”, i.e., posits it as true. (Yes, so it is), it is Socrates not pale, ésti Sōkratēs ou leukos: ‘ésti’ “signifies that this: Socrates to be not pale, is true”, i.e., posits it as true.

Note that in the answer (B) the negation word ‘not’, ‘ou’, does not belong to ‘ésti’ and hence is not in an emphatic position alongside it, but belongs to what expresses the content, for what is posited as true is Socrates to be not pale. Secondly, “ ‘ouk ésti’ signifies that it is false again both in affirmation and negation”: (C) Is the diagonal commensurable? –

6

(No, it is not so), it is not the diagonal commensurable, ouk éstin hē diametros symmetros: ‘ouk éstin’ “signifies that this: the diagonal to be commensurable, is false” i.e., rejects it as false.

Which is essentially consistent with Ross, 1953 I, 308f. The same construal is also endorsed by Antonelli, 2001, 81.

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(D) Is the diagonal not incommensurable? –

(No, it is not so), it is not the diagonal not incommensurable, ouk éstin hē diametros ouk asymmetros: ‘ouk éstin’ “signifies that this: the diagonal to be not incommensurable, is false”, i.e., rejects it as false.

This example (which is Ross’s), which provides the illustration for the fourth case, is left out by Aristotle himself. With respect to the negation word in (D), note that in its first occurrence, alongside ‘éstin’ in an emphatic position, it belongs, just as in (C), to the sign of rejection, but belongs in its second occurrence to what expresses the content which is rejected as false. In Met. Δ.7, being as the true is only introduced, but not discussed. It is in E.4 that Aristotle addresses the question of its nature, as follows: Being as the true (to hōs alēthes on) and non-being as the false (mē on hōs pseudos) depend on composition and division (peri synthesin esti kai diairesin), and taken together, on the division according to contradictory opposites. For the true lies in the affirmation in the case of what is compounded [in reality] and in the negation in the case of what is divided, while the false has the contradictory of this allocation (1027b18-23).

Again, being as the true covers both affirmation and negation, which was exemplified earlier by (A) and (B). Basically, the significance of this passage for our topic relates to its connection with Aquinas and Brentano, as we will show in sections 4 and 5. Here we will only note that the source of being as the true, which is not specified in Δ.7, is ‘composition and division’, that is, our mental activity of making affirmative and negative judgments. But then, without judgers there would be no such thing as being as the true, “for the true and the false are not in the things (pragmasin)” (1027b25f.), but its cause “is a certain affection of the mind (tēs dianoias ti pathos)” (b34-28a1), viz., the state it is in when judging. Since being as the true and coincidental being “both are around (peri) the remaining genus of being” i.e. categorial being – in the sense, for example, that Socrates to be musical

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“is around” the substance of Socrates and the quality of musicalness –, they therefore “do not indicate any extra nature of being” (1028a1f.). Because of this and its dependence on the mind, being as the true, just as coincidental being, is to be dismissed (apheteon 1027b34, both apheisthō 1028 a3) from metaphysics, i.e. from the science of being qua being.7 As it was to be expected, the items that have turned up as what falls under the heading ‘being as the true’ are only sentential contents: 7 Thus we may well view Aristotle’s analysis of being as the true as an example of Sprachkritik. What he calls being as the true, or at least its equivalents considered as entities of propositional structure, has in more recent philosophical verbiage come to be called Sätze an sich by Bolzano, or generally, non-linguistic propositions. Now, our way of involving ourselves in “ontological commitment” regarding such entities is as follows: We start from some sentence ‘p’. Then, for whatever reason, we expand ‘p’ to (a) It is true that p. As such, this move is devoid of any ontological commitment as long as we remain aware of what we have done: expanding ‘p’ by attaching to it an operator that forms sentences out of sentences: ‘it is true that –’, such that the logical structure of (a) is displayed by (b) It is true that / p. Reification, and with it ontological commitment, comes in as soon as we regard the that-clause as a logical unit, ‘that-p’, whereby it becomes an abstract singular term and the rest changes into a predicate attached to it, stating something of what the abstract singular term designates: (c) That-p / is true; it is only (c), but not (b), that allows expansion to (d) (∃x)(that-p = x & x is true), which is said to express in canonical form an ontological commitment to Sätze an sich or the like which is inherent in (a) as analysed by (c). A speaker of Ancient Greek, however, could move from ‘p’ quite directly, without any intermediate reifying step, to an entity associated with ‘p’, simply by responding to the question, whether p, with an ‘ésti’, which looks as if it would straight off exhibit the content of the question to be some sort of entity. Thus he would have been even more tempted than certain modern philosophers to populate his universe with Sätze an sich or the like, sharing with substances the property of being self-subsistent, being less than substances by not being capable of acting on another thing, but more than the corruptible substances such as humans and horses and trees by sharing with those nobler substances which are the heavenly bodies the property of being eternal (as the heavenly bodies are in Aristotle’s cosmology). But by pointing out that in this context to be means to be true, and by arguing that there being truths depends on the mind’s judging activity, these entities being, moreover,“around”, i.e. dependent on categorial being, Aristotle at once demotes such purported quasi-substances, which share with proper substances the basic feature of substancehood, viz., self-subsistence, to the rank of only improper beings which have no place in the science of being qua being.

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Socrates to be musical is such a being, but not Socrates nor the quality of musicalness, as is maintained by the view which in section 1 we have encountered as belonging to Brentano: On the contrary, Aristotle explicitly excludes categorial being (i.e. Socrates, musicalness) from the scope of being as the true by emphasizing that the latter “is around” the former, and that it is not, in contrast to the former, extra mentem.8 3 After Aristotle, our next station is Alexander of Aphrodisias who, in his commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true, makes a certain move which will then become important for Brentano’s treatment of it in his dissertation. We subdivide Alexander’s commentary into eight steps: [a] The ‘is’ (to ésti) and ‘to be’ (to einai) and ‘being’ (to on) signify the true (to alēthes), but ‘not to be’ (to mē einai) and ‘non-being’ (to mē on) the false ( pseudos); for we say that the true is and is being, but that the false is not and is non-being, [b] and this alike both in affirmation and negation (en kataphasei kai apophasei), [c] that is, both when [something] is predicated of something in affirmative manner (kataphatikōs) and in negative manner (apophatikōs). [d] For one who says ‘It is Socrates musical’, says that what is said is true, using ‘is’ with reference to the true. [e] And similarly, one who says ‘It is Socrates not pale’, predicating not-pale (ou leukos) in negative manner (apophatikōs), again says it is true that Socrates is not-pale (einai mē leukon Sōkratēn). [f] And thus the true is in affirmation (en tēi kataphasei) but the false in negation (en tēi apophasei), [g] as when one says that it is not the diagonal commensurable with the side (mē einai tēn diametron tēi pleurāi symmetron); for by joining ‘the diagonal commensurable with the side’ to ‘is not’, he says that this (touto = the diagonal to be commensurable with the side) is false. 8

Some object to the Ross-type account of the Δ.7 passage, claiming that ‘true’ and ‘false’ are to be construed as qualifiers of the copula, such that (A), to take just this example, has to be read as ‘Socrates is truly musical’ (see Seidl 1989, 385f., and, following Seidl, Tanasescu 2002/03, 170). But whatever are the virtues of this construal, in any case it has no tendency either to bring us any closer to the Brentano scheme presented in section 1.

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[h] For one who states the affirmation (kataphasis) says that ‘to be’ is true, whereas one who states the negation (apophasis) denies ‘to be’ as being false (Al. in Met. p.371.36-72.10).

According to this, [a] and [b] are almost verbatim renderings of Aristotle’s own words. A further element is introduced with [c], which is a strange thing to read after [b]: after all, [b] seems to be plain enough, yet [c] purports to elucidate it, and moreover, by using the adverbial phrases ‘in affirmative manner’, ‘kataphatikōs’, and ‘in negative manner’, ‘apophatikōs’. One wonders what the point of this is. It becomes evident with [e], which comments on Aristotle’s example (B) ‘It is Socrates not pale’, that Alexander takes (B) to predicate the negated term ‘not-pale’, such that (B) will be, just as (A), an affirmation, albeit with a negative predicate term: ‘It is Socrates not-pale’, which is, according to [c], a predication affirming something of a subject apophatikōs, in a negative manner, i.e. predicating affirmatively a negative predicable of the subject. By this tour de force, Alexander manages to bring (B) under the heading of affirmation, such that both of Aristotle’s examples for the true fall on its side, and to establish the connections affirmation-true and negation-false stated in [f] and reaffirmed in [h], where in contrast to [b] as explained by [c]-[e] negation again means propositional negation. We may note at this point that Alexander’s treatment of (C) in [g] is not on par with his treatment of both (A) and (B): to account for (C) as an example of the false, he takes the ‘is not’ of ‘It is not the diagonal commensurable’ as rejecting the content of another sentence, viz., ‘The diagonal is commensurable’ as false, just as we have done before in section 2. But why did he not treat (B) in the same spirit, taking the ‘is’ of ‘It is Socrates not pale’ as positing the content of the entire sentence ‘Socrates is not pale’ as true? The only explanation one can think of appears to be this: he did not properly distinguish the role of the ‘is’ as an assertion-sign from its role as a mere copula, so that he had no choice but to relate Aristotle’s dictum that the ‘is’ signifies the true exclusively to affirmation, and hence to interpret the master’s ‘both in the case of affirmation and of negation’ in terms of ‘both in the case of a positive and of a negative predicate term’. Such is the reasoning we have thus drawn from Alexander : The ‘is’ signifies the true, and it is the copula of the affirmative proposition; both

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‘Socrates is musical’ and ‘Socrates is not pale’ are true hence ↓ ↓ signifies the true signifies the true as well Therefore, the second sentence must be, just as the first, an affirmation, i.e., its ‘not’ must belong to its predicate term. Of course, if Alexander had subjected (C) to the very same treatment, the ‘asymmetros’ of the codices in Δ.7 1017a35 would have then been required instead of his own ‘symmetros’: The ‘is not’ signifies the false, and it is the negated copula of the negative proposition; hence,

‘The diagonal is not incommensurable’ is false; ↓ signifies the false.

Luminaries of 19th century Aristotle scholarship, such as Bonitz and Schwegler, not only accepted Alexander’s ‘symmetros’ reading in Δ.7 1017a35 (a good thing to do), but also followed the great ancient commentator’s construal of (B) as an affirmation with a negated predicate term. Bonitz argues that because Aristotle’s ‘epi kataphaseōs kai apophaseōs’ “refers kataphasis and apophasis both to ‘to einai’ and to ‘to mē einai’ ”, he used these words here such as not to make the affirmation-negation distinction among propositions, but rather to establish the distinction “which arises from the affirmative or negative nature of the predicates (ex praedicatorum natura affirmativa aut negativa)”. Thus: the proposition: ésti Sōkratēs ou leukos (it is Socrates not pale) is because of its negative predicate to be referred to the apophaseis, but its affirmative copula has the force to affirm that proposition to be true (copula autem affirmativa eam habet vim, ut illam enunciationem veram esse affirmat). (Bonitz 1849, 242)

The mistake of not sufficiently distinguishing the two roles of the copula is clear here in Bonitz. Again, the same view can be drawn from Schwegler (1847/48 III, 212f.), who remains consistent with

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Alexander’s construal of (B) in translating it as ‘die Behauptung, Sokrates ist nicht-weiß’.9 And Brentano in his dissertation followed suit, both in accepting the ‘symmetros’ reading in Δ.7 1017a35, and also, this being the salient point for us, in endorsing Alexander’s reading of (B). In translattranslating the Δ.7 passage, he even avoids from the outset to render ‘kataphasis’ and ‘apophasis’ as ‘Affirmation’ (or ‘Bejahung’) and as ‘Negation’ (or ‘Verneinung’): Again, ‘to be’ and ‘is’ signify that it is true, but ‘not to be’ that it is not true but false, both in positive and in negative utterances (bei positiven sowohl, als negativen Aussprüchen), for instance, Socrates is musical, i.e., this is true, or Socrates is not-white, i.e. it is true; on the other hand, the diagonal is not commensurable, i.e., it is false. (1862 p.34f.)

And as already to be expected from the translation, he comments that here ‘true’ is on the side of the affirmation (although attaching now a positive, and again a negative determination), but ‘false’ is always on the side of the negation. (Ibid., 35)

After this, he proceeds by quoting approvingly Alexander’s [f], adding as well the support of a contemporary authority: “like this, Schwegler too ...” (ibid.). However, going further into Brentano’s 1862 account of being as the true requires as a prerequisite that Aquinas’ treatment of this question be scrutinized. But then we will also see that Alexander’s construal of (B) as an affirmation, which by itself may seem like a minor point that does not truly deserves the attention we have paid to it, is nevertheless a condition sine qua non for what Brentano in his dissertation elicits from the Δ.7 passage on being as the true. 9 Concerning Bonitz’ reading of ‘apophasis’ in Aristotle’s ‘epi kataphaseōs kai apophaseōs’, we may add that surely ‘apophasis’ is used by Aristotle also in the sense of what a negated term signifies (plainly so, e.g., in the list of being in Met. Γ.2 mentioning at its end “apophaseis of some of these”, ‘these’ referring back to affections, qualities etc. listed previously, “or of substance”, 1003b9f.). But then the opposite ‘kataphasis’ is here to mean ‘positive, i.e. non-negated term’ or ‘term of an affirmative nature’, to put it in Bonitz’ way. However, even Bonitz himself does not mention in his Index s.v. (p.375b) a use of ‘kataphasis’ in this sense.

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4 Before considering Aquinas’ commentary on the Metaphysics and more precisely, his commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true, we should first take a look at his comments on the E.4 lines quoted above in section 2: He says, then, “that in one sense being is spoken of as the true (ens dicitur quasi verum)”, that is, that it signifies nothing else than truth (veritatem): for when we ask whether man is an animal, it is answered that he is, by which it is signified that this proposition is true (Cum enim interrogamus si homo est animal, respondetur quod est; per quod significatur, propositionem praemissam esse verum). And in the same way, non-being signifies as the false (non ens significat quasi falsum): for if it is answered that he is not, it is signified that the utterance made is false. Now this being which is called [being] as the true, and non-being which is called [non-being] as the false depend on composition and division ...; and here affirmation is called composition, ... but negation is called division (in Met. VI.4, 1223). And since the being and non-being just mentioned, i.e. the true and the false, depend on composition and division, they therefore also depend on the partition of a contradiction, for every contradiction separates the true and the false from each other, so that one part is true and the other is false … Hence, if two contradictions are formed, one from terms connected [in reality], such as ‘man is an animal’, ‘man is not an animal’, and another from terms disconnected [in reality], such as ‘man is an ass’, ‘man is not an ass’, each of the two contradictions divides within itself the true and the false ... For these two propositions, ‘man is an animal’ and ‘man is not an ass’, are true. But the false has on its side the contradictories of these propositions which fall on the side of the true, because the false has on its side the negation of what is connected and the affirmation of what is disconnected; for these two, ‘man is not an animal’ and ‘man is an ass’, are false. (Ibid., 1225f.)

Here, everything is as we expect it to be. Aquinas clearly points out the veridical use of ‘to be’, and simply calls the being of sentential contents to which it gives rise ens quasi verum, which shows up both in affirmation and in negation (the emphasis on the latter point was the reason why the longer part from section 1225f. was included in the quote). In other words, the passage quoted may serve perfectly well as a commentary on the Δ.7 statement that “ ‘to be’ signifies that it is

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true and ‘not to be’ that it is false, both in affirmation and in negation”, but except for the significant fact that in Δ.7 Aristotle does not consider “composition and division”, our forming of affirmative and negative propositions or judgments, exclusively focusing on the copula of propositions already formed in its role as assertion-sign. However, when turning to Aquinas’ commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true we see things radically changing. But in order to assess it, there is another preliminary point to be considered, namely that in Aquinas a singular existential proposition, whose form is ‘X is’, is by itself a full-fledged proposition formed out of a subject and a predicate which in this case is the existential ‘is’. A concise formulation of this doctrine, combined with a distinction that is also featuring in the commentary, is in the following passage of the Summa Theologiae, in which Aquinas responds to the argument against his identification of esse, Be,10 and essentia in God by arguing that we cannot know God’s essentia, but we can know his esse insofar as we can know that there is a God: esse is spoken of in two ways. In one way it signifies the act of Be (actum essendi), in the other way it signifies the composition of the proposition which the mind forms by attaching the predicate to the subject (coniungens praedicatum subiecto). Now esse taken in the first way, we cannot know God’s esse, just as little as God’s essentia. It is only in the second way that we can have knowledge of God’s esse: for we know that the proposition which we form about God when we say: ‘God is’ (Deus est), is true (Summa Th. Ia qu.3 art.4 ad 2).

Thus, just as ‘God is omnipotent’, the simple proposition ‘God is’ is a case of “attaching the predicate to the subject”, and is hence also a subject-predicate proposition just as the former. But moreover, Aquinas says that this proposition ‘God is’ can be understood in two ways in that there are two ways esse is spoken of. As to be expected, this distinction corresponds to the two ways being, ens, is spoken of in the De Ente et Essentia passage quoted in section 1. With reference to 10

Translating ‘esse’ presents difficulties: the usual ‘being’ conceals the difference between ‘esse’ and ‘ens’; but ‘existence’ will not do either, since we have already tied the verb ‘exists’ with the ‘is’ of ‘X is’ meaning ‘About X a true affirmation can be formed’, and as we will presently see, there is also another, and quite different sense of ‘esse’. Thus we have chosen, in analogy to the German ‘Sein’, the unusual ‘Be’; but the best policy will be to leave ‘esse’ as far as possible untranslated.

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“Book V” of the Metaphysics, i.e. Met. Δ.7, Aquinas explains again that esse is spoken of in two ways … In one way inasmuch as it is the verbal copula (copula verbalis) signifying the composition of any proposition which the mind forms: hence this esse is not anything in the nature of things but only in the act of the soul compounding and dividing (animae componentis et dividentis) [forming affirmative and negative propositions]: and in this way esse can be attributed to anything about which a [true] proposition can be formed, be it a being or the privation of a being; for we say that blindness is (caecitatem esse). In the other way esse is called the act of a being in so far as it is a being (actus entis inquantum est ens), that is, that by which (quo) something is called an actual being (ens actu) in the nature of things: and esse taken in this way is attributed only to those things which are contained in the ten categories, such that what is called being from such esse (ens a tali esse dictum) is divided by the ten categories. (Quaest. Quodlibetales, Quodlibetum IX qu.2 art.2 co)

The first way (the second in the Summa Th. quote) is fairly clear as far as it goes, and corresponds to that way in which being, ens, is spoken of according to which X is a being, i.e. is, when a true affirmation (we now see that this can be ‘X is’ itself) can be formed about X: that is, taken in this sense esse is to exist, and is shared by first-class and second-class beings alike. Let us note that Aquinas clearly begins with the ‘is’ as a copula by saying that “esse signifies the composition of a proposition” but that he then shifts without any explanation to the existential ‘is’ (reminiscent of the move, which we have seen him make in section 1, from an ens that “signifies the truth of propositions” to an ens which can be the subject of a true affirmation). The more intricate part concerns the other way esse is spoken of, according to which esse is the actus essendi or actus entis inquantum est ens, in which sense only first-class beings are said to have esse. In this metaphysical sense, esse is actuality (actus), viz., what makes that, or is that by which, quo, something is an actual being in reality. Now, in God this esse is without any limiting specification, but in creatures it is specified, and thereby limited, by the creature’s form to such-andsuch an esse of such-and-such an actual being, in an animate thing, whose form is a soul, to vivere, living: vivere viventibus est esse, Aquinas repeats Aristotle’s saying that “living is what for living things it is to be” (De Anima II.4 415b13), but in a way which is alien

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to the Philosopher himself further explaining that living is “a certain esse specified by a special principle of esse”,11 viz., soul, whence animate things “do not only have life, but simultaneously with life they also have esse”. Thus the relationship between esse and vivere rather resembles, to employ Kenny’s helpful comparison (2002, 60f.), the relationship between ‘running’ and ‘running slowly’, whereby the living creature compares to the runner whose running is not simply running, period, but is modified in a way which is slow running or fast running. We will find echoes of this doctrine of esse still in the Brentano of 1862, and as indicated already, it is, together with the thesis that a singular existential proposition is a full-fledged subject-predicate proposition which it presupposes, required if we are to come to terms with Aquinas’ commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true, which we are now at last equipped to address. We will quote the passage in full, subdividing it into seven sections. Having addressed the question of categorial being, Aquinas then proceeds as follows, in Met. V.9, 895f.: [1] Then he posits another mode of being, inasmuch as ‘to be’ and ‘is’ signify the composition of the proposition (compositionem propositionis) which the intellect forms when compounding and dividing (componens et dividens). [2] Hence he says that ‘to be’ signifies the truth of a thing (veritatem rei), or as another translation puts it better, that ‘to be’ signifies that some statement is true. [3] Thus the truth of the proposition can be said to be the truth of the thing in the manner of a cause (veritas rei per causam). For by the fact that the thing is or is not (ex eo quod res est vel non est), the statement is true or false. [4] (a) For when we say that something is (aliquid esse), we signify the proposition to be true, and when we say that it is not, we signify the proposition not to be true, and this applies both to affirming and to negating: (b) to affirming, as when we say that Socrates is musical (Socrates est musicus12), because this is true; and to negating, as when we say that Socrates is not pale (Socrates non est albus), because this is true, viz., that he is not pale. And in a similar way we say that it is not the diagonal of a square incommensurable with the side (non est diameter incommensurabilis lateri quadrati), because this is false, 11 12

Quodl. IX qu.2 art.2 ad 1; next quote: Quaest. Disp. de Potentia qu.7 art.2 ad 9. The text has ‘albus’, not ‘musicus’: but this seems to be merely a mistake.

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Werner Sauer viz., its not being not commensurable (non esse ipsum non commensurabilem). [5] One must know that this second mode [of being] relates to the first [= categorial being] as effect to cause: for from this that something is in the nature of things (quod aliquid in rerum natura est), it follows that there is truth and falsity in the proposition, which the intellect signifies by this word ‘is’ (Est) taken as verbal copula (copula verbalis). [6] But since the intellect considers something which in itself a nonbeing as a sort of being (quia aliquid, quod est in se non ens, intellectus considerat ut quoddam ens), such as negation and the like, therefore sometimes esse is said of something in this second mode, but not in the first. For it is said in the second mode that blindness is (quod caecitas est), on the ground that the proposition saying that something is blind (aliquid esse caecum) is true. However, it is not said to be true in the first mode; for blindness does not have any esse in things (in rebus), but is rather the privation of the esse of something. [7] Now it is for whatever thing an incidental matter (accidit) that about it something is truly affirmed in thought or in word, for the thing is not referred to knowledge but vice versa. But the esse which each thing has in its own nature is substantial (Esse vero quod in sui natura unaquaeque res habet, est substantiale); and therefore, when it is said ‘Socrates is’, if this ‘is’ (Est) is taken in the first mode, it is of the kind of a substantial predicate (est de praedicato substantiali); for being is higher with reference to any particular being (superius ad unumquodque entium), as animal is with reference to man. But if this ‘is’ is taken in the second mode, it is a kind of an incidental predicate (est de praedicato accidentali).

At first we observe that in contrast to his commentary on E.4, here in his commentary on Δ.7 Aquinas does not mention an ens quasi verum, being as the true. Certainly, nor does Aristotle in Δ.7, but does so only in the recapitulation of Δ.7 in E.2: but while the lack of the phrase in Δ.7 may seem to be a mere incident, its absence in Aquinas’ commentary is significant, as it will soon become obvious. Secondly we should note that Aquinas, in [1], concentrates right at the beginning on the composition of the proposition consisting in the mind’s “compounding and dividing”, i.e., linking a predicate to a subject by means of ‘is’ and ‘is not’, whereas Aristotle in Δ.7, as we have seen, does not talk of the ‘is’ in its copulative role but focuses

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exclusively on its role as an assertion-sign (and the opposite role of ‘is not’). Kenny (2002, 181) has drawn attention to this difference: Aristotle’s point seems to be to draw attention to the use of the verb ‘to be’ to affirm or deny a whole proposition, as opposed to linking predicate to subject … It is not clear whether Aquinas understood Aristotle in this way. He says that ‘esse’ in this sense signifies the composition of the proposition, which the intellect creates by compounding and dividing. This is the formula he commonly uses to refer to ‘esse’ as the copula, not as an operator with a whole sentence as its scope.

So already we gather from [1] that Aquinas’ “interest, in any case, is elsewhere than Aristotle’s” (ibid., p.182). From this, Kenny moves on to [6]; we, however, have to take the longer path. In [2] Aquinas proceeds by saying that “hence”, i.e. because ‘to be’ signifies the composition of the proposition, as stated in [1], “it signifies the truth of a thing, veritas rei”, adding that according to a better translation “ ‘to be’ signifies that some statement is true”, which is of course quite literally what Aristotle says at the beginning of the Δ.7 passage, although there is no word of a veritas rei in it. The better translation which Aquinas refers to is the word by word translation of the Metaphysics by William of Moerbeke. To quote from the critical edition: Amplius esse et est significant quia verum, non esse autem quia non verum sed falsum, similiter in affirmatione et negatione; ut quod ‘est Socrates musicus’, quia hoc verum, aut quod ‘est Socrates non albus’, quod verum; hoc autem ‘non est dyameter incommensurabilis’, quod falsum. (Moerbeke, Aristoteles Latinus XXV 3.2).

But although in this word by word translation there is of course no mention of a veritas rei either, Aquinas sticks to it albeit in a modified form, saying in [3] that “thus”, i.e. because of what was stated before (viz., that ‘to be’ signifies that some statement is true), the truth of the proposition “can be said to be the truth of the thing in the manner of a cause, veritas rei per causam” (such that the res may be called a verum per causam); and he gives the following reason for this: because the thing is or is not (quod res est vel non est), the statement is true or false (and not vice versa).

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By now, it becomes already clear in which direction Aquinas is in reality heading for. In [1], he began, contrary to Aristotle, with the copulative role of ‘is’. But what is now surfacing is the existential ‘is’: for the res, whose truth per causam makes a proposition true, can only be such things as Socrates or Bucephalus, and thus the propositions made true by them should be existential, such as ‘Socrates is’, etc.. Again, “the proposition which is true because res est vel non est”, can hardly be anything else but ‘res est’ and ‘res non est’, that is, existential affirmation and negation. Indeed, in view of the fact that Aquinas is prepared to subsume existential propositions such as ‘God is’ under the mind’s ability to form propositions by means of “compounding and dividing”, and given that we already saw him in Quodl. IX moving with complete ease from the copulative to the existential ‘is’, we may well suspect that even in [1] it was already the existential proposition that he was primarily thinking of. In this train of thought, [4] is strangely out of place, insofar as Aquinas now interrupts his attempt at extracting the existential proposition from Aristotle’s opening dictum that “ ‘to be’ and ‘is’ signify that it is true, and ‘not to be’ that it is not true”, in order to refer to the Philosopher’s text itself. Now, (a) of [4], which is obviously intended to present a paraphrase of Aristotle’s opening dictum, suggests, by its ‘aliquid esse’, a connection with [3] (aliquid = aliqua res). This, however, is quite unwarranted, since the ‘aliquid’ of (a) has no basis in Aristotle’s own text, and by the same token, it neither has any connection with (b), where Aquinas comments on Aristotle’s three examples that are of course not existential but categorical propositions. Here at last the veridical use of ‘to be’ might be expected, but Aquinas shows no appreciation for the emphatic position of the copula preserved in the Moerbeke translation, and he is moreover hampered by the fact that this translation’s follows the ‘asymmetros’ reading in Δ.7 1017a35. And so, his commentary seems to be saying no more than this: there are true affirmations of the form ‘S is P’; there are true negations of the form ‘S is not P’; and there are also false double negations of the form ‘S is not not P’ (‘The diagonal is not not commensurable’). This, however, is as true as it is unilluminating, and in particular, it is hard to see how a separate sense of being should emerge from this. However, [4] is only a sort of parenthesis, and in [5] Aquinas returns to his own proper theme, summarizing what he has posited

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before, namely that the second mode of being – the one deriving from the mind’s “compounding and dividing”, as said in [1] – relates to the first mode, i.e. categorial being, as effect to cause. The only thing which in comparison with [3] is new in [5] is that now the ‘is’, which is aligned with the second mode of being, is explicitly said to be the copula. But nevertheless it is the existential proposition that Aquinas is really talking about. In his ‘for from this that something is in the nature of things (quod aliquid in rerum natura est) ...’, the ‘aliquid in rerum natura est’ stands simply as a reformulation of the ‘res est’ in [3]: it would seem that the ‘is’ of, say, ‘Socrates is’ fulfills both the role of the copula, viz., “signifying the proposition” i.e. indicating that this two-word expression is a proposition, and the role of the predicate, as it is linked to the subject by way of “compounding”; but by now this should not be a surprise anymore. In any case, with the distinction between the truth of a proposition and the truth of the thing per causam already stated in [3] and, after the interruption of [4], recalled in [5], Aquinas thinks he has prepared the ground for the distinction between the two modes of esse, which we have presented in this section’s second paragraph. So, in [6] Aquinas finally moves on to focus explicitly on the existential proposition and to bring by way of it the dichotomy of firstclass and second-class beings, which he had already set forth so much earlier in De Ente et Essentia, into the picture. Here, our old acquaintance blindness makes an appearance: blindness considered in itself is not a being and has no esse in the nature of things (i.e., no actus essendi, or actus entis inquantum est ens), being on the contrary the absence of what would be such a thing, viz., the absence of sight from an eye. Nevertheless, this absence of sight can itself be considered as a sort of being in that ‘Blindness is’ is a true proposition on the grounds that, say, ‘Homer is blind’ (i.e., ‘Sight is absent from Homer’s eyes’) is true: thus blindness has esse in the second mode (meaning existence only), but, Aquinas hastens to add, not in the first mode (meaning the actus essendi, the mode in which only categorial beings are said to be), saying that ‘Blindness is’ is not true in the first mode, since blindness does not have any esse in

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the nature of things, “being rather the privation of the esse of something in things”, i.e. of the esse of sight in an eye. Thus Aquinas has arrived in [6] at his dichotomy of first-class and second-class beings framed in terms of the corresponding dichotomy of senses or modes of esse. And finally, in [7] Aquinas concludes his commentary on being as the true in Δ.7 by elaborating on this, his example being ‘Socrates is’ which is, in contrast to ‘Blindness is’, true in regards to either mode of esse. By now, these concluding reflections should not present any peculiar difficulties anymore, and need not to be commented upon at length. Thus we may confine ourselves to the remark that here in the end Aquinas leaves no room anymore for any doubt whatsoever concerning what his intention has been all along, namely, to establish the dichotomy of first-class and second-class beings via the corresponding distinction regarding the existential ‘is’ as expressing mere existence, and as expressing an esse which is an actus essendi, or an esse which, in the words of [7], “each thing, i.e., each first-class being, has in its own nature”. Let us summarize. In contrast to his commentary of E.4, Aquinas’ commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true shows that he is not concerned with the veridical but with the existential use of ‘to be’; and thus, as already stated, it is indeed no mere coincidence that the phrase ‘ens quasi verum’, although occurring in the E.4 commentary, does not appear in the Δ.7 commentary as well. This discrepancy may even be noticed in the Δ.7 commentary itself. In [2] Aquinas says, echoing Aristotle, “that ‘to be’ signifies that some statement is true”: here, the veridical use of ‘to be’ becomes apparent, and as a result of this, he would have come to an ens quasi verum in the sense of a sentential content; but it is concealed immediately in [3] by the distinction between “the truth of the proposition and the truth of the thing per causam”, and it is not to reappear again. (Once more we are reminded of the similar move carried out in the De Ente et Essentia passage which was quoted in section 1). But so, there is no real unity between Aquinas’ account of the Δ.7 passage on being as the true and his account of being as the true in E.4 – unless the following premise is added: namely, that the existential

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use of ‘to be’ in which to be is to exist, i.e., in which alone ‘Blindness is’ is true, is essentially the same as its veridical use. 5 And this was exactly the step which was then taken by Brentano, bluntly expressed in his 1889 equation ‘on hōs alēthes, i.e. in the sense of what exists’ quoted in section 1. However, all the essential elements of this view were already present in his dissertation of 1862. Many years later, long after his reistic turn, he condemned it as an error which resulted from having been misled by Aquinas in his early years . In 1916, a year before his death, he writes in critical retrospect that in those days, during which philosophy was in a state of miserable decline, he was still an apprentice in philosophy and could do no better than to follow as his master old Aristotle, for whose understanding, which is not always easy, often Thomas Aquinas had to serve me. And so it happened, among other things, that I let myself be lured into holding that the ‘is’ in both sentences ‘a tree is’ and ‘that a tree is, is’ functions in the same way. The beginning of the Posterior Analytics seems to speak in favour of this, and Thomas Aquinas explains expressly (erklärt ausdrücklich) the ‘est’ in the sentence ‘deus est’ in the sense of ‘is true’. (Brentano 1977 p.291f.)

In an essay written two years earlier in which he raises the same objection against Aquinas, namely, to have given “the ‘is’ in the sentence ‘God is’ the same sense as that of the ‘is’ which signifies a judgment to be true” (Brentano 1974 p.129), he exempts Aristotle from this error: In his view, what in the sentence ‘a man is’ is accepted is the man subsisting outside the mind. In the case of the ‘so ist es’ [as an answer to a sentential question] something which subsists only in the mind is said to be true, which means that the judger judges correctly. According to Aristotle, the man is, if he is, not ‘true’ in the same sense in which a judgment is true. He says expressly that the true is not in things, but only ... in the mind. (Ibid., p.128)

But we have already had sufficient opportunity to observe that Aquinas too had not done anything like “explaining expressly” that the existential use of ‘is’, in which to be is to exist, is to be regarded as

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the same as its veridical use, and thereby calling God a being as the true in the same sense in which the sentential content that God is is one. On the contrary, this was entirely the product of Brentano’s own earlier work, as we now shall attempt to show. In his dissertation, Brentano follows the scheme provided by the fourfold classification of being in Met. Δ.7. Concerning being as the true, the task he sets out for himself in this work can be described briefly as follows: to defend the view of his true master in that time before the tribunal of contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. To this end, Aquinas’ two divergent accounts in his commentaries on Δ.7 and on E.4 had to be integrated into a unified account of the veridical sense of ‘to be’ and of being as the true. This however was to be carried out without invoking the support of Aquinas himself, which would have been quite an anathema in the republic of contemporary Aristotle scholars (in contrast to references to Alexander, or Schwegler). One would expect that someone who discusses Aristotle’s being as the true would begin with Δ.7, and would only afterwards turn to its discussion in E.4. But not so for Brentano; the reason for this was quite plain: the E.4 account was the unproblematic part, whereas the Δ.7 account had to be twisted to fit with Aquinas’ commentary, i.e. it had to yield the conclusion that the subject of a true affirmation is, just as much as the content of a true proposition, a being as the true. Brentano therefore begins his discussion of being as the true by declaring that in E.4 Aristotle expresses himself to the effect that the on hōs alēthes and the mē on hōs pseudos is to be found only in the judgment, be it affirmative or negative. (1862 p.33f.)

Then he expounds the passage 1027b18-23, which we have quoted above in section 2: Here quite obviously it is the judgment which is called true and false, and hence being and non-being (seiend und nichtseiend), the judgment itself is the subject to which being (das Seiende) attaches as the predicate. Therefore, the Be (das Sein) which is spoken of here is not the copula which within the sentence itself connects subject and predicate, in particular since a negative judgment is called being (seiend) as well, and an affirmative judgment non-being (nichtseiend) as well: ra-

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ther, what is here in question is a being (Seiendes) which is predicated of the whole judgment in its complete expression. (Ibid., 34)

This is quite plain, and equally so what Brentano adds, in which he gives a perfectly lucid account of the veridical use of ‘to be’ in answer to sentential questions by way of the following example: Suppose someone wants to prove to another person that the sum of the angles in the triangle is equal to two right angles, and that as starting point of the proof he requests from that person to concede that the exterior angle is equal to the two opposite interior angles [Eucl. Elementa I, Prop. XXXII]. Thus the question is: is this, or is it not?, i.e., is this true, or is it false? – It is!, i.e., it is true. In this sense it is demanded in the Posterior Analytics that the hoti ésti [that it is] of the principles of a science must have been grasped beforehand. (Ibid.).

On this, there is nothing to be added except perhaps the reminder that it fits perfectly with what we had in the reading suggested by Aquinas regarding E.4 1027b18-23. But when with the words “Let us now compare with this passage [in E.4] another one from Book V of the Metaphysics” (ibid.) Brentano turns to the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true, the perspective changes drastically, in that it is not anymore “the whole judgment itself which is the subject to which being is attached as a predicate”, but only the judgment’s subject. This is to say that what now signifies being as the true is not the veridical ‘is’ attached to a whole sentence anymore, but the copula, the ‘is’ of ‘S is P’. This shift requires in turn that only affirmative propositions be linked to being as the true, given the correlation of ‘is’ with being as the true (and of ‘is not’ with nonbeing as the false). And to this end, Brentano, as we have noted in section 3, follows Alexander’s translation of the Δ.7 passage, in changing Aristotle’s true negation (B) into an affirmation containing a negative predicate term, ‘Socrates is not-white’. Thus Brentano endorses Alexander’s connections of affirmation-true and negation-false stated in the commentator’s [f ], which he quotes in support for his move. We now see at last why Alexander’s construal of (B) is a conditio sine qua non for Brentano in his attempt to align being as the true with the copulative ‘is’. Again, looking back to his translation of the Δ.7 passage, we see at once that as little as Aquinas he pays any attention to the emphatic position of ‘ésti’ and ‘ouk éstin’ in Aristot-

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le’s examples: this indicates clearly enough that he simply ignores the role of the copula as an assertion-sign having the entire sentence as its scope which of course is in view of his intention just as necessary as rendering Aristotle’s example of a true negation as an affirmation. By twisting the Δ.7 passage in this way, Brentano believes he has pointed out a significant difference between Aristotle’s account of being as the true in Δ.7 and that which is present in E.4. We observe, he comments, between the two passages a difference which is not without interest. In the first [in E.4], the ‘is’ was used like a predicative determination (Prädikatsbestimmung) of the judgment that was called true; and the judgment itself occupied the position of the subject: (the judgment) a is b, is (true). But here in the second passage [in Δ.7] the ‘is’ is a constituent of the sentence itself which is asserted as true, by combining as copula subject and predicate: a is b. There, the ‘is’ declared a given judgment as corresponding with reality: here, it constitutes the judgment itself. There, true and false were predicated both of affirmative and negative statements: here, ‘true’ is on the side of the affirmation (although attaching now a positive, and again a negative determination), but ‘false’ always on the side of the negation. (1862 p.35)

Thus, as Brentano sees things, it is the copula itself, the ‘is’ of ‘S is P’, which plays the role of the veridical ‘is’ in the Δ.7 passage. And from this, he concludes that the subject of a true affirmation corresponds to the notion of being as the true. Aquinas in his Δ.7 commentary had distinguished between two ways in which an existential proposition can be considered: one in which the esse of the existential ‘is’ is merely existing, a way in which even ‘Blindness is’ is true; and another in which it is an actus essendi, a way in which ‘Blindness is’ is of course false. The same distinction is made by Brentano, albeit not with reference to the existential ‘is’ but to the copula, which is the only ‘is’ available to him in the Δ.7 passage since Aristotle’s examples are categoricals. It is, he says, certain that the ‘to be’ of the copula does not signify an act of Be (Energie des Seins, = actus essendi), a real attribute, since of negations [in the sense of what is signified by negated terms] and privations, of purely fictitious relations and other wholly arbitrary figments of the mind too we nevertheless do predicate something affirmatively (1862 p.36), [for instance] when we say, ‘the centaurs are fictitious beasts,

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Jupiter is an idol’ and the like, for that in all these affirmations we do not ascribe any reality is quite plain: thus the ‘is’ here in question also signifies only ‘it is true’. (Ibid., p.37).

Except that for the reason stated Brentano speaks of the copula, his dependence in all this on, and complete agreement with, Aquinas’ esse distinction his plain. How much, however, he is at pains to conceal this dependence becomes increasingly visible in his use of the phrase ‘Energie des Seins’: by ‘Energie’, Brentano seems to be calculating that everyone will be thinking of Aristotle’s technical term ‘energeia’ rather than of its scholastic translation ‘actus’, thereby perhaps not noticing at all that he is actually referring to Aquinas’ actus essendi. Instead, he invokes the support of Alexander’s [h] (“For one who states the affirmation says that ‘to be’ is true”, etc.), which is much less appropriate here, to emphasize his point: Thus the Be of the copula (das Sein der Kopula) too is nothing else than that veridical Be (einai hōs alēthes) [of E.4]. (1862 p.37).

Brentano has thus reached his goal: “the Be, das Sein, of the copula” is by now the same veridical Be which was before “like a predicative determination of the whole judgment”. The upshot of this he puts as follows, ibid., p.37f.: From this there results at once an enlarged extension for the on hōs alēthes, inasmuch as now not anymore [as in E.4] only judgments belong to it but concepts as well are drawn into its domain, inasmuch as affirmative statements can be formed about them, and thus the Be of the copula (das Sein der Kopula) can be ascribed to them; even nonbeing is, because it is non-being, … an on hōs alēthes, and generally, any ens rationis (Gedankending), that is, everything insofar as it exists objectively [= intentionally] in the mind and can therefore become the subject of a true affirmative statement, will belong to it. Nothing of what we form in the mind is to that extent deprived of reality altogether that it would be wholly excluded from the domain of the on hōs alēthes; Aristotle too gives evidence for this, when he says in Met. Δ.12 1019b7: “Privation (sterēsis) too is in a certain sense a property (hexis [possession, the opposite of privation])”.

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In this way, then, Brentano in his dissertation “let himself – to follow the way he then in 1916 will express himself – be lured into holding that the ‘is’ both in ‘that the tree is tall, is’ and in ‘the tree is tall’ functions in the same way”: not, however, by Aquinas directly, but rather by his own attempt to integrate his master’s accounts of being as the true in the E.4 and in the Δ.7 passages into a unified whole, whereby both are brought under the same heading of ‘being as the true’,but which is absent from Aquinas’ own treatment of the Δ.7 passage. By now, we already see Brentano’s essential scheme, with which we started in section 1, emerging: (α) being in general = being as the true, i.e. that to which das Sein der Kopula can be ascribed in that a true affirmation can be formed about it, viz., being as what exists; (β) what is only a being as the true, in cases where we even have the same sort of examples, viz., Gedankendinge: centaurs as fictitious beasts, i.e., thought-of-centaurs, and Jupiter as an idol, i.e., thoughtof-Jupiter: second-class beings; (γ) what also has an “Energie des Seins”, i.e., what in ‘Das Seiende im Sinne des Wahren’ is essential being: first-class beings. The distinction between (β) and (γ), which was already present in the ‘Energie des Seins’ passage from before, is in the dissertation now drawn with more emphasis, when Brentano comments on how even privations and negations can be called beings: It is just the way of our on hōs alēthes, which will always bear, though homonymously, the same name as the real Be (das wirkliche Sein), even in the case when the Be in the sense of the true, [i.e.], the Be of the copula (das Sein im Sinne des Wahren, das Sein der Kopula) is connected with things that do not lack real existence (wirkliche Existenz) outside the mind either: even so it will always have to be distinguished from their essential Be (von dem ihnen essentiellen Sein) as something incidental (Akzidentelles), as it is (what we have already heard before) incidental for every thing when some true statement is made about it. (1862 p.38)

It should be evident that this is but a paraphrase of Aquinas’ (who of course remains unnamed) final observation,[7], drawn from his commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true, the only difference being that Brentano does not, and cannot, bring the existen-

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tial ‘is’ into the picture. (Of course, what he here calls real Be, wirkliches Sein, or real existence, wirkliche Existenz, outside the mind, or essential Be, essentielles Sein, is what he has called earlier Energie des Seins). 6 When comparing things as they stand now with what Brentano will say in 1914/1916 regarding his earlier erroneous view on the matter, only this difference stands out: according to Brentano’s later statements, his error in earlier times was to hold that the ‘is’ functions in the same way, that is, means the same thing, as ‘is true’, no matter whether: (a) it completes a term into a sentence (‘The tree is’), or (b) it is attached as its subject to the whole sentence thus formed (‘That the tree is, is’). In other words, the error he thus ascribes to his own earlier view is to have held that in both cases the ‘is’ is uniformly the same existential ‘is’, in turn to be explained as ‘is true’. But the Brentano of 1862 has only the (b)-part of this; instead of the existential ‘is’ of the (a)-part, he has to put up with the copulative ‘is’ which is, however, just like the ‘is’ of the (b)-part, explained in terms of the veridical Be, i.e. as ‘is true’. This, however, is an awkwardness imposed on him by the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true, yielding from Aristotle’s examples only the copula but not an existential ‘is’. This barely conceals the fact that he is concerned with the existential proposition which after all was also present in Aquinas’ discussion of the Δ.7 passage. In particular, it is quite unconceivable that in paraphrasing Aquinas’ [7], Brentano did not actually have in mind the existential proposition. But quite apart from this, the existential proposition is already lurking in the background of Brentano’s account of being as the true in his dissertation. Consider Aristotle’s first example in the Δ.7 passage, (1) Socrates is musical according to the dissertation’s account, the copula ‘is’ of (1), understood in one way, ascribes to Socrates das Sein der Kopula i.e. veridical Be, declaring Socrates to be true, or to be a being as the true. But simultaneously, the very same copula ascribes musicalness to Socrates, and this dual role of ‘is’ is surely an oddity since it allows a sentence fragment of (1), i.e. ‘Socrates is’, to be at the same time a

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complete sentence, which states that Socrates is a being as the true. Now to get out of this predicament it will suffice to take this simple step of transforming the ‘S is P’ proposition (1) into the existential proposition (1’) Musical Socrates is such that veridical Be, which is in (1) das Sein der Kopula, is now expressed by the existential ‘is’. And so, Brentano’s 1862 account of being as the true already prefigures the theory of judgments which he then presents to the public in his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt of 1874 and which is, besides the intentionality thesis, the doctrine we primarily associate with his name, viz., that all judgments are really existential judgments, and that hence “every categorical proposition” – in other words, “every proposition which expresses a judgment” – “can, without any change of meaning whatsoever, be translated into an existential proposition” (1971, 56, 60). Believing to have thus laid bare the true nature of judgments, Brentano also regarded himself to be in a position to dismiss Aquinas’ doctrine of the actus essendi, which was in any case un-Aristotelian, as one of the results of misunderstanding it (ibid., 75-77), such that one of the two ways in which according to Aquinas’ [7] – still approvingly paraphrased by Brentano in his dissertation – the existential proposition ‘Socrates is’ can be considered, viz., the way in which the ‘is’ is a sort of substantial predicate expressing Socrates’ actus essendi, is abandoned. What remains then is the sentence form ‘X is’ in which the ‘is’ uniformly stands for the einai hōs alēthes, veridical Be, or as Brentano calls it in the PES, das Anzuerkennensein des Gegenstandes, “i.e. ..., the truth of the object” (ibid., 89f.), no matter whether X is a compound like musical Socrates, which is only qua its subject a substance, the substance Socrates, or a sentential content. In other words, we have now arrived at what Brentano’s later selfcriticism in 1914/1916 is aimed at. However, the existential proposition seems to take a step forward from the background of Brentano’s 1862 account of being as the true when we look at the two examples of (β)-things, i.e. second-class

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beings which are Gedankendinge, but nevertheless exist, i.e. possess veridical Be, in that a true affirmation can be formed about them. For here the existential proposition is from the outset quite unavoidable if we are to make sense of them at all: (2) The centaurs are fictitious beasts (3) Jupiter is an idol. Neither centaurs as such exist, nor does Jupiter, and if they would, they would be (γ)-things, first-class beings. Thus, (2) and (3) cannot display the true logical form of what is expressed by these sentences, for what grammatically is the predicate term in them, ‘fictitious beasts’ and ‘idol’ respectively, must really belong to the subject term modifying ‘centaur’ and ‘Jupiter’, respectively. But then, what (2) and (3) amount to will be the following: (2’) Fictitious [fiction fabricated] beasts called centaurs are or generically put: Thought-of-centaurs are, (3’) The fictitious [idolization fabricated] god Jupiter is again, generically put: The thought-of-god-Jupiter is. But with (2’) and (3’), which are necessary reformulations of (2) and (3) if we are even to make sense of these two propositions, we are already confronted in fact with Brentano’s treatment of such cases in his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Mill had argued before against the possibility of rendering every ‘S is P’ proposition as an existential proposition, claiming that this appears from such a proposition as this, A centaur is a fiction of the poets; where it cannot possibly be implied that a centaur exists, since the proposition itself expressly asserts that the thing has no real existence (Logic I.iv.1).

Against this, Brentano objects in the PES the following: The proposition ‘a centaur is a fiction of the poets’ does indeed require … not this: that there be a centaur, but rather the opposite. But in order to be true it requires at least that there be something else,

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Having finally seen how Brentano’s 1862 interpretation of the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true points at his future doctrine of judgments, we may now conclude by briefly reviewing the major points of our examination of it: 1. Brentano intended to defend the account of the Δ.7 passage on being as the true given by Aquinas, who, in contrast, considered it in terms not of the veridical but of the existential ‘is’. 2. This account of the Δ.7 passage had to be calibrated with both the on hōs alēthes and the veridical ‘is’ as attaching to a whole sentence, in E.4. But in this attempt the existential proposition had to be left out of the picture, since it does not at all occur in the Δ.7 passage,

13

It would be not without justification to claim that this answer was already available to the Brentano of 1862 as well, which in that time he would still have presumably framed in Thomasian terms, roughly as follows (cf. e.g. Summa Th. Ia qu.56 art.2 ad 3, qu.67 art.3 co, qu.78 art.3 co; Quodl. IX qu.2 art.2 co; Quaest. Disp. de Veritate qu.10 art.4 co): esse in the sense of the actus essendi is (a) esse naturale (which is esse as actus essendi so far taken into account), by which something is an actual being in reality, or esse spirituale (or intentionale), esse in a mind; (b) something has esse naturale either (b¹) in the way a self-subsistent substance, or (b²) in the way for example the colour white has it, for which to have it is for some substance to be actually white; (c) what has esse spirituale has it in the way analogous to (b²), hence for an A to have esse spirituale is for a mind to be actually A-thinking. Now, since what has esse in the sense of an actus essendi has also esse in the sense of existence, an A having esse spirituale will be an existing thought-of-A, as it is in the case of the two existential propositions (2′) and (3′). We add only that from this Thomasian background young Brentano might, in the light of (c), well have further remarked that (2′) and (3′) are somewhat improper formulations, their proper formulations being rather (2′′) A centaur-thinker is, (3′′) A god-Jupiter-thinker is: but so, young Brentano would at least in the case of Gedankendinge already have been at a stage similar to that of the late reistic phase of his thinking; a reistic passage on Gedankendinge particularly suited for comparison is in Brentano 1968, 14f.

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its examples being categoricals, ‘It is Socrates musical’, ‘It is Socrates not pale’, ‘It is not the diagonal commensurable’. 3. Thus the only possibility left was to equate the veridical ‘is’ with the copulative ‘is’ of the affirmative form ‘S is P’, such that the copulative ‘is’ also came to express veridical Be, now as Sein der Kopula; but since in the Δ.7 passage the second example too is on the side of the true, Alexander’s reading, which mistook it as an affirmation (with a negated predicate term), had to be endorsed. 4. Thus, since das Sein der Kopula, which was in turn equated with veridical Be, was now ascribed to the subject of a true affirmation, that subject too came to be subsumed under the notion of being as the true, and since a being in the sense of what exists is that about which a true affirmation can be formed, being in the sense of what exists came to be equated with being as the true. 5. In this way Aquinas’ view seemed to be vindicated that being in the sense of what exists is what the Δ.7 passage on being as the true is about, but with the two differences enforced by the two conditions stated sub 2 which Brentano had to satisfy: first, to equate being in the sense of what exists with being as the true which is not found in Aquinas; and secondly, to establish this equation by simultaneously leaving the existential proposition out of the account and hence identifying the veridical with the copulative ‘is’. This, however, was quite an uncomfortable predicament from which Brentano then freed himself with his new doctrine of judgments.

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Alexander of Aphrodisias. 1891. Al. in Met. = Alexandri Aphrodisiensis in Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria. Ed. Michael Hayduck, Berlin: Reimer. (CIAG I). —— 1993. On Aristotle Metaphysics 5. Translated by William E. Dooley, London: Duckwort. Antonelli, M. 2001. Seiendes, Bewußtsein, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano. Freiburg & München: Alber. Aquinas, St. Thomas. 1964. in Met. = S. Thomae Aquinatis in duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio. Eds M.-R. Cathala & R. M. Spiazzi, Turino & Rome: Marietti. —— 1995. Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Translation and Introduction by John P. Rowan, Notre Dame, Indiana: Dumb Ox Books. Bonitz, H. 1849. Commentarius in Aristotelis Metaphysicam, reprint Hildesheim: Olms, 1992. —— 1955. Index = Index Aristotelicus, 2nd edn, Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt. Brentano, F. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, reprint Hildesheim: Olms, 1960. —— 1867. ‘Geschichte der kirchlichen Wissenschaften’, in: J. A. Möhler, Kirchengeschichte, vol. 2, Regensburg: Manz, 526-84. —— 1968. Kategorienlehre, Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1971. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, vol. 2 of the 3rd ed., reprint Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1974. Wahrheit und Evidenz, Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1977. Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, Hamburg: Meiner. Frege, G. 1892. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, in: Frege’s Kleine Schriften,Hildesheim: Olms, 1967, 143-62. Kenny, A. 2002. Aquinas on Being, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mill, J. S. 1973. Logic = A System of Logic. Books I-III. Ed. J. M. Robson. Introduction by R. F. McRae, London: Routledge. Moerbeke, W. 1995. Aristoteles Latinus XXV 3.2, Leiden: Brill. Ross, W. D. 1953. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. A revised Text with Introduction and Commentary. 2 vols, reprint with corrections Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwegler, A. 1847/48. Die Metaphysik des Aristoteles. Grundtext, Übersetzung und Kommentar nebst erläuternden Abhandlungen, 4 vols, reprint in 2 vols Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1960. Seidl, H. 1989. Aristoteles’ Metaphysik, I: Bücher I-VI. Mit Einleitung und Kommentar hrsg. von H. S., 3rd edn, Hamburg: Meiner. Tanasescu, I. 2002/03. ‘Das Seiende als Wahres und das Sein der Kopula in der Dissertation Brentanos’, in Brentano Studien X: 167-184.

FRANZ BRENTANO’S MEREOLOGY WILHELM BAUMGARTNER

(UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG)

pollachos legetai to meros a part is spoken of in many ways Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1034 b 32

Introduction In his search for a scientifically based worldview, and in contrast to “blind a priori” assumptions (Brentano 1925), Brentano aimed at an analysis of parts, down to their last fundamental elements, their properties and interconnections in order to demonstrate “what binds the world from within”. He did so from an ontological (and from a broader metaphysical) standpoint on the one hand, and from a psychological perspective on the other. In what follows, I will examine Brentano’s methodological attempts to provide a foundational account of an ontology of things (§ 2) and an ontology of mind (§ 3) on the basis of his mereology, that is, his theory of part-whole-relations. In § 1, I refer to his lectures on the history of philosophy and to his essay on “The Four Phases of Philosophy”. I consider these investigations on scientific history in general, its periods, main themes, and endeavors, as relevant examples which illustrate my thesis that the relations of parts and wholes in Brentano’s thought can also be observed beyond his ontology and his psychology. 1 Mereology in the History of Philosophy At the very beginning of his career as a professor at the University of Würzburg, the young Privatdozent Franz Brentano delivered lessons in 1866-67 on the history of Greek philosophy (Brentano 1963; cf. also his investigations on scholastic philosophy (Brentano 1867a) and his 1870 lectures on medieval philosophy (Brentano 1980); see also his Philosophie der Neuzeit (Brentano 1987).

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In the ‘Introduction’ (Brentano 1963), he characterizes as necessary the tasks of elucidating: (1) the concept of the history of philosophy (whether it is a coherent theoretical science in its own right, containing true and necessary knowledge); (2) its aim (whether it has a historical value in showing its law-like development, or a philosophical one as a “history of problems”); (3) its method (whether it must be determined in respect to the teachings of the leading philosophers or according to their problems); (4) its primary and secondary sources; and (5) its classification (according to its own historical laws). Brentano’s conclusion is that a purely historical inquiry would lack any scientific requirements; only a “Philosophy of the History of Philosophy” (Brentano 1987, 77 and 84) could realize the task of classifying historical philosophical positions and problems and of substantiating their results. One should keep in mind that Brentano always exemplifies philosophical positions and problems with concrete (personifizierende) philosophers (ibid., 262). As a result, “the eminent historical fact solely belongs to a history of Philosophy”; it has to be “looked at from a philosophical point of view”; and “in order to acknowledge this, a certain philosophical sense is required” (ibid., 84). “A mere craftsmen-like procedure will not do … a philosophizing encounter with the philosopher” is the hermeneutic duty (Brentano 1911, 165). Like the history of other sciences, the history of philosophy is a “history of scientific efforts”. The specialty of the history of philosophy and likewise of the fine arts is that it “has always had periods of ascending development and, on the other hand, periods of decadence. … In the succession of these periods, a certain regularity can be found.” In the successive periods of antiquity (Brentano 1963), of the Middle Ages (Brentano 1867a; Brentano 1980), and of the modern period “up to the collapse of the Hegelian school” (Brentano 1987 and 1998), “four stages can be distinguished in each case.” On the one hand, these are “in many ways different from one another” but, on the other hand, they are “in the same time internally related to the extent that their similarity, once recognized, is unmistakable. Moreover, quite simple considerations in cultural psychology can make this remarkable correspondence fully comprehensible.” Now, these distinctional parts (cf. III. 3. (2) further down) of the history of

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philosophy and their internal relations are realized in the following way: (1) The “first phase covers the whole ascending development. Its beginning is in each case characterized in a twofold way; on the one hand by a lively and pure theoretical interest. … On the other hand, it is marked by a method that is essentially applicable to nature.” (2) The second phase represents in fact the “first stage of decline. It is initiated in each case by the weakening or distortion of scientific interest. From this time on it is practical motives by which investigations are primarily determined. Accordingly, theoretical interest is persued less rigorously. … This is no true substitute for genuine scientific activity.” (3) A predominant practical interest with respect to method is followed by the outbreak of “a kind of spiritual revolution” which “constitutes the second stage of decline, … the time of predominant skepticism.” Within it, “science has become unscientific and has thereby made itself unworthy of trust. … It is then generally denied that reason is capable of any sort of secure knowledge.” (4) The natural longing for truth, “challenged by skepticism, forces its way through with violence. With pathologically intensified enthusiasm people start once more to construct philosophical dogmas … they now invent entirely unnatural means of gaining knowledge on the basis of ‘principles’ lacking in all insight, ingenious ‘directly intuitive’ powers, mystical intensifications of the mental life – so that people suppose themselves to be in possession of the most exalted truths that are beyond all human powers. The period of decline thereby reaches its extreme point.” (Brentano 1998, 85-7; my emphasis) Thus, “for the philosophical investigator it is only of pathological interest” (Brentano 1987, 84; see also his partly sympathetic reception of Comte’s ‘Three Stadia’, ibid., 246-294). Brentano does not directly say here (but elsewhere often enough, cf. Brentano 1929) that he sees himself as renewing philosophy in the sense of a first-phase philosophy. His message is however quite clear. He observes a “universal revolution, or in better words, a fundamental reformation of the philosophy” of his time (Brentano, 1968, 12). Whether or not one follows this classification of historical phenomena, its points (for our present purposes, too) seem to be the following: (a) The history of any science is not an independent science in its

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own right, but “belongs”, as its part, to the relevant science. It is, in Brentano’s words, “one-sidedly dependent” on its “fundament”. Nevertheless, historical knowledge can (partly) shed light on its relevant science. The conclusion that follows is that any science has its own history (of problems) which has to be dealt with scientifically from within, with insight, and according to a theoretical interest. The contemporary historicism is an unjustified attempt of an overall explanation. (b) The phases “differ” from one another, yet are linked in their “development”. In other words, they are only “distinctional” (“conceptually distinguishable”) parts, and therefore not actual “separable parts”. They are “in the same time internally related” through their “similarity”, i.e., they constitute the consecutive parts of a coherent development. (c) The “pure theoretical interest” seems to be characterized by a necessary “intentional attitude” dedicated to “theoria” in the literal sense, to the “insight” or to the “evidence” of the “things as they are in themselves”. Practically motivated interests would hinder this process and would indeed lead to false “results”, and, as a result, to skepticism. (d) The appropriate philosophical method is analogous to that of natural science (see Brentano 1866, thesis 4) as it is “essentially appropriate to nature”. Instead of constructing philosophical systems, instead of “entirely unnatural means of gaining knowledge on the basis of ‘principles’ lacking in all any insight”, instead of supposed “truths that are beyond all human powers”, a sober empirical method “from bottom to upwards” and an analysis of given natural phenomena are required in order to gain knowledge from “within”. Only on the basis of the knowledge of the integral parts (say of a historical occurrence) and their constituent role for a whole (say for a phase of history of which they are foundational parts) can one obtain justified knowledge of the structure of a relevant whole (say a science), which is “superposed” on its parts and one-sidedly dependent on them. Through this, a general knowledge of history can be obtained, yet not by “complete induction”: in some cases, a whole may become intuitively clear “in one stroke”. Thus, a “dark part can be perceived in the light of the whole”, i.e. “deductively”: “the parts somehow, if not logically, at least psychologically, must be compatible” with one another (Brentano 1987, 85; cf. Brentano 1995, 76). Furthermore,

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history has to be written not just by enumerating a mass of indifferent opinions, but by concentrating on essentials, by portraying history through a process of abstraction, like a painter. Less can be more (cf. Brentano 1987, 84). 2 Ontological mereology 1. The doctoral dissertation. Brentano’s dissertation on the Manifold Meanings of Being in Aristotle (Brentano 1862) is inspired by and dedicated to his Berlin teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, “the highly appreciated scholar” who fostered his “understanding of Aristotle”. His earliest work is “a treatise on the deduction of Aristotle’s categories out of the first substance in order to solve hitherto unsolved problems” (Ibid., Vorwort). In his discussion of contemporary interpreters from Kant (including Trendelenburg) to his days, Brentano came to the conclusion “that their theories of the categories did not follow the means which Aristotle had in mind. So, in no way can it be maintained that they had in any respect replaced the old categories” (Ibid., 193). Brentano rejects Kant’s verdict of the “rhapsodic character” of Aristotle’s categories and identifies Kant’s table of categories as mere “subjective forms of Anschauung”. He reflects on Trendelenburg’s conception of the categories (Trendelenburg 1846) as schemata of a conceptual “framework” (Brentano 1862, 76), and on his interpretation of the categories as logical proportions and as analoga to a grammar of language. Brentano’s critical remark on Trendelenburg’s thesis runs as follows: Brentano insists on the ontological primacy of the categories. He seeks to demonstrate that “according to Aristotle, ‘being’ is spoken of in a homogenous, not in a synonymous ways”, i.e. it is expressed in different analogous ways. ‘Being’ shows itself in language and can be fixed conceptually (by a ‘logos’). Through the analysis of language, the “indefinite expression” ‘being’ can be made “definite” (ibid., 88). Furthermore, it can “at the same time be shown how the manifold differences regarding being can be reduced to a first differentiation which leads to four original meanings”: being as accidental; being in the sense of ‘being’ true or false; being in the sense of ‘being’ possible or real; and being in the sense of the categories (Ibid., 5). The following conclusions follow from the fact that being can be spoken of in four ways. (1) ‘Being’ as accidental ‘obtains’ only nomi-

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nally thanks to an “irregularity of language” (ibid., 217), and therefore it cannot be a scientific object. It has to be excluded from metaphysics in contrast to a definite being in its own right from which it is onesidedly dependent. (2) Being in the sense of ‘being’ true or false (cf. ibid., 22) is no proper object of metaphysics, but of logic: the predicates ‘true’ and ‘false’ belong to the logic of speech, not to that of the things themselves. The copula ‘is’, expressed in a judgment, does not refer to some real existence, but only to ‘something’ given “objectively”, as an object (cf. ibid., 37). (3) Being in the sense of ‘Being’ possible, too, is no proper object as it ‘is’ ‘something’ which ‘is’ merely thought of or which might come into being, and which ‘is’ one-sidedly dependent of a real being (cf. ibid., 49). (4) Being in the sense of the categories, although these (as predicates) appear in the form of a language, in fact coincides with real being and is therefore the proper and “most important” object of metaphysics (ibid., 72). Thus the four meanings of Being are to be reduced to that of the categories. Aristotle maintains, according to Brentano, that the structure of the manifold meanings of being is such that the different categories all stand in relation to the being as its inherent accidents, as “modes of existence in the first substance” (ibid., 178). It is here that the ontological concept of ‘inesse’ is first formulated. Transposed into psychology, it plays a predominant role as the concept of “intentional inexistence”. Within his metaphysics, Brentano offers a concept of “inesse” according to which the substance, as a part, is included in the accidents, the wholes). These modes of ‘inexistence’ differ “according to the different relation they hold to the first substance” (ibid., 108), and these relations are “neither reducible to one another, nor to a higher genus” of being (Ibid., 216). With this argument, Brentano clearly opts for the ontological primacy of the categories and their consistency. This “justification of Aristotle’s theory of the categories” takes the number of Aristotle’s categories for granted, “given that other Aristotelian central propositions (Sätze) are valid”. He speaks “for Aristotle” and “against the accusations towards the Aristotelian categories”. (Ibid., 218). Later, he will be more critical of this (Cf. Antonelli 2001, ch. V; Chrudzimski 2004, ch. 2). 2. The Lectures on Metaphysics. (1) The first part of Brentano’s “Lectures on Metaphysics” (Würzburg 1867 ff; Nachlass M 95, M 96,

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M 99) deals with a ‘transcendental philosophy,’ a theory of knowledge in the sense of an “apology of knowledge against criticism and skepticism”. In these lectures: a) he sums up the main critical and skeptical remarks formulated against knowledge, against the certainty of knowledge, and against knowledge altogether; b) he discusses and refutes in an aporetical manner skepticism as a false and impossible position in principle; c) he offers solutions; and d) he summarizes his argument: We have concluded our apology of what Kant would have called the transcendental part of metaphysics. We now proceed to investigate what might be called, in his language, transcendent. He stops here. From the standpoint of his conclusions, he forbids us to carry on. However, his conclusion is not ours. He ends up with a skeptical attitude [that maintains] the unknowability of the thing in itself and the subjectivity of our principles. We, in contrast, have seen that we do have indubitable principles. (M 96, 31945)

(2) The second part refers to ontology, metaphysics in a narrow sense, a philosophy of mind and of transcendent things which had been developed in his dissertation. The meaning of being in the proper sense is the object of metaphysics. There is no definition of being as its explanation is already included in its concept. Yet, not everything which is conceptually designated is a being. The logical meaning of being in the sense of ‘being’ true is nothing but the expression of a confirmation (of a judging person), not a being in the proper sense. The real (reale) meaning of being is that of the being of proper things (sachlich Seiendes). It excludes fictions, modalia, negativa, collective, divisiva, and conceptualia, even if they have a “fundamentum in re” (cf. ibid., 31451 ff). (3) Under the heading “Parts of Being”, Brentano distinguishes, following Aristotle and the medieval philosophers, between “physical”, “logical”, and “metaphysical parts”. His aim is to reveal the inner structure of being, how and in what respects things and their parts (and parts of these parts, the “moments” or “last elements”) are bound together in order to obtain structured wholes. a) Physical parts are either mere loose and concrete quantitative parts which form a loose whole (like grains of corns build a heap of corns; in the sense of there being no heap of corn without single grains of corns), or concrete parts of an organized body (“the tail is a physi-

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cal part of a sparrow”). With reference to these, we can build relevant concepts such as collectiva, continua, masses and their conceptual parts, the divisiva (cf. Aristotle, Physics, 210 a, and Metaphysics, 1036 a-b, where he refers to a sensible corporal, quantitative part of a whole as “meros tou posou”, and conceptual ones as “eidos meros hyles”; cf. also Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., I, q. 76, art. 8 c). b) The concepts of part/whole, which Brentano also calls logical parts and wholes. “Logical parts are parts of a definition”. They are called “logical because they are the logos of a thing, i.e. its definition” in the “strict sense”. He explains: The logical whole [“res”, thing] is an individual of a genus; the logical part is the determination of this genus (seine Gattungsbestimmtheit).” “Logical parts [such as ‘color’ or ‘bird’]… and each part [different colors, birds] of a logical whole [red colored thing, sparrow]… are conceptually independent from the logical whole, the species [is independent] from the individual, the genus [is independent] from the species (MS, 31567). The logical parts are a real unity (sind real eins). They all are posited in the same line of predication (liegen alle in derselben Linie der Prädikation). The concept of each true difference … entails the concept of genus, and the previous difference entails the following one. … Hence … the last difference … is equal to the relevant … total species (its definition). But it is logically dependent on that part which is its genus. (MS, 32001 and 31957)

A “definition” could be exemplified in this way:

Franz Brentano’s Mereology Logical parts, and parts of these parts are the “logos”, determination, definition of are conceptually independent of are genera and subdivisions thereof which are all posited in one line of predication: Genus (e.g. color) is independent of, and determines The difference of the genus (different colors) is logically independent of, and (partly) determines The difference of this difference (red color) is independent of and lastly determines as it entails (1) the former concept of different colors, and (2) the concept of the genus color

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logical wholes, things, “res” the logical whole

the whole species, (colored) thing the whole specifically colored species, thing (as it is logically dependent of the concept genus which it entails) the whole specifically red colored thing, which is thus defined and individualized

The unity of the logical parts: genus, difference, and difference of this difference are posited “all in one line of predication”, all entailing the concept of genus on which they one-sidedly depend; and all of them together, in a logical hierarchical order, determine or define the whole thing, which is thus individualized. With this theory of “logical” part-whole relation, Brentano offers a solution to the longstanding issue of universals by determining them through their parts. c) The parts and wholes in the metaphysical sense serve to clarify the relations of substances (categories) and accidents, and of the relation of the (immortal) mind and the (mortal) body (cf. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, esp. 1037). Metaphysical parts are “parts of substances, of places, of time, of thinking”. (1) Whereas physical parts are parts of corporeal substances only, metaphysical parts are parts in a broader sense and include the former. Metaphysics as the most general science rests on and includes physics and is “superposed” on it. Metaphysics has to do with “substances which belong to accidents as well as to minds (Geister)” (MS 31567). (2) “In respect to the substance, something can continue to be

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the same real thing if it loses a [physical] accident. In respect to its spiritual part (individuo), man continues to be the same he has always been, whereas the physical part changes (is totally lost with his death)” (Ibid.). (3) “Whenever two real predicates refer to a thing and the same physical part without [logically] applying to the substance and species, they differ in respect to the metaphysical part.” (4) “ The metaphysical whole refers to each metaphysical part in different ways. According to the different ways of referring to the substance, the highest genera [categories] differ from one another” (MS 32011; cf. the chapter on Brentano’s dissertation above and his later writings on the catogories; see Brentano 1974). (5) Brentano thus summarizes: What the question of being in the proper sense is concerned with: the metaphysical parts, such as greatness, thought, etc., are not real beings” in themselves, but abstract “divisive” parts (“divisiva”) (MS, 31534). The pure … abstract … substance in itself [“Socrates”; “mind”] is not what a thing is, but is so only in conjunction with other metaphysical parts” [“greatness”; “thinking” etc.]. And these “other metaphysical parts” in themselves are “not what the thing is”, but are so only in conjunction with the metaphysical substance. A fortiori for the concrete metaphysical parts: “The concrete substance and the concrete accident are … predicable from each other … [and] are not two things but one and the same thing, namely the metaphysical whole.” … [Socrates is great; a mind is thinking] “Only the metaphysical whole: the great [Socrates], the thinking [mind] etc. is a real thing (a Reale)” (MS, 31985 and 31535; emphasis mine).

It is shown that mutually dependent metaphysical parts necessitate each other, as constituents, to form a real whole. I find it remarkable how Brentano, in his quite early metaphysics, addresses and characterizes the thingly character of being. It is not to be ascribed exclusively to his later “reism”. 3 Psychological mereology Brentano’s philosophical psychology (“a personalizing psychology”) is an analysis of psychical phenomena taken as whole units which one “experiences” in one’s “inner life”. Brentano aims on one hand to show how such wholes are to be analyzed in order to seize their “parts”. On the other hand he demonstrates how these parts can interplay with one another and how they can play a constituent role for the

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relevant whole of which they are parts. One of the conclusions that follow is (against for instance Kant’s verdict) that analysis consists in the method of not only gaining and developing particular knowledge (Erkenntniszugewinn), but also arriving at “analyzed wholes”. This means that there is an “analytical apriori” of knowledge, and that a Kantian “a priory synthesis” is merely a “prejudice” (Brentano 1925). 1. The Psychology of Aristotle. This Habilitationsschrift (Brentano 1867) is dedicated to Aristotle’s “theory of the faculties of knowledge”. For “in a certain measure a just characterization of his entire philosophy is given” (ibid., VI). Brentano insists on several points. (1) He argues that in Aristotle’s psychology, the faculties of mind, senses, and intellect stand in a constitutive and intentional relation to one another. The same thing that is given concretely to the senses is taken “in” by reason as being essentially identical; it is apprehended “only in different ways” according to different intentional attitudes held towards the same object as an object which is inherent to both the senses and reason (ibid, 80; cf. 135). As soon as one has “grasped this harmonic unity of sense and reason in Aristotle, one will come close to an understanding of the rest” of his philosophy (ibid., 40). (2) Brentano has up to this point reiterated a thesis taken from Trendelenburg’s lectures on psychology (1859/60), which he had attended and of which he had prepared a Mitschrift. Now, he develops his own theory of the much debated nous pojetikos or intellectus agens, that is, the active intellect. Brentano holds it to be: (a) the “preleflexive active power of the thinking part of our soul”; (b) the power of the mind which is “not [one-sidedly] separated from sense and intellect”; (c) the “intrinsic cause of our thinking” which gives to the senses, “the necessary drive for their retro-action towards the intellect”; (d) that which “holds mind and body intimately together” – as long as one is alive. Afterwards, the immortal soul, which is one-sidedly independent of the mortal body, still remains (cf. Ibid. 196). This interpretation had provoked a long-lasting controversy with Eduard Zeller, a Hegelian-inspired historian of philosophy (cf. Brentano 1911). 2. The Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. In his most famous work of 1874 (English edition, Brentano 1973, which from now on will be cited), on the one hand, he confronts his Psychology of Aristotle with the methods of psychology, especially with those of

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“experience” which lay the foundation for it, and with investigations on experience “from within” as it were, of the conscious “psychic phenomena” (which he also calls “acts”, or “functions” of the mind, in contrast to their counterpart, the “physical phenomena”) (cf. Brentano 1973, Book Two; Stumpf 1873, Ch. 5, on “psychological parts”; and Stumpf 1907). On the other hand, he aims at a new foundation of psychology on the basis of Aristotelian thought and by reflecting on contemporary positions (such as English empiricism, from Hume to Mill, Comte’s ‘positivism’, and Lange’s ‘materialism’). He leaves aside metaphysically-laden concepts such as ‘the soul’, and focuses instead on scientifically neutral “psychic acts” (cf. Brentano, ibid., 11). With this “empirical” act psychology which rests on “psychical facts”, Brentano hopes to gain a much needed “unity of convictions” in this field and to present it to his contemporaries. For the most part, “acts” are characterized by: a) their empirical, positively, and undoubtedly given “inner awareness”, or “selfexperience”; b) their multiple, and simultaneous, intentional relations towards an object, to a content, and to the acts themselves; c) their different intentional attitudes in relation to the same thing: either one presents it, judges it, or has an emotional attitude towards it. Brentano’s characterization of mental acts thus reveals in any case the following mereological structure: (1) A mental act is a complex unity which entails parts: a twosided “intentional” direction towards two different objects, and a twosided knowledge. In every single act, two simultaneous “parts” of knowledge are included, one that is oriented outwards, the so-called “primary consciousness”, transitively directed towards things (the “primary objects”, usually an object of sensation, a “physical phenomenon”, but also a prior act), and one that is oriented inwards, the “secondary consciousness”, which is intransitively “self-related” towards the “secondary object”, which is the act itself. (A rainbow appears, I have the “experience” of seeing a rainbow and I immediately, evidently, and de facto, know that I see it) (cf. Ibid., 91). (2) An act, while it obtains, together with its objects (the rainbow and the act itself), also has a content which is the object as sensed. Brentano also calls the latter “immanent objectivity” (cf. Twardowski 1894, § 2). An act can therefore not only “have” (mind-transcendent) objects (letting them be what they are or seem to be), but it also sup-

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poses them as mind-immanent objects, taking them “in” without their material qualities as soon as it acts on them (A rainbow has on the firmament its material physical “qualities”, the colors. But a thought of a rainbow does not possess such qualities. Otherwise the mind would itself become colored.) (3) There are not only different objects with respect to acts, but also different modes of acts, which refers to one and the same object in different ways: through (1) presentations, (2) judgments, and (3) emotive attitudes (love, hate, will, desire). Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on (Brentano, ibid., 88).

The mereological structure of these acts is such that they are “presentations or […] phenomena which are based upon presentations” (ibid., 97; emphasis is mine). One can be presented with something as it is, and in such a way whereby one does not further react on it. Presentations can stand on their own; they are one-sidedly separable and independent acts. One can make also, in addition to this presentation, make a judgment about it or take an emotional attitude towards it. Presentations are the “fundamental” acts on which the other acts are “founded”, or “superposed”. This means that: (1) in any superposed act a presentation is presupposed and included as part, for nothing can be judged without being presented, and nothing can be loved without being presented; (2) superposed acts are not just connections of presentations, but are interconnected with fundamental acts in such a close way as to form units of acts sui generis (“idiogenetic” acts, cf. Hillebrand 1891, § 16); (3) although one carries out different modes of acts, the unity of one’s consciousness and self-consciousness persists. It is not a loose “‘bundle’ of phenomena”: When we perceive color, sound, warmth, odor simultaneously nothing prevents us from assigning each one to a particular thing. On the other hand, we are forced to take the multiplicity of various acts of sensing, such as seeing, hearing, experiencing warmth and smelling, and the simultaneous acts of willing and feeling, as well as the inner perception which provides us with the knowledge of all those, as parts of one

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3. The Descriptive Psychology. This work (Brentano 1982; Engl. ed. 1995, which will from now on be cited) is also called “Descriptive Phenomenology”, “Phenomenognosis”, and “Psychognosis”. It is “the science of people’s inner life, that is, the part of life which is captured in inner perception.” Brentano searches for an “anatomy of the soul’s life” in which he “aims at exhaustively determining (if possible) the elements of human consciousness and the ways in which they are connected” in order to provide “for us” a general concept of the entire area of the human consciousness (Brentano 1995, 3; cf. ibid., 83, 135, 165) . These elements and their interconnections are elaborated in a psycho-mereology, in analogy to the onto-mereology. This “pure” descriptive analysis and synthesis of mental states and processes is strongly kept apart from “inexact” “genetical” or “physiological” psychology. For the elementary questions are to be resolved first; only when the base is established can questions of psychophysics be dealt with. A methodological necessary condition for the description is the experience (Erleben) of inner states and processes. These can be made clear through an explicit perceiving (Bemerken) of what is given implicitly in consciousness; through an inductive “collection” and “fixation” of what has been experienced; through an “inductive generalization” of the experienced in order to “intuitively” grasp its laws; and through the “deductive use” (“deductive Verwertung”) of its theoretical and practical value for psychology and the other sciences (cf. ibid., 31-79). Regarding the “elements of consciousness” “and the ways in which they are connected“, Brentano argues the following: (1) “This implies that consciousness is something which consists of a multitude of parts.” Thus, he rejects Hume’s thesis according to which consciousness consists in a “multitude of things”, in “nothing but a bundle of different ideas” laying “side by side” in succession and uninterrupted motion. Sed contra: The claim that our present consciousness does not belong to one thing, but that it is distributed across a multitude of things, means that it does not fully consist in a real thing (einem Reale) or in a collective of real

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things. This … is completely inconceivable. … However he [Hume] is undoubtably correct at one point: Our consciousness does not present itself … as something simple, but it shows itself as being composed of many parts. Unity of reality is something different from simplicity of reality. (Ibid., 14 f)

(2) He classifies the parts in the following unities: (2.1.) There are real separable parts. These parts of consciousness can actually be separated from one another, when one of these parts ceases to be and the other still exists, either a) one-sidedly (for example, like in “seeing a particular color and presenting the concept”, seeing is gone, the concept remains), or b) two-sidedly (for instance seeing and hearing which can mutually be separated from one another. One can hear and see something or just see or just hear). (2.2.) Distinctional parts. These are those parts of consciousness “which are distinguishable even though they were not actually separable. … And, since distinguishing goes beyond actual separability … one could speak of parts or elements of elements … the last mere [conceptually] distinctional parts.” (Ibid., 16 f)

(2.2.1.) There are two classes of these mere distinctional parts. a) Two-sidedly “mutually penetrating” or “pervading” parts, e.g. in a visual experience. In it, one can, on one hand, distinguish a specific quality, say of a specifically colored object, and the space presupposed by this quality; on the other hand, these distinctional parts “penetrate” each other, and thus “mutually contribute” to the “individualization” of this visual experience. Mutual pervading distinctional parts “in the strict sense” are to be found in acts (as wholes). For instance, in a positive judgment ‘There is a truth’ the following parts of this sort are at least included: its affirmative quality, its directedness upon its object ‘truth’, and its evidence. b) One-sidedly (hierarchically, logically) determined parts. They are exemplified by color vision: In it, a “superordinate generic” determination “color” and a specific determination “red” are distinguishable; and a determination “being colored” does not imply “being red” whereas “being red” implies “being colored”. There is a logical distinction between genus and differentia specifica, and both “parts of a definition” determine something distinctionally from one another, yet the differentia specifica is included in the same line of

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predication of the genus (cf. Ibid., 21 and 23; cf. also above sub II. 3. b)). c) Real and modified distinctional parts. These are the parts of “the intentional pair of correlates” in consciousness. The one of these two parts is the act itself, the other the object it relates to (f. i. seeing – what is seen; presenting – what is presented). The peculiarity in those relations in general is that one part of the correlate, the experiencing subject, is real, not so the other part, the directed-upon-object: The seen color as seen (what Brentano in his 1874 had called the “content” of an act) is not real (not really a color). A presented former king presented as past is not real (now). The presented as such is only “modified” “co-present” as the past object of the (now) real act (cf. ibid., 24 and 28-30). d) Inseparable concomitant distinctional parts. These are the primary and the secondary psychical relations (cf. above sub II. 2.). Both are not really separable but only distinctional parts; for “Every consciousness, upon whatever object it is primarily directed, is concomitantly directed upon itself. In the presenting of the color thus there is simultaneously a presenting of this presenting” (ibid., 25), which is given in the “twofold energy” (Diploseenergie) of any act. 4 Conclusion To sum up Brentano’s mereology in relation to diverse philosophical disciplines, we can refer to Brentano himself, who in his “pure” Descriptive Psychology gives reasons for such a detailed procedure: in order to arrive at an “anatomy” of the inner life, Brentano aims at “exhaustively determining (if possible) the elements of human consciousness and the ways in which they are connected”, and thus providing “for us a general concept of the entire area of the human consciousness.” By methodologically describing act-units (and ontological units) from inside via their differently qualified kinds of parts and elements, and by detecting “elements of these elements”, he was to develop “a general concept of the entire area of the human consciousness”. This concept analogously, mutatis mutandis, is transferable to other disciplines (Inasmuch Brentano’s concept meets the newer formal criteria of part/whole relations, of e.g. Lesniewski’s, see Baumgartner and Simons 1994.)

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This concept was first developed “for us”, for Brentano himself, and for his school. In a letter to Anton Marty, Brentano had sent a harbinger version of it, maintaining that it will mean a scientific breakthrough (Letter to Marty, March, 24, 1885; see Elisabeth Baumgartner et al. (eds.) 1996, 26). It is well known what essential influence Brentano’s Psychology, especially his Descriptive Psychology, had for his school and for the “phenomenological movement” altogether. Secondly, this concept generally was thought to serve for the foundation of a scientific psychology; moreover, for any science, including natural science to which Brentano had lent the raw concept which he worked out in detail. It was, a fortiori, thought to serve the further development of a scientific “genetic psychology”, psycho-physics (solution of the mind-body-problem). A science “which deserves this name” first has to elaborate a proper theory in order to solve its issues. And in doing so, it can be used to solve further problems (cf., ibid, 78).

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References

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Antonelli, M. 2001. Seiendes, Bewußtsein, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano. Freiburg / München: Alber. Baumgartner, E. et al. (eds.). 1996. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Dettelbach: Röll. Baumgartner, W. & P. Simons. 1994. Brentano’s Mereology. In Axiomathes, n.s., V (1), 55-76. Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano-Forschung, III, (1990/91), „Intentionalität“. Brentano Studien, Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano-Forschung, IV, (1992/93), „Teil und Ganzes“. Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg: Herder. —— 1866. Habilitationsthesen Ad disputationem … theses…pro impedranda venia docendi. Aschaffenburg: Schipner. (also in Brentano 1929) —— 1867 ff. Metaphysikvorlesungen. Nachlass M 95, M 96, M 99. —— 1867a. ‘Geschichte der kirchlichen Wissenschaften’ P.B. Gams (ed.) J.A. Möhler, Kirchengeschichte. Regensburg: Manz: Vol II, 526-584. —— 1867b. Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom Nous Pojetikos. Mainz: Kirchheim —— 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpuncte. Leipzig . (New edition according to the original: Heusenstamm: ontos 2008). —— 1895. Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand. Stuttgart: Cotta. —— 1911. Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes. Leipzig: Meiner. —— 1925.Versuch über die Erkenntnis, Leipzig: Meiner. —— 1929. Über die Zukunft der Philosophie. Leipzig: Meiner. —— 1933. Kategorienlehre. Leipzig: Meiner. —— 1963. Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie. Bern: Francke / Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1968. Über die Zukunft der Philosophie. Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1973. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. —— 1974. Kategorienlehre. Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1980. Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Philosophie. Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1982. Deskriptive Psychologie. Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1986. Über Aristoteles. Nachgelassene Aufsätze. Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1987. Geschichte der Philosophie der Neuzeit. Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1995. Deskriptive Psychology. London: Routledge. —— 1998. The Four Phases of Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Chrudzimski, A.. 2004. Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Hillebrand, F. 1891. Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse. Eine logische Untersuchung. Wien: Hölder. Jacquette, D. (ed.) 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Franz Brentano. Cambridge / U.K.: Cambridge University Press Stumpf, C. 1873. Über den psychologischen Ursprung unserer Raumvorstellung. Leipzig: Hirzel.

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—— 1907. Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen. Berlin: Reimer. Trendelenburg, F. A. 1846. Geschichte der Kategorienlehre. Berlin: Bethge. —— 1859/60. Unpublished Lectures on Psychology. Twardowski, K. 1894. Zur Lehre von Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung. Wien: Hölder. (Reprint München: Philosophia 1982).

BRENTANO AT THE INTERSECTION OF PSYCHOLOGY, ONTOLOGY, AND THE GOOD SUSAN GABRIEL

(SAINT ANSELM COLLEGE)

1 Introduction Though he rejected the architectonic, speculative systems of Kant and Hegel, Franz Brentano (1838-1917) was himself a systematic philosopher with the big picture always in mind. Many useful studies of his thought have focussed narrowly on this or that aspect of his system– his theory of intrinsic value, his intentionality thesis, his mereology, and so forth–but since the time of his own students, such as Oskar Kraus and Alfred Kastil, few have paid attention to the overarching themes and their relations.1 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.2 But I do 1

A notable recent exception is Tiefensee (1998). This wonderful and amazingly comprehensive study is a gold mine of information about the development of Brentano’s thought in view of his larger concerns. I shall have occasion to refer to it repeatedly in the notes to this paper. See also, Marocco (1996; 1998). 2 For proofs of God’s existence, for theodicy, and for discussions of optimism and pessimism, see Brentano (1987) and (1954). Brentano rejected the ontological proof of God’s existence and relied instead especially on the teleological proof as well as the proof from motion, the proof from contingency and what he called the psychological proof. The teleological proof is a kind of theodicy in itself, but Brentano also

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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. As is well known, Brentano had many areas of interest in philosophy, ranging from logic to psychology to metaphysics to ethics to aesthetics. Brentano’s work in these areas has been acknowledged as a significant contribution to philosophy in general, both among analytic philosophers and among Continentalists. At the same time, his preoccupation with natural theology has received far less attention, and even been regarded as quaint or embarrassing in an otherwise very modern thinker.3 As I have pointed out elsewhere, this attitude seems to me to overlook the fact that Brentano must have been well aware that natural theology as a topic for philosophical discussion had already been in some disrepute before he was born.4 Eberhard Tiefensee suggests, and I agree, that precisely the 19th century eclipse of religious concerns by such modern developments as the “world-view neutral modern state”5 led Brentano to apply his philosophical mind to the larger human questions dealt with by metaphysics and by its completion in natural theology. Be that as it may, there can be no question but that natural theology was an abiding and even dominant concern for Brentano throughout his career. References to it may be found in virtually all of his works, from the early period to the late, before his break with the Catholic Church and after, before the so-called ‘reistic turn’ and after. So I think it is fair to assume that questions in natural theology often lie behind and sometimes even motivate Brentano’s inquiries in other areas of philosophy; not that his thought is ever reducible to apologetics–a project that would have been anathema to him–but rather that his version of classical, natural theology provides a set of background concerns against which his claims in other areas can be seen to fit together. added considerations relevant to theodicy which he had worked out at various stages during his career, while he taught at Würzburg, while he taught at Vienna, while he lived in Florence; and he still worked on these issues at the end of his life in Zürich. 3 See Tiefensee (1998, 27-42). 4 Krantz Gabriel (2004). 5 Tiefensee (1998, 490). His well-turned German phrase in this connection is: “besonders der weltanschaulich neutrale moderne Staat.”

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In what follows, I shall briefly discuss: first, certain features of Brentano’s psychology; second, certain features of Brentano’s later ontology; and third, certain features of his ethical theory; in order to show, finally, where these intersect in a way that illuminates Brentano’s views in the area of metaphysics and natural theology known as theodicy. 2 Psychology Brentano’s psychology has been widely studied and written about. I shall not focus on well-worn topics such as the intentionality thesis, immanent objects, and the like. Rather I take my starting point from early passages in the collection of posthumous writings to be found in his Descriptive Psychology where he notes that there are elements or parts of human consciousness, “contrary to the old teaching that the soul is something strictly uniform and completely simple.”6 Brentano notes that Hume had already questioned the simplicity of the soul when he proposed his ‘bundle theory’ of the self, commenting: However unfortunate Hume’s comparison of our consciousness to a bundle, he is undoubtably (sic) correct on one point: Our consciousness does not present itself to our inner perception as something simple, but it shows itself as being composed of many parts. Unity of reality is something different from simplicity of reality.7

There can be no doubt that consciousness has parts, then, if it thus presents itself to our inner perception, because inner perception cannot be mistaken about things like this.8 Inner perception also indicates that the parts of our consciousness fall into several kinds: there are separa6

Brentano (1982/1995, 13). I shall quote from the English edition, only adding the German in footnotes where I think the English is difficult or misleading. Unfortunately the Müller translation is flawed. Phrases in square brackets occur as such in the Müller translation, except as otherwise indicated. 7 Brentano (1982/1995, 15), emphasis added in the last line. 8 Brentano (1981, 1): “To understand Brentano’s theory of being, one must realize that he appeals to what he calls inner perception for his paradigmatic uses of the word ‘is.’ For inner perception, according to Brentano, is the source of our knowledge of the nature of being, just as it is the source of our knowledge of the nature of truth and of the nature of good and evil. And what can be said about the being of things that are not apprehended in inner perception can be understood only by analogy with what we are able to say about ourselves as thinking subjects.”

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ble parts, both mutually separable and one-sidedly separable, as well as non-separable parts, or ‘distinctional’ parts which Brentano tells us also come in several kinds, viz., mutually pervading parts, logical parts, and intentional correlates. Let us take a very brief look at what he says about each of these. First there are the separable parts: [Examples of two-sided/mutual] actual separability: seeing and hearing, parts of seeing and parts of hearing, respectively, to see and to remember having seen. [Examples of] one-sided separability: seeing and noticing, seeing of a particular color and presenting the concept [Vorstellen des Begriffs], concept and judgment, premises and conclusion, etc.9

‘Mutual actual separability’ (bilateral separability) means that the two parts can each continue to exist without the other. ‘One-sided separability’ (unilateral separability) means that when one part (the second) is removed, it cannot continue to exist on its own. For instance, noticing cannot continue to exist if the seeing (or other outer perception) is separated from it, because then there would be nothing to notice. Next there are the non-separable parts, which Brentano calls ‘distinctionelle Teile.’10 In order to elucidate these, Brentano concocts a fiction:

Someone who believes in atoms believes in corpuscles which cannot be dissolved into smaller bodies. But even so he can speak of halfs (sic), quarters, etc., of atoms: parts which are distinguishable even though they are not actually separable. To differentiate these from others, we may refer to them as distinctional [distinktionelle] parts. And, since distinguishing goes beyond actual separability, one could speak of parts or elements of elements. But the fact that there are no merely distinctional spatial parts does not exclude [the possibility of] there being any distinctional parts, in the same way in which the cir-

9

Brentano (1982/1995, 15). The English translation, in calling these “distinctional” parts rather than distinguishable parts, abuses the language somewhat, but Brentano was known to abuse German, too, so I see no reason to correct this. The discussion at hand occurs in Brentano (1982/1995, 15-23). 10

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cumstance that there are no spatially separable parts did not exclude that there are other separable parts.11

The fictitious atom whose halves and quarters can be distinguished mentally but not really shows that parts may be distinguished even where they are neither mutually (bilaterally) nor one-sidedly (unilaterally) separable, since an atom is literally an unsplittable thing. LikeLikewise, the distinctional parts of consciousness can be distinguished although they are not separable from one another. Such distinctional parts come in three kinds: The following are the mutually pervading parts in the act of judging ‘There is truth’: Affirmative quality The being directed (Gerichtetsein) upon the object ‘truth’ Self-evidence The apodeictic modality, ... [and among distinctional parts there are also] Logical Parts ... [and] Parts of the Intentional Pair of Correlates...12

For my purposes, it is important to note that intentionality (the being directed upon an object), evidence, and logical parts (for instance, seeing-red has seeing as a logical part13) are all distinctional parts of consciousness, that is to say, they are inseparable from consciousness. This is interesting because it shows that for Brentano consciousness is 11

Brentano (1982/1995, 16-7). In German, the last sentence quoted here reads: “Aber wie der Umstand, dass keine räumliche ablösbaren Teile, nicht ausgeschloss, dass [es] irgendwelche ablösbaren Teile [gibt], so auch die Tatsache, dass keine bloss distinktionellen räumlichen Teile, nicht, dass [es] irgendwelche distinktionelle [gibt].“ (Brentano 1982, 14) 12 Brentano (1982/1995, 22/3). Passages in square brackets have been added. 13 Chisholm and Baumgartner append the following explanatory note: “8. Can the concept of parts which are (mutually) pervading [durchwohnend] be reduced to that of logical parts? If we speak of the spatiality [Räumlichkeit] or the quality of a sensation, we are not speaking of the subspecies of the sensation or the genus under which it falls. The concept of logical parts is illustrated in a different way in sensation. For example, seeing-red has seeing as a logical part; seeing has experiencing as a logical part, and experiencing has thinking as a logical part. Analogously, judging is a logical part of accepting. But the affirmative quality would be a pervading part of accepting. ‘Logical parts’ would seem appropriate for species and genera, not for individual things; and ‘mutually pervading parts’ would seem appropriate for individual things and not for species and genera.” Brentano 1982/1995, 179).

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enriched in various ways – not in all ways at all times, to be sure, but in some ways at all times, since it always has at least the distinctional part which is intentionality – and thus is not to be thought of as ever being bare or blank or, it turns out, without value. We shall return to this point later, in section 4. In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,14 Brentano famously distinguished three kinds or levels of mental activity: presentation; judgment; and acts of love or hate. The first point he wished to emphasize is that presentation and judgment are in fact different mental acts although others had classed them together: .

Even if you refuse to admit that in judgment there is, in addition to presentation, a second and radically different way in which consciousness refers to the object, it is not and cannot be denied that there is some difference between the one state and the other.15

For Brentano, however, the “difference between the one state and the other” is not that judgment involves predication, as has typically been thought. Rather, he tells us, judgment involves “a radically different way in which consciousness refers to the object,” i.e., affirmation or denial (acceptance or rejection) of the object, which is different from simple presentation of the object since in presentation judgment clearly can be withheld. To fail to make this distinction is to confuse the two classes, presentation and judgment, and therefore erroneously to assume that cognition or knowledge is the fundamental class: But in fact it is not correct to say that knowledge is the primary mental act. It is, to be sure, present in all mental acts, and therefore in the first one, but only secondarily. The primary object of the act is not always known (if it were we would never judge falsely) and not even always judged (if it were there would be no questions or inquiries about it), but often, and in the simplest acts, it is merely presented.16

14

Brentano (1973). The relevant discussion may be found at Brentano (1973, 202-53). Brentano (1973, 202). 16 Brentano (1973, 226). Here Oskar Kraus objects (note 23) that, “The proof does not seem to be quite rigorous. For even if the primary ‘object’ is always an object of judgment, as is actually the case with belief in sense-qualities, doubt in the judgment’s correctness can arise subsequently.” However, this will not affect our point about pervading distinctional parts. 15

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The knowledge that is present in all mental acts is “the cognition of the mental phenomenon in inner consciousness,” i.e., the awareness of being aware of an object. From what we have gleaned from the passages about distinctional parts in the Descriptive Psychology, we can conclude that Brentano would have considered judgment, in this case, to be a distinctional (pervading) part of presentation. This will be a significant point later on in sections 4 and 5. Having established that presentation and judgment are distinct mental acts or phenomena, Brentano continues his classification of the fundamental kinds of mental acts by insisting that feeling and will, though distinct from judgment, form just one additional class, not two as many have thought.17 He thus combines feeling and will into a third class of mental acts which he calls acts of love or hate (sometimes emotive phenomena, or phenomena of interest). A phenomenon belonging to this [third] class is not a judgment. (‘This is something to be loved,’ or ‘This is something to be hated,’ would be judgments about goodness or badness.) It is, rather, an act of love or hate…[T]he relationship between goodness and badness, value and disvalue of objects, and the phenomena belonging to this class, is analogous to that which obtains between truth and falsity in judgments. And it is this characteristic reference to the object which, I maintain, reveals itself in an equally direct and evident way in desire and will, as well as in everything that we called feeling or emotion, through inner perception.18 The peculiar character of acts of love or hate is captured, then, in their relationship to their object, which is not the relationship of mere presentation and not the relationship of affirmation or denial (acceptance or rejection), but rather the emotive relationship of love or hate, desire or aversion. We have, therefore, exactly three kinds of intentional relation, or mental act according to Brentano:

17

Brentano (1973, 247): “As a result of our discussion, we may say, then, that inner experience clearly reveals the unity of the basic class of feeling and will. It does so by showing us that there is never any sharply drawn boundary between them and that they are distinguished from other mental phenomena by a common characteristic of their reference to a content. The things said about them by philosophers of the most diverse persuasions, even those who divide them into two basic classes, give clear indications of this common characteristic and confirm, as does ordinary language, the correctness of our description of these inner phenomena.” 18 Brentano (1973, 240-41).

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254 Presentations Judgments Acts of love or hate19

Distinct though they are, however, it is also to be noted that Brentano considered them exactly that–distinct but not necessarily separable. As he says: This shows that phenomena of the three fundamental classes are most intimately intertwined. For it is not possible to conceive of a more intimate connection than that between the three elements of inner consciousness. Furthermore, we know that the three classes are of the utmost universality; there is no mental act in which all three are not present. There is a certain ubiquity pertaining to each class in all of our conscious life. As we noted previously, however, it does not follow from this that they are derivable from one another... But it is conceivable without contradiction that there might be a form of mental life which is missing one or even two of these kinds of mental activity and lacks all capacity for them as well. By the same token, there is still a difference between those mental acts which are called in a relative sense mere acts of presentation and those of which this is not the case, insofar as the primary object of an act is sometimes merely presented, sometimes also affirmed or denied, and sometimes simultaneously loved or hated in some way. In the latter cases, strings which had only, so to speak, resonated in the first case are now struck directly.20

Again, we see Brentano’s insistence on the complexity of human mental life. He leaves open the possibility of simpler mental lives (e.g., those of non-human animals), reduced to one or two of the three kinds of intentional relation. We shall return to this issue in section 4. Besides its complexity, Brentano saw our mental life as exposing the deep nature of reality in a special way, for he coordinates the three kinds of mental acts with the ancient trinity of ideals, Beauty, Truth, 19

Brentano (1973, 264): “For this reason, therefore, we may consider it established that mental phenomena exhibit no more and no less than a threefold fundamental difference in their reference to a content, or as we might put it, in their mode of consciousness, and that, in view of this, they fall into three basic classes; the class of presentations, the class of judgments, and the class of the phenomena of love and hate.” 20 Brentano (1973, 265-266).

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and Goodness. As with much of Brentano’s thought, this is a revision of a traditional theme, and at the same time a reinforcement of its value. Brentano sees each of the three kinds of mental acts as capable of its own peculiar perfection: the perfection of presentation is to be found in the appreciation of beauty; the perfection of judgment is to be found in the knowledge of truth; and the perfection of love is to be found in the love of the good for its own sake. In a particularly rhapsodic passage, he carries this image to the heights of religious concontemplation: The Ideal of Ideals consists in the unity of all Truth, Goodness and Beauty, i.e., in a being whose presentation is the manifestation of infinite beauty, revealing in it and in its infinite and surpassing archetypes every conceivable finite beauty; a being whose knowledge is a disclosure of infinite truth ... and a being whose love loves the infinite allencompassing good and, in it, all else which shares in a finite way in its perfection... This is the promise of blessedness which is offered in Christianity, the most perfect religion that has appeared in history. And the greatest of the pagan thinkers, especially the divinely inspired Plato, are in agreement with it in hoping for such a blissful happiness.21

This completes our brief excursion into Brentano’s psychology, but I shall return to these themes from his psychology in section 4. We have seen that first of all, Brentano regards our mental life as being complex and having parts, contrary to the traditional doctrine of the simplicity of the soul. Secondly, these parts may have a variety of relationships to one another: they may be mutually separable; onesidedly separable; or merely distinctional; and if the latter, they may be mutually pervading, or logical parts, or intentional correlates. Thirdly, mental acts come in three basic kinds: presentation, the simplest and most basic; judgment which, based upon presentation, adds the element of affirmation or denial (acceptance or rejection); and acts of love or hate which, based on judgment, add the element of love or 21

Brentano (1973, 262). See Tiefensee (1998, 33 and 488). He notes that there is a neo-Platonic element evident here, which some have remarked upon and others simply found inconsistent with Brentano’s overall Aristotelian orientation. For Tiefensee, the neo-Platonism is real, and really Brentano; the inconsistency is not to be brushed away, but forms part of an adequate picture of Brentano’s thought. “Brentanos Philosophiebegriff ist offensichtlich nolens volens in deutliche Nähe zum Neuplatonismus und zum von ihm immer bekämpften Deutschen Idealismus gelangt.”

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hate, desire or aversion.22 I turn now to a brief discussion of Brentano’s ontology, in order to clarify the ontological status of these parts of consciousness, according to Brentano’s later reistic ontology. 3 Ontology As mentioned earlier, Brentano considered the evidence with which a judgment is rendered to be a distinctional, pervading part of the judgment. This view, taken from the writings on psychology, gets fuller treatment in the writings on ontology (published posthumously), particularly in those which deal with Brentano’s reistic turn, his development of an ontology restricted entirely to concrete individuals and dismissing as unreal such alleged entities as universals, activities, and thought-of objects considered in themselves. He tells us: 22

For further elaboration, see Brentano (1973, 266-7): “Here, as everywhere, the relative independence, simplicity and universality of the classes must determine their order. “On this principle it is clear that presentation deserves the primary place, for it is the simplest of the three phenomena, while judgment and love always include presentation within them. “It is likewise the most independent of the three, since it is the foundation for the others, and, for exactly the same reason, it is the most universal... We can conceive, without contradiction, of a being which has no capacity for judgment or love, equipped with nothing but the capacity for presentation, but we cannot conceive of it the other way around. Furthermore, the laws governing the succession of presentations for a psychological fiction such as this could be the same as some of the laws which manifest their influence on our mental life now. “For similar reasons, judgment is entitled to the second place. For, after presentation, judgment is the simplest class... An act of love will be one of joy on some occasions, sorrow on others, or hope or fear or any number of other forms, depending upon what judgment is made concerning the existence or non-existence, probability or improbability of the object loved. In fact, then, it seems inconceivable that a being should be endowed with the capacity for love and hate without possessing that of judgment. And it is equally impossible to set up any law governing the sequence of this kind of phenomena which completely leaves out the phenomenon of judgment. With regard to independence, to simplicity, and, for the very same reason, to universality, then, this class comes after the class of judgment. In universality this is true, of course, only in the sense in which a difference in universality can be spoken of between presentation and judgment. “We can see from what has been said how completely mistaken as to the true relationship of the facts those people are who consider will to be the most basic of all mental phenomena ... It is not just presentation that is obviously a prerequisite for the will. The discussion just conducted shows that judgment precedes love and hate generally and, all the more, the relatively late phenomena of the will. Those philosophers thus turn the natural order precisely around.”

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Among the things that have parts, there are certain wholes which are not composed of a multiplicity of parts. Such a whole would seem to be a thing which is such that one of its parts has been enriched but not as a result of the whole acquiring a second part. One example of such an entity is a thinking soul. When it ceases to think it remains the same soul. But when it starts to think again no second thing has been added to that entity which is the soul. What we have there, then, is not like what we have when one stone is laid alongside another or when we double the size of a body. In the latter case, the enlarged body is made up of two things, one of which is the added part and neither of which contains the other. By contrast, the thinking soul contains the soul essentially [sachlich], just as the specific difference red contains the concept color conceptually. This fact is readily misunderstood. Thus one has been led to say that the actively thinking thing is added to that thing which is the soul. All so-called abstract terms, it would seem, are rooted in this fiction. But the thinking activity conceived abstractly is just as little a thing as a contemplated man or the future king... The substance is a thing and the substance enriched by an accident is again a thing; but the substance enriched by the accident is not a thing that is wholly different from the substance; hence we do not have that kind of addition which yields a plurality.23

His ontology from this period is characterized by what Prof. Chisholm has called, “the ontological primacy of the intentional,”24 and by commitment to the proposition that whatever really exists must be an individual, that is to say, a substance, or a part of a substance, or an aggregate of substances, or an accident.25 Thus Brentano treats accidents as individuals, perhaps the best known feature of his ontology. In light of this, the evident quality of a judgment may be viewed, not only as a distinctional, pervading part of the judgment, but also as an accident of the judgment, as Brentano explained in this excerpt from a dictation dated July 9, 1915: If, now, we compare certain accidents with other accidents, for example, if we compare thinking with affirming or denying, the relation would seem to be analogous to that of substance and accident; for the thinking is included in the affirmation and denial, whereas the con23

Brentano (1981, 47-8). For more on Brentano’s ontology, see among other sources: Chisholm (1978); Churdzimski and Smith (2004). 24 Brentano (1981, 2). 25 Brentano (1981, 19): “Among things in the strict sense, then, are every substance, every multiplicity of substances, every part of a substance, and also every accident.”

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verse is not true. And the thinking can continue to exist without continuing to be an affirmation or denial. Just as the soul serves as the substratum for the thinking, it would seem that the thinking, in turn, serves as the substratum for the judging. Is it not possible, then, for the judging itself to be the subject of accidental differences, instead of being specifically differentiated? If we perceive or demonstrate something with evidence and if we continue to adhere to it but without direct or indirect evidence, then we would seem to judge the same as before, even though the evidence has not been replaced by any other differentia which is coordinated to it. One could hold, therefore, that instead of serving to differentiate the judgment essentially or to determine it specifically, the evidence is related to it as an accident, just as the judging is related to the thinking and the thinking to the soul.26

Whereas earlier, in discussing Brentano’s psychology, we noted an ordered hierarchy of mental acts–presentation, judgment, act of love or hate–now we begin to see this hierarchy as rooted in a substance, the soul, such that the unity of presentation, judgment, and love or hate, may be seen to be grounded in the unity of the thinking thing which underlies these mental acts. Now, instead of speaking of mental acts, we speak of accidents of a substance. In addition, we begin to see the parts of consciousness discussed in Brentano’s psychology–mutually separable parts, but also one-sidedly separable parts, and merely distinctional parts, including logical parts– as being individuals. Brentano suggests: Suppose an atom were capable of thinking: then the thinking atom would be a whole which, if the atom ceased to think, would be reduced to one of its parts. But one could not at all say that its thinking could be preserved if the atom ceased to exist. Just as the concept red contains as red the concept color, so the thinking thing would contain as thinking thing the nature of the atom. If another atom were to think the same thing, it would differ from the first not only qua atom but also qua thinking thing; as a thinking thing it would be individuated by the individuality of the atom. In such cases, the one part of the whole is said to subsist or to underlie the whole and thus to be its substance. The whole itself, in contrast to this part, is to be called an accident... A substance can be enriched by more than one accident. This would be the case if the atom we imagined to be capable of thinking were also 26

Brentano (1966, 128).

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to hear and to see at the same time. The unity of the substance would then unite the one who hears and the one who sees. Yet the one who hears could cease to exist as such while the one who sees persists unchanged; and conversely. Now it is perhaps incorrect to ascribe mental activity to an atom, but there is a non-spatial substance within ourselves. It is contained in us as the substantial part of the one-who-isthinking, of the one-who-is-willing, of the one-who-is seeing, of the one-who-is-hearing, and equally so in each case. This substantial part distinguishes our own hearing from the similar hearing of another person, and for each of us it unifies the one-who-hears, the one-who-sees, the one-who-thinks, and so on. This part is called the soul [Seele].27

Following this train of thought, we can see that from his reistic perspective, Brentano would consider each of the following to be an individual, an accident: one-who-sees; one-who-hears; one-whojudges; one-who-judges-with-evidence; one-who-loves, and so forth: If one judges with evidence, then it is the case, not only that a substance is the subject which underlies the judging, but also that this judging is the subject which underlies the evidence. Perhaps one can also say that, in every case of judgment, the substance is in the first instance the subject underlying a presentation; the latter is an accident which is, in turn, the subject underlying a belief.28

At the simplest psychic level, presentation, what really exists is an individual, an accident, one-who-sees, or one-who-hears, etc. And ‘beneath’ that there is just the ‘one,’ the soul or psychic individual. What is the nature of this apparently ‘bare particular’? Its nature is that it is capable of being enriched by a great number and variety of psychic accidents; this is the reistic way of saying that it is able to think, that it is, in traditional terminology, a rational being. I have heard a philosopher refer to Brentano’s later ontology as, “the rabbit hole of reism.”29 Many have considered his reistic turn difficult to explain,30 if not outright bizarre. My attempted explanation elsewhere of this phase of his thought is hardly sufficient,31 but I do think that a large factor must be Brentano’s Cartesian starting points. 27

Brentano (1981, 115-6). Brentano (1981, 119). 29 Professor Burnham Terrell, in conversation, 1981. 30 See Tiefensee (1998, 37f). 31 Krantz (1988). 28

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Philosophically, though heavily influenced by Aristotle, Brentano is thoroughly Cartesian in his reliance upon inner perception as the foundation of knowledge about reality. Looked at from the outside, as Aristotle views them, substances are ordered wholes which act as one even though they contain separable parts, and are unified even though, in the case of organisms, they gain and lose material constituents steadily through the processes of growth and metabolism. Thus Aristotle was not a mereological essentialist; he did not consider the parts to be essential to the whole, since the form of the whole provides actual identity over time.32 The individual man or ox acts as one in virtue of its form, not in virtue of its matter alone. But from the inside, from the Brentanian or Cartesian viewpoint, a substance is more like a point or, as Brentano repeatedly suggests, an atom, an unsplittable something whose identity is ensured precisely by its having no separable parts, although it can be a separable part. As Brentano puts it, “At the root of [my] theory of categories is a theory of the relation of whole and part ...”33 And as Chisholm rightly points out, Brentano’s theory of whole and part is that of a mereological essentialist. The cash value of this, to borrow an expression from William James, is ultimately that a substance is something that can exist without being a part of anything, while an accident, for Brentano, is something that cannot exist without being a part of something.34 The question why Brentano turned to this sort of ontology may be hard to answer, but it can be accounted for in a merely descriptive fashion: reism is the logical result of a thoroughgoing commitment to the epistemic priority of the ‘cogito,’ so much so that it becomes the ontological priority as well. 4 The good Now we are in a position to pull these threads from psychology and ontology together, as we turn to a consideration of Brentano’s conception of the good. As he tells us, in The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, “This concept, like all our others, has its origin in certain intuitive presentations.”35 To understand the good, then, we 32

See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Zeta, chapter 10. Brentano (1981, 84). 34 Brentano (1981, 7-10). 35 Brentano (1969, 13). For more on Brentano’s theory of value see among other sources: Chisholm (1986); Wilhelm Baumgartner and Lynn Pasquerella (2004). 33

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must return to the three fundamental classes of mental activity (or of psychic accidents, in the revised, reistic terminology), and search there for the source of the concept of the good. Thus Brentano examines them with a view to this end: Psychological acts that belong to the first class cannot be said to be either correct or incorrect. But in the case of acts that belong to the second class, one of the two opposing modes of relation–affirmation or denial–is correct and the other is incorrect, as logic has taught since ancient times. Naturally, the same thing is true of the third class. Of the two opposing types of feeling–loving and hating, inclination and disinclination, being pleased and being displeased–in every instance one of them is correct and the other incorrect. And now we have found what we have been looking for. We have arrived at the source of our concepts of the good and the bad, along with that of our concepts of the true and the false. We call a thing true when the affirmation relating to it is correct. We call a thing good when the love relating to it is correct. In the broadest sense of the term, the good is that which is worthy of love, that which can be loved with a love that is correct.36 We could speak of the axiological primacy of the intentional here, as a kind of parallel to the ontological primacy of the intentional mentioned earlier, adding to this the concept of correct emotion which Brentano held to as an aspect of his version of natural law ethics.37 We may say that the implications of this for Brentano are as follows; It is correct to love ‘clarity of insight’ and to hate ‘error or ignorance’; It is correct to prefer joy to sadness; ‘The correctness and higher character’ of correct emotion is good in itself;

36

Brentano (1969, 17-18). Brentano’s prose toward the end of this passage is lovely, and Professor Chisholm always said it made him think of a spelunker who had gleefully happened upon the source of a spring deep within the earth: “Hier sind wir nun an der Stelle, wo die gesuchten Begriffe des Guten und Schlechten, ebenso wie die des Wahren und Falschen, ihren Ursprung nehmen. Wir nennen etwas wahr, wenn die darauf bezügliche Anerkennung richtig ist. Wir nennen etwas gut, wenn die darauf bezügliche Liebe richtig ist. Das mit richtiger Liebe zu Liebende, das Liebwerte, ist das Gute im weitesten Sinne des Wortes.” 37 For an understanding of the sense in which Brentano’s ethics is a version of natural law ethics, see Brentano (1969, 4-34). The concepts of correct love and hate, as well as correct preference, come from this tradition, with Brentano’s alterations, as usual.

262

Susan Gabriel ‘Every act of thought–that is to say, every instance of having an idea or a presentation–is something that is good in itself.’38

Because the works on ethics stem mainly from Brentano’s pre-reistic period, in discussing their implications I shall at first use ordinary language that appears to accept the existence of such entia irrealia as acts, activities, and universals. Later I shall translate these points into the reistic language that captures Brentano’s mature view and is most applicable to his speculations in theodicy. We know from our examination of Brentano’s three basic classes of mental activity, combined now with his claims made in ethics, that presentations alone are incapable of being correct or incorrect. Judgments, as they involve affirmation or denial (acceptance or rejection) may be incorrect, and so by the principles above, judgments may not always be considered good in themselves. Likewise, emotive phenomena, acts of love or hate, may be incorrect, so they, too, are not always good in themselves for Brentano. The love of what is bad, or the hatred of what is good, then, are complicated phenomena; they include incorrect judgments as parts, so that we may say they are bad and include parts that are bad. But they also include a part that is necessarily good in itself, namely a presentation, since presentations have positive value despite being neither correct nor incorrect; something similar may be said for incorrect judgments. Brentano explains: Just as knowledge is a good, error is an evil as such, and the magnitude of the evil varies in proportion to the goodness of the knowledge corresponding to it and to its distance from the truth. An error that is not far short of it has a certain value as an approximation to the truth. But no error is to be called a pure evil, for as a judgment it includes an idea, and every idea is a good as such ... The man who errs is of greater worth than the man who makes no judgments and who is therefore incapable of error, but the good in this instance is coupled with the evil of a disharmony, for the erroneous judgment acknowledges what is evidently false or rejects what is evidently true. Because knowledge is a good, and an exalted good, inquiry is also of value. Even the first speculation, the first clearing of the way–not only the knowledge (sophia), but the love of it (philosophia)–is a good.39 38

Brentano (1969, 22-3). See also, Brentano (1973a, 169; 173-4), The summary here is taken from my doctoral dissertation, see Krantz Gabriel (1980). A fuller account of the implications of Brentano’s value theory for the theory of correct preference may be found in Katkov 1937.

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Thus we see that for Brentano the principles of psychology and the principles of ethics come together to form a basis for understanding the concept of the good and applying it to specific kinds of cases. The consequences for ethics generally lie outside the scope of this discussion, but clearly they involve the endeavor to prefer and to choose knowledge rather than ignorance, to prefer and to choose correct over incorrect love, and correct over incorrect hatred. Returning to the opening theme of this paper, my concern is rather with the consequences for natural theology and theodicy, in other words, with the application that Brentano saw for his views on the good when it comes to questions about God and the existence of evil. For these purposes, Brentano’s claim that thought is good in itself is of paramount importance. Brentano considered this claim relatively easy to establish: Certainly, anyone who had to choose between a condition of unconsciousness and the possession of at least some ideas would welcome even the most trivial of these and would not envy inanimate objects. Thus every idea appears to constitute a valuable enrichment of our lives. If we conjure up an idea of an ideal being (God), we cannot attribute to him every judgment and every act of love, but we must certainly confer upon him the possession of every conceivable idea.40

Setting aside the question of whether this claim truly is easy to establish, let us take a look at how it fits with Brentano’s worldview generally, when translated into the terms of his later reistic ontology. The upshot is that every thinking being is inherently good in itself. Here we are now at the origin and source of Brentano’s optimism, his theodicy, and his confidence in the basic goodness of the world. For he accepts an ancient tradition concerning the “convertibility of being and the good”41: Plato thought that every positive being was an imitation of the idea of the good, and Aristotle and the most important medieval philosophers

39

Brentano (1973a, 169). Brentano (1973a, 173). See also (1973a, 184): “Thus we have upheld the claim that every idea is something good in itself and that every extension of our life of ideas increases the good within us. And as ideas lie at the basis of all other mental activities, it follows that every mental activity is a good.” 41 See, for instance, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q.5, art.3. 40

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Susan Gabriel agreed. So, too, did Leibniz... The question is of importance for theodicy ...42

The reason why the question is of importance for theodicy, and specifically for Brentano’s theodicy, is that theodicy must reconcile the existence of an infinitely perfect God with the existence of evils in the world as we know it. Step one in Brentano’s version of this reconciliation is to show that each thing which exists, i.e., which God has prepreferred and chosen for existence, actually is good in the sense of being worthy to be loved.43 And we are in a position now to show this 42

Brentano (1973a, 190). Leibniz’s Theodicy was especially influential for Brentano on these topics. Brentano continues, after this passage, to make a point that is not consistent with his later ontology, at least not without certain revisions, namely that mental activity must not be the only good because the existence of non-mental things must be compatible with God’s goodness and with the convertibility of being and the good. According to the later ontology, these non-mental things appear as accidents of mental things, however, and so the point for theodicy may be preserved. As Brentano tells us, the existence of plants, for instance, may be a matter of indifference for ethics, but it is a matter of “overwhelming importance for the metaphysician.” See Brentano (1973a, 190-2). This claim might be revised in terms of the value of “onewho-loves-plants.” 43 Brentano clearly held that nothing which exists is absolutely bad. See Hedwig (2003). In note 32, Hedwig agrees with Chan-Young Park that the absolutely bad has no place in Brentano’s ethics proper, and adds that in this Brentano departs from the tradition. (The reference is to Park 1991). But there is a passage, TH 18 of the Nachlass, in which Brentano says, “Optimism compromises itself if it identifies its cause with the view that there is nothing which is absolutely bad considered in itself. The position would be more tenable if, admitting this, it showed how the bad is justified on grounds of usefulness.” (See Brentano (1954, 184): “Der Optimismus kompromittiert sich, wenn er seine Sache mit der Bahauptung, es gebe nichts für sich betrachtet absolut Schlechtes, identifiziert. Viel haltbarer wird seine Stellung, wenn er, dies zugestehend, zeigt, wie das Schlechte aus Nützlichkeitsgründen gerechtfertigt ist.” My translation above.) It is a fair question whether this passage constitutes abandonment of the view that “there is nothing which is absolutely bad considered in itself,” or whether it rather amounts to advice concerning the rhetorical or persuasive value of the claim. Brentano’s theodicy makes use of many kinds of arguments that are encountered in other philosophers, especially in Leibniz, and these include arguments to the effect that an entity or state of affairs that appears to be unjustifiable considered in itself might nevertheless be seen to be justified in the context of the whole. Such an argument can dispense with the claim that nothing is absolutely bad, because its absolute badness might be outweighed by the good of the whole (i.e., the created world) which includes it as a part. See Brentano (1987, 330-7), and Brentano (1954, 151-84). It seems to me, however, that the reistic interpretation of the claim that presentation is always good in itself, does have direct bearing on Brentano’s theodicy.

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in the spirit of Brentano’s thought because we can say, in keeping with his later reism, that every value-laden thing we know about is either a substance, a part of a substance, an aggregate of substances, or an accident such that either it is a part or it has a part that is inherently good in itself. Under the reistic ontology, that is to say, the entities disclosed to us by inner perception – the only entities of whose exist-ence we can be truly confident – are the entities that have value or disvalue (positive or negative value). These are thinkers, perceivers, judgers, and lovers or haters. Granted that perception, judgment, and love or hate can be mistaken and thus evil or worthy to be hated, there remains the ontological core, presentation, which cannot be mistaken and which is always good in itself. In reistic terms, though one-who-judges, and one-who-loves or one-who-hates may be mistaken or even perverse and evil, yet each of these retains as a one-sidedly-separable proper part an entity that is good in itself, the thinker, the substantial subject of presentation. This is the key point taken from Brentano’s ethical theory concerning the concept of the good which is important for theodicy. In combination with the points we have gathered from his psychology and his ontology, I think we can see the emergence of his mature view. 5 Conclusion In conclusion I wish to note the implicit, creative way Brentano poses the problem of evil, as well as the peculiar challenge of his partial answer to the problem.44 For given the existence of a perfect God (which in any case is a required presupposition for any statement of the problem of evil, since in the absence of such a God the problem vanishes), the question arises quite pointedly from a reistic perspective, and in light of Brentano’s psychology and his ethics: is there anything such that God has incorrectly preferred its existence to its non-existence? If so, then God would incur blame, as having judged the false to be true, and incorrectly loved what was correctly to be hated. But for every candidate–from the neighbor who mows his lawn at 7:00 a.m., to the greedy and careless mine owners whose negligence has led to others’ deaths, all the way down to Hitler and Stalin– 44

That it is only a partial answer, Brentano himself would freely admit. As he tells us in a dictation from 1915, included at the end Brentano (1987, 337): “It is undeniable that much remains obscure for the theist.” It does not seem wise, in any event, to claim that theodicy is definitive or complete from our perspective in this life.

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we are required to note that at their core they are thinking things, hence good in themselves, and evil precisely in having fallen away from their own goodness.45 So God was right to prefer their existence to their non-existence, after all, or at least we are in no position to show this is not so; we would have to relinquish the principle that thought is good in itself. Should we wish, then, to relinquish the principle? In reflecting on this possibility we may encounter difficulties which Brentano perhaps anticipated. While it may sound odd to ground value itself in the capacity for thought, this is indeed where we find it. Letting go of Brentano’s reism for the moment, let us ask what in the world there is that has value apart from consciousness. Plants, the Earth, stars, the cosmos? Are they good as means, perhaps? Or good in themselves, intrinsically valuable? Would either of these kinds of goodness attach to them in the complete absence of any consciousness or thought? Yet we see their value immediately as soon as we introduce thought at the most rudimentary level–in Brentano’s terms, presentation–and then suddenly plants, the Earth, stars, and the cosmos appear to have both instrumental and intrinsic value. For beginning with presentation we have the instrumental value of the necessities for survival and along with this the higher value of beauty introduced in simple contemplation, and building upon that, the value of truth in judgment, and the value of the good itself in correct acts of love and hate. So the concept of the good does depend upon thought, and thought–even in the simplest sense of it–carries value with it. No, we probably should not abandon the principle that thought is good in itself. Should we keep the principle, then, but insist that different things are good for different ‘thinkers,’ God perhaps having preferred a lot of things that we would and should not prefer? Brentano considered this possibility, analyzed it, and partially rejected it: 45

My own view is that this outlook supports the value of conscious life in general, and human dignity in particular, perhaps even the sanctity of human life; that at the same time it provides reasons to reject views and policies that lack full respect for the value of the human person. But the words of Eberhard Tiefensee give me pause: “Es rächt sich, dass die Anthropologie im philosophischen System Brentanos keinen eigentlichen Ort gefunden hat.” (Tiefensee (1998, 466): "There is a price to be paid for the fact that anthropology found no real place in Brentano’s system.") Brentano was a brilliant thinker in logic, psychology, ontology, metaphysics, and ethics; however, he does not consider the whole, living, human person as a whole–as a subject for philosophical investigation–but rather only, as it were, one part at a time.

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(a) Is it to be desired that the same intrinsic good pertain to all creatures? (b) Is it desirable for everyone that any given intrinsic good exists? Taken in its first sense, this question is to be answered in the negative; taken in the second, in the affirmative ... [For example,] it is good for a man to have a genuinely masculine character and for a woman to have a genuinely feminine character. On the other hand, it is good for both men and women for men to be masculine and women feminine. (Here I speak of good in the sense of intrinsic good, rather than in the sense of useful.) This result follows directly from our previous discussion. We came to see that not only our own perfection is to be loved, but also that of others. And regarding the perfection of plants and other physical perfections, it is yet easier to recognize that diversity in the persons feeling the love cannot result in any differences as to the rightness or wrongness of the love. The same things are good for everyone, just as the same things are true for everyone. And it is this that makes possible the peace of all who will the good. The angels are right in singing, at Christmas, ‘Peace on earth to men of good will’–assuming, of course, that the men have understanding as well as good will.46

When it comes to the intrinsic value of entities, then, the principle holds and it holds for all: thought is good in itself; in reistic terms again, each thinker (using this term in the broadest sense)47 is inherently valuable, and rightly chosen for existence by God. Moreover, God’s choice of what to create, and God’s creative activity as an infinitely perfect being, must be thought of as motivated by correct love and correct preference. Thus Brentano insists on the application of the law of excluded middle to the realm of love and hate. It is not possible that one who loves what another incorrectly hates loves it incorrectly, nor that one who hates what another incorrectly loves hates it incorrectly (other things equal). Here it is to be noticed 46

Brentano (1973a, 192-3). It’s nice that Brentano requires understanding, and not just good will, for being worthy of peace. 47 The broadest sense of ‘thinker’ would be ‘conscious entity.’ Thus Brentano would include non-human animals. As he says in the dictation from 1915 included in Brentano (1987, 334): “...the view that immortality is not to be granted to animal souls, as distinct from human souls, is untenable. Anyone who does not go along with certain Cartesians in completely denying soul to animals and taking them for mere machines, will consider animal souls imperishable, too, as Leibniz did.”

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that what holds for simple love and hate holds also for preference and rejection. It is especially important to take into account whether something is loved or hated for its own sake or for the sake of something else, i.e., as useful or harmful. Everything that is true is true as such, but not everything that is good is good as such, i.e., in itself, rather many things are only good as being useful. This is particularly true of those things that are not conscious. This may serve as a warning not to think of the domains of the good and the true as being wholly analogous without qualification. (One could ask whether there is anything to be loved that is neither good in itself nor good as being useful, and whether there is anything which is to be hated that is neither bad in itself nor harmful. If so, our principle collapses, but then we have the consequence that divine preference is arbitrary.)48 This is not to say that it has been shown conclusively that everything that exists is such that God has correctly loved it and correctly preferred its existence (at least for a period of time) to its non-existence.49 That would be far more than can be proved. The objections are formidable; hence the problem of evil. However, I would say, what has been shown in the spirit of Brentano’s psychology, ethics, and later ontology, is that one way to frame the problem of evil is to ask the question whether there exists anything the existence of which ought never to have been preferred to its non-existence by a supposed infinitely perfect God. It turns out that when we examine the various candidates for this damnable category, if I may call it that, each turns 48

Brentano (1956, 175-6): “Es ist unmöglich, dass einer, der liebt, was ein anderer unrichtig hasst, es unrichtig liebt, sowie auch, dass einer, der etwas hasst, was ein anderer unrichtig liebt, es unrichtig hasst (mit Beifügung der bekannten Klausel). Dabei ist zu beachten, dass was von dem einfachen Lieben und Hassen, auch von dem Vorziehen und Nachsetzen gilt. Insbesondere ist auch darauf Rücksicht zu nehmen, ob etwas um seiner selbst willen oder um eines anderen willen, also als nützlich oder schädlich [176] geliebt oder gehasst werde. Alles, was wahr ist, ist als solches wahr, aber nicht alles, was gut ist, ist als solches, das heisst in sich selbst, sondern vieles nur als nützlich gut. So insbesondere alles Unbewusste. Das möge als Warnung dienen, nicht ohne weiteres auf dem Gebiete des Guten und Wahren alles analog zu denken. (Man könnte fragen, ob kein Fall möglich sei, wo etwas weder als gut in sich, noch nützlich zu lieben und weder als schlecht in sich, noch schädlich zu hassen sei. Wenn ja, so fiele unser Gesetz; aber is hätte die Konsequenz der Unmotiviertheit göttlicher Bevorzugung.)” My translation. 49 We might add here, “at least as being useful (as distinct from being good in itself).” But see note 42 above.

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out to have a core that is such that its existence is correctly to be preferred to its non-existence. Again, this does not show that there is not nor could not be anything in the damnable category. But it does motivate us to ask, if we were to solve the problem of evil by populating the damnable category, then would we as a result saddle ourselves with a ‘problem of good’? That is, would we perhaps have under-mined the concept of value so thoroughly – by denying that consciousness is good in itself – that we can no longer account for the good in the world as we understand it? I suspect that this may be the case, and I suspect that Brentano thought so, too.50 But since I am not able at this time to prove it, I shall have to end with a non liquet.51

50 Again, there is a bit of apparently countervailing evidence: The passage from TH 18 of the Nachlass mentioned above, note 43, also contains Brentano’s opinion that pain is to be avoided in various circumstances where ethical issues are raised, e.g., we consider it permissible to euthanize animals that suffer and cannot be cured, we consider it permissible to alleviate the suffering of humans even when this limits their psychic abilities, we anaesthetize patients even though this means interrupting their consciousness, and it may be permissible to shorten the lives of people who suffer from incurable diseases, especially if they are at the same time incurably insane. (See Brentano (1954, 184). Yet in another passage, from TH 23 of the Nachlass, Brentano says: “Jeder Leidende hasst sich selbst, insofern er leidet, in dem Akt des Leidens selbst. Er hasst sich notwendig, aber darum nicht richtig. So mag ja auch ein Urteil sich unwiderstehlich aufdrängen, ohne darum richtig zu sein.” (“Everyone who suffers hates himself, insofar as he suffers, in the very act of suffering. He hates himself of necessity, but not on that account correctly. So even a judgment can impose itself irresistibly, without thereby being correct.” (Brentano 1954, 174-5). My translation.) In this case, however, as in the ethical issues mentioned above, the very high value of consciousness, better, of the one-who-is-conscious, grounds the concept of the good. Without this concept we cannot clarify or justify our conclusions concerning the difficult cases. 51 “It is not clear.” I borrow this finale from Stein (1989, 118).

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Park, C.H. 1991. Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie bei F. Brentano. Dettelbach: Röll Verlag. Stein, E. The Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein, Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Tiefensee, E. 1998. Philosophie und Religion bei Franz Brentano, Tübinger Studien zur Theologie und Philosophie, Band 14. Tübingen and Basel: A. Franke Verlag.

4 CRITICS AND HEIRS. THE SCHOOL OF BRENTANO INTRODUCTION (DENIS FISETTE) This section contains four articles on specific aspects of Brentano’s philosophical program that gave rise to lively discussions with his students. In his article ‘The intentionality of pleasure,’ Olivier Massin attributes to Brentano a form of hedonic intentionalism according to which all pleasures are intentional states and proposes a defence of Brentano’s theory against his critics. In my paper ‘Mixed feelings,’ I attempt to situate Carl Stumpf’s theory of emotions in relation to that of his teacher Franz Brentano and to William James’s sensualist theory. I argue that Stumpf’s theory can be considered as an attempt to reconcile Brentano’s hedonic intentionalism with James’ sensualism, the latter of which emphasizes the role of bodily feelings. Riccardo Martinelli’s main topic in his paper ‘Stumpf and Brentano on Tonal Fusion’ is Stumpf’s famous notion of fusion (Verschmelzung) and the discussions to which it gave rise with Brentano on sensory qualities in their correspondence and in several other places. The common starting point of the three articles of this section is the dispute between Brentano and his student Stumpf on the topic of algedonic sensations in their relation to emotions. The dispute arises from the outset about the issue whether the pleasure provided by an object such as a work of art, for example, is likely intentional, as suggested by Brentano’s doctrine in which pleasure is closely linked to the class of emotions, or rather sensory and phenomenal in nature as sensualists such as William James claim. The starting point of this controversy was the publication of an article by Stumpf in 1899 entitled ‘On emotions.’ Stumpf distinguishes emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, hope, envy, disgust, etc., from what he calls sensory feelings (Gefühlsempfindungen), i.e. pain or bodily pleasures such as sexual pleasure, the pleasure or feelings of discomfort associated with specific senses such as temperature, sound, taste, sounds, colors, etc. The main difference between a sensory feeling and an emotion rests

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on the intentional nature of the latter. In a nutshell, according to Stumpf’s conception of intentional states during the period of 1899, an emotion or what he calls an affect is understood as “a state of passive emotion which refers to a judged state of affairs” (Stumpf, 1899, p. 10). It is therefore a state that belongs to the class of emotions (and to the subclass of passive affects), which, as in Brentano, presupposes a judgment and a state of affairs. However, sensory feelings are not, strictly speaking, affects; they are not functions or intentional states, but sensory qualities just like colors and sounds. This is the disputed thesis. Stumpf’s thesis on algedonic sensations gave rise to several interesting discussions with Brentano, up until the latter's death in 1917. Given the importance of this controversy for the articles we have collected in this section, we will provide a brief summary of the main aspects of this discussion.1 In a long letter of August 18, 1899, Brentano acknowledges receipt of Stumpf’s paper (1899) and accuses him, in a tone that could not be more paternalistic, of deviating dramatically from the original doctrine. For, according to Brentano, Stumpf's position in this paper does not take into account many principles of his descriptive psychology. First, Stumpf ignores Brentano’s principle of classification of mental phenomena that Brentano conceives in this letter in terms of intentional inexistence (1989, p. 59). Stumpf also abandons the classification of acts into three classes in favour of a classification based on two main classes: intellectual and emotional functions. Hence the question raised by Brentano as to what justifies subsuming representations and judgments in a single class of acts. Brentano also questions the validity of the distinction, in the second class, between passive affects, under which fall emotions, and active affects, to which belong desire and will. Brentano accuses him above all not to consider his doctrine of affects, represented in the third class of acts. According to Brentano, one may call affects only the complex state of the soul that can only be found in “humans [who have] higher order mental activities based on general representations” (1989, 121). But Brentano also considers that there are emotional states such as pleasure and displeasure, aesthetic enjoyment, etc., which do not belong to the class of feelings, but are nonetheless intentional states. They do not presuppose a judgment and a state of affairs or any other activity of the abstract thinking, as is the case with feelings or emo1

On these discussions, see also D. Fisette, 2009.

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tions. Finally, as discussed by Martinelli in his contribution to this volume, their positions differ with respect to the intensity of sensations and to fusion. Stumpf responded to Brentano’s criticisms in an unpublished letter dated September 1899, in which he first tries to minimize the differences that separate his position from the so-called doctrine and offers his own diagnosis about this dispute, which ultimately rests on the distinction between sensory pain and affective pain as well as musical affective stimuli (Gefühlsregungen) about which their disagreement seems complete. Stumpf argued that because of the lack of publication from Brentano since the publication of his Psychology in 1874 on these issues, it is difficult to take into account his actual position. Stumpf considers that he remains in principle in agreement with the doctrine presented in Brentano’s Psychology on most of the points raised by Brentano in his correspondence and claims that with each mental state, including that of sensation, is related an awareness of these states; but when I characterize an affect in using the recognition of a state of affairs, as opposed to mere pleasure or sensory pain, I am not talking about what is common to all mental states, but instead of a particular judgment that is added.2

Seven years later, in a letter dated June 12, 1906, Stumpf informed Brentano on the forthcoming publication of a lecture that he delivered at Würzburg on the topic of affective sensations (Stumpf, 1907) and claims to defend the position which he also attributed to Brentano and according to which sensory feelings belong to a class of sensations similar to those that the sensualists had in mind with the notion of Gefühlstönen (affective coloring) of the higher senses. But such is not Brentano’s position as confirmed by his correspondence and by a long footnote to his essay ‘From the psychological analysis of sound qualities in their first elements’ published in 1907. Brentano addresses the issue of fusion as exposed in Stumpf’s Psychology of Sound and the topic of pleasure and sensory pain in relation to his dispute with Stumpf on sensory feelings. Brentano (1907, 237) summarizes his dispute with Stumpf in five points: –For Stumpf, pleasure and sensory pain are themselves sensory 2

Stumpf’s letter to Brentano is date September 3, 1899, and it is located in the Franz Brentano Archiv in Graz.

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qualities, while Brentano conceives them as emotions and mental phenomena; –There is nothing in common for Stumpf between sensory pleasure and enjoyment of the mind (Wohlgefallen). For Brentano, instead, sensory pleasure is an enjoyment (Wohlgefallen), “which is directed toward an act of sensation;” –According to Stumpf, pleasure and sensory pain, when they appear to us, cannot be recognized as truly existent, as is the case for a color that I see or a sound that I hear. On the contrary, argues Brentano, “the reality of pleasure and pain, like that of seeing and hearing, is accredited via the evidence of internal perception” as Descartes thought, while the existence of color and sound are merely phenomenal and not guaranteed by internal perception; –That unlike Brentano, in distinguishing sensory pleasure and displeasure from aesthetic enjoyment, Stumpf tends to exclude the pleasure and displeasure that provides a musical piece, for example, from the field of aesthetic enjoyment; –Finally, it stands our clearly from this discussion that the heart of the dispute between Stumpf and Brentano rests on Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects, to which we shall turn shortly (1907, 238). Stumpf took a decade before reacting to Brentano’s objections. In 1916, he published an article titled ‘Apology of affective sensations,’ in which he answers the objections of many psychologists and philosophers including T. Ribot, E. B. Titchener, T. Ziehen and Brentano. He claims that his concept of sensory feeling is not new since it has been already used by sensualists such as Mach, Condillac, James and Hobbes, with the difference, however, that Stumpf, as we have seen, refuses to reduce emotions to sensory feelings. In this paper, Stumpf now recognizes significant disagreements with Brentano not only on affective sensations, but also on several other fundamental aspects of Brentano’s psychology. He admits that, in his article of 1907, he misunderstood Brentano’s position on sensory feelings, which he summarizes in terms of a “new kind of mental states that is added to the sensation and that belongs to the same genus as emotions.” In ‘Apology of affective sensations,’ Stumpf offers in turn his own diagnosis of the aspects of Brentano’s psychology which are involved in this dispute, and his diagnosis can also be summarized in five points: –Stumpf recognizes the heterogeneous nature of emotions, which

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fall under the class of functions or intentional states, and sensory pleasure and displeasure, which belong to the realm of sensory phenomena. This raises the question of the relationship between sensory phenomena and mental phenomena or functions. –It follows that sensory pleasures or displeasures are distinct from aesthetic enjoyment, since the latter presupposes an act and refers to a state of affairs. –With respect to Brentano’s objection according to which Stumpf is then forced to completely exclude sensory feelings from the domain of musical enjoyment, Stumpf responds that despite the heterogeneous nature of these two elements, they are both essential to aesthetic enjoyment, affective sensation being a necessary if not a sufficient condition to aesthetic experience as a whole. –As a sensory phenomenon, the reality of pleasure and displeasure cannot, by definition, be guaranteed by the evidence of inner perception since it only applies to acts of judgment. –As I have said above, the heart of this dispute rests on Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects. For, according to this theory, acts of love and hatred are always directed at mental states and not at the content of sensations or, in Brentano’s terminology, at secondary objects and not at primary objects. The pleasure we take in smelling the scent of a flower is not provided by the flower itself, considered as its primary object, but rather by the act itself considered as the secondary object of perception. For Brentano, this representation thus relates to its object indirectly and the sensory quality, to use Stumpf’s metaphor, is placed in a double set of brackets: first in the act of smelling and then in the higher-level emotional act. In a final letter to Stumpf dated July 30, 1916, Brentano provides new details on their dispute while pointing to two further aspects of his psychology that are at stake in this debate. Brentano acknowledges receipt of Stumpf’s ‘Apology of affective sensations’3 and accuses him again of not understanding certain basic principles of his psychology and of not taking into account his new research in the field of sensations. Brentano emphasizes once again the importance of the distinction between primary and secondary objects and criticized Stumpf for not taking into account the fact that he now clearly distinguishes the mental relation to (primary) objects from the mental act 3

This text was probably accompanied by another paper of Stumpf (1916a), which is not reproduced in this collection.

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itself considered as a secondary object. The two new points raised in this letter, in addition to those listed above, can be summarized as follow: –The first concerns sensations and the co-called concomitant sensations (Mitempfindungen). In this regard, Brentano points out a significant change in his conception of sensation advocated in his Psychology in that he now distinguishes sensations, which are affects, from those such as seeing and hearing, which are not. However, pleasure and displeasure still belong to the domain of emotions. –The second aspect concerns the evidence of inner perception and whether this thesis, which in fact belongs to the domain of the theory of knowledge, may legitimately be raised in the field of psychology, such as Brentano does when he claims that the existence of pleasure and displeasure must be accredited by the evidence of inner perception.4 Brentano wonders whether or not Stumpf is challenging the authority of evidence in the field of psychology. In 1926, Stumpf published his three main papers on emotions and sensory feelings in a book entitled Emotion and sensory feelings, which contains a substantial introduction on the classification of acts. Here again, Stumpf’s main interlocutor is Brentano, and this introduction can be considered as Stumpf’s last attempt to demarcate his own classification of mental states from that of Brentano. The main objection that Stumpf addressed to Brentano in this introduction (1926, x) again relates to his theory of primary and secondary objects. This criticism is based on Stumpf’s previous objections against Brentano’s theory according to which there is absolutely no pleasure to sensory phenomena as such, but only to the acts of hearing, seeing, etc., so that sensory pleasure and displeasure fall under the concept of intentional states or more precisely of what E. Utitz calls ‘Funktionsfreude.’

4

With respect to Stumpf’s remark according to which the topic of the evidence in internal perception of pleasure and pain belongs to considerations relating to the theory of knowledge and not to psychology, Brentano responded: “Fast könnte man auf die Vermutung geführt werden, Sie glaubten nicht mehr an die ausschließliche unmittelbar Evidenz der inneren Wahrnehmung. Der Fall von sinnlicher Lust und sinnlichem Schmerz wird aber demselben sicherlich nicht abträglich sein können, solange man das Bewusstsein davon bewahrt, dass Lust und Fühlen der Lust, Schmerz und Fühlen des Schmerzes ein und dasselbe sind; denn das Fühlen des Schmerzes ist doch wahrlich ein Gegenstand der inneren Wahrnehmung” in Brentano (1989, 151).

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Brentano, F. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. O. Kraus (ed.), Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1924. —— 1895. Meine Letzten Wünsche für Österreich. Stuttgart: Cotta. —— 1907. Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie. Hamburg : F. Meiner. —— 1989. Briefe an Carl Stumpf 1867-1917. G. Oberkofler (ed.), Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Fisette, D. 2009. ‘Love and Hate: Brentano and Stumpf on Emotions and Sense Feelings’ in Gestalt Theory 29: 115-127. Katkov, G. 1939/40, ‘The Pleasant and the Beautiful’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 40: 177-206. Ribot, T. 1910. Problème de psychologie affective. Paris: Alcan. Stumpf, C. 1890. Tonpsychologie II. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. —— 1899, ‘Über den Begriff der Gemüthsbewegung’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 21: 47-99; also in Stumpf (1928, 1-53). —— 1906, ‘Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen’ Abhandlungen der Königlich-Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophish-historische Classe, Berlin: Verlag der Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 3-40. —— 1907. ‘Über Gefühlsempfindungen’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 44: 1-49; also in C. Stumpf (1928, 54-102). —— 1916a. ‘Verlust der Gefühlsempfindungen im Tongebiete (musikalische Anhedonie)’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 75: 39-53. —— 1916b, ‘Apologie der Gefühlsempfindungen’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 75: 330-350; also in C. Stumpf (1928, 103140). —— 1928. Gefühl und Gefühlsempfindung. Leipzig, J. A. Barth. Titchener, E. B. 1917. ‘Prof. Stumpf’s Affective Psychology’ in American Journal of Psychology: 28, 263-277.

MIXED FEELINGS. CARL STUMPF’S CRITICISM OF JAMES AND BRENTANO ON EMOTIONS* DENIS FISETTE

(UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL)

In The Principles of Psychology, William James not only recognizes his debt to Carl Stumpf regarding the perception of space and the psychology of sound, but he also considers Stumpf as “the most philosophical and profound of all writers” (James 1890, 911). James and Stumpf maintained a friendly relationship since they first met in Prague in 1882 and had a considerable correspondence, which testifies to an evident interest in each other’s work in the field of psychology (cf. Dazzi, 1994). In 1928, Stumpf published a small book dedicated entirely to this correspondence, in which he expressed his esteem and affection for James, whom, on the occasion of the latter’s nomination as a corresponding member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, Stumpf describes as “the most outstanding philosophical mind that the new world has created until now.” In this work, Stumpf claims that, beyond his criticism of James’s psychology, there is a broad consensus between his Erfahrungsphilosophie and James’s radical empiricism, namely regarding their world view and their methods: From a methodological point of view, he calls [his world view] radical empiricism, because (from a purely intellectual point of view) it acknowledges all and only what is given in experience as real. No covering up, no escape through reasoning, but only taking things as they are: this is probably the most general maxim of this theory of knowledge. (1928b, 31)

* I would like to thank Kevin Mulligan for his comments on earlier versions of this paper and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support.

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However, this starting point in what is given in experience is not only a maxim, but also represents for both proponents of empiricism the primary source of all contents and concepts of thought (cf. Stumpf 1928b, 22). Despite this consensus on method, Stumpf does not espouse James’s sensualism, as evidenced by his criticism of James’s theory of emotions. Stumpf’s long-lasting relationship with Brentano is well known, and despite his significant deviations from Brentano’s philosophy, Stumpf always unequivocally advocated Brentano’s philosophical program until his very last work, Erkenntnislehre, which is in fact dedicated to Brentano. Stumpf’s main departures from Brentano’s psychology are quite obvious with respect to his views on emotions. Indeed, Brentano’s position on emotions and sensory feelings represents the counterpart of James’s sensualism, and this opposition corresponds exactly to the distinction that Stumpf established between emotions, which are intentional states such as beliefs and desires, and what he calls Gefühlsempfindungen or sensory feelings, which are sensations, such as colours and sounds. In all his writings on affective states, Stumpf opposed sensualism to a form of mentalism as epitomized by the work of Wundt or by Brentano’s representationalism, which Stumpf accused of committing the opposite error to that of sensualism insofar as it reduces sensory feelings to objects or properties of mental states. In short, Stumpf's position on this issue is prima facie a kind of compromise between James’ and Brentano’s views in that he argues against Brentano that sensory feelings are necessary conditions of emotional experience in general, and against James, that this phenomenal dimension of emotional experience is not by itself a sufficient condition. Ultimately, the main issue at the heart of this debate is the distinction introduced by Stumpf in 1906 between mental states and phenomena, and more generally the distinction between phenomenology understood as the science of phenomena and psychology understood in a narrow sense as the science of functions or mental states. Stumpf’s three main papers on the topic of affective states are collected in a book published in 1928 under the title Gefühl und Gefühlsempfindungen, in which one also finds a substantial introduction on the classification of affective states.1 The first two articles are 1

The references to Stumpf’s three papers (Stumpf 1899, 1907, 1916b) are taken from Stumpf (1928a).

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complementary: the first, published in 1899 under the title "Über den Begriff der Gemütsbewegung" deals with emotions and is specifically directed against James’ sensualist theory of emotions (Stumpf 1924, 46); in the second article, entitled “Über Gefühlsempfidungen” and published in 1907, Stumpf examines three theories of sensory feelings. The latter article belongs to a period of change in the thought of Stumpf and is the result of extensive research, the findings of which were presented to the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1905 and published the following year in two important treatises (1906a, 1906b). I have in mind, more specifically, Stumpf’s article “Phenomena and Psychical Functions,” in which substantial changes are made to his theory of sense perception and his views on phenomena put forth in his 1899 paper. This is also confirmed in his lectures on psychology delivered in the winter semester of 1907, in which great importance is attached to James’ views on emotions. Stumpf’s prevailing views on affects during this period remained unchanged until his last book, Erkenntnislehre, published posthumously. Finally, another important source of Stumpf’s discussions on the topic of emotions is his rich correspondence with Brentano, which we will examine in the second part of this study. 1 Stumpf’s classification of mental states The starting point of the controversy that opposes Stumpf to Brentano and James on the nature of affective states and sensory feelings lies in the distinction between emotions and sensory feelings. There are several types of sensation that fall under the category of sensory feelings: [First] the purely bodily pains (that is, those which appear without any essential involvement of intellectual functions), whether they are set up from within or from without the organism; secondly, the feeling of bodily well-being in its more general and in its more special forms, the latter of which includes the pleasure component in a tickle, the feeling produced by an itch, and sexual feelings; and lastly the agreeableness and disagreeableness that may be connected, in the most various degrees of gradation, with the sensations of all or nearly all the “special” senses, with temperatures, odours, tastes, tones, colours. (Stumpf 1928a, 54-55)

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Stumpf argues that there is a specific difference between sensory feelings, which are sensory qualities such as colours and sounds, and emotions, which are defined in terms of “an affective state which is directed toward a judged state of affairs” (1928a, 56). The essential difference between elementary feelings and emotions lies in the fact that the latter is directed toward complex objects, and more specifically, toward states of affairs, thereby presupposing a judgment: Concerning states of feelings which undoubtedly and in the most appropriate sense of the term belong to the class of affects, we are saying that they relate to a state of affairs about which we are pleased, angry, irritated, afraid, etc. That is to say, the affect is founded on a judgment. In contrast, the sensory agreeableness of a colour or a taste is triggered directly by the sensory impression. (1928a, 2-3)

Let us for the moment leave aside the topic of sensory feelings in order to concentrate on Stumpf’s conception of emotions proper. The simplest way to approach this complex topic is through the classification of mental states which Stumpf presents in the preface to his 1928 book. Unlike Brentano, Stumpf recognizes only two major classes of functions or mental states, namely, intellectual functions and emotional functions. This classification is based on a distinction put forth between two possible modes of intentional relations through which consciousness refers to its objects. To these two modes of intentional relations correspond two distinct types of attitudes (Stellungnahmen) directed toward their objects, namely, a pleasurable (gemütlich) attitude (1928a, 68) with respect to the class of affective states, and a cognitive stance in the case of the class of judgments, i.e., affirmation and negation. All functions that fall under one of these two classes are related hierarchically with one another, so that the functions of the second class, which are more complex, presuppose and are based on the functions of the first. The most basic function is sensory perception, which is directly related to sensory phenomena and, thus, represents the basis of this classification. Between perception and judgments we must also presuppose numerous operations, such as abstraction and concept formation, which provide higher states of this class with their conceptual content (1906a, 4-5). Stumpf distinguishes the class of affective functions, to which emotions belong, from the class of intellectual functions. To under-

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stand the nature of emotions, we must also consider a new division within the field of affective functions, that of passive and active states. The subclass of active affects is dominated by desires (Begehrungen), which in turn is subdivided into elementary desires (instincts) and volitional acts. Stumpf says very little about these basic desires except that they are instincts (like hunger) and that they presuppose and are based on passive elementary feelings (1928, xv). In his 1907 lectures on psychology, Stumpf defines these as Lustgefühle, which are essentially linked to behaviour and are related to volitional actions in the same way that elementary feelings are related to emotions in the class of active states. However, there are important differences between these two subclasses, the most important of which being that only active affects lead to (instinctive or volitional) actions. Stumpf uses the term Streben (striving, or what in today’s action theory would be called an “act of trying”) to characterize the elementary feelings of this subclass (1940, 837). Although this term refers to a tendency or an orientation toward something, which is also the main characteristic of mental states proper, it does not fall under the concept of intentionality mainly because the instinctive states that we find in animals lack concepts and, therefore, intentional contents. It refers rather to a behavioural disposition. The term Seinsollen (ought to be), by which Stumpf characterizes this class of affective functions, designates precisely this tendency toward a goal, i.e., a value understood as the prime object of desire, the latter being an intention or a plan to be achieved through voluntary actions (1928, p. xv). Values are for this subclass of active affective states what states of affairs are for judgments. Passion, envy, wishes, and will are all desires whose content is a value, or to quote Stumpf, “an ought to be in accordance with the intention of the desiring [subject]” (1940, 836), and by “intention,” he means “something which appears to the desiring subject as somehow a consequence of his momentary valuable state” (1940, 837). Emotions belong to the subclass of passive sentiments. Affects are called passive when they have as an object something existent, i.e., the object of a true judgment, while active affects are obligations (1928a, ix). The class of passive affects is subdivided into elementary feelings and emotional states. The essential difference between these two subclasses is that elementary feelings are triggered directly by sensory phenomena without the aid of any other classes of functions and their contents, be they judgments or concepts, while emotions, which are

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intentional states directed toward states of affairs, presuppose the formation of concepts and conceptual thought broadly understood (1928a, ix). The basic difference between elementary feelings and emotions is one of complexity, and it is comparable to the difference between an accomplished musician and a novice. Let us focus on the structure of an act of judgment given the latter’s fundamental role in Stumpf’s definition of an emotion as a passive affective state directed toward a state of affairs. Stumpf distinguishes, in an act of judging, between the latter's quality, matter, content, and object. The quality of judgment is affirmation and negation, and that which is affirmed or rejected is its content or meaning. As in Brentano, the matter of an existential judgment of the form “this rectangular table exists” is provided by the presentation of “table” and “rectangular,” which presuppose of course the formation of the corresponding concepts. Unlike Meinong, and in agreement with Husserl, Stumpf conceives of states of affairs as truth-makers, whereas (propositional) contents of judgment are considered truth-bearers. The truth of this proposition depends partly on the appropriateness of the quality of this state to its matter (1939, 61) and partly on internal perception. The content of a judgment is also distinct from its object, i.e., from the state of affairs taken to be an existent true judgment. When Stumpf says that states of affairs are expressed linguistically in subordinate clauses of the form “that P”, he has in mind an indirect judgment in which the state of affairs is considered as the matter of a new judgment such as “that P is true or evident” or “I wish or desire that P.” However, in a direct judgment, P stands for the content of the propositional attitude (Gebilde) and not for the judged state of affairs. Furthermore, when Stumpf claims that emotions are based on judgments and that they have states of affairs as objects, judgments and state of affairs must be understood in a very broad sense. For the object of an emotion can be a state of affairs, known or believed, that we formulate in the linguistic form of a statement or as something that we think of conceptually (1928a, 13); however, it does not necessarily involve an actual or explicit judgment. Stumpf’s classification raises several questions, in particular, regarding the justification of subsuming emotions under the same class as desire and will, given their significant structural differences. For, to use John Searle’s terminology (1983), desires and intentions (and will) have different conditions of satisfaction and different directions

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of fit: the fulfilment of the object of a desire requires a change in the world, and accordingly, its direction of fit is a world-to-mind relation, whereas judgments (and emotions) have the opposite direction of fit insofar as they must fit with the existing state of affairs; their conditions of satisfaction therefore coincide with their truth conditions, and their direction of fit is a mind-to-world relation. Of course, Stumpf’s criterion for this classification is not the structure but the quality of an act, i.e., the attitude or stance toward one and the same state of affairs. However, we will see that it is also difficult to subsume these two subclasses under one and the same attitude. Stumpf’s definition of emotions raises further problems, namely, the relation between emotion and judgment and that of emotion and sensory feelings, which we will examine in the fourth section. 2 Criticism of James’s sensualist theory of emotions In his paper “Über Gefühlsempfindungen,” Stumpf distinguished between three competing theories of sensory feelings, to which correspond, respectively, the positions of James, Wundt, and Stumpf himself (Titchener, 1908). Stumpf claims that Brentano, like himself, advocates the third theory, according to which sensory feelings are themselves sensations: The so-called sensory feelings or affective tone of sensations are themselves sensations (Sinnesempfindungen). Therefore, they do not belong to the functional side but to the objective side of consciousness, not to the mental states but to the material, provided that colours, sounds, and noises belong to the objective side and to the material of consciousness and in the same way that we usually do it. (1928a, 93)

However, this is not Brentano’s position, as confirmed by his correspondence and a long footnote to his paper “From the psychological analysis of sound qualities in their properly first elements,” also published in 1907. In fact Brentano’s position in this regard is far from clear, as Stumpf wrote to James in a letter from 1899: It seems that you have not yet received the last article that I sent you, ‘Über den Begriff der Gemütsbewegung.’ Since I took there a position which is opposed to your theory, I originally intended to send an accompanying letter [...]. Between Brentano and me things have taken a curious turn. I thought that I was rather in agreement with him, in respect to emotions, and now I have received a letter from him, seven

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This passage suggests that Stumpf also seems to have associated Brentano with the first theory, i.e., to James’s sensualism. However, Brentano in fact advocated a version of the second theory according to which sensory feelings belong to a kind of mental state and to the same genus as emotions (Stumpf 1928a, 108). Brentano’s position on that issue stands out clearly in his theory of primary and secondary objects, which we will discuss in the next section. James advocates a version of the first theory according to which sensory feelings and emotions are properties (attributes, moments, aspects, modes of change) of sensations. In the same way that a sensation has a quality (red, hot, bitter), intensity, duration, and, in the case of the senses of touch and sight, a spatial extension and location, sensory feelings possess an affective tone [Gefühlston] as, for example, the sensation of hunger and the unpleasant bodily feeling produced by this sensation. According to this theory, this attribute of affective tone represents the main property of emotions understood as bodily feelings (1928a, 18-19). Stumpf dedicated much of his 1899 paper to criticizing the JamesLange sensualist theory of emotions. His discussion focused partly on the physiological assumptions of their theory and partly on their definition of emotions and bodily feelings. For the purposes of this study, we will emphasize Stumpf’s main objections to their definition of sensory feelings. Let us begin with an outline of James’s sensualist conception of emotions in ‘What is an Emotion?’ which Stumpf summarizes in this passage taken from his 1899 paper: The nature of affects consists in the peripheral bodily processes, which we regard as expressive movements, reactions, side effects; more precisely (since the affect is something mental) in the sensations and sensory feelings that we have from these peripheral bodily processes. Trembling is fear, crying is sorrow, blush is shame; more specifically, again: the sensation of trembling and all changes related to blood vessels, respiratory and cardiac movements and so on, are fearing ... (1928a, 17)

Stumpf’s first objection to this definition concerns James’s ideomotor hypothesis, according to which each and every sensation and presenta-

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tion (and the corresponding central processes in the brain) influences the peripheral processes of the body (Stumpf 1928, 32). This hypothesis is central to James’s account of emotions defined in terms of the expression of movements and bodily reactions (crying is sorrow), understood as organic reactions and sensations. Stumpf argues that this hypothesis is not plausible because, as Reisenzein (2003) points out, it is not clear what adaptational value would result from a brain that is, to quote Stumpf, “like a tube through which every affective stimulus immediately flows to the periphery (…) and it is good luck, adds Stumpf, that we do not react so sensitively” (Stumpf 1928a, 8283). Stumpf’s second objection to this theory concerns the relation between physical sensations or bodily feelings and the underlying brain processes. He claims that James theory does not provide evidence as to the correspondence between peripheral bodily reactions and the underlying processes of the central nervous system (1928a, p. 38). It follows that James definition of affects in terms of organic sensations is at best a postulate. For even if we had such a proof, it could not be used to justify our actually experiencing these sensations, or more precisely, the phenomena understood as contents of sensations. Hence, Stumpf’s criticism of this definition of affects: it is not attributed to consciousness nor justified by the evidence of internal perception, to use Brentano’s expression, and it stands in flagrant contradiction with the basic principles of James radical empiricism (1928a, 37). Stumpf’s fourth objection is directed against the very form taken by James definition of emotions, i.e., as a definition by identification, which consists in reducing the definiendum to the definiens, such as by defining water in terms of its chemical properties. Stumpf claims that this type of definition must be reversible, i.e., to use James’ definition, if every emotion is a sensory feeling, then sensory feelings such as hunger and gastric pressure must also fall under the class of affective states (Stumpf 1928a, 38). Stumpf argues against James that the generic difference between sensory feelings and emotions rules out any attempt to reduce one of theses terms to the other. Furthermore, by not recognizing the specific distinction between phenomena and psychic functions and by seeking to reduce emotions to bodily feelings, James theory is unable to account for more complex emotional experiences such as artistic emotions. In aesthetic experiences, and more specifically, in the aesthetic enjoyment provided, for exam-

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ple, by a work of art, there is a specific difference (and not only a difference in degree of intensity) between aesthetic enjoyment and bodily pain or sensory feelings such as the pleasure triggered by this object. For aesthetic enjoyment presupposes the involvement of judgment and conceptual thought in general (Stumpf 1928a, 41-2). However, Stumpf attributes to James the merit of having shown, against the prevailing intellectualist conceptions of emotions, the importance of sensory feelings for a full-fledged theory of emotions. 3 Stumpf’s criticism of Brentano In his book Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie und Theodizee, Georg Katkov, a pupil of O. Kraus in Prague, said of the controversy opposing Stumpf to Brentano’s theory of affects that it “is perhaps the most important reaction of modern psychology to Brentano’s ideas” (1937, 94-95). Some aspects of the controversy were known at the time when Katkov published his book, in particular, through Brentano’s long footnote, which we mentioned above and in which Brentano discussed some of his disagreements with Stumpf on sensory feelings and emotions. Part of Stumpf’s reaction to Brentano’s objections was published several years later in a paper entitled ‘Apology of Sensory Feelings,’ in which Stumpf finally recognizes the existence of significant disagreements with Brentano, not only on sensory feelings and emotions, but also on several other aspects of his psychology. However, the most important source of information on this controversy is their rich correspondence, which shows, namely, that these issues were the subject of many missives, from the publication in 1899 of Stumpf’s article on emotions until Brentano's death in 1917.2 All these 2

Brentano’s first reaction to Stumpf (1899) is a ten-page letter dated August 18, 1899, in which he criticizes Stumpf for having deviated from the original doctrine on the following points: the lack of a principle of classification that Brentano conceives of in this letter as intentional inexistence (1989, 59); and Stumpf’s rejection of Brentano’s classification into three classes (representation, judgment, and emotion) in favour of a classification whose two main classes are intellectual and emotional functions. Hence the question as to what justifies subsuming representations and judgments under the single class of intellectual functions. Brentano also questions the distinction within the class of affects between passive and active states. Finally, their positions differ on the nature of sensory feelings and phenomena (i.e. content of sensation). In reaction to Brentano’s letter, Stumpf merely tries to minimize his disagreement with Brentano and claims that he remains in agreement with the initial doctrine on most issues raised by Brentano’s letter. In ‘Über Gefühlsempfindungen’ (1928a, 4) Stumpf thought his views on emotions and sense feelings were in agreement with Brentano’s psychology

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documents bear witness to the fact that this dispute concerns several key aspects of Brentano’s descriptive psychology: the classification of on the basis of a conversation he had with the latter. However, in a letter dated January 1, 1907, Stumpf reports that he was told by Marty that he misunderstood once again Brentano. Brentano reminded Stumpf that he was absolutely not in agreement with his theory in a long footnote to his paper “From the psychological analysis of sound qualities in their properly first elements” (1907). In this footnote, Brentano summarizes in five points his main disagreements with Stumpf. For Stumpf, pleasure and pain are sensory qualities like colour and sound. For Brentano, they are emotions or mental phenomena. For Stumpf, there is nothing common between sensory pleasure and enjoyment (Wohlgefallen); for Brentano, on the contrary, ‘die sinnliche Lust ist ein Wohlgefallen, der sinnliche Schmerz ist ein Missfallen, welche auf einen Empfindungsakt gerichtet sind, zu dem sie selbst gehören’ (2009, 177). They also disagree on the issue of internal perception: according to Brentano, the evidence of internal perception justifies the existence of pleasure and pain. As well, they disagree on the nature of sensations and their relation to mental acts. Brentano differs from Stumpf in his theory of primary and secondary objects: “Rather, it is for me the fact that each act of sensation has, in addition to its primary object, itself as a secondary object, or, as Aristotle says, en parergo, and in several ways; and that is the case of sensations of pleasure and pain as opposed to others (such as seeing and hearing), emotionally in particular, i.e. in the modes of love and hate” (2009, 178). By separating pleasure and displeasure from aesthetic enjoyment proper, Stumpf excludes, at the same time, pleasure and displeasure from the field of aesthetic enjoyment (1907, 238). In ‘Apology of Sensory Feelings’ (1916a), Stumpf responds to Brentano’s criticism. He now recognizes the existence of significant disagreements with Brentano not only on the matter of sense-feelings, but also on other fundamental aspects of his psychology. Stumpf acknowledges the heterogeneous nature of affects or emotion, which fall under the class of functions, and the pleasure and displeasure that belong to the domain of sensory phenomena. This raises the question of what the relationship between sensory phenomena and functions or intentional acts consists in. It follows that pleasure and displeasure are different from aesthetic enjoyment understood as an emotion, which presupposes an act and whose object is a state of affairs. As a sensory phenomenon, the reality of pleasure and displeasure cannot, by definition, be justified by the evidence of internal perception since it applies only to mental acts or functions. Stumpf criticizes Brentano’s doctrine of primary and secondary objects, as we will see below. Stumpf claims that he does not exclude pleasure and displeasure from the field of aesthetics since he believes that sensory feelings are necessary conditions to experience any kind of aesthetic enjoyment. In one of his last letters to Stumpf dated from July 1916, Brentano comments on Stumpf’s responses in ‘Apology’ and his paper ‘Verlust der Gefühlsempfindungen im Tongebiete’ and accuses him of having misunderstood his position on several points because he does not take into account the results of his new research in the field of sensations. In this long letter, Brentano informs Stumpf of some of the changes in his conception of sensations and accuses the latter of dismissing the evidence of inner perception in the field of psychology. Finally, Stumpf concludes this long controversy with Brentano in the preface to his 1928 book, in which Stumpf’s three main articles on affects are collected.

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mental states; the criterion of this classification; external or sensory perception and the evidence of inner perception; Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects; and the nature of sensations and aesthetic enjoyment. Given the complexity and the number of issues raised in the course of these discussions, it is very difficult to make a sound and precise diagnosis on the ins and outs of the discussion and, above all, to identify the philosophical stakes that divide both philosophers. Moreover, their respective positions evolved during the course of this period, so much so that Stumpf does not seem to have succeeded in identifying Brentano’s final position on affects until 1916 (Stumpf 1916). To resolve these difficulties, we will venture two hypotheses, one on the philosophical issues of this debate, the other on its motivations. Regarding the first, the philosophical issue lies in what might be called the intentionalist thesis or Brentano’s representationalism. In his paper “The Pleasant and the Beautiful,” Katkov makes a similar diagnosis when he says that Stumpf’s conception of sensory feelings contradicts Brentano’s intentionality thesis in such a way that it presupposes from the outset a non-intentional mode of consciousness such as pain or pleasure, whose contents are precisely sensory phenomena.3 Some remarks in Titchener's works on emotions follow along these lines.4 My second hypothesis is based on the fact that Stumpf was influenced by the criticism of his student Husserl, who in the Logical Investigations, and especially in Section 15 of the fifth Investigation, disputes Brentano’s theory of emotions. This seems to be confirmed by Stumpf in his 1916 paper (1928a, 104), in which he recognizes that he had simply failed to mention Husserl’s position in the Logical Investigations and the important distinction that Husserl 3 Katkov advocates Brentano’s position on this issue and argues against Stumpf that applying the terms ‘pleasure’ or ‘displeasure’ to sensory qualities is a denominationes extrinsecae because, originally, these terms refer to intentional relations much like the terms ‘the seen,’ ‘the heard,’ ‘the feared,’ and ‘the hoped for’ (1939, 184). Katkov’s main argument is based on the principle that every conscious state is intentional– consciousness and intentionality being coextensive (1939, 181). 4 The American psychologist E. B. Titchener (1908, 1917, 1929) has extensively discussed Stumpf’s theory of affects and he is one of Stumpf’s main interlocutors in his article ‘Apology of Sensory Feelings’ (1928, 113 ff). Titchener also took a stance in the debate opposing Brentano and his students on many aspects of his psychology, particularly in his Prolegomena, in which he claims that the main issue of this debate is Brentano’s intentionalism (1929, 177 ff). On this issue, see also Reisenzein (2003, 261-2) and Reisenzein & Schönpflug (1992, 35).

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makes between sensory feeling and emotion, on which Stumpf’s own criticism of Brentano is based. Stumpf’s remarks are important not only because the position he advocated on these issues is very close to Husserl’s but also because of the significant modifications Stumpf made to his original conception of sensory feelings as advocated in his 1899 paper. These modifications concern primarily Stumpf’s theory of sensory perception and Brentano’s thesis that perception is a judgment, which Stumpf abandoned during this period. Let us first address the first hypothesis. In section 15 of the fifth Investigation, Husserl raises the general question “as to whether the ‘intentional relation’ suffices to demarcate ‘psychical phenomena’ (the domain of psychology) or not” (1982, 107). This question concerns Brentano’s criterion for delineating the field of descriptive psychology from that of the natural sciences, i.e., what Brentano (1874) called intentional inexistence. Husserl wondered whether or not such a criterion justifies the classification based on the division between psychology understood as the “science of psychical phenomena,” and the natural sciences understood as “sciences of physical phenomena.” However, this is precisely what Husserl challenges in this section: It can be shown that not all ‘psychical phenomena’ in the sense of a possible definition of psychology are psychical phenomena (i.e., mental acts) in Brentano’s sense, and that, on the other hand, many genuine ‘psychical phenomena’ fall under Brentano’s ambiguous rubric of ‘physical phenomena’. (1982, 94)

Husserl argues against Brentano that phenomena such as Gefühlsempfindungen or sensory feelings, which belong to a stratum of experience that he calls, in the Logical Investigations, ‘primary contents,’ do not fall under any of the two classes of phenomena in Brentano’s classification; hence, the criticism directed at Brentano for having confused, in his usage of the term Gefühl, sensory feeling (Gefühlsempfindung) with emotional state (Gefühlsact). The issue is whether pain and bodily pleasures, which are feelings associated with sensations of the senses (such as temperature, sound, taste, sound, and colour) are intentional states (such as joy, sadness, anger, hope, desire, and disgust), as Wundt and his followers (mainly Titchener and T. Ribot) claim, or whether they are sensory phenomena, as argued by advocates of sensualism such as James and Mach (Fisette, 2011). The

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position advocated by Husserl in his Logical Investigations is based on the distinction between primary contents and mental states, and it consists in subsuming sensory feelings under the class of primary content, while maintaining with Brentano, contra the partisans of sensualism, that emotions such as shame or envy belong to the class of intentional acts.5 Husserl’s position in his Logical Investigations is indeed very close to that advocated by Stumpf in his 1907 paper and in his 1906 treatise ‘Phenomena and psychical functions,’ in which he frequently refers to this work of Husserl. In his paper on sensory feelings, Stumpf confirms that his revisions on the nature of sensory feelings were mainly motivated by his research on sensory perception (Stumpf 1928b, 95). Stumpf advocates a thesis that is similar to what today is called ‘direct perception,’ according to which sensory perception is a mode of consciousness directly related to the sensory phenomena, i.e., without requiring the involvement of any concepts or any intentional items. It consists in a direct relation to sensory feelings, which are defined, as we saw above, as sensory qualities. This thesis is the result of Stumpf’s criticism of Brentano's thesis according to which “perception is a judgment” (Brentano 1874, 214), which Stumpf still advocated in his Psychology of Sound and most likely in his 1899 paper on emotions (Stumpf 1924, 40). Stumpf argues that perception is not a judgment but a more primitive mode of consciousness that is prior to presentation and judgment, and which founds the latter and, therefore, the class of affective states as a whole (1906a, 16). On this new conception of perception is based Stumpf’s thesis, directed against Brentano and James, that there is a specific difference between the domain of sensory feelings and that of mental states such as emotions, whose study falls within the domain of descriptive psychology 5

According to Husserl, Brentano’s principle according to which every state of consciousness is either a representation or is based on a representation fails to account for sensory feelings, which are not, as Husserl pointed out in his Investigations, “presentative acts, in the term of acts of feeling-sensation, [that] underlie acts of feeling” (1982, 354). Husserl argues that many sensory feelings such as pleasure and pain that we usually range in the class of intentional states belong to the same genus as the sensations of touch, taste, or smell. One of Husserl's arguments is that the differences of intensity that we attribute to sensory contents, and therefore to pleasure and pain and to sensory feelings in general, are not attributes of psychical phenomena and thus of representations, as Brentano's theory of primary and secondary objects presupposes (1982, 111). For no predicate or attribute of the field of sensory content such as intensity or space is attributable to mental states (Fisette 2010).

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understood in a narrow sense. Stumpf's entire argument against Brentano’s views on emotions is based on this distinction. We will briefly examine the bearing of Stumpf’s criticism on some of the important theses which underly Brentano's theory of affects, and summarize Stumpf’s main arguments. Brentano’s thesis that Wahr-nehmung is a judgment, i.e., that internal perception is what is taken to be true and the only veridical perception, is responsible for the asymmetry between internal and external or sensory perception. This thesis confers internal perception with a double advantage over external perception: an ontological advantage because it warrants and justifies the existence and reality of what is perceived; an epistemological advantage because inner perception is the only reliable source of knowledge, where knowledge is a justified belief, and any justification ultimately rests on the evidence of internal perception. Stumpf, after Husserl, recognizes that internal perception is indeed an important source of knowledge, but he does not admit that it is the only one. In fact, external perception, which Brentano, following Descartes, dismissed for being illusive and dubitable, is considered by both Husserl and Stumpf to be a source of knowledge as important as internal perception (Stumpf 1939, 215). Two consequences can be drawn from this: the first is ontological and challenges Brentano’s thesis that (physical) phenomena only exist intentionally, as opposed to mental phenomena which are the only ones to really exist; at the epistemic level, the domain of sensory phenomena, and therefore of sensory feelings, can now be regarded as a genuine source of knowledge. Stumpf’s position on Brentano’s conception of affects stands out more clearly in his criticism of Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects, which, according to R. Chisholm (1979), is the heart of the controversy opposing both philosophers on the issue of sensory feelings. This doctrine is clearly stated by Brentano in his Psychology of 1874 and is reformulated several times in his correspondence and in the long footnote of 1907. Brentano claims that every perception has a primary object, for example, sound or colour, and a secondary object, which is the very act of presenting sounds or colours. The first is something sensually qualitative and the second is the act of sensation itself, to which the sensing (das Empfinden) always refers both in the mode of representing and that of acquiescing in the evident

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According to Brentano’s theory, the pleasure provided by the scent of a flower is a pleasure that stems not from the perfume as such, but from the smelling of the perfume, i.e., from an act of presentation which subsumes seeing and hearing (and sensing and the sensed). To use Stumpf’s metaphor (1928a, 109), this theory of primary and secondary objects places the sensory quality in a double set of brackets, and it is therefore doubly indirect: the first set of brackets represents the act of sensing; the second set of brackets represents a higher order act, namely, the act of emotion, to which pleasure and displeasure are associated. The doctrine of primary and secondary objects amounts to identifying pleasure and the act of sensing pleasure (primary and secondary objects being in the third class of acts) as one and the same thing. An important distinction introduced by Stumpf in his two 1906 Academy treatises refers to that of first and second order phenomena, which constitutes Stumpf’s alternative to Brentano’s distinction between primary and secondary objects. First order phenomena are contents of sensation, while second order phenomena are “mnemonic images” and phenomena such as colour or sound as “merely represented.” The issue is whether, between sensation and representation, between primary and secondary objects, there is, as Brentano claims, a specific difference or simply a difference of degree, as Stumpf maintains (Stumpf, 1918). The difference between intensity and the “fullness of detail” of a piece of music and its mere representation in the imagination, for example, is not, following Brentano’s doctrine, a difference in the degree of intensity between phenomenal content and representational content, but rather a difference in the very act of presentation, which is, depending on the circumstances, more or less intense. Therefore, following Brentano, the properties that Stumpf attributes to phenomena, including intensity, are in fact properties of a class of mental states. Stumpf’s entire argument against Brentano’s theory is based on the idea that the properties of pleasure and pain, for example, cannot be reduced to properties of functions (representational or emotional).

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One of Stumpf’s arguments against Brentano stands out clearly in the classical case of localization as applied to cases of sensory feelings. We may ask a patient to locate her pain by asking her whether she has a toothache or a headache. However, we cannot ask her to locate her anger or sadness. Now, space or location, just like intensity, is an attribute of tactile and visual phenomena, not of functions. It follows first that sensory pleasure and pain are phenomena in the same way as colour is, for example. It follows secondly that we cannot speak of a specific difference between the contents of first and second order phenomena, i.e., between representation and sensation. There is, indeed, a specific difference between an act or a mental state and its content, but there is only a difference of degree between the content of a presentation and that of sensing (Stumpf 1939, 348). As we saw above, these sensory contents are founding contents (phenomena) as opposed to founded contents (intentional) of mental states such as emotions, which are states of affairs.6 4 Mixed feelings: Emotions cum fundamentum in sensory feelings The question is how does Stumpf reconcile in his overall theory of affects the phenomenological dimension of sensory feelings with the intentional dimension of affective states, while avoiding at the same time the objections made to Brentano’s representationalism (of intentionalizing sensory feelings) and to James’s phenomenalism (of sensualizing the intentional content of affective states). We saw that most of Stumpf’s arguments against both rival theories were based on the thesis that there is a specific difference between the fields of sensory phenomena and psychical functions and therefore that these two heterogeneous aspects of experience are irreducible. As we have shown, Stumpf's position on the classification of acts and his definition of emotions as a subclass of affective states whose objects are states of affairs is incomplete because it does not account for the essential role of sensory feelings within his theory of emotions. We also pointed out that the modifications that Stumpf made to his origi6

Another argument worth mentioning is based on the case of anhedonia, which Stumpf (1916a) applied to the pathological case of a musician suffering from an evident inability to feel pleasure in listening to music or other activities that were previously perceived as pleasant. In such cases, the sense of hearing itself is not significantly affected. Stumpf argues that anhedonia to musical notes would result in an apathy or a loss of enjoyment and emotion toward music in general. Hence the idea that sensory feelings are a necessary condition to affects.

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nal conception of affects in his 1899 paper proceeded more or less along the same lines. In this regard, we have to take into account the bearing of these modifications on Stumpf’s early criticism of James. For while his criticism of James in 1899 suggested that no true compromise was possible with sensualism, Stumpf’s later works are much more sympathetic to the sensualism of Condillac or James and reveal an important contribution to his own theory of emotions (1939, 337). Part of the solution to the problem of the relationship between sensory feelings and emotions is formulated in Stumpf’s important paper ‘Phenomena and Psychical Functions,’ in which he argues that mental states and phenomena form a real unity that can only be separated by abstraction. Stumpf conceives of phenomena as wholes, not as aggregates of sensations, and they appear to consciousness as unitary and structured wholes. As unitary wholes, complex phenomena are contents of sensation, which are characterized by certain properties that Stumpf calls attributes of sensation (or sometimes psychological or metaphysical parts). These attributes entertain different kinds of relations with phenomena, including relations of fusion and part-whole relations. These relations are not imposed from without or produced by conceptual thought or by mental functions, but are rather given (and perceived directly) together with the phenomena. As we have noted above, Stumpf considers sensory perception as the most primitive function, which underlies Brentano’s class of representation within his own classification. In its most general sense, sensory perception is understood as a Bemerken or a ‘noticing’ (of parts in wholes), or as attention, which Stumpf defined in the first book of his Tonpsychologie as ‘Lust am Bemerken.’ This characterization applies both to inner perception, oriented toward mental states, and sensory perception, which is directly related to first order phenomena, i.e., directed toward attributes and the relations they have with their substance (quality) (1906a, p. 16). In visual perception, noticing relates to parts of the perceived, for example, intensity, colour, and space, and to relations of similarity, fusion, dependency, etc., while the whole, or the perceived, as such, is a second order presentation. For example, in the hearing of a melody, sounds and notes are noticed while the melody, which Stumpf conceives of as a Gestalt, is perceived as a second order phenomenon. Now, we said above that there is a hierarchy in the class of intellectual functions between perception and judgment. This hierarchy is

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understood as a relation of foundation between higher order mental states and more primitive ones, between foundational contents (first order phenomena) of the sensory perception and founded contents of judgments. The relation of foundation between these two levels of complexity can be understood in terms of ontological dependence (the existence of the judgment’s contents depends, in turn, on that of the phenomena) or in psychological terms (conceptual contents of judgments are the result of a process of abstraction based on sensory contents). This relation of foundation is also obtained between affective states and the class of intellectual functions to the extent that judgments provide emotions with their matter, and we saw that emotions, though more complex than the former, are nevertheless structured in the same way. Between the subclasses of passive and active affects, between emotion, desire, and will, there is a hierarchy similar to that which exists in the class of mental states, with the difference that the phenomenal basis of affective states is nothing other than sensory feelings: My theory of the ‘sensory feelings’ [Gefuhlsempfindungen] is therefore that there is a class of sensory phenomena, to which such elementary feelings are primarily attached, that expressions such as pain, tickle, etc. essentially designate sensory feelings, and that the purely sensory agreeableness of sounds, colours, smells and other sensory impressions is grounded in the admixture of such specific sensory feelings. (1928a, p. IX)

These elementary feelings are triggered directly either by the stimulation of peripheral bodily organs, such as the sensation of pain on the skin, or by central processes in the brain. In both cases, however, these feelings are not mediated by any psychical functions (1928a, p. ix). Stumpf argues that each and every function belonging to the class of active or passive affective states are lustvoll in that they are all intimately linked to pleasure (1928a, p. XII). The difference between an elementary feeling and an emotion lies primarily in the conceptual contribution of the judged state of affairs to emotions, and consequently, to the whole class of affective states. As we pointed out earlier, Stumpf’s classification raises several problems, the most important of which, in the present context, is the relation between emotion and judgment and that of emotion and sensory feelings. The first problem has been studied by Reisenzein

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(2003), who understands Stumpf’s theory of emotions as evaluative states directed toward the object of a judgment. The evaluative component of an emotion rests on a positive or negative stance vis-à-vis the judged state of affairs. The distinction between these two classes of function would therefore rest on their quality, i.e., in the positive or negative attitude toward their objects: affirmation and negation in the case of judgment; love and hate in the case of emotions. According to Reisenzein, the relation of foundation between emotions and judgments or beliefs presupposes, on the one hand, a causal relation between the belief and the evaluation, and on the other hand, a particular semantic (or intentional) relation between the intentional content of belief and the emotion. Let us consider the case of jealousy in order to illustrate these two aspects which characterize the relationship between belief and emotion. Jealousy is considered on this account as a negative attitude and as an evaluation of the state of affairs that someone else owns a good that is desired or coveted for oneself but that ones does not own; and this state of affairs would be caused by the belief or the judgment that this state of affairs exists (true existential judgment). However, this case is misleading because, as Stumpf himself points out, jealousy belongs to the subclass of active feelings in that it presupposes the desirability of the judged state of affairs and the value of the coveted good. It presupposes indeed an evaluation and a choice. In contrast, the subclass of passive sentiments, to which disgust and aesthetic enjoyment belong, does not seem to presuppose such an evaluation, and their object does not consist in a value (or Wertverhalt), but rather a state of affairs. On the other hand, there is indeed a causal relation between desire and will (or the intention to achieve what ought to be), but there is no causal relation according to Stumpf’s theory between a belief (or its content) and the corresponding attitude. In fact, the source of an emotion, or what triggers an aesthetic experience, for example, is not a belief or its intentional object as such, but precisely the sensory feeling triggered by primary content understood as a structured phenomenon (a Gestalt, precisely) originally given in experience. It is first and foremost primary content that can provide pleasure or displeasure, and it is precisely this sensory feeling that constitutes the sensory basis (the founding content) of a more complex intentional act. The relationship between such elementary feelings and emotions is comparable to that between sensory perception and judg-

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ment in such a way that the founding content of affects (i.e., the structured phenomenon as such) constitutes the raw material of more complex intentional states (whose content is actually the conceptual working out of the original sensory content) such as emotions.7 The case of aesthetic enjoyment is more suited to the present context because it represents, in Stumpf's writing on emotions, a paradigmatic case of emotions and illustrates the intimate relationship between this class of affective states and sensory feelings. In one of his earlier writings on the nature of enjoyment in tragedy, Stumpf regarded the problem of the immediate action (Wirkung) of a work of art in the production of an artistic enjoyment (Genuss) as the main difficulty in the field of aesthetics (1910, 5). In his paper on sensory feelings, Stumpf tackles this problem with that of defining sensory feelings precisely in terms of the actions they exert on the soul (Gemüt) (1928a, 69). He carefully distinguishes the pleasure brought about by a piece of music from the aesthetic enjoyment proper, which corresponds to the distinction in music between euphony (the sensory effects produced by rhythm) and the enjoyment and agreeableness obtained through the structure, technical execution, and the content of the piece of music (1924, 53-54). The first factor involves only sensory feelings, while the second, which varies according to the musical knowledge of the listener, is related to the aesthetic object itself. However, aesthetic enjoyment is conditioned both by the sensory 7

Despite the merits of this stimulating study of Reisenzein on Stumpf’s theory of emotions and the useful references to contemporary theories of emotions, there are at least two aspects of his interpretation that I disagree with. The first concerns the causal relation between judgments or beliefs and attitudes (Reisenzein 2003, 241-2). The only textual support that I have found in this paper is a reference to a passage in Stumpf’s first study (1899, 50), in which, in fact, there is no mention of any causal relation. The second problem with this interpretation is the understanding of the subclass of affective states in terms of the so-called occurrent pro-evaluations and con-evaluations, i.e., approvals and disapprovals of states of affairs (Reisenzein & Schönpflug 1992, 35). This neo-Kantian interpretation (à la Windelband), which amounts to regarding all classes of attitudes as evaluation, was criticized by Brentano and Stumpf (1906b, 57-8). Belief is not an evaluation but a judgment about the existence or nonexistence of the judged state of affairs, i.e., about the truth of falsity of the propositional content of the judgment. Stumpf’s definition of passive emotional states as states that have as their object something existent, i.e., a state of affairs, shows sufficiently clearly that emotional states presuppose such a judgment. Affective states, on the other hand, comprise an evaluation, but this element belongs to the subclass of active states that Stumpf defined in terms of obligation and whose object is a value or what might be called, following Meinong, a Wertverhalt.

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feelings directly obtained directly through the way we experience a piece of music and by the form and content of its object. Hence the distinction between two sources of aesthetic emotions: the first is called the fullness or wealth of formal relations among its parts, which are involved in the experience of a genuine work of art; the second involves the properties of the object, or more precisely, of the judged state of affairs (Stumpf 1928a, 9). The first source is of a phenomenological origin and lies in the formal relations that are directly given to consciousness. The action produced by a work of art is inherently direct and immediate in a sense comparable to the experience of having a pain or a sexual orgasm; therefore, it rules out any differences that may result from culture, knowledge of the contemplated objects, or world-view (historical, cultural, or other). Stumpf recognizes that sensory feelings alone cannot produce an aesthetic affect, as such, without the aid of conceptual thought or representation. For aesthetic enjoyment can only arise when sensations and a combination of sensations are “entangled” with an act, i.e., with a passive affective state. The feeling of pleasure is immediately linked to an activity as sensory pleasure is to sensations, but it is not yet an emotion in the strict sense of the term. It becomes an emotion in the enjoyment (Entzücken) provided by a work of art, for example, as soon as, and only when, the intuited unitary relations are objectified by consciousness and become an intentional object. However, these two sources represent two essential conditions of emotions, including aesthetic enjoyment, and they form a whole that can only be separated through abstraction (Stumpf 1928a, 111). 5 Final remarks To conclude, let us consider an alternative to Reisenzein's causal interpretation of Stumpf's theory of emotions. According to this alternative interpretation, which is based on part-whole relations, an emotion consists in a whole whose parts are its content (the judged state of affairs) and sensory feelings, which exert a triggering action on the emotion without being emotions themselves. This mereological interpretation has the advantage of accounting for the phenomenological contribution of sensory feelings in Stumpf’s overall theory of affects, which the causal theory does not seriously take into account. This interpretation also finds support in Stumpf's thesis on the unity of consciousness and has the further advantage of allowing for a connec-

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tion with James on this issue. This is confirmed by H. Langfeld, an American student of Stumpf in Berlin, in his commentary on Stumpf’s 1906-1907 lectures on psychology. Langfeld reports that Stumpf stressed several times in these lectures the importance of his views on the unity of consciousness for his psychology, and mentioned several times the name of James in relation to this topic. According to Langfeld, Stumpf “took a position similar to that of James against the atomistic theory. The unity of consciousness is not a sum of parts but a totality, the parts of which are recognized only through abstraction” (Langfeld 1937, 55). This is also the position taken by Stumpf in several of his works vis-à-vis the antagonism not only between sensualism and intellectualism, but also between nativism and empiricism, between the psychology of acts and the psychology of contents, and between hedonism and stoicism in the field of ethics.

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Brentano F. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. O. Kraus (ed.), Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1924. —— 1907. Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie. Hamburg: F. Meiner. —— 1989. Briefe an Carl Stumpf 1867-1917. G. Oberkofler (ed.), Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. —— 2009. Schriften zur Sinnespsychologie. W. Baumgartner (ed.), Frankfurt: Ontos. Chisholm, R. 1979. ‘Einleitung’ to F. Brentano, Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie, Hamburg: Meiner, 1979. Dazzi, N. 1994. ‘James and Stumpf. Similarities and differences’ in Psychologie und Geschichte 6: 244-257. Fisette, D. 2008. ‘Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)’ in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stumpf/ (02.03.2009). —— 2010. ‘Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences: Husserl’s Early Criticism of Brentano’ in C. Ierna and al. (eds.), Edmund Husserl 150 Years: Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Berlin: Springer: 135-167. —— 2011. ‘Phenomenology and Phenomenalism: Ernst Mach and the Genesis of Husserl’s phenomenology’ in Axiomathes 22: 53-7. Husserl, E. 1982. Logische Untersuchungen: Elemente einer phänomenologischen Aufklärung der Erkenntnis, Husserliana, XIX/1 and XIX/2, Berlin: Springer, 1984; eng. transl. by J. N. Findlay, Logical Investigations, vol. 1 & 2, second ed., London: Routledge, 1982. James, W. 1884. ‘What is an emotion?’ in Mind 9: 188-205. —— 1890. The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. New York : Henry Holt. Katkov, G. 1937. Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie und Theodizee, R.M. Rohrer. —— 1939. ‘The Pleasant and the Beautiful’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 40: 177-206. Langfeld, H. S. (1937) ‘Stumpf’s “Introduction to Psychology”’ in The American Journal of Psychology 50: 33-56. Reisenzein, R. 2003. ‘Stumpfs kognitiv-evaluative Theorie der Emotionen’ in L. Sprung & W. Schönpflug (eds.), Zur Geschichte der Psychologie in Berlin. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, pp. 227-274. Reisenzein, R. and W. Schonpflug. 1992. ‘Stumpf’s cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion’ in American Psychologist 47: 34-45. Searle, J. 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stumpf C. 1873. Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. —— 1890. Tonpsychologie II. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. —— 1899. ‘Über den Begriff der Gemüthsbewegung’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 21:47-99; also in Stumpf (1928a), pp. 1-53. —— 1906. ‘Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften’ in Abhandlungen der KöniglichPreußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophish-historische Classe, Berlin: Verlag der Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. 1-94. —— 1906a. ‘Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen’ in Abhandlungen der Königlich-Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophishhistorische Classe, Berlin: Verlag der Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften: 3-40.

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—— 1907. ‘Über Gefühlsempfindungen’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 44: 1-49; also in C. Stumpf (1928a), pp. 54-102. —— 1910. Philosophische Reden und Vorträge. Leipzig: Barth. —— 1916a. ‘Apologie der Gefühlsempfindungen’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 75: 330-350; also in C. Stumpf (1928a), 103-140. —— 1916b. ‘Verlust der Gefühlsempfindungen im Tongebiete (musikalische Anhedonie)’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 75: 39-53. —— 1918. ‘Empfindung und Vorstellung’ in Abhandlungen der KöniglichPreußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse 1: 3-116. —— 1924. ‘Carl Stumpf’ in R. Schmidt (ed.) Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellung, V. Leipzig: F. Meiner: 1-57; Eng. transl. In C. Murchison (ed.) (1930): A History of Psychology in Autobiography, 1, Worcester: Clark University Press: 389-441. —— 1928a. Gefühl und Gefühlsempfindung. Leipzig: J. A. Barth. —— 1928b. William James nach seinen Briefen. Berlin: Pan Verlag. —— 1939. Erkenntnislehre. I. Bd. Leipzig: J. A. Barth. —— 1940. Erkenntnislehre. II. Bd. Leipzig: J. A. Barth. Titchener, E. B. 1908. Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention. New York: Macmillan. —— 1917. ‘Prof. Stumpf’s Affective Psychology’ in American Journal of Psychology 28: 263-277. —— 1929. Systematic Psychology. Prolegomena. New York: MacMillan.

THE INTENTIONALITY OF PLEASURES AND OTHER FEELINGS. A BRENTANIAN APPROACH OLIVIER MASSIN

(UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA)

This paper defends hedonic intentionalism, the view that all pleasures, including bodily pleasures, are directed towards objects distinct from themselves. Brentano is the leading proponent of this view. My goal here is to disentangle his significant proposals from the more disputable ones so as to arrive at a hopefully promising version of hedonic intentionalism. I shall mainly focus on bodily pleasures, which constitute the main troublemakers for hedonic intentionalism. Section 1 introduces the problem raised by bodily pleasures for hedonic intentionalism and some of the main reactions to it. Sections 2 and 3 rebut two main approaches equating bodily pleasures with nonintentional episodes. More precisely, section 2 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be purely non-intentional self-conscious feelings, by relying on Brentano’s objection to Hamilton’s theory of pleasure. Section 3 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be non-intentional sensory qualities by relying on Brentano’s objections to Stumpf’s theory of pleasure. Section 4 develops a brentanian view of the intentionality of bodily pleasures by claiming bodily pleasures are directed at a sui generis class of sensory qualities. Section 5 presents an objection to Brentano’s later theory of pleasure according to which all sensory pleasures are directed at sensing acts. 1 Bodily pleasures and intentionality Brentano famously claimed that mental episodes are by nature directed towards objects distinct from themselves. He also thinks that all pleasures are mental episodes. He consequently endorses hedonic intentionalism:

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hedonic intentionalism: all pleasures are intentional episodes. Bodily pleasures represent a potential threat for hedonic intentionalism. Bodily pleasures are typically contrasted with pleasures of the mind. Paradigmatic pleasures of the mind include the pleasure of reading a good novel, the pleasure of remembering a nice diner, the pleasure of solving a puzzle; prototypical pleasures of the body include the pleasure of entering a hot bath, the pleasure we get when were are massaged or the pleasure we get when we scratch an itch. Although hedonic intentionalism is prima facie unproblematic for pleasures of the mind, it is far more controversial as far as pleasures of the body are concerned. There are two reasons for doubting the intentionality of bodily pleasures. First it is not clear what the intentional objects of bodily pleasures are. When Mary enjoys reading a good novel or admires Paul’s elegance, there is a reasonably clear distinction between, on the one hand, her enjoyment or admiration, and, on the other hand, what she enjoys (reading the novel) or admires (Paul’s elegance). But when Mary enters her bath or has a pleasant frisson on her neck it is not as easy to distinguish her intentional acts from their intentional objects. Brentano formulates the worry as follows: with respect to some kinds of sensory pleasure and pain feelings, someone may really be of the opinion that there are no presentations involved, even in our sense. At least we cannot deny that there is a certain temptation to do this. This is true, for example, with regard to the feelings present when one is cut or burned. When someone is cut he has no perception of touch, and someone who is burned has no feeling of warmth, but in both cases there is only the feeling of pain. (Brentano 1995, 82)

In the case of bodily pleasures, there is no salient distinction between intentional acts and the intentional objects they would be directed at. The second reason for doubting the intentionality of bodily pleasures pertains to bodily ascription. Like bodily pains, bodily pleasures appear to have a bodily location: they seem entirely located in the body of the subject or in some part of it. Consider for instance the pleasant frisson that we feel on our face when the wind refreshes it on a hot day, the pleasant sensation that we feel on our head when the hairdresser washes our hair, the pleasure we get when we scratch an

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itch, the pleasure we get when we have an orgasm, the pleasure we get when we put our cold hands under hot water, the pleasures we get when we are slightly caressed, and other Kitzelempfidungen (pleasant sensations). Such pleasures are naturally described as being located in parts of our body, or in it as a whole. This does not mean that this location is always precisely given: it might be more or less diffused; we might have difficulty in saying where exactly a pleasure is located in our body. But it remains located somewhere in a more or less vague area of it. Intentional phenomena, however, typically lack such an apparent bodily location. Judgments, desires, thoughts, likings, appreciations, convictions, do not have felt bodily location. As a result, it hardly makes sense to ask “Where is it that you believe in God?”, “How far is your enjoyment of that discussion from your disliking of Brahms?”. True, on some materialist proposal such intentional episodes are indeed located in our body, namely, in our brain. But phenomenology is mute with respect to this location of intentional episodes. It is far more loquacious about the location of bodily pleasures. Apart from headaches, which are bodily displeasures, we do not feel anything inside our head. These two considerations about bodily pleasures – lack of obvious intentional objects, and possession of a felt location – might lead to the rejection of hedonic intentionalism. However, given that pleasures of the mind do seem intentional, the natural way to go is to claim that while some pleasures – bodily pleasures – are not intentional, while some others – pleasures of the mind – are intentional. Since this view distinguishes two quite different kinds of pleasure, let us call it hedonic dualism: hedonic dualism: some pleasures – e.g. pleasures of the mind – are intentional, while some others – e.g. pleasure of the body – are not intentional. If pleasures of the body are not intentional episodes, what are they? Two main proposals come from two philosophers that Brentano considers as his main adversaries as far as pleasures are concerned: the Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton and Brentano’s pupil Carl Stumpf.

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According to Hamilton, who takes this view from Reid, bodily pleasures are mental but non-intentional episodes. This amounts to a straightforward rejection of Brentano’s claim that intentionality is essential to mental phenomena. Upholders of such an alternative view have to give an account of what makes bodily pleasures mental, if it is not intentionality. The strategy of Reid and Hamilton is to appeal to reflexive consciousness: (bodily) pleasures are mental in virtue of being self-conscious: pleasures are directed towards themselves only.1 Let us call such a version of hedonic dualism reflexive hedonic dualism: reflexive hedonic dualism: some pleasures – e.g. pleasures of the mind – are intentional, while some others – e.g. pleasure of the body – are non-intentional mental episodes that are mental in virtue of being selfconscious. Stumpf embraces another alternative account to hedonic intentionalism with respect to bodily pleasures. According to him, bodily pleasures are non-mental, non-intentional episodes, akin to sensory qualities such as colours and sounds. Such sensory qualities are intentional objects, what Brentano calls physical phenomena. This amounts to the rejection of another claim of Brentano: that all pleasures are mental phenomena. Let us call Stumpf’s view qualitative hedonic dualism: qualitative hedonic dualism: some pleasures – e.g. pleasures of the mind – are intentional, while some others – e.g. pleasure of the body – are non-intentional and non-mental episodes, akin to sensory qualities such as colours, sounds, smells, tastes, pressures, etc. 1

I am here assuming that Hamilton intends to limit this approach to bodily pleasures only. Although he does not say explicitly that he intends to treat differently pleasures of the mind and pleasures of the body, he might have had this idea in mind. After having denied the intentionality of pleasures, Hamilton mentions favourably the theory according to which pleasures are perceptions of our perfections (see esp. Hamilton, 1882, vol. II, 460 ff). As noted by Brentano (1995, 244), there is a tension between Hamilton’s official view that pleasures are not intentional, and his declared sympathy for the view that pleasures are perceptions of some perfections. One way to reconcile these two views, for Hamilton, would be to claim that while pleasures of the mind are perceptions of some perfections, pleasures of the body are mere reflexive feelings.

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One therefore faces three main options about the nature of bodily pleasures: 1. Bodily pleasures are intentional episodes (Brentano) 2. Bodily pleasures are non-intentional mental episodes: reflexive feelings (Hamilton) 3. Bodily pleasures are non-intentional, non-mental episodes: sensory qualities (Stumpf) These different approaches to the intentionality of pleasures are recapped in fig. 1. Hedonic

intentionalism All pleasures are intentional. (Brentano)

anti-intentionalism Not all pleasures are intentional.

extreme anti-intentionalism No pleasure is intentional.

hedonic dualism Pleasures of the mind are intentional, pleasures of the body are non-intentional.

reflexive hedonic dualism

qualitative hedonic dualism

Bodily pleasures are self-conscious feelings. (Hamilton)

Bodily pleasures are sensory qualities. (Stumpf)

Figure 1: Some main approaches to the intentionality of pleasures

2 Bodily pleasures are not reflexive feelings: Brentano vs. Hamilton This section objects to reflexive hedonic dualism (Stumpf’s qualitative hedonic dualism will be the target of section 3). Brentano argues against Hamilton that the view that some pleasures are self-conscious, non-intentional feelings is conceptually inconsistent. I agree with this, but his diagnosis concerning the inconsistency of self-conscious feelings seems a bit too hasty: the view is indeed incoherent, but not for the reason Brentano thought it was. Inconsistency of reflexive feelings: first try. For Hamilton, pleasures are feelings, which are non-intentional mental phenomena: In the phaenomena of Feeling, –the phaenomena of Pleasure and Pain, – on the contrary, consciousness does not place the mental modification or state before itself; it does not contemplate it apart, – as separate

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Olivier Massin from itself, but is, as it were, fused into one. The peculiarity of Feeling, therefore, is that there is nothing but what is subjectively subjective; there is no object different from self, – no objectification of any mode of self. (Hamilton, 1882, vol. 2, 432 ; see also 463).

Brentano contends that it is contradictory to claim that pleasures and pains are ‘subjectively subjective’ for the concepts of subject and object are interdependent: Hamilton is wrong when he says that with regard to feelings everything is ‘subjectively subjective’ – an expression which is actually self-contradictory, for where you cannot speak of an object, you cannot speak of a subject either (Brentano 1995, 91; see also 1981, 59).

Brentano is certainly right in claiming that the concepts of subject and object are mutually dependent. But he might be putting too much weight on Hamilton’s expression “subjectively subjective”. The core of Hamilton’s view can be maintained without using this unfortunate wording. What Hamilton should have said is that pleasures are their only objects: they refer to themselves only, without referring to anything beyond themselves. It is not that pleasures are subjects without objects, it is rather that they are (constituents of the) subjects, which are their own objects. Such a way of putting Hamilton’s view does not infringe on the grammar of the subject-object relation. Besides, although reflexivity might well raise logical worries on its own, this is not a card that Brentano could play against Hamilton for he himself relies heavily on reflexivity in his theory of secondary objects (see section 5 below). Of course, for Brentano, although intentional phenomena are not only reflexive, they are still necessarily reflexive. According to him, every intentional act has an object distinct from itself as its primary object, and also has itself as its own secondary object. Intentional reflexivity is therefore not inconsistent for Brentano. Inconsistency of reflexive feelings: second try. Is there any other way to argue that Hamilton’s purely reflexive feelings are inconsistent? Instead of focussing on the subject-object relation, one might try to derive the intentionality of feelings from the grammar or the term of “feeling” itself. On the face of it, the non-intentional view about feelings of pleasures clashes with two linguistic observations that suggest that feelings are intentional:

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1. We distinguish between various feelings by using apparently the same preposition ‘of’ that we use to describe and distinguish intentional phenomena: ‘The perception of a dog’ by contrast to the ‘The perception of a cat’/ ‘The feeling of a hot bath’ by contrast to ‘The feeling of a cold blow’. 2. We distinguish between various feelings by using transitively the verb ‘to feel’: ‘To feel an itch’ vs. ‘To feel a pain’. However, these two other attempts to prove the inconsistency of non-intentional feelings with ordinary language fail as well. In order to accommodate the first point, anti-intentionalists about feelings might claim that with expressions such as ‘a feeling of fear’, ‘a feeling of pain’, ‘a feeling of pleasure’, the term ‘feeling’ refers neither to an intentional act nor to an intentional object, but to a reflexive mental episode; and that the ‘of’ is not intentional either, but specificatory: it gives us the kind of the feeling in question, not its object (such as in ‘a piece of cake’ – see Searle, 1983, p. 39 n.1). Likewise, in “a feeling of pleasure”, there would be no question of distinguishing the pleasure from the feeling, because pleasure would be the feeling. The second point deserves more detailed consideration. The noun ‘feeling’ is deverbal, it comes from the transitive verb ‘to feel’. Such transitivity suggests that there is a difference between the act of feeling and its object: when we feel pleasure, the verb refers to the intentional act, and the pleasure to the intentional object. Antiintentionalists about feelings might however accommodate this remark by claiming that in ‘Paul feels a pleasure’, ‘pleasure’ is a cognate accusative of the verb ‘feels’, such as in ‘Paul is thinking a thought’. According to this hypothesis, in ‘Paul feels a pleasure’, ‘feels’ and ‘pleasure’ function appositively: they express the same thing. This strategy goes back to Reid at least, who strongly influenced Hamilton, his editor: The same mode of expression is used to denote sensation and perception; and therefore we are apt to look upon them as things of the same nature. Thus, I feel a pain; I see a tree: the first denotes a sensation, the last a perception. The grammatical analysis of both expressions is the same: for both consist of an active verb and an object. But, if we attend to the things signified by these expressions, we shall find, that in the first, the distinction between the act and the object is not real but grammatical; in the second, the distinction is not only grammatical but real. The form of the expression, I feel pain, might seem to imply

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Olivier Massin that the feeling is something distinct from the pain felt; yet, in reality, there is no distinction. As thinking a thought is an expression which could signify no more than thinking, so feeling a pain signifies no more than being pained. (Reid 2000, 167-8, my emphasis)

Ryle himself, although deeply hostile to the view that pleasures are reflexive feelings, notes that in some of its uses, the verb ‘to feel’ denotes non-intentional episodes, and explicitly introduces the idiom of ‘cognate accusative’ to deal with the transitivity of ‘to feel’: In ‘feel a tickle’ and ‘strike a blow’, ‘tickle’ and ’blow’ are cognate accusatives to the verbs ‘feel’ and ‘strike’. The verb and its accusative are two expressions for the same thing, as are the verbs and their accusatives in ‘I dreamt a dream’ and ‘I asked a question’. (Ryle 1990, 98)

It might not be that obvious, pace Reid and Ryle, that the dreaming and the dream, the asking and the question, the thinking and the thought stands for the same things in such expressions (see Twardowski, 1999 for a similar concern in the domain of action verbs and nouns). But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that such a ‘cognate accusative’ strategy with respect to non-intentional feelings is sound. Thanks to the specificatory reading of the ‘of’ in ‘feelings of pleasure’, and to the cognate accusative reading of ‘pleasure’ in ‘to feel a pleasure’, the reflexive hedonic dualist can maintain that the expression “feelings of pleasure’ denotes episodes which are both non-intentional and self-reflexive. Inconsistency of reflexive feelings: last try. Was then Brentano too optimistic in suggesting that the reflexive approach to bodily pleasures as non-intentional self-conscious feeling is inconsistent? Maybe not. I shall now propose an argument to the effect that purely self-conscious feelings are inconsistent. This argument, although never explicitly formulated by Brentano, is arguably Brentanian in spirit. Nonintentional reflexive feelings, it claims, face the following dilemma: Ñ Either a feeling is nothing but a presentation of itself But trying to make sense of that proposal soon gives vertigo: there would be nothing to be presented in a feeling but the fact that it presents itself to itself. Feelings would be empty loops. It is first very

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doubtful, to say the least, that feelings are felt like this. But even if they were, what on earth would distinguish a pleasure-feeling from a pain-feeling or a tickle-feeling? How can empty loops be qualitatively distinct? Or Ñ A feeling is only partly a presentation of itself. There is a part of the feeling which is not dedicated to selfpresentation. Thanks to such a part, feelings are no longer empty loops and acquire some material content that distinguishes feelings of different types from each other. But let us ask then what the relation is between the reflexive part of the feeling and its material part? We face here another embedded dilemma: Ñ Either the reflexive part only reflects egocentrically onto itself, and the material part is only juxtaposed to it in the feeling But in that case, we come back to the first horn of our general dilemma: the reflexive part becomes an empty loop, and the material part plays no role in the phenomenology of the feeling: it is there in the feeling, but is neither felt nor presented. If such were the case, the way pains feel would be the same as the way pleasures feel, and it is on the whole obscure why the material part should be considered as part of the feeling at all. Or Ñ The reflexive part presents not only itself to itself, but also presents the material part of the feeling. But then we find inside the feeling the very Brentanian intentional schema which defenders of the view that feelings are not intentional were intending to rebut. What is called the “self-presentation of the feeling” boils down to the presentation of its material part (the primary object) together with the reflexive presentation of that presentation itself (the secondary object). Such a picture matches in every respect the Brentanian schema of intentionality: instead of eliminating the distinction between the feeling-act and the feeling-object, it vindicates it. In sum, either non-intentional reflexive feelings are pure reflexions, but are then empty loops; or feelings have some kind of material, non-

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reflexive part, but then each feeling is composed of a feeling-act directed towards its material part (and towards itself) and has intentionality ingrained within itself. It follows that self-conscious non-intentional feelings are inconsistent. If there are reflexive feelings, they have to be intentional, i.e. to point towards something other than themselves. Brentano was right, if the above argument is correct, to claim that the reflexive view of bodily pleasures was logically inconsistent. Besides, if feelings are mental either in virtue of being intentional, or in virtue of being self-conscious (let us assume, therefore, than other criteria for defining the mental, such as the lack of extension, are deficient), it follows from the above argument that pleasures, if they are mental, have to be intentional. Such a conclusion is of some importance: an appeal to feelings construed in terms of non-intentional mental episodes pervades a significant part of the psychological and philosophical literature on emotions. According to the present argument, any theory appealing to feelings construed in this way is deeply flawed. 3 Bodily pleasures are not sensory qualities. Brentano vs. Stumpf Qualitative hedonic dualism. Bodily pleasures, it appears, cannot be non-intentional mental feelings. Might they be non-intentional and non-mental feelings? According to one proposal of this type, while pleasures of the mind are clearly intentional acts, pleasures of the body are akin to sensory qualities, that is, to intentional objects. This view has been dubbed “qualitative hedonic dualism” in section 1. Its first explicit defenders were Stumpf and Husserl2. Stumpf argues that bodily pleasures constitute a sui generis class of intentional objects, on a par with other sensory qualities such as colours and sounds. He calls this new class of sensory qualities Gefühlsempfindungen. Following Titchener (1908, 338), and as suggested by Stumpf (1928b, 68, n. 1) himself, I shall use the term ‘algedonic sensations’, rather than ‘feeling-sensations’, ‘affective sensations’ or ‘sensory pleasures’, to translate ‘Gefühlsempfindungen’. It should be stressed that by ‘feeling’ or ‘sensation’ one means here what is sensed or felt, by contrast to our feeling or sensing it. To equate bodily pleasures with nonmental feelings, or with algedonic sensations, amounts to equating 2

It is unclear whether Stumpf got this view from Husserl or the reverse. Fisette (this volume) argues that the first option is the right one.

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them with some kind of intentional objects. It is in that sense that bodily pleasures, according to the qualitative hedonic dualist, are objective or non-mental: they are physical phenomena in the sense of Brentano. They might be mental in a weaker sense: they might depend for their existence on mental acts directed towards them, in the same way as sense-data (according to the standard understanding of the term). This was indeed Stumpf’s view about algedonic sensations. Stumpf also subscribed to the view that colours were mind-dependent (so did Brentano at the time of the Psychology). There is therefore nothing really special about pleasures as far as mind-dependence is concerned. Stumpf’s qualitative hedonic dualism could as well have taken a more realist stance with respect to bodily pleasures: the main upshot of his approach, i.e. that bodily pleasures are intentional objects rather than intentional acts or self-conscious feelings, would have remained intact. Stumpf’s (1928a, 1928b) views on pleasure were quite influential.3 They were taken up (with some qualifications to be introduced below) by Husserl (Husserl, 1970, LI, §15, (b)), Scheler (1973a, pp. 256-8) and more recently by Mulligan (1988) (1998) (2008b) (2009).4 Moreover, Feldman (1997) (2002) (2004)’s influential theory of pleasure, without explicitly mentioning Stumpf, displays clear affinities with his views (but see note 5). All these authors agree that there are at least two kinds of pleasures: intentional pleasures of the mind and nonintentional pleasures of the body, and all of them identify pleasures of the body with what Brentano calls physical phenomena: i.e. kinds of intentional objects, on a par with other sensory qualities such as colours or smells, but in any events not intentional acts. Consequently, despite significant differences,5 all insist that pleasures of the mind 3 Stumpf’s works on pleasure have not been translated in English. One might find useful presentations of them, or hints at them in Titchener (1908, chap. III), Titchener (1917), Allen (1930, 5), Katkov (1939), Chisholm (1987), Chisholm (1986, 24 ff.), Reisenzein and Schönpflug (1992), Mulligan (1988) (2008b) (2008a), Fisette (this volume). The latter paper, moreover, presents in detail the confrontation between Brentano and Stumpf about pleasures. 4 Classifying Scheler among hedonic dualists is an understatement. Scheler indeed recognises four basic forms of algedonic feelings (Scheler 1973a, 332). See Mulligan (2008a) and Zaborowski (2011) for presentations of Scheler’s conception of the stratification of emotional life. 5 The main difference among qualitative hedonic dualists, as far as bodily pleasures are concerned is this: while Stumpf and Husserl take bodily pleasures to be natural (=non-axiological) sensory qualities, Scheler and Mulligan argue that bodily pleasures

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and pleasures of the body are so heterogeneous that they do not ultimately belong to the same natural kind. The first ones are positive attitudes, whereas the second ones are sensory qualities, intentional objects. Table 1 recaps the different terms used by qualitative hedonic dualists to mark this distinction. Pleasures

of the Mind (intentional episodes)

of the Body (non-intentional sensations or feelings)

Stumpf (1928b)

Feeling-act (Gefühlsakt)/ emotion (Gemütbewegung)

Algedonic sensations (Gefühlsempfindung)

Husserl (1970)

Feeling-act (Gefühlsakt)

Feeling-sensation (Gefühlsempfindung)

Scheler (1973a)

Intentional feelings (intentionalen Fühlen)

Sensory feeling-states (sinnliche Gefühlzustände)

Mulligan (1998)

Emotions

Emotional sensations

Feldman (2004)

Attitudinal pleasures

Sensory pleasures

Table 1: Hedonic objective dualists

Qualitative hedonic dualists often appeal to the location of bodily pleasure to justify their view (see e.g. Stumpf 1928b, 67; Scheler 1973a, 333). As mentioned in the first section such a location represents a problem for hedonic intentionalist, while it is easily accounted for if bodily pleasures are regarded as sensory qualities: the location of bodily pleasures is, under the latter hypothesis, no more problematic than the location of colours or sounds. I shall present Brentano’s

are to be construed in term of sensory values. Despite this difference, these four philosophers agree that bodily pleasures are sensory qualities (natural or axiological) that belong to a same kind, independently of our liking or disliking them. This is what distinguishes Feldman from other qualitative dualists: according to him, the only property shared by bodily pleasures is that they are the objects of attitudinal pleasures. Bodily pleasures are sensory qualities that have no property in common apart from the extrinsic property of being enjoyed. They are not intrinsically alike.

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answer to that problem in the next section. Let us for now focus on one of Brentano’s main objections to qualitative hedonic dualism. Against qualitative hedonic dualism. Brentano (1979, 237-240) criticizes Stumpf’s qualitative hedonic dualism in some detail. Some of his objections are not crucially dependent on his endorsement of hedonic intentionalism (as pointed out by Stumpf, 1928a in his answer to Brentano). But at least one of them is. From the hedonic intentionalist standpoint, hedonic dualism is gerrymandering a homogenous class of phenomena, that of pleasures, into two entirely heterogeneous classes: intentional acts and sensory qualities. Für Stumpf ziegt sich nichts Gemeinsames für sinnlich Lust und geistiges Wohlgefallen, sinnlichen Schmerz und geistiges Mißfallen. Für mich steht der gemeinsame Charackter außer Zweifel. (Brentano 1979, 237)6 [According to Stumpf, sensory pleasure and pleasure of the mind, sensory pain and displeasure of the mind have nothing in common. According to me, their common character is beyond doubt].

To this objection, hedonic dualists typically answer that bodily pleasures and pleasures of the mind, although essentially distinct, are still closely linked to each other. Bodily pleasures, they say, are the intentional objects of the pleasures of the mind. This might be considered as a metaphysical necessity (Feldman), a psychological necessity (Stumpf), or some kind of normative necessity (it is appropriate to enjoy bodily pleasures because they are essentially good, as in Scheler’s and Mulligan’s versions of qualitative hedonic dualism, see again note 5). But, as an answer to Brentano’s objection, such necessary connections miss the point. That bodily pleasures are objects of pleasures of the mind is of no help in understanding what all pleasures have in common.7 6

Similar objections against Stumpf are raised by Titchener (1917, 265) and Duncker (1941, 408). 7 Feldman (1997, chap. 5) restricts what he calls the ‘heterogeneity problem’ (i.e. what is the essential property shared by all pleasures) to sensory pleasures only, and claims that the main issue encompassing both sensory and attitudinal pleasures is the ‘linkage problem’: what is the metaphysical relation between sensory and attitudinal pleasures? Although the linkage problem is a perfectly legitimate question, it should not conceal the fact that the restriction of the heterogeneity problem to sensory pleasures looks like an ad hoc maneuver. If sensory and attitudinal pleasures are all pleasures, the first question to ask is not: ‘How are their related?’, but: ‘What do they have in common?’. Is there any natural/sparse property that sensory and attitudinal

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The only genuine option for the qualitative hedonic dualist is to bite the bullet and to grant that appearances notwithstanding, pleasures of the mind and pleasures of the body are not pleasures in the same sense. Contrary to our initial intuitions, bodily pleasures and pleasures of the mind do not belong to the same natural kind. This revisionary claim is not the only bullet that qualitative hedonic dualists have to bite. If hedonic dualism is true, then not only pleasures, but all things and theories defined on the basis of pleasures are splitted into scattered pieces.8 Let us examine three examples: 1. Psychological hedonism is the view that only pleasures can be intrinsically desired. If hedonic dualism is true, psychological hedonism turns out to be the view that at least two heterogeneous kinds of things can be intrinsically desired: bodily pleasures, on the one hand; and intentional pleasures, on the other. Independently of its truth or falsity, this certainly undermines the appeal of this theory. 2. Axiological hedonism is the view that only pleasures have intrinsic value. If hedonic dualism is true, axiological hedonism turns out to be the view that only two kinds of things have intrinsic value. Axiological hedonism, whether true of false, then loses most of its initial appeal for it ceases to be a monistic view about intrinsic value. 3. The valence of emotions is often construed in hedonic terms: love, admiration, fear, anger are held to be positive or negative emotions in virtue of the pleasures or unpleasures that constitute them. If one scatters pleasures, one runs the risk of dismantling emotions as well. Positive emotions will not be positive in the same sense. Suppose that there are some bodily emotions, whose valence is accounted for in terms of bodily pleasures; and some non-bodily emotions, whose valence is accounted for in terms of non-bodily pleasures. Bodily emotions could include for instance delectation and disgust (the valence of such emotions consist in their containing some bodily pleasures/unpleasures). Non-bodily emotions could include, for instance pride and shame (the valence of such emotions consists in their containing some non-bodily pleasures/unpleasures). According to qualitative hedonic dualists, the pleasurableness of delectation then has nothing to do with the pleasurableness of pride. The pair (delectapleasures share in virtue of which both kinds of episodes are pleasures? Feldman’s answer, despite his positive answer to the linkage question, is negative. 8 See Goldstein (1985) for a similar objection to what he calls ‘hedonic pluralism’, of which hedonic dualism is a version.

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tion, pride) is no more natural than the pair (delectation, shame), for such hedonic valences are essentially distinct and therefore incommensurable. Delectation and pride are positive in entirely different senses. This in turn entails some other oddities: how is it, for instance, that other things being equal, we prefer positive emotions to negative ones? Such regularity in our preferences turns out to be utterly ungrounded. Hedonic dualism is therefore a revisionary view about pleasure. I shall now argue that there is an intentionalist way to stick to the commonsensical intuition of a unity of pleasures that keeps the main advantages of qualitative hedonic dualism while getting rid of its main drawback. 4 The intentionality of bodily pleasures The two main anti-intentionalist accounts of bodily pleasures envisaged so far are defective: it is inconsistent to equate bodily pleasures with non-intentional self-conscious feelings, and equating bodily pleasures with sensory qualities leads to a rejection of the unity of pleasures. In order to defend hedonic intentionalism, however, one needs more than a rebuttal of some of its rivals: one has to state what the elusive intentional objects of bodily pleasures are. As mentioned in the first section, bodily pleasures are not prima facie intentional: it is easy to say what our visual acts are directed at, but it is more difficult to determine the objects of bodily pleasures. This apparent lack of intentionality of bodily pleasures is the main motivation behind both versions of hedonic dualism. The main question raised by bodily pleasures, for Brentano, and more generally for any hedonic intentionalist, is therefore this: what are the intentional objects of bodily pleasures? The objects of bodily pleasures. One standard way to defend the intentionality of pain or displeasure is to claim that pains are perceptions of bodily damages (see esp. Armstrong 1962; Pitcher 1970: Dretske 1995; Tye 2000; 2006; 2008). But what corresponds to bodily damages in the case of pleasures? “Bodily repairs” does not seem to be a very promising answer: in spite of a long tradition that explains pleasures in terms of the restoration of a lack or relief from pain (see e.g. Plato 1993; Verri 1781; Kant, 2006 Bk II, pp. 125 sqq, for bodily pleasures), such approaches face the recurrent objection that there are pure pleasures, i.e. pleasures that are not preceded by any lack or

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displeasures. The intentionality of bodily pleasures, therefore, seems even more problematic than the intentionality of bodily displeasures. Somewhat ironically, qualitative hedonic dualism lays the ground for a straightforward answer to this problem. Stumpf insisted that there is a class of forgotten sensory qualities besides the standard ones (sounds, colours, tastes, smells, pressures, hot and cold), and he equated bodily pleasures with these algedonic sensations. These are two independent claims. The hedonic intentionalist, I submit, should accept the former and reject the latter. There is indeed a class of sensations (in the sense of possibly sensed objects), typically located in the body, that the classical distinction between the proper objects of the five senses fails to capture. Such algedonic sensations include for instance orgasms, itches, shivers, prickles, irritations, thrills, tingles, shivers, thorns, burning sensations, hunger sensations, thirst sensations, sensations one gets when one stretches one’s muscle, pins and needles, etc. Stumpf was right to claim that such sensations are on a par with other sensory qualities such as sounds, colours, pressures or smells: they are sui generis intentional objects. But he was wrong to equate such algedonic sensations with pleasures. These sensations, on the present proposal, are the objects of our bodily pleasures and unpleasures. Bodily pleasures, according to the version of hedonic intentionalism defended here, are precisely the pleasures that are directed at algedonic sensations. The objects of bodily pleasures are the algedonic sensations that qualitative hedonic dualists wrongly equate with the bodily pleasures themselves. Qualitative hedonic dualism furnishes the hedonic intentionalist with the intentional objects he was looking for. This view was indeed put forward by Brentano even before Stumpf introduced his own view according to which bodily pleasures are algedonic sensations. After having conceded that bodily pleasures constitute a prima facie problem for his intentionalism (see first section), Brentano maintains: Nevertheless there is no doubt that even there the feeling is based upon a presentation. In cases such as this we always have a presentation of a definite spatial location which we usually characterize in relation to some visible and touchable part of our body. We say that our foot or our hand hurts, that this or that part of the body is in pain. [...] there is in us not only the idea of a definite spatial location but also that of a particular sensory quality analogous to color, sound and other so-

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called sensory qualities, which is a physical phenomenon and which must be clearly distinguished from the accompanying feeling. (Brentano 1995, 82-3)

Brentano claims here that bodily pleasures are directed towards sensory qualities of a sui generis class, akin to colours, sounds, smells, tastes, pressures or temperatures, although distinct from them, and which are necessarily located in the body. There are some kinds of pleasure-qualities, and some kind of pain-qualities, that affect parts of our body and which are, so to speak, the proper objects of bodily pleasures and pains. The pleasure-qualities and the pain-qualities are not themselves pleasures and pains, but are the intentional objects of pleasures and pains. Such qualities are called by Brentano Gefühlsempfindungen (Brentano 1973, 118). Brentano and Stumpf, at this point, appear to agree on the existence of such a sui generis class of sensory qualities. Their only disagreement concerns the relation between bodily pleasures and Gefühlsempfindungen: identity for Stumpf, intentionality for Brentano. Brentano’s hedonic intentionalism has however one crucial advantage over Stumpf’s hedonic dualism: it does not split pleasures into two heterogeneous kinds. What all pleasures have in common, according to his proposal, is that they are hedonic attitudes directed towards intentional objects. What distinguishes pleasures of the mind from bodily pleasures is their object: contrary to pleasures of the mind, bodily pleasures are directed towards sensory quality of a sui generis kind: algedonic sensations. Brentano expresses this simple and powerful intentionalist theory of pleasure as follows: To feel pleasure or delight is an emotional act, a taking pleasure or a loving; it always has an object, is necessarily a pleasure in something which we perceive or imagine, have an idea of. For example, sensual pleasure has a certain localised sense quality as its object. (Brentano 2009, 113)

Why bodily pleasures seem non-intentional. How is it, then, that bodily pleasures do not strike us as being intentional, in contrast to pleasures of the mind? If they do have algedonic sensations as objects, how is it that, while we naturally distinguish between the hearing of the sounds and the sounds, we do not so spontaneously distinguish between a thrill and the pleasure we take in it?

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Brentano’s overall answer to this question is that in the case of bodily pleasures, we tend to conflate the intentional pleasure-acts with their intentional objects. This strategy not only helps the hedonic intentionalist to explain the elusiveness of the intentional object of bodily pleasures, it also puts him in a position to explain the apparent location of bodily pleasures. According to this intentionalist proposal, bodily pleasures are not themselves located in the body, but rather their objects, with which they are often conflated. Although I agree with Brentano’s general claim that bodily pleasures tend to be conflated with their objects, the two reasons he advances in order to explain this common conflation seems to me less convincing. Brentano first notices that we have only one name for designating the act directed toward a pain-quality and the pain quality itself. A [...] basis for this illusion is the fact that the quality which precedes the feeling and the feeling itself do not have two distinct names. The physical phenomenon which appears along with the feeling of pain is also called pain. (Brentano 1995, 84)

Such an observation, if true, hardly explains why we confuse the intentional displeasure with the pain-quality it is directed at. First because we are usually able to distinguish different things called by the same name. Indeed, in the language of affects, it quite often happens that the emotion’s objects are named after the emotions that are directed at them: “His daughter was an amusement to him”, “This dinner was a pleasure”, “That defeat was a shame”, “His trophy is his pride”, “Meeting him was a great excitement”, etc. But such expressions rarely, if ever, prompt conflations between the emotion and its object (e.g. between the pleasure we take in a dinner and the dinner itself, or between one’s shame and the shameful event it is directed at). Second, the fact that we have only one name for the intentional act and the intentional object of pain is hardly an explanation for our tendency to conflate them: it is rather a symptom of it. We have only one term, intuitively, because we tend to confuse the two, not the reverse. Brentano’s other explanation of the conflation between bodily pleasures and their objects is more elaborate. It appeals to our tendency to conflate certain sensory qualities when they are presented at the same time. But how exactly Brentano intends to pass from such a

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conflation between intentional objects to a conflation between intentional pleasure-acts and their intentional objects is not entirely clear: [1] If we now look at the sensations of feeling [Gefühlsempfindungen] we find, on the contrary, that their phenomena are usually linked with another sort of sensation, and when the excitation is very strong these other sensations sink into insignificance beside them. Thus the fact that a given individual has been mistaken about the appearance of a particular class of sensory qualities and has believed that he has had one single sensation instead of two is very easily explained. [2] Since the intervening idea was accompanied by a relatively very strong feeling, incomparably stronger than that which followed upon the first kind of quality, the person considers this mental phenomenon as the only new thing he has experienced. [3] In addition, if the first kind of quality disappeared completely, then he would believe that he possessed only a feeling without any underlying presentation of a physical phenomenon. (Brentano 1995, 84)

This is a pretty dense passage, which I have divided into three steps for explanatory purpose. Step [1] explains why algedonic qualities are often conflated with non-algedonic ones (such as colours, sounds, pressures, etc.). In order to explain this conflation, Brentano appeals to the fact that algedonic qualities are usually presented together with non-algedonic ones, and that qualities that are presented together are often conflated. In step [2], Brentano speaks no more of intentional objects (sensory qualities) but of intentional acts. The presentation of the nonalgedonic sensory quality, he says, is neither strongly pleasant nor unpleasant. Only the presentation of the algedonic quality is. As a consequence, the person only pays attention to the strong feeling he has towards the algedonic quality, to the detriment of the weak feeling he has towards the non-algedonic quality. While the first step explains the conflation between sensory and algedonic qualities, the second step explains why the strong feeling directed at the algedonic quality overshadows the weak feeling directed at the non-algedonic quality. The result of the two first steps is that we appear to have only one strong feeling directed at only one algedonic quality (with which the non-algedonic quality has been conflated in step 1). Step [3] the crucial one, the one that allows for an explanation of why bodily pleasures often seem to be non-intentional. But it is also the more elusive. It says that if the non-algedonic quality disappears

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altogether, we are led to believe that we have a feeling without object. But why should it be so ? Why should the disappearance of the nonalgedonic quality lead us to believe that we have an objectless feeling rather than a feeling directed towards the algedonic quality that now appears on its own, without any risk of being conflated with any nonalgedonic sensory quality? Suppose one feels a light pressure on one’s skin and enjoys some concomitant algedonic sensory quality. The first step shows that when the two qualities are presented at once, they tend to be conflated. But if the pressure disappears, the algedonic quality remains alone on the intentional scene. Rather than being oblivious to it, we should be struck by its new self-standing appearance. In other words, what should happen when the non-algedonic quality disappears is that we cease to misleadingly equate the object of our pleasure with this non-algedonic sensory quality (such as a pressure), and we come to identify it with what it really is, namely a genuine algedonic quality. If true, Brentano fails to give a convincing account of the reason why bodily pleasures and their objects are often conflated: neither his linguistic argument, nor his conflation-based explanation sound convincing. Hedonic intentionalism is still in need of an explanation regarding the elusiveness of the intentional objects of bodily pleasures. Here is an alternative proposal. The reason why algedonic sensations are not spontaneously recognized as the objects of our bodily pleasures might be rather due to the epistemology of (sensory) intentionality. Traditionally, intentionality in the sensory realm has been thought of on the basis of visual perception, and visual intentionality has often been in turn understood on the basis of the visual distance or depth between the subject and the object (Smith 2000). Intentionality, strictly speaking, is of course not a spatial relation, but a reference relation between a subject and an object. However, the presence of a seen (or co-seen, see Husserl 1989, 308) distance between the subject and the object certainly helps to diagnose intentionality. The distinction between the subject and the object is in such cases plain to see. When there is a lack of spatial distance between the subject and the object however, one is sometimes led to overlook the distinction between the subject and the object, and relatedly, to overlook the intentionality of the phenomena under consideration. Thus, tactile perception, bringing us most often in contact with its objects, has sometimes been claimed to be non-

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intentional (see e.g. Warnock 1953, 47). The distinction, for instance, between our feeling a pressure on our skin, on the one hand, and the felt pressure, on the other, is less salient than the distinction between our seeing the colour of the moon and the colour of the moon. In the same way that tactile sensations, algedonic sensations are not presented as being distant from the subject. There is no presented distance between our thrill and our enjoyment of it. This might be the main reason why bodily pleasures and their objects have not always been sharply distinguished: the objects of our bodily pleasures, presented as located in our body, are not presented as being distant from us. Although Brentano’s explanation of our tendency to conflate bodily pleasures with their objects is questionable, his main thesis, that bodily pleasures are directed at algedonic qualities, provide a simple and very plausible answer to the problem of the intentionality of bodily pleasure. Hedonic intentionalists, I submit, should stick to Brentano’s proposal. Are pleasures and pains contraries? Before ending this section, let us consider a possible reply on behalf of qualitative hedonic dualism. As we have seen, one main difficulty for hedonic dualism is that it leads to the revision of the intuition that all pleasures have something in common. But hedonic intentionalism, one might reply, is as well rejecting a widespread belief: namely that pleasures and pains are indeed located in the body. According to hedonic intentionalism they are not, since the alleged location of bodily pleasures indeed stems from the conflation between pleasures and their objects. With one revision on both sides, hedonic intentionalism loses its comparative advantage. As a reply, note first that while common-sense, no doubt, takes bodily pains to be located in our body, it is less clear that bodily pleasures are naturally ascribed to such a location. We naturally say that we have a pain in the foot, but it does sound a bit odd to say that we have pleasure in the foot. Sure, we do say that we have a pleasant sensation located in the body, but “pleasant”, in its ordinary sense, means the property of what gives pleasures (by contrast to a widespread philosophical use according to which pleasantness is the essential property of pleasures themselves). But what about bodily pains then? Isn’t hedonic intentionalism still committed to the denial that they have a bodily location? Not necessarily. Brentano takes pleasures (Lust) and pain (Schmerz) to be

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contraries, but this might be a mistake. On the present proposal, which departs from Brentano, the true opposite of pleasure is displeasure (or better: unpleasure9) and pain is not the opposite of pleasure. Pain is rather one algedonic quality (this view is defended by Wohlgemuth 1917, 437, 450; Russell 1995, 70; von Wright 1963, 70). Pleasures and unpleasures are intentional phenomena, but we do not ascribe bodily location to them. Pain is a kind of algedonic quality that is typically the object of some unpleasures. Pains are not intentional, and are indeed located in the body. As long as pains are not contraries of pleasures, such a claim is fully compatible with hedonic intentionalism. To recap: the opposites of pleasures are unpleasures. Both pleasures and unpleasures are intentional phenomena whose objects are algedonic qualities. Pain is not an opposite of pleasure, but one of the algedonic qualities which is typically the intentional object of some unpleasure. 5 Taking pleasure in sensory acts According to the Brentanian view just defended, bodily pleasures are pleasures directed at sensory qualities of a sui generis kind. This view is however not exactly that of Brentano. According to him, in 1874, only some sensory pleasures are directed at sensory qualities (in particular algedonic qualities); some others, however, are directed at sensory acts. More precisely, many sensory pleasures are not directed at sensory qualities, but rather towards the sensory acts of sensing these qualities: One thing certainly has to be admitted; the object to which a feeling refers is not always an external object. Even in cases where I feel a harmonious sound, the pleasure which I feel is not actually pleasure in the sound but pleasure in the hearing (Brentano 1995, 90).10 9 That ‘unpleasure’ is the antonym of ‘pleasure’ is a view endorsed by Mezes (1895), Wohlgemuth (1917, 437), Russell (1958), Findlay (1961), Rachels (2004), Mulligan (2009). 10 See also: “often the act of hearing a sound is obviously accompanied not only by a presentation and a cognition of this act of hearing, but by an emotion as well. It may be either pleasure, as when we hear a soft, pure young voice, or displeasure, as when we hear the scratching of a violin badly played. On the basis of our previous discussions, this feeling, too, has an object to which it refers. [This object is not the physical phenomenon of sound, but the mental phenomenon of hearing, for obviously it is not really the sound which is agreeable and pleasant or which torments us, but the hearing

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In this last section, I shall argue that Brentano, because of his views about internal perception, cannot allow for such pleasures taken in sensory acts. Although the objection I am going to raise already affects the theory of pleasure defended by Brentano in the Psychology, it is even more problematic for Brentano’s second theory of pleasures. According to this later theory, all sensory pleasures, including bodily ones, are directed towards sensing acts (no pleasure is directed towards sensory qualities anymore). I will first present this second theory and then introduce the problem that pleasures in sensory acts raise in the context of Brentano’s general theory of intentionality. Brentano’s second theory of pleasures. Brentano’s new theory of pleasure appears in his Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie (1907), and is reaffirmed as a complement to his first version (see the supplementary remarks added to the 1911 edition of the Psychology, esp. Brentano 1995, 276) and in the posthumous collections of essays Sensory and Noetic Consciousness (Brentano 1981; see Mulligan 2004, p. 84 for a comparison between Brentano’s two theories). Brentano’s new theory of pleasures still intends to be a version of hedonic intentionalism. Brentano introduces three main modifications to his former theory. The first modification concerns the nature of Gefühlsempfindungen. In the first version of the Psychology, Brentano uses this term only once without defining it in detail: he merely hints at the idea that bodily pleasures and pains have some sui generis kind of sensory quality as their object, without saying more. In his second theory Brentano says a bit more. He now includes the Gefühlsempfindungen among the Spürempfindungen, i.e. sensations of the Spürsinn. Brentano argues that there are only three senses: vision (whose proper objects are colours), hearing (whose proper objects are sounds) and the Spürsinn (whose proper objects are the Spürempfindungen). The Spürsinn includes all the sensory acts directed at temperatures, pressures, tastes, smells and algedonic qualities (such as “the quality of the sensation of being stuck with a needle”, Brentano 1981, 46). The reason why all these usually distinguished sensory modalities are fused into one is that, according to Brentano, their objects can all be said to be light and dark in the same sense (a sense distinct from the one in which colours and sounds can be said to be light and dark). of the sound.]” (Brentano, 1995, pp. 143-4 – the editor reports that the sentence in brackets had been later modified by Brentano.)

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Brentano’s proposal sounds quite metaphorical and hardly convincing. One possibly better way to unify the different Spüremfpindungen was hinted at in the previous section: while in the cases of colours and sounds it makes sense to speak of a perceived distance between the subject and the perceived sensory quality, such distance is not presented when we perceive some pressure, some taste, some temperature or some itches. This lack of felt distance or externality might be the common feature of all Spürempfindungen. Be it as it may, Brentano’s theory of the Spürsinn, although it happens to be associated with his new theory of pleasures, is not a crucial part of it. The two other changes he introduces are more decisive. The second change is that sensory pleasures now consist only in pleasures of the Spürsinn. Brentano’s first theory maintained that bodily pleasures are only “some kinds of sensory pleasure and pain feelings” (Brentano 1995, 82, see full quote in section 1). In the first theory (although Brentano expresses some reservations regarding sounds) sensory pleasures can in principle be directed at any sensory quality: colours, sounds, tastes, pressures, algedonic qualities, etc. Bodily pleasures constitute the sub-kind of sensory pleasures that are directed at algedonic qualities. Brentano’s second theory, however, asserts that the only sensory pleasures are pleasures related to Spürempfindungen: just as every mental activity is the object of a presentation included within it and of a judgement included within it, it is also the object of an emotional reference included within it. I myself adopted this view in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Since then, however, I have abandoned it and I now believe that even among sensations there are many cases in which there is no emotional reference, and so no pleasures or displeasures, contained within it. Indeed, I believe the entire broad classes of visual and aural sensation to be completely free of affective character. This does not rule out the fact that very lively affects of pleasure and pain ordinarily accompany them in various ways determined by laws. (Brentano 1995, Supplementary Remarks, 276)

Brentano’s new position is not only that visual and aural acts are never intrinsically pleasures, it is also that sensing acts of the Spürsinn are always necessarily pleasures. We cannot be presented with a sensory quality of the Spürsinn without having a feeling of pleasure or pain. This was the case for every sensory quality in Brentano’s first

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theory of pleasure; this is now only the case for the quality of the Spürsinn. This is still too much, however. By denying that one can be presented with an algedonic quality without enjoying or suffering it, Brentano needlessly rigidifies his hedonic intentionalism (note that the present worry applies equally to Brentano’s first theory of pleasure). For Stumpf (1928b, 68), having a pain without suffering it is at least a conceptual possibility, and later empirical investigations will show that in certain pathological cases, it is as well a psychological reality: in the case of pain asymbolia, subjects feel pain but do not suffer it; while in cases of anedonia, subjects feel their orgasm, yet they do not enjoy it (see in particular Grahek, 2007; that pains are not essentially suffered is also argued by von Wright 1963, 57; Hall 1989; Johansson 2001; Tye 2008 and Mulligan 2008b). A hedonic intentionalist that welcomes algedonic qualities can easily countenance such cases: the subjects feel some algedonic quality in their body, but that feeling is just a neutral or indifferent presentation, deprived of any hedonic feature. But both of Brentano’s theories of pleasures, although they grant algedonic qualities, cannot account for pain asymbolia nor for anhedonia because they assume that such qualities can never be presented independently of any act of love or hate. The third and main change introduced in Brentano’s second theory of pleasure is that he now thinks that we never take pleasure in the sensory qualities themselves, but always in the acts of sensing these sensory qualities: sensory pleasure is an agreeing, sensory pain a disagreeing, which are directed towards a sensory act to which they themselves belong. (Brentano 1979, 237, translated by Mulligan 2004, 84)

It is not clear why exactly Brentano is reluctant to admit that we can take pleasure in physical objects, i.e. sensory qualities. This is one of the criticisms that Stumpf addresses to him. Stumpf claims that one can take pleasure not only in seeing, but also in colours, not only in hearing, but also in sounds, not only in tasting, but also in tastes, etc., and that Brentano’s restriction is consequently illegitimate (Stumpf 1928a, 110). Mulligan (2004, 84) suggests one plausible explanation of Brentano’s reluctance to allow for pleasures that are taken in sensory qualities. Brentano might be driven here by the intuition that most sensory pleasures appear to be directed at sensory activities: we enjoy

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listening to Purcell, reading a book, looking at the Alps from the Jura, etc. This might encourage the view that the primary objects of our sensory pleasures are sensory acts. Can Brentano allow for pleasures in sensory acts? Regardless of where Brentano’s reluctance to admit sensory pleasures directed at physical objects stems from, his very insistence that pleasures are directed at mental acts raises an important problem in the context of his own theory of intentionality. The most straightforward way of dealing with pleasures taken in sensing, for the hedonic intentionalist, would be to “go second-order”: to enjoy hearing a sound is to have a second-order mental act of love directed at the first-order act of hearing. But Brentano rejects second-order mental acts: only physical objects can be apprehended externally. Mental acts can never be directly and instantaneously introspected or observed. How are they to be known then? The answer lies in Brentano’s distinction between primary and secondary intentional objects of mental acts. A mental act not only refers to a primary object distinct from itself, but also refers to itself as its own secondary object (Brentano, 1995, chap. II). In every mental act is ingrained reflexivity: this reflexivity does not exhaust the nature of the mental act which also refers to a physical object (contra Hamilton, see section 2.), but it is still an essential feature of it11. This Cartesian aspect of Brentano’s intentionalism explains that, according to him, mental acts are always conscious, and that internal perception (our knowledge of secondary object–mental acts) is infallible, contrary to external perception, which is directed at primary, physical objects. Mental acts, according to this picture, can never be primary objects, i.e. they can never be the objects of simultaneous mental acts distinct from themselves (Brentano 1995, 128-9). When we take pleasure in hearing a sound, according to Brentano’s theory, it cannot be the case that we have a second-order mental act of love directed at our first-order hearing (Brentano 1995, 144). So how are we to enjoy hearing rather than the sounds according to Brentano? To answer this question, Brentano relies on his theory of secondary objects and on a second feature of his theory of intentionality. Brentano distinguishes between three modes of intentional reference: presentation, judgement, and love/hate. These modes de11

See however Textor (2006) for a non-standard interpretation of Brentano’s theory of inner consciousness.

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pend on each other in (at least) the following way: every object of love is also judged, every object of judgement is also presented. Thanks to his distinction between primary and secondary intentional objects, and to his distinction between three modes of intentional reference, Brentano’s proposal is to treat pleasures taken in sensory acts in the following manner. When we enjoy the act of hearing, we do not have a second-order mental act of love directed at our hearing, rather the act of hearing is not only presented as its own secondary object but it also loved as its own secondary object. The act of hearing, so to speak, loves itself: love is not a new mental act directed at the act of hearing, but just a way the act of hearing refers to itself. Experience shows that there exist in us not only a presentation and a judgment, but frequently a third kind of consciousness of the mental act, namely a feeling which refers to this act, pleasure or displeasure which we feel toward this act. (Brentano 1995, 143)

Now comes the problem. If pleasure is a kind of love, as Brentano maintains, it should be directed not only towards itself, but also towards some primary object. There can be no secondary object without a primary object. Brentano saves the appearance of intentionality in the case of sensory pleasures by claiming that, by being grounded on presentation, pleasure always accompanies some presented object. But this begs the question: what is required by his theory is not (only) a presented primary object that is necessarily tied to a feeling of pleasure. It is also a primary object that is loved, an object towards which the act of love – not the act of presentation on which it is grounded – is directed. Pleasures appear to lack any primary objects. To repeat: in his treatment of pleasures taken in sensory acts, Brentano seems to suggest that the act of love has only a secondary object, but not primary object. But this is explicitly precluded by his theory of intentionality. The distinction between primary and secondary objects is supposed to apply respectively to each of his three modes of intentional reference: that is, the presenting has both a secondary and a primary object, the judging has both a secondary and a primary object, and the loving has both a secondary and a primary object (see e.g. Brentano, 1995, p. 266). It is not enough to say that the act of love is its own secondary object and that it is grounded on a presentation which has a physical object as its primary object. Brentano’s theory

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requires that the act of love has itself a primary object, that is, it requires that the act of love relates, by itself, to a physical object. That the dependency of pleasures on an act of presentation is not enough to insure the intentionality of pleasure is clearly expressed by Husserl: But we do not merely have a presentation, with an added feeling associatively tacked on to it, and not intrinsically related to it, but pleasure or distaste direct themselves to the presented object, and could not exist without such a direction. [...] [Intentional pleasure, conviction, desire] are all intentions, genuine acts in our sense. They all ‘owe’ their intentional relation to certain underlying presentations. But it is part of what we mean by such ’owing’ that they themselves really now have what they owe to something else. (Husserl 1970, V, §15, vol. 2, 108)

Brentano’s theory regarding pleasures taken in intentional acts deprives these pleasures of any intrinsic intentionality. Pleasures taken in sensory acts, although they depend on sensory presentations, are not by themselves directed towards any object distinct from themselves. They become non-intentional phenomena “added on to” presentations. Indeed, Brentano’s reluctance to admit primary objects for pleasures in sensory acts is apparent not only in the way he speaks of sensory pleasures as being directed only towards sensory acts, but also in his way of equating pleasures with accompanying feelings of mental acts (see e.g. Brentano 1995, 83). This way of speaking is quite close to the way hedonic tone theorists express themselves: as it appears such feelings-tones “colour” the presentation they depend on, but they are not themselves intentional. If so, taking pleasure in or feeling something is not a mode of intentional reference, as Brentano officially argues, but a quale, as he strongly suggests, nolens volens (see Hossack 2006, 49 for a similar claim about Brentano’s commitment to hedonic qualia).12 Worse, to the extent that pleasures in sensory acts are directed towards themselves without being intrinsically directed towards sensory qualities, they look very much like Hamilton’s purely reflexive feelings, which Brentano rightly diagnosed as being inconsistent (see section 2). There is no room for such 12 Indeed, the various writers that Brentano mentions in favour of the idea that pleasure is dependent on presentation are most often hedonic tone theorists and Brentano does not distance himself from them on this particular point.

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hedonic tones or reflexive feelings in Brentano’s official ontology of the mind. As pointed out by Husserl, there is an important difference between the view that pleasures are intentional mental acts that depend on presentations, and the view that pleasures are hedonic tones or purely reflexive feelings that depend on presentations. Brentano’s official position is (or should be) the first one, but when considering pleasures as directed towards sensory acts, he tends towards the second one. On the whole, Brentano’s theory of pleasure appears committed to the following inconsistent triad: 1. Every mental act has a primary object distinct from itself. 2. No mental act is a primary object. 3. Some pleasures are directed at mental acts only. It seems to me that the faulty claim is the second one, which is closely related to Brentano’s view that mental acts are essentially reflexive. It is not the place here to criticize this view (see e.g. Scheler 1973b for such detailed criticism), but the hedonic intentionalist is in any event not committed to it. The concept of intentional act requires the concept of primary object, but it can still be maintained without such reference to secondary objects. The hedonic intentionalist should then, I suggest, reject Brentano’s views on internal perception. He should also reject his later view that all sensory pleasures are directed towards sensory acts. But he should keep the following invaluable views: (i) purely reflexive feelings are inconsistent; (ii) pleasures of the mind and pleasures of the body do share some natural and essential property; and (iii) pleasures of the body are directed towards algedonic qualities.13

13 I am grateful to Otto Bruun, Laurent Cesalli, Julien Deonna, Denis Fisette, Guillaume Fréchette, Marion Hämmerli, Anne Meylan, Kevin Mulligan, Mark Textor and Fabrice Teroni for their invaluable comments on this paper.

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Allen, A.H. 1930. Pleasure and Instinct, A study in the Psychology of Human Action. London: Kegan Paul. Armstrong, D.M. 1962. Bodily sensations, London New York: Routledge & Paul Humanities Press. Brentano, F. 1973. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Bd 1, O. Kraus, ed. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. —— 1979. Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie. Meiner Verlag. —— 1981. Sensory and noetic consciousness: psychology from an empirical standpoint III, O. Kraus and L. McAlister, eds. London: Routledge. —— 1995. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, L. McAlister, ed., trad. A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, L. L. McAlister, London: Routledge. —— 2009. The Foundation and Construction of Ethics (Routledge Revivals). London: Routledge. Chisholm, R. 1986. Brentano and Intrinsic Value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— 1987. ‘Brentano’s Theory of Pleasure and Pain’ in Topoi 6: 59-64. Dretske, F. 1995. Naturalizing the Mind. MIT Press. Duncker, K. 1941. ‘On Pleasure, Emotion, and Striving’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1: 391-430. Feldman, F. 1997. Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert: Essays in Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. —— 2002. ‘The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65: 604-628. —— 2004. Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism. Oxford University Press. Findlay, J. 1961. Values and Intentions. London: Allen & Unwin. Fisette, D. 2013. ‘Mixed Feelings. Carl Stumpf’s Criticism of James and Brentano on Emotions.’ (this volume). Goldstein, I. 1985. ‘Hedonic Pluralism’ in Philosophical Studies. An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition Tucson, Ariz. 48: 49-55. Grahek, N. 2007. Feeling Pain and being in Pain. The MIT Press. Hall, R. 1989. ‘Are Pains Necessarily Unpleasant?’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49: 643-659. Hamilton, W. 1882. Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, H. L. Mansel and J. Veitch, eds., vol. 1-4. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. Hossack, K. 2006. ‘Reid and Brentano on Consciousness’ on M. Textor, ed. The Austrian contribution to analytic philosophy. Taylor & Francis, pp. 36–63. Husserl, E. 1970. Logical Investigations. London: Routledge, trad. J.N. Findlay. —— 1989. Chose et Espace, Leçon de 1907. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, trad. J.-F. Lavigne. Johansson, I. 2001. ‘Species and Dimensions of Pleasure’ in Metaphysica 2: 39-71. Kant, I. 2006. Anthropology from a pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katkov, G. 1939. ‘The Pleasant and the Beautiful’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 40: 177-206. Mezes, S. 1895. ‘Pleasure and Pain Defined’ in The Philosophical Review 4: 22-46.

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Mulligan, K. 1988. ‘On Structure: Bühler’s linguistic and psychological Examples’ in A. Eschbach (ed.) Karl Bühler’s theory of language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. —— 1998. ‘The Spectre of Inverted Emotions and the Space of Emotions’ in Acta Analytica 18: 89-105. —— 2004. ‘Brentano on the Mind’ in D. Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 66–97. —— 2008a. ‘Max Scheler. Die Anatomie des Herzens oder was man alles fühlen kann’ in H. Landweer and U. Renz (eds.) Klassische Emotionstheorien von Platon bis Wittgenstein. Berlin: de Gruyter. —— 2008b. ‘On Being Blinded by Value, Feeling Feelings and their Valence’. Manuscript. —— 2009. ‘Emotion and value’ in P. Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook in the Philosophy of Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pitcher, G. 1970. ‘Pain Perception’ in Philosophical Review 79: 368-393. Plato. 1993. Philebus. Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. Rachels, S. 2004. ‘Six Theses About Pleasure’ in Philosophical Perspectives 18: 24767. Reid, T. 2000. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, D. R. Brookes, ed. Pennsylvania State University Press. Reisenzein, R., and W. Schönpflug. 1992. ‘Stumpf’s cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion’ inAmerican Psychologist 47: 34-45. Russell, B. 1958. ‘What is Mind?’ in The Journal of Philosophy 55: 5-12. —— 1995. The Analysis of Mind. London: Routledge. Ryle, G. 1990. The Concept of Mind. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Scheler, M. 1973a. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Value. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, trad. M. Frings, R.L. Funk. —— 1973b. ‘The Idols of Self-Knowledge.’ In Selected Philosophical Essays. Northwestern University Press, pp. 3–97, trad. D. R. Lachterman. Searle, J. 1983. Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, A. 2000. ‘Space and Sight’ in Mind 109: 481-518. Stumpf, C. 1928a. ‘Apologie der Gefühlsempfindungen’ in Gefühl und Gefühlsempfindung. Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosis Barth. 103-140. —— 1928b. Gefühl und Gefühlsempfindung. Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosis Barth. Textor, M. 2006. ‘Brentano (and Some Neo-Brentanians) on Inner Consciousness’ in Dialectica 60: 411-432. Titchener, E. 1908. Lectures on the elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention. New York: The Macmillan Company. Titchener, E. 1917. ‘Professor Stumpf’s affective Psychology’ in The American Journal of Psychology: 263–277. Twardowski, K. 1999. On Actions, Products and other Topics in Philosophy, J. Brandl, J. Wolenski, and A. Szylewicz, eds. Rodopi. Tye, M. 2000. Consciousness, Color, and Content. MIT Press. —— 2006. ‘Another Look at Representationalism about Pain’ in M. Aydede (ed.) Pain: New Essays on Its Nature and the Methodology of Its Study (Bradford Books). Cambridge MA: MIT Press: 99-120.

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—— 2008. ‘The Experience of Emotion: an Intentionalist Theory’ in Revue internationale de Philosophie 62: 25–50. Verri, P. 1781. Discorsi sull’indole del piacere e del dolore, sulla felicitae sulla economia politica. Milan: Giuseppe Marelli. von Wright, G. 1963. The Varieties of Goodness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Warnock, G. 1953. Berkeley. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Wohlgemuth, A. 1917. ‘On the Feelings and their Neural Correlates, with an Examination of the Nature of Pain’ in British Journal of Psychology 8: 423-476. Zaborowski, R. 2011. ‘Max Scheler’s model of stratified Affectivity and its Relevance for Research on Emotion’ in Appraisal 8, 24-34.

BRENTANO AND STUMPF ON TONAL FUSION RICCARDO MARTINELLI

(UNIVERSITY OF TRIESTE)

1 Brentano, Stumpf and tonal fusion Carl Stumpf repeatedly acknowledged his intellectual debt towards Franz Brentano, who influenced him both from a personal and from a philosophical point of view.1 Stumpf’s devotion and gratitude towards his Würzburg teacher is testified by many writings2, letters and by the dedication of the second volume of the Tonpsychologie and of the posthumously published Erkenntnislehre.3 However, the relationship between Brentano and Stumpf went through different phases. As Stumpf reports, some disappointing events took place as of 1896, and around 1903 they broke up almost completely and overcame their crisis only in the following year4. Along with some personal reasons, scientific issues played an important role in this process. Stumpf moved from a Brentanian standpoint, but investigated sense perception – and especially tonal perception – in an original manner. As a consequence, some of his most renowned and important results, such as the doctrine of tonal fusion, became unacceptable to Brentano. However, their divergence dramatically increased after the development and publication of Brentano’s new theory of sensible perception.5 Thereafter, Brentano’s and Stumpf’s works both offered alternative approaches to the same question. As we shall see, this also explains why6 the two philosophers argued about the issue of tonal fusion in 1907, seventeen years after the publication of Stumpf’s 1

Stumpf 1919; 1922; 1924; Brentano 1989. Stumpf (1919, 86). 3 Stumpf (1939, iii). 4 Stumpf 1929, quoted in Oberkofler (1989, xxi-xxiii). 5 Brentano (1893; 1897; 1905; 1907a; 1907b) (see Brentano 1907 and 2009). For a discussion on this matter see above. 6 This circumstance has been pointed out by Allesch (2003, 229). 2

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doctrine – but only two years after Brentano’s first public claims on tonal perception.7 In this essay I shall focus on the polemic concerning tonal fusion and try to show its importance in the development of the relationship between Brentano and Stumpf.8 Far from representing a marginal episode, this quarrel is quite relevant to our understanding of this relationship. Stumpf never followed Brentano’s new theory of “sensible qualities”.9 Thus, the controversy on the mechanism of tonal fusion reveals a more general divergence concerning the idea of human sensibility as a whole. This allows us to backdate the fundamental disagreement between Brentano and Stumpf concerning their respective approaches to sensibility, which became later explicit in the Erkenntnislehre.10 My analysis begins with an exposition of Stumpf’s idea of tonal fusion (§ 2). I shall then introduce Brentano’s new theory of sensible qualities and of music perception (§ 3), and conclude with his criticism of Stumpf’s doctrine of tonal fusion (§ 4). 2 Stumpf’s doctrine of tonal fusion Stumpf’s interest in the world of sound and music is deeply rooted in his personal and intellectual biography. He depicts himself as a young student “with more love of music than of erudition” in Würzburg in 1866, when he attended Brentano’s public habilitation discussion and, strongly impressed by this figure, decided to devote himself to philosophy.11 This fundamental decision did not prevent him from either practising music throughout his life, or making it one of his favourite fields of scientific research.12 Some essential features concerning this topic emerge in many of his early writings. In the first theoretical section of the first volume of the Tonpsychologie (1883), Stumpf lists 7

Stumpf (1890); Brentano (1905). For more details, see the discussion above. I shall not consider here the two other polemical issues concerning sensory feelings and tonal qualities. With respect to the former, see Fisette 2009; on tonal qualities, see Martinelli (1999, 155-160; 199-204). 9 As pointed out by Baumgartner (2009, xi), this was suggested by Emil Utitz, who names Stumpf, Köhler and Eisenmeier among the ‘few’ who followed Brentano in this special aspect of his doctrine (Utitz 1917, 231). 10 See Fisette (2006, 32). From a Brentanian point of view Kastil (1948) vehemently reacted against Stumpf’s theses. 11 Stumpf (1924, 391f.). 12 Stumpf (1918, 7-8) lists a series of reasons for preferring the study of auditory phenomena. 8

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the main relationships that define appearances: multiplicity, increase (Steigerung), similarity and fusion (Mehrheit, Steigerung, Ähnlichkeit, Verschmelzung).13 This distinction represents the general philosophical framework of the subsequent, more specific analysis concerning tonal fusion. Also in his psychology lessons in Halle (1886/87), Stumpf already says that consonant tones, given “in simultaneous hearing or presenting, approximate the impression of one single tone”.14 However, it is only in the second volume of the Tonpsychologie (1890) that Stumpf systematically deals with the perception of simultaneous tones and formulates the doctrine of Tonverschmelzung. To begin with, Stumpf wonders about the very nature of perceiving a simultaneous multiplicity of tones.15 Following the Aristotelian method of the aporiai16, he carefully discusses all the possible solutions for this question, i.e. that one perceives “many sensations at the same time, or just one sensation, or many sensations one after another”.17 Accordingly, a perceived chord18 would be conceived (1) as the result of many tone-sensations blended together (Mehrheitslehre, “multiplicity theory”); (2) as a single, unitary sensation – i.e. a chord-sensation – whose components depend on each other (Einheitslehre, “unity theory”); (3) as the result of a tremendously fast alternation of the two tonal sensations in the mind (Wettstreitslehre, “contrast theory”).19 This preliminary philosophical distinction has crucial importance for any discussion on tonal fusion. Stumpf’s definition of tonal fusion (see below) can be properly understood only against the background of this conceptual framework. It is remarkable that some divergence with Brentano emerges at this fundamental level. As we shall see, 13

Stumpf (1883, 96). Since his first book (Stumpf 1873) on the psychological origins of the presentation of space, Stumpf introduces the idea of “psychological parts”, which is relevant to tonal fusion: see Kamleiter (1993, 30-8). 14 Stumpf (1886/87, 292). 15 Stumpf (1890, 1). Aristotle already posed this question in De sensu, VII, 447a 12 ff. 16 Stumpf (1890, 9), quoting Aristotle, Metaph. B 995a. 17 Stumpf (1890, 12). 18 For the sake of simplicity, I shall hereafter designate the occurrence of two simultaneous notes as a ‘chord’. Properly speaking, however, in the harmonic theory a chord (Dreiklang, Akkord) is made up of no less than three simultaneous tones, conjoined together according to certain harmonic rules. For Stumpf, fusion and consonance have to do with two-tone unities (harmonic intervals, Zweiklänge), whereas in the case of three-tone chords he speaks of concordance (Konkordanz). See Stumpf (1898; 1911). 19 Stumpf (1890, 1). On this problem see Aristotle, De sensu, VII, 448a 20-22.

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Brentano first leans towards the third option and finally switches to the second. In contrast, Stumpf definitely and enduringly defends the “multiplicity theory”.20 For him, hearing (or remembering, or thinking of) a chord implies the perception of a real multiplicity of tones, more or less “fused” together. As Stumpf observes, sometimes we clearly discern this multiplicity and correctly recognise that it is composed of two tones. Other times, however, we completely fail to grasp the actual state of affairs, and erroneously believe that a single tone is played. Such confusion does not necessarily result from subjective inaccuracy or inexperience. Stumpf’s experiments show that the response to tonal multiplicity follows some general rules, depending on which tones are chosen to make up the chord. An interval of a major second is usually recognised as being made up of two tones; but the octave is often taken to be a single note. In other words, each different tonal multiplicity (the octave, the fifth, the fourth, and so on) is essentially characterised by a certain degree of “tonal fusion”, that is, by the strength of its natural tendency to make up in our perception a sensorial whole rather than a mere sum of sensations. Stumpf defines tonal fusion (Tonverschmelzung) in the following words: The relation between two contents, more specifically between contents of sensation, whereby these do not constitute a mere sum but rather, a whole (ein Ganzes). The consequence of this relation is that, in high degrees, the overall impression – all other things being equal – increasingly approaches that of a single sensation, and is increasingly more difficult to analyse.21 In a general sense, the remote origins of this idea could be located within ancient musical theories (carefully investigated by Stumpf with remarkable philological competence) and especially in Aristotle’s writings22. More specifically, however, Stumpf borrows many aspects of this doctrine from the well-known physiological experiments on the 20

Stumpf (1890, 40ff). Stumpf (1890, 128). 22 The Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum, a contemporary and a friend of Plato, already claimed that one hears a single sound in consonances; Plato himself often speaks of consonance (symphōnia); however, according to Stumpf, only Aristotle understands the mixis of sounds in a psychological, rather than in a metaphorical sense: see the historical reconstruction in Stumpf (1897, 27). However, Stumpf (1890, 17) also says that Aristotle is wrong in adopting (De sensu, VII, 447b) the ‘unity theory’. 21

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sense of touch performed by Ernst Heinrich Weber.23 Stumpf had been personally introduced to Ernst Weber24 by his brother Wilhelm, his admired teacher in experimental physics.25 In weighing two objects in one’s hand, Weber noted, successive evaluation considerably improves precision. If, on the contrary, both hands simultaneously compare the weight of two different objects, the resulting sensations tend to mix, and then mislead us.26 Something similar happens when we hear two simultaneous sounds, so that this general principle can be transferred to the field of tonal perception.27 Tonal fusion, Stumpf claims, can be observed and verified through the use of an experimental method. This procedure enables him to determine the different “degrees” of tonal fusion.28 Stumpf explains consonance and dissonance as degrees of tonal fusion: the more two tones are “fused” together, the more consonance they produce. Finally, Stumpf establishes the independence of tonal fusion from other factors. He admits that the degree of tonal fusion depends on the physical frequencies of sounds, but only in a very indirect way. Different physical frequencies may correspond to the same degree of fusion because of minimal differences that remain below the threshold of sensation and judgement (Urteilsschwelle). Rather than being physical, then, the cause of tonal fusion is physiological. Specific energies that underlie various degrees of fusion are produced by two stimuli: accordingly, Stumpf speaks of second-order specific energies, which he also calls specific synergies.29 With this, Stumpf directly criticises Helmholtz’s auditory theory.30 In his view, Helmholtz’s theory was unable to explain the occurrence of tonal fusion with merely imagined tones, i.e. those given in a “bloße Phantasievorstellung”31. Stumpf’s theory of tonal fusion accounts for this fact, thus explaining important 23

See Stumpf (1890, 61). Stumpf (1924, 395). 25 Stumpf (1924, 392), where Stumpf declares that “besides Brentano and Lotze”, Wilhelm Weber “developed and formed my manner of scientific thinking”. 26 Weber (1851, 85f). 27 A difference lies in that tonal fusion depends on qualitative rather than on quantitative factors. 28 Stumpf (1890, 135). The five degrees of fusion correspond to the groups formed by the intervals of an octave, a fifth, a fourth, a third and a sixth, and finally all of the remaining. 29 Stumpf (1883, 214). On the law of specific energies see below. 30 Stumpf (1883, 152). 31 Stumpf (1890, 138). 24

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processes such as musical imagery (and then, composition) or silent score reading, as usually performed by skilled musicians. Most notably, Stumpf’s approach undermines any naturalistic approach to the philosophy of music as supported, for instance, by Helmholtz’s insistence on the allegedly “natural” role of the series of harmonic overtones, analysed in the inner ear.32 On the contrary, notwithstanding its undeniable artistic value, Western tonal music cannot be considered more “natural” than any other kind of music in light of tonal fusion. Thus, Stumpf’s deep interest in non-European musical systems and his pioneering work in the field of ethnomusicology are a consequence of his approach to the theory of consonance based on tonal fusion.33 Tonal fusion has been widely discussed by philosophers, psychologists and musicologists. Stumpf took many of these critical remarks seriously; as a result, he revised many aspects of his doctrine. However, a reconstruction of the whole debate on tonal fusion would take us too far. Let us here simply single out two general trends: on the one side, a tendency to discuss tonal fusion rather technically (e.g. discussions concerning the nature or the consequences of tonal fusion, or the exactness of Stumpf’s experiences); on the other side, a more radical approach, often consisting in a complete refusal of tonal fusion as an ill-defined psychological concept. As I shall show, Brentano’s name must be listed in both cases. 3 Brentano on sensible qualities and tonal perception Brentano developed his new theory of sensible qualities in Vienna, around 1890.34 The vicissitudes of his doctrine of intensity show that this innovation goes hand in hand with his overall philosophical evo32

Actually, Helmholtz allowed for a specifically aesthetic moment, independent of the nature of the sensations of tone. See Hatfield (2004). Nevertheless, his demonstration that tonal music follows the very nature of tone sensations implied a substantial advantage of Western tonal music upon any other kind of music. 33 Stumpf was quite conscious of this question. Hypotheses concerning consonance should be tested on both cultivated and non-cultivated forms of European and nonEuropean music: see Stumpf (1911, 355); Stumpf and Hornbostel (1911). Obviously, Stumpf’s open-mindedness on this question offers no evidence of the correctness of his claims, yet it represents a good reason to consider his ideas seriously. On the Phonogramm-Archiv founded by Stumpf see Simon (2000). 34 On Brentano’s theory of sensation see Eisenmeier (1918); Baumgartner (2009). On the origin of this doctrine, see Baumgartner (2009, xvi).

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lution.35 In the first edition of Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt published in 1874, Brentano asserted that all psychical phenomena (sensible and intellective presentations, judgments and feelings – both in primary and in secondary consciousness) involve degrees of intensity.36 In contrast, in the 1911 edition he claims that only sensible phenomena, i.e. sensations, have intensity.37 Brentano argues that the mental presentation, for example, of the number three does not feature any intensity; similarly, the so-called different “degrees” of belief in the existence, for example, of a horse or of a centaur, have nothing to do with intensity. On the contrary, different sensations really imply different degrees of intensity. The person who hears a loud sound (or who hears and sees, touches, etc., stimulating various senses at the same time) has a more intense perception, compared to that of a person who hears a feeble sound. According to this new approach, sensibility radically differs from the rest of human consciousness: accordingly, Brentano keeps the two domains carefully separated and, as a result, speaks of sensory and noetic consciousness.38 Some of Brentano’s reasons for this attitude in relation to the doctrine of specific sense energy will be discussed below. But how is the problem of intensity related to the theory of sensation – and finally, to tonal fusion? Some early traces of Brentano’s new theory of sensation can be found in a conference held in Vienna at the Philosophical Society (Philosophische Gesellschaft) in January 1893.39 Three years later, in 1896, Brentano presented his new doctrine in full detail at the Third International Congress of Psychology, held in Munich under

35

This question cannot be addressed here. For an interesting account, which partly relies upon Brentano’s Würzburg lectures, see Chrudzimski and Smith (2004). 36 Brentano 1874 (in 1924, 169; 192 ff.). Brentano relies upon a calculus of intensity in his demonstration of a critical theorem, namely that no unconscious psychical phenomenon can be given. Brentano (1924, 194). 37 Brentano (1911, 151f.) 38 Brentano (1928). 39 See Brentano (1893). Stumpf was informed by Brentano (1989, 106 [19.3.1893]) about this conference. Actually, Brentano did not announce a new theory of sensibility to him but simply mentioned a possible contrast with Hering as a consequence of his new approach. Many years later, in preparing a paper concerning Brentano, Stumpf (1982, 155 [31.12.1918]) confessed to Franz Hillebrand that he knew very little about Brentano in Vienna.

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Stumpf’s (and Theodor Lipps’) presidency.40 According to Brentano, all sensible qualities, i.e. elementary sense elements such as “red”, or “tough”, and so on, are given within the “space of sensation” (Empfindungsraum), also designed as “sensory space” (Sinnesraum).41 Within this Empfindungsraum, sensible qualities are reciprocally impenetrable, just as are real bodies within the real space or “worldspace” (Weltraum).42 Given that human sensibility has a threshold, the actual disposition of sense qualities in the sensory space may remain unnoticed. Thus, if a certain number of “spots” in the space are empty, we then experience a low degree of intensity, which is the “measure” of the “density” of sensation. It is for this reason that a lower degree of intensity actually implies a lower level of reality. Thus, besides intensity, Brentano’s new theory explains the nature of multiple qualities. When different qualities lay one next to the other in the phenomenal space, and the texture remains beneath the threshold, we experience multiple qualities. Mixed colours, like orange, result from the juxtaposition of red and yellow qualities filling the spots of the phenomenal space. This is analogous to some well-known occurrences in real space: e.g. the optical effect of a tweed tissue, or the overall effect conveyed by a “divisionist” painting, and so on. This process holds, for Brentano, for mixed qualities of any kind, including those pertaining to the sense of hearing. With this, Brentano’s new theory of phenomenal space offers an alternative to Stumpf’s concept of fusion, both in a general sense and specifically concerning tonal phenomena. However, in the printed version of the proceedings of the Munich Congress, there is little material to account for a controversy on tonal fusion with Stumpf.43 After all, in this version, tonal perception plays 40 Brentano (1897). The essay was published in the proceedings of the Munich conference as ‘Zur Lehre von der Empfindung’, and in 1907 as “Über Individuation, multiple Qualität und Intensität sinnlicher Erscheinungen” (Brentano 1907a). The Munich title originated from a modification request made by the organisers of the congress (Stumpf, Lipps and Schrenck-Notzing): Brentano (1989, 107-108). 41 Brentano (2009, 52) (1905, 114; 1907, 70). In a letter to Stumpf of 1874 [25.7.1874], in a critical discussion of Fechner’s law, Brentano contrasted a ‘real’ and a ‘phenomenal’ space (phänomenaler Raum): Brentano (1989, 57). 42 Brentano (2009, 52) (1905, 114; 1907, 70). 43 However, the Munich Congress marks the beginning of a critical phase in their friendship. Stumpf was busy with the organisation of the congress and found no time for Brentano; moreover, he had to ask him to make a drastic cut in his speech because of the lack of time and the generalised delay at the crowded conference. Brentano left

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a secondary role. The problem of tonal perception was expressly tackled by Brentano in a paper written for the Fifth International Congress of Psychology, held in Rome in 1905. Brentano’s conference was scheduled as the opening session, although he did not attend the congress but sent his paper for the proceedings.44 Some criticism directed at Stumpf is introduced in this text, yet Brentano still avoids an extensive polemic on tonal fusion. Along with other writings, the Munich and the Rome papers were published in 1907 in a volume entitled Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie. In this volume, Brentano adds footnotes to both essays. It is worth noting that the most elaborate and significant of these footnotes consists in an attack of Stumpf’s theory of tonal qualities, sensory feelings and tonal fusion.45 To sum up, in the 1897 paper (Munich) Brentano does not even mention Stumpf; in the 1905 paper (Rome) some criticism is introduced; the notes added in 1907 (to both essays) chiefly aim at a sharp criticism of Stumpf’s position. In a footnote that was added to the 1907 version of the 1897 paper, which is particularly relevant in this context, Brentano widely discusses tonal fusion.46 Given the important role that this subject plays in Brentano’s 1905 text, a short digression on the law of specific energy is necessary. According to Helmholtz’s doctrine, as expounded in his Lehre von den Tonempfindungen (18631), each acoustic frequency acts upon a single nervous fibre located in the inner ear, so that the activation of this fibre triggers a ”specific energy”, which is transmitted to the brain. In his view, the inner ear then is similar to a piano, whose strings are set free to resonate sympathetically.47 When a tone of a certain pitch is heard, the corresponding “string” (i.e. nervous fibre) of this piano resonates, so that the corresponding “specific energy” finally reaches the central system. Helmholtz’s “one fibre/one sensation”

the official final meeting without even greeting Stumpf. See Stumpf (1929), quoted in Oberkofler (1989, xxii). 44 See Brentano (1905). 45 The text of the two papers relevant to our purposes have been published as Brentano 1897 (Munich proceedings), Brentano 1905 (Rome proceedings) and 1907 (three footnotes added to each paper). All texts are now available in Brentano 2009. To prevent confusion, when needed, I shall indicate in square brackets the year of publication of Brentano’s claims. 46 See Brentano (2009, 150-158) (2007, 218-228). 47 Helmholtz (1870, 129); see Vogel (2004).

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approach48 was an extension of Johannes Müller’s law of specific energies: not only the different senses, but even the different qualities associated to each sense are determined by a specific energy. Brentano’s attitude towards this doctrine deserves special attention. He firmly and explicitly endorses the law of “specific energies” not only in its general, but also in its broadest application.49 He thus clearly supports Helmholtz’s theses50. According to Brentano, the law of specific energy provides not only a distinction among different senses (e.g. sight and hearing), but also among different qualities within a certain sense (e.g. pitches in hearing)51. This might help us explain the reason why Brentano adopted this new theory of sensibility, a doctrine which is perhaps logically consistent and metaphysically convenient, but manifestly lacks any kind of empirical (even in Brentano’s sense) support.52 Actually, Brentano’s new approach was less successful – even within his school – than he might have expected. Ehrenfels explicitly criticised it53, and no prominent member of Brentano's school 48

Hatfield (2004, 531). In his lessons on psychology in Halle, Stumpf subscribes to the law only in its general sense: Stumpf (1886/87, 293). 50 With his “descriptive” approach, Brentano is obviously quite far from Helmholtz’s physiology (as remarked by Chisholm (1979, XIV)); yet he leaves the door open for a potential convergence with Helmholtz’s influential “genetic” doctrine. 51 Brentano (1909, 158) (1907, 21): “Es gilt hier das Gesetz von der spezifischen Energie der Sinne. Dieses Gesetz wird nicht bloß heutzutage von den Sinnesphysiologen ersten Ranges noch festgehalten, sondern seit Thomas Young, oder wenigstens seit Helmholtz sich das Verdienst erworben hat, auf die Bedeutung von Youngs Hypothese hinzuweisen, neigen sie auch zu der Annahme, daß es wie für die Gattung, so auch für die Art der Qualität zutreffend sei, ohne daß freilich damit gesagt sein soll, daß dem Nerven und nicht vielmehr dem zentralen Organ der spezifizierende Einfluß zukomme. Wenn nun dies, warum nicht auch annehmen, daß derselbe Reiz wie in verschiedenen Sinnen Heterogenes, in demselben Sinne spezifisch Verschiedenes bewirken könne, und daß dies beim Gesichtssinn wirklich der Fall sei. Es handelt sich hier also um nichts anderes als um eine Steigerung von auch anderwärts Bekanntem, und auch unsere Gegner geben die betreffenden Tatsachen zu”. See also Brentano 1893 (2009, 122; 1907, 42): “Helmholtz hat das Verdienst, die Bedeutung von Youngs Gedanken zuerst vollauf begriffen und insbesondere durch die glückliche Übertragung auf das Tongebiet durch Analogie wesentlich gestützt zu haben”. 52 Even those who defended Brentano’s doctrine, like Géza Révész, recognised its lack of empirical foundation (“Mängel an empirischer Fundierung”). See Baumgartner (1994, 33) (for this quote) and 34 for Baumgartner’s interpretation of this passage, less radical than the one proposed here. On Révész, Brentano and Stumpf see also Kamleiter (1993, 194 ff.). 53 As Ehrenfels notes, it is the sensory nature of the content that determines the presence of an intensity of the act. Accordingly, judgements and feelings directed at 49

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of thought defended or developed this doctrine54. In Brentano’s eyes, however, his hypothesis of “sensory space” could offer the advantage of a possible convergence with the doctrine of specific energies and the potential local individuation of each sensation suggested by Helmholtz’s approach – as Brentano himself explicitly suggests.55 However, Helmholtz’s extensive application of the law of specific energies had often raised perplexities, particularly with respect to the theory of tonal sensations. In fact, Helmholtz assumed that the specific energies involved in tonal perception are as numerous as the variety of audible pitches. This enormous amount appeared somewhat disturbing, even more so if compared with the three (or, at least, four, according to the different versions) specific energies, one for each fundamental colour, required by the so-called Young-Helmholtz’s theory of visual perception.56 For this reason, notwithstanding his enthusiastic commitment to Helmholtz’s Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, Ernst Mach had tried to lower the number of the specific energies of the auditory nervous system.57 Mach assumed only two specific energies, which he called “dull” (dumpf) and “bright” (hell): the former prevailed in low-pitched sounds, the latter in high-pitched ones, and a balanced mixture of the two elements at the middle of the range. Now, Brentano begins his paper on tonal qualities with an attempt to undermine Mach’s reform of Helmholtz’s theory. If the different pitches of musical notes result from blending only two elements just as, for example, grey is composed of black and white, the world of sounds would be deprived of its chromatic variety. Who would seriously claim, though, that Beethoven (so to speak) painted his symphonies in different shades of grey?58 Moreover, Brentano obsensory instances would still admit intensity. But then, if I look at the inkwell on my table and say “there is an inkwell on my table”, this judgement would suddenly cease to have intensity as soon as I close my eyes. Ehrenfels (1898, 54). 54 On the legacy of Brentano’s doctrine, see Baumgartner (2009). 55 “Wer, wie ich wenigstens, mit aller Entschiedenheit an der Hypothese der spezifischen Sinnesenergien festhält, der wird nach dem Gesagten nicht umhin können, die Empfindung jedes Sinnesnerven nicht bloß qualitativ, sondern auch örtlich spezifiziert zu denken”. Brentano (n.d.) in 1907, 167. Stumpf (1898, 52) suggests a physiological interpretation of Brentano’s doctrine. 56 Helmholtz (1856-66); see Kremer (1994, 288). 57 Mach (1906, 276) (for the English translation; previously, Mach 1885). Mach widely relies upon Ewald Hering’s psychological views. 58 Brentano (2009, 74) (1907, 94).

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serves, Mach’s theory cannot resist Stumpf’s critical remark that from two tones played together should originate a third tone of intermediate pitch rather than a chord. However, Brentano specifies in a footnote [1905] that this observation also holds for Stumpf’s own theory. Brentano thus associates Stumpf with Mach in defending the wrong view that “the tones of a scale proceed as a straight line”.59 Mach’s two specific energies, renamed by Brentano as “tonal black and white” (Tonweiss and Tonschwarz), can account for the series of sounds, extending over the entire auditory range. In the field of vision, black and white coexist with pure colours and their blends; similarly, Brentano claims, in the field of musical perception two different kinds of elements must be given. According to his hypothesis, the phenomenal space is filled by “qualities” that belong to two kinds, “saturated” (gesättigt) and “non-saturated” (ungesättigt).60 With respect to the tonal field, saturated qualities are responsible for the cyclically recurring features expressed by the names of the notes (C, D, and so on); whereas the amount of the two non-saturated qualities, i.e. tonal “black” and “white”, define the position of this note within the linear dimension of the audible range61. According to Brentano, however, the relative amount of each kind of element is not constant. The “saturated” elements prevail at the middle of the audible range, and dramatically decrease at its periphery. 4 Brentano’s critique of tonal fusion Let us now take a step back and introduce Brentano’s main claims about tonal fusion in a chronological order. In May 1890, Brentano expresses gratitude to Stumpf for the announced dedication of the second volume of the Tonpsychologie.62 In July, after having received the book, he promptly congratulates Stumpf on his commitment to metaphysics, as declared in the Preface.63 However, in a subsequent letter of November 1890, Brentano takes note of Stumpf’s divergence (“freilich an Differenzen fehlt es nicht”). Stumpf’s arguments, Brenta-

59

See the footnote [1905] in Brentano (2009, 74) (1907, 93). Brentano (2009, 76 ff.) (1907, 94 ff.). 61 On this basis, Brentano proposes a graphical representation of sounds in terms of his peculiar geometrical views. Brentano (2009, 81) and 168 (with the editor’s note). 62 Brentano (1989, 94) [8.5.1890]. 63 Brentano (1989, 95) [21.7.1890]. See Stumpf 1890, vi. 60

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no thinks, cannot shake his own theory of musical harmony.64 Brentano then expresses the wish to convince him, in the next meeting, that “a chord (Mehrklang) is a tone (Ton) in the same sense that purple is a colour”.65 In other words, Brentano supports the “unity-theory” which is dismissed by Stumpf in favour of the “multiplicity-theory”. Previously, Brentano had adopted – with some reservation – the “contrast hypothesis” (Wettstreitslehre). At that time (1882), he already claimed that two simultaneous qualities cannot be locally identical, but had not yet wholly developed his later doctrine of sensible qualities. To bypass this difficulty, Brentano supposed that the two apparently simultaneous tones alternate with tremendous speed, as if they would build up an indefinitely accelerated musical trill.66 Thanks to his new approach, this problem could be dealt with in different terms, so that Brentano could abandon this hypothesis in favour of the “unity theory” (see above, § 2). With respect to the theoretical background of tonal fusion, then, Stumpf’s and Brentano’s conceptual frames diverge essentially since the beginning of this debate. As for tonal fusion itself, however, in the letter of November 1890 Brentano confesses his need for further reflection. He contents himself, at this stage, with some general criticism of Stumpf’s hypothesis of “specific synergies” as the physiological causes of tonal fusion.67 An in-depth criticism of tonal fusion was however simply delayed. As we already know, Brentano addresses this question in one of the footnotes added in 1907 to the Munich paper in his Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie. Brentano begins with some rather technical observations against Stumpf’s idea of tonal fusion as confined within the octave68. The degrees of fusion, for example, of a fourth and an eleventh (i.e. the fourth of the higher octave) are different, since tonal fusion tends to diminish in the second case.69 However, this level of 64

Moreover, according to Brentano, Stumpf fails to consider some important differences between auditory and visual sense (referring to Stumpf 1990, 60-64). 65 Brentano (1989, 96) [15.11.1890]. Brentano previously allowed for more difference with respect to this question: Brentano 1907, 13-14. 66 Brentano (1989, 77) [22.11.1882]. Lotze allowed for the “contrast-hypothesis” in the case of remembering or imagining chords. See Lotze 1853, 83 f. This theory found some support since ancient times. 67 Brentano (1989, 97). 68 Brentano (2009, 150) (2007, 218). 69 On this aspect of Brentano’s criticism see Kamleiter (1993, 101f.) In a subsequent letter, Brentano welcomes Stumpf’s acknowledgement of the justification of his

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discussion does not imply a specific philosophical disagreement between the two philosophers. Brentano’s criticism concerns a particular aspect of Stumpf’s theory, and is partly a matter of definition.70 He also enumerates a series of cases in which one may speak of tonal fusion, thus adopting a broader definition of «Verschmelzung» than that of Stumpf’s.71 Yet, Brentano also addresses tonal fusion in Stumpf’s sense. As we have already seen, Stumpf considers tonal fusion as a primary phenomenon and rejects any attempt to reduce it to any other constitutive factor. In contrast, now Brentano claims that tonal fusion results from three different and more primitive factors: past experience, feelings and physical “beats”.72 In distinguishing the two fused tones, he argues, past experience plays a significant role; since we usually hear several tones fused together in a timbre (Klangfarbe) and then unconsciously develop the habit of fusing sounds together. Furthermore, feelings influence our judgment. An act of emotion (Affekt), is regularly combined with a tone sensation.73 However, chords either strongly increase this pleasant feeling, or provoke the opposite effect: for instance, the major third is an agreeable harmony (Wohlklang), while “the melancholic (wehmütig) minor third marks the entrance of the opposite feeling”.74 Consonant chords evoke pleasant feelings (and vice versa), so that we rely upon these Affekte to distinguish one chord from another. Finally, one must consider physical “beats”. When two acoustic waves are out of phase, a periodical disturbing stimulus arises, which also influences our judgment. In all of these cases, perceptual results depend less on tonal fusion than on the above mentioned factors. Brentano adopts here against Stumpf some aspects of Helmholtz’s theory – which he defends against Mach’s criticism in the beginning reasons regarding this point and suggests that this should imply the endorsement of his doctrine as a whole. Brentano (1989, 133) [7.5.1907]. 70 Brentano’s claim, in a sense, reminds us of the extension proposed in ancient times by Aristoxenus (El. Harm., II, 45f.), who introduced new consonances beyond the octave, previously ignored by Greek theoreticians of music. 71 Brentano (2009, 150-152) (1907, 218-220). 72 Brentano (2009, 152 ff.) (1907, 220 ff.). 73 See the footnote [1905] in Brentano (2009, 75) (1907, 232). See also Brentano (1928, 18). In a letter of 1899, Brentano criticises Stumpf for focusing too much on the problem of musical pleasure in considering the Affekte: in order to grasp their nobleness, he suggests that Stumpf should “elevate them from the sensible sphere to the spiritual one”. Brentano (1989, 124). 74 See the footnote [1907] in Brentano (2009, 152) (1907, 220-221).

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of his essay. In a previous phase, Brentano had held a different position. In a letter of 1882, for instance, he explicitly agreed with Stumpf’s criticism of Helmholtz’s explanation of dissonance: pleasure arises from both the harmonic and melodic combination of tones, but in the latter case no “beats” can be given.75 Brentano’s extensive criticism of Stumpf does not merely imply a slight revision of tonal fusion: rather, it has destructive effects upon Stumpf’s entire theory. It is no surprise, then, that Stumpf protested and claimed that Brentano had misunderstood his doctrine of tonal fusion.76 Brentano responded in a letter in May 1907, in which he developed a different and – at least apparently – more conciliating strategy. Brentano apologised and – as a result of Stumpf’s protest and of a renewed reading of the Tonpsychologie – acknowledged that he had not “completely” understood the theory of tonal fusion.77 Nonetheless, he observed, it still remained unclear what Stumpf actually meant by this. Does fusion occur – Brentano asks – between the two “phenomenal tones” (in Brentano’s term, the primary objects), or does it concern the relationship of the act of hearing with the two phenomenal tones (secondary/primary object)? Or finally, do the two acts of hearing – i.e. the act of hearing the one tone and the other one – merge into one single act (secondary objects)?78 Disregarding external factors such as past experience, feelings and “beats”, Brentano eventually discusses Stumpf’s theory on the basis of his own theoretical framework. Even in this new phase of the discussion, however, Brentano’s criticism is severe. He considers that it is reasonable to accept the first hypothesis, i.e. that tonal fusion is a relationship between the two phenomenal tones. Accordingly, these 75

Brentano (1989, 77). Stumpf’s letter seems to be lost. Regarding the point under discussion, one can infer its general content from Brentano’s answer. 77 Brentano (1989, 132). He also declares himself ready to a public revision of his previous claim. See also Brentano (1989, 151) [30.7.1916], where Brentano accuses Stumpf of misunderstanding his doctrine concerning some essential points, just like he himself did with Stumpf’s theory of Tonverschmelzung. 78 Brentano (1989, 133). No answer to this criticism is known to me. In a subsequent letter of September 1907, Stumpf does not mention the question. Stumpf, who had been appointed Rektor of the University of Berlin, writes to Brentano: “Da Sie früher einmal nach Berichten eines Unkundigen der Meinung waren, ich sei in Berlin wenig bekannt und geachtet, so hoffe ich, dass Sie jetzt darüber vollkommen beruhigt sind“. C. Stumpf, Brief an F. Brentano [27.9.1907], Franz Brentano–Archiv. Forschungsstelle- und Dokumentationszentrum für österreichische Philosophie, Graz. 76

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“primary objects” must become “parts” of a new unitary “whole”.79 However, Brentano asks, what kind of “whole” is this? Stumpf’s analogy with the unity of extension and colour seems inappropriate to him: the “extended-coloured object” (das ausgedehnt Farbige) is a single individual, which can be labelled either as “extended” or as “coloured”. However, this is not the case with the two fused tones: the one tone is not the other tone, at least not in the same manner that “the extended” is “the coloured”. The only kind of fusion between phenomenal contents, Brentano argues, is a local specificity, given within the “phenomenal space”. Since Stumpf denies any local specification to tonal perception, Brentano concludes that tonal fusion turns out to be a ”qualitas occulta”.80 Brentano concludes with another remark: Stumpf seems to accept at least Brentano’s observations concerning the extension of tonal fusion beyond the octave. But he then considers that Stumpf will probably be led to adopt in toto Brentano’s theory of sensible qualities, from which that piece of doctrine logically descends.81 With this, Brentano’s discussion of tonal fusion provides important indications concerning Stumpf’s divergence from him on the question of sense perception. Both Brentano’s early “misunderstanding" and his renewed criticism in the letter of May 1907, are evidence of a deep difference between the two philosophers concerning the theory of musical phenomena and of sensory perception. According to Brentano, a successful interpretation of tonal phenomena can be developed from the starting point of his new theory of intensity and sensible qualities. In contrast, Stumpf relies upon a conceptual framework whose essential features are closer to Brentano’s earlier doctrine. The gap between Brentano and Stumpf turns out to be deeply rooted in a disagreement about the conception of human perception and of its psychological significance as a whole.82

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Brentano (1989, 133). Brentano (1989, 133). 81 Brentano (1989, 133). 82 Stumpf never allowed for a dramatic gap between sensory and intellectual consciousness, as implied by Brentano’s new thesis that intensity belongs only to the former, but not to the latter realm. In an essay of 1918 devoted to the definition of sensation and presentation, Stumpf affirms that sensations and presentations differ in terms of different degrees of intensity – and then, quite obviously, that both involve intensity Stumpf (1918, 27). On the whole question see Martinelli 2003. 80

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Stumpf, C. 1873. Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung. Leipzig: Hirzel. —— 1883. Tonpsychologie, vol. I, Leipzig, Hirzel; repr. Amsterdam, Bonset, 1965. —— 1886/87. ‘Syllabus for Psychology’ engl. transl. in Rollinger 1999, 285-310. —— 1886/87a. ‘Syllabus for Logic’ engl. transl. in Rollinger 1999, 311-338. —— 1890. Tonpsychologie, vol. II Leipzig: Hirzel; repr. Amsterdam, Bonset, 1965. —— 1897. ‘Geschichte des Konsonanzbegriffes’ in Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-philologische Klasse 21:1-78. —— 1898. Konsonanz und Dissonanz, Leipzig: Barth (Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft, vol. I). —— 1906. ‘Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen’ in Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. —— 1907. ‘Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften’ in Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin. —— 1911, ‘Konsonanz und Konkordanz. Nebst Bemerkungen über Wohlklang und Wohlgefälligkeit musikalischer Zusammenklänge’ in Zeitschrift für Psychologie 58: 353-355. —— 1918. ‘Empfindung und Vorstellung’ in Abhandlungen der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Berlin. —— 1919. ‘Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano’ in Kraus 1919, 87-149. —— 1922. ‘Brentano, Franz. Professor der Philosophie, 1838-1917’ in A. Chroust et al., Lebensläufe aus Fränken II, Würzburg, Kabitzsch & Mönnich, 67-85. —— 1924. ‘Carl Stumpf’ in Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, ed. by R. Schmidt, Leipzig, Meiner, vol. 5, 1-57; engl. transl. in Murchison, ed., A History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol. 1, Worcester, Clark University Press, 1930, 389-441. —— 1939. Erkenntnislehre, ed. by F. Stumpf, Leipzig, Barth, vol. 1. —— 1982. ‘Carl Stumpf (1848-1936) an Franz Hillebrand (1863-1926) Briefe (18941920)’ ed. By G. Oberkofler, Tiroler Heimat 46:147-157. Stumpf C. and Hornbostel E.M. von. 1911. ‘Über die Bedeutung ethnologischer Untersuchungen für die Psychologie und Ästhetik der Tonkunst’ in Bericht über den 4. Kongress für experimentelle Psychologie (Innsbruck, 1910), ed. by F. Schumann, Leipzig, Barth, 256-259. Utitz, E. 1917. ‘Franz Brentano’ in Kant-Studien 22: 217–242. Vogel, S. 1994. ‘Sensation of Tone, Perception of Sound, and Empiricism. Helmholtz’s Physiological Acoustics’ in D. Cahan 2004, 258-287. Weber E.H. 1851. Die Lehre vom Tastsinne und Gemeingefühle, auf Versuche gegründet Braunschweig: Vieweg.

5 EXPOSITIONS AND DISCUSSIONS. SELECTED MATERIALS AND TRANSLATIONS INTRODUCTION (DENIS FISETTE)

All das ist Zukunftsmusik, Aber Musik, die gespielt warden muss. – E. Utitz

The papers collected in this section are intended to provide an update on the current state of Brentano’s Nachlass and to focus on some of his unpublished manuscripts. In his article Brentano’s Nachlass, Thomas Binder, a researcher at the Brentano Archives in Graz, traces the complicated history of Brentano’s manuscripts since his death in 1917, and makes an inventory of lost documents and those that were recently added to this important collection of nearly 30,000 pages. This section also includes some manuscripts from Brentano’s Nachlass that we have collected in two separate sections: the first contains the text of a lecture delivered by Brentano on December 16, 1890, at the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna under the title ‘Moderne Irrthümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schließens’.1 The second section is based on the manuscript ‘Abstraction and Relation’ and contains part of Brentano’s correspondence with his student Anton Marty on the topic of relations. In addition to the intrinsic qualities of Brentano’s posthumous writings, there are several factors that confer to his philosophical Nachlass an inestimable value, namely the limited number of books published by Brentano during his lifetime, the importance he attached to his teaching as well as his rich and abundant correspondence. In fact, unlike many of his students, Brentano published little during his lifetime, and apart from his dissertation (Brentano 1977) and his 1

On the important role of Brentano in the Philosophical Society, see Fisette (forthcoming).

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habilitation (Brentano 1975), he has only published one systematic book, namely Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Brentano 1973) which remained uncompleted. His other works are mostly circumstantial and cover a wide range of topics ranging from enigmas (Brentano 1919), chess strategies and marriage policies in Austria (Brentano 1895) to visual perception (Brentano 2009), philosophy of history (Brentano 1998), and the interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy (Brentano 1978). There are several factors that explain this poor output in publication: Brentano’s institutional situation, the fact that he was suffering from blindness during one of the most active periods of his life, and as Emil Utitz pointed out, Brentano was perhaps disappointed with the reception of his own works and had high hopes in the works of his students. The latter, adds Utitz, “should take over the heritage and properly manage it. This is why Brentano was also sensitive to increasingly important deviations regarding his own doctrine, and strove patiently to instruct his supporters, to dispel their doubts, and to guide them on the path he felt adequate.”2 In fact, Brentano was forced to rely on his students namely because of his institutional status. Indeed, Brentano held sporadically two chairs of philosophy, the first in Würzburg (1872-1873) and the second in Vienna (1874-1880) where he taught until 1894. However, he left the first because of his conflict with the Catholic Church and the second because of the matrimonial laws of Austria, which forbade marriage to former Catholic priests. By marrying, Brentano had to abandon his Austrian citizenship and to resign his professorship in Vienna. This is why most of his students have been forced to pursue their studies with other philosophers, such as Stumpf and Marty who both went to Göttingen in order to complete their dissertation under the direction of Hermann Lotze. Once Stumpf, Meinong and Marty had obtained academic positions, they themselves assumed the direction of several other students of Brentano, the best known being Husserl, Christian von Ehrenfels, Franz Hillebrand and Alois Höfler. That being said, whatever the factors that explain Brentano’s reluctance to publish, the publication has never been the vehicle that he has favoured for transmitting his ideas. His two main channels were in fact his teaching and his correspondence. With respect to his teaching, although Brentano was forced to renounce his chairs of Würzburg and Vienna, he nevertheless taught nearly thirty years during this period, 2

Utitz (1954, 79).

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with an average of four lectures per year on very different topics and before a very large audience, especially in Vienna. Most of his students have carefully reproduced many of his lectures in notebooks, and some of these notebooks reproduce almost entirely the content of these lectures. And we know that these notes have circulated widely not only among the students of Brentano, but also among other wellknown philosophers.3 The other important information channel of Brentano’s ideas and their evolution in time is his correspondence with his students and many other philosophers. We do not know the exact number of letters that were preserved, but if we look at the lists and directories of the different archives, there are more than 4500 containing more than 16,000 pages. Much like the lecture notes, many of these letters transited from a recipient to another, and led to other epistolary exchanges to which Brentano did not directly take part.4 If we add to this number the correspondence of Brentano’s own students dealing with subjects relating to his philosophy, we get a considerable amount of documents that represent together an important but unexploited source of information on Brentano and his school. For, the bulk of Brentano’s 3

Let us take for example Husserl’s notes on Brentano’s lecture “Ausgewählte Fragen aus der Psychologie und Ästhetik” (published in Brentano 1988) that Husserl attended in Vienna in the winter semester of 1885-1886. Upon his arrival in Halle in the fall of 1886, Husserl sent a copy of his notes to Stumpf who studied them upon reception. It followed an exchange of several letters with Brentano concerning namely a “lapsus calami” in Husserl’ notes regarding internal perception. Thirty years later, in a footnote to his article “Vorstellung und Empfindung” where he discussed, among other things, Brentano’s views on imaginary representations, Stumpf claims that the latter has influenced, through Husserl’s notes, philosophers and psychologists who did not belong to his circle of students: “Brentano treated once thoroughly the issue [of the relationship between imagination and representation] in his lectures (‘Ausgewählte Fragen aus der Psychologie und Ästhetik,’1885-1886) that I have read through Husserl’s notes. Husserl’s position as that advocated by the late Marty were certainly influenced by these lectures, and since Jaspers, Specht, T. Conrad, Grünbaum and others have been influenced by Husserl and also by Jaspers, one sees on this single example the influence exerted by this great thinker” (Stumpf 1918, 25). There are several other similar cases, including Brentano’s lectures on logic or on descriptive psychology, which clearly show that the diffusion of Brentano’s thought borrowed different channels. 4 An example is a letter addressed to the philosophical club in Prague, to which belonged several of Brentano’s students including Franz Kafka and his biographer, the philosopher Max Brod. This letter deals extensively with the question of whether animals have a soul and it gave rise to many interesting discussions among the members of this remarkable club.

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correspondence consists of philosophical discussions that inform us about many aspects of his philosophy that is little or not addressed in his publications. Oskar Kraus has pointed out that: Brentano’s correspondence with me, his students and grand-students is a gold mine not only for the development of his thought but also for the methodological treatment of problems. The most fertile aspect [of this correspondence] for the history of philosophy and Brentano’s life can be found in the correspondence with Marty from 1869 to 1914, that I have in my possession, in which Brentano expressed his motivations. But other students of Brentano (Stumpf, Schell, Husserl, Ehrenfels, etc.) also have important missives.5

The correspondence with Marty is indeed very important. It contains approximately 1400 letters, excerpts of which were used by Kraus and Kastil in their edition of Brentano’s manuscripts. But the correspondence with Marty is not the only one in importance, it also includes letters to well-known philosophers such as Fechner, Helmholtz, Mill, Spencer, Mach and Boltzmann, to name only a few. As noted by Kraus, this correspondence contains philosophical treatises on a number of topics ranging from the theory of probability and the nature of axioms in geometry to agnosticism. It also bears witness to Brentano’s memorable controversies with his students, such as Hillebrand, Husserl, and as we have seen in the previous section, with Stumpf. We know that after Brentano’s death in 1917, his archival fund circulated everywhere in Europe, it has been copied, photocopied and transcribed in a few copies and each of these copies have had a complicated history that T. Binder describes in his contribution to this volume. The other problem is the management and publication of part of Brentano’s manuscripts by his students and grand-students O. Kraus, A. Kastil and F. Mayer-Hillebrand. The editorial policy that has prevailed for nearly fifty years until the 1970s was motivated both by ideological reasons and an interpretation of the instructions left behind by Brentano regarding the possible publication of his manuscripts. As to the editorial policy, it apparently rests on an interpretation of instructions transmitted by Brentano to Kraus in a letter dated January 13, 1916: You indicate the task you have set yourself with respect to the manu5

Kraus (1929, 170).

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scripts I leave behind. I don’t know to what extent I think such publication is desirable at all. In any case, it would be better to do something similar to what Étienne Dumont did with Bentham’s manuscripts. Marty has sometimes even compared me to Bentham in my reluctance to do final editing and to publish. But for that reason John Stuart Mill did not want to consider the things published after Bentham’s death as of the same value as Dumont’s writings. Providence, which is always wise, has done many things differently than we would have thought advisable. Aristotle’s Metaphysics was not finished, and none of his works that have come down to us were finally edited and polished. In my case, external and other circumstances make it hard for me to work, and thus many good things that I could contribute to my fellow men must be lost. It would be a foolish overestimation of myself to believe that this is an irreplaceable loss. 6

Despite what this passage suggests, it would be wrong to believe that Brentano was completely indifferent to the fate of his Nachlaß. Indeed, a remark of his son John7 testifies that during the last years of his life in Zurich, Brentano has multiplied dictations and made every effort to prepare his succession. Nevertheless, Brentano proposed in this letter a compromise solution for the eventual publication of his manuscripts referring to the model followed by the Genevan Étienne Dumont in his edition of the writings of Jeremy Bentham. Dumont is known in Europe for the special relationship he has maintained with Mirabeau, but he is also known for having introduced the work of Bentham in Europe through his editions in French translation of several works of the English philosopher. As shown in Dumont’s preface to the first French edition of Bentham’s Theory of Legislation (Traités de législation civile et pénale, 1802), all the manuscripts he had collected under this title presented the same kind of difficulties that the editors of Brentano’s Nachlaß have had to cope with. Among these difficulties, Dumont mentions the fragmented nature and incompleteness of most of Bentham’s manuscripts, numerous repetitions, significant variations in the manuscripts on a single theme, obscure fragments, etc.. Faced with these difficulties, but with the consent of Bentham, with whom he was in direct contact, Dumont adopted an editorial

6 7

Brentano (1981, xxiii-xxiv). John Brentano (1966, 478).

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policy that he briefly explains in the preface to his edition of the Theory of Legislation: I declare that I have no share, no claim of association, in the composition of these works. They belong entirely to the author, and to him alone. […] The changes I have made, have varied with the manuscripts. When I have found many treatises relative to the same subject, but composed at different times and with different views, it has been necessary to reconcile them, and to incorporate them together, so as to form a perfect whole. The author perhaps had thrown aside some occasional composition, which now would not be interesting, nor even intelligible. Unwilling that the whole should perish, I have strippe dit, like an abandoned house, of every thing worth preserving. When he has delivered himself up to abstractions too profound, to metaphysics, I do not say too subtle, but too dry, I have endeavored to give more development to his ideas, to illustrate them by applications, by facts, by examples ; and I have allowed myself to scatter, with discretion, some ornaments. I have been obliged to write out some entire chapters, but always after hints and notes of the author ; and the difficulty of the task would have sufficed to bring me back to a modest estimation of myself, if at any time I had been exposed to the temptation of thinking otherwise.8

Is this the policy that Brentano had in mind in his letter to Kraus when he refers to Dumont’s editions of Bentham’s works? In any case, Dumont’s model has prevailed in the editorial work of Kraus, Kastil, and Mayer-Hillebrand, with the difference that their editorial policy was guided by a bias in favour of the philosophical positions advocated by Brentano during the last period of his life and without the assistance of the author. This is confirmed by Kraus in a well-known passage from his introduction to the 1929 edition of Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein. Like Dumont, Kraus claims that he simply collected some of Brentano’s manuscripts and gave them a unitary form. But unlike Dumont, Kraus modified Brentano’s texts: In a few places, which I have clearly indicated in the notes, I have changed the text so as to make viewpoints which he had given up agree with the definitive doctrine.9 8

É. Dumont in J. Bentham (1802, iii-iv). English translation by R. Hildreth, in Bentham (1840, iv-vi).

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This editorial policy has been followed systematically by Kastil and Mayer-Hillebrand10 in their edition of a dozen of Brentano’s works and it rests on a periodization in the development of Brentano's philosophy, i.e. the idea of a first and a second Brentano. What Kraus calls “the definitive doctrine of Brentano” in this passage refers to the last period of Brentano’s work and it is characterized among other things by what is called “Abkehr vom Nichtrealen,” i.e. the period from 1904 during which Brentano dissociates himself from a certain interpretation of the concept of intentional inexistence with which he characterized mental phenomena in his Psychology. Kraus spoke of a Copernican revolution in Brentano’s thought in order to emphasize both the break with his previous positions and his conversion to a form of reism. Kraus and Kastil used excerpts of manuscripts from Brentano’s correspondence and several late dictations to support the thesis of a radical change in Brentano’s thinking and they campaigned on behalf of this new philosophy against Meinong’s theory of objects and Husserl’s phenomenology accused of Platonism. One can see in this campaign an attempt by Marty’s students to claim the inheritance of the ‘echte’ philosophy of Brentano against the other three main streams that were also inspired by Brentano: Husserl’s phenomenology, Meinong and the Graz school, and the Berlin school led by Stumpf. Husserl responded to Kraus by calling him a fanatic orthodox and by comparing him to Torquemada, the Grand Spanish Inquisitor of the fifteenth century.11 Utitz addressed to Kraus and his collaborators the same kind of criticism and rightly pointed out that “by their intolerance and the hateful and contemptuous tone of their polemic, they have adversely affected the recognition and dissemination of Brentano’s ideas.”12 We can see that the disputes over Brentano’s succession has hampered considerably Brentanian studies and unduly delayed the full publication of his Nachlaß. Since the late 1970s, part of the editorial 9

Kraus in Brentano (1981, xxiii). See Werle (1989, 145-147). 11 In a letter to M. Farber dated June 18, 1937, Husserl writes about Kraus: “Kraus habe ich in Prag persönlich kennengelernt. Er ist eigentlich ein ‘guter Kerl’, aber als Brentanist ein arger Fanatiker, eine Art Torquemada. Er würde die Gegner Brentanos ohne eine Miene zu verziehen, wenn er die Macht hätte, auf Scheiterhaufen verbrennen” in Husserl (1994, 82). 12 Utitz (1954, 74). 10

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work was undertaken by R. Chisholm, K. Hedwig, W. Baumgartner and R. George. More recently, the publisher Ontos commissioned T. Binder and A. Chrudzimski to reissue Brentano’s works published during his lifetime.13 But we are still far from the full publication of Brentano's work if we take into account Brentano’s Nachlaß, including his research manuscripts, his numerous dictations between 19051917 as well as the lecture notes of his students. The publication of these manuscripts should take into account the evolution of Brentano’s thinking on topics such as intentionality and his interpretation of Aristotle, for example. Let us mention Brentano’s correspondence, which only a fraction has been published to date. A final desideratum, probably the most complex of all, is an intellectual biography of Brentano, a wish expressed by several of his students. References

Bentham, J. 1802. Traités de législation civile et pénale, vol. I, E. Dumont (ed.), Paris : Paul Renouard. Brentano, F. 1895. Meine letzten Wünsche für Österreich. Stuttgart: Cotta. —— 1919. Aenigmatias. Neue Rätsel. 3rd ed., München: Beck. —— 1966. Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. F. Mayer-Hillebrand (ed.), Hamburg, Meiner. —— 1973. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, transl. by A.C. Rancurello, D.B. Terrell, and L. McAlister, London: Routledge. —— 1975. On the Several Sense of Being in Aristotle. edited and translated by Rolf George, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. —— 1977. The Psychology of Aristotle. Edited and translated by R. George, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. —— 1978. Aristotle and His World View. transl. by R. George and R. M. Chisholm. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— 1981. Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewußtsein, O. Kraus (ed.), Leipzig: Meiner, 1929; transl. by L. McAlister, London: Routledge. —— 1988. Grundzüge der Ästhetik, F. Mayer-Hillebrand (ed.), Hamburg, Meiner. —— 1998. ‘The Four Phases of Philosophy and Its Current State’ in B. Mezei and B. Smith (eds.) The Four Phases of Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi. —— 2008. Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, A. Chrudzimski and T. Binder (eds.), I. Abteilung: Schriften zur Psychologie, 1. Band: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Frankfurt: Ontos. —— 2009. Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, A. Chrudzimski and T. Binder (eds.), I. Abteilung: Schriften zur Psychologie, 2. Band: Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie, Frankfurt: Ontos. —— 2010. Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, A. Chrudzimski and T. Binder (eds.),

13

Three volumes have been published so far: see Brentano 2008; 2009; 2010.

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II. Abteilung: Schriften zur Ethik und Ästhetik, 3. Band: Schriften zur Ethik und Ästhetik, Frankfurt: Ontos. Brentano, J. C. M. 1966. ‘The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano’ in Revue internationale de philosophie 78: 477-482. Fisette, D. (forthcoming) ‘Austrian Philosophy and its Institutions: Remarks on the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna (1888-1938)’ in A. Reboul (ed.) Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, Berlin: Springer. Husserl, E. 1994. Briefwechsel, Band IV: Die Freiburger Schüler, K. und E. Schuhmann (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kraus, O. 1929. ‘Selbstdarstellung’, in R. Schmidt (ed.), Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, vol. 7, Leipzig: Meiner. —— 1934. ‘Die “kopernikanische Wendung” in Brentanos Erkenntnis- und Wertlehre’, in O. Kraus, Wege und Abwege der Philosophie, Prague: Calve’sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung: 62-76. Stumpf, C. 1918. ‘Empfindung und Vorstellung’ in Abhandlungen der KöniglichPreußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse 1: 3-116. Utitz, E. 1954-1955. ‘Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano’ in Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität HalIe-Wittenberg 4: 73-90. Werle, J. M. 1989. Franz Brentano und die Zukunft der Philosophie. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN. AN UPDATED HISTORY OF FRANZ BRENTANO’S UNPUBLISHED PAPERS1 THOMAS BINDER

(UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ)

1 Introduction Apart from the international well-known bequests of Edmund Husserl and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Franz Brentano’s philosophical Nachlass is undoubtedly one of the most impressive of a philosopher in the first half of the twentieth century. It consists of more than 30,000 pages of philosophical manuscripts and approximately 3,000 letters of mainly scientific character.2 But when the question of Brentano’s relevance to the development of philosophical thinking after his death in 1917 comes into focus, Brentano is eclipsed by Husserl and Wittgenstein. This is especially remarkable because Brentano and Husserl both played a prominent role in the history of phenomenology: the former being the founder of phenomenology, the latter as his student and successor. Wolfgang Stegmüller, who himself was a late offspring of the ‘Brentano-School’, provides a very appropriate summary of Brentano’s position within the philosophical landscape: The significance of Brentano’s inquiries for contemporary philosophy is still much underestimated; there is a strange disparity between his actual and strong impact on today’s philosophy and the relatively slight attention which is paid to his theories in present-day teaching 1 This paper is a slightly modified version of a German paper; cf. Binder (2011). Denis Courville, Udo Thiel and Ursula Brentano provided valuable assistance in improving the English style of this paper. I am especially grateful to Ursula Brentano for sharing her knowledge of the family history of the Brentanos with me. 2 Wittgenstein left behind approximately 20,000 pages of philosophical manuscripts, Husserl even 40,000. – In addition to the philosophical portion of the Nachlass there are also poems, riddles, writings on chess-problems, and more than 4,000 ‘private’ letters.

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Thomas Binder and research. Nevertheless, Brentano is the converging point of various lines of thought … (Stegmüller (1965, 1); [my transl.])

This was written back in 1965,3 but in the meantime things have not changed essentially: Husserl (to say nothing of Wittgenstein) is still “ ‘selling’ much more than Brentano4, who is far too often neglected among contemporary philosophers and does not receive the attention he deserves, given the importance of his contributions to philosophy. It is not the aim of this paper to correct this assessment with philosophical arguments. Its aim is rather a more modest one: it wants to provide some of the external reasons which may have contributed negatively to the impact of Brentano’s philosophy. The first and most important reason is to date we do not have a complete edition of his unpublished papers which complies with modern text-critical standards. Therefore we still do not know what Brentano has really written. The second reason is that there is neither a critical edition of his works nor a complete index: more than 90 years after Brentano’s death in 1917 in Zurich, we still do not have a comprehensive catalogue which describes all the parts of his scattered Nachlass and which could serve as the basis for such an edition. This incompleteness of the existing catalogues results from the fact that numerous documents were not accessible for decades – and that to the surprise of all scholars some missing manuscripts and letters have resurfaced quite recently. In other words, we still do not have a complete catalogue of Franz Brentano’s literary bequest because its complex history is deeply interwoven with the political history of the 20th century. Of course, this impact of historical events applies also to Husserl. It might therefore be of some interest – as an anticipation of what will follow later – to compare the fortunes of Husserl’s and Brentano’s Nachlässe. In 1935, Husserl went to Prague to visit the Cercle philosophique de Prague and the Masaryk Archive, looking for a safe storage place for his valuable research manuscripts. At this time he had already

3

This quotation is from the third edition of Stegmüller’s very popular introduction to contemporary philosophy. It is missing in the first edition published in 1952 (the author was not able to get hold of the second edition). 4 This can be taken literally: only recently a colleague told me that he offered a manuscript on Brentano to Harvard University Press. His offer was rejected with the justification that books on Brentano do not sell well – but they would be glad to publish a book on Husserl instead.

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started – with the help of his assistant Ludwig Landgrebe5 – to transcribe his own manuscripts, because most of them were written in Gabelsberger shorthand. In April 1938, Husserl died in Freiburg im Breisgau. Because of Husserl’s Jewish ancestry there was the imminent danger that his manuscripts could be destroyed if they should fall into the hands of the National Socialists. But before this could happen, Herman Leo Van Breda6, a Franciscan, successfully came to an agreement with Malwine Husserl, Husserl’s widow: camouflaged as diplomatic bags, the documents were smuggled into Belgium. In 1939, Van Breda initiated the foundation of a Husserl archive which was established at the Catholic University of Louvain and continues its work to this day.7 In 1950, a branch of the main archive was founded in Freiburg by Eugen Fink, also a former assistant to Husserl, and another in Cologne by Ludwig Landgrebe in 1951. In joint efforts, the three archives succeeded in publishing most of Husserl’s Nachlass: no less than 38 volumes of the Husserliana have been released so far. In Brentano’s case, things did not turn out so well. More than Brentano himself, his ‘Enkelschüler’ Oskar Kraus8 and Alfred Kastil9 were strongly concerned about the preservation of his unpublished papers. In the last two years of Brentano’s life there was an intense discussion about this question in letters and during visits of Kraus and Kastil to him in Zurich. The outbreak of the First World War had prompted Brentano to leave his adopted homeland of Italy for Switzerland. Thus when Brentano died in Zurich in 1917 his Nachlass was already scattered in different places. Although the editorial work started surprisingly early (the first volume of unpublished papers was released as early as 1920), it took more than a decade for most of the documents to be reunited again in Prague, where in 1931 Kraus had 5 Ludwig Landgrebe (1902–1991) was Husserl’s assistant since 1923 and was habilitated in 1935 with Oskar Kraus. 6 Herman-Leo van Breda, born in 1911, was head of the Husserl Archive until his death in 1974. 7 For a more detailed account of the history of the archive cf. Melle 2007. 8 Oskar Kraus (1872–1942) was a student of Anton Marty, Brentano’s closest philosophical ally; this relationship of being a pupil of a pupil is called “Enkelschüler” in German. In 1916, Kraus became Marty’s successor as a professor of the German Karl-Ferdinands University in Prague. On Kraus cf. ch. 2 & 3 below and Binder 1991. 9 Alfred Kastil (1874–1950) was just as Kraus a student of Marty and an Enkelschüler of Brentano. From 1909 until his retirement in 1933, he was professor of philosophy at the Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck. On Kastil cf. ch. 2 & 3 below and Goller 1989a, 123–151.

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founded a Brentano archive with important financial support from president Masaryk. This was at last a place well suited for the systematic transcription, edition and storage of the manuscripts – but no comprehensive catalogue was produced however. Unfortunately, the archive’s lifespan was rather short: when the Germans marched into Prague in 1939, the archive ceased to exist in its initial form, and it is surely no exaggeration to say that Brentano-research has not recovered from this catastrophe until today. Fortunately almost all manuscripts were rescued, but Brentano’s bequest was scattered again, and even worse, it was not accessible in Europe for a very long time. Another problem was certainly personnel discontinuity: Kraus died in 1942 in Oxford, Kastil only a few years after the end of World War II. Of course, we must not disregard Gio Brentano’s 10 important role in the conservation and dissemination of his father’s bequest. Indeed, one of the aims of this paper is to stress his impact; but for all his engagement he was neither a philosopher nor was he a professional archivist. By comparison the Husserl Archive was far better off with Van Breda at its head from 1939 until 1974. Also, a final aspect which should not be neglected is that research in the Husserl Archives was conducted as a collective endeavour, while most of the time since Kastil’s death research on Brentano has been carried out by ‘lone fighters’ like Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand11 and Roderick M. Chisholm.12 All things considered, we may therefore conclude that, from an historical point of view, Husserl was undoubtedly the “luckier guy”. 10

Johannes Christian Michael Brentano (1888–1969) was Brentano’s only son, the child of his first marriage with Ida von Lieben, who died early at the age of 42. After Brentano’s migration from Vienna to Florence in Italy he was called ‘Giovanni’ and his nickname was ‘Gio’. Because this nickname was most widely used by his friends and relatives ‘Gio’ is used throughout this paper. 11 Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (1885–1978) obtained her doctorate in 1919 with a thesis on the late phase of Brentano’s philosophy under the supervision of Kastil. A year later in Vienna she married Franz Hillebrand, a pupil of Brentano. In 1932, she became the second female private lecturer in the history of the University of Innsbruck. On Mayer-Hillebrand cf. ch. 4 & 5 below and Goller 1989a, 190–197. 12 It is Roderick M. Chisholm’s (1916–1999) undeniable merit to have introduced Brentano’s philosophy to the United States. On Chisholm cf. ch. 5 below. – The foundation of the Franz Brentano Forschung in 1984 and of the Franz Brentano Studien (both in in Würzburg, where Brentano’s philosophical career started back in 1875), was certainly an important step forward. Unfortunately, the Franz Brentano Forschung was closed down quite recently without having published a single volume of the much awaited critical edition of Brentano’s works.

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So far, we have only drawn a very rough sketch of the history of Brentano’s Nachlass. The modest aim of this paper is to look closer into its rambling paths and to learn more about the external impediments which have hindered the perception of Brentano’s philosophical ideas. But we do not only want to follow its tracks in a geographical sense, we also want to investigate the changes happening to the Nachlass itself. Brentano’s Nachlass as it exists today deviates in three important ways from the original documents which he left on his death in 1917: 1. The Nachlass was enriched with additional documents, especially through the collecting activities of the Prague Brentano Archive. Brentano’s letters to Anton Marty13 for instance which are considered a particularly important source for the development of his thoughts, were of course not a part of the original bequest. Instead Marty had left those letters as part of his own bequest to his student and successor Kraus, who later incorporated them into the Brentano Archive collection; 2. At the same time, documents were repeatedly lost, for example when the Brentano Archive was forced to leave Prague for England; among other things numerous manuscripts on the history of philosophy which are listed in the old Prague catalogues, are missing or exist only as typescript transcriptions; 3. Contrary to Husserl, Brentano himself (maybe due to his situation in exile) seems not to have spent any time at all examining and organizing his papers. It was not before his death that his heirs began to arrange and edit the documents of his Nachlass. Fortunately, several old lists have surfaced again which may allow (not without some arduous reconstructive work of course) to draw conclusions about the original condition of Brentano’s Nachlass. Unfortunately, besides the signatures of those lists, there are notes added frequently like ‘exclude’, ‘discard’ or ‘outdated’ which may indicate possible losses. There are even more serious problems concerning individual documents, for instance his seminal lecture notes. If somebody were to try and edit these notes today, it would be rather difficult to identify how many stages of processing they had already been subjected to by the previous editors. A last point concerns the arrangement of the documents according to systematic themes which Kastil seems to have 13

Anton Marty (1847–1914) was already mentioned above as Brentano’s most faithful philosophical companion. After a brief period in Czwernowitz he was from 1880 until his death professor of philosophy at the German University of Prague. He was especially influential as a philosopher of language.

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introduced. We do not want to deny the reasonableness of classifying Brentano’s manuscripts into writings on Aristotle, ethics, psychology, etc. But this approach reveals at the same time Kraus’ and Kastil’s tendency to force a philosophical system upon Brentano’s work afterwards, a tendency which has also become manifest in their editorial work. As a consequence to date we do not have a chronological arrangement of the manuscripts, although many of the documents are either dated or the date of origin could easily be extrapolated. It might very well be possible that such a chronological arrangement brings new aspects to light which have been concealed so far. We will try to keep all these aspects in mind throughout the paper. The most recent publications which were specifically devoted to Franz Brentano’s bequest, are those of Mayer-Hillebrand (Mayer-Hillebrand 1963) and Gio Brentano (J.C.M. Brentano 1966). Their accounts are incomplete, inaccurate and in some respects incorrect. But the principal reason for providing an updated report on Brentano’s bequest is that it was only recently possible to obtain access to original documents so far unknown. Perhaps we are for the first time in a position to give a rather reliable overview of Brentano’s bequest in its entirety. For this paper we have also exploited numerous archival documents (e. g. annual reports of the Prague Brentano Society, letters etc.) which had likewise been inaccessible for decades. This paper has no intention to treat the difficult problems all editors of Brentano’s manuscripts are confronted with (although its author is fully aware of the fact that Kraus’ and Kastil’s editorial policy had consequences for the way they handled his Nachlass), and it does not address the interaction between the editorial history and the history of the reception of Brentano’s philosophical work.14 Undoubtedly, there are many sources left which have not yet been analyzed and which may provide surprising answers to questions still unanswered. In the case of Franz Brentano’s Nachlass, the jury is still out. 2 The Twenties: From Zurich to Innsbruck Ludwig Wittgenstein published merely one book during his whole life, namely his famous Tractatus. Considering the number of unpublished manuscripts he left behind, Wittgenstein is surely an extreme example. In Brentano’s case the disproportion is less consid14

Ulrich Melle’s already mentioned paper deals in an exemplary manner with this subject with respect to Husserl. Cf. Melle (2007).

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erable,15 but still remarkable. What are the causes of this disparity between published and unpublished works? The most important reason was perhaps his changing theoretical views which prompted him to abandon the project of a psychology from an empirical standpoint after two volumes; the project was originally conceived in terms of six volumes, and there was already a well advanced draft for the third volume. After that he refined his philosophical thoughts primarily in his lecture notes which were not intended for publication. Brentano gave insight into his work only accidentally in rare talks. A prominent example of this is certainly Vom Ursprung sittlicher Ekenntnis.16 Another reason which has certainly fostered the growing amount of unpublished manuscripts, was his working style: the direction towards a step-by-step solution of particular philosophical problems following the methodical ideal of natural science. And finally Brentano’s eye disease must not go unmentioned which from 1903 onwards forced him to dictate his thoughts in several attempts to different secretaries, who succeeded each other.17 This was of course also the case in Zurich, where Brentano moved in 1915 to flee the increasingly hostile political atmosphere in Italy.18 15

After all, Brentano’s published work fills the nine volumes of a new Brentano edition published by ontos and edited by Thomas Binder and Arkadiusz Chrudzimski. Three volumes of Franz Brentano: Sämtliche veröffentliche Schriften are already published, volume four is in print. There will also be one additional volume containing Brentano’s non-philosophical writings. 16 This classic of modern value theory and ethics which was also appreciated by English philosophers such as G. E. Moore, was actually a casual work, originating from a talk at the Vienna juridical society on the foundations of law. 17 Brentano’s bequest contains, for instance, hundreds of pages of repeatedly reworked drafts of his studies on Aristotle Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung and Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes which were published in 1911. In his letters it becomes apparent how his handwriting deteriorates more and more and finally becomes illegible. After 1910 there are almost no more texts from Brentano’s own hand. 18 The consequences of Brentano’s politically motivated migration for his bequest are difficult to assess. Almost fifty years later, Mayer-Hillebrand wrote in a letter to Gio Brentano that Kraus had told her about manuscripts which had been left behind in Florence. Gio replied that he had visited the devastated residence of his father shortly after the war, but that he had not discovered any philosophical manuscripts. On the other hand, there is a very interesting passage in the correspondence of Brentano and Kraus. On March 9, 1916, Kraus wrote to Brentano: “Another concern has worried me lately. What happened to your manuscripts which were then left behind in Florence? Were you able to take them along in your hasty departure? Or are they safeguarded by a trustworthy man?” [my transl.] Brentano answered on March, 21:

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Kraus and Kastil were very well aware of the fact, that the last phase of Brentano’s philosophical thinking was completely unknown to the public, and that thus the late manuscripts were of eminent importance. In the beginning of 1916, Kraus seemed to have made suggestions concerning the future of the manuscripts and their publication; unfortunately this letter to Brentano is missing.19 Brentano answered: “You are hinting at the task which you had set yourself at one time concerning my manuscripts that I may leave behind. I do not know if their publication is desirable at all … Apart from other things which have hampered my work, it seems that, in my case, it was external circumstances that caused the loss of many a good which I could have given to my fellow men. It would be a misguided hubris to think that this would be an irretrieveable loss.”20 [my trans.l] In the fall of the same year Kraus and Kastil went to see Brentano in Zurich to discuss again the future of his unpublished papers. According to Mayer-Hillebrand, it was during this last visit that Brentano orally assigned his Enkelschüler with the edition of his Nachlass. 21 On March 17, 1917, Franz Brentano died in Zurich after a short illness. As the dates on his manuscripts show, he had worked on philosophical problems until the end. Astonishingly enough, his heirs started their work on his Nachlass shortly afterwards. On July 19th of the very same year, Gio Brentano reports to his uncle Richard Lieben22: “As you have assumed correctly, my manuscripts are in Florence. And if it is the will of providence they will remain there as safe as Aristotle’s manuscripts once did in its cellar.” [my transl.] However, there is no further evidence concerning those manuscripts “left behind in Florence”. What we know for sure is that Brentano’s library and many letters remained in Florence not only during the war but for much longer. – If not explicitly mentioned, all cited documents are part of the collection of the Brentano Archive in Graz. 19 For more information concerning Kraus’ letters to Brentano see below, p. 397. 20 Correspondence card of Brentano to Kraus, January 13th 1916. In this card Brentano also writes that it would be best to treat his manuscripts in a way similar to Etienne Dumont’s handling of Jeremy Bentham’s manuscripts. This formulation was repeatedly used by the editors of his bequest to justify their abandonment of textcritical methods. Cf. Mayer-Hillebrand (1952, 599). 21 Cf. Mayer-Hillebrand (1968, 25). 22 Gio Brentano had studied physics under Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and was afterwards the assistant of the Nobelist Max von Laue, who was also his close friend. In 1914, Gio accompanied von Laue to Frankfurt, where he received a professorship in theoretical physics at the newly founded Goethe University. The rapidly declining working conditions for foreigners (Gio was an Italian citizen) at the beginning of WW

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Ms. Carlin has forwarded your advice to mother and myself that we should not overwork ourselves with the edition of the writings23 … we have a typist here who types for three hours every day; once a manuscript is finished, one copy goes to Prague, another one to Innsbruck: as you can see everything is arranged very well”. [my transl.]

Unfortunately, from these first beginnings onwards the activities start to become somewhat confusing from the perspective of a historian. The main reason for this incertitude is certainly that the key players of our story acted from different places for the entire time: Gio in Zurich (later on in Manchester, Evanston, Blonay), Kraus in Prague and Oxford, and Kastil in Innsbruck, Vienna and Schönbühel. From now on, it is therefore not an easy task to trace back which part of Brentano’s Nachlass is in a certain place at a certain time. Of course, we might put it simply by saying that the Nachlass is constituted by all the documents which were in Zurich at the time of Brentano’s death. These are, on the one hand, the documents dictated by Brentano in Zurich, and, on the other, the content of a big travel case which Brentano used to stow away his manuscripts when he was away (we do not know if Brentano carried this case with him during his sudden departure from Florence or if it was forwarded to Zurich later). But the situation is even more complex. There is for instance Brentano’s summer cottage in Schönbühel.24 As he left it for Florence in the fall I motivated his decision to leave Germany. In March 1915, he joined his father in Zurich and accepted a job at the Polytechnische Hochschule. We have already suggested that Gio’s influence on the future fate of his father’s bequest can hardly be overestimated. His wife Sophie Leembruggen wrote in an obituary following his death in 1969 that in addition to his profession as a physicist, he dedicated his life to the preservation and propagation of his father’s philosophical work. – The economist Richard Lieben (1842–1919) was the brother of Brentano’s first wife Ida Lieben and had an especially close relationship to Gio. Many letters from Brentano to his brotherin-law have survived in the family archive of the Brentanos in Blonay (see below, 394), but there are almost no letters from Richard Lieben to Brentano which is quite remarkable because it would be natural to expect the opposite. Brentano’s letters to Richard are of eminent biographical significance, because he discusses not only family affairs but also political, economic and scientific topics. 23 ‘Ms. Carlin’ was an acquaintance of Brentano who lived in Zurich. All we know of her is that she wrote two letters (of non-scientific content) to Brentano which are kept by the Houghton Library. – ‘Mother’ refers to Emilie Brentano (née Rueprecht; 1867– 1939), Brentano’s second wife. 24 Schönbühel is located near Melk in the picturesque landscape of the ‘Wachau’. Brentano decided to acquire this cottage in 1888, because its position high above the

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of 1913, he expected of course to return to it the following year; he had therefore clearly no reason to move any papers which might have been there. Further it seems that Kraus at least was at that time in the possession of some of Brentano’s original manuscripts, because in Alfred Kastil’s Nachlass a list entitled “Provisional directory of all manuscripts, copies, letters, notes etc. related to the legacy of Franz Brentano as far as it is kept by Prof. Oskar Kraus” [Provisorisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Manuskripte, Kopien, Briefe, Notizen etc. betreffend die Hinterlassenschaft von Franz Brentano soweit sie sich in Verwahrung von Prof. Oskar Kraus befindet]25 was found. This register lists more than 220 numbered items, mostly stenographic or typed transcriptions prepared by Marty or Kraus, dictations from Schönbühel and Florence, but also several original manuscripts. It might very well be possible, that these documents were later incorporated into the collection of the Prague archive (on the other hand, Kraus always put great stress on marking documents which he considered his private property).26 But there were not only problems caused by geographic separation, the participants also had quite different ideas about the next steps to be taken. Hence Gio was seeking advice. Among the persons he consulted on the best way to proceed were Lujo Brentano,27 his father’s brother, and Carl Stumpf.28 At the end of 1917 or early in 1918, Gio wrote in a letter to Lujo: Concerning the merely scientific writings it seems obvious that it was my father’s intention that they should be published by Kastil and Danube reminded him of his parents’ house in Aschaffenburg. It was originally an outbuilding of the Schönbühel Castle. 25 The register is dated from April 1917. For more information on Kastil’s Nachlass see below, p. 411f. 26 For more information on the Brentano Archive see section 3 below. Besides his private Brentano archive, Kraus had also created a Marty archive which collected all documents that Marty had left him. Undoubtedly, it would be an interesting (but timeconsuming) task to compare all those historical lists and registers and to merge them into one comprehensive catalogue. 27 Lujo Brentano (1844–1931) was a member of a group of famous economists and social policy makers called ‘Katherdersozialisten.’ 28 Like Anton Marty, the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) was a devoted philosophical companion of Brentano from his beginnings in Würzburg. After Stumpf had left Prague to teach at various universities in the German Empire the relationship began to loosen. Nevertheless Stumpf kept up the correspondence until Brentano’s death.

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Kraus; but in this case, I do not simply want to sign a mandate until we have not agreed on details. Kastil was talking about extensive commentaries, about re-arrangements, and so forth. Kraus is about to write an outline of the teachings of my father which also includes unpublished papers. I do not really appreciate either kind of activity; I am too much in awe of my father as to be indifferent about the treatment of his work; I am worried therefore that assiduous rearrangements which on the one hand could clarify some things, might be distorting on the other hand … Compared to this it seems to me that the only dignified way to publish the manuscripts is – at least as far as the numerous fragments and unfinished attempts are concerned [–] to print them – like the “papers” of English scholars – as they are, loosely strung together and at most annotated with a few factual comments; this is common practice there in the case of natural scientists, I do not know if economists are treated in a similar way. This will of course lead to a small audience, but this is a natural consequence and this can hardly be avoided if the rearrangements should not go so far as distortions are to be feared … Kastil is pressing for a quick agreement about the relationships according to which he and Kraus could be designated as the only authorized editors of the philosophical Nachlass and no objections could be raised against their activities from any side. At the same time I have received word that he was studying manuscripts which we had sent to him, with his doctoral students. I know that it was not my father’s intention to vigorously preserve any rights of priority, but this has put me right off with respect to making any arrangements. I am confident that Kraus is really devoted to my father and full of faithful eagerness, but I can hardly negotiate with him without including Kastil as well. I therefore argued that for the moment a publication would not be feasible and that even the manuscripts were not available; so it would be better to wait until everything could be overviewed. [my transl.]

This letter is quoted at greater length because it reveals not only the rivalry between Innsbruck and Prague, but it also demonstrates Gio’s surprisingly independent position regarding the publication of his father’s manuscripts and his concerns about the extensive editorial interventions and changes. But eventually Kraus’ and Kastil’s argument gained acceptance that without considerable adaptions Brentano’s manuscripts would not reach the audience they deserved.29 29

The remark that the manuscripts were ‘not available’ in Zurich is rather confusing: at least the manuscripts Brentano had dictated since 1915 must have been accessible.

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In 1963, Mayer-Hillebrand published an article with the ponderous title “Review of the Former Efforts to Preserve and Disseminate Franz Brentano’s Philosophical Doctrines and a Brief Outline of these Doctrines” (Mayer-Hillebrand 1963) which provides – apart from Gio Brentano’s ‘The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano’ (J.C.M. Brentano 1966) – the most accurate account of the history of Brentano’s bequest published so far. There she condenses the events at the beginning of the 1920s into two – inaccurate and partly wrong – sentences: Kastil received Franz Brentano’s scientific Nachlass from Dr. John Brentano, his only son, and carried out the first inspection and ordering. In the following years a large part of the manuscripts was transcribed and photographically reproduced in Innsbruck. (MayerHillebrand 1963, 147 [my transl.])

Here Mayer-Hillebrand gives her former teacher Kastil credit for an achievement which was definitely not his. Actually, it was Oskar Kraus, who – provided with 4000 Czech Crowns for his travel expenses by the University of Prague – set out for Switzerland in September 1920 to produce the first register of Brentano’s manuscripts, as they were located in Zurich. Fortunately, a copy of this register has survived and was discovered in the Kastil Nachlass at Schönbühel. The original list was obviously typed by Kraus, but there are many handwritten additions and corrections which Kastil seems to have later inserted. The registers list altogether 435 main entries and subentries on eighteen pages,30 the numbering is twofold. On the title page a handwritten note by Gio Brentano comments on this: “the double numbering corresponds to two different storage places, the second register refers to manuscripts which are contained in a box” [my transl.]. It is very likely that this case was Brentano’s travel case which we have already mentioned above and which was temporarily inaccessible for reasons unknown. The register itself has the character of a simple inventory: it lists groups of documents (Konvolute) numbered with Roman numerals, but without any systematic or chronological order; manuscripts and letters are not separated; and the manuscripts outnumber the letters by far.

30 That is much less than the 836 items listed in Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue which is also incomplete. On Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue see below, p. 400.

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Frequently interspersed comments such as ‘legible’ or ‘printable’ suggest the assumption that for Kraus and Kastil quick publications of manuscripts were more important than an in-depth registration of Brentano’s bequest. Hence Kraus outlined a publication schedule (presumably in accordance with Kastil) and reached an agreement with Gio shortly after his visit in Zurich at the end of 1920. It was decided that negotiations should begin with the publisher Felix Meiner in Dresden,31 and as early as 1921 the second edition of Der Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis32 was released; some of Brentano’s unpublished manuscripts were made available by Kraus for the first time ever in a new annex. The following year, Kastil published Die Lehre Jesu und ihre bleibende Bedeutung; Brentano himself had prepared this manuscript for publication shortly before his death. Early in 1922, Gio Brentano moved from Zurich to Manchester to work as an assistant lecturer at W. L. Bragg’s newly founded center for X-ray studies. Because the manuscripts in Zurich were now hardly accessible to Kraus and Kastil, Gio agreed to transfer the documents to Innsbruck. They arrived there in February or March 1923 and were stored away in the Innsbruck branch of the Creditanstalt, an Austrian bank institute. At the same time, Kraus applied in Prague for a longterm stay in Innsbruck, where he wanted to finish the inspection of Brentano’s bequest and to discuss further publication plans with Kastil. In the following years Kastil seemed to have begun a more systematic examination of Brentano’s Nachlass. Unfortunately, we have almost no documents or letters which might throw some light on his activities. Mayer-Hillebrand’s assertion that a large part of the manuscripts was transcribed and copied photographically in Innsbruck can hardly be confirmed. The only source we have is a list which is mentioned by Mayer-Hillebrand in the introduction to her own catalogue: it is almost certain that Kastil himself produced this list in Innsbruck sometime in the late 1920s. It was allegedly enclosed with the transcriptions which Gio carried along with him on a trip to the U.S. in

31

Meiner was (and still is) specialized in philosophical texts. His “Philosophische Bibliothek” is one of the best known philosophical series in the German speaking world. 32 Under the title The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong an English translation by Cecil Hague was published in 1902.

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1940.33 The fact that this register classifies for the first time Brentano’s manuscripts into philosophical fields makes it especially imimportant. On the other hand, Kastil indicated the dates of origin (if they were provided), but did not observe the chronological order. 25 years later, Mayer-Hillebrand took Kastil’s spadework as a basis for her own catalogue which is still the standard catalogue of Brentano’s Nachlass. The typed register is divided into the following philosophical subject groups: Epistemology (33 listings) Logics (28 l.) History of philosophy (39 l.) Megethology (51 l.) Metaphysics (86 l.) Natural science (18 l.) Pedagogics, ethics, politics, astronomy, miscellanea (13 l.) Religion (36 l.) Philosophy of language (6 l.) Theology (30 l.) Time and space (11 l.) Time (50 l.)34 Cf. Mayer-Hillebrand (1951, ii). The register is included in her bequest; one part of Mayer-Hillebrand’s Nachlass is kept by the Archive of the University of Innsbruck, another one by the Franz Brentano Archive in Graz. The following passage from Gio Brentano’s Personal Reminiscences might serve as confirmation of her claim: “Soon the war was to engulf the whole of Europe. I had just been given a sabbatical leave and was on my way to the U.S., where I intended to make arrangements for the manuscripts of my father, the late philosopher Franz Brentano. With the outbreak of war I returned to Manchester to find actually that there was no special need for me. So after one year I went to the U.S. for the summer months, taking the manuscripts of my father with me. I was offered a position at Northwestern University, where a large expansion of the physics department was planned and an X-ray physicist needed” J.C.M. Brentano (1962, 547). As it is often the case, inaccuracy contributes to the confusion of the reader: Gio of course did not carry the original manuscripts but only transcriptions and photographical copies. 34 Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue differs from the older register in three points: 1) it combines the fields of ‘Epistemology’ and ‘Logics’ into a single group; 2) the items of the field ‘Pedagogics, Ethics …’ are assigned to other groups (with the exception of a few entries which are now subsumed under the category “Miscellaneous”); and – most importantly – 3) the fields ‘Aristotle’, ‘Aesthetics’, ‘Ethics’, ‘Body and Soul’, ‘Psychology’ and ‘Psychology of the Senses’ of Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue are completely missing in Kastil’s register. But of course it is possible that parts of Kastil’s register are lost, because it consists only of loose sheets. 33

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In this ‘Kastil register’ about three quarters of the manuscripts are marked as transcribed. It is remarkable however that the list covers almost only shorter texts: not one of Brentano’s extensive lecture notes is included. If these indications are correct then MayerHillebrand’s assertion cited above is at least partly correct. At the same time, only three manuscripts are marked as “photographed”. The annual report of the Prague Brentano Society of 1935 mentions under the topic ‘subsidies’ that Ernst Foradori35, Kastil’s assistant in the Innsbruck Brentano archive, had agreed to produce the photographs requested by ‘Prof. Brentano’ in return for the loan of his father’s manuscripts. The society funded Foradori’s activities until the end of 1933; they were cancelled by Kastil in the spring of 1934.36 It is virtually impossible to estimate the extent of this project and to evaluate its results, because no photographs have survived which can be clearly assigned to the work of the Brentano archive in Innsbruck. After all, the Brentano archive in Innsbruck (in case it deserves this label altogether) remains a somewhat nebulous institution. One of Kastil’s most important achievements during those years is undoubtedly the publication of Brentano’s Viennese lecture notes Vom Dasein Gottes in 1929 which he had begun to prepare four years earlier. As already stated above it is not the aim of this paper to dwell on the difficult editorial problems concerning Brentano’s manuscripts, but the edition of this Brentano lecture is of special significance, because here Kastil applies for the first time his editorial methods in a paradigmatic style. As regards Brentano’s account of the teleological argument, Kastil writes in his preface: So I had to resolve to revise the three proofs that follow the teleological proof. I asked myself how Brentano would have carried them out if he himself had come to the point of publishing the large lecture. After a thorough study of everything the posthumous works contain on these problems, I have gathered together the most mature remarks from manuscripts and dictations, from letters and conversations, concerning which I could assume that Brentano himself would approve of 35

The logician and mathematician Ernst Foradori (1905–1941) was Kastil’s assistant since 1927. In 1931, he habilitated with a treatise on Franz Brentanos Lehre von den Axiomen. On Foradori, cf. Goller (1989a, 237-41). 36 The annual reports of the Prague Brentano Society for the years 1933-1936 are included in Gio Brentano’s bequest which is part of the family archive in Blonay. The Brentano Archive in Graz holds copies courtesy of Ms. Ursula Brentano.

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Kastil’s method has mainly two aspects: 1) it merges different versions of a text – especially dictations on the same topic – into a “final” edition; and 2) in case Brentano’s manuscripts are sketchy, fragmentary or do not represent the latest, “most mature” state of his philophilosophical doctrines Kastil completes or changes the text by often using material from sources which he does not mention explicitly. Kastil and his student Mayer-Hillebrand brought this method to perfection.37 In the meantime, Kraus had not spent his time in Prague inactive. In 1924 and 1925, he had published a new edition of the Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte in two volumes. These publication activities attracted President Masaryk’s attention. Thomas G. Masaryk (1850–1937), who was president of Czechoslovakia since 1919 and represented a unique figure as a democratic personification of Plato’s philosopher king, had been Brentano’s student in Vienna;38 in 1882, he was appointed professor of philosophy and sociology at the Prague Karls-University. Although in later years his interests were shifting from the theoretical to the more practical aspects of politics, his affection for philosophy never declined. Especially his interest for the philosophical thoughts of his teacher was still vivid. Masaryk’s increasing commitment to Brentano’s writings, culminating in the foundation of the Brentano Society and Archive in Prague, was certainly a singular piece of luck for the small community of Brentano 37 Another impressive example of Kastil’s methods of handling his teacher’s writings is the overview of Brentano’s philosophy in Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos. Eine Einführung in seine Lehre, published posthumously by Mayer-Hillebrand in 1951. This outline manages without any verbatim citations from Brentano’s texts as well as any references. Gio Brentano struggled for many years to find a publisher for the English translation of the book, but no English language publisher was willing to release a scientific monograph without any detailed bibliographic references. 38 It best fits to characterize Maysaryk as a “non-orthodox Brentanist”. The members of this group that consisted of Brentano’s students (e.g. Stumpf, Husserl, Meinong) share his most fundamental views on philosophy, especially his ideas regarding psychology as the basis of philosophy and natural science as its methodical ideal. They autonomously developed Brentano’s thoughts further which frequently resulted in open hostility from the orthodox “Brentanoten” like Kraus and Kastil. On the complicated relationship of Masaryk on the one side, and Brentano and the Brentano School on the other side, cf. Zumr and Binder (1992) and Binder (2000).

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devotees. As early as 1925, Masaryk provided substantial resources to the publication of Brentano’s manuscripts. In June of 1925, Masaryk wrote to Kraus: Dr. Strnad from my office will present you with 100,000 Crowns; I want to say again here that I am very delighted to have the possibility of contributing to the publication and dissemination of Brentano’s writings at least in this way. And there are further contributions available if required … Immediately after your departure I have read the introduction and the notes to the psychology and to the ethics; I was strongly moved by your reverent carefulness – it reminded me of the time when Brentano’s company was granted to me. The annex of the ethics was completely new to me and was much-loved. My archivist, Skrach, will inform you if I am able to find in the castle the required premises for the B[rentano] archive… (cited in Binder 2000, 557 [my transl.])

Unfortunately, there were no suitable premises available in Castle Lana, Masaryk’s private residence. However, the letter verifies ongoing discussions about the creation of an archive at an early period in time. In December 1928, Kraus prepared an application for the foundation of a Brentano-Marty archive which already provided detailed information on the requirements of such an institution. The addressee of the application is unknown, most likely it was the office of the president or the German University in Prague. A remarkable aspect of this application is that it lists only (Innsbruck?) transcriptions of Brentano’s manuscripts for the prospective inventory of the archive – possibly Kraus had not yet reached an agreement with Gio Brentano in regard to the acquisition of the originals. The list of the other documents assigned for the new archive is also instructive: –the original letters of Brentano to Marty since 1869; –the original letters of Brentano to Kraus since 1893; –Marty’s lectures and numerous notes on conversations with Brentano; –Marty’s own philosophical and biographical writings; –further original letters of Brentano to Ehrenfels, Eisenmeier, Utitz, Hertling, Enriques and others; –copies of letters which were transcribed by Carl Stumpf in Berlin at the time of the application;

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–Kraus’ own material and documents. This list demonstrates clearly that many documents which are today included in Brentano’s bequest, were actually added years after Brentano’s death. Indeed, some of Brentano’s most significant correspondences are among these items. It is also obvious that Kraus and Kastil were actively collecting documents from various sources: partly still living addressees of Brentano’s letters, who were asked to donate the documents to the archive (Christian von Ehrenfels, Emil Utitz) or to provide copies (Carl Stumpf)39, partly letters that were removed from other bequests (Eisenmeier). And finally, the application shows that the Prague Brentano archive was from the beginning conceived as a Brentano-Marty archive – a fact which is easily overlooked because much of Marty’s bequest was lost.40 Thus far we had focused on the events in Zurich, Innsbruck and Prague, but we should not forget Brentano’s summer abode in Schönbühel: it is also an important scene of our story. As already mentioned, Brentano had left Schönbühel sometime in the fall of 1913 expecting to return the following year. If there were any documents in Schönbühel, he had no apparent reasons to remove them from this location. In all probability, there were many documents from the period before 1914 in Schönbühel. In 1929, more than ten years after the end of the First World War, further documents were transferred to 39 The history of Brentano’s correspondence with Stumpf is an especially interesting case. Among the scientific correspondences which Gio Brentano had handed over to Harvard’s Houghton Library as a permanent loan (see below, p. 412) were Brentano’s original letters to Stumpf and approximately one third of the original letters of Stumpf to Brentano. However, the Brentano collection of the Brentano Archive in Graz (it possesses the remains of the Brentano Archive in Prague) contains transcriptions of a considerable larger number of Stumpf’s letters. Remarkably the originals of those letters were discovered in 2011 in the archive of Oriel College at Oxford and were donated to the Brentano Archive in Graz (on this discovery in Oxford see below, p. 404). In his application, Kraus refers to “copies of letters transcribed by Stumpf”. From this, we can conclude that Stumpf initially was not willing to turn over Brentano’s original letters to the archive in Prague; it is still unresolved how Gio Brentano came into possession of them after the Second World War. Brentano (1989) is an incomplete edition of Brentano’s letters to Stumpf; Stumpf’s letters are entirely missing. 40 Today the Franz Brentano Archive in Graz holds the larger part of the remaining Marty Nachlass, a smaller part is kept by the Burger Bibliothek Bern (Switzerland). On Marty’s bequest cf. Bokhove and Raynaud (1990, 250–264).

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the old house. In September 1929, Gio wrote to his cousin Sissi Brentano: It is rather difficult for me to leave Schönbühel these days because Prof. Kraus and his student Dr. Katkov are here to put in order my father’s writings; it is necessary for me to join them right from the beginning in order to learn what is here and to have a say in how everything should be best arranged. It will therefore not be possible for me to come and visit you, but this will likely not do much harm, because I want to have read much more of the letters and I want to check everything more thoroughly than it was the case during our first cursory sorting in Schönbühel; only afterwards I would be able to make arrangements concerning the eventual placement and how the documents should be stored and especially where to draw a demarcation line. In the boxes from Florence many letters from my grandmother to my father have been found, but also letters addressed to her and to grandfather; it has to be considered up to what extent the letters of my father should be handed over to a library, and where to draw the line between the early letters and the later ones which could serve as a supplement to the manuscripts. … In the dining room both large tables are covered with letters and files and we are busy bringing them in order. Everything else is left aside for the moment so that we can sort out as quickly as possible the documents that Prof. Kraus needs. [my transl.]

This letter is quite remarkable in several respects. First, it reveals the so far unknown fact that at the end of the 1920s there were still parts of Brentano’s Nachlass that were in Florence. Moreover it shows Gio’s hesitancy regarding the future of his father’s bequest: on the one hand, the perspective of losing control makes him uneasy; on the other, he had clearly understood that the continuation of the editorial work made it necessary to hand the documents over to an appropriate institution. Another permanent source of Gio’s discomfort is also present in the letter – the question of privacy: where to draw the line between documents of public interest and those of private content? This question – especially hard to answer in the case of many letters with mixed content – occupied his mind until the end of his life.41 41

The problem of privacy is especially relevant in the case of Brentano’s correspondence with his mother Emilie (“letters from my grandmother to my father”). Those letters deal at length with Brentano’s separation from the Catholic Church and with his marriage plans – both of which were firmly denounced by his deeply religious

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A year later, in the fall of 1930, Gio Brentano and Kraus met again in Lujo Brentano’s house at Prien (near the Bavarian Chiemsee) to discuss some of the details of Lujo’s autobiography Mein Leben. This time there was an agreement: Gio accepted that his father’s bequest should go – under specific conditions – to Prague. 3 The Brentano-Society and the Brentano Archive at Prague42 On February 26th, the Czechoslovak Parliament passed a resolution to dedicate a sum of twenty million Crowns to President Masaryk in recognition of his merits as the co-founder of the republic. In the beginning of the following year, Masaryk announced his decision concerning the distribution of the donation in the Prague newspaper Bohemia. Besides several medical and social facilities, the “German Society of Science and Arts in the Republic of Czechoslovakia” (it acted as a kind of German Academy of the Sciences) was listed among the beneficiaries. The foundation of the Brentano Society and the Brentano Archive was not mentioned explicitly, but it seems obvious that it was Masaryk’s donation which provided the necessary financial basis for the new institutions. On March 2, 1931, the constitutive plenary meeting of the Brentano Society was eventually held. Kraus was elected chairman of the society, Kastil as his deputy, and Gio Brentano as secretary. At the request of the society, Masaryk was appointed as an honorary member. As the principal task of the society, the statutes declare the promotion of Brentano’s lifework, “to work towards its publication and to encourage philosophical research in the direction determined by Brentano”. The following points were listed in detail: 1. the systematic registration of the complete scientific bequest including the letters; 2. the publication of Brentano’s oeuvre respectively of his mother. Without better knowledge of their content, it is almost impossible to write the (much anticipated) biography of Brentano. On the other hand, the letters give insight into the private affairs which, of course, were never intended for publication. Many years later, Mayer-Hillebrand began to write a biography of Brentano which makes an extensive use of this correspondence. After Mayer-Hillebrand had presented the first four chapters of the biography to Gio Brentano, he cancelled the project. Nevertheless, Gio and his heirs have not destroyed the letters: they are still part of the family archive in Blonay. 42 For a more detailed account of the history of both the society and the archive cf. Binder (2000). This paper focuses on the most important stages of their development and adds some information drawn from recently found documents, especially from the annual reports of the Brentano Society and from Eberhard Rogge’s memorandum.

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unpublished papers; and 3. the foundation and maintenance of an archive and of a library, collecting publications by and on Brentano. Contests, lectures, scholarships and the funding of philosophical studies were also intended to encourage the investigation and disseminadissemination of Brentano’s thoughts. According to the statutes, one of the society’s most important assignments was the creation of an archive. But this was met with an obstacle: the society had not yet reached an agreement with Gio Brentano concerning the deposit of the original manuscripts in Prague. The annual report of the society for 1933 describes some conflicts in this regard. In return for every manuscript lent out to the archive, Gio had demanded a rotographic or statographic copy.43 When the society had informed Gio that all copies would stay in the archive’s ownership unless the deposit of the originals was settled, Gio protested. In September 1933, Kastil handed over those photographic copies which were produced by his assistant Foradori in Innsbruck. Now Gio eventually agreed to clear the manuscript’s way from Innsbruck to Prague.44 After the finalization of the transfer, the Prague archive held almost the complete scientific bequest of Brentano. In (Kraus 1937) he gives an overwiew of the collections: Manuscripts, among them particularly numerous lectures, also dictations and letters. Brentano’s scientific correspondences with J. Stuart Mill, Spencer, Breuer (the co-founder of psychoanalysis), Fechner, Hering, Rolfes, also with his students Stumpf, Marty, Hermann Schell, Husserl, Ehrenfels, and the Enkelschüler Kraus, Kastil, Hugo Bergmann, Urbach and others are comprised of several thousand letters … [my transl.]

43

This process is a predecessor of xerography which was invented in 1938. Statographic copies are characterized by an inverse rendering of the original: black ink on white paper is therefore represented as white on a black background. Although the Brentano Archive in Graz holds a larger number of such statographic copies, only a small part of Brentano’s Nachlass was duplicated in this way. 44 The documents were sent to Prague in several different shipments. Some lists describing the contents of the individual shipments have survived. Gio however was still cautious and reserved the right to withdraw his father’s manuscripts. As we can learn from the later developments, it seems that a final legally binding agreement concerning the deposit in Prague has never been reached. Gio stored the copies which he had received from the Prague archive in the British Museum.

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Further information can be found in the annual reports of the society. Among the collections of the archive, Marty’s Nachlass played an especially prominent role: in addition to his own manuscripts, the reports refer to Marty’s countless notes on discussions and conversations with Brentano which he had recorded over decades. Marty had also copied many letters written by Brentano, whose originals were already missing at the time of the archive’s foundation. But the archive did not restrict itself to collecting documents related to Brentano or Marty. A certain ‘Herr Lanzendörfer’ donated a stenograph of a lecture given by Christian von Ehrenfels; Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand presented a lecture on probability theory to the archive which her first husband Franz Hillebrand had delivered. And when in November 1935 Edmund Husserl visited the Brentano Society to give a talk, he surprised Kraus with a very special gift: ten booklets with stenographic notes of Brentano’s lectures on ‘Practical Philosophy’ and ‘Old and New Logics’. All those valuable documents listed above were lost only a few years later. As we have already stated, the Prague archive now held almost all of Brentano’s Nachlass – with some noteworthy exceptions. Those letters which were delivered from Florence to Schönbühel in 1929, were not brought to Prague – at least not all of them. In Kastil’s bequest an undated register entitled ‘Register of the letters located in Schönbühel’ (Verzeichnis der in Schönbühel befindlichen Briefe) has survived (it is not clear if this typed register was produced by Kraus or Katkov); the correspondents listed in this register partly coincide with the correspondents which Kraus specifies in (Kraus 1937). Possibly the letters of predominantly scientific content were forwarded to Prague while the rest stayed in Schönbühel. This assumption is confirmed in a letter from Kastil: In July 1939, he reports to Gio about twelve tin boxes containing letters which he had stored in a wall cabinet in the library for his convenient access.45 The annual report of the society of 1935 also mentions that the prospective transfer of Brenta45 The following quotation from Kastil’s letter verifies the private nature of the correspondences in Schönbühel: “The method which I have adapted for my purpose is the following: for each year of [Brentano’s] life I prepare a file; on each file or in its inserts I note down keywords indicating which biographically relevant data can be learned from the letters of this year. I suggest that these letters, once I had worked through them, should not be entrusted to a public institution but taken into private custody. Thus we shall from the outset prevent the nuisance of obliterating the demarcation line between a biography of general interest and indiscretion.” [my transl.]

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no’s library from Florence to Prague – as a reference library of the Brentano Society – was not yet carried out. Instead, Brentano’s valuable library containing many personal copies with autographic annotaannotations ended up in Schönbühel too. The activities of the Prague archive during the few years of its existence focused mainly on the transcription of Brentano’s manuscripts and on the preparation of a catalogue. The transcriptions were not only intended for the archive itself: carbon copies were also sent to Gio Brentano and to Kastil. Those so-called ‘Prague transcriptions’ include Brentano’s research manuscripts, his lecture notes and the collection of ‘scientific’ correspondences. A large number of Prague transcriptions has survived and is now held by the Brentano Archive in Graz. They are still of considerable interest, because in many cases they are the only existing transcriptions of handwritten documents; in some cases they even replace the missing originals as the sole source left. Apart from this, the Prague transcriptions meanwhile are historical documents in their own right. 46 The results of the cataloguing activities were two undated registers which are not identical. It is rather astonishing that these registers do not follow Kastil’s manuscript classification in terms of different philosophical fields. Without any systematic or chronological order, they are simple lists detailing the content of the folders used by the archive for the storage of documents. Unfortunately, it was not yet possible to discover the register of the letters kept by the Prague archive; such a register which could provide valuable information on missing letters, was mentioned repeatedly by Kraus and Mayer-Hillebrand. The position of the archivist, who had to oversee all these activities, was held by Georg Katkov, a former student of Kraus.47 Eberhard Rogge, a German philosopher who had worked in the Prague archive before and who had later become Katkov’s successor as archivist, summarizes all the achievements of the archive in a notable 46 Unfortunately those transcriptions were partially produced by untrained typists (including Kraus’ daughter) which resulted in many misspellings. Gio had already warned against the quality of the transcriptions in (J.C.M. Brentano 1966). 47 The Prague transcriptions also frequently show corrections and collations in the handwriting of Walter Engel. Like Katkov, Engel was a student of Kraus. While Katlov was suffering from a serious illness in 1934, Engel acted as archivist in his place. After 1939, he disappeared without leaving a trace; allegedly he was still living in Prague in the early 1990s.

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‘Denkschrift’, a memorandum dating from June 1939 (we shall come back to this Denkschrift later): A catalogue of the entire Brentano-Nachlass including the letters from and to Brentano was created. Books, brochures and offprints of the archive which were partly provided as a loan by Prof. Kraus, were catalogued. Brentano’s manuscripts and letters, especially his lectures, were photographically duplicated. At the same time, they were copied with a typewriter; these transcriptions were collated with the originals by experts on Brentano’s handwriting so accurately that the well legible transcriptions can be used instead of the crabbed originals. The manuscript collections of the archive were constantly extended by acquisitions and the acceptance of donations. Anton Marty’s Nachlass, especially his notes on conversations with Brentano, were handled in a way similar to Brentano’s Nachlass. Brentano’s library in Florence and Schönbühel were put in order, the annotations were made available. [my transl.] 48

It should not go unmentioned that the Brentano Society was operating a branch office in Vienna. After retiring in 1934, Kastil had moved from Innsbruck to Vienna. He took with him several original manuscripts (the annual report of 1935 mentions manuscripts on Aristotle) as well as transcriptions regarding further editorial revisions. For these editorial activities and for storage purposes, the society provided a study equipped with a working table and lockers. This room was also frequently used for discussion meetings with other philosophers. Kastil was in touch with the members of the Vienna Circle and with Karl Bühler’s psychological institute where he delivered several lectures. Kastil also delivered lecture courses at the University of Vienna: e. g. during the winter semester of 1937-38, he lectured – unsurprisingly – on “Franz Brentano’s Philosophy”. It is especially interesting that from July until September 1934, Rush Rhees (1905–1989) stayed in Vienna to discuss Brentano’s theories of categories and continuity with Kastil. Kastil was so enthusiastic about Rhees that he asked him to assume editorship of Brentano’s unpublished writings on the theory of continuity. For this purpose, he 48

The transcriptions of Brentano’s annotations were lost as well. It seems questionable however that at that time parts of the library were still in Florence.

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even forwarded all transcriptions on the topic he possessed to Rhees. For reasons we do not know, Rhees did not publish Brentano’s writings, nor did he pay another visit to Kastil, but they kept correspondcorresponding with each other until Kastil’s death in 1950.49 From 1936 onwards, Gio Brentano allowed Kastil to use his father’s cottage in Schönbühel; at first Kastil lived there only in the summer, later during the war for the entire year. This is not the place to go deeper into the activities of the Brentano Society and the Brentano Archive,50 but it may be stated that at the end of 1937, the conditions in Prague were nearly ideal. A repository and a research institute dedicated to Brentano’s philosophical legacy were set up and both were working fervently; the original manuscripts and letters were – with the exception of the documents at Schönbühel – for the first time concentrated in one location; legible transcriptions of many manuscripts were available and could be used for further editorial work; guest researchers were supervised; Kraus and Katkov were busy with publishing their research results and delivering lectures; and last but not least, a conference in celebration of Brentano’s centenary was planned. But the gathering clouds darkening the political sky were obvious. In the beginning of 1938, Kraus was already very pessimistic about the general situation. Hence Katkov later went to Great Britain in the same year to check the conditions for the relocation of the society and its archive. Following a political crisis in September 1939, the infamous Munich Agreement between Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain was concluded which allowed Germany to occupy large areas of Czechoslovakia. Now Gio lost his nerves and reclaimed the manuscripts from Prague. And he was right in doing so: Hitler’s troops invaded Czechoslovakia on March 15th and marched into Prague, thereby disregarding the Munich Agreement. Because of his Jewish 49 Entitled Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Raum, Zeit und Kontinuum the volume was published many years later by Stephan Körner and Roderick M. Chisholm, who made extensive use of Kastil’s preliminary work. The Franz Brentano Archive in Graz has a small part of Rush Rhees’ Nachlass which includes also those transcriptions Kastil had presented to Rhees. Later on, Rhees became close friends with Ludwig Wittgenstein. With George Henrik von Wright and Elisabeth Anscombe, he administered and edited Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. It might be an interesting task to examine if Kastil’s editorial methods have affected Rhees’ edition of Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen. 50 Cf. Binder (2000).

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ancestry and his close links to the deceased President Masaryk, Oskar Kraus was arrested on the same day.51 Shortly before – and just in time – the original documents had left Prague aboard an aircraft.52 As a result of Katkov’s efforts, the philosophical department of University of Oxford invited the Brentano Society in February 1939 to establish a new institute in Oxford, but without any financial assistance from the university. Eventually, the project foundered as a result of the Czechoslovak authorities’ refusal to transfer the monetary assets of the society to Great Britain. Although the most valuable documents had been moved, the society and the archive in Prague carried on. In his memorandum, the new archivist Eberhard Rogge stated that despite the fact that “nearly all” original manuscripts were brought to Manchester, the archive was well-resourced with collated transcriptions. Rogge was very busy in other ways as well. He proudly reports in his Denkschrift that he had already contacted several offices of the N.S.D.A.P. to discuss “the later arrangements regarding the relationship between the Brentano Society and the Party”. And of course the list of the society’s members53 was no longer appropriate and had to be adapted accordingly: The Brentano Society was transferred into Aryan hands; the former (non-Aryan) chairman Kraus resigned from the Brentano Society and stepped down at the same time; Messrs. Utitz and Klatscher followed suit; Mr. Weltsch went to Palestine early in March without providing any information to the Brentano Society – he can therefore practically be regarded as having also resigned … Dr. Engel (mixed blood I) requested his resignation verbally, but I motivated him to maintain his membership until the final settlement of his affairs. That way a new 51

Due to Katkov’s involvement, Kraus was released from prison six weeks later and received an exit permit for Great Britain. Kraus was not imprisoned in a concentration camp (as some sources assert), but in a police prison. The Brentano Archive in Graz has Kraus’ annotated copy of Brentano’s Vom Dasein Gottes which he studied in detention. 52 Some of the transport boxes of the Prague haulier, Richard Kirchenberger, have survived in the family archive at Blonay. The boxes are addressed to the National Provincial Bank LTD in Manchester. 53 Besides the members we have already mentioned, the following persons belonged to the society between 1931 and 1939: Emilie Brentano (Brentano’s second wife), Howard O. Eaton, Oskar Engländer, Karl Essl, Otto Funke, Dawes Hicks, Edmund Husserl, Camill Klatscher, J. B. Kozák, Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand, George Edward Moore, Mario Puglisi, Geza Révész, Rush Rhees, Jindrich Riha, Francesco de Sarlo, Carl Stumpf, Kazimierz Twardowski and Eduard Winter.

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list of members emerged …, and from this list all non-Aryans are eliminated. [my transl.]

Rogge’s remarkable memorandum comments not only on the society’s purification from a racial point of view, but also makes suggestions on how the future philosophical work could follow ethnic (“völkischen”) principles: Brentano’s effects on the new strictly German philosophy have to be studied thoroughly, after the former direction of the archive had rejected it firmly; Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology and along with it a large part of contemporary existential, völkisch and political philosophy is based on Brentano’s theory of ‘intentionality’, but it adopts at the same time the rising powers [Aufbaukräfte] of German idealism which were unfamiliar to Brentano and his loyal students. All of that must from now on be respected in the Brentano Archive! [my transl.]

But all the diligence Rogge had put on display did not save him from war service. In September 1941, he was killed during the German attack on Russia. Since we have limited knowledge about the later fate of the Prague Brentano Society, it can be summarized in a few sentences. Kastil was the sole member of the former board of the society who had not immediately resigned after the clean-up. At first, he authorized a “substitute” to represent him.54 But when in May 1940 the Brentano Society was officially transformed into a branch of the Kant-Society, Kastil resigned too. Under the guidance of Ernst Otto55, the society agreed on new statutes: its new purpose was now to foster ‘philosophy in an artdeutsch manner’. In 1945, the premises of the society were occupied and looted by members of the Red Army and selfproclaimed tenants. In a moving letter to Katkov, Jindrich Riha, a former collaborator of Masaryk and a member of the ‘original’ Bren54

In July 1939 Kastil wrote to Gio Brentano: “Even more unpleasant are the difficulties regarding the Brentano Society, because the substitute, who was recommended by our friend and ex-archivarius, has completely failed; I therefore had to withdraw his authority. He seems to be out of his mind. If the challenge for my nerves is too hard I will no longer accept any reassurances and resign; in any case, effective management that is not present on site is not really possible.” Kastil commented also on the bustling Rogge: “Dr. Rogge has proved himself successfully …”. [my transl.] 55 Ernst Otto (1877–1959) was an educationalist and philosopher of language; by this time he was also rector of the Charles University in Prague.

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tano Society, commented in detail on his desperate efforts to collect and to save all remains of the archive which had survived devastation; none of Brentano’s manuscripts were found among the rescued documents. After the final liquidation of the Brentano Society in 1955 the few remaining holdings were handed over to the Czechoslovak Academy of the Sciences. Today the catalogue of the Academy designates the documents as “Korpus Kraus” and “Korpus Marty”. 4 Emigration Let us return to the year 1940. The Brentano Society’s enforced political conformity and the removal of its founders from all positions were certainly heavy setbacks for the entire Brentano scholarship. Even so, our story’s main characters were not discouraged by this difficult situation. Gio Brentano and his wife Sophie left Manchester and were about to make a new start in the U.S., where Northwestern University had offered Gio a position as an X-ray physicist. Kastil now stayed all year round in Schönbühel and completely devoted himself to the study and the edition of Brentano’s manuscripts and letters; the most significant results of his work were a compilation of Brentano’s Viennese lecture notes on ethics and a monographic synopsis of Brentano’s philosophy.56 Kraus and Katkov, on the other hand, relocated to Oxford and tried to stay afloat with the support of friends and acquaintances. Particularly Kraus’ situation did not start to improve before the University of Edinburgh decided to appoint him as Gifford Lecturer of 1941.57 Starting on May 2, 1941 Kraus delivered ten lectures under the title New Meditations on Mind, God, and His Creation. In these lectures Kraus attempts to demonstrate the possibility of scientific metaphysics and of a rigorous scientific proof of God58 – the same problems which had occupied his teacher Brentano a 56

Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik (Brentano 1952) as well as Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos (Kastil 1951) were published only posthumously after Kastil’s death in 1950 by his student Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand. 57 The founder of the lecture series was Adam Lord Gifford (1820–1887). The lectures were dedicated to the study of natural theology and alternately organized by the Scottish Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and St. Andrews. Among the Gifford lecturers were such outstanding thinkers like William James, Alfred North Whitehead and Werner Heisenberg. 58 Kraus tried desperately to prepare his lectures for publication. This foundered not only because of his poor command of the English language, but also because of his dissatisfaction with the argument for the justification of evil he had presented in the

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whole lifetime too. In June 1942, Kraus wrote a letter to Otto Funke 59 which included a valuable report on the situation of the Brentano Archive: We have brought the most valuable assets of the archive to Oxford. Four boxes are stored away in the Bodleian library (in the basement). The register is with me. Among the documents are manuscripts, letters, also my letters to Brentano and his letters to me. In addition to that, we have produced many photographs before the war started, and Brentano’s son preserves the photographs of these manuscripts in the U.S. I do not know what else is in the archive. Most probably writings by Marty?? Unfortunately we were not able to ensure the safety of all of the manuscripts. Hopefully these documents, as you yourself have written, will not get lost. Furthermore the largest part of the library is my property and many books bear my ex-libris.[my transl.] 60

Three months later, on September 26, 1942, Kraus died in Oxford of cancer. Not until the end of WW II did it became possible again to correspond by letter. In January 1946, Kastil reports to Gio on the difficult supply situation in Austria and that the cottage in Schönbühel had even survived the billeting of some Russian officers in good condition. On the other hand, the Brentanos frequently sent groceries and other goods to Schönbühel to support Kastil and his wife Hermine. At the end of 1947 or at the beginning of the following year, Kastil went to London for a meeting with Gio and Katkov, where they discussed the feasibility of further publications from Brentano’s Nachlass. The lectures. Kraus’ Nachlass which is kept in the Franz Brentano Archive in Graz, includes drafts of the lectures and other preliminary work. 59 Otto Funke (1885–1973) was a philosopher and anglicist. As a private lecturer, he had studied Marty’s philosophy of language in Prague. He was Professor in Bern since 1926. 60 Kraus’ Nachlass, Franz Brentano Archive in Graz. Until recently, only the (incomplete) Prague transcriptions of Kraus’ letters to Brentano were known, while the originals were missing. In the fall of 2011(!), the archivist of Oriel College at Oxford discovered not only most of Kraus’ original letters to Brentano but also many other documents which were considered lost. In the meantime, Oriel College has donated the documents to the Franz Brentano Archive in Graz. Supposedly these documents were overlooked in 1950, when Brentano’s Nachlass was prepared for transportation to the U.S. It is not clear however why and when the documents were moved from the Bodleian Library to the archive of Oriel College. It is too soon to provide a more detailed report on this finding.

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situation was intricate because Meiner was located in Leipzig and therefore subjected to the censorship of the cultural council (Kulturrat) in the Russian zone. Eventually it was decided to change publishpublishers.61 As we have already mentioned, Kastil had done much preliminary work during the years of war; particularly Brentano’s Viennese Lectures on ethics were just about ready for publication. But this was not going to happen: on June 20, 1950, Kastil died unexpectedly in Schönbühel. Like his teacher Brentano, he had worked on philosophical problems until the end. With Kastil’s death, the second driving force behind the still unfinished project of a Brentano edition was gone. However, shortly before his demise Kastil had expressed the desire that his student Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand should take over the Brentano-project and publish the unfinished works he had left behind (die ‘Weiterführung des Brentano-Nachlasses’62). After some hesitation Mayer-Hillebrand agreed to shoulder the burden. And it was in fact a heavy burden. The first important assignment for Mayer-Hillebrand was to look after the documents in Schönbühel. Gio was rather anxious about the political situation; after all, in 1950 the Red Army was still occupying a considerable part of Austria. In July of the same year, Gio eventually decided to move his father’s philosophical library and all remaining manuscripts from Schönbühel and to transfer everything to the U.S. For this reason, he asked MayerHillebrand to go to Schönbühel for a thorough examination of all documents and to prepare the selected items for transportation. After Mayer-Hillebrand had stayed at Schönbühel for almost a week she wrote to Gio on October 10, 1950: I have looked through the manuscripts – also all manuscripts which had been deposited in Vienna, were transferred to Schönbühel by Georg Kastil – and I have made a three-part division. 1) Those which I need now or later on and which should be brought to Innsbruck. These are mainly copies with the exception of a tin box which contains handwritten manuscripts of your father’s (Aus der 61

Until 1966, all new volumes of Brentano’s writings were published by A. Francke at Bern. Only after the refounding of Felix Meiner’s publishing house in Hamburg was the relationship established again. In this context, Kastil had suggested to propitiate the cultural council by establishing an affinity between Brentano’s criticism of Mach’s and Avenarius’ positivism, on the one hand, and Lenin’s empiriocriticism, on the other hand. Gio was strictly opposed to this (cf. Goller (1989b, 154 and 160f.)). 62 Cited in Goller (1989b, 162).

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Theologenzeit, On Aristotle’s theory of categories, preliminary work for “On the several senses of being [in Aristotle]”, conversations with Marty, notes, excerpts, sermons, poems, short essays). Of this, I can send you whatever you want. 2) Those which should go to you a) family souvenirs (2 tin boxes), b) photographs (1 tin box), c) letters, mainly family letters (3 tin boxes). Added to this are 7 black cardboard files containing letters to your father in alphabetical order, mostly originals. The scientific correspondence which could be of importance for me, primarily Brentano-Marty and vice versa, and which I am taking along to Innsbruck. 3) Manuscripts which could stay in Schönbühel, lectures, talks and letters from and to Prof. Kastil. Hermine Kastil has registered the library in Schönbühel (in all rooms of the house) – I have discovered a register of the books on the upper floor which was produced by Prof. Kastil himself – the register will be sent to you. Before the books can be dispatched to you some red tape has to be processed. The Austrian State does not simply allow that books and writings from the American zone be shipped abroad. [my transl.]63

This letter deserves to be quoted at length, because it is one of the few snapshots of the history of Brentano’s bequest which is really significant. What the letter conceals however is the fact that the “manuscripts which could stay in Schönbühel” were including not only Kastil’s own bequest in the strict sense but also many original documents from Brentano’s Nachlass, among them some of outstanding value.64 In hindsight, it is of course impossible to say if Mayer-Hillebrand had considered those documents irrelevant or if she had simply overlooked them. There are reasons for both explanations: on the one hand, is it hardly possible to check such a large number of documents within a single week; on the other hand, however, it is also rather difficult to ignore such a bulk of paper. In any case, Gio offered the Schönbühel house to Kastil’s family; and as result of MayerHillebrand’s evaluation, many documents of Brentano’s Nachlass along with the house itself passed to new owners. Still in November 1950 three large cases – probably containing Prague transcriptions – were transported from Schönbühel to Innsbruck. The major part of the material intended for removal however 63 Cited ibid., 162f. Georg Kastil was Alfred and Hermine Kastil’s only son. He died in a car accident in 1952. 64 This came to light almost half a century later; cf. below, p. 411f.

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was sent to the U.S. In February 1951, twenty nine cases with manuscripts, letters, books, artworks and furniture arrived at the house of the Brentanos in Highland Park (Illinois) – the total weight of all cases together exceeded 1,6 tons! At almost the same time, Gio received five large boxes, containing those manuscripts which – after their escape from Prague – had been stored in the basement of the Bodleian Library for more than ten years. Since Katkov had not succeeded in establishing himself in a higher academic position at Oxford University, Gio also decided to take the key part of his father’s bequest to the U.S.. With the exception of the (then unknown) documents left behind in Schönbühel, Franz Brentano’s Nachlass had now completely left Old Europe. On the other hand, for the first time in its history the Nachlass was concentrated in one geographical place: in Gio and Sophie’s house in Highland Park. It was of course a major task to put this immense mass of material into order. For the winter term of 1951-1952, Mayer-Hillebrand therefore accepted a visiting professorship at Northwestern University, where she delivered a lecture on Brentano’s philosophy. In her leisure time, she assisted Gio and Sophie Brentano in arranging the philosophical manuscripts. The result of her work was a catalogue which lists 836 items in total. In her report “Franz Brentanos wissenschaftlicher Nachlass”, she comments on the making of this catalogue in detail.65 As we have already noted above, Mayer-Hillebrand makes ample use of Kastil’s preliminary work, but there are also rearrangements and additions to the older lists. However, Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue has subsequently established itself as the standard catalogue of Brentano’s philosophical manuscripts: its signatures are still in use when quoting the unpublished texts.66 In connection with Mayer-Hillebrand’s report from 1952 two somewhat strange assertions deserve our closer attention. She writes that besides the manuscripts, the collection at Highland Park contains 65

Cf. Mayer-Hillebrand (1952, 601). Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue is still in use as a finding aid by the Houghton Library which keeps Brentano’s manuscripts today (it is accessible on the library’s website). Although the catalogue is standard, it is at the same time erroneous in many places and does not comply with modern cataloguing rules: Mayer-Hillebrand is hardly to blame for this, because she was neither a librarian nor an archivist. Her catalogue suffers from two main shortcomings: it does not include those archival numbers which were stamped on the manuscripts by the Brentanos during their filming work; and it is not complete.

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several thousands of original letters from and to Franz Brentano – a fact which is not particularly astonishing. But then she continues: The most extensive part of this correspondence is that with A. Marty (more than 3,000 letters from the years 1869–1911) … The correspondences with G. Fechner, H. v. Helmholtz, J. St. Mill, S. Freud, Boltzmann deserve a special highlighting. (Mayer-Hillebrand 1952, 602 [my transl.])

The first astonishing assertion concerns the quantity of the correspondence between Brentano and Marty: instead of the 3,000 letters Mayer-Hillebrand mentions in her report only 1,400 have survived today which is quite a remarkable disparity (moreover the correspondence does not end in 1911, but of course in 1914, the year Marty died). Where have these many letters disappeared? Or is MayerHillebrand’s assertion simply an error? If somebody checks a list of the letters today, it is apparent that they are distributed irregularly: there are years during which many letters were exchanged, sometimes only a few; there are even years without any surviving letters. It seems therefore obvious that the correspondence between Brentano and Marty is not complete. As Brentano and Marty were close friends, some of their correspondence comprises of course also subjects of a private nature which John may have wished to respect.67 Thus the removal of particular letters becomes well conceivable. On the other hand, in numerous cases parts of letters were simply cut out – a good solution to avoid outright destruction. Since the missing letters are not present in the family archive as well, the more probable answer to the question is that Mayer-Hillebrand has committed an error. An even more astonishing assertion concerns the existence of a correspondence between Brentano and Sigmund Freud, who had attended some of Brentano’s lectures in Vienna. Such a correspondence between the discoverer and explorer of the human unconscious and a philosopher who strictly denied the possibility of an “unconscious consciousness” in his philosophical writings would certainly be of outstanding scientific interest. Due to the lack of space we cannot go deeper into this still enigmatic affair, 68 but some issues in this 67 Brentano was also a highly gifted polemic, who usually did not suspend judgment on his philosophical adversaries. 68 Cf. also Hemecker (1991, 114f.).

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context should not go unmentioned. It seems that except for MayerHillebrand’s 1952 report, we have two additional sources which testify to the existence of a Freud-Brentano correspondence. On the one hand, Freud himself writes in 1875 to Eduard Silberstein, that such letters of philosophical content exist;69 and in January 1954, MayerHillebrand wrote to Gio Brentano: “… I am almost sure that there exist also some [letters] between Freud and your father; I have seen them mentioned in the list of the letters which was made in Prague and which is with you.”70 Still in the same year, Gio went to New York for a meeting with Kurt Eissler, the director of the Sigmund Freud Archive. Eissler had already contacted John before asking for Josef Breuer’s letters to Brentano, but of course he was all the more interested in letters from Freud himself. In the catalogue of the Sigmund Freud Collection at the Library of Congress, we can find Gio Brentano’s name under the heading ‘Interviews and Recollections’. Unfortunately the document is closed to the public until 2020.71 In 1963 Mayer-Hillebrand published an updated report on Brentano’s Nachlass entitled ‘Rückblick auf die bisherigen Bestrebungen zur Erhaltung und Verbreitung von Franz Brentanos philosophischen Lehren’72 – now the name Sigmund Freud has completely vanished. Gio’s last word concerning this affair was a short letter written to Eissler in 1966: “Mrs. Mayer[-Hillebrand] writes that you approached her about any correspondence between Freud and my father. We had already discussed this subject and I had pointed out to you that all we possess are the letters of my father to Breuer, but that these do not touch the subject psychoanalysis or of Freud”73. Maybe the year 2020 will shed new light on this matter. 69

Cf. ibid., 114. Nachlass Mayer-Hillebrand, University Archive of Innsbruck. It is of course well possible that Mayer-Hillebrand has simply quoted this list in 1952 even though she had never herself seen any original letters from the Freud-Brentano correspondence. Unfortunately, a detailed list of the letters kept by the Prague Brentano Archive has not been discovered so far. In this context another strange fact seems notable: Gio had obviously read a typed draft of Mayer-Hillebrand’s report, because in November 1952 he had suggested a few corrections to her; but he did not suggest eliminating Freud’s name from the report. 71 Cf. Teichroew, Baumann and McAleer (2004, 65). 72 Cf. Mayer-Hillebrand (1963). 73 Gio Brentano to Kurt Eissler, 21.4.1966. A copy of this letter was presented to the author, courtesy of Ms. Ursula Brentano. 70

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In addition to his concerns about a final storage place for the manuscripts of his father, Gio ever since the 1920s had experimented with photographical copies which he considered to be the most suitable safeguard against an eventual loss of the original documents. Gio was very much interested in photography: already as a boy he had installed a darkroom in the basement of the Schönbühel cottage and, later on, as a professional physicist, he contributed to the improvement of Xray photography. In April 1952, one of Gio’s students started to photograph the manuscripts in his house in Highland Park. Although a technician later took over, the results were disappointing. Now Gio turned his attention to the brand new technology of microfilm. Its advantages were obvious: microfilm copies of manuscripts can be quickly produced and are comparatively inexpensive; the copies themselves can be used for projection and for printing positives as well. Gio’s only concern was that scientists who were used to books and paper might have problems reading microfilms on a screen; on the other hand, they were certainly “acceptable to a future generation brought up on viewing the television screen.”74 In April 1954, Gio went to Cambridge where the head librarian of the MIT eventually convinced him of the new technology’s advantages. There were two additional reasons which prompted Gio to start the project of microfilming his father’s philosophical manuscripts. The first reason was that his retirement from Northwestern University in 1953 should provide him with sufficient free time. The second reason was less positive: following a serious illness in 1954, Gio was alarmed by a diagnosis which found him to have a supposedly chronic heart disease with doubtful prospects. Still in 1954, he therefore hired a microfilm device from Eastman Kodak and plunged into his work. In a letter to Mayer-Hillebrand, Sophie Brentano depicts her husband’s new activities: “… the tempo of his work is such that nobody could keep up with it. He gets up early and begins often to work before breakfast we have usually before 8 o’clock. Then he goes on for another 6 hours or so, sometimes much longer, and hardly a day goes by without us mailing a 100 foot roll for developing”. But Sophie is involved too: I do the numbering of the pages first which proves to be a slower job than the actual photographing. I will spare you technical details except 74

Gio Brentano to Mayer-Hillebrand, 31.4.1954.

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Thomas Binder that there is a 100 feet film drying in your bathroom waiting for me to pass it through the viewer in order to splice it. It is impossible to avoid making mistakes, they have to be corrected by splicing. Once we have a good negative any amount of positives can be made. We do the photographing together, one laying out the sheets, the other manipulating the release of the camera. When the sheets are equal in size it is an extremely quick work, but you know the variety of sizes there are.

Not only were the various sizes of the manuscripts causing time consuming problems, it was also extremely difficult to photograph the manuscripts that were written in pencil which were frequently smudged or had faded. It was therefore necessary to take multiple shots of one single page with varying exposure times and to stitch the best shots to a master copy. It took Gio and Sophie more than four years of concentrated work before they were able to send out the first film reels to Brown University. More films were later sent to other universities in the U.S. (e.g. to Harvard and Berkeley) and in Europe (e.g. to Innsbruck, to the Staatsbibliothek in Munich and to the Goethe-Haus in Frankfurt).75 Gio was, of course, aware of the fact that microfilms required special reading devices which were not very common then, especially in Europe. Hence he asked Mayer-Hillbrand if she could provide new typed transcriptions of the manuscripts. She agreed and with the assistance of her secretary Klara Kolb, a large number of new transcriptions were produced in Innsbruck, the so-called “KolbAbschriften”. The “Kolb-transcriptions” were mostly transcriptions of the Prague transcriptions from Schönbühel. The main objective of the retyping work was to avoid errors and misspellings and to produce a 75

Mayer-Hillebrand (1963) lists further universities. In the following decades, those films proved to be especially useful for all Brentano scholars outside the U.S., because most of them simply could not afford a trip to Cambridge. But when MayerHillebrand states that the films could entirely replace the originals for all research purposes (cf. Mayer-Hillebrand 1963, 153), an obvious response is that she has missed some aspects of modern textcritical work. The mere fact that the films are only in black and white considerably reduces their value for text genetic studies. Nowadays, the usability of the films is restricted due to their conservation status. The Franz Brentano Archive in Graz holds those films which Gio Brentano originally had presented to Brown University. Due to frequent use, the films are already badly scratched and therefore in part hardly legible. To make things even worse, the films tend to break apart at exactly those positions where they were stitched; to repair a broken film is very costly and time-consuming. The films are therefore no longer suitable as an available research resource, they are museum pieces themselves.

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reliable and legible text. Since the original manuscripts were of course not available to Miss Kolb, she simply replaced erroneous Prague text with apparently new and correct formulations. Gio, who originally was enthusiastic about the project, had later stated that numerous passages of the Kolb-transcriptions sounded grammatically correct but were, at the same time, nonsense in respect to content. Today the Kolb-transcriptions are therefore irrelevant for research purposes. An especially important date in the history of Brentano’s Nachlass is undoubtedly May 25, 1961, the day Gio Brentano established the ‘Franz Brentano Foundation’ in Boston. The purpose of the Foundation was to provide financial support to all activities regarding the conservation and dissemination of his father’s bequest like translations into English, republications of out of print volumes, funding of philosophical studies and, of course, new editions of still unpublished manuscripts. The first trustees of the Franz Brentano Foundation which was managed by the Boston Trust Company, were Gio Brentano himself and Georg Katkov.76 But funding was not the only purpose of the Foundation: it played an additional role as the legitimate owner of the original documents of Brentano’s bequest. At least since 1954, Gio had looked for a final repository for the physical safe-keeping of the documents. In the same year, he had visited Harvard to discuss his concern with the Assistant Librarian of Harvard College Library. Another candidate was Northwestern University, where Gio had taught for more than ten years. 77 Even the universities of Innsbruck and Vienna were taken into consideration. We can learn from Gio’s correspondence with Roderick M. Chisholm78 that his favored plan was to hand over the documents to a research center similar to the Brentano Archive in Prague, – or at least to a university which was doing research on his father’s philosophy. Both plans had to be abandoned. Finally Katkov’s suggestion to deposit the philosophical manuscripts and part of the correspondence in

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The Franz Brentano Foundation still exists today and provides valuable support for research projects. 77 At Northwestern University, the building which accommodated the philosophers was renamed to ‘The Brentano Hall of Philosophy’ in 1963, presumably with the ulterior motive to influence Gio’s decision. 78 The correspondence between Chisholm and Gio Brentano is included in Chisholm’s bequest which is kept by the Gio Hay Library at Providence.

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Harvard’s Houghton Library was accepted79. The deposit became officially a permanent loan of the Franz Brentano Foundation. In 1966, the library was eventually presented with four large wooden boxes containing approximately 23,000 sheets of philosophical manuscripts; those manuscripts which Mayer-Hillebrand had catalogued in Highland Park in 1951. Additionally the Houghton Library received more than 3,000 letters of predominantly philosophical content, the so-called “scientific correspondence”. It was catalogued in the following years by a library staff member.80 The history of the most important part of Brentano’s Nachlass has now almost reached its end. To keep track of the other parts of the bequest, a short flashback is required. Since his retirement from Northwestern University, John had contemplated a return to Europe. During a stay in Switzerland in 1958, Gio and Sophie spontaneously decided to purchase a house in Blonay, then a small and charming village overlooking the Lake of Geneva. At first they lived there only in the summer time, but a few years later they moved there permanently.81 By this time, most of the documents from Brentano’s bequest were deposited in a bank safe in Evanston, from where they were later brought to Cambridge. But not all of them: in April 1964, Gio wrote to Mayer-Hillebrand: “… our move to Blonay was intended to be so temporary that we took along with us almost no originals (except nonphilosophical letters which were not yet put on order and which were of no scientific interest)”[my transl.]. Those “non-philosophical letters” are the basis of what we have called for the sake of simplicity the Brentanos’ “family archive” (we shall later come back to this). In the following years, documents were frequently brought from the U.S. to Switzerland, a procedure we cannot reconstruct here in detail. A small 79

The Houghton Library was established in 1942 with the financial support of the industrialist Arthur A. Houghton. It houses the Rare Books and Manuscript Collection of the Harvard College Library and is situated right beside the Widener Library. At the time of its construction, the Neo-Georgian building set new standards in airconditioning, air-filtering, security and storage. 80 Additionally, two boxes with documents were handed over which were sealed until 1990; cf. below, p. 419. Brentano’s philosophical reference library was not included in this permanent loan. 81 In 1895 Gio’s father had stayed for several months in Lausanne which is located not very far from Blonay, also in the Lake Geneva region. Maybe this proximity has influenced Gio’s choice, but there were of course additional reasons, most notably close friends and family members living nearby.

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part of Brentano’s Nachlass had therefore returned to Europe – other documents however were travelling in the opposite direction. 5 Returning to Europe on detours Since her visit in the U.S. in 1951 and the publication of her report on Brentano’s bequest in 1952, Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand had been everything but idle. In short intervals, she had published volume after volume of unpublished manuscripts: in 1952 Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik was released, in 1954 Religion und Philosophie, in 1956 Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil, in 1959 Grundzüge der Ästhetik, followed finally in 1963 by Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie.82 In all these editions, Mayer-Hillebrand had used the Prague transcriptions of Brentano’s manuscripts and the countless adaptions and revisions of those transcriptions Kastil had produced in Schönbühel. After the finalization of the editorial work, the transcriptions were no longer needed in Innsbruck. From the end of 1963 onwards, Mayer-Hillebrand therefore started to send the Prague copies to Blonay.83 But Blonay was only a stopover. Gio inspected and ordered the material from Innsbruck and prepared it for the rest of the journey: the final recipient was Roderick M. Chisholm, Professor of Philosophy at Brown University (Providence). For the next decades, he established himself as a principal actor in Brentano scholarship and in the history of Brentano’s Nachlass as well. Chisholm was born in 1916 and was professor of philosophy at Brown University since 1947. In Gio’s correspondence, Chisholm’s 82

Although Mayer-Hillebrand’s achievements as editor of Brentano’s writings are impressive, the result is all in all ambivalent. The editorial methods she had adopted from her teacher Kastil were criticized early on, as her controversy with Jan T. Srzednicki demonstrates (cf. Srzednicki (1962) and Mayer-Hillebrand (1962)). It became only recently apparent again that the sacrifice of accurate text-critical work with the original manuscripts may have caused serious errors: a re-examination of Brentano’s lectures on logic (EL 80), based on a digital facsimile of the manuscript, has proven that these lecture notes were not – as stated by Mayer-Hillebrand in her preface to (Mayer-Hillebrand 1956) – Brentano’s last lectures on the topic delivered in Vienna but instead his first lectures delivered in Würzburg. 83 The last volume Mayer-Hillebrand published from Brentano’s bequest was Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen in 1966. Mayer-Hillebrand died in Innsbruck on March 29, 1978. One part of her bequest is kept by the archive of the University of Innsbruck, another by the Franz Brentano Archive in Graz. Obviously not all of Prague and Kastil transcriptions were moved from Innsbruck to Blonay (as Gio had wanted), because respective documents can be found in both places.

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name emerges for the first time early in 1953. In a letter he surprised Gio with the following confession: “You may be interested to know that some of us in America are now becoming very interested in the works of Brentano. He has much to contribute on many philosophical problems”. Chisholm, who later became one of the most prominent representatives of analytic philosophy in the 20th century, was especially interested in the problem of intentionality and in the philosophy of psychology which both played a central role in Brentano’s thinking too.84 At first, Chisholm was mainly concerned with philosophical questions, but later he and his wife Eleanor became close friends of Gio and Sophie Brentano. In May 1960, the Chisholms visited them in Blonay and, afterwards, they went together to Schönbühel. For the Chisholms, this was the “high spot of the year”85. The way in which Chisholm distinguished himself from his predecessors (Kraus, Kastil and Mayer-Hillebrand) was his refusal to completely dedicate his own philosophical work to Brentano’s Nachlass. In December 1960, he wrote to Gio: “… although I am second to none in my esteem for and in my interest in your fathers work, my first interest, for good or ill, is in working out my own views, and the Brentano project would come second”86. It seems that Gio appreciated Chisholm’s emphasis on his philosophical independence because a year later he invited him to assist the Trustees of the Brentano Foundation as an advisor. In 1967 the first shipment from Blonay arrived at Providence, containing documents from Prague and Schönbühel. Chisholm also 84

In 1956, Chisholm accepted an invitation from Alfred Ayer to deliver a lecture to the Aristotelian Society in London. In this well-known lecture entitled “Sentences about Believing”, Chisholm demonstrated – following Brentano’s arguments – that intentional relations are not primarily founded in language, but in mind, in thinking, in volition and feeling. The philosophical perspective shifts from the relationship between language and the objects to which it refers in the external world to the relationship between the mind and its objects. This was the beginning of a move away from the philosophy of ordinary language which was predominant by this time (cf. Haller (1999) and Marek (2001)). 85 Chisholm to Gio Brentano, July 31, 1960. 86 Chisholm to Gio Brentano, December 1960. Chisholm’s enthusiasm for Brentano’s philosophy seems to have increased later on. In March 1962, he wrote to Gio: “During the past 6 months, while preparing a course on your fathers’ philosophy, I have become more and more impressed by his greatness as a philosopher. And even more so going through [his] manuscripts […]. I think I can understand the devotion of Kraus, Kastil, Katkov and the others in a way in which I never could before. You have done a great service to philosophy in preserving the manuscripts in this way”.

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received Marty’s manuscripts, lecture notes and diaries which had been stored before in a bank safe in Evanston along with Brentano’s Nachlass. Remarkably enough, Gio had also decided to hand over his father’s valuable library to Chisholm, although Katkov had explicitly advised against it. Together with the microfilms and the xerocopies of the manuscripts that Chisholm had received earlier, all documents were stored in Brown’s specially arranged “Brentano Room”. Like the manuscripts and the letters kept by the Houghton Library, all documents at Brown University were on permanent loan from the Franz Brentano Foundation. When Gio Brentano died in Blonay on January 14, 1969 he certainly died with the knowledge that his father’s bequest was in good hands. Sophie Brentano87 succeeded Gio as Trustee of the Franz Brentano Foundation and Chisholm was appointed as the Foundation’s new president – a position specially created for him by Sophie and Katkov. In the following years, Chisholm was very active, not only as an editor88 and a translator89 of Brentano’s writings, but also as a conference organizer90 and, of course, as a philosophical author91. Chisholm was not only interested in Brentano but also in his student and later adversary Alexius Meinong, who was professor of 87

Sophie Brentano outlived her husband for 24 years and died only in 1993 at Blonay. In addition to several shorter writings, Chisholm edited the following volumes from Brentano’s Nachlass: Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Raum, Zeit und Kontinuum (1976; in cooperation with Stephen Körner); the second edition of Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie (1979; in cooperation with Reinhard Fabian); Deskriptive Psychologie (1982; in cooperation with Wilhelm Baumgartner); and finally Ernst Machs ,Erkenntnis und Irrtum‘ (1982; in cooperation with Johann Ch. Marek). Chisholm’s merits as editor however hardly exceed those of his predecessors, because he started his editions not from the manuscript but made frequent use of Kastil’s preliminary work instead – like Mayer-Hillebrand had done. At the same time he made a remarkable suggestion to Gio Brentano (which obviously was not realized): “One question we should discuss is this: the desirability of publishing some of your father’s manuscripts just as he left them, without trying to improve upon them. I cannot help but feel that much of it is valuable source material which should be available just in the way your father dictated it.” (Chisholm to Gio Brentano, November 5, 1966) 89 Chisholm was co-translator of The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong (1969), Aristotle and His World View (1978) and The Theory of Categories (1981). 90 E.g. Chisholm was joint organizer of a Brentano conference which took place in Graz in 1977; one of the attendees of this conference was Sophie Brentano. 91 To give an example we might mention Chisholm’s essay collection Brentano and Meinong Studies which was published in 1982 as the third volume of Haller’s series Studien zur österreichischen Philosophie. 88

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philosophy at Graz from 1882 until his death in 1920. In 1956, Chisholm visited Graz for the first time to meet Rudolf Kindinger; Kindinger had ordered Meinong’s Nachlass which was kept by the library of the Karl Franzens University. In 1959 and in 1960, Chisholm was a Fulbright Professor at the Graz University which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1972 and made him honorary professor in 1974. In Graz, he also met Rudolf Haller, who had received the newly established position of professor of theoretical philosophy in 1967. Haller had already earned merits for his reimportation of analytic philosophy back to Austria, but he was known especially for his thesis about the existence of a distinct Austrian philosophical tradition which – contrary to German idealism – was guided by the methodical ideal of the natural sciences; one of the founders of Austrian philosophy was none other than Franz Brentano. Already for years Haller had pursued the plan to establish an institute with a twofold aim: on the one hand, to do research on Austrian philosophy and, on the other hand, to collect autographs and bequests of Austrian philosophers. After several failures, the Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für österreichische Philosophie was eventually set up in Graz in 1983. Subsequently, Chisholm concluded that Graz was a much better place for Brentano scholarship and decided to hand over his Brentano collection to the Forschungsstelle: in September 1985 the shipment arrived in Graz. Shortly afterwards, the Forschungsstelle received also Georg Katkov’s Nachlass (Katkov had died in January 1985) and, included in Katkov’s Nachlass, was that of Oskar Kraus. During the inspection of the documents in the following years, it became apparent that Chisholm’s collection contained not only copies and transcriptions but also original documents, among them the manuscript of Brentano’s famous Würzburg habilitation theses and numerous original letters that were part of the correspondence between Brentano and Marty. One of the further assignments of the Forschungsstelle was of course to produce editions of Brentano’s unpublished manuscripts – and there were still many manuscripts left which had never been published before. Apart from that, a group of Brentano scholars92 had eventually realized that most of the old editions – especially those of 92

Besides Chisholm and Haller, this circle was formed by Wilhelm Baumgartner (the head of the Franz Brentano Forschung in Würzburg), Johannes Brandl (Salzburg), Peter Simons (Leeds) and Karl Schuhmann (Utrecht †).

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Kastil and Mayer-Hillebrand – in no way complied with modern editorial standards and were therefore no longer acceptable as a basis for research on Brentano’s philosophy: a new text-critical edition of all manuscripts was desperately needed. Unfortunately, some of the new edition plans (e.g. Brentano’s Würzburg lectures on metaphysics) were confronted with the serious problem of missing manuscripts. A systematic search for missing source material was therefore unavoidable. First and foremost on the list of the places of interest was of course Schönbühel which Chisholm93 had visited for the last time in 1960. With the active support of Georg Gimpl (an Austrian Germanist and a historian of philosophy who lived and taught in Finland) the Forschungsstelle finally succeeded to get in touch with the Kastil family. In 1999, a first meeting with Robert Kastil (a grandson of Alfred Kastil) took place at Schönbühel where a first inspection of the documents was granted. The quantity and the significance of the documents which had survived for decades (some of them for much longer) exceeded all expectations. In the following years, the entire material stored in the former “Brentano House” was catalogued and all relevant documents were also digitized (the Kastil family had decided to keep the documents in the house). The result of this project94 was a catalogue which lists more than 4,000 separate items; from the philosophically and historically relevant items more than 17,000 digital facsimile were produced (they are now managed and maintained by the Franz Brentano Archive in Graz). Especially remarkable was the fact that alongside Alfred Kastil’s own bequest a considerable amount of documents relating immediately to Brentano was found – those documents which Mayer-Hillebrand had overlooked or classified earlier as irrelevant.95 Besides letters (mostly letters to Brentano), brief or fragmentary philosophical notes and biographical documents two complete philosophical articles96 and the Chisholm could not witness this rediscovery of Schönbühel himself: he died in January 1999 at Barrington (Rhode Island). A major part of his philosophical bequest was handed over to the Forschungsstelle by his widow Eleanor Chisholm. 94 The project Alfred Kastils Nachlass im Schönbüheler Brentanohaus was funded by the Jubiläumsfond (of the Austrian National Bank), the federal state of Niederösterreich and the Franz Brentano Foundation; it was carried out in the years 2001–2003. 95 Cf. above, p. 398f. 96 The first manuscript is entitled Gespräch mit Müller und Grossmann über das Dasein Gottes und die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (it is listed in some of the older 93

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manuscripts of some of Brentano’s most important publications97 were discovered. Last but not least, the manuscripts of Brentano’s writings on chess were also found in Schönbühel. Unfortunately none of the manuscripts needed for the editorial work had been discovered. Nevertheless the Schönbühel project was a great achievement, because documents that were lost for at least half a century are now accessible again. Another important project of the Forschungsstelle was the reexamination of all manuscripts and letters which were on permanent loan to the Houghton Library and the revision of Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue and Houghton’s Guide to Brentano’s scientific correspondences, both with reference to the originals. This re-examination brought many inaccuracies and errors to light, but no genuine discoveries were made. Nevertheless there were some new insights: those two boxes which had been sealed until 1990 were now included into the revision work and for the first time ever a register of their contents was produced. The boxes contain, on the one hand, early philosophical writings of Brentano and, on the other hand, a small, but biographically significant collection of family letters. These documents are listed neither in Mayer-Hillebrand’s catalogue nor in the Correspondence Guide of the Houghton Library.98 The aim of the project however was not only to revise the catalogues, but also to carry out a digitization project: in cooperation with the Harvard College Library, Houghton’s complete collection of Brentano’s registers of Brentano’s Nachlass), the second [Über Th. Funck-Brentanos ‘Morale Sociale’]; as it later turned out, Brentano had already published the latter anonymously in the Viennese newspaper Neue freie Presse. It was published for the first time under Brentano’s name in vol. 3 of Brentanos sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften (cf. Brentano 2010). 97 The manuscripts of the following publications were discovered: Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862), Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom Nous poietikos (1866), Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung (1911), Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes (1911) and Von der Classifikation der psychischen Phänomene (1911). Unfortunately, all these manuscripts were sealed by the Kastil family and could not therefore be digitized. Hopefully, it will be possible to come to an agreement in the future, because all these manuscripts are indispensable sources for a text-critical edition. 98 Apart from only a few exceptions, all these letters are from the correspondence between Brentano and his brother Lujo. Presumably the letters were handed over to Gio by Sophie (called “Sissi”) Brentano, Lujo’s only daughter, before she died in 1956.

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manuscripts and letters was digitally reproduced. The project started in 2006 and is now completed.99 The digital facsimile of the documents are held and maintained by the Franz Brentano Archive in Graz.100 Thus the return of Franz Brentano’s Nachlass to Europe was eventually completed: he is back again. But this does not mean of course that nothing remains to be done. On the occasion of an exhibition opening101 in Vienna’s Jewish Museum in 2004, the Forschungsstelle successfully came in contact with Ursula Brentano, who lives in Blonay. Thanks to her it was possible to have a first look at the archive and to produce a provisional catalogue of this impressive collection which includes a large number of original documents related to Brentano: e. g. most of his poetry and some drawings, but also philosophically relevant items such as the proofs of his masterpiece Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte corrected by Brentano himself. A more detailed catalogue of this collection would of course be highly desirable. 6 Desiderata Undoubtedly we have gained, in the last years, a much better understanding of Brentano’s Nachlass. However, we still do not possess a definitive catalogue of all the parts of this first-rate cultural document (cf. the annex for an overview). And it is also still possible that new documents might come to light: the incredible discovery of original documents in the archive of Oriel College exemplifies this.102 Research on the history of Brentano’s bequest is also not yet finished: many letters and biographical documents from Schönbühel and (hopefully) from Blonay have not yet been analyzed. A comparison of all surviving historical registers and lists would also be useful in order to get a better idea of any missing documents. In 2009, the Franz Brentano Archive was founded in Graz as part of the Forschungs-stelle (it has now been integrated into the philosophy department of the Karl Franzens University). Besides the documents transferred from Brown University and the bequests of The project was funded in its entirety by the Franz Brentano Foundation in Boston. The Franz Brentano Archive in Graz was a part of the former Forschungsstelle: cf. below, p. 422. The archive now holds approximately 40,000 digital facsimile of Brentano’s manuscripts and letters. 101 The exhibition was dedicated to the Viennese Jewish family Lieben; Brentano’s first wife was a member of that family. 102 Cf. above, p. 397. 99

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Katkov and Chisholm, the archive also has digital facsimile from Kastil’s bequest and a complete digital copy of Houghton’s Brentano collection: all these documents taken together amount to the largest Brentano collection around the world. The next logical step is the creation of a digital Brentano Archive on the web which is already underway. It will combine all philosophical and biographical documents related to Brentano and provide access to them. This archive is not intended to be a digital Brentano museum, but a comprehensive basis for all future Brentano research which may help to resolve the problems listed above. Hopefully it will also contribute to the most important of all Brentano projects: a text-critical edition of Brentano’s complete works. Gio Brentano would certainly appreciate that.

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APPENDIX I. Today Franz Brentano’s bequest is located in the following places: 1. Houghton Library / Harvard College Library, Cambridge (MA) Houghton Library holds most of the scientific manuscripts, the scientific correspondence and also a small but important part of the family letters. 2. Blonay (Switzerland) The archive of the Brentano family includes the extensive family letters, a small amount of scientific notes and nearly the entire literary work of Brentano (numerous poems, a stage play, translations). 3. Schönbühel bei Melk (Austria) A significant part of Brentano’s bequest is located in his former summer cottage in Schönbühel near Melk which is now owned by the Kastil family. Most of the documents are scientific notes and letters to Brentano, but there are also some lengthier philosophical manuscripts, such as the clean copies of his dissertation and his habilitation treatise. 4. Franz Brentano Archiv Graz (Austria) The most important part of the Brentano collection in Graz is Brentano’s reference library, containing many autographic annotations and numerous inserted sheets with scientific notes. Furthermore, the archive holds some original manuscripts as well as original letters from the correspondence of Brentano with Anton Marty, Carl Stumpf, John Stuart Mill and others. 5. Goethe-Haus Frankfurt (Germany) The Goethe-Haus, also called Freies Hochstift Frankfurt is wellknown as the repository of Clemens Brentano’s bequest, but it also has some family letters and some of his nephew’s poetry. 6. Other Places Since the activities of the Brentano Archive in Prague, nobody has made any serious efforts to locate and collect letters written by Brentano in the Nachlässe of his numerous correspondence partners. The evidence that such documents really do exist was the result of random

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enquiries in the inventories of the Austrian National Library and the Wienbibliothek, e. g. Brentano’s letters addressed to the famous Austrian poetess Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. The letters written by Brentano to Thomas G. Masaryk are kept in the Masaryk Archive in Prague, those to Kazimirz Twardowsky in the Twardowsky Archive in Warsaw, and those to Alexius Meinong in the Special Collections of the University Library in Graz. II. More collections related to Brentano: University Archive Innsbruck Franz Brentano Forschung (Würzburg) Czech Academy of Science (Prague)

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Binder, T. 1991. ‘Der Brentano-Schüler Oskar Kraus: Leben, Werk und Nachlaß’ in: Nachrichten der Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für österreichische Philosophie 2: 15-21. —— 2000. ‘Die Brentano-Gesellschaft und das Brentano-Archiv in Prag’ in: Rudolf Haller (ed.), Skizzen zur österreichischen Philosophie. Amsterdam / Atlanta: Rodopi (= Grazer Philosophische Studien 58/59), 533–565. —— 2011. ‘Der Nachlass Franz Brentanos. Eine historische Annäherung an einen schwierigen Fall’ in Revue Roumaine de Philosophie 55: 221-261. Binder, T. and U. Höfer. 2004. Gesamtverzeichnis des Nachlasses von Alfred Kastil (1874–1950) im Schönbüheler Brentano-Haus. Graz: Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für österreichische Philosophie. Bokhove, N. and Raynaud, S. 1990. ‘A Bibliography of Works by and on Anton Marty’ in K. Mulligan (ed.), Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics. The Philosophy and Theory of Language of Anton Marty. Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer, 237-284. Brentano, F. 1929. Vom Dasein Gottes. Mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen hrsg. von A. Kastil. Leipzig: F. Meiner. —— 2010. ‘Der neueste philosophische Versuch in Frankreich’ in: Franz Brentano, Schriften zur Ethik und Ästhetik. Hg. von Th. Binder und A. Chrudzimski. Frankfurt etc.: ontos, 4–17. (= Franz Brentano. Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften Bd. 3) Brentano, J.C.M. 1962. ‘Personal Reminiscences’ in: P. P. Ewald (ed.), Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction. Utrecht: Published for the International Union of Crystallography by A. Oosthoek’s Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V., 540-549. —— 1966. ‘The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano’ in Revue Internationale de Philosophie 78: 477-482. Goller, P. 1989a. Die Lehrkanzeln für Philosophie an der philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Innsbruck (1848 bis 1945). Innsbruck. On Kastil: 123-151); on Mayer-Hillebrand: 190-197. —— 1989b. ‘Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand als Brentano-Forscherin. Zur Wiederentdeckung der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie in Österreich nach 1945’ in Tiroler Heimat 53: 153-164. Haller, R. 1999. ‘Roderick M. Chisholm (1916–1999)’ in Nachrichten [der] Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für österreichische Philosophie 9: 13.18. —— 2001. ‘Eine kurze Selbstdarstellung’ in: Th. Binder et. al. (ed.), Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Philosophie an der Universität Graz. Amsterdam / New York: Rodopi, 575-601. Hemecker, W. 1991. Vor Freud. Philosophiegeschichtliche Voraussetzungen der Psychoanalyse. München / Hamden / Wien: Philosophia. Kastil, A. 1987. ‘Editor’s Foreword to the German Edition’ in Franz Brentano, On the Existence of God. Lectures Given at the Universities and Vienna (1868– 1891). Edited by Susan F. Krantz. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 338–346. —— 1951. Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos. Eine Einführung in seine Lehre. Bern: A. Francke. Kraus, O. 1937. ‘Brentano-Gesellschaft in Prag’ in Philosophia 2: 1-4 [Sonderdruck].

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Marek, J. C. 2001 ‘Roderick M. Chisholm. Phänomenologische und analytische Philosophie’ in Th. Binder et. al. (ed.), Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Philosophie an der Universität Graz. Amsterdam / New York: Rodopi, 487-519. Mayer-Hillebrand, F. 1951. Verzeichnis der Manuskripte Franz Brentano. Katalogisiert im Herbst 1951 von Franziska Mayer Hillebrand. Innsbruck. Unpublished typescript. —— 1952. ‘Franz Brentanos wissenschaftlicher Nachlass’ in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 6: 599-603. —— 1963. ‘Remarks concerning the interpretation of the philosophy of Franz Brentano. A reply to Prof. Srzednicki’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23: 438-44. —— 1963. ‘Rückblick auf die bisherigen Bestrebungen zur Erhaltung und Verbreitung von Franz Brentanos philosophischen Lehren und kurze Darstellung dieser Lehren’ in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 17: 146-69. —— 1968. ‘Franz Brentano: Der Werdegang seines philosophischen Denkens’ in Philosophie in Österreich, 12-30 (= Wissenschaft und Weltbild). Melle, U. 2007. ‘Die Husserl-Edition, ihre Wirkungsgeschichte und die Rezeption des Nachlasses. Stadien einer Wechselwirkung’ in Editionen – Wandel und Wirkung. Hg. von Annette Sell. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer 221-237. (= Beihefte zu editio, Bd. 25) Oberkofler, G. 1989. ‘Einleitung’ in Franz Brentano, Briefe an Carl Stumpf 1867– 1917. Unter Mitarbeit von Peter Goller herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Gerhard Oberkofler. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt 1989, ix– xxiii. Schad, B. 1984. ‘Der Brentano-Nachlaß im Stadt- und Stiftsarchiv Aschaffenburg’ in Brigitte Schad (ed.), Die Aschaffenburger Brentanos. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Familie aus unbekanntem Nachlaß-Material. Aschaffenburg: Geschichtsund Kunstverein e.V., 11-15. Srzednicki, J. 1962. ‘Remarks concerning the interpretation of the philosophy of Franz Brentano’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23: 308-16. Stegmüller, W. 1965. Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie. Eine kritische Einführung. Dritte, wesentlich erweiterte Auflage. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner. Teichroew, A., F. Baumann and M. McAleer. 2004. Sigmund Freud. A Register of his Papers in the Sigmund Freud Collection in the Library of the Congress. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress: Washington D.C. Zumr, J. and T. Binder. 1992. Masaryk und die Brentano-Schule. Beiträge zum gleichnamigen Symposium vom 15.–17. Oktober 1991. Praha/Graz.

ABSTRACTION AND RELATION, FOLLOWED BY SELECTED LETTERS FROM BRENTANO TO MARTY FRANZ BRENTANO Edited by Guillaume Fréchette and translated by Robin D. Rollinger

EDITORIAL REMARKS GUILLAUME FRÉCHETTE

1 Historical and philological details The following essay (text I) and the letters related to it (text II) were written between March and April 1899 in Palermo. The original handwritten document is preserved at the Houghton Library of Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) and classified in the series ‘Epistemology and Logic’ (Erkenntnistheorie) under the number EL 87, under the title ‘Object, Reality, Being, Relation (Before 1903)’ (‘Gegenstand, Wirklichkeit, Seiendes, Relation (vor 1903)’). A handwritten copy of the document is classified in another series, ‘Psychology’ (Psychologie) under the number Ps 21, bearing the title ‘Abstraction (1899)’. Page numbers used here refer to the original manuscript in EL 87. The title chosen for this edited version, ‘Abstraction and Relation’ (henceforth AR) is a compromise between the two different titles, but it also refers to the two main issues of this manuscript. As such, the manuscript was conceived as an essay (Brentano speaks of his ‘Abhandlung’ in his correspondence with Marty concerning the manuscript) but there are no indications in the Nachlass that AR would have been a standalone essay. Considering the corresponding letters (also edited here), it would be a safe estimation to say that AR was the first version of a larger essay that Brentano never published, or maybe even a chapter from a larger work on substance that he was obviously preparing at that time.1 1

There are numerous manuscripts in the Nachlass concerning substances, relations, and abstractions that were written between 1893 and 1901. We also find extensive letters from that period between Brentano and Marty that discuss these subjects. One of them, written by Brentano on Nov. 24th 1893, announces a ‘complete theory of the ens rationis in opposition to the ens reale’ that Brentano sketched out in ‘one sleepless night’. The sketch is labelled as TS14 in the Nachlass under the title ‘Realität und Intentionalität’. See also M32 ‘Vom Relativen’ (1899); M42 ‘Von der Substanz’; M43 ‘Vom Begriff der Substanz’; M44 ‘Substanz–Akzidenz’; M50 ‘Von der Substanz’(1900); M56 ‘Wesenhaft –Unwesenhaftes’. The manuscript M50, ‘Von der Substanz’, also written in Palermo, but a year after AR, even contains a detailed table

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The topic of abstraction, which holds an important place in the letters and the essay presented here, was already an important subject of discussion between Brentano and Marty by the end of the 1890s. We find extensive letters discussing a manuscript on abstraction by Marty in October 1897 (see letter 1065 and 1072 for instance), but these discussions also continue after 1899 (see for instance the exchange between Marty and Brentano in October 1900, catalogued as a letter from Marty to Brentano, number 2382). This very intensive period of correspondence between Brentano and Marty marked the transition from Brentano’s Viennese ontology to the later phase of his philosophy, often called the ‘reistic’ phase, in which he supposedly abandoned the view that intentionality was a relation. Manuscripts from this period are still largely unknown. They were almost systematically left aside by Mayer-Hillebrand, Kastil and Kraus in their edition of the Brentano-Marty correspondence and in their editions of Brentano’s posthumous works. These editors often comment directly on Brentano’s original manuscripts, adding here and there that the concerned pages are advocating the ‘old’ theory which has been ‘abandoned’, and therefore contain nothing philosophically pertinent. Unfortunately, AR has been considered by them to be such a manuscript. 2 Remarks concerning the manuscript The essay is divided into six larger parts composed of 43 sections with two additions. Sections one to eight form the introduction of the essay and contain mainly terminological remarks (Part 1); Sections nine to 17 discuss the properties of objects of presentation in parallel with the kinds of presentations. A distinction between presentation and concept is also proposed (Part 2); Sections 18 to 29 deal with correlative concepts. Different kinds of correlations are discussed (Part 3); Sections 30 to 33 include a short discussion of abstract and concrete names (Part 4); Sections 34 to 40 address once more the different issues concerning correlatives (Part 5); finally, sections 40 to 43 discuss distinct and indistinct intuitions and their relation to abstraction (Part 6). As Brentano himself acknowledges at the end of the essay, in a of contents of a work on substance, in which the AR was obviously to be integrated. M50 has been edited by Wilhelm Baumgartner in Brentano (1993).

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note that was obviously addressed to Marty, “not everything is so perfectly thought out and exposited as the matter demands […] the disadvantage of haste is felt, along with other things, towards the end.” Parts 1 to 3 are well-structured and present central distinctions with clarity. Parts 4 to 6 are conceived more as a discussion of the distinctions presented in the three first parts than as independent parts. 3 Relatives and correlatives Brentano’s views on intentionality evolved considerably during his career. There are indeed significant modifications to the conception of intentionality advocated at different stages of his work. In his habilitation thesis, for example (Brentano 1867), he discusses the intentional relation in Aristotelian manner, in analogy with the feeling of the warmth: when I feel the heat of the oven, I am not myself materially warm, but warmth is ‘objectively’ contained in my perception of it, like the imprint of the seal in the wax: It is not insofar as we become cold that we sense what is cold; otherwise plants and inorganic bodies would sense; rather it is only insofar as what is cold exists within us objectively, i.e. as known, that it is sensed, that is, insofar as we take coldness in, without ourselves being its physical subject. (Brentano 1867, 80; Engl translation 54ff. Compare with Aristotle, 425b20)

According to this early conception, intentionality is understood analogously to the power of the soul of receiving the sensible forms of things without matter (424a18). In other words, if I perceive x, the intentional object is the form of x. If x exists or not doesn’t seem to play any role here, since only the form of x, and not its matter, is involved in the intentional relation. The Psychology of 1874 doesn’t really depart from this terminology, but it introduces another characterization of the intentional relation by stating its directedness toward something and by making intentionality the mark of the mental. The varieties of intentional relations are such that not only sensings are intentional, as seemed to be the case in 1867. Finally, somewhere after 1903, Brentano seemed to have abandoned the idea that intentionality was a relation. Mental acts are instead seen as accidents of the soul, meaning that talk about intentional objects should be reduced to talk about concrete individuals and their properties. If I think of Sherlock Holmes, the object of my think-

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ing is not considered to be the intentional object expressed by ‘Sherlock Holmes’: it is a thinker thinking of Sherlock Holmes.2 This interpretation of Brentano’s ‘reistic turn’ is still widely acknowledged today. It was first developed by Brentano’s disciples Oskar Kraus and Alfred Kastil in their editions of Brentano’s works and it was later continued by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand, a student of Kastil, in the 1950s and 1960s.3 This reading was later carried on by Chisholm and, although with important variations, defended still today– for instance by Barry Smith and Arkadiusz Chrudzimski.4 Most notably, Werner Sauer and Mauro Antonelli have challenged this account in recent years. According to Sauer (2006), the standard interpretation of Brentano’s reistic turn misses something fundamental in the development of Brentano’s conception of relation and correlation. What is changing in Brentano’s reistic phase is not the abandonment of the idea that intentionality is a special kind of relation to ‘intentional objects’, but rather, and more precisely, the abandonment of the idea that mental acts have correlates. A few explanations should help to understand this distinction. Following Aristotle’s conception of relations, Brentano believes that the object of a mental activity is object of something, namely the mental activity. In this sense, the object (of a mental act) belongs to the category of relatives (Cat. 10/11b24), like what is known (in relation to knowledge), what is seen (in relation to sight) or what is heated (in relation to heating). In this sense, relatives usually need a correlative: what is heated is relative to the heating, and so it can be said that the heating is a correlative of what is heated. But unlike heating, the object (of a mental act) doesn’t have a correlative since, according to Aristotle, it would mean twice repeating the same thing. 5 The same holds, according to Aristotle, with vision: Similarly sight is the sight of something, not ‘of that of which it is the sight’ (though of course it is true to say this); in fact it is relative to colour or to something else of the sort. But according to the other way of speaking the same thing would be said twice,–‘the sight is of 2

Compare Brentano (1933, 19). See for instance Brentano (1933); (1925); (1963) and (1954). 4 Compare Smith (1995) and Chrudzimski (2001). 5 Compare Metaphysics V 15, 1021a26: “ ‘that which is thinkable’ implies that the thought of it is possible, but the thought is not relative to ‘that which it is the thought’; for we should then have said the same thing twice.” See also 1056b34 and 1057a9. 3

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that of which it is’ (Met V, 15).

Aristotle’s comment is based on the following distinctions: a) numerical relatives, like quantities, have correlates: ½ is contained 4 times in 2; 2 is contained in ½ ¼ times; b) relatives involving operations also have correlates: what can heat is relative to what can be heated; what is heating is relative to what is being heated. They often are referred to as active and passive potencies; c) epistemic relatives, like knowing, thinking and seeing involve a (non quantitative) notion of measurement; the truth of knowledge is ‘measured’ by the knowable object, the veridicality of visual perception is ‘measured’ by the seen object, etc. Therefore, knowing, thinking and seeing have relatives (the known, the seen, the thought), but these are not correlatives, since the relation between knowledge and the object known (or between visual perception and the seen object) is not a reciprocal relation. Of course, Aristotle adds, it is true to say that visual perception is ‘of which it is the visual perception’, or that ‘thinking is of which it is the thinking.’ (a) and (b) are relatives because ‘their very essence includes in its nature a reference to something else’ (pros ti); but (c) are relatives because ‘something else involves a reference to it’. Saying that (c) relatives ‘include in their nature a reference to something else’ is true, but uninformative: it aims at saying that the knowing is related to ‘the known’ (or to ‘the thing of which it is the knowing’), and not to, say, to ‘the snow’s being white’. In that sense, one could say that (c) relatives have correlates only in a mere linguistic sense. Interestingly, as Sauer (2006) and Antonelli (2009) pointed out, Brentano uses exactly the same distinction between (c) relatives and (a) and (b) relatives in the Psychology: The concept of sound is not a relative concept. If it were, the act of hearing would not be the secondary object of the mental act, but instead it would be the primary object along with the sound. And the same would be true in every other case, which is evidently contrary to Aristotle’s view. (Brentano 1973, 101)

Hence, the intentional object is not a relative (the sound is not a ‘heard

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sound’; the horse is not a ‘presented horse’), although ‘it is true to say’, as Aristotle pointed out, that knowing is related with ‘something which is known’. Therefore, it seems that one should distinguish, according to Brentano, between the intentional object of an act (the sound, the horse) and its correlate (the ‘presented horse’, the ‘heard sound’). This double structure (act-correlate vs. act-intentional object) plays a role when it comes to inner perception. Seeing red consciously, red is present only as a part of a secondary object (my seeing of red). In inner perception, it is present only as a correlate of my seeing (the ‘seen red’). In contrast, in outer perception, I only see red, and not a ‘presented red.’6 As we said, according to Chisholm’s and Kraus’s understanding of the reistic turn, Brentano would simply have abandoned the idea that intentionality was a relation. However, using the distinction between correlates and relatives, one can tell another story of the evolution of Brentano’s conception of intentionality: Before the reistic turn, correlates (the ‘presented horse’, etc.) are said to be irrealia, whose ontological status is accepted by Brentano and which play a role in his theory of inner perception. After the reistic turn, he simply rejects the idea that this correlate has any ontological status and comes back to Aristotle’s idea about epistemic relatives: their correlates are such only from a merely linguistic point of view.7 Therefore, if we accept this reading of the evolution of Brentano’s conception of intentionality, the main change that characterizes the reistic turn are that there are relatives that don’t have correlates, but the structure of the intentional act remains the same throughout the early and the late Brentano. This structure could be summarized in the following way: 1) every mental phenomenon is directed toward (pros ti) an object; 2) The object doesn’t have to exist in the outside world (think of Sherlock Holmes, for instance); 3) A presentation of Sherlock Holmes has no relative, but it has a correlate (the ‘presented Sherlock Holmes’) Now, (3) has two interpretations, pre-reistic and reistic: 6

See Antonelli (2009) on the impact of this distinction on inner perception. In this context, the late Brentano often uses the expression ‘ens linguae’. See De Libera (2011) concerning the late medieval origins of this expression. 7

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(3)pre-reistic: when I have presentation of Sherlock Holmes, there is only one proper relative, the presenting; the object named by ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is an improper relative of the presenting construed by demodification of the non-real correlate;8 (3)reistic: when I have a presentation of Sherlock Holmes, I present in recto a thinker-of-Sherlock-Holmes, and in obliquo Sherlock Holmes. The presenting has a relative (‘thinker-of-SherlockHolmes’) but no (non-real) correlate. The ‘presented-SherlockHolmes’ is thus a mere ens linguae. Of course, Chisholm and Kraus would disagree with (3): for them, the presentation of Sherlock Holmes has a relative, which is nothing else than the correlate (the ‘presented Sherlock Holmes’). Following this interpretation, the reistic turn is the abandonment of the idea that intentionality is a relation (pros ti). This interpretation has heavy consequences and is bound to marginalize Brentano’s analyses before the reistic turn. 4 Correlations in AR AR definitely belongs to Brentano’s pre-reistic period, but it contains elements which are not present in his earlier Viennese period. The account of abstraction presented here in connection with his account of correlatives is an original attempt to give an account of general concepts in terms of non-real correlates. Between 18869 and 1900 at least, Brentano held the thesis that correlative pairs of concepts have an ontological basis in virtue of which they are correlative: for example, the concept expressed by ‘thinking’ is correlative to the concept expressed by ‘thought’ in virtue of the correlation that holds between the act of thinking and the thought: the first relatum of the correlation is called ‘essential’ (wesenhaft), the second inessential (unwesenhaft). There are no thoughts without acts of thinking, and there are no such acts without the corresponding thoughts. This relation of mutual dependence holds between an essential, or ‘real’ entity on the one hand, and an inessential or ‘irreal’ entity on the other. Accepting the ontological correlation means accepting that both extremities of the relation belong to one’s ontology. 8 9

Compare Fréchette (this volume) on demodification. See the letter from Brentano to Marty from February 15th, 1886.

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Between the dates mentioned above, Brentano hadn’t any problem with such an inclusion of irrealia (the non-real correlates) in his ontology, which are those at play in AR: The essential (or substantial: ‘wesenhaft’) is real, the non-substantial is non-real. This opposition is also analogous to the opposition between concrete and abstract. Here, it is interesting to note that Brentano supports here a distinction between a thing and its properties, where things are concrete, but where ‘concrete’ is associated more generally with real, and is capable of causation. Here, the concept of substance is at play, wesenhaft being Brentano’s term for the Aristotelian adjective ‘substantial’. In this context, general concepts (like redness) are always conceived of as undetermined but are still dependent, as correlates. This situation brings Brentano in the position of saying that abstractions are individual, but in their nature undetermined, and this undetermination provides them with the kind of universality needed for being transferable.10 5 Brentano’s letters to Marty Letters 1081 to 1099 discuss issues related with the manuscript, which Brentano sent to Marty in at least one earlier version. They give an insightful perspective on the redaction of AR and on connected issues. Letter 1081 is the most extensive letter, and it discusses issues on the distinction between sensory and abstract presentation. Here, the opposition distinctness/confusion is discussed, and Brentano seems to abandon the view that abstract presentations and sensory presentations are distinguished by matters of degrees.11 He claims that they have no familiarity (keine Verwandtschaft). The issues discussed in the letter are more extensively dealt with in the last part of the manuscript. Letter 1082 continues the reflection, supporting the rejection of a general concept of presentation under which both abstract and sensory presentations belong. The kind of discrimination involved in the perception of red and blue as distinct parts of violet is presented as a conceptual discrimination that has nothing to do with sensory discrimination. Further issues concerning space are also discussed, although they do not relate to the issues discussed in the manuscript. 10 In our view, AR gives an account of the abstraction of general concepts in terms of non-real correlates. For a reading of AR in terms of immanent objects (as identical to non-real correlates), see Chrudzimski (2004, 138ff.). 11 This view was still defended in Vienna in the 1880s, see for instance Brentano (1954).

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Letter 1084 deals with correlative concepts and relations, which is the subject of the first part of the manuscript. Brentano’s point is that there are objects which are nothing in isolation, but are “rather what they are only in connection with another”⎯for example, a boundary and something bounded by it. After discussing some practical remarks concerning his and Marty’s annotations to the original manuscript (letter 1085), Brentano answers some questions from Marty regarding the relation between substance and accident (letter 1086). The last letter (1087) concludes the discussion regarding the manuscript on correlatives and abstraction with a remark on intensity. References

Antonelli, M. 2009. ‘Franz Brentano et l’“inexistence intentionnelle”’ in Philosophiques 36: 467-487. Brentano, F. 1867. Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom nous poietikos. Mainz: Franz Kirchheim —— 1925.Versuch über die Erkenntnis, Leipzig: Meiner. —— 1933. Kategorienlehre. Leipzig: Meiner —— 1954. Grundzüge der Ästhetik. Bern: Francke Verlag. —— 1963. Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie. Bern: Francke / Hamburg: Meiner. —— 1973. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. —— 1993. ‘Von der Substanz’ in Axiomathes 1: 25-40. Chrudzimski, A. 2001. Die Intentionalitätstheorie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer. —— 2004. Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer. De Libera, A. 2011. ‘Le direct et l’oblique. Sur quelques aspects antiques et médiévaux de la théorie brentanienne des relatifs’ in A. Reboul (ed.), Philosophical Papers dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, Geneva. URL: http://www.philosophie.ch/kevin/festschrift/ Sauer, W. 2006. ‘Die Einheit der Intentionalitätskonzeption bei Brentano’ in Grazer philosophische Studien 73: 1-26. Smith, B. 1995. Austrian Philosophy. Chicago: Open Court.

ABSTRACTION AND RELATION FRANZ BRENTANO Edited by Guillaume Fréchette and translated by Robin D. Rollinger 1. We call an ‘object’1 anything towards which a psychical activity is directed. 2. We call a ‘being’ anything that is. Since that towards which a psychical activity is directed often is not, it is clear that not every object is a being. If it is not a being, we say that it obtains ‘objectively [gegenständlich]’, but not ‘actually’. 3. ‘Actual’ designates in particular the contrast in the use of a name that is used now with, now without additional modifying words, which estrange it from its meaning. It means the same as ‘in the proper sense’. Hence, in contrast with a presented triangle, we speak of an actual triangle, in contrast with an alleged friend, of an actual friend, in contrast with counterfeit gold, of actual gold, in contrast with a dead person, of an actual person, in contrast with a poet not favored by the muses, of an actual poet. (The first of these is a poet only if the concept is expanded by a leveling that includes the bungler along with the artist). [Further contrasts are:] a painted head – an actual head, a future or past ruler – an actual ruler, a possible case – an actual case, a king on the chessboard – an actual king, a habitual knowing – an actual knowing, a seeing in the sense of having the faculty of sight – an actual seeing, etc. Hence we also say ‘actually obtaining’ in contrast with ‘objectively obtaining’. We must be cautious here of thinking that what is only 1

Translator’s note: Here Brentano writes Gegenstand, followed by Object in brackets. Both terms are normally translated as “object”. Both terms are translated as “object” here. Whenever the term Object is used, this will be indicated in brackets.

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objective, but not actual, is not actually objective. It is actually an object, but it is not actual. 4. ‘Something’ seems to me synonymous with ‘possible object’. That is to say, under this concept falls that which is as well as that which is not, and consequently everything. (Of course there are equivocations, as when we say: “There is something in that!”, “That is saying something”, “something or nothing”, etc.) 5. A ‘thing’ is a most ambiguous expression. It is used for ‘something’. “Let us speak of something else” = “Let us speak of other things”. It is used for ‘being’. In this sense we speak of actual things in contrast with ‘things of thought’. It was used for things that are possible without contradiction in contrast with an ‘absurdity’.2 Yet, we do speak of an ‘impossible thing’ almost in the sense of an ‘absurdity’. It is sometimes used in the sense of something subsistent in contrast with a lack, an empty space, an impossibility, an ability, a law, a property, etc. 6. The same must be said of the expression ‘matter’ (Sache)3 (res). It denotes many items. It designates the same as ‘object’ when we say, for instance: “to the matter at hand” (zur Sache). Or: “what are these matters [was sind das für Sachen]”?,4 and when we say: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus. (In the case of a negative true judgment it is especially evident that this means only that the object is judged as it demands or as the correctness of the judgment requires it, in other words, that it is appropriately judged. In a similar way it might be said of certain acts of love and hate that they are an adequatio rei et cordis.) We use ‘real’ in the sense of ‘subsistent’. We speak of ‘really identical’ in contrast with ‘conceptually identical’. Here it might be thought that it means the same as ‘actually identical’, for ‘conceptual’ [identity] is not actual identity. Here, however, res can here mean the same as ‘falling under a concept’. ‘Matter’ stands here also in contrast with ‘person’ and again in contrast to ‘male and female’. An organism without a cell nucleus, as neither feminine nor masculine, would be 2 Translator’s note: The word translated here as ‘absurdity’ is Unding. While this German word serves Brentano to strengthen his point, it is still conveyed by the English translation. 3 Translator’s note: This word can be translated into English in various ways, especially as ‘thing’ or ‘matter’, depending on the context. Without any context it has no exact English equivalent. 4 Translator’s note: This question would normally be translated thus: “What kinds of things are these”.

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matter as something neuter [sächlich]. 7. The concept of the ‘subsistent’ differs from that of being (and of what actually is [des wirklich Seienden]). There is being that begins without itself being caused, [but the beginning of which] is simply due to the fact that something else is caused. Likewise it ceases to be without itself undergoing a destructive influence or being deprived of a sustaining influence. It begins, persists, and ceases to be parergo, so to speak. Example: a collective, a multitude of beings of the same kind, persisting independently of each other. When these are all causally brought about, the collective comes about along with them. When one [member] in this [collective] perishes, the collective ceases to be along with it. As it is not causally brought about, it likewise does not causally bring about anything. The causal bringing-about that is sometimes ascribed to it is rather only a multiplicity of [instances of] causal bringing-about, arising from the simultaneity of the effect of all relevant members [Einheiten]. Such being we call ‘non-subsistent’. Something subsistent, by contrast, is that which as such can and does causally bring something about, and which as such cannot begin without being causally brought about and cannot as such cease to be without as such undergoing an [destructive] influence or removal of a sustaining influence. Nota bene: Instead of the expression ‘subsistent’, as noted above, sometimes ‘thinglike’, ‘real’, or ‘pertaining to factual matters’ [sachlich] is used, but sometimes also ‘having ontic status’ [“seinshaft”]. It would be better to avoid all these expressions due to ambiguity (cf. 2, 5, and 6 above). Nota Bene: It is of course also possible, in accordance with what has been said, to divide the presentations of non-being [Nichtseienden] into ones of the subsistent and [ones of] the nonsubsistent. For the latter, the object would be subsistent if it were to be. 8. It is not necessary for something to be in order for a psychical activity to be directed towards it. Thus we said that not every object is a being. Rather, objects fall into [two classes:] beings and non-beings. If a being is an object, we call it an external object insofar as it is in the proper sense, [while we call it] an internal object insofar as it is objective: the former also a being in the external world, the latter a being in the world of consciousness.

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9. Since every psychical activity is directed towards something, each one has an object. Thus every presenting activity in particular, which is the basis for every other (judging or feeling5) [activity], [has an object]. Whoever presents an object takes the object up into itself in a certain sense. Thus, in the case of presenting, we speak of what is taken up (conceptus): concept in the broadest sense, in which it agrees (deckt) with [the] presentation. That which is ‘presented to oneself’ and that which is ‘taken up’ and ‘grasped’ are expressions which mean the same and [do so] by drawing upon related sensory images. 10. If a being is presented, such that an object in the external world obtains, this external object is never presented exhaustively, but rather, as one says, in terms of certain features, but not in others. As a consequence, every object in the external world can be an object of different presentations. One of them grasps it in terms of these features, [while] another [grasps it] in terms of other features, others either completely or partially. Or, what means the same, there are different presentations, the objects of which are identical with each other. Something white, for instance, can be something sweet. Presentations that differ in content have the same object. (The features that are taken up in the presentation are its content.) 11. Then again, it can happen that a presentation becomes indeterminate by not taking up the object in all of its features. Such presentations are called general presentations, general concepts. 12. Such general presentations are not found among our intuitions, but rather only among our thoughts which are formed from intuitions by means of abstraction. (Here the expression “thought” is restricted to a class of presentations. Very often judgments are also included under this term.) 13. Thoughts are partly of intuitive, partly of predicative unity. The latter is given when the objects for presentations that differ in content are identified, and hereby a presentation of this identical [object] is formed. Thus, for instance, the presentation of oxygen as of a body that undergoes these combinations and solutions under such and such circumstances and others under other circumstances. 14. Also presentations of predicative unity can be indeterminate, 5

Translator’s note: the term translated as „feeling“ here (gemütlich) is used in a broad sense, which also includes volition as well as feeling or emotion.

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general, but they can also be determinate, individual, and they can indeed even be over-determined, sub-individual insofar as positing-asidentical [Identischsetzung] external objects of presentations with conflicting features forms an object to which there cannot correspond not merely a multiplicity, but also a unity of being. Such presentations are called contradictory concepts. 15. The generality of concepts differs in degrees. Larger, smaller extension (to be distinguished from greater or smaller content and often opposite to it).6 16. As real identity [reelle Identität] obtains together with conceptual difference whenever an object of the external world falls under different presentations, there obtains conceptual identity together with real difference [bei reeller Verschiedenheit] whenever different objects of the external world fall under the same presentation. 17. We distinguish concepts that have objects (actually or possibly): ones that have objects which are as such identical and ones that have objects which are per accidens identical. They are identical “as such” when they are presented in terms of the same features, per accidens when presented in terms different features (which perhaps do not require each other). (Here the various senses of “as such” might be utilized and distinguished.) 18. Among that which is, the subsistent as well as non-subsistent, there is to be found what is connected with another such that each of them is what it is only in connection with the other, and for this reason can be thought and grasped only in connection with it. A point and that which as such contains the point as a boundary [is a being of this kind]. The same goes for something greater and something smaller, double and half, something that presents and the presented, etc. (Here, as elsewhere, clarity [is obtained] only by indicating examples.) These are called correlatives. 19. I said that each of the correlatives, as it cannot be without the other, can also not be thought without the other. Nor is each of the concepts of them something in isolation, [but] each one [is] what it is only in connection with the other. If indeed I think of a boundary, I also think of what is bounded and think of the boundary as a boundary 6 Translator’s note: Here Brentano is referring to a traditional doctrine, according to which the greater the content, the smaller the extension and vice versa. He leaves it undecided here whether this always the case.

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of the bounded, the bounded as bounded by the boundary. If I think of something that presents, I also think of something presented and think of something that presents as presenting something presented, that which is presented as presented by something that presents.7 Yet, there are nonetheless truly two of the concepts and each of them can stand as a subject or predicate in relation with other concepts without the other one standing in such a relation. Thus, for instance, something presented is contradictory. A boundary is two-dimensional. 20. If we ask whether thinking, whenever we think correlative concepts, is one or many or twofold, the answer to be given in accordance with what has been said is: It is a twofold thinking. Yet, neither of the two acts of thinking is something in and of itself, but rather each one what it is only in connection with the other one. 21. We also said that neither one of the correlatives can be accepted and grasped without the other one. After all, if I grasp that something is larger than something smaller, I also grasp that something is smaller than something larger, and so forth. And again something similar to what was said earlier is true. The acts of grasping are also two: but neither of them is something in and of itself, each one being what it is only in connection with the other one. 22. We said that the correlatives are sometimes subsistent, sometimes not subsistent. For they come about, cease to be, insofar as one or the other of the two quantities comes about or ceases to be. No operation or destruction is directed at the larger as such. Each of the two relations here is called a relatio rationis. In the case of that which presents and that which is presented we are concerned with something subsistent and something nonsubsistent. One [relation] is called a relatio rationis and the other one a relatio realis (it would be better to say [in this particular case]: subsistentnonsubsistent relation). In the case of the boundary and that which is bounded as such the same is apparently true, since the bounded is a correlative of boundaries, which is brought about insofar as these are brought about. 7

This gives rise to the casus obliqui, of which there would be much more if the system of inflexion were fully developed, particularly as many as [there are] modes of relation. Whenever a casus obliquus is applied, we are dealing with a correlate. Yet, this is often left inexplicit, e.g. son of Darius = son of one who has procreated, being Darius = something procreated, being male, by one who has procreated, being Darius. In other cases it may be explicit, but multiplied with attributes, e.g. child of rich parents.

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In the case of bridegroom and bride two nonsubsistents. In the case of husband and wife two nonsubsistents. In the case of name and that which is named two nonsubsistents. In the case of scholar and science two nonsubsistents. In the case of that which hears-and-sees and that which is heardand-seen two nonsubsistents. (Nota bene: That which hears-and-sees seems to name a correlative.) 23. What about the case of something operating and that which is operated on? That which operates as something operating cannot be subsistent. Insofar as it makes something that is being operated on, it as such becomes operating. But is something being operated on as such substantive? Apparently not! For insofar as the object operated on becomes what it is operated on as, e.g. warm, it also becomes an object being operated on as such (Aristotle). Then again, the contrary also seems to be the case. For the warm as such persists while it has already ceased to be as something-being-warmed. Here a special ceasing-to-be for that which is operated on as such apparently obtains. Consequently, of the two correlatives, that which operates and that which is operated on, one of them is apparently nonsubsistent, the other subsistent. (If someone says that there remains something-beingwarmed as long as there is something warm, for that which is warm is maintained, there nonetheless does not remain anything being warmed by something that warms.) 24. When we have the intuition of an extended black object, it consists of intuitions of smaller black objects and, in the final analysis, of black points which have the character of a boundary. If we accept that there are such points in reality, a double comingabout and double ceasing-to-be would be possible in their case a) through discoloration. Something not colored that would be in the location would become black; b) through change of location; something that is elsewhere would move here. For what is black is determined in its species by the color differentia, in its individuation by localization, what is here in its species by the local differentia, in its individuation by the quality. The individual, however, is that which comes about. This black thing is identical with this locally determined thing; this blackness non-identical with this local determinacy. This blackness

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and this local determinacy come about, however, at the same moment at which this black thing or, what is the same, this locally determined thing comes about. Should it now be said that this blackness or this black thing, this local determinacy or this locally determined thing is that which “cobecomes”? Certainly in the becoming of this black thing through local movement this blackness appears as something that co-becomes, and in the case of its becoming through discoloration this localization does so. If we would say that this localization becomes via a being-affected that is peculiar to it, that this blackness does so in the second case, the result would be that this black thing (which is identical with this locally determined thing) only co-becomes and is thus not something subsistent, but rather a collective. In the opposite case we would say that this blackness and this localization are nothing subsistent, but rather divisives. They can indeed certainly begin without as such being specifically affected, which does not agree with the concept of the subsistent. Consequently Aristotle is right, who considers the compositum / concretum as the subsistent. It is a subsistent thing with heterocategorical parts, each of which is a divisive, not a subsistent thing. The black thing = something having blackness, blackness according to its concept = had blackness, since it receives individuation via a part that is categorically alien to it. Now we see that it is also true of these correlatives that only one is a subsistent correlative, the other a nonsubsistent correlative. See above, p. 8 (=14187). [14187] 25. It seems possible to say in general of two correlatives: in no case are they both subsistent. What is under consideration here is a nonsubsistent pros ti or a pros ti to something nonsubsistent. Since the subsistent is very often confused with that which is, [14188] it is for this reason understandable how someone might come to believe that the relations as such do not even belong to that which is, that they are not in the external world, but only imported by our relating thought. For in one set of the cases both correlatives are as such non-subsistent, while in another set one of them is so, and without this one the other one cannot be. Consequently, if only something subsistent were something which is, no relation would in fact be something that is. They would all prove to be fictions. It is clear, however, that this opinion, which arises from a confu-

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sion, is false. It is certain that if a thing is larger than another one, the other one can truly be called a smaller one. There is thus in such a case something larger and something smaller, not merely somethingthought-larger and something-thought-smaller; they are in the external world, not merely in thought. It is only true to say that they as such are not subsistent things. 26. We say of something that is that it is identical with itself. Does a relation obtain here too in the external world? – It does not seem so; for belonging to every relation are two correlatives; here, however, no pair of correlatives seems to be given. Neither really nor conceptually does that which we call identical with itself seem to be different from that with which we call it identical. – The opposite is the case, however, for otherwise the statement that calls something that is identical with itself false. The correlatives, as this example teaches, need not [14189] be really different. We may not doubt, however, that they are conceptually different. The concept of something identical and that of that-with-which-something-is-identical are not the same. (Nor are the concept of something equal to another and that of something to which another is equal. Only in this case the real difference of the correlatives obtains in addition to the conceptual one.) (What is said here is to be considered precisely once again. The scholastics speak here of a relatio rationis ratiocinantis.) There is, also because correlatives may not to be really identical, nothing opposed to something affecting, maintaining, moving itself, etc. I repeat once again that in order for something to be a correlative in the external world it need not be something subsistent, but only something that is. And thus by saying that something identical with itself in the external world obtains this is not to say that it as such is something subsistent; the contrary is rather indubitable. [14191] 27. We have said above that blackness and something black are correlatives. The sense of these correlatives must be determined more closely. It is clear that this is not an identity. Otherwise, everything true of the one would be true of the other, and the relation of the one to the other would be the same as that of the latter to the former. The contrary is beyond doubt. It is equally clear that this is not a relation of part to part, as would

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be the case if the local determinacy were meant by “something black” insofar as it is connected with blackness. “Black” does not mean categorical part connected with blackness as another categorical part. Otherwise something colored could not be predicated of something localized and something localized of something colored. They would be no more identical than color and location. It is rather a relation of part to whole and whole to part. It is similar to the relation between black and blackened, wing and winged. Something blackened is = a whole having black. The dog, for instance, is blackened. Black is = had black (had as part). If it is cut off, it is not a black anymore. “Cut off” for it is like “dead” for person, a modifying attribute. Thus something black is = a whole having black, blackness = had blackness (had as part). The concept “blackness” is necessarily grasped simultaneously along with the concept “black”, and the acceptance of blackness is necessarily grasped simultaneously along with acceptance of what is black. 28. What is said, however, is misleading, and it seems necessary to exclude the wrong understanding explicitly. For “black” has various senses. If I call a body of the external world black, this means only that, by reflecting no rays of light, it becomes the cause of a black phenomenon. This concept lacks intuitive unity, and something similar is true of blackness which corresponds to it. What we had in mind above (under 27) was black as it is given to us in the phenomenon itself. From it, the phenomenon, an intuitive concept of black and another one of blackness are abstracted, the one correlative to the other simultaneously. 29. It is therefore a false presentation that the scholastics formed for themselves, that the concept “something black” was first abstracted and then the concept “blackness” was formed from this by means of predicating. No, the concept “blackness” is grasped insofar as we are conscious of grasping blackness in the sensory phenomenon, and for this very reason the concept arises as that of had blackness and for this very reason along with it that of what has blackness, i.e. of something black. Obj[ection]: (It seems, or else this would also be so, that the content of the concept demands it; however, it does not seem a priori

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required that we have that consciousness.) 30. If I make it more general through further abstraction, I ultimately arrive at a concept that coincides with the mode of being-had (as quality). For this reason the most general concept of quality is a category (in the original sense that is familiar from Aristotle). It is, however, not the subject, but rather the whole or the part that is to be understood as the correlate of this category. [14193] 31. Still other possible misunderstandings deserve explicit consideration. We need not believe that, because, in the one case of something black and blackness, that which is black, as what is designated by the concrete name, was the subsistent, every concrete name designates something subsistent. There are, after all, collectives that are designated by concrete names, such as army, state, and other non-subsistents as such, e.g. groom, bride, etc. 32. We should furthermore be on guard against believing that blackness is the content of the concept when that which is black is grasped as something black. Not at all! What is black as something black is not blackness. We can also speak of a blackness as blackness. Two concepts are there at the same time, what is black and blackness; the content in the one case is what is black as something black, in the other blackness as blackness (not as had, loved, preferred, fitting, etc., if this should be so in the particular case). 33. We should for precisely this reason on guard against an error, to which the name “predicated”, avoided by us, can give rise, namely to the belief that concepts such as blackness represent an object exhaustively and concepts such as black do not represent an object exhaustively, insofar as it is indicated here that still other attributes can belong to it. It is certainly true that many attributes of that which is black are no longer suitable for blackness. Nonetheless, it too can in truth have many attributes; for instance, it is non-redness, etc., indeed some such as: it is something that is not that which is black, which are not suitable for something black. Thus the tail has attributes which are not applicable to the caudate. If it were only intuitive concepts that were under consideration in the usage of concrete and proper names, it would be very easy to give a simple rule for their usage. It is different, since the contrary is the case. That simple rule thereby becomes a rule for one small part. The most general concrete

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expressions, just like most abstract ones, designate non-intuitive concepts. Consider: man, animal, God, nature, state, church, house, people, king, food, etc., etc. Even so, the almost universal matching in that which we find in the case of intuitive concepts may have its reason. 34. Let us return to the consideration of correlation in general. As in the case of black, there is also in the case of cause, which stands in correlation to the concept of effect, a corresponding abstract term. In that case blackness, in this one causality. There is none that is customary in the case of ‘effect’, but we might use the term ‘being-aneffect’ for this purpose, and it is clear that, as the concept ‘to cause’ stands alongside the concept ‘causing’, the concept of ‘to be effected’ stands alongside that of ‘being effected’. The concreta ‘something causing’ and ‘something being effected’ are correlatives. They are not identical concepts. How is it in the case of the abstracta: ‘to cause’ and ‘to be effected’. Every ‘to cause’ is the ‘to cause’ of a cause (gen. subj.) and of something caused (gen. obj.). It is a part of the cause. But not a part [14195] of something caused. Thus every ‘to be caused’ is the ‘to be caused’ of a cause (gen. subj.) and of an effect (gen. obj.). But not the part of a cause. There are thus in this case as well two concepts. 35. And as there no conceptual identity between “to cause” and “to be effected”, there is no real identity between them. (Otherwise the above-mentioned predicates could not apply one-sidedly.) Rather, it is here correct to say only that neither is something in isolation and each one is what it is only in connection with the other. Aristotle said that the “to effect” of one thing is the “to undergo” of another. He is apparently wrong. Perhaps he was misled by the circumstance that the abstractum appears as formal cause for him. There appears to be one cause, however, cases where things cannot be without each other (such as that which is effective as something effective and that which undergoes as something undergoing.) Yet, it would seem that this should be denied above insofar as the mutual dependency of the things formed, just as that of the forms, was asserted. 36. That which is intuited has intensity, whereas that which is thought does not. When I grasp what is thought in the intuition, the question is whether this act of perception has intensity, e.g. when I see red and I

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recognize it as red. It seems clear that with regard to each of the points belonging to the continuum from which red is abstracted there is an active abstracting and grasping. Hence, the judgment seems to have intensity. However, the intensity of the subject suffices, whereas the grasped concept, the predicate, is without intensity. 37. The grasped concept is the effect of intuition. Thus it stands to this intuition, as does every effect to its cause, in the relation of temporal contact of the later to the earlier. This temporal contact maintains itself for some time: for as long as the concept is grasped in the intuition, that is to say, as long as the concept lasts. Thus it is indeed possible for the concept to be named simultaneously [along with] the intuition. [14196] 38. When we grasp the concept of identity, this can be done with respect to the inner intuition which shows us identifying, predicating. What occurs in this case as well, according to Aristotle, is that two concepts make contact with each other temporally, and the predicating combines them insofar as the temporal point is, as a boundary, in a certain sense two. This is apparently correct. Nor can it be asserted as an objection that the point is nothing in isolation. The predication is simply continued for some time. It is similar to what was just said (no. 37) regarding the concept arising from intuition. 39. The same is true when we grasp premise and conclusion, end and means, and when we grasp the concept of a judgment that is evident from presentations and that of love arising from the goodness of objects. Here there is always found a continuous adjacency of something later and earlier. We need not allow ourselves here, however, to be led into believing that the concept of the premise was earlier than that of the effect, the concept of the end earlier than that of the means, the concept of that which makes something evident earlier than that of the evident, the concept of the good, or least what is correctly loved, earlier than that of correct love. [14197] 40. Our intuitions8 are not down to the smallest physical parts distinct. What is it that distinguishes intuition, insofar as it is distinct, from intuition, insofar as it is indistinct? Is it more intense? Impossible. Is it only in terms of its distinct parts able to become the cause of special 8

Cf. my marginal notes, always bearing in mind that this essay [is] the later one.

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abstractions, the object with which the mind is especially occupied? That may be so. The essence of sensory abstraction, however, cannot at all be sought therein. Violet becomes the cause of two abstractions, of red and blue. It is here a distinction via abstraction, of which the animals are incapable. We ourselves are in fact incapable delimiting physically here parts of red in contrast with parts of blue. It remains for us a confused mixture. This is not given in other cases, and this distinguishes the picture of distinct red and blue surface surfaces from the image of violet. It seems to me that here the multiplicity of the physical parts makes itself noticeable, which means roughly the same as the being-another of one in contrast with the other. This can also be so in the case of an animal. It seems awkward to explain in any other way the different consequences of the impressions with the equality of colors and yet with a difference of the presentation in the figure. It seems to me to be grounded in negatively predicative judgments, which however have, as double or triple judgments, also affirmative parts. In the case of distinguishing the distinguished are affirmed and negated of each other. Nota bene. When the distinction is a sensory one, it has continuity and intensity, also in its negative moment. It puts point in relation with point, though not in isolation, but rather as boundary in the bounded. The negation occurs only in [14198] the case of some distance and further. In violet, even in the most considerable extension, red and blue are not distinguished, but rather only one violet part from another. The distinguished part in itself would thereby be distinguished in a blue and red one. That is to say, in a certain extension red would not have to be confused with blue and blue with red. 41. Physical parts of an extension, which are as such distinguishable, are for this very reason different. Are we to say that for us all of them are, though not equal, extremely similar? Hardly! Here too there are degrees of similarity. However, they are not graspable as similar if they are not graspable as different. Only by means of inferences can we come to recognize them and make judgments regarding their similarity. 42. What, however, is similarity, and how do we come to measure and assess it? We call objects equal insofar as they fall under the same concept. Similar, insofar as they fall under concepts that differ to a small ex-

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tent. Similar is thus actually in some sense almost-equal (approximately equal). Some assert that similar objects are partly equal. If this is to mean that certain concepts under which they fall are in one part of their features in agreement, it is incorrect; if, however, what is meant is that certain concept under which they fall are the basis for certain equal concepts being connected to them, it must be conceded that this is so in all cases where we can speak of similarity: for instance, two timepoints relatively close to each other are relatively similar to each other, two that are relatively distant are relatively dissimilar. Of two relatively close time-points, however, it is true that, with respect to the time-points different from these two, a larger set is marked off in the same direction, a smaller one [14199] in the opposite directions. The same can be said concerning locations, tonal pitches, numbers, etc. Yet, it would certainly be wrong if we wanted to reduce the similarity of the 1003 and 1004 to relations that are common among 1, 2, 3, etc. as smaller numbers and among 1006, 1007, etc., and not rather to the small distance especially in the relation to the absolute multiplicity of one and another number. (The latter of significance: 3 and 5 appear as less similar than 1003 and 1005.) Still more! People speak of association by similarity and also especially of similar being associated with similar. I believe that association is to be spoken of only insofar as such associations occur with ease. This is why we call many objects that remind us of each other similar, and according as they are more reminiscent of each other, and objects which, insofar as they remind us of each other, bring about still other associations which appear proportionate to each other. Where such consequences are altogether absent, we may hardly speak of similarity. It is clear how it understandable from this why the mathematicians use the concepts of similarity as they do. Equal triangles do not remind us of each other, but similar ones do, as do other images, according to whatever standard that is implemented. 43. If we ask if what we have said is true for cases where we call bright similar to high (for tones), dark to low, this seems to me beyond doubt. Let ten dark impressions precede a black one three times in succession, and at the same time let ten deep tones precede one high one just as often. Then let ten bright impressions precede a dark one

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three times while the simultaneous succession of tones remains as before. In the first case something like harmony will be observed, in the second one the contrary in spite of the rhythmic regularity. It could be investigated whether feeling-effects or something else come into play. It seems out of place if, without further analysis, we should speak here of an immediate assessment of some sort of greater or less distance. It is also wrong to assume immediate assessments of distances of locations, colors, tones without running through the intermittent ones in some form with the indication of equally noticeable differences. If, however, this is wrong, how should we arrive at immediate assessments of greater and less distance between white and black in connection with sweet and bitter, cool and warm? For this very reason I still think that it is impermissible to explain in a unfelicitous compromise, along with Stumpf, the qualities of sensations of touch, smell, and taste as qualities of three different senses, though ones that would stand closer to each other than the others. Something similar to what I have said regarding the analogies to bright and dark is true regarding saturation and non-saturation and regarding the analogy of blue-yellow with a fifth, of blue-red with a minor, red-yellow with a major third, etc. Also regarding the analogy of affirmation with love, negation with hate, and regarding truth with the correctness of love (adaequatio rei et intellectus – adaequatio rei et cordis) and regarding evidence with the emotive act characterized as correct. They are reminiscent of each other. Why they are so, may be investigated more closely. I think that the investigation will not fail to lead to clarifications. PS. Addendum to 40: It would be desirable to conduct an experimental investigation (which would easily be possible) as to whether the distinguished parts within a bright surface, e.g. a white one, are more numerous than within a dark surface, e.g. a black one. If so, this would perhaps be the best explanatory basis for why a bright surface on a dark basis seemed larger than the other way around. It might also be investigated as to whether a spotted has more distinguishable parts than an equally large simple one. Yet, whatever the result may be, this does not alter the above remarks. In the marginal remarks on your manuscript I have worked out another conception. One or the other conception seems to be necessarily true. The one in the marginal remarks, however, could hardly be tenable. The sensory connection of parts to other parts is interesting. Such a

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connection is also seen in sensory contrast. Also in the law of the victory of the contours in the competition of visual fields. [14201] Addendum to 24: Earlier we used to say that locality is the foundation of the concept of quality. Why not also say that quality is the foundation of locality? We see that there is reciprocity. Hence the term foundation is not the right one. It would be consistent to say that the highest generic concept for locations and qualities is one. (For “reciprocally part” is contradictory.) Instead of saying that the one concept is the foundation of the other, we would rather have to say that the one is in correlation to the other and thus there obtains reciprocal inseparability, as is found between correlatives. Thus it is and similar, insofar as locality in general necessarily belongs to that whole to which quality stands in relation, in order for this to be, and quality to that whole to which locality stands in relation, in order for this to be. *** I read over what has been written, very much aware that not everything is so perfectly thought out and exposited as the matter demands. Settle for my good will and make allowances for the many disincentives and disturbances! The selection of questions already has value. But also, at least in some respect, a correct answer is also given. As said, however, I hold back in view of the abundance of problems and the greatness of their difficulty. I let a friend see the results, in spite of all that remains incomplete for me. The initial preparatory and at the same time easiest questions are discussed most clearly. The disadvantage of haste is felt, along with other things, to towards the end.

SELECTED LETTERS TO MARTY FRANZ BRENTANO Edited by Guillaume Fréchette and translated by Robin D. Rollinger

Brentano to Marty, Letter 1081 Florence, 10 February, 99 Dear friend, Thanks very much for your kind letter. I shall answer it before my departure for Palermo, which is set for the day after tomorrow. Kastil has sent me the announcement of his doctoral ceremony which he has also appended – perhaps not so cleverly and suitably – to an announcement of a new position as an intern at the bank. Why emphasize that with such enthusiasm? It will not be beneficial to his habilitation and will create prejudices against the necessary concentration of his ability. He is sometimes lacking tact. May Kraus soon be quick as well! My condition is not yet satisfactory. The case is delicate enough, since catarrh has stricken my renal pelvis. The doctors definitely promise good convalescence, but a long hesitation of healing. On the last point they are certainly not wrong. Still, after all, we are in God’s hand. I am at times engaged in philosophical musings. Thus the question recently imposed itself upon me concerning the difference of distinct phenomena from non-distinct ones. It seemed to me that an animal has distinct phenomena. It already has this when it has in its visual field blue and red at the same time without these getting mixed up into violet. Without distinct seeing all differences of shape would be meaningless for it. Further, [it seems] that there is no affinity between abstract presentations and sensory part-presentations. The abstract ones are

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something special as such, whereas the distinct ones are not so. They provide a constitutive contribution to the presentation of the whole. It is not as if we had a confused the entire presentation and in addition to this especially distinct presentations of the parts. If so, someone who would see the board with black and white squares would see it on the one hand as completely gray, the single squares on the other hand as white in some cases and black in others. It is not like this. The entire presentation is constituted by the distinct part-presentations. If we want to call the distinct-presenting “consciousness” and any other presentation an unconscious sensory apprehension of parts (as some people in fact seem to be inclined toward such a usage of language), unity should certainly be denied of this consciousness. Several objects can be distinctly presented. It may be the case, however, that insofar as some parts are distinguished others withdraw from distinction, and when these are then distinguished, the former lose their distinction. Our power often does not extend to all [distinctions] at the same time, though it does to many. In this case it is interesting to ask how things are when we recognize red and blue in violet. They are thus not distinguished as those on a speckled Easter egg. Should we say that the colors are distinguished, but not their relative locations? Or should we say that the colors are not distinguished while the similarity with red on the one hand and with blue on the other is noticed? This [similarity], however, would not be like that of a unitary color that would be between them. And thus this would recommend the first conception, which also most apparent in the case of harmonies. Yet, it is strange enough. Perhaps it is possible to bring about tactile sensations where no locations are distinguished (everything seems punctual), but heat and cold or another multiplicity of feeling-qualities [occur therein]. My memory speaks in favor of such an assumption. Further, like the sensory presentations, the sensory perceptions and affects are distinct and confused. In connection with these considerations the objection is met that the weak sensations and affects are to be composed from none of the extremely intense ones. This seems inconvenient, but only as long as we bear in mind that they are not composed from intense ones that are distinguished. If the ones distinguished are all weak, nothing of a strong sensation, a strong affect, strong pain, strong feeling of pleasure is noticed. It can, however, occur that a strong sorrow is

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distinguished with weak non-distinguished parts, some of which are pleasure, some suffering. It would perhaps be better to look at first for laws of distinguishing than to look for ones of sensory attention. It seems to be focused on distinguishing. (In other usage of language to overlap with this.) Nota bene: I would not, with Descartes, like to call that perception distinct whose parts are all distinct. It is distinct when it is itself distinguished within our perceiving functions. It is impossible that all parts at some time should be distinct.1 But now to your question! I read with interest your remarks concerning the changing usage with regard to the expressions “foundation” and “term”. Goudin apparently does not think of the form of a relation (equality, fatherhood, etc.), but rather something prior when he speaks of fundamentum. (Generatio is indeed not fatherhood, but rather the occurrence that has fatherhood as a consequence.) It would therefore not be white color of Socrates, but also of Plato, that would have to be the foundation of the equal whiteness of both. If the usage of language is always equivocal, it is perhaps better not to be committed to anything. It would lead to a verbal quibble. In the elaborations that I wrote to Kastil on your behalf a short time ago I avoid the expression “foundation” and speak (which is certainly in harmony with common usage) only of two terms of the relatives that are abstract and for each term semi-concrete, whereas in the case of what completely concrete “relative concept”, which I introduce here for the first time, cannot at all be spoken of. Also your remarks about analogy touch upon something that is important. You very briefly add something about equality that is not completely intelligible to me. Certainly equality in the broadest sense is apparently spoken of, where two objects fall under one and the same concept. Socrates and Plato are equal as human beings, dog and flee as animals. Three apples and three feathers as three. As far as analogy is concerned, the scholastics distinguish two things: A) Relation to the same term, whatever the mode of the relation may be. Thus they called the accidents analogous to each other, due to the relation to the on in the proper sense as the subject. (Aristotle does call the accidents analogous for this reason; he knows only 1

Translator’s note: The following sentence indicates that the word deutlich, which is usually translated as “distinct”, is in fact not a good translation for “distinct“.

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the second kind of analogy, to be mentioned forthwith.) B) When the position of the object towards certain others in its genus is similar or equal to that of an object of another genus towards certain other objects of its domain. You offer suitable examples in acceptance of the domain of judgment in its position towards rejection, which seems to be analogous to love in the domain of emotion in its position towards hate. The relation is contrast. But why do we call love and not hate analogous to affirmation? Perhaps because love aims at giving and maintaining being, while hate aims at destroying and changing becoming and being.2 If this does not suffice, we would have to assume the perception of particular similarity, which you are inclined to each. Truth and falsehood in the domain of judgment, in comparison with goodness and badness in the domain of emotion, offer yet another example. Here too, as in the previous case, there is a contrast and a kind of agreement with what is to be (we can say correspondence) in the case of truth and goodness; a conflict, a non-correspondence in the case of falsehood and badness. True judgments, good emotions are in their content blameless, praiseworthy. Evidence and being-characterized-as-correct of emotion offer yet another example. In that case a judgment is characterized as it ought to be in its content, in that case an emotion. Should we say that I thus find in both cases the same distinguishing feature? I don’t believe so. In the former case we find something that distinguishes a judgment, in the latter something that distinguishes an emotion, analogous but not equal. We could say “equally proportionate”. Love would not be capable of the same distinguishing feature. It is possible to form a common concept. But remains in a certain way external to the matter. This is especially clear in the case of love, where “characterized” contains a relation to the cognitive faculty. Another example is offered by moment in the case of time, point in the case of space. A set of common determinations can be given. The inner essence, however, remains a generically different one. (Notbeing-in-isolation in the case of the spatial point a dependence in

2

If someone accepts what exists, denies what does not exists, we may see that his judgments is in agreement with existence. But we may also say the same of someone who loves what exists and hates what does not exist. He harmonizes with what exists, whereas for someone else emotion is in conflict with what exists.

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accordance with multiple directions in the case of holoclery.3) Again, an example is offered by brightness and darkness in different sensory domains. Here we have a contrast in the extreme sense. (The different color-qualities of colors and tones, etc. are not contrasts in the sense of extremes.) We have a concrescence of these contrasts with the spatial determinations and perhaps with the color-qualities. (These too would be an example; I could not say, however, that there is a special similarity between c or d or the like and one of the three color-qualities, only that the opinion can be held with some degree of justification that the color-qualities of blue, red, and yellow are related as the fundamental tone is related to its minor third and its fifth, with which the melancholic impression of violet, the joyful one of orange (major third), and the gentle and usually fused one of green (fifth) would harmonize.) But why is a deep tone analogous to a dark color, the high tone to the bright color? Why is the sweet, cool, sour, tart analogous to bright tones and colors, the warm, bitter to dark ones? Why not the other way around? Is it the affects that cause us to pair off contrasts in this way? A dark color, a deep tone have something serious, even tragic, while a bright color has something more playful, cheerful. (People trill in high tones and a trill is certainly not suitable for a serious expression, already due to its skipping character.) Can we indicate anything else? I concede that we think that the matter is not exhausted with this (as what has been said hardly applies the warm and the cool). If we are unable to say something more, we would like to insist on an immediate impression of similarity, as you believe yourself to have established. In the case of the heterocategorial parts there are similarities of relations between local determination and what is locally determined, quality and what is determined in quality, etc. The concept “local determination” has a term, is abstract from the subject; what is locally determined is the relevant concretum. These are correspondences, though the relation is not simply and intrinsically the same; certainly approximations to correspondences. What appears objectionable to me from the outset is the thought of 3

Editor’s note: ‘holoclery’ (Holoklerie) is a construction by Brentano from the Greek ‘holo’ (whole) and ‘klero’ (a share), meaning the fullness of participation (Vollanteiligkeit), in which a boundary is related to its continuum in multiple directions. A low degree of participation is called meroclery (partiality of participation). Both terms were abandoned in later works and replaced by ‘plerosis’ (Plerose), using adjectives to specify the degree of fullness of participation.

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an immediate impression for a certain similarity in the case of the heterogeneous which causes us to ascribe to it the analogous position in the heterogeneous domain. By no means. Nor may such an impression come into consideration where many like relations can easily be indicated. Enough for now. Be lenient with a sick man. More from Palermo! Yours, FB

Brentano to Marty, Letter 1082

Palermo, Via Falde 1

February 1899

My dear friend, We are happy here. I write from the terrace, from where the view encompasses lake and mountain range and the city with its gardens, while the countless shades of orange take part in a divine beauty in golden glow. The weather is glorious. Thus, I hope, body and soul will convalesce. In Prof. Faggi I have found a scientifically receptive colleague. I am quite keen on freeing him altogether from Kant and initiating him in our school. May Italy be ruled both politically and philosophically from Sicily! My whole urge to teach and do research is awakened. How felicitously Plato defines love, especially in the noblest sense, as a desire to beget in the beautiful! How he writes truth about how the urge to beget loses its power in face of what is ugly! The riffraff in Vienna had undone my entire consciousness of a teaching profession, and now it awakes anew as lively as it was in the old days. I said also that the urge to do research stirs once again more and more.

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I have given a lot of time to the thoughts concerning distinct and indistinct presentations which were imperfectly indicated in my last letter. My opinion is now this: between distinct and indistinct presentation as such there is no difference. The distinct one is connected with the discrimination from something else. This is a judgment, more particularly a most complex one, insofar as relative negation is connected with affirmation. Individual parts are in this case that which is distinguished, which means that they are differentiated as to their locations. This is what takes place where blue and red are presented distinctly alongside each other. If I present violet and distinguish red and blue in violet, this is not a sensory discrimination, but rather a conceptual one. Animals never discriminate redness and blueness in violet. When do the judgments of discrimination attach themselves to the emergence of a presentation? – The laws are complicated. A certain magnitude is beneficial. It has been established that also exercise is a favorable condition. In order for it to be confirmed, certain conditions which are given in the state of attention are required for other judgments to join in. What makes up this state is not fully analyzed. We say to one person: pay attention! And his will thereupon notices it without his being able to account for what he notices. In a similar case, I say to someone: judge A! He utters it in speech and does not know what he is doing. Habit, however, has made him unconscious master of the utterance of A. Most people who have learned to be very attentive are thus unconscious masters of attending. As regards the question of the intensity of distinguishing and of attending the newest theory of attention provides the most secure support. The intensity of distinguishing itself must be differentiated from the intensity of the exertion that it takes. All of them lie in sensory phenomena, which may, however, accumulate and be very diverse; sometimes painful. Pardon me, for at the moment I am also writing in the utmost hurry. We have no furniture yet. The conversation with Faggi concerning the question about the synthetic character of mathematical axioms led me to very strange ideas, it seems to me. I found that objects of 4, 10, and multidimensions obtain, 3 dimensional ones that are an analogue of spaces, of which it can correctly be said that they have boundaries in infinity,

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that they are larger than infinite spaces, and that their magnitude differs in different directions, but are infinite in each one. Regarding the parallelism of two lines there is its expression: With a line from A to B, every line is of the formula: Line from

aA + (b − a)N b

to

aB + (b − a)N b

Emilie is calling me to dinner, so I leave my letter without a proper conclusion. For I think that your friendly disposition longs for a report. Greetings to our dear young friends, also Arleth and Ehrenfels. Emilie and Giovanni greet you. Faithfully as ever yours, F. Brentano

Brentano to Marty, Letter 1084 Palermo, Piazza del Campo 1

13 April, 99

Dear friend, You letter arrived yesterday. At the same time a card from Stumpf was received. He writes from Florence. Did he really wish to meet me there? – I replied, without revealing any suspicion, and instead invited him together with his wife to a visit in Schönbühl. I fear that I am only judging correctly when I suspect that he will not come. He no longer feels the need, once so lively within him, for me or for vigorous scientific advancement. A letter from Schell is enclosed. It delighted me. But what a position! Is faith still alive in the soul of the apologist? You will of course regard the exchange as a matter of confidence. In my reply I advised him definitively to change the professorship

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and showed him how as a professor of apologetics he will henceforth be paralyzed, if not muzzled. Every new work will find its way to the Index and be pulped after repeated humiliations. Kastil’s follies are hopefully temporary. His engagement to be married as such may of course be called a folly, which will have consequences whereby his whole life will suffer. But didn’t we also get carried away in youthful obsession to bad decisions? Perhaps you can at best mortify him by indicating to him how you yourself have borne much harder restrictions. The weather is bad. This may cause a fall back into conditions that had seemingly been overcome. Otherwise I am experiencing much that delights me. I have gained a whole lot of new friends. From various sides people who eager to learn are approaching me. Thus, once again, recently a medical practitioner to whom I spoke of monism and Darwinism. That lasted about 2 to 3 hours and at the end he took it upon himself to gain permission to visit me again. Strange! Something like this has never happened to me in Florence. Di Amato, in order to keep me here, wanted to make a villa by the seaside available to me. Prof. Faggi, however, is now unnerved since I poured out a 36 page criticism of his work. He only deserved this, because he presented to me an unprinted treatise in which he wanted to show 1) that bad things in the world refute the existence of God, 2) that bad things in the world in fact are the only thing that leads to the belief in God. My criticism dealt only with the first part. Since I saw therein someone already downgraded to be slain, I took it upon myself to give him the full 25 lashes one after the other. Personally, however, we are by no means enemies even today, for he is fortunately a better human being than a philosopher. As I was constantly called upon to be occupied with such matters and more, while this was in conflict with the doctor’s prescriptions, I have not yet gotten to answering your scientific questions. Yet, I have thought about them and, if I do not deceive myself, corrected many a mistake, eliminated much unclarity. Thus I hope bring to a proper end what I have hesitated about. Today I only say a word or two concerning relation, about which your thought remains restless. The solution of the conundrum lies in the truth, which has been demonstrated elsewhere, that there are objects which are nothing in isolation, but are rather what they are only in connection with another. In this way the point appeared to us as a

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boundary of something bounded by it. That which presents is also thus nothing in isolation, but is what it is only in connection with something presented, etc. Where two objects (not always two real ones) of this kind are given, the thought of them also has the distinguishing feature that the thought of one of them is, to be sure, not the thought of the other, but not something independent in relation to it. Hence the peculiar character of correlative concepts. By wanting to see here one concept that is applied in various ways, you obviously touched upon this kind of unity in multiplicity. We will do well, however, to accept the dependent multiplicity or rather the multiplicity of dependent units as true multiplicity. Only then can it occur without contradiction that each of the two concepts enters its special attributive connections. The essence of casus obliquus becomes completely clear from this point on. What we have here, though unexpressed, is always a correlative term. (There should be much more of this casus, while numerous equivocations, including prepositional connections, remain.) The expression “son of Diares” is = “son of the one who begets with the attribute ‘Diares’” = “something begotten, with the attribute ‘masculine’, by something that begets, with the attribute ‘Diares’”. The expression “suitcase of Marty” = “property with the attribute ‘suitcase of an owner with the attribute Marty’”. In addition, only cordial greetings for the day from a friend. Yours with devotion, Franz Brentano

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Brentano to Marty, Letter 1085 Palermo, Piazzo del Campo 1

23 April, 99

Dear friend, I do not want hold back the letter any longer. The issue demanded yet further consideration. But you are certainly already longing for and expecting the reply. I have been called upon a great deal. Nevertheless I have, as you will see, devoted some hours to your questions. The more I delved into them, the more I saw how much is interconnected here. I do not like making separations here. Only if everything is considered and it all agrees together and gives testimony to itself in this agreement, does the work seem mature and worthy of being brought before the public. How about you coming to Via Reggio? The sea air, the walks along the beach and, in the fully level pine forest, the mild, sublime location of the whole would certainly do you good. At our place, as in Schönbühl, you would be a dear guest. The apartment would have enough room. You could bring my manuscript there along with yours with the marginal notes, and we would perhaps finalize everything as desired. Otherwise I hope that this can be done in Schönbühl. I do not know whether I will go back there somewhat later. For the southern warmth is still a remedy for me. I am unfortunately not fully restored. At the end of the month we shall travel. We shall visit Syracuse and also stay in Naples (probably a little as well in Rome and Florence); but then, as was said, going to Via Reggio of which I am assured of the best. Here they simply want to persuade me to choose Palermo for my permanent residence. From here, they say, Italian philosophy can best be regenerated. It is certainly true that Palermo offers favorable conditions for my work. It is good for my nerves. There are also some people here who are sincerely, indeed passionately interested in philosophy. That has an inspiring effect. How rare such people are! In Vienna I had no one. Will I find them in another city of Italy? We shall exchange advice about all this orally. Of what I have written to you, the marginal notes are earlier. Cer-

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tain questions marks, written with ink, indicate to you what the comparison with the independent manuscript makes more apparent, that I have, upon further consideration, changed my view in this or that respect. Yet, I delete nothing. You may in that case check everything for yourself. Certainly you see also – and not for the first time here – that in favor of the truth there are times when I do not spare either my friend’s or my own opinion. One of the friends of wisdom here has paid me the honor of a work that he has written,4 which is in a long chapter concerned, I see, with the particularity of concrete names. The man is talented and sincerely striving. Mill in particular strongly influenced him. He is, however, even more of a nominalist than Mill. And thus his standpoint is apparently untenable. Nonetheless, you will find much of what there is in this work interesting. And I would send it to you if I did not think that he might still visit me with a desire to discuss some points orally. From Stumpf I have heard nothing more. I understand, for my invitation to Schönbühl was hardly convenient to him. He will not follow up on it or do so only reluctantly and might just as well not do so. Strange how almost the only thing of value to him anymore is his post and his position in the learned world! His philosophy lives no longer. It has been embalmed as a mummy. The better sealed off it is, the longer it hopes to be preserved in its bloodless state. Dilthey, Paulsen are probably no longer company for him. And whom does he care for? Noscitur ex socio, qui non cognoscitur ex se. Also from the lack of any philosophical companion the lack of a philosophical life in himself is revealed. All love! Yours in friendship as of old, F. Brentano

4

Translator’s note : See Cosmo Guastella, Saggi sulla Teoria della Conoscenza. Saggio Primo: sui limiti e l’oggeto della conoscenza a priori (Palermo, 1897). Brentano also wrote a 30-page manuscript “On Nominalism [Vom Nominalismus] (Ps 19, Palermo 1900) in which he criticized this work. It should be noted that when Brentano speaks of nominalism he means the view that there are in fact no general presentations.

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Brentano to Marty, Letter 1086 Palermo

End of April, 1899

Dear friend, Warm thanks for your kind letter. Eucken, however, seems wretched after this, as could be expected. Concerning Tönnies, of whom I have been especially told that he received a prize with the work, I shall once again make inquiries. Your two questions testify, as before, to your fine attentiveness. Ad 1. I reply that the presentation of the substance in which the accident is in fact contained is similar to a separable logical part. Thus in general to what subsists in that which inheres. Hence, often the difficulty of being on guard against confusions.5 Aristotle himself accepted even coinherent parts where heterocategorical logical ones were under consideration. Whoever individually or specifically grasps the accident completely in confuso brings to explicit consciousness neither the logical relation of difference and genus nor the relation of inherence of accident to substance. Thus we cannot say that the substance in general is explicitly apperceived if the accident is apperceived. It may in this case be only co-apperceived in general and in particular, like every part of apperception. It is correct only to say that, if an accident is apperceived as the accident of something, also a subsistent is apperceived as subsistent, but in that case also perhaps not explicitly according to this most general concept. If we assume that a certain presenting entity subsists in a certain accepting entity, the accepting entity may be apperceived while the presenting entity and the relation of the accepting entity as something inhering in the presenting entity are not explicitly apperceived. Only implicitly is the presenting entity included in the apperceptional presentation of the affirming entity, and thus more so is the presenting entity, as subsistent, [included therein] according to the general concept. 5

I have found it necessary to put together a group of criteria for making a decision. The criterion of one-sided separability often does not suffice because the possibility of a simultaneous existence, in isolation and as a logical part, appears to be given. Real separation of something inherent might be accepted here where something coinherent is omitted. The entire domain requires a more careful treatment after acknowledging heterocategorical logical parts.

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Ad 2. It is true that in case of discoloring occurs in the sensory presentation opposite colors are presented, and likewise that if persistence of a color is given the same color is presented infinitely many times. The latter does not contradict the principium indiscernibilum, because the acceptance of the primary object is of a different kind, continually modified, and sensory accepting is not inherent to sensory presenting, but is only a heterocategical part of the same psychical act. For this reason it happens that, as in the case where something is apodictically negated it appears as impossible, something that is sensuously presented appears as existent, indeed having been and the like and as persistent or changing. You have again proof for the caution that is required in treating the question whether inherence or logical part [is under consideration]. The law of the exclusion of the qualities of the visual field obtains only for presenting-affirming acts with the same mode of affirmation. I am glad that Eisenmeier is going to Swedenborg. I will still request from Amato the exact name of the location. As far as my health is concerned, is again satisfactory. Leaving aside my work on substance, I have worked out a small treatise for Amato, somewhat more than a print sheet. It treats the question of the recommendability of a belief which exceeds the proportion of rational grounds and those of monadology. I requested a copy and will bring it along with other fruits of my activity here to Schönbühl. We have apparently gained a companion in Vailati. Amato tells me of enthusiastic letters. Never has a thinker, he says, made such an impression on him. My Four Phases, according to him, are worth more than an entire handbook of the history of philosophy. The three pages in my empirical Psychology which touch on the categorical syllogism are on his view are worth more than the whole book by Hillebrand, etc. He did not tell or write me this directly, and that pleases me. In the last letter he asked me to thank you for the pamphlet that you were so friendly to send. Amato spoke of the prospect being good for Vailati to get the professorship for the history of philosophy in Palermo. There he would certainly have an effect to our liking. Our departure is approaching. Hopefully we will have good weather for the day on the lake. We will stay in Naples a few days. In mid May or probably already on the tenth or eleventh we will be in Florence. There I hope for a letter from you. The Rüprecht parents are

Selected Letters to Marty coming there. Cordially farewell from your devoted friend,

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PS. I am reading over the letter. The version of the passage about substance is by no means perfected. But my thoughts are correctly stated. Also what is meant will not remain an enigma for your acuteness of mind.

Brentano to Marty, Letter 1087 Messina

May 2nd, 99

Dear friend, We are in Messina. The departure from Palermo and the trip from there to the coast are beautiful memories. One of my newly acquired friends, who urgently requests my return, has some kind of malady that makes him believe (I cannot assess whether it is with or without reason) that any movement is harmful to him, every journey an endangerment to his life. “If you do not come to us”, he said, “I shall come to Florence, even if I will die then. Think about whether you want that on your conscience!” He is a talented, noble man. He wants to send me a treatise soon that is to be translated into German. You may evaluate him more closely here. As regards the hastily concluded work for you, I ask you once again not to allow the later parts of it to influence you without testing them. I myself now would like to report one thing already. A perceptual judgment that discerns the general concept as contained in the concretely intuitive one has no intensity. In face of a concretum with equally noticeable extension is it exists only one time, in face of one in which physical parts are discriminated as often as parts are discriminated. This multiplicity is an infinite one and one multiplicity of discrete judgments. In the case of the intensity of a judgment the

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multiplicity or the multiplicities would be noticeable and continuous ones. In this way the whole difficulty is solved. We shall perhaps come to Syracuse tomorrow, which I will perhaps then not leave before the end of the week in order to travel from here with the ship Alexandria to Naples. Emilie and Giovanni send their greetings and once again recommend Viareggio. Best wishes, F. Brentano

ABSTRAKTION UND RELATION FRANZ BRENTANO Edited by Guillaume Fréchette [14180] 1. Einen ‘Gegenstand’ (Object) nennen wir jegliches, worauf eine psychische Thätigkeit sich richtet. 2. Ein ‘Seiendes’ nennen wir jegliches, was ist. Da das, worauf eine psychische Thätigkeit gerichtet ist, oft nicht ist, so ist klar, daß nicht jeder Gegenstand ein Seiendes ist. Ist er kein Seiendes, so sagen wir, er bestehe nur ‘gegenständlich’, aber nicht ‘wirklich’. 3. ‘Wirklich’ bezeichnet nämlich den Gegensatz in dem Gebrauch eines Namens, der bald mit, bald ohne modificierende, dem Sinn entfremdende Beiwörter angewandt wird. Es heisst so viel wie ‘im eigentlichen Sinn’. So spricht man, im Gegensatz zu einem vorgestellten Dreieck, von einem wirklichen Dreieck ; im Gegensatz zu einem vermeinten Freund, von einem wirklichen Freund ; im Gegensatz zu falschem Gold von wirklichem Gold ; im Gegensatz zu einem todten Menschen, von einem wirklichen Menschen ; im Gegensatz zu einem von der Muse nicht begünstigten Dichter von einem wirklichen Dichter (der erste ist Dichter nur durch verflachende Erweiterung des Begriffs, die mit dem Künstler den Stümper umfasst) ; ein gemalter Kopf ein wirklicher Kopf ; ein zukünftiger oder gewesener Herrscher – ein wirklicher Herrscher ; ein möglicher Fall – ein wirklicher Fall ; ein König auf dem Schachbrett – ein wirklicher König ; ein habituelles Erkennen – ein wirkliches Erkennen ; ein Sehen im Sinne von Sehvermögen besitzen – ein wirkliches Sehen, usw. usw. So sagen wir denn auch wirklich Bestehn im Gegensatz zu gegenständlich bestehn. Man muß sich hier hüten, zu meinen, das, was nur gegenständlich, nicht aber wirklich ist, nicht wirklich Gegenstand sei. Es ist wirklich Gegenstand, ist aber nicht wirklich.

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4. ‘Etwas’ scheint mir synonym mit einem möglichen Gegenstand, d.h. es fällt unter diesen Begriff das, was ist, wie das, was nicht ist, und somit ausnahmslos alles. (Freilich kommen Äquivocationen vor, wie wenn wir sagen : an dem ist etwas ! Damit ist etwas gesagt. Etwas oder nichts, usw. [14181] 5. Ein ‘Ding’ ist ein höchst zweideutiger Ausdruck. Es wird gebraucht für ‘etwas’. “Sprechen wir von etwas Anderem” = “Sprechen wir von anderen Dingen”. Es wird gebraucht für ‘Seiendes’. In diesem Sinne sprechen wir von wirklichen im Gegensatz zu ‘Gedankendingen’. Es wird gebraucht von etwas widerspruchlos Möglichem im Gegensatz zu einem ‘Undinge’. Doch sprechen wir anderwärts von einem ‘Ding der Unmöglichkeit’ nahezu im Sinn von ‘Unding’. Es wird manchmal auch im Sinn von etwas Wesenhaftem gebraucht im Gegensatz zu einem Mangel, leeren Raum, etwas Möglichem, einer Fähigkeit, einen Gesetz, einer Eigenschaft usw. 6. Dasselbe muss von dem Ausdruck ‘Sache’ (res) gesagt werden. Er bezeichnet sehr vielerlei. Er bezeichnet so viel wie ‘Gegenstand’, z.B. wenn wir sagen: zur Sache. Oder: was sind das für Sachen, und weiter wenn wir sagen ‘veritas est adaequatio rei & intellectus (beim negativen, wahren Urtheil ist es besonders erleuchtend, daß hiermit nichts anderes gesagt wird, als daß der Gegenstand so beurtheilt wird, wie er es verlangt oder wie es die Richtigkeit des Urtheils es erfordert ; mit anderen Worten, daß er entsprechend beurtheilt wird. Ähnlich könnte man von gewissen Acten der Liebe und des Hasses sagen, sie seien eine adequatio rei et cordis). Wir gebrauchen ‘real’ im Sinne von ‘wesenhaft’. Wir sprechen von ‘real identisch’ im Gegensatz zu ‘begrifflich identisch’. Hier möchte man meinen, es bedeute so viel vie ‘wirklich identisch‘, denn die ‘begriffliche’ ist keine wirkliche Identität. Doch könnte hier ‘res’ soviel wie ‘unter einem Begriff fallendes’ heißen. ‘Sache’ steht auch im Gegensatz zu ‘Person’ und wieder im Gegensatz zu ‘Mann und Weib’. Eine Monere, als weder männlich noch weiblich, wäre sächlich. [14183]1 Es scheint mißlich, so äquivoke Ausdrücke wie ‘Ding’ oder ‘Sache’ als philosophische Termini zu verwenden. 7. Von dem Begriff des Seienden (wie auch des wirklich Seienden) unterscheidet sich der des ‘Wesenhaften’. Es giebt Seiendes, welches beginnt, ohne selbst gewirkt/verursacht 1

Pages 14182 and 14183 have been mistakenly switched in the Manuscript collection.

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zu werden, einfach dadurch, daß etwas anderes verursacht/gewirkt wird. Ebenso hört es auf, ohne daß es selbst einen zerstörenden Einfluß erfährt oder eines erhaltenden Einflußes beraubt wird. Es beginnt, besteht und hört auf so zu sagen en parergo. Beispiel: ein Collectiv, eine Vielheit voneinander unabhängig bestehender gleichartiger Seienden. Indem diese alle gewirkt werden, entsteht das Collectiv mit. Indem diesen eines vorgeht, hört das Collectiv mit auf. Wie es nicht gewirkt wird, so wirkt es auch nicht. Das ihm unter Umständen zugeschriebene Wirken ist vielmehr nur eine Vielheit von Wirken, die sich aus dem Zugleichsein des Wirkens aller betreffenden Einheiten ergiebt. Solches Seiendes nennen wir ein ‘unwesenhaftes’. Etwas ‘wesenhaftes’ dagegen ist dasjenige, was als solches wirkt oder wirken kann, und was als solches nicht beginnen kann, ohne als solches gewirkt zu werden, und als solches nicht aufhören kann, ohne als solches einen Einfluß oder den Wegfall eines erhaltenden Einflußes zu erfahren. NB : Statt des Ausdrucks ‘wesenhaft’ wird, wie oben bemerkt, manchmal ‘dinglich’, ‘real’, oder ‘sachlich’, manchmal aber auch ‘seinshaft’ gebraucht. Es dürfte besser sein, alle diese Ausdrücke wegen der Mehrdeutigkeit (vgl. oben 2, 5 und 6) zu vermeiden. NB : Natürlich kann man, dem Gesagten entsprechend, auch die Vorstellungen von nicht Seiendem in solche von Wesenhaftem und Nichtwesenhaftem scheiden. Für jene, wäre der Gegenstand wesenhaft, wenn er wäre. 8. Es ist nicht nöthig, daß etwas sei, damit eine psychische Tätigkeit sich darauf richte. Wir sagten darum, daß nicht jeder [14182] Gegenstand ein Seiendes sei. Die Gegenstände zerfallen vielmehr in Seiende und Nichtseiende. Ist ein Seiendes Gegenstand, so nennen wir es, insofern es im eigentlichen Sinne ist, äusserer Gegenstand, insofern es gegenständlich ist, innerer Gegenstand ; jenen auch ‘Gegenstand in der Außenwelt’, diesen Gegenstand ‘in der Welt des Bewusstseins’. 9. Da jede psychische Thätigkeit sich auf etwas richtet, so hat jede einen Gegenstand. So insbesondere jede vorstellende Thätigkeit, die jeder anderen (urtheilenden oder gemüthlichen) zu Grunde liegt. Der Vorstellende nimmt den Gegenstand in gewissem Sinne in sich auf. Daher spricht man beim Vorstellen von einem Aufgenommenen (conceptus), Begriff im weitesten Sinne, in welcher er sich mit [der] Vorstellung deckt. Das ‘sich-vorgestellte’ und das ‘Aufgenommene’,

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‘Erfasste’ sind Ausdrücke, die dasselbe und mit Anlehnung an verwandte sinnliche Bilder besagen. 10. Wird ein Seiendes vorgestellt, so daß ein Gegenstand in der Außenwelt besteht, so wird dieser äußere Gegenstand nie in erschöpfender Weise vorgestellt, sondern, wie man sagt, nach gewissen Merkmalen, nach anderen aber nicht. In Folge davon kann jeder Gegenstand in der Außenwelt Gegenstand verschiedener Vorstellungen sein. Die eine erfasst ihn nach diesen, die andere nach anderen Merkmalen, entweder durchaus oder theilweise anderen. Oder, was dasselbe sagt, es giebt verschiedene Vorstellungen, deren Gegenstände mit einander identisch sind z.B. ein Weißes kann identisch mit einem Süßen sein. Inhaltlich verschiedene Vorstellungen haben denselben Gegenstand. (Die Merkmale, nach welcher der Gegenstand in der Vorstellung aufgenommen ist, bilden ihren Inhalt). 11. Wiederum kann es geschehn, daß eine Vorstellung, indem sie den Gegenstand nicht nach allen seinen Merkmalen aufnimmt, unbestimmt wird, d.h. daß eine Vielheit von Gegenständen in der Außenwelt ihre entsprechen können. Man nennt solche Vorstellungen allge- [14184]meine Vorstellungen, allgemeine Begriffe. 12. Solche allgemeine Vorstellungen finden sich nicht unter unsern Anschauungen, sondern nur unter unsern aus den Anschauungen mittels Abstraction gebildeten ‘Gedanken’. (Hier wird der Ausdruck ‘Gedanke’ auf eine Classe von Vorstellungen beschränkt. Sehr häufig begreift man darunter auch Urtheile). 13. Die Gedanken sind theils von anschaulicher, theil von prädicativer Einheit. Letztere ist dann gegeben, wenn für Vorstellungen verschiedenen Inhalts die Gegenstände im Denken identifiziert werden, und hiedurch eine Vorstellung von diesem Identischen gebildet wird. So z.B. die Vorstellung des Sauerstoffs als eines Körpers, der unter gewissen Umständen diese, unter andern andere Verbindungen und Lösungen erfährt. 14. Auch Vorstellungen mit prädicativer Einheit können unbestimmt, allgemein sein; sie können aber auch bestimmt, individuell, ja sie können auch so zu sagen überbestimmt, unterindividuell sein, indem durch (absolute oder hypothetische) Identischsetzung der äußeren Gegenständen von Vorstellungen mit widerstreitenden Merkmalen ein Gegenstand gebildet wird, dem nicht bloß keine Vielheit, sondern

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auch keine Einheit von Seiendem entsprechen kann. Solche Vorstellungen heißen widersprechende Begriffe. 15. Die Allgemeinheit der Begriffe ist von verschiedenen Graden. Größerer, geringerer Umfang (zu unterscheiden vom größerem oder geringerem Inhalt und vielfach im Gegensatz zu ihm.) 16. Wie, wo ein Gegenstand der Außenwelt unter verschiedene Vorstellungen fällt, reelle Identität bei begrifflicher Verschiedenheit besteht, so besteht, wo verschiedene Gegenstände der Außenwelt unter dieselbe Vorstellung fallen, begriffliche Identität bei reeller Verschiedenheit. 17. Man unterscheidet Begriffe, welche Gegenstände (absolut/wirklich oder hypothetisch/möglich) haben, die als solche, und solche, welche Gegenstände haben, die per accidens identisch sind. ‘Als solche’ sind [14185] sie identisch, wenn sie denselben Merkmalen nach, ‘per accidens’, wenn sie nach verschiedenen, (vielleicht nicht einmal einander fordernden) Merkmalen vorgestellt sind. (Hier wäre des Weiteren zu verwerten und den mehrfachen Sinn des ‘als solche’ zu unterscheiden). 18. Unter dem Seienden, dem wesenhaften wie unwesenhaften, findet sich solches, was so mit einem andern verbunden ist, daß jedes von ihnen, was es ist, nur in Verbindung mit dem andern ist, und ebendarum auch nur in Verbindung mit ihm gedacht und erkannt werden kann. So ein Punct und ein den Punkt als Grenze enthaltendes als solches. So ein Größeres und Kleineres, Doppeltes und Halbes. So ein Vorstellendes und Vorgestelltes u. dgl. (Hier, wie vielfach anderwärts, Klarheit nur im Hinblick auf die Beispiele.) Man nennt sie Correlative. 19. Ich sagte, daß jedes der Correlative, wie es nicht ohne das andere sein, so auch nicht ohne es gedacht werden könne. Auch von Ihren Begriffen ist keiner etwas für sich, jeder, was er ist, nur in Verbindung mit dem andern. In der That, denke ich eine Grenze, so denke ich auch ein Begrenztes und denke die Grenze als Grenze des Begrenzten, das Begrenzte, als durch die Grenze begrenzt. Denke ich ein Vorstellendes, so denke ich auch ein Vorgestelltes und denke das Vorstellende als ein ein Vorgestelltes Vorstellendes, das Vorgestellte als ein von

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einem Vorgestellten Vorgestelltes.2 Aber dennoch sind der Begriffe wahrhaft 2 und jeder von ihnen kann als Subject oder Prädikat mit andern Begriffen in Beziehung stehen, ohne daß es der andere thut. So z.B. ein Vorgestelltes ist widersprechend. Eine Grenze ist zweidimensional. 20. Fragt man, ob das Denken, da, wo man correlative Begriffe denkt, eines oder vieles, resp. ein zweifaches, sei, so ist, dem Gesagten entsprechend, zu antworten: Es ist ein zweifaches Denken. Aber auch von den 2 Denkacten ist keiner etwas für sich, vielmehr jeder, was er ist, nur in Verbindung mit dem andern. 21. Wir sagten auch, daß keiner der Correlative ohne das andere anerkannt und erkannt werden könne. In der That erkenne ich, daß ein Größeres als ein Kleineres, so erkenne ich auch, daß ein Kleineres als [14187] ein Größeres ist usw. Und wieder gilt ähnliches wie früher. Auch die Erkenntnisacte sind 2; aber auch von ihnen keiner [ist] etwas für sich ; jeder [ist], was er ist, nur in Verbindung mit dem anderen. 22. Wir sagten, die Correlativa seien theils wesenhaft, theils nicht wesenhaft. Im Fall des Größeren und Kleineren haben wir es mit 2 Unwesenhaften zu thun. Denn sie werden, hören auf, indem das eine oder andere der beiden Größen wird oder aufhört. Kein Wirken oder Vernichten ist auf das Größere als solches gerichtet. Mann nennt jede der 2 Relationen hier eine relatio rationis. Im Fall des Vorstellenden und Vorgestellten haben wir es mit einem Wesenhaften und einem Unwesenhaften zu thun. Man nennt die eine ein relatio realis, die andere eine relatio rationis (besser wäre: wesenhafte-unwesenhafte Relation). Im Fall der Grenze und des Begrenztes als solchen gilt, scheints dasselbe, da das Begrenzte ein Collectiv von Grenzen ist, das hervorgebracht wird, indem diese hervorgebracht werden. Im Falle von Bräutigam u. Braut 2 Unwesenhafte 2

Dies der Anlaß zu den casus obliqui, deren bei vollständiger Ausbildung des Flexionssystems viel mehr sein würden, nämlich so iviele als Beziehungsweisen sind. Wo immer ein Casus obliquus angewandt wird, hat man es mit einem Correlat zu thun. Doch ist dasselbe oft unausgesprochen z.B. Sohn des Darius= Sohn eines Erzeugthabendes, welcher Darius = Erzeugtes, welches männlich, von einem Erzeugthabenden, welcher Darius. Anderweitig mag es ausgesprochen, aber mit Attributen vermehrt sein z.B. Kind reicher Eltern.)

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Im Falle von Gatte und Gattin 2 Unwesenhafte Im Falle von Namen und Genannten 2 Unwesenhafte Im Falle von Gelehrter und Wissenschaft 2 Unwesenhafte Im Falle von Hörendes-und-Sehendes und Gehörtes-undGesehenes 2 Unwesenhafte (NB Ein Hörend-und-Sehendes scheint ein Collectiv zu nennen) 23. Wie ists im Falle von Wirkendes und Gewirktes? Das Wirkende als Wirkendes kann nicht wesenhaft sein. Indem es das Gewirktwerdende macht, wird es selbst wirkend. Aber ist das Gewirktwerdende als solches etwas Wesenhaftes? Es scheint, nein! Denn, indem der gewirkte Gegenstand das wird, als was er gewirkt wird, z.B. warm wird er auch ein als solcher gewirktwerdender (Aristoteles) Und doch scheint auch wieder das Gegentheil der Fall. Denn das Warme als solches besteht fort, während es als Gewärmtwerdendes schon aufgehört hat. Es besteht also scheints hier ein besonderes Aufhören für das Gewirktwerdende als solches. Somit scheint von den Correlativen Wirkendes und Gewirktwerdendes eines unwesenhaft, das andere wesenhaft. (Sagt man, es bleibe ein Gewärmtwerdendes, so lange als ein Warmes, indem das Warme sich selbst erhalte, so bleibt jedenfalls nicht ein von dem Erwärmenden Gewärmtwerdendes). 24. Wenn wir die Anschauung eines ausgedehnten schwarzen Gegenstands haben, so besteht dieselbe aus Anschauungen kleinerer schwarzer Gegenstände und in letzter Analyse aus Anschauungen schwarzer Puncte, die den Charakter der Grenze haben. Nehmen wir an, solche schwarze Puncte gäbe es in Wirklichkeit, so würde ein doppeltes Entstehen und doppeltes Vergehen bei ihnen möglich sein a) durch Verfärbung. Ein Nichtfarbiges, das an dem Ort wäre, würde schwarz; b) durch Ortsveränderung, ein anderswo seiendes bewegte sich hierher. Denn das Schwarze ist in seiner Species durch die Farbendifferenz, in seiner Individuation durch die Örtlichkeit, das Hierseiende in seiner Species durch die Ortsdifferenz, in seiner Individualität durch die Qualität bestimmt. Das Individuum aber ist das, was wird. Dieses Schwarze ist mit diesem Örtlichbestimmten identisch; diese Schwärze mit dieser örtlichen Bestimmtheit nicht-identisch. Diese Schwärze aber [14190] sowohl als diese örtliche Bestimmtheit werden in demselben Augenblick, in dem dieses Schwarze oder, was dasselbe sagt, dieses örtlichbestimmte wird.

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Soll man nun sagen, diese Schwärze, oder dieses Schwarze, diese örtliche Bestimmtheit, oder, dieses örtlich Bestimmte sei das Mitwerdende? – Jedenfalls scheint beim Werden dieses Schwarzen durch örtliche Bewegung diese Schwärze ein Mitwerdendes, und im Falle seines Werdens durch Verfärbung diese Örtlichkeit. Würden wir sagen, das eine Mal werde diese Örtlichkeit durch ein ihr eigenes Gewirktwerden, im zweiten Fall diese Schwärze, so würde sich ergeben, daß dieses Schwarze (welches mit diesem örtlich Bestimmten identisch) nur mitwerde, also kein Wesenhaftes, sondern ein Collectiv sei. Im entgegengesetzten Fall würden wir sagen, daß diese Schwärze und diese Örtlichkeit nichts Wesenhaftes, sondern nur Divisive seien. In der That können sie jedenfalls beginnen, ohne als solche eigens gewirkt zu werden, was mit dem Begriff des Wesenhaften nicht stimmt. Somit hat Aristoteles recht, welcher hier das Compositum/Concretum als das Wesenhafte betrachtet. Es ist ein Wesenhaftes mit heterokategorischen Theilen, deren jeder ein Divisiv, nicht ein wesenhaftes Ding ist. Das Schwarze ist = Schwärze habendes, die Schwärze ihrem Begriffe nach = gehabte Schwärze, da sie durch einen ihr kategorischfremden Theil die Individuation empfängt, somit sind beide Correlative. Wir sehn nun, auch von diesen Correlativen gilt, daß nur eines ein wesenhaftes, das andere ein unwesenhaftes Correlat ist. vide supra, S.8(=14187) [14191] 25. Es scheint allgemein gesagt werden zu können, daß von 2 Correlativen in keinem Fall beide wesenhaft sind. Hier handelt es sich um ein unwesenhaftes pros ti oder um ein pros ti zu einem Unwesenhaften. Da man nun sehr häufig das Wesenhafte mit dem Seienden [14188] verwechselt, so ist es daraufhin begreiflich, wie mann dazu kommen konnte, zu glauben, daß die Relationen als solche gar nicht zum Seienden gehörten, daß sie nicht in der Außenwelt seien, sondern nur durch unseres beziehendes Denken hineingetragen würden. Denn in einem Theil der Fälle sind beide Correlative als solche unwesenhaft, in einem anderen Theil eins, und ohne dies kann das andere nicht sein. Somit wäre, wenn nur ein Wesenhaftes ein Seiendes wäre, in der That keine Relation seiend. Sie erwiesen sich alle als Fictionen. Es ist aber klar, daß diese aus einer Verwechslung hervorgegangene Meinung falsch ist. Es ist sicher, daß, wenn ein Ding > als ein anderes ist, das andere mit Wahrheit ein kleineres genannt werden

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kann. Es giebt also in solchem Fall ein Größeres und Kleineres, nicht bloß ein Größergedachtes und Kleinergedachtes; sie sind in der Außenwelt, nicht bloß im Denken. Nur das ist richtig, daß sie als solche keine wesenhaften Dinge sind. 26. Wir sagen von einem Seienden, es sei identisch mit sich selbst. Besteht auch hier eine Relation in der Außenwelt? – Es scheint nicht; denn zu jeder Relation gehören 2 Correlativa; hier aber scheint kein Correlativenpaar gegeben. Weder reell noch auch begrifflich scheint das, was wir identisch mit sich selbst nennen, von dem, womit wir es identisch nennen, verschieden zu sein. – Dennoch ist das Gegentheil der Fall, sonst wäre der Satz, der das Seiende mit sich identisch nennt, falsch. Die Correlativa müssen, wie dies Beispiel lehrt, nicht [14189] reell verschieden sein. Daß sie aber begrifflich verschieden sein müßen, daran dürfen wir nicht zweifeln. In Wahrheit ist der Begriff eines Identischen und eines Mit-dem-etwas-identisch-ist nicht derselbe. (Ähnlich auch nicht der Begriff eines einem andern gleichen und eines, dem ein anderes gleich ist. Nur kommt hier zur begrifflichen noch die reelle Verschiedenheit der Correlative.) (Das Hiergesagte ist noch einmal genau zu überlegen. Die Scholastiker sprechen hier von einer relatio rationis ratiocinantis). So steht denn auch deshalb, weil die Correlative nicht reell identisch sein dürften, nichts dem entgegen, daß etwas sich selbst wirkt, erhält, bewegt, usw. Ich wiederhole es indeß nochmals, daß, damit ein Correlativ in der Außenwelt sei, es nicht etwas Wesenhaftes, sondern nur etwas Seiendes sein muß. Und so ist denn damit, daß das mit sich Identische als solches in Wirklichkeit besteht, nicht gesagt, daß es als solches etwas Wesenhaftes ist; vielmehr ist das Gegentheil unzweifelhaft. 27. Wir haben oben gesagt, daß Schwärze und Schwarzes Correlativa seien. Es kommt darauf an, den Sinn dieser Correlation näher zu bestimmen. Es ist klar, daß hier keine Identität vorliegt. Alles, was vom einen würde sonst vom andern gelten, und die Relation des einen zum andern dieselbe, wie die von diesem zum ersten sein. Das Gegentheil ist außer Zweifel. Es ist ebenso klar, daß nicht eine Relation von Theil zu Theil vorliegt, wie wenn unter dem Schwarzen die örtliche Bestimmtheit zu verstehn wäre, insofern sie mit Schwärze verbunden ist. Schwarz heißt nicht mit Schwärze als anderem kategorischen Theil verbundener

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kategorischer Theil. Sonst könnte nicht Farbiges vom Örtlichen und Örtliches vom Farbigen prädiciert werden; sie wären so wenig als Farbe und Ort identisch. Vielmehr handelt es sich um eine Relation von Theil zum Ganzen und Ganzen zum Theil. Es ist dem Verhältnis ähnlich wie zwischen Schwarz und Geschwärztes, Flügel und Geflügeltes. Geschwärztes ist = Schwarzhabendes Ganzes. Z.B. der Hund ist geschwärzt. Schwarz ist = gehabter (als Theil gehabter) Schwarz. Wenn er abgeschnitten ist, ist er kein Schwarz mehr. Abgeschnitten ist für ihn, wie todt für Mensch, ein modificierendes Attribut. – So denn ist auch Schwarzes = Schwärzehabendes Ganzes, Schwärze = gehabte (als Theil gehabt) Schwärze. Der Begriff Schwärze wird nothwendig gleichzeitig mit dem Begriff Schwarz erfaßt, und die Anerkennung der Schwärze ist nothwendig gleichzeitig mit der Anerkennung des Schwarzen verbunden. Das folgt aus dem, was wir über die Correlativa gesagt haben. [14192] 28. Indeß ist, was ich gesagt, mißverständlich, und es erscheint nöthig, das falsche Verständnis ausdrücklich auszuschließen. Schwarz hat nämlich einen mehrfachen Sinn. Nenne ich einen Körper der Außenwelt schwarz, so wird das nur sagen, daß er, indem er keine Lichtstrahlen zurückwirft, Anlaß wird zu einem schwarzen Phänomen. Dieser Begriff entbehrt der anschaulichen Einheit. Und Ähnliches gilt von der Schwärze, die ihm correspondiert. Wir hatten oben (unter 27) im Besondern das Schwarz, wie es im Phänomen selbst uns gegeben ist, im Auge. Von ihm, dem Phänomnen, werden ein anschaulicher Begriff von Schwarz und ein anderer von Schwärze, der eine correlativ zum andern gleichzeitig abstrahiert. 29. Auch das ist also eine falsche Vorstellung, welche die Scholastiker sich gebildet zu haben scheinen, daß zunächst der Begriff Schwarzes abstrahiert und dann aus diesem durch Präcidieren der Begriff Schwärze gebildet wurde. Nein, der Begriff Schwärze wird erfaßt, indem man sich bewußt ist, die Schwärze in dem sinnlichen Phänomen zu erfaßen, und eben darum tritt der Begriff als der der gehabten Schwärze und ebendarum? Mit ihm der des Schwärze habenden d.i. des Schwarzen auf. Obj. (Es scheint, auch sonst würde dies sein, verlangt es doch der

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Begriffinhalt; daß man aber jenes Bewußtsein hat, scheint nicht a priori gefordert). 30. Verallgemeinere ich ihn durch weitere Abstraction, so komme ich in letzter Instanz zu einem Begriff, der mit der Weise des Gehabtseins (als Qualität) zusammenfällt. Es ist darum der allgemeinste Begriff der Qualität eine Kategorie (im urpsrünglichen von Aristoteles gekannten Sinne). Unter dem Correlat der Kategorie ist freilich nicht das Subject, sondern das Ganze, resp. der Theil zu verstehen. [14193] 31. Noch andere mögliche Mißverständnisse verdienen ausdrückliche Berücksichtigung. Man muß nicht glauben, daß weil in dem Falle von Schwarzem und Schwärze, das Schwarze, als das mit dem concreten Namen bezeichnete, das Wesenhafte war, jeder concrete Namen ein Wesenhaftes bezeichne. Giebt es doch auch Collective, die mit concreten Namen bezeichnet werden, wie Heerde, Staat und andere Unwesenhafte als solche, wie Bräutigam, Braut, usw. 32. Man muß ferner sich hüten zu glauben, daß Schwärze der Inhalt des Begriffes sei, wenn das Schwarze als Schwarzes erfaßt werde. Nicht doch! Das Schwarze als Schwarzes ist nicht die Schwärze. Wir können auch von einer Schwärze als Schwärze sprechen. Zwei Begriffe sind zugleich da, das Schwarze und die Schwärze, bei dem einen bildet das Schwarze als Schwarzes, bei dem andern die Schwärze als Schwärze (nicht als gehabte, geliebte, vorgezogene, paßende, etc. wenn sie dies im einzelnen Fall sein sollte,) den Inhalt. 33. Man muß sich ebendarum hüten vor einem Irrthum zudem, der von uns vermiedene Namen ‘präcidiert’ Anlaß geben kann, nämlich zu glauben, daß Begriffe wie Schwärze einen Gegenstand erschöpfend, Begriffe wie Schwarz einen Gegenstand nicht erschöpfend darstellten, indem hier angedeutet werde, daß ihm noch andere Attribute zukämen, von denen dort präcidiert werde. Es ist sicher wahr, daß viele Attribute des Schwarzen der Schwärze nicht mehr eigen sind. Nichtdestoweniger kann auch sie in Wahrheit Attribute haben, wie z.B., sie ist Nicht-Röthe usw. Ja manche wie: sie ist ein nicht das Schwarze seiendes, welche sich nicht für das Schwarze eignen. So hat auch der Schwanz Attribute, die nicht auf das Geschwänzte anwendbar sind [14194]. Würde es sich bei dem Gebrauch concreter und abstracter Namen immer nur um anschauliche Begriffe handeln, so wäre es sehr leicht, eine einfache Regel für ihre Anwendung zu geben.

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Anders, da das Gegentheil der Fall ist. Hiedurch wird jene einfache Regel zur Regel für einen kleinen Theil. Die allermeisten concreten Ausdrücke bezeichnen ebenso wie die meisten abstracten unanschauliche Begriffe. Man betrachte: Mensch, Thier, Gott, Natur, Staat, Kirche, Haus, Stadt, Volk, König, Speise, usw. usw. Immerhin mag die schier allgmeine Paarigkeit, in dem, was wir bei anschaulichen Begriffen fanden, ihren Grund haben. 34. Kehren wir zur Betrachtung über die Correlation im Allgemeinen zurück. Wie im Fall von Schwarz, so giebt es auch im Falle von Ursache, welche zu Wirkung in Correlation steht, einen correspondierenden abstracten Ausdruck. Dort Schwärze, hier Ursächlichkeit. Im Fall von ‘Wirkung’ ist keiner üblich, man könnte aber etwa den Ausruck Wirkung-sein dafür vorschlagen, und deutlich ist, daß wie dem Begriffe Verursachend, der Begriff Verursachen, dem Begriffe Gewirktwerdend der Begriff Gewirktwerden zur Seite steht. Die Concreta Verursachendes und Gewirktwerdendes sind Correlativa. Sie sind nicht identische Begriffe. Wie verhält es sich mit den Abstractis: Verursachen und Gewirktwerden? – Jedes Verursachen ist das Verursachen einer Ursache (gen. Subj.) und eines Verursachten (gen. Obj.). Es ist ein Theil der Ursache. Aber nicht ein Theil [14195] des Verursachten. So ist auch jedes Verursachtwerden das Verursachtwerden von einer Ursache (gen. obj.) und von einer Wirkung (gen. Object) Aber nicht ein Theil der Ursache. Somit bestehn auch hier 2 Begriffe. 35. Und wie keine begriffliche, so besteht zwischen Verursachen und Gewirktwerden auch keine reelle Identität. (Sonst könnten nicht die obengenannten Prädicate einseitig zukommen). Vielmehr ist auch hier nur richtig, daß keines etwas für sich, jedes, was es ist, nur in Verbindung mit dem andern ist. Aristoteles sagte, das Wirken des einen sei das Leiden des andern usw. Er scheint im Unrecht. Vielleicht verführte ihn der Umstand, daß der Abstractum bei ihm als formale Ursache erscheint. Eine Ursache aber erscheint für solche, was ohne einen nicht sein kann (wie das Wirkende als Wirkendes und das Leidende als Leidendes). Doch man müßte ober dies leugnen, indem man vielmehr, wie die wechselseitige

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Unselbstständigkeit des Geformten als solchen, auch die der Formen behauptete). 36. Das Angeschaute hat Intensität, das Gedachte nicht. Wenn ich nun den Gedanken in der Anschauung erfaße, so fragt sich, ob dieser Wahrnehmungsact Intensität habe, z.B. wenn ich ein Rothes schaue und es als Roth erkenne. Es scheint klar, daß bezüglich jedes der zum Continuum, von dem das Roth abstrahiert wird, gehörigen Puncte das Abstrahieren und Erfaßen thätig ist; das Urtheil scheint also Intensität zu haben. Aber dazu genügt die Intensität des Subjects, das Prädicat, der erfaßte Begriff ist ohne dieselbe. 37. Der erfaßte Begriff ist Wirkung der Anschauung. Daher ist er zu ihr, wie jede Wirkung zur Ursache, in Verhältnis zeitlicher Contacts des Späteren zum Früheren. Dieser zeitliche Contact erhält sich eine Zeitlang; so lange als der Begriff in der Anschauung erfaßt wird; d.h. so lange der Begriff besteht. So kann doch der Begriff der Anschauung gleichzeitig genannt werden. [14196] Bezüglich des Erfaßens der Correlativa, welche hier abstrahiert wurden, kann man aber in keiner Weise sagen, daß das Erfaßen des einen dem des andern vorangehe; wie gesagt nur das Anchauen des Phänomens geht voran. 38. Wenn wir den Begriff der Identität erfaßen, so kann dies nur im Hinblick auf die innere Anschauung geschehn, die uns ein Identificieren, Prädicieren, zeigt. Auch hier geschieht es nach Aristoteles, daß zwei Begriffe sich zeitlich berühren, und die Prädication sie verbindet, indem der Zeitpunct als Grenze gewißermaßen 2 ist. Dies scheint richtig. Und es kann nicht als Einwand dagegen geltend gemacht werden, daß ein Punct nichts für sich ist. Die Prädication wird eben eine ganze Zeitlang fortgesetzt. Es gilt Ähnliches wie eben (Nr 37) bezüglich des Hervorgehns des Begriffs aus der Anschauung gesagt wurde. 39. Auch wenn wir die Begriffe von Grund und Folge. Zweck und Mittel, und wenn wir den Begriff des aus den Vorstellungen evidenten Urtheils und den der aus der Güte des Objects entspringender Liebe erfaßen, gilt Ähnliches. Es findet sich hier immer ein continuierliches Aneinandergrenzen von einem Früheren und Späteren. Wir müßen uns aber natürlich auch hier nicht dazu verleiten lassen, zu glauben, der Begriff des Grundes wurde früher als der der Folge, der Begriff des Zwecks früher als der des Mittels, der Begriff des Evidentmachenden früher als der des Evidenten, der Begriff des Gu-

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ten, oder wenigstens mit Recht Geliebten, früher als der des richtigen Liebe erfaßt. [14197] 40. Unsere Anschauungen3 sind nicht bis in die kleinsten physischen Theile hinein distinct. Wodurch unterscheidet sich denn die Anschauung, insoweit sie distinct ist, von der Anschauung, soweit sie indistinct ist? Ist sie intensiver? – unmöglich. Ist sie allein distincten Theilen nach fähig, die Ursache besonderer Abstractionen, den Gegenstand besonderer psychischen Beschäftigung zu werden? Das mag sein. Aber darin kann das Wesen der sinnlichen Abstraction nicht wohl gesucht werden. Das Violett wird Ursache der Abstractionen des Rothen wie Blauen. Es ist hier eine Distinction durch Abstraction, deren die Thiere unfähig sind. Doch wir selbst sind zugleich unfähig, hier sinnliche Theile von Roth gegenüber den sinnlichen Theilen von Blau physisch abzugrenzen. Es bleibt uns die confuse Mengung. Diese ist andernwärts nicht gegeben, und das unterscheidet das Bild distincter rother und blauer Flächen von dem Bild von Violett. Es scheint mir, daß hier die Mehrheit der physischen Theile sich merklich macht oder, was ungefähr dasselbe sagt, das Ein-andererSein des einen gegenüber dem andern. Dies dürfte auch beim Thiere sein. Mißlich scheint es, sonst die verschiedenen Folgen der Eindrücke mit Gleichheit der Farben doch Verschiedenheit der Vorstellung in der Figur zu erklären. Sie scheint mir in negativ prädicativen Urtheilen zu gründen, welche freilich als Doppel- oder Trippelurtheile auch affirmative Theile haben. Bei der Unterscheidung werden die unterschiedenen Theile anerkannt und von einander negiert. NB. Wenn die Distinction eine sinnliche ist, so hat sie Continuität und Intensität, auch in ihrem negativen Moment. Sie setzt Punct mit Punct in Beziehung, doch nicht für sich, sondern als Grenze im Begrenzten. Die Negation tritt nur ein bei [14198] gewißen Abstand und weiter. Von Violett wird auch bei beträchtlichster Ausdehnung nicht Roth und Blau, sondern nur ein violetter Theil vom andern unterschieden. Damit müßte der unterschiedene Theil in sich in einem blauen und rothen unterschieden sein, d.h. das Roth müßte in gewisser Ausdehnung nicht mit Blau, das Blau nicht mit Roth wechseln.

3

vgl. hiezu m. Randbemerkungen, immer beachtend, daß dieser Aufsatz der spätere.

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41. Physische Theile unserer Anschauung, welche für uns ununterscheidbar sind, sind deswegen doch verschieden. Sollen wir sagen, daß sie für uns, wenn nicht gleich auch alle extrem ähnlich seien? Kaum! Auch hier bestehn noch Unterschiede der Ähnlichkeitsgrade. Erfaßbar aber sind sie nicht als ähnlich, wenn sie nicht als verschieden erfaßbar sind. Nur durch Schlüße können wir zu ihrer Erkenntnis und zu Urtheilen über ihre Ähnlichkeit gelangen. 42. Was aber ist die Ähnlichkeit, und wie kommen wir dazu, sie zu messen oder zu schätzen? Gleich nennen wir Gegenstände, insofern sie unter denselben Begriff fallen. Ähnlich, insofern sie unter wenig verschiedene Begriffe fallen. Ähnlich ist darum in gewisser Weise wirklich so viel wie an-gleich (annähernd gleich). Manche behaupten, was sich ähnlich sei, sei theilweise gleich. Was das heißen soll, gewisse Begriffe, unter die sie fallen, seien in einem Theil ihrer Merkmale übereinstimmend, so ist dies nicht richtig; wenn man aber nur dagegen wollte, gewisse Begriffe unter die sie fallen, seien der Grund dafür, daß gewisse gleiche Begriffe sich daran knüpften, so muß zugegeben werden, daß dies überall, wo man von Ähnlichkeit sprechen kann, der Fall ist z.B. zwei einander relativ nahe Zeitpuncte sind sich relativ ähnlich, 2 relativ ferne relativ unähnlich. Von 2 relativ nahen Zeitpuncten wird aber gelten, daß in Bezug auf die von beiden verschiedenen Zeitpuncten eine größere Menge in den gleichen, eine kleinere [14199] in den entgegengesetzten Richtungen abliegt. Dasselbe kann in Bezug auf Orte, Tonhöhen, Zahlen usw. gesagt werden. Indeß wäre es gewiß irrig, wollte man die Ähnlichkeit der Menge 1003 und 1005 auf gemeinsame Verhältnisse zu 1, 2, 3 usw. als kleineren und zu 1006, 1007, etc. als größeren Zahlen, und nicht vielmehr auf den relativ geringer Abstand insbesondere im Verhältnis zur absoluten Vielheit der einen und andern Zahl zurückzuführen. (Das letztere ist von Bedeutung; 3 und 5 erscheinen weniger ähnlich als 1003 und 1005). Noch mehr! Man spricht von einer Association durch Ähnlichkeit und insbesondere auch davon, daß Ähnliches an Ähnliches associert werde. Ich glaube nur so weit, als solche Associationen mit Leichtigkeit eintreten, wird von Ähnlichkeit zu sprechen sein. Daher wir Vieles, was aneinander erinnert, und je mehr es aneinander erinnert,

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ähnlich nennen, und was, indem es aneinander erinnert, noch andere Associationen, welche einander proportioniert erscheinen, mit sich führt. Wo solcherlei Folgen gänzlich fehlen, dürfte man kaum von Ähnlichkeit sprechen. Es ist klar, wie sich daraus begreift, warum die Mathematiker den Begriff Ähnlichkeit so gebrauchen, wie sie es thun. Gleiche Dreiecke erinnern nicht aneinander; ähnliche aber, wie andere Abbilder, in was immer für einen Maßstab sie ausgeführt sind. 43. Fragt man, ob, wenn Hell dem Hoch (bei Tönen) Dunkel dem Tief ähnlich genannt wird, dasselbe gelte, was ich hier gesagt habe, so scheint mir dies außer Zweifel. Man laße 10 dunkle Eindrücke einem hellen in dreimaliger Folge vorangehen, und gleichzeitig 10 tiefe Töne einem hohen ebenso oft. Man laße dann 10 helle Eindrücke einem dunkeln dreimal vorangehen, die gleichzeitige Tonfolge aber diesselbe wie vorher sein, und man wird das einmal etwas wie Harmonie, das anderemal trotz der gleichen Taktregelmäßigkeit aber das Gegentheil beobachten. Ob Gefühlswirkungen hereinspielen oder was sonst wäre zu untersuchen. Mißlich scheint es mir von einem unmittelbaren Schätzen von einer Art > oder < Distanz hier sprechen zu wollen, ohne weitere Analyse. Auch auf die Annahme [14200] unmittelbarer Schätzungen von Orts-, Farben-, Tondistanzen ohne Durchlaufen des Mittleren in irgendwelcher Form mit Anhalt an ebenmerkliche Differenzen darf man sich kaum einlaßen. Wenn aber dies nicht, wie sollte es zu unmittelbarer Schätzungen des > oder < Abstandes von Weiß und Schwarz in Bezug auf Süß und Bitter, Kühl und Warm kommen? Ebendarum bleibe ich dabei, daß es unzuläßig ist, mit Stumpf, in einem unglücklichen Compromiß, zwar die Qualitäten von Tast-, Geruchs- und Geschmacksempfindungen für Qualitäten dreier verschiedenen Sinne, aber solcher, die sich der Qualität nach näher ständen als die andern zu erklären. Ähnliches, wie, was ich für die Analogien zu Hell und Dunkel gesagt, gilt für die Sättigung und Ungesättigtheit und für die Analogie von Blau-gelb mit einer Quint, von Blau-Roth mit einer Kleinen und Roth-Gelb mit einer Großen Terze u.dgl. Auch für die von Bejahung mit Liebe, Verneinung mit Haß, und für die von Wahrheit mit Richtigkeit der Liebe (adäquatio rei et intellectus; – adäquatio rei et cordis). und für Evidenz mit dem als richtig charakterisierten Gemütsact. Sie erinneren entschieden aneinander.

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Warum, mag näher untersucht werden. Ich denke, die Untersuchung wird nicht ermanglen, zu Aufklärungen zu führen. PS. Nachtrag zu 40. Wünschenswerth wäre eine experimentelle Untersuchung (die leicht möglich), ob innerhalb einer hellen z.B. weißen Fläche die distinguiblen Theile zahlreicher als innerhalb einer gleichgroßen dunkeln z.B. schwarzen. Wenn dies, wäre dies vielleicht der beste Erklärungsgrund, warum eine helle Fläche auf dunkelm Grund > scheint als umgekehrt. – Ebenso wäre zu untersuchen, ob eine gescheckte Fläche mehr distinguible Theile hat, als eine gleich große einfache. - Doch welches auch das Resultat sei, es alteriert nicht die oben gegebenen Bestimmungen. – In den Randbemerkungen zu Ihrem Manuscript habe ich eine andere Auffassung ausgeführt. Eine oder die andere scheint nothwendig richtig. Die in den Randbemerkungen dürfte aber kaum haltbar sein. Interessant ist die sinnliche Beziehung von Theilen zu anderen Theilen. Auch im sinnlichen Contrast zeigt sich eine solche. Auch in dem Gesetz des Siegs der Contoure im Wettstreit der Sehfelder. [14201] Nachtrag zu 24: Wir pflegten früher zu sagen, Örtlichkeit sei Fundament des Begriffs Qualität. Warum nicht ebenso sagen, daß Quali-tät Fundament des Begriffs Örtlichkeit? – Man sieht, es besteht Wechsel-seitigkeit. Daher der Ausdruck Fundament nicht am Platze. Man käme consequent dazu, zu sagen, daß der höchste Gattungsbegriff für Orte und Qualitäten einer sei. (Denn gegenseitig Theil sein, ist widerspre-chend). Statt zu sagen, der eine Begriff sei Fundament des andern, wird man vielmehr sagen müßen, der eine sei in Correlation zum andern, und so bestehe wechselseitige Unablösbarkeit, wie sie zwischen Correlativen sich finde. (So oder ähnlich, indem zum Ganzen zu welchem die Qualität in Beziehung steht, damit dies sei, Örtlichkeit im Allgemeinen, zum Ganzen, zu welcher die Örtlichkeit in Beziehung steht, damit dies sei, Qualität im Allgemeinen nothwendig als Theil gehörig ist). --Ich überlese das Geschriebene; habe sehr das Bewußtsein, daß nicht alles so vollkommen ausgedacht und dargestellt ist, als die Sache es erheischt. Nehmen Sie mit dem guten Willen vorlieb und haben Sie ob

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der vielen Abhaltungen und Störungen Nachsicht! Schon das Aufwählen von Fragen hat seinen Werth. Vielleicht ist aber auch, wenigstens in manchem Punct, eine richtige Antwort gegeben. Doch, wie gesagt, gerne halte ich bei dem Reichthum der Probleme und der Größe ihrer Schwierigkeit zurück. Dem Freunde aber gewähre ich Einblick, wie mir selber trotz alles Unfertigen. Die ersten, vorbereitenden und zugleich leichtesten Fragen scheinen am klarsten besprochen. Später fühlt man nebst anderem auch die Nachtheile der Eile zum Abschluß.

AUSGEWÄHLTE BRIEFE AN MARTY FRANZ BRENTANO Edited by Guillaume Fréchette

Brentano an Marty, Brief 1081 den 10. Februar 99 Florenz Lieber Freund! Für Ihren lieben Brief besten Dank. Ich werde ihn noch vor meiner Abreise nach Palermo, die auf übermorgen festgesetzt ist, beantworten. Kastil hat mir seine Promotionsanzeige geschickt, die er – vielleicht wenig klug und passend – zugleich zu einer Anzeige seiner neuen Stellung als Prakticant an der Sparcasse gemacht hat. Warum das so energisch hervorheben? Seiner Habilitation wird es nicht förderlich sein und Vorurtheile gegen die nöthige Concentration seiner Kraft erwirken. Es fehlt ihm gar | manchmal an Takt. Möchte Kraus bald auch flott werden! Mein Zustand ist noch immer nicht zufriedenstellend. Der Fall ist heikel genug, da der Catarrh auch das Nierenbecken ergriffen hat. Die Ärzte verheißen zwar mit Bestimmtheit volle Genesung, doch ein langes Vorzögern der Heilung. Im letzten Punct irren sie gewiss nicht. Doch wir sind ja in Gottes Hand. Philosophische Grübeleien hänge ich zeitweilig nach. So drängte sich mir jüngst die Frage auf nach dem | Unterschied der distincten Phänomene von den nichtdistincten. Es schien mir, daß auch das Thier distincte sinnliche Phänomene habe. So schon, wenn es im Gesichtsfeld zugleich blau und roth hat, ohne daß diese sich zu violett confundieren. Ohne distinctes Sehen, wären alle Gestaltunterschiede für es bedeutungslos.

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Ferner daß zwischen den abstracten Vorstellungen und den distincten sinnlichen Theilvorstellungen keinerlei Verwandtschaft bestehe. Die abstracten sind etwas Besonderes für sich. Die distincten sinnlichen Theilvorstellungen nicht ebenso. Sie liefern zu der Vorstellung des Ganzen einen constituierenden Beitrag. Es ist nicht so, als ob man eine confuse Gesammtvorstellung und außerdem noch besonders distincte Vor- | stellungen von Theilen hätte. (Wenn dies würde der, welcher ein schwarz und weiß gewürfeltes Brett sähe, es einestheils ganz grau anderntheils die einzelnen Felder theils schwarz theils weiß schauen.) Nein, die gesammte Vorstellung ist constituiert durch die distincten Theilvorstellungen. Will man das Distinctvorstellen „Bewußtsein“, das übrige ein unbewußtes Empfinden der Theile nennen (Manche scheinen ja zu solchem Sprachgebrauch zu neigen) so ist sicher von diesem ‚Bewußtsein’ die Einheit zu leugnen. Mehreres kann distinct vorgestellt werden. Es mag dabei aber doch sein, daß indem einige Theile distinguiert werden, andere der Distinction sich entziehn, und indem diese dann distinguiert werden, jene die Distinction verlieren. Unsere | Macht reicht oft nicht aus für alle zugleich, wenn auch für viele. Interessant ist dann die Frage, wie es sich verhält, wenn wir im Violett Roth und Blau erkennen. Sicher werden sie dann nicht distinguiert wie auf einem scheckigen Osterei. Sollen wir sagen, man distinguiere die Farben, aber nicht ihre relativen Orte? Oder soll man sagen, man distinguiere auch die Farben nicht und erkenne nur ihre Ähnlichkeit mit Roth einerseits und mit Blau andrerseits? Doch diese wäre nicht wie die einer einheitlichen Farbe, die zwischen ihnen läge. Und so muß dies die erstere Auffassung empfehlen, die auch bei den Mehrklängen am scheinbarsten ist. Aber sie ist merk- | würdig genug. Vielleicht könnte man auch Berührungsempfindungen wecken, wo keine Orte distinguiert werden (alles scheint ein Punct) aber Wärme und Kälte oder eine andere Mehrheit von Spürqualitäten. Meine Erinnerung spricht für solche Annahme. Weiter sind wie die sinnlichen Vorstellungen auch die sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen und Affecte distinct und confus. Im Zusammenhang mit diesen Betrachtungen ergiebt sich die Lösung der Objection, daß die schwachen Empfindungen und Affecte aus keinen äußerst intensiven sich zusammensetzen sollen. Dies scheint inconvenient. Doch nur so lange, als man nicht erwägt, daß sie sich nicht aus distinguierten intensiven zusammensetzen. Sind die

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distinguierten | alle schwach, so merkt man nichts von einer starken Empfindung, einem starken Affect, starkem Schmerz, starken Lustgefühl. Es kann aber geschehen, daß man eine starke Wehmuth distingudistinguiert mit schwachen nicht distinguierten Theilen, welche theils Lust theils Leid. Vielleicht wäre es besser, zunächst nach den Gesetzen des sich Distinguierens, als nach denen der sinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit zu forschen. Sie scheint auf das Distinguieren zu gehen. (In anderem Sprachgebrauch sich damit zu decken.) NB. Ich möchte nicht mit Descartes die Perception distinct nennen, deren Theile alle distinct sind. Sie ist distinct, wenn sie selbst innerhalb unserer percipierenden Functionen distinguiert wird. Daß | irgendeinmal alle Theile distinct wären, ist unmöglich. ‘Deutlich’ scheint eine schlechte Übersetzung für distinct. Doch nun zu Ihren Fragen! Ihre Bemerkungen über den wechselnden Gebrauch in Bezug auf die Ausdrücke Fundament und Terminus bei der Relation las ich mit Interesse. Goudin scheint unter fundamentum nicht die Form der Relation (wie Gleichheit, Vaterschaft) sondern etwas Vorgängiges zu denken. (Die Generatio ist ja nicht die Vaterschaft sondern ein Geschehnis, das die Vaterschaft zur Folge hat.) Danach müßte die weiße Farbe des Sokrates nicht bloß sondern auch des Platon Fundament der Gleichweißheit der beiden sein. Vielleicht ists | besser, wenn der Sprachgebrauch immer aequivoc war, sich auf nichts einzulassen. Es würde zu einem Wortstreit führen. In den Ausführungen, die ich kürzlich für Sie an Kastil geschrieben, vermeide ich den Ausdruck Fundament und spreche (was jedenfalls im Einklang mit dem gemeinen Sprachgebrauch ist) nur von 2 Terminis der abstracten und je einem der halbconcreten Relativen, während bei dem ganzconcreten Relativbegriff (den ich hier erst einführe) von gar keinem gesprochen werden kann. Auch Ihre Bemerkungen über die Analogie berühren etwas, was wichtig ist. Sie fügen ganz kurz ein | Wort über die Gleichheit an, das mir vielleicht nicht ganz verständlich ist. Jedenfalls scheint mir von Gleichheit im weitesten Sinne gesprochen zu werden, wo 2 Gegenstände unter ein und denselben Begriff fallen. Sokrates und Platon sind als Menschen, Hund und Floh als Thiere gleich. Drei Äpfel und drei Federn als Drei.

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Was die Analogie anlangt, so unterschieden die Scholastiker eine zweifache. A) Beziehung zum gleichen Terminus, welches auch immer die Weise der Beziehung sei. So nannten sie die Accidenzien einander analog, wegen der Beziehung zum ὄν im eigentlichen Sinn als Subjekt. (Aristoteles nennt die Accidenzien nicht aus | diesem Grund analog; er kennt nur die zweite sogleich zu erwähnende Art der Analogie). B) Gleiche oder ähnliche Stellung eines Gegenstandes zu gewissen andern in seiner Gattung wie die eines ihm heterogenen Gegenstandes zu gewissen andern seines Gebietes. Treffende Beispiele bieten Sie in der Anerkennung auf dem Gebiet des Urtheils in ihrer Stellung zur Verwerfung, die analog erscheint der Liebe auf dem Gebiet des Gemüths in ihrer Stellung zum Hass. Das Verhältnis ist Gegensatz. Warum aber nennen wir gerade die Liebe der Anerkennung analog und nicht den Haß? Etwa weil die Liebe da- |rauf ausgeht, Sein zu geben und zu erhalten, der Haß zu vernichten und das Werden und Sein zu verändern?* Wenn dies nicht genügt, müßte man eine Perception bes. Ähnlichkeit, wie Sie sie zu lehren geneigt sind, annehmen. Wieder ein Beispiel bieten Wahrheit und Falschheit auf dem Gebiet des Urtheils im Vergeich mit Güte und Schlechtigkeit auf dem Gebiet des Gemüths. Auch hier ist da wie dort ein Gegensatz und da wie dort eine Art von Übereinstimmung | mit dem, was sein soll (wir können sagen ein Entsprechen) bei Wahrheit und Güte; ein Widerstreit, ein Nichtentsprechen bei Falschheit und Schlechtigkeit. Wahre Urtheile, gute Gemüthsthätigkeiten sind inhaltlich tadellos, lobenswerth. Wieder ein Beispiel bieten Evidenz und als-richtig-charakterisiertsein der Gemüthsthätigkeit. Dort ist das Urtheil als inhaltlich wie es sein soll charakterisiert, hier die Gemüthsthätigkeit. Soll man sagen, also finde sich in beiden dieselbe auszeichnende Eigenheit? Ich glaube | nicht. Dort findet sich etwas, was das Urtheil, hier etwas, was die Gemüthsthätigkeit auszeichnet, analog aber nicht gleich. Man könnte sagen ‘gleichmäßig’. Der gleichen Auszeichnung wäre die Liebe nicht fähig. Einen gemeinsamen Begriff mag man bilden. Aber der bleibt * Wenn einer anerkennt, was besteht, leugnet was nicht besteht, so mögen wir sagen, sein Urtheilen sei mit dem Bestehen in Übereinstimmung. Aber auch von dem, der liebt, was besteht, und haßt, was nicht besteht, mögen wir dasselbe sagen. Er harmoniert mit dem Bestehenden, bei einem andern ist das Gemüth mit dem Bestehenden in Widerstreit.

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der Sache gewißermaßen äußerlich. Besonders deutlich ist dies bei der Liebe, wo ‘charakterisiert’ eine Beziehung zum Erkenntnisvermögen enthält. Wieder ein Beispiel bieten Moment bei der Zeit, Punct beim Raum. Eine Menge gemeinsamer Bestimmungen lassen sich geben. Das innere Wesen bleibt aber ein generisch Anderes (So ist das Nichts-fürsich-sein bei dem Raumpunct eine Abhängigkeit nach viel mehrfacher | Richtung bei voller Holokterie. Wieder ein Beispiel bietet die Helligkeit und Dunkelheit auf anderem und anderem Sinnesgebiet. Hier haben wir einen Gegensatz im extremen Sinn (die verschiedenenen Colorite von Farben und Tönen usw. sind keine Gegensätze im Sinne von Extremen. Wir haben eine Concrescenz dieser Gegensätze mit den räumlichen Bestimmungen und eventuell mit den Coloriten.) Auch diese wären ein Beispiel; daß aber zwischen c. od. d. od. dgl. und einem der 3 Farbencolorite eine besondere Ähnlichkeit bestände, wüßte ich nicht zu sagen, nur etwa, daß mit irgend- | welchem Recht die Meinung gehegt werden könne, daß sich die Colorite von Blau, Roth und Gelb wie die eines Grundtons zu seiner kleinen Terz und seiner Quint verhalten, womit der wehmutige Eindruck des Violett, der freudige des Orange (große Terz) und der sanfte und am meisten verschmolzene des Grüns (Quint) harmonieren würde). Warum aber ist der tiefe Ton der dunkeln, der hohe der hellen Farbe analog? Warum das Süße, Kühle, Sauere, Schneidende hellen Tönen und Farben das Warme, Bittere dunkelen analog? Warum nicht umgekehrt? – Sind es Affecte, die uns bestimmen, die | Gegensätze so zu paaren? Die finstere Farbe, der tiefe Ton haben etwas ernstes ja Trauriges, die helle Farbe, der hohe Ton etwas eher spielendes, heiteres (man trilliert besonders in hohen Tönen und Triller paßt gewiss nicht zu ernstem Ausdruck, schon wegen des Hüpfenden.) Kann man sonst noch etwas angeben? Ich gestehe, man meint, daß hiemit die Sache nicht (wie wenig paßt das Gesagte auf warm und kühl) erschöpft sei, und wenn man unfähig ist, etwas Weiteres zu sagen; so möchte man auf einen unmittelbaren Eindruck von Ähnlichkeit verweilen, wie Sie ihn constatiert zu haben glauben. Bei den heterokategorialen Theilen bestehen Ähnlichkeiten von Verhältnissen | zwischen Ort und örtlich Bestimmtem, Qualität und Qualitätsbestimmtem usw. Der Begriff Qualitätsbestimmtheit hat einen Terminus, ist abstract vom Subject; das örtlich Bestimmte ist

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das zugehörige Concretum. Das sind Übereinstimmungen, obwohl das Verhältnis nicht schlechthin und innerlich dasselbe ist; jedenfalls Annähenrungen zu Übereinstimmungen. Von Vornherein verwerflich erscheint mir der Gedanke eines unmittelbaren Eindrucks für eine gewisse Ähnlichkeit bei Heterogenem, der uns bestimmt ohne die analoge Position auf heterogenem Gebiet zuzuschreiben keineswegs. Auch mag er dort noch nicht in Betracht kommen, wo mancherlei gleichheitliche Beziehungen leicht anzugeben sind. Doch nun genug. Haben Sie mit dem Kranken Nachsicht. Mehr von Palermo! Ihr FB

Brentano an Marty, Brief 1082 Palermo, Via Falde 1

Februar 1899

Mein lieber Freund! Wir sind glücklich hier. Ich schreibe von einer Terrasse, von wo der Blick See und Bergkette und die Stadt mit ihren Gärten beherrscht, die im Goldschimmer ungezählten Orangen einer göttlichen Anmuth theilhaft sind. Das Wetter ist herrlich. So hoffe ich werden Leib und Seele gesunden. In Prof. Faggi habe ich einen wissenschaftlich empfänglichen Collegen gefunden. Ich bin schon recht eifrig daran, ihn vollends | von Kant zu befreien und in unsere Schule einzuführen. Möge Italien, wie politisch auch philosophisch von Sizilien aus regeneriert werden! Mein ganzer Lehr- und Forschungsdrang ist erwacht. Wie glücklich definiert doch Platon die Liebe, insbesonderes im edelsten Sinne, als eine Begierde zur Erzeugung im Schönen! Wie schreibt er wahr, wie der Zeugungsdrang vor dem Häßlichen die Kraft verliert. Der Wiener Gesindel hatte mich um alles Bewußtsein eines Lehrerberufs gebracht, und nun erwacht es neu in alter Frische.

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Ich sagte auch, der Forschungsdrang rege sich wieder mehr und mehr.| Den Gedanken, die sich gar unvollkommen in meinem letzten Brief, die distincten und indistincten Vorstellungen betreffend, angedeutet, habe ich mancher Augenblick geschenkt. Meine Meinung ist nun diese: zwischen distincter und indistincter Vorstellung als solcher besteht kein Unterschied. Die distincte ist mit Unterscheidung von anderem verbunden. Diese ist ein Urtheil und zwar ein complexestes, indem mit Affirmation relative Negation sich verbindet.* Das Unterschiedene sind dabei individuelle Theile, was sagen will, daß sie örthlich differenziert sind. So ists, wo Blau und Roth distinct neben einander vorgestellt werden. Wenn ich Violett vorstelle und | im Violett Roth und Blau unterscheide, so ist dies kein sinnliches Unterscheiden, sondern ein begriffliches. Thiere unterscheiden niemals im Violett Röthlichkeit und Bläulichkeit. Wann knüpfen sich nun die Unterscheidungsurteile an das Antreten der Vorstellung? – Die Gesetze sind compliciert. Eine gewisse Größe begünstigt. Man hat constatiert, daß auch die Übung eine günstige Bedingung ist. Damit sie sich besthätigt, sind für das Anknüpfen andrer Urtheil besondere Bedingungen erförderlich, die im Zustand der Aufmerksamkeit gegeben sind. Was diesen ausmacht, ist unvollständig analysiert. Wir sagen einem: sei aufmerksam! Und sein Wille bemerkt es daraufhin vielleicht, ohne daß er doch von dem Rechenschaft [1082-4] geben kann, was er bemerkt. Es ist ähnlich, wie ich einem sage; urtheile A! Er spricht es, und weiß nicht, wie er es macht. Aber die Gewohnheit machte ihm zum unbewußten Meister der Aussprache des A. So sind die meisten, die gelernt haben, sehr aufmerksam zu sein, unbewußte Meister des Aufmerkens. Bezüglich der Frage der Intensität des Distinguierens und des Aufmerkens giebt die neue Intensitätslehre sichersten Anhalt. Die Intensität des Distinguierens selbst muß von der Intensität der Anstrengung, die es kostet, unterschieden werden. Alle bestehen nur in sinnlichen Phänomenen, die sich aber häufen mögen und sehr verschiedenartig sein können; unter Umständen schmerzlich. | Verzeihen Sie, denn auch diesmal schreibe ich in großer Eile. Noch sind wir nicht eingerichtet. Auf recht merkwürdige Ideen hat mich, wie mir scheint, das Gespräch mit Faggi über die Frage nach dem synthetischen Charakter der *

[footnote sign without footnote]

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mathematischen Axiome geführt. Ich fand, daß in Wahrheit Gegenstände von 4, 10 und Mehrdimensionen bestehn, 3 dimensionale, welche ein Analogon von Räumen sind, von welchen in Wahrheit gesagt werden kann, daß sie Grenzen haben in der Unendlichkeit, daß sie größer sind als unendliche Räume, und daß sie in verschiedenen Richtungen verschieden groß, aber in jeder unendlich sind. Für die Parallelität zweier grader Linien | besteht in ihnen der Ausdruck: Mit Linie von A nach B, ist jede Linie von der Formel: Linie von

aA + (b − a)N b

nach

aB + (b − a)N b

Emilie ruft zum Essen, so laße ich meinen Brief ohne rechten Abschluß. Denn ich denke, Ihr Freundesherz verlangt nach Nachricht. Unsern lieben, jungen Freunden, auch Arleth und Ehrenfels, Grüße. Emilie und Giovanni grüßen. In alter Treue Ihr FBrentano

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Brentano an Marty, Brief 1084 Palermo, Falde, Piazza del Campo 1

den 13, April 99

Lieber Freund! Gestern kam Ihr lieber Brief. Zugleich traf eine Karte von Stumpf ein. Er schreibt von Florenz. Ob er mich dort wirklich zu treffen wünschte? – Ich antwortete, ohne irgendwelchen Verdacht zu äußern, forderte ihn vielmehr samt Frau zu einem Besuch in Schönbühl auf. Ich fürchte nur zu richtig zu urtheilen, wenn ich vermuthe, daß er nicht kommen werde. Weder nach mir, noch nach energischer wissenschaftlicher Förderung fühlt er mehr das einst in ihm so lebendige Bedürfniß. Einliegend ein Brief von Schell. Er freute mich. Doch was für eine Stellung. Lebt Glauben noch in der Seele dieses Apologeten? Die Mittheilung werden Sie natürlich als vertraulich behandeln. In meiner Antwort rieth ich ihn entschieden zum Wechsel der Professur und zeigte ihm, wie er als Professor der Apologetik fürderhin, wenn nicht mundtodt, doch fingertodt sein werde. Jede neue Schrift werde auf den Index wandern und nach erneuten Demüthigungen eingestampft werden. Kastils Thorheiten sind hoffentlich vorübergehend. | Seine Brautschaft selbst freilich mag eine Thorheit zu nennen sein, unter deren Folgen sein ganzes Leben leiden wird. Aber haben nicht auch wir im Jugendwahn uns zu thörichten Entschlüßen führen laßen? Sie können ihn vielleicht am besten beschämen durch Hinweis darauf, wie Sie selbst viel härtere Beschränkungen ertragen haben. Das Wetter ist schlecht. Damit mag ein nochmaliger Rückfall in Zustände, die überwunden schienen, zusammenhängen. Sonst erlebe ich hier manches, was mich freut. Ich habe eine ganze Zahl wahrer Freunde gewonnen. Von mannigfacher Seite drängen sich Lernbegierige an mich heran. So jüngst wieder ein Mediziner, dem ich von Monismus und Darwinismus sprach. Das währte wohl 2-3 Stunden, und am Ende erbat er sich, mich bald wieder besuchen zu dürfen. Seltsam! In Florenz ist mir nie Ähnliches begegnet. Di Amato, um mich hier festzuhalten, wollte mir eine Villa am Meere zur Verfügung stellen. Prof. Faggi nur ist jetzt etwas kopfscheu, seit ich ihm eine 36 Seiten lange Kritik darüber gegoßen habe. Er hatte sie nur zu sehr verdient, indem er mir eine ungedruckte Abhandlung überreichte, in

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der er | beweisen wollte, daß 1) das Schlechte in der Welt die Existenz eines Gottes widerlege, und 2) daß das Schlechte in der Welt doch dasjenige sei, was allein zur Gottesglauben führe. Meine Kritik behandelte nur den ersten Theil; da ich den darin Abgespeckten schon erschlagen sah, unterliess ich, ihm, fortfahrend, die verdienten 25 Hiebe vollzumachen. Persönlich verfeindet sind wir aber auch heute keineswegs, indem er zum Glück ein besserer Mensch als Philosoph ist. Fort und fort durch solche Beschäftigungen, und mehr, als es mit den ärztlichen Vorschriften stritt, in Anspruch genommen, kam ich noch nicht dazu, Ihre wissenschafltichen Fragen zu beantworten. Indeß habe ich darüber nachgedacht, und, täusche ich mich nicht, manchen Fehler berichtigt und manche Unklarheit behoben. So hoffe ich demnächst, das Verzögerte zum richtigen Ende zu führen. Heute nur ein Wort über die Relation, über welche Ihr Denken nicht zur Ruhe kommt. Die Lösung des Räthsels liegt in der schon anderweitig erwiesenen Wahrheit, daß es Gegenstände gibt, die nichts für sich, vielmehr, was sie sind, nur in Verbindung mit einem anderen sind. So | ergab sich uns der Punkt als Grenze eines durch ihn Begrenzten. So ist auch das Vorstellende nichts für sich, sondern was es ist, nur in Verbindung mit einem Vorgestellten usw. Wo zwei Gegenstände (nicht immer 2 reale) von diesem Charakter gegeben sind, hat auch ihr Denken das Eigene, daß das Denken des einen zwar nicht das Denken des andern, aber nichts ihm gegenüber selbständiges ist. Daher der eigenthümliche Charakter der correlativen Begriffen. Indem Sie hier einen Begriff sehen wollten, der nur mehrfach gewendet werde, rührten Sie offenbar an diese Art Einheit in der Vielheit. Wir werden aber doch gut tun, diese unselbständige Vielheit oder vielmehr Vielheit unselbständiger Einheiten, als wahre Vielheit anzuerkennen. Nur dann kann es ohne Widerspruch geschehen, daß jeder der beiden Begriffe seine besonderen attributiven Verbindungen eingeht. Das Wesen des Casus obliquus wird nunmehr vollkommen deutlich. Immer handelt es sich, wenn auch unausgesprochen, um einen correlativen Terminus. (Es sollten dieser Casus vielmehr sein; die Präpositions-Verbindungen mitgerechnet, bleiben zahlreiche Äquivocationen). Der Audruck ‘Sohn des Diares’ ist = Sohn eines Erzeugenden mit dem Attribut ‘Diares.’ = Erzeugtes mit dem Attribut ‘männliches’, eines Erzeugenden mit dem Atrtibut ‘Diares’. Der Ausdruck ‘Koffer des Martys’ = Eigenthum mit dem Attribut Koffer eines

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Eigentümers mit dem Attribut ‘Marty’. Sonst heute nur noch herzliche Freundesgrüße. Ihr ergebener Franz Brentano

Brentano an Marty, Brief 1085 Palermo, Piazza del Campo 1

Den 23 April 99.

Lieber Freund! Ich will die Sendung nicht länger zurückhalten. Freilich verlangte die Sache eine noch weitere Überlegung. Doch Sie sehen gewiß schon verlangend der Antwort entgegen. Ich war viel in Anspruch genommen. Dennoch habe ich, Sie werden es erkennen, Ihren Fragen manche Stunden gewidmet. Je mehr ich mich darin vertiefte, um so mehr sah ich, wie Vieles da zusammenhängt. Ich trenne da nicht gern. Erst wenn alles berücksichtigt ist, und alles zusammenstimmt und sich in diesem Zusammenstimmen Zeugnis giebt, erscheint die Arbeit reif und würdig, vor das Publicum gebracht zu werden. Wie wäre es, wenn Sie nach Via Reggio kämen? Die Seeluft, die Spaziergänge am Meeresstrand und, in dem völlig ebenen Pinienwäldchen, die milde, erhabene Stelle des ganzen thäten Ihnen gewiß wohl. Bei uns wären Sie wie in Schönbühl ein lieber Gast. Die Wohnung hätte Raum genug. Dahin könnten Sie mein Manuscript und Ihres mit den Randbemerkungen mitbringen und wir brächten | vielleicht alles zu erwünschtem Abschluß. Andernfalls hoffe ich, daß sich dasselbe in Schönbühl ergeben möge. Nun weiß ich nicht, ob ich nicht etwas später auch dahin wende. Denn die südliche Wärme ist für mich noch immer Heilmittel. Ganz hergestellt bin ich ja leider noch nicht.

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Ende Monats machen wir uns auf die Reise. Wir wollen Syrakus besuchen, auch in Neapel uns aufhalten (ein wenig denn wohl auch in Rom und Florenz); dann aber, wie gesagt, nach Via Reggio uns wenden, von dem ich mir das Beste verspreche. Hier will man mich schlechthin bewegen, Palermo zu meinem bleibenden Aufenthalt zu wählen. Von hieraus sei die italienische Philosophie am besten zu renegerieren. Wahr ist jedenfalls, daß Palermo für meine Arbeiten günstige Bedingungen bietet. Meinen Nerven thut es wohl. Auch sind hier etliche Leute, die sich wahrhhaft, ja leidenschaftlich für Philosophie interessieren. Das wirkt anregend. Wie selten sind solche Menschen! In Wien hatte ich [1085-2b] keinen. Werde ich sie in einer andern Stadt Italiens finden? Über alles das werden wir mündlich miteinander berathen. Die Randbemerkungen sind von dem, was ich für sich geschrieben, das frühere. Gewiße mit Tinte gemachte Fragezeichen deuten Ihnen an, was der Vergleich mit dem selbständigen Manuscript noch mehr erkennen läßt, daß ich bei weiterem Überlegen in dem oder jenem Punct meine Ansicht geändert habe. Doch lösche ich nichts aus. Sie mögen dann selbst alles überprüfen. Jedenfalls sehn Sie auch – und hier nicht zum erstenmal – daß ich der Wahrheit zu lieb, wie dann und wann der Meinung des Freundes, auch der eigenen nicht schone. Einer der hiesigen Weisheitsfreunde hat mir kürzlich ein von ihm verfaßtes Werk verehrt, daß sich, wie ich sehe, in einem langen Kapitel auch mit den Begriffen und der Besonderheit der concreten Namen beschäftigt. Der Mann ist begabt und redlich strebend. Besonders Mill beeinflußte ihm | stark. Er ist aber noch mehr Nominalist als dieser. Und so erscheint sein Standpunkt unhaltbar. Doch mag sich manches für Sie Interessante darin finden, und ich würde es Ihnen schicken, wenn ich nicht dächte, er käme mich noch besuchen, begierig über einiges mündlich mit mir zu verhandeln. Von Stumpf hörte ich nichts mehr. Ich begreife es; denn meine Einladung nach Schönbühl war ihm gewiß sehr wenig willkommen. Er wird ihr nicht oder nur widerstrebend und so gut wie nicht Folge geben. Seltsam, wie ihm der Posten und die wissenschaftliche Position in der Gelehrtenwelt schier mehr allem Werth hat! Seine Philosophie lebt nicht mehr. Sie ist zur Mumie einbalsamiert. Je besser abgesperrt, um so länger hofft sie sich in ihrem blutlosen Zustand zu conservieren. Dilthey, Paulsen sind wohl kein Umgang für ihn. Und welchen andern pflegt er? – Noscitur ex socio, qui non cognoscitur ex se. Auch

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aus dem Mangel jedes philosophischen Genoßen läßt sich der Mangel philosophischen Lebens in ihm selbst erkennen. Alles Liebe! In alter Freundschaft Ihr FBrentano

Brentano an Marty, Brief 1086 Palermo

Ende April 1899

Lieber Freund! Für Ihren lieben Brief freundlichen Dank. Eucken scheint danach allerdings unter aller Erwartung erbärmlich. Über Tönnies, von dem mir noch besonders erzählt worden war, daß er mit der Arbeit einen Preis errungen, will ich mich noch einmal erkundingen. Ihre 2 Frage zeugen wie früher für Ihre feine Achtsamkeit. Ad 1. Erwidere ich, daß die Vorstellung der Substanz in der des Accidenz ja enthalten ist, ähnlich wie ein ablösbarer logischer Theil. So überhaupt der von Subsistierenden in der von Inhärirerenden. Daher oft die Schwierigkeit sich sich vor Verwechselungen zu hüten*. Aristoteles | selbst hat sogar coinhärirende Theile angenommen, wo es sich um heterokategorische logische [Theile] handelte. Wer das Accidenz ganz in confuso individuell oder speciell erfaßt, bringt weder das logische Verhältnis von Differenz und Gattung noch das Inhärenzverhältnis von Accidenz zu Substanz zu explicitem Bewußtsein. So kann man denn nicht sagen, daß die Substanz im Allgemeinen explicite appercipiert werde, wenn das Accidenz appercipiert wird. Sie mag *

Ich habe nöthig gefunden, eine Reihe von Kriterien zur Entscheidung zusammenzustellen. Das Kriterium | einseitiger Trennbarkeit genügt oft nicht, weil die Möglichkeit eines gleichzeitigen Bestandes, für sich und als logischer Theil, gegeben erscheint. Man könnte da reelle Abtrennung eines Inhärirenden annehmen, wo ein Coinhärierendes entfällt. Das ganze Gebiet erfordert nach Anerkennung heterokategorischer logischen Theile eine viel umsichtigere Behandlung.

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dann im Allgemeinen wie im Besonderen nur mitappercipiert werden, wie jeder Theil der Apperception. Richtig ist nur, daß, wenn das Accidenz als Accidenz von etwas appercipiert wird, auch ein Subsistierendes als Subsistierendes appercipert wird, auch dann aber vielleicht nicht explicite diesem allgemeinsten Begriffe nach. Nehmen wir | an, ein gewisses Vorstellendes subsistiere einem gewißen Anerkennenden, so mag das Anerkennende appercipiert werden, ohne daß das Vorstellende und die Beziehung des Anerkennenden als eines dem Vorstellenden Inhärierenden explicite appercipiert wird. Nur implicite beschloßen ist das Vorstellende in der Apperceptionsvorstellung des Anerkennenden, und mehr noch so das Vorstellende, als subsistierendes, diesem allgemeinen Begriffe nach. Ad 2. Daß, im Fall Verfärbung in der Sinnesvorstellungen auftritt, entgegengesetzte Farben vorgestellt sind, und ebenso, daß, wenn Beharren einer Farbe in ihr gegeben ist, dieselbe Farbe unendlich vielmal vorgestellt wird, ist richtig. Die letztere widerpsricht nicht dem Principium Indiscernibilum, weil die Anerkennung des primären Objects eine andersartige, continuierlich modificierte ist, und das sinnliche Anerkennen nicht dem sinn- | lichen Vorstellen inhärent, sondern nur ein heterokategorischer Theil desselben psychischen Actes ist. Nur daher kommt es, daß ähnlich wie, wo etwas apodictisch verneint wird, es als unmöglich erscheint, etwas, was sinnlich vorgestellt wird, als existierend ja gewesen u.Ä und als beharrend oder wechselnd erscheint. Sie haben hier wieder einen Beleg für die Vorsicht, die bei der Behandlung der Frage, ob Inhärenz, ob logischer Theil, geboten ist. Das Gesetz des Ausschlusses der Qualitäten im Sinnesfed besteht nur für Vorstellend-anerkennende Act mit gleicher Weise der Anerkennung. Es freut mich, daß Eisenmeier an Swedenborg geht. Übrigens werde ich mir von Amato noch die genaue Bezeichnung der Stelle erbitten. Mit meiner Gesundheit geht es wieder zur Zufriedenheit. Meine Substanzarbeit bei– | seite lassend, habe ich noch eine kleine Abhandlung für Amato ausgearbeitet, wohl einen Druckbogen stark. Sie behandelt die Frage der Empfehlenswürdigkeit eines Glaubens, welcher die Proportion der Vernünftsgründe überschreitet, und die der Monadolo-gie. Ich erbat mir eine Copie und werde sie mit andern Früchten hiesiger Thätigkeit nach Schönbühl bringen.

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An Vailati scheinen wir einen Genossen zu gewinnen. Amato erzählt mir von schwärmerischen Briefen. Nie habe ihn ein Denker so viel Eindruck gemacht. Meine 4 Phasen seien mehr werth als ein ganzes Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie. Die drei Seiten in meiner empirischen Psychologie, welche die kategorische Syllogistik berühren, seien mehr werth als das ganze Buch von Hillebrand u.s.w. Mir hat er, und das gefällt mir, solches weder direct gesagt noch geschrieben. In seinem letzten Briefe bat er mich, Ihnen für die freundlich übersandte Broschüre zu danken. Amato sprach davon, daß Aussicht dafür sei, daß Vailati die Professur für Geschichte der Philosophie in Palermo erhalte. Da würde er gewiß in unserem Sinne wirken. Unsere Abfahrt steht bevor. Hoffentlich haben wir für den Tag auf der See gutes Wetter. In Neapel bleiben wir ein Paar Tage. Mitte Mai, oder wohl auch schon am 10-11ten, sind wir in Florenz. Dort hoffe ich einen Brief von Ihnen. Die Eltern Rüprecht kommen hin. Alles grüßt. Herzliches Lebewohl! Ihr ergebener Freund FBrentano PS: Ich überlese den Brief. Die Fassung des Paßus über die Substanz ist nichts weniger als formvollendet. Doch ist mein Gedanke richtig wiedergegeben. Ihrem Scharfsinn wird auch, was gemeint ist, kein Räthsel bleiben.

Franz Brentano

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Brentano an Marty, Brief 1087 (Postkarte) Messina Lieber Freund!

der 2. Mai 1899

Wir sind in Messina. Der Abschied von Palermo und die Fahrt von dort an der Küste hin sind schöne Erinnerungen. Einer meiner neuerworbenen Freunde, der dringend meinen Wiederkehr verlangt, hat eine Art Leiden, das ihn (mit oder ohne Grund, weiß ich nicht zu ermeßen) zu der Überzeugung führt, jede Bewegung sei ihm schädlich, jede Reise eine Lebensgefahr. “Wenn Sie nicht zu uns kommen” sagte er am Ende, “so komme ich nach Florenz, auch wenn ich dann sterben sollte. Überlegen Sie, ob Ihr Gewissen das auf sich nehmen will!” Er ist ein begabter, edler Mann: Nächstens will er mir eine Abhandlung schicken, die ins Deutsche übersetzt werden soll. Da mögen Sie ihn näher würdigen lernen. Bezüglich der etwas hastig abgeschloßenen Arbeit für Sie, bitte ich nochmals, namentlich die letzteren Theile nicht ungeprüft auf sich Einfluß nehmen zu laßen. Eines möchte ich schon jetzt selbst berichtigen. Das Wahrnehmungsurteil, welches den allgemeinen Begriff als in dem konkrete anschaulichen enthalten erkennt, hat sicher KEINE Intensität. Gegenüber einem Konkretum von ebenmerklicher Ausdehnung ist es nur einmal, gegenüber einem, worin physische Teile unterschieden werden, so oft vorhanden, als Teile unterschieden sind. Diese Vielheit ist eine unendliche und eine Vielheit von discreten Urtheilen. Im Falle der Intensität des Urtheils würde die Vielheit oder die Vielheiten merkliche und continuirliche sein. So löst sich die ganze Schwierigkeit. Morgen kommen wir vielleicht nach Syrakus, das ich dann vielleicht nicht vor Ende der Woche verlassen werde, um am Samstag von hier mit dem Alessandriaschiff nach Neapel zu fahren. Emilie und Giovanni grüßen und empfehlen nochmals Viareggio. Alles Gute! Ihr FB

Ausgewählte Briefe an Marty

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Brentano an Marty, Brief 1088 Florenz

den 30. Mai 99

Lieber Freund! Endlich sind wir daheim. Unter andern Briefen, die sich da angesammelt, finde ich den Ihrigen. Ich danke Ihnen dafür und nehme an dem schweren Verlust, den Sie, wie sie darin erzählen, erlitten, innigen Antheil. Wohl traf er nicht unvorbereitet. Aber keine Vorbereitung genügt, uns schmerzlos so Schweres ertragen zu laßen. Ich hoffe zuversichtlich, Mitte Juli in Schönbühl zu sein, und freue mich Ihres | dortigen Besuchs. Immerhin bedauere ich, daß Sie den Gedanken an Viareggio so ganz zurückweisen. Ihre Gesundheit bedarf der Kräftigung. Viareggio wäre Ihnen geistig und leiblich erquicklich. Hoffentlich nützen Sie die kommenden Ferientage an anderem Orte in entsprechender Weise. Emilie grüßt herzlich. Kraus hat mir gestern seine Heirathsanzeige geschickt. Ich erlaube mir ein paar Zeilen für ihn einzulegen. Alles Weitere später. Ich bin im Gedräng der ersten Tage. Vertrauen wir! Sursum orda! Vom Herzen Ihr Franz Brentano

MODERN ERRORS CONCERNING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAWS OF INFERENCE* FRANZ BRENTANO Edited by Denis Fisette and translated by Robin D. Rollinger and Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray Paper Presented at the Philosophical Society at the University of Vienna 16th December 1890 [10903] § 1 The progress of science leads to innovations of very different kinds. Frequently a new truth gets discovered, which drives out old errors. At other times a mistake goes away only to make room for a new illusion. And again it occurs that an old correct view that has been inherited is contested and discarded, while erroneous opinions are disseminated in their place. Such cases seem to indicate an obvious step backwards. But they can also contribute indirectly to the advancement of knowledge. If the error is refuted, often other flaws, occasions of error, will be eliminated with the result that the entire domain is clarified and our insight is deepened. [10904] * Editor’s note: The transcription of Brentano’s talk in the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna is based on the original manuscript entitled ‘Moderne Irrtümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schliessens’. This manuscript is located in Houghton Library, Harvard University, and it belongs to the Series Erkenntnistheorie und Logik (under the signature X.E.L. 70, #10903-10936). Part of this manuscript has been published by F. Mayer-Hillebrand in her edition of Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil (Bern : Francke Verlag, 1956), section 48 ‘Der Vorwurf, daß die Syllogismen entweder falsch oder nutzlos seien’ (pp. 227-237). We kept the original orthography of the text, corrected the errors in the partial transcription, and completed Brentano’s references.

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§ 2 In this consideration I would primarily like to turn your attention today to certain epistemological doctrines that have been established in the modern era by great men and have gained a group of followers. However mistaken they are, they might yet point the way to more complete knowledge. § 3 Where does the knowledge of the rules of inference come from? [10905] The old conviction, already clearly attested to by Aristotle, was that the rules of inferential procedure, in the simplest cases directly, in the more complicated ones indirectly, are evident as analytic a priori judgments. § 4 This was held with unrestricted universality. Therefore, when we distinguish demonstrative and empirical inferences, i.e. inferences by imperfect induction, it was held for both realms equally. § 5 In modern times this doctrine has been contested in part and in its entirety, more particularly from two sides: 1) in the empirical school, 2) in the a priori school of Kant. § 6 Let us first look at what certain empiricists say and then at what certain Kantians say against it. § 7 First, [10906] it was the domain of induction where doubt set in as to whether analytic judgments really guaranteed us the correct rules of inferential procedure. Hume denied it decidedly, because the conclusion contained something not included in the premises and thus there is in fact no contradiction between the acceptance of the premises and the denial of the conclusion. Since, according to Hume, there was a lack of analytic guarantee and some other kind that could replace it seemed inconceivable, he rejected [10907] all inductive inferences as logically inadmissible. They are something that people presumably have a drive to do. But the drive is nothing but a blind compulsion of habit, which leads them to behave in the case that follows as they did in the in the preceding case. This psychological law is a logical impropriety of human nature. Thus any empirical proof would be illusory, and skepticism, contrary to all empirical science, would be the only reasonable attitude. [10908] § 8 In such a manner this revolutionary descendant of the empirical school wanted to give all empirical evidence the merciless deathblow. The old proposition that the rules of inference must be evident in an analytic way is something he left untouched, rejecting only a part of

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the tradition as contrary to this proposition. § 9 To renounce all empirical science – the sacrifice is too large that Hume demands of the human desire for knowledge for us to offer it willingly. Can we not escape this and rescue induction by abandoning the old doctrine that the rules of inference must be evident in an analytic way? We should not be surprised when later thinkers of the empiricist school sought an alternative on this side. Thus we see John Stuart Mill in his famous Logic adhering to the correctness of inductive method [10909], although he believes with Hume that an analytic guarantee does not exist. What is essential for the truth of inductive rules lies in the ultimate ground of experience. We must, he thinks, find no inconvenience in the substantiation of the rules of induction through induction. For inductions are not one and all of equal value. And indeed for that reason one induction can support another, as the more wide-ranging one namely can support the one which is not built upon such an abundance of facts. § 10 Thus the old principle whereby the rules of inference must be evident in an analytic manner was abandoned in the empiricist school for at least a part of the inferences. [10910] § 11 Still, what I do I mean by “a part”? No! According to Mill, the ultimate foundation of all rules for the entire realm of inferring should be induction. This thesis for Mill arises on the basis of the former, for he believes that he has found that everything that had been designated earlier as reasoning, except for inductive reasoning, does not truly deserve this name. A syllogism, for example, is not really an instance of reasoning. For reasoning must impart new knowledge. The syllogism, however, says nothing in the conclusion that was not already contained in the premises. All men are mortal. Caius is a man. — Therefore, Caius is mortal. Has this syllogism taught me something new? Does it expand my knowledge? No! If I knew of all men that they are mortal, I knew it of Cassius as well. [10911] Thus only the inductive procedure, where the conclusion gives something that was not contained in the premises, is a genuine inferential procedure. And experience is therefore the ultimate guarantee for all the rules of inference in general.

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§ 12 Mill’s view that all syllogisms and everything that earlier times contrasted as demonstrative procedure with inductive procedure are not truly inferential procedures has been endorsed by eminent men. Helmholtz, for example, expresses his approval in his Physiological Optics. § 13 However, it failed even amongst Mill’s closest friends and philosophical brothers in arms, who found the statement precarious. No one was as close to Mill as Alexander Bain, and he apparently withheld consent in his Logic [10912]. But in answer to the main question, namely whether all rules of inference rest on experience, he finds himself nonetheless in agreement with him. What he in particular means to say is that, just as the rules of induction are not evident in an analytical way, the same should be said for the rules of syllogism and all demonstrative inferential procedure. The ultimate guarantee for the Barbara, Celarent, and the remaining modes of categorical inference lies in the principle that according to past experience they always lead to true results. Thus, according to him, the guarantee for the rules of induction itself also lies in induction, thus for all rules of inference as such. § 14 The opposition to the old doctrine of the analytic character of the rules of inference, as we see, is for these empirical philosophers [10913] radical and profound. Was the old view really mistaken? Or rather, is the new one to be condemned as a mistake? § 15 Certainly the latter is the case, and to provide proof is not difficult. 1. Regarding the rules of induction, it is, as Mill always likes to protest against, an obvious circularity when one wants to confirm them by induction. When Mill says that a more comprehensive induction could support a weaker one, I’d like to ask him, who gives him the right to make such a claim as long as the logical justification of trust in experience is called into question. If experience deserves our trust, the more comprehensive experience as a ‘plus’ of experience might deserve a ‘plus’ of trust. If, however, it deserves no trust, [10914] through such a ‘plus’ only a ‘zero plus zero’ is obtained, which is again equal to zero. Here the astute Hume, as he already anticipated Mill’s attempt, more correctly judged the insufficiency of replacing

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analytic evidence with the rules of induction by means of experience, dismissing it as an obvious impossibility. 2. As far as the rules of demonstrative inferential procedure are concerned, it is also clearly to be shown, contrary to Mill, that he was wrong in failing to acknowledge in syllogisms and related ways of thinking genuine instances of reasoning, as was Bain in seeking in inductions the guarantee of the rules of such reasoning. a) No syllogism, no demonstrative [10915] procedure is to be an expansion of cognition? This is utterly wrong! To put this beyond doubt, we need not dwell on a finer analysis of Mill’s spurious argument, for the facts of the great discoveries via demonstrative proof in the realm of pure and applied mathematics supply a demonstratio ad oculos for the falsity [of Mill’s claim]. Mill believes that he can defend himself against this devastating argument by saying that all these demonstrations are combined only from propositions, which, when we go to their ultimate grounding, are supported by experience itself. And thus here too the supporting force lies exclusively in induction. But is this not obviously [10916] shifting the point in the question? Assuming (but not conceding) that all so-called mathematical axioms are based on induction, it would still be clear that with the establishment of those fundamental principles inductive reasoning would reach its end here. Everything else would be a matter of a syllogistic combination of propositions which are supplied by induction. And is this, rather than the establishment of axioms, not the most substantial feature of all wherein we marvel at the investigative power of the mind? Hence, what a profound interest in the expansion of knowledge accordingly belongs without a doubt to the process of syllogistic combining! It is the clearest contradiction, if we asserted with Mill, that a syllogism is incapable of expanding cognition, and then we say, however, that every syllogism does so if only the premises themselves are established beforehand by induction. [10917] b) Thus Bain was certainly right to separate himself here from his friend Mill.

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But he is just as surely wrong if he believes that demonstrative thinking as a genuine inferential procedure secures its rules only by experience verifying them without exception. From which truth is it easier to gain insight, from the truth of the rules of syllogism or from the truth of those rules which teach us to trust in imperfect induction? Obviously the latter is the more difficult task. The opposite, however, would have to be the case if induction, i.e. the application of the rules of induction, should guarantee for us the rules of syllogisms. Thus the innovation [10918] of both empirical thinkers, according to whom all rules of inference should be based on induction instead of on analysis, proves itself to be misguided in both respects. 3. To my two arguments, each of which was directed against an aspect of the new doctrine, I add yet another, which, by turning against the whole, shows its indefensibleness. If all the rules of inference must be supported by induction, there is no rule of inference that is immediately evident. Nor is there an inference that would not first require proof for its justification. But how can we provide proof, while we are not justified in drawing any conclusions? – In no way at all! Thus it is obvious that if there is not an inference whose procedure [10919] is evident immediately and independently of every proof, whether it be deductive or inductive, there can never be an inference either whose procedure is justified in a mediated way, and consequently each and every inference is altogether lacking in justification. § 16 This is, briefly stated, the great aberration of the empirical school. Now let’s turn to the a priori school of Kant, and see how and with what success they had in their attempt at reforming the theory of knowledge with regards to the rules of inference. Here too the distinction between what the rules of inductive method and what the rules of demonstrative inferring concern [may] serve us in arranging [10920] the argument. § 17 Let us look first at Kant himself. § 18 On induction Kant is not very thorough in his lectures on logic or in his Critique of Pure Reason. One thing stands out immediately: namely, that he has much less

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confidence in inductive inferences than in demonstrative inferences. Induction is missing the necessary connection of the conclusion with the premises. It gives only empirical certainty (thus not the kind belonging to a priori statements), he says in his Logic. Certainly in the introduction to his Critique of Reason there are utterances found that we might be tempted to interpret almost as mistrust against induction [10921] as Hume fostered this. It says there: “Empirical universality is therefore only an arbitrary increase in validity from that which holds in most cases to that which holds in all.”1 And again: “Experience never gives its judgments true or strict assumed and comparative universality (through induction), so properly it must be said: as far as we have yet perceived, there is no exception to this or that rule. “2 Hume might also have granted this as justified because that would only be a summarizing of experiences, but not an inference that goes beyond them. On the other hand, Kant finds in his Logic something that Hume believed should not be conceded, that inductive inferences are useful and indispensible [10922] for the sake of extending our experiential cognition. We must make use of it, but due to its imperfect certainty we must do so with caution and prudence. § 19 In accordance with all this, we may well say that Kant regarded inductive inferences as inferences of probability, which is indeed actually the case. § 20 If we are now able to ask him if the rules for these inductive inferences are guaranteed by analytic propositions a priori, which answer would we perhaps receive? Unquestionably a negative one. For induction should expand experiential cognition, as he told us: only synthetic, not analytic laws, should enable the expansion of knowledge, according to Kant. Furthermore, the induction is an inference of probability. To weigh the probabilities and measure them by the standard of certainty is, howev1

Translator’s note: This passage is cited from The Critique of Pure Reason (B 4). The translation used here is that of Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 2 Translator’s note: This passage is cited from The Critique of Pure Reason (B 3). See above note regarding the translation that is used here. Brentano writes two exclamation marks immediately after the quotation.

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er, as Kant [10923] teaches in his Logic, a concern for mathematicians, and mathematics for Kant rests not on analytic propositions, but on synthetic ones. For this very reason, if only we do not consider it a matter of indifference in induction to see in how many cases thus far experience has shown facts in agreement with it, the procedure of inductive inference is, for the sake of this counting alone, conditioned by synthetic laws. Kant could not deny without great inconsistency that it is impossible that the rules of induction are secured through a priori analytic cognition. Rather, we will have to look in synthetic judgments a priori, as he understands them, in search of the source for the rules of inductive cognition. [10924] § 21 Regarding the rules for demonstrative inferences, however, Kant left unchallenged the traditional epistemological view, as Hume had done. He too considers the rules of these inferences to be evident, namely as analytic cognitions a priori. Indeed, all formal logic, in which we may not, however, properly include the theory of induction, is seen by him as coming from this source. § 22 In the case of Kant regarding the epistemology of the rules of inference what we have is only a partial defection from his predecessors. § 23 However, this did not settle the matter in the Kantian school. With regard to the rules of induction the neo-Kantians, such as the physiologist Fick in a treatise on the inference of probabilities and Albert Lange in his Logical Studies, have expressed [10925] most resolutely, and stressed and argued most vehemently what was already clear as Kant’s view, namely that the rules of induction together with the rules of the calculation of probabilities theory have their roots in synthetic cognitions a priori, not in analytic ones. § 24 Among them, however, Lange goes even further. He accuses Kant of inconsistency and of defection from his principles, for Kant maintains the old view for the rules of demonstrative inference: that they come from of analytic principles. By learning these rules of inference, he says, we extend our cognition; otherwise all formal logic [10926] would not at all be considered to be truly an extension of our cognition. But it is so. Kant himself includes it among the sciences. Now, however, analytic cognitions, as Kant everywhere stresses emphatically, are not judgments of expansion, but rather merely ones of elucidation judgments. Hence, the rules of conversion for the syllogism and of all deductive inference must rather be synthetic judgments

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a priori. Therefore, he [Lange] believes that the intuition of space is indispensable to the cognition of syllogistic rules. In point of fact, it had already for a long time been considered beneficial to illustrate [10927] validity and invalidity of certain modes of inference by means of geometrical figures, partly overlapping, partly separated, partly intersecting each other. In sharp contrast to those who ridicule these illustrations, as Prantl does, as if they were absurd childishness, Lange now asserts: No, here we rather have in full clarity the insight that is absolutely required. Like geometry, the syllogistic logic is also rooted in a priori intuition of space. § 25 Enough of this! We have here in the a priori school of Kant a defection that is no less complete from the old doctrine whereby the rules of inference [10928] should be analytic a priori insights. While the empirical school had ultimately lost its bearings in claiming that all rules of inference rested on experience, we find neoKantians arriving at the proposition that all rules of inference would have as their origin synthetic a priori cognitions. § 26 And this innovation was nothing but an objectionable mistake. And how am I, in the short time at my disposal today, supposed to justify this dismissive judgment? I will do so by restricting myself to one point, but it is one that is of the utmost general importance for the appraisal of Kantian philosophy as a whole. [10929] § 27 ‘Synthetic a priori cognitions’, as Kant depicts them to us, are not truly evident propositions. The name ‘cognition’ therefore belongs to them only according to an improper usage. And because they are themselves without evidence, they cannot be used as principles for the sake of mediating insight into other truths. § 28 The so-called synthetic a priori cognitions are, according to Kant’s own characterization, nothing but certain judgments that are regarded by us, in a blind impulse, as necessary independently of all experience, that is to say, if we will, prejudices of pure reason, but ones which have [10930] the peculiar trait whereby the facts of experience stand in harmony with them in some extraordinary manner. § 29 The existence of such prejudices would be certainly very odd. And Kant was very much puzzled about the existence of these synthetic a priori judgments, whereas the analytic judgments a priori, since they are true insights, appear to him simply as obvious.

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In Kant’s question: “How are synthetic a priori cognitions possible?” this puzzlement finds expression. And the only answer he can conceivably give is that the validity of these judgments, the harmony of the matters of fact with [10931] them, will be comprehensible only if we assume that the objects which we judge in accordance with them conform to those judgments, that they are conditioned by our subjectivity. § 30 In yet another doctrine of Kant’s it becomes clear that these socalled synthetic a priori cognitions lack true evidence. After already declaring their existence secured and noting several of them, he asks whether these cognitions deserve our trust without reservation or only in certain domains. And he decides in favor of the second option. Thus it is not universally, but rather only within certain boundaries, that validity belongs to these propositions. What can show more clearly than this that they [10932] in character lack evidence? For in the case of a truly evident proposition it is absurd to ask: Where and within which boundaries might it deserve our trust? If it is evident, I may absolutely trust in it as it stands and each restriction, which would be a narrowing of its contents, a partial suspension of its truth, should be rejected from the outset. § 31 Hence, once again Kant’s two questions: “1) How are synthetic a priori cognitions possible? 2) Within which boundaries may we trust in their validity?” clearly indicate that we – even if such judgments are given to us a priori – are not [10933] dealing with real insight, with truly evident judgments. If we want to utilize them, a preliminary consideration is required whether it is appropriate here to rely on them. This preliminary consideration is impossible without our ability to infer. We must therefore already make inferences, in order to secure for us the justification of making use of those synthetic a priori judgments. And thus it is clear that Lange is trapped in a circle, no less than Mill and Bain are, when he allows [10934] insight into the correctness of every inferential procedure to be gained from synthetic a priori cognitions, while the reliability and applicability of synthetic a priori judgments are quite concealed from us without any prior inferential activity. § 32 I must finish here, although I would like to have added still some supporting argumentation to the forgoing. To a good many of you what I have said will initially have sounded quite strange. The more someone thinks about it, however, the more he will find it established.

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It is my belief that I may indulge in this hope. § 33 What I most regret, however, is that I still left completely untouched the promises made at the start in their most essential part. I promised [10935] not merely to show that the modern innovations regarding the epistemology of inferring put errors in the place of truth; I wanted also to demonstrate how these errors can be advantageous to us, insofar as they draw our attention to other already existing defects, by whose removal the whole realm is clarified for us and knowledge is deepened. The doctrine of inferential procedure, which Aristotle had founded, and of which Kant says that it has been neither improved nor worsened since Aristotle, is in fact very insufficient in spite the undeniable [10936] merit of the great master. This goes for both his doctrine of the syllogism and his almost completely undeveloped doctrine of induction. Without these shortcomings, the modern deviations would not have been possible. My concern is the clarification of inferential procedure, whereby its analytic character thus becomes unmistakable for everyone. Perhaps another evening will provide the opportunity to do what I had to leave unfulfilled today.

MODERNE IRRTHÜMER ÜBER DIE ERKENNTNIS DER GESETZE DES SCHLIEßENS FRANZ BRENTANO Edited by Denis Fisette and translated by Robin D. Rollinger and Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray Vortrag gehalten in der philosophischen Gesellschaft der Universität zu Wien, am 16. Dezember 1890* [10903] §1 Der Fortgang der Wissenschaft führt zu Neuerungen sehr verschiedener Art. Oft wird eine Wahrheit entdeckt, die alte Irrtümer verscheucht. Anderermals weicht ein Irrtum nur, um einen neuen Wahne Platz zu machen. Und wieder kommt es vor, dass eine altererbte richtige Anschauung angezweifelt, dass sie verworfen wird und dass irrige Meinungen an ihrer Statt Verbreitung gewinnen. Solche Fälle scheinen einen offenbaren Rückschritt zu bezeichnen. Aber auch sie können mittelbar zur Förderung des Wissens beitragen. Wird der Irrtum widerlegt, so werden oft andere Mängel, Anlässe des Irrtums, mitbeseitigt, das Ganze Gebiet geklärt, die Erkenntnis vertieft. [10904] §2 In dieser Erwägung vorzüglich möchte ich heute Ihre Aufmerksamkeit für gewisse erkenntnistheoretische Lehren in Anspruch *

Anmerkung des Herausgebers: Die Transkription von Brentanos Vortrag an der philosophischen Gesellschaft der Univerisität zu Wien basiert auf dem Originalmanuskript ‘Moderne Irrtümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schliessens’. Dieses Manuskript wird an der Houghton Library in der Universität Harvard bewahrt (Signatur X.E.L. 70, #10903-10936). Teile dieses Manuskriptes sind von F. MayerHillebrand in ihrer Ausgabe von der Lehre vom richtigen Urteil (Sektion 48: ‘Der Vorwurf, daß die Syllogismen entweder falsch oder nutzlos seien’ (pp. 227-237)) veröffentlicht worden. Die originale Rechtschreibung wurde behalten, Fehler in der Teiltranskription wurden behoben und die Referenzen wurden vervollständigt.

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nehmen, die in moderner Zeit von bedeutenden Männern aufgestellt, einen Kreis von Anhängern gewonnen haben. Irrig, wie sie sind, mögen sie doch ein Fingerzeig für den Weg zu vollkommenerem Wissen werden. §3 Woher stammt die Erkenntnis von den Regeln des Schließens? [10905] Die alte, schon von Aristoteles deutlich bekundete Überzeugung war die, daß die Regeln des Schlußverfahrens uns in den einfachsten Fällen unmittelbar, in den komplizierteren mittelbar einleuchteten als analytische Urteile a priori handle. §4 Dies galt in voller Allgemeinheit, und daher, wenn man demonstrierende und empirische, d. h. unvollständige Induktionsschlüsse scheidet, für beide Gebiete gleichmäßig. §5 In der neueren Zeit ist diese Lehre in den Teilen, und im ganzen bestritten worden und zwar vornehmlich von zweifacher Seite: 1) in der empirischen Schule 2) in der apriorischen Schule Kants. §6 Blicken wir zunächst auf das, was gewisse Empiriker, dann auf das was gewisse Kantianer dagegen vorbringen. §7. Zuerst [10906] war es das Gebiet der Induktion, wo der Zweifel Platz griff, ob wirklich analytische Urteile uns für die Richtigkeit des Schlußverfahrens garantierten. Hume leugnete es entschieden; weil der Schlußsatz etwas enthalte was in den Prämissen nicht beschlossen sei, so bestehe ja zwischen der Annahme der Prämissen und der Leugnung des Schlußsatzes kein Widerspruch. Da nun nach Hume die analytische Bürgschaft fehlte, eine andere aber, welche sie ersetzen könnte, ihm undenkbar schien, so verwarf [10907] er alle induktiven Schlüsse als logisch unstatthaft. Die Menschen haben wohl einen Trieb so zu verfahren. Aber der Trieb ist nichts als der blinde Drang der Gewohnheit, welcher dahin führt, sich im folgenden Fall ähnlich wie in dem vorhergegangenen zu verhalten. Dieses psychologische Gesetz ist eine logische Gesetzwidrigkeit der menschlichen Natur. So wäre denn jeder Erfahrungsbeweis illusorisch, und aller Erfahrungswissenschaft gegenüber die Skepsis das einzig vernünftige Verhalten. [10908] §8 So wollte denn dieser revolutionäre Abkömmling der empirischen Schule der ganzen Empirie unbarmherzig den Todesstoß geben. Den alten Satz, daß die Regeln des Schließens auf analytischem Wege

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einleuchten müssten, ließ er unangetastet, er verwarf nur einen Teil der überlieferten als diesem Satze entgegen. §9 Verzicht auf alle Erfahrungswissenschaft – das Opfer ist zu groß, das Hume der menschlichen Wißbegier zumutet, als daß man es willig brächte. Können wir ihm nicht entgehen, so fragte man, und die Induktion retten, indem wir lieber die alte Lehre, daß die Regeln des Schließens auf analytischem Wege einleuchten müssten, preisgeben? Wir dürfen uns nicht eben wundern, wenn spätere Denker der empirischen Schule auf dieser Seite einen Ausweg suchten. So sehen wir J. St. Mill in seiner berühmten Logik an der Gültigkeit des induktiven [10909] Verfahrens festhalten, obwohl er mit Hume glaubt, daß eine analytische Gewähr nicht vorhanden sei. Was für die Richtigkeit der induktiven Regeln gilt ist im letzten Grunde die Erfahrung. Man darf, meint er, daran keine Inconvenienz finden, daß die Regeln der Induktion selbst durch Induktion erhärtet werden. Denn die Induktionen sind nicht alle gleichwertig. Und recht wohl kann darum eine Induktion eine andere stützen, die umfassendere nämlich diejenige, welche nicht auf eine solche Fülle von Tatsachen aufgebaut ist. §10 So war in der empirischen Schule das alte Prinzip, wonach die Regeln des Schließens auf analytischem Wege einleuchten müssten, für einen Teil der Schlüsse wenigstens verlassen. [10910] §11 Doch was spreche ich von einem Teil, nein! für das ganze Gebiet des Schließens sollte nach Mill die Induktion die letzte Grundlage aller Regeln sein. Diese These ergibt sich Mill auf Grund der früheren, indem er nämlich zu finden glaubt, daß alles, was man außer den induktiven Folgerungen früher als Folgerung bezeichnet habe, nicht wahrhaft diesen Namen verdiene. Ein Syllogismus z. B. ist nicht wahrhaft eine Folgerung. Denn eine Folgerung muß mir eine neue Erkenntnis vermitteln. Der Syllogismus dagegen sagt im Schlußsatz nichts, was nicht schon in den Prämissen enthalten war. Alle Menschen sind sterblich Cajus ist ein Mensch ___ Also ist Cajus sterblich. Lehrt mich dieser Syllogismus etwas Neues? Erweitert er mein Wissen? Nein! Wenn ich von allen Menschen wüsste, daß sie sterblich sind, so wüsste ich es auch von Cajus. [10911] Also nur das induktive

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Verfahren, wo der Schlußsatz etwas gibt, was in der Prämisse nicht enthalten war, ist ein wahres Schlußverfahren. Und so ist die Erfahrung die letzte Bürgschaft für alle Regeln des Schließens schlechthin. §12 Die Ansicht Mills, daß alle Syllogismen und alles, was die frühere Zeit als demonstrierendes Verfahren dem induktiven Verfahren gegenüberstellt, nicht wahrhaft ein Schlußverfahren sei, hat von Seiten angesehener Männer Billigung erfahren. Helmholtz z. B. in seiner physiologischen Optik spricht seine Zustimmung aus. §13 Dennoch fehlte es selbst unter den nächsten Freunden und philosophischen Waffenbrüdern Mills nicht an solchen, welche die Behauptung bedenklich fanden. Keiner stand Mill so nahe wie Alexander Bain, und der scheint ihm in seiner Logik die [10912] Zustimmung zu versagen. Aber in der Beantwortung der Hauptfrage, ob nämlich alle Regeln des Schließens auf Erfahrung ruhten? findet er sich trotzdem mit ihm einig. Er meint nämlich, wie die Regeln für die Induktion nicht auf analytischem Wege einleuchten, so sei dasselbe auch von den Regeln der Syllogistik, und alles demonstrierenden Schlußverfahrens zu sagen. Die letzte Garantie für das Barbara, Celarent und die übrigen Modi der kategorischen Schlüsse liege darin, daß sie nach der bisherigen Erfahrung immer zu wahren Resultaten führten. Also in Induktionen liegt auch nach ihm die Garantie wie für die Regeln des Induzierens selbst, so überhaupt für alle Regeln des Schließens. §14 Wir sehen, der Gegensatz zu der alten Lehre von dem analytischen Charakter der Regeln des Schließens ist bei diesen empirischen Philosophen [10913] ein voller und durchgreifender. War nun wirklich die alte Anschauung irrig? Oder ist vielmehr die neue als ein Irrtum zu verdammen? §15 Gewiß ist das letztere der Fall, und der Nachweis nicht schwer zu erbringen. 1. Was die Regeln der Induktion betrifft, so ist es, wie immer Mill dagegen protestieren mag, ein offenbarer Zirkel, wenn man sie selbst durch Induktion bewähren will. Wenn Mill sagt, eine umfassendere Induktion könne eine Stütze werden für eine schwächere, so möchte ich ihn fragen, wer ihm, solange die logische Berechtigung des Vertrauens auf die Erfahrung in Frage gestellt ist, zu solcher Behauptung ein Recht gibt. Verdient die Behauptung Vertrauen, dann mag die umfassendere Erfahrung als

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Plus von Erfahrung ein Plus von Vertrauen verdienen. Verdient sie aber keines, [10914] so wird durch solches Plus nur ein Null plus Null gewonnen, welches wieder gleich Null ist. Hier hat der scharfsinnige Hume viel richtiger geurteilt, indem er zum Voraus schon den Versuch Mills, den Mangel analytischer Evidenz bei den Regeln der Induktion durch Erfahrung zu ersetzen, als eine handgreifliche Unmöglichkeit verwirft. 2. Was die Regeln des demonstrierenden Schlußverfahrens anlangt, so ist es ebenso klar gegenüber Mill zu zeigen, daß er Unrecht hat, in den Syllogismen und verwandten Weisen des Denkens keine wahren Folgerungen anzuerkennen, als andererseits gegenüber Bain, die Gewähr für die Regeln dieser Folgerung in Induktionen zu suchen. a) Kein Syllogismus, kein demonstratives [10915] Verfahren soll eine Erweiterung der Erkenntnis geben? Das ist grundfalsch! Wir brauchen uns, um dies außer Zweifel zu stellen, nicht bei einer feineren Zergliederung des Millschen Scheinargumentes aufzuhalten, wo die Tatsachen der großartigen Entdeckungen durch demonstrative Beweisführung auf dem Gebiet der reinen und angewandten Mathematik für die Falschheit eine Demonstratio ad oculos liefern. Mill glaubt sich gegen dieses vernichtende Argument dadurch verteidigen zu können, daß er sagt, alle diese Demonstrationen kombinierten nur Sätze, welche, wenn man auf den letzten Grund gehe, sich auf Erfahrungen stützten. Und so liege auch hier die fördernde Kraft ausschließlich in der Induktion. Aber ist dies nicht die offen- [10916] barste Verschiebung des Fragepunktes? Angenommen (aber nicht zugegeben), daß alle sogenannten mathematischen Axiome auf Induktion beruhten, so wäre es noch immer klar, daß mit der Feststellung jener Grundsätze das induktive Folgern hier sein Ende gefunden hätte. Alles Weitere wäre Sache jener syllogistischen Kombination der Sätze, welche die Induktion geliefert hat. Und ist dies nicht das Allererheblichste, das, worin wir die forschende Geisteskraft weit mehr als bei der Aufstellung der Axiome bewundern? Also, welcher mächtige Anteil an der Erweiterung des Wissens fällt nicht hienach unleugbar dem syllogistisch kombinierenden Verfahren zu! Es ist der klarste Widerspruch, wenn man mit Mill behauptet, kein Syllogismus vermöge die Erkenntnis zu erweitern, dann aber wieder sagt: jeder Syllogismus tue es, wenn nur die Prämissen selbst zuvor durch Induktion festgestellt worden seien. [10917]

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b) So hat denn Bain gewiß Recht gehabt, hier von seinem Freunde Mill sich zu trennen. Aber ebenso sicher ist er im Unrecht, wenn er glaubt, das als wahres Schlußverfahren anerkannte demonstrierende Denken gewinne die Sicherung seiner Regeln nur durch die ausnahmslos sie bewährende Erfahrung. Von welcher Wahrheit ist es leichter Einsicht zu gewinnen, von der Wahrheit der Regeln der Syllogismen oder von der Wahrheit der Regeln, welche uns lehren, einer unvollständigen Induktion zu vertrauen? Offenbar ist das letzte die ungleich schwierigere Aufgabe. Es müsste aber das Gegenteil der Fall sein, wenn uns Induktion, also die Anwendung der Regeln der Induktion, die Regeln der Syllogismen erst gewährleisten sollte. So erweist sich denn die Neuerung [10918] der beiden empirischen Denker, wonach alle Regeln des Schließens statt auf Analyse auf Induktion beruhen sollten, in beiden Teilen als verfehlt. 3. Ich schließe den beiden Betrachtungen, welche sich gegen je eine Seite der neuen Lehre kehrten, noch eine dritte an, welche gegen das Ganze sich wendend, seine Unhaltbarkeit zeigt. Wenn alle Regeln des Schließens auf Induktion gestützt werden müssen, so gibt es keine Regel des Schließens, welche unmittelbar einleuchtet. Also auch keinen Schluß, welcher nicht erst eines Beweises für seine Berechtigung bedürfte. Wie kann man aber einen Beweis erbringen, solange man nicht berechtigt ist, irgendwelche Folgerungen zu ziehen? – In gar keiner Weise! Also ist es offenbar, daß es, wenn es nicht einen Schluß gibt, dessen Ver- [10919]fahren unmittelbar und unabhängig von jedem, sei es deduktiven, sei es induktiven Beweis als berechtigt einleuchtet, auch niemals einen Schluß wird geben können, dessen Verfahren mittelbar gerechtfertigt ist, somit daß alles und jedes Schließen jedweder Berechtigung ermangelt. §16 Soviel in Kürze von jener großen Verirrung in der empirischen Schule. Wenden wir uns nun zu der apriorischen Schule Kants, und sehen wir, wie und mit welchem Erfolg man innerhalb dieser die Erkenntnistheorie bezüglich der Regeln des Schließens zu reformieren versucht hat. Auch hier die Unterscheidung von dem, was die Regeln des induktiven Verfahrens und was die Regeln des demonstrierenden

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Schließens anlangt, uns bei der Ordnung der Betrachtungen [10920] dienen. §17 Blicken wir zunächst auf Kant selbst. §18 Von der Induktion handelt Kant nicht sehr eingehend, weder in seinen Vorlesungen über Logik noch in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Eines tritt sofort hervor: nämlich, daß er auf die induktiven Schlüsse ein ungleich geringeres Vertrauen als auf die demonstrierenden Schlüsse hat. Es fehlt bei der Induktion der notwendige Zusammenhang des Schlußsatzes mit den Prämissen. Sie gibt nur empirische* Gewißheit (also keine solche, wie sie apriorischen Sätzen eignet), sagt er in seiner Logik. Ja, in der Einleitung zu seiner Vernunftkritik finden sich Äußerungen, die man schier auf ein ähnliches Misstrauen gegen die In- [10921]duktion, wie Hume es hegte, zu deuten versucht sein könnte. Da heißt es: „Die empirische Allgemeinheit ist nur eine willkürliche Steigerung der Gültigkeit von der, die in den meisten Fällen, zu der, die in allen gilt.“1 Und wieder: „Erfahrung gibt niemals ihren Urteilen wahre oder strenge, sondern nur angenommene und komparative Allgemeinheit (durch Induktion), so daß es eigentlich heißen muß: soviel wir bisher wahrgenommen haben, findet sich von dieser oder jener Regel keine Ausnahme.“* Das hätte in der Tat auch Hume als berechtigt zugestehen müssen, denn das wäre nur ein Zusammenfassen der Erfahrungen, aber kein Schluß, der die Erfahrungen überschritte. Andererseits findet aber Kant in seiner Logik* – was Hume nicht zugestehen zu dürfen glaubte -, daß die Induktion nützlich und unent[10922] behrlich sei zum Behuf der Erweiterung unseres Erfahrungserkenntnisses. Man müsse sich ihrer nur, wegen ihrer

*

Logik, S. 469. [quoted from Gustav Hartenstein (ed.), Immanuell Kant’s Werke, sorgfältig revidirte Gesammtausgabe in zehn Bänden. Zweiter Band, Leipzig, Modes und Baumann, 1838, p. 469. See Kant, AA IX, 133] 1 S. 37 [quoted from Gustav Hartenstein (ed.), Immanuell Kant’s Werke, sorgfältig revidirte Gesammtausgabe in zehn Bänden. Zweiter Band, Leipzig, Modes und Baumann, 1838, p. 37 See Kant, AA III, 29, and Kant Critique of Pure Reason, B4] * S.37 [quoted from Gustav Hartenstein (1838), 37: B4] * Logik, S. 469. [quoted from Gustav Hartenstein (ed.), Immanuell Kant’s Werke, sorgfältig revidirte Gesammtausgabe in zehn Bänden. Zweiter Band, Leipzig, Modes und Baumann, 1838, p. 469. See Kant, AA IX, 133]

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unvollkommenen Gewißheit, mit Behutsamkeit und Vorsicht bedienen. §19 Nach alledem dürfen wir wohl sagen, daß Kant die Induktionsschlüsse für Wahrscheinlichkeitsschlüsse hielt, was ja auch tatsächlich der Fall ist. §20 Wenn wir nun in der Lage wären, ihn zu fragen, ob die Regeln für diese Induktionsschlüße durch analytische Sätze a priori gewährleistet seien, welche Antwort würden wir wohl erhalten? Unzweifelhaft eine verneinende. Denn die Induktion soll, wie er uns sagte,* die Erfahrungserkenntnis erweitern; nur synthetische, nicht analytische Gesetze sollen es aber nach Kant sein, die eine Erweiterung des Wissens ermöglichen. Ferner, die Induktion ist ein Wahrscheinlichkeitsschluß. Die Wahrscheinlichkeiten zu wägen und am Maßstab der Gewißheit zu messen, ist aber, wie Kant [10923] in seiner Logik* lehrt, Sache des Mathematikers, und die Mathematik ruht nach Kant nicht auf analytischen, sondern synthetischen Sätzen. Eben darum wird es, wenn man es nur bei der Induktion nicht für gleichgültig hält, zu sehen in wie vielen Fällen denn bisher die Erfahrung übereinstimmende Tatsachen zeigte, wird schon um dieser Zählung willen das induktive Schluß verfahren von synthetischen Gesetzen bedingt sein. Kant hätte also unmöglich ohne große Inkonsequenz umhin gekonnt zu leugnen, daß die Regeln der Induktion durch analytische Erkenntnis a priori gesichert seien. Vielmehr werden wir in seinem Sinne in synthetischen Urteilen a priori die Quelle für die Regeln der induktiven Erkenntnis zu suchen haben. [10924] §21 Was die Regeln für die demonstrierenden Schlüsse anlangt, so ließ aber hier Kant ähnlich wie Hume die althergebrachte erkenntnistheoretische Ansicht unangefochten. Auch ihm gelten die Regeln dieser Schlüsse für einleuchtend als analytische Erkenntnisse a priori. Ja die ganze formale Logik, zu der wir freilich dann die Lehre von der Induktion nicht eigentlich rechnen dürfen, gilt ihm als dieser Quelle entflossen. §22 Wir haben also bei Kant selbst in Bezug auf die Erkenntnistheorie der Regeln des Schließens nur einen teilweisen weisen Abfall vom früheren. *

S.o. Logik, S. 412. [quoted from Gustav Hartenstein (ed.), Immanuell Kant’s Werke, sorgfältig revidirte Gesammtausgabe in zehn Bänden. Zweiter Band, Leipzig, Modes und Baumann, 1838, p. 412. See Kant, AA IX, 81]

*

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§23 Dabei hatte es aber in der Kantischen Schule sein Bewenden nicht. In Bezug auf die Regeln der Induktion haben Neukantianer, wie der Physiologe Fick in einer Abhandlung über die Wahrscheinlichkeitsschlüsse2 und Albert Lange in seinen logischen Studien3 das [10925] mit höchster Bestimmtheit ausgesprochen, energisch betont und durchgeführt, was schon als Kants Ansicht ersichtlich war, nämlich daß die Regeln der Induktion, mit den Regeln der WahrscheinWahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung verwachsen, nicht in analytischen, sondern in synthetischen Erkenntnissen a priori ihre Wurzeln hätten. §24 Von ihnen geht Lange aber dann noch weiter. Er beschuldigt Kant einer Inkonsequenz und eines Abfalls von seinen Prinzipien, wenn er für die Regeln des demonstrierenden Schließens die alte Ansicht, daß sie aus analytischen Prinzipien geflossen, aufrechterhalten habe. Denn, sagt er, indem wir diese Regeln des Schließens erlernen, erweitern wir unsere Erkenntnis, die ganze formale Logik [10926] würde sonst gar nicht wahrhaft als eine Erweiterung unserer Erkenntnis zu betrachten sein. Und sie ist es doch. Kant selbst zählt sie zu den Wissenschaften. Nun sind aber analytische Erkenntnisse, wie Kant überall mit Nachdruck hervorhebt, keine Erweiterungs-, sondern bloße Erläuterungsurteile. Also müssen vielmehr die Prinzipien auch für die Regeln der Konversion der Syllogismen und aller demonstrierenden Schlüsse synthetische Urteile a priori sein. Darum, glaubt er sie auch zur Erkenntnis der syllogistischen Regeln die Raumanschauung so unentbehrlich. In der Tat hatte man schon seit langem es dienlich erachtet, die [10927] Gültigkeit und Ungültigkeit gewisser Schlußmodi durch geometrische Figuren zu veranschaulichen, die teils ineinander, teils auseinander liegen, teils einander schnitten. In grellem Gegensatz zu denen, welche wie Prantl über diese Illustrationen wie über eine abgeschmackte Kinderei spöttelten, behauptet nun Lange: nein, hier habe man vielmehr das zur Einsicht unbedingt Erforderliche in voller Klarheit vor sich. Wie die Geometrie so wurzele auch die Syllogistik in der apriorischen Anschauung des Raumes. §25 Hiemit genug! Sie sehen, wir haben hier in der apriorischen Schule Kants einen ebenso vollständigen Abfall von der alten Lehre, wonach die Regeln des Schließens [10928] analytische Einsichten a priori sein sollten. 2

[A. Fick, Philosophischer Versuch über die Wahrscheinlichkeiten, Würzburg 1883.] [Fr. A. Lange (1828-1875) Logische Studien. (Beiträge zur Neubegründung d. form. Logik u. Erkenntnistheorie). Iserlohn 1877.] 3

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Hatte man in der empirischen Schule sich schließlich zu der Behauptung verirrt, alle Regeln des Schließens ruhten auf Erfahrung: so finden wir Neukantianer bei dem Satze angelangt, daß alle Regeln des Schließens aus synthetischen Erkenntnissen a priori ihren Ursprung nähmen. §26 Und auch diese Neuerung war nichts anderes als ein durchaus verwerflicher Irrtum. Und wie soll ich, bei der Kürze der Zeit, die nur heute zu Gebote steht, dies verwerfende Urteil rechtfertigen? Ich thue es in dem ich mich auf eine Frage beschränke, aber auf eine, [die] für die ganze Beurteilung der ganzen Kantischen Philosophie von allgemeinster Bedeutung ist. [10929] §27 „Synthetische Erkenntnisse a priori“, wie Kant sie uns schildert, sind nicht wahrhaft evidente Sätze. Der Namen „Erkenntnis“ kommt ihnen also nur mißbräuchlich zu. Und sie können, da sie selbst ohne Evidenz sind, auch nicht als Prinzipien benützt werden, um die Einsicht in andere Wahrheiten zu vermitteln. §28 Die sog. synthetischen Erkenntnisse a priori sind nach Kants eigener Charakteristik nichts anderes als gewisse Urteile, die von uns unabhängig von aller Erfahrung in blindem Drange für notwendig gehalten werden, also, wenn wir so sagen wollen, Vorurteile der reinen Vernunft, die aber [10930] das Eigentümliche an sich haben, daß die Erfahrungstatsachen in merkwürdiger Weise mit ihnen in Einklang stehen. §29 Die Existenz solcher Vorurteile wäre gewiß etwas höchst Seltsames. Und so verwundert sich denn auch Kant gar sehr über die Existenz dieser synthetischen Urteile a priori, während ihm die analytischen Urteile a priori, da sie wahre Einsichten sind, einfach als selbstverständlich erscheinen. In der Frage Kants: „Wie sind synthetische Erkenntnisse a priori möglich?“ findet diese Verwunderung Ausdruck. Und er kann begreiflicherweise nur die Antwort geben, daß die Gültigkeit dieser Urteile, die Harmonie der Tatsachen mit [10931] ihnen nur dann verständlich werde, wenn man annehme, daß die Gegenstände, welche wir nach ihnen beurteilen, sich nach diesen Urteilen richteten, also von unserer Subjektivität bedingt seien. §30 Noch in einer anderen Lehre Kants tritt deutlich hervor, daß diese sog. synthetischen Erkenntnisse a priori der wahren Evidenz ermangeln. Kant erlaubt sich nämlich, nachdem er schon ihre Existenz für

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gesichert erklärt und etliche von ihnen namhaft gemacht hat, die Frage, ob diese Erkenntnisse durchwegs oder nur auf gewissen Gebieten Vertrauen verdienten. Und er entscheidet sich für das letztere. Also nicht überall, sondern nur innerhalb gewisser Grenzen kommt diesen Sätzen Gültigkeit zu. Was kann deutlicher als dies zeigen, daß ihnen [10932] der Charakter der Evidenz mangelt. Denn bei einem wahrhaft evidenten Satz ist es absurd zu fragen, wo und innerhalb welcher Schranken etwa verdient er nun Vertrauen? Wenn er evident ist, so darf ich ihm unbedingt vertrauen so wie er lautet und jede Beschränkung, die ja eine Verengung seines Inhalts, eine partielle Aufhebung seiner Wahrheit wäre, wäre von vornherein zurückzuweisen. §31 Also nochmals: die beiden Fragen Kants: 1) Wie sind synthetische Erkenntnisse a priori möglich? 2) Innerhalb welcher Grenzen dürfen wir auf ihre Gültigkeit vertrauen? bezeugen klar, daß wir es – selbst wenn solche Urteile a priori uns gegeben sein sollten, nicht [10933] mit eigentlichen Einsichten, mit wahrhaft evidenten Urteilen zu tun haben. Wenn wir sie benützen wollen, so wird es dazu einer Vorüberlegung bedürfen, ob es denn hier am Platze ist, sich auf sie zu verlassen. Diese Vorüberlegung ist ohne Betätigung unseres Vermögens zu schließen unmöglich. Wir werden also bereits Schlüsse machen, um uns nur die Berechtigung zu sichern, von jenen synthetischen Urteilen a priori Gebrauch zu machen. Und somit ist es klar, daß Lange sich ganz ähnlich wie Mill und Bain in einen Zirkel verwickelt, indem er die Einsicht in die Richtigkeit jedes Schlußverfahrens aus synthetischen Erkenntnissen a priori gewinnen läßt, [10934] während doch umgekehrt die Vertrauenswürdigkeit und Verwendbarkeit der synthetischen Urteile a priori ohne ein vorgängiges Schließen uns durchaus verborgen ist. §32 Ich muß hier abschließen, obwohl ich gerne noch manches bekräftigende Wort dem Gesagten beigefügt hätte. Denn gar manchem von Ihnen wird Einiges von dem, was ich gesagt, zunächst recht fremdartig erklungen sein. Je mehr er darüber nachdenkt, um so mehr – ich glaube mich dieser Hoffnung hingeben zu dürfen, wird er es aber bewährt finden. §33 Was ich aber ganz besonders beklage, ist, dass ich die im Anfang von nur gegebenen Versprechungen den wesentlischten Teil nach

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noch gar nicht gerührt habe. Ich versprach [10935] nämlich nicht bloß zu zeigen, dass die modernen Neuerungen bezüglich der Erkenntnistheorie des Schließens Irrtümer an die Stelle der Wahrheit setzten; ich wollte auch nachweisen, wie diese Irrtümer uns förderlich sein können, indem sie uns auf andere, schon früher bestehende Mängel aufmerksam machen, durch deren Beseitigung das ganze Gebiet geklärt uns die Erkenntnis vertieft werde. In Wahrheit ist die Lehre von Schlußverfahren, die Aristoteles begründet hat, und von der Kant sagt, dass sie seit ihm weder verbessert noch verschlechtert worden sei, trotz des unbestreitbaren [10936] Verdienstes des großen Meisters, sehr mangelhaft. Seine Lehre von der Syllogistik ebenso wie seine fast ganz und gar unentwickelte Lehre von der Induktion. Ohne diese Mängel wären die modernen Abwirrungen nicht möglich gewesen. Es handelt sich also um eine Klärung des Schlußverfahrens, womit dann für jedermann der analytische Charakter seiner Regeln unverkennbar wird. Vielleicht wird nun ein anderer Abend Gelegenheit geben, das, was ich heute unausgeführt lassen mußte, in dem Kreise unserer Gesellschaft nachzuholen.

Index of Names

A Ahlman, E. 150, 161 Albertazzi, L. 11, 15, 139, 161 Alexander of Aphrodisias 193, 197, 202, 203, 204, 205, 216, 217, 219, 225, 226, 504, 516 Allen, A.H. 317, 336 Allesch, C. 339, 355 Antonelli, M. 86, 97, 118, 122, 193, 199, 226, 232, 244, 424-426, 429 Aquinas 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 200, 205, 206, 207-226, 234, 263 Archytas of Tarentum 342 Aristotle, 5, 6, 13, 21, 40, 48, 53, 64, 67, 74, 78, 86, 87, 88, 101, 110, 112, 121, 125-129, 133, 135, 136, 156, 190, 191, 193-197, 200-205, 207, 208, 210-212, 214-219, 221, 226, 227, 231-235, 237, 260, 264, 270, 291, 341, 342, 360, 363, 366, 374-376, 382, 392, 399, 409, 423426, 437, 438, 441-443, 451, 461, 502, 511 Aristoxenus 352 Armstrong, D. 321, 336 Arnauld, A. 150, 151, 160, 161

B Bain, A. 44, 113, 504, 505, 510, 516, 517, 518, 523 Ballod, M. 355 Barker, S. 67 Baumann, F. 402, 418, 519, 520 Baumgartner, W. 6, 137, 139, 161, 180, 188, 190, 191, 227, 242, 243, 244, 251, 260, 270, 304, 340, 344, 348, 349, 355, 365, 409, 410, 422 Beck, L. 15 Bell, D. 74, 86 Bentham, J. 363, 364, 366, 376 Bermúdez, J. 41, 64 Binder, T. 7, 137, 359, 362, 366, 369,

371, 375, 384, 385, 388, 393, 417, 418 Block, N. 21, 31, 40 Bokhove, N. 386, 417 Bolzano, B. 14, 16, 101, 118, 142, 151, 152, 160, 161, 201 Bonitz, H. 204, 205, 226 Bradley, F.H. 11, 74 Brandl, J.L. 5, 19, 41, 44, 64, 67, 77, 122, 337, 410 Brandom, R. 31, 40 Brentano, F. passim Brentano, E. 393, 405, 412, 476, 484, 510, 518, 519 Brentano, L. 378, 388, 412 Brentano, U. 369, 383, 402, 413 Brod, M. 361 Bruun, O. 335 Bühler, K. 161, 162, 337, 392 Burge, T. 37, 40, 77, 86 Bynoe, W. 67

C Cahan, D. 355-357 Callanan, J. 67 Carruthers, P. 32, 40, 56, 64 Caston, V. 18, 21, 24, 36, 40, 76, 77, 86 Cesalli, L. 5, 89, 139, 140, 141, 155, 161, 162, 335 Chalmers, D. 17, 21, 90, 173, 188 Chisholm, R. 12, 13, 15, 20, 64, 88, 91, 92, 93, 95-98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 114, 117, 118, 137, 188, 251, 257, 260, 261, 270, 295, 304, 317, 336, 348, 355, 365, 366, 372, 393, 405, 407-411, 414, 417, 418, 424, 426, 427 Chrudzimski, A. 5, 88, 89, 117, 121, 122, 132, 137, 139, 141, 155, 156, 161, 192, 232, 244, 270, 345, 355, 366, 375, 417, 424, 428, 429 Comte, A. 44, 229, 238

Index of Names

526

Condillac, E. 276, 298 Conrad, T. 361, 376 Crane, T 21, 67, 86, 110, 111, 112, 118

D Dale, R.E. 140, 161, 270 Davidson, D. 92, 118, 142 Davies, W. 143, 161 Dazzi, L. 281, 288, 304 De Libera, A. 426, 429 Dennett, D. 88, 90, 95, 110, 118 Deonna, J. 335 Descartes, R. 17, 57, 70, 71, 86, 276, 295, 451, 485 Dretske, F. 25, 60, 64, 321, 336 Drummond, J. 60, 64 Dumont, E. 363, 364, 366, 376

E Ehrenfels, C. 10, 161, 190, 192, 348, 356, 360, 362, 385, 386, 389, 390, 456, 490 Eisenmeier, J. 162, 340, 344, 356, 385, 386, 462, 496 Eissler, R. 402 Engel, W. 391, 394 Enriques, F. 385 Eucken, R. 461, 495

F Farber, M. 14, 15, 365 Fechner, G.T. 12, 346, 362, 389, 401 Feldman, F. 317, 318, 319, 336 Field, H. 31, 40 Findlay, J. 304, 328, 336 Fink, E. 371 Fisette, D. 5, 6, 7, 10, 17, 21, 117, 139, 161, 191, 192, 273, 274, 279, 281, 293, 294, 304, 316, 317, 335, 336, 340, 356, 359, 367, 501, 513 Flint, R. 11 Foradori, E. 383, 389 Frank, M. 41, 43, 60, 64 Fréchette, G. 5-7, 9, 10, 67, 87, 91,

102, 118, 139, 145, 146, 161, 189, 191, 192, 335, 419, 421, 427, 431, 449, 465, 483 Frege, G. 14, 74, 142, 152, 178, 184, 185, 188, 198, 226 Freud, S. 23, 45, 401, 402, 417, 418 Fügmann, D. 139, 161 Funke, O. 146, 161, 162, 394, 397

G Gabriel, S. 6, 191, 247, 248, 262, 270 Gallagher, S. 41, 64 Gennaro, R. 18, 21, 62, 64 Georgalis, N. 29, 40 Gimpl, G. 411 Goldstein, I. 320, 336 Goller, P. 371, 372, 383, 398, 417, 418 Goudin, A. 451, 485 Grahek, N. 331, 336 Grice, P. 89, 139, 142, 143, 161, 162 Griffin, N. 11, 15 Grünbaum, A.A. 361 Guastella, C. 460 Güzeldere, G. 18, 21, 40

H Hall, R. 331, 336, 405 Haller, R. 137, 408, 409, 410, 417 Hamilton, W. 44, 108, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 332, 334, 336 Hämmerli, M. 335 Harman, G. 31, 40 Hatfield, G. 344, 348, 356 Haugeland, J. 88, 90, 110, 118 Hedwig, K. 264, 270, 365 Heidegger, M. 11, 14, 15, 395 Helmholtz, H. 343, 344, 347-349, 352, 355-357, 362, 401, 504, 516 Hemecker, W. 401, 417 Henrich, D. 41, 43, 60, 64 Hering, E. 345, 349, 389 Hertling, G. 385 Hillebrand, F. 239, 244, 345, 357, 360, 362, 372, 374, 380-382, 388, 390, 398, 399, 400-402, 404, 407,

Index of Names 412, 418, 462, 497 Höfler, A. 9, 10, 360 Horgan, T. 90, 166, 167, 175, 188 Horwicz, A. 44 Hossack, K. 37, 40, 67, 334, 336 Houghton, A. 118, 192, 377, 386, 400, 406, 409, 412, 414, 415, 421, 501, 513 Hume, D. 20, 46, 70-75, 86, 238, 240, 241, 249, 502-504, 507, 508, 514, 515, 517, 519, 520 Husserl, E. 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 39, 41, 42, 65, 82, 83, 86, 89, 93, 94, 104, 107, 110, 114, 117, 118, 119, 142, 152-154, 160, 161, 162, 165, 189, 190, 192, 286, 292, 293-295, 304, 316, 317, 326, 334336, 356, 360, 361, 362, 365, 367, 369, 370-374, 384, 389, 390, 418

I

527

483, 485 Kastil, H. 397, 399 Katkov, G. 13, 262, 270, 279, 290, 292, 304, 317, 336, 387, 390, 391, 393-397, 400, 405, 408-410, 414 Kenny, A. 196, 209, 211, 226 Kidd, C. 42, 64 Kindinger, R. 137, 410 Kirchenberger, R. 394 Kneale, W. 13 Körner, S. 13, 393, 409 Kraus, O. 16, 40, 88, 98, 99, 118, 119, 132, 137, 139, 155, 161, 162, 247, 252, 279, 290, 304, 336, 355357, 362, 364, 365, 366, 367, 371, 373-381, 384-394, 396, 397, 408, 410, 417, 422, 424, 426, 427, 449, 483, 499 Kremer, R.L. 349, 356 Kriegel, U. 5, 18-21, 23, 24, 37, 40, 42, 61, 62, 64, 65, 77, 86, 90

L

Ismael, J. 26

J Jacquette, D. 9, 15, 137, 244, 270, 337, 355 James, W. 6, 260, 273, 276, 281-283, 287, 288, 289, 293, 294, 297, 303, 304, 305, 336, 396 Janzen, G. 18, 21, 42, 64 Jaspers, K. 361 Johansson, I. 331, 336

K Kafka, F. 361 Kaiser-El-Safti, M. 355 Kamleiter, P. 341, 348, 351, 356 Kant, I. 64, 74, 231, 233, 237, 247, 321, 336, 357, 395, 454, 488, 502, 506-511, 519, 520, 521, 522, 524 Kastil, A. 156, 161, 162, 247, 340, 356, 362, 364, 365, 371, 372, 373, 376-384, 386, 388-392, 393, 395400, 407, 408, 409, 411, 412, 414, 415, 417, 422, 424, 449, 451, 457,

Lancelot, C. 150, 151, 160, 161 Land, J. 11, 15 Landgrebe, L. 144, 161, 371 Lange, F.A. 44, 238, 288, 508, 509, 510, 521, 523 Langfeld, H. 303, 304 Leech, J. 67 Leembruggen, S. 377 Lehrer, K. 37, 40 Leibniz, G.W. 23, 264, 267 Lenz, M. 152, 162 Leśniewski, S. 190, 192 Lévinas, E. 11 Lieben, I. 268, 372, 376, 377, 413 Liedtke, F. 140, 143, 162 Lipps, T. 346 Loar, B. 31, 40 Locke, J. 17, 152, 160, 162 Longworth, G. 67, 78 Lotze, R.H. 111, 343, 351, 356, 360 Lycan, W. 56, 65, 141, 162

Index of Names

528

M Mach, E. 276, 293, 304, 349, 352, 356, 362, 398 MacIntyre, R. 94, 119 Marconi, D. 141, 162 Marek, J. 65, 86, 408, 409, 418 Marmo, C. 140, 162 Marocco, A. 247, 270 Martin, M. 110, 119, 367, 395 Martinak, E. 151, 154, 160, 162, 163 Martinelli, R. 6, 273, 275, 339, 340, 354, 356 Marty, A. 5, 7, 9, 11, 15, 39, 69, 70, 75, 80, 86, 89, 99, 106, 139, 140, 141, 143-156, 158-163, 243, 291, 359, 360-363, 365, 371, 373, 378, 385, 386, 389, 390, 392, 396, 397, 399, 401, 409, 410, 415, 417, 421, 422, 423, 427-429, 449, 454, 456, 458, 459, 461, 463, 483, 488, 491, 493, 495, 498, 499 Masaryk, T. 370, 372, 384, 385, 388, 394, 395, 416, 418 Massin, O. 6, 273, 307 Maudsley, H. 44 Mayer-Hillebrand, F. 101, 119, 161, 270, 362, 364, 365, 366, 372, 374, 375, 376, 380, 381, 382-384, 388, 390, 391, 394, 396, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 406, 407, 408, 409, 411, 412, 417, 418, 422, 424, 501, 513 McAleer, M. 402, 418 McAlister, L. 39, 40, 64, 270, 336, 366 McCabe, MM. 67 McGinn, C. 40, 88, 90, 110, 119 Meinong, A. 9, 10, 12, 16, 39, 131, 132, 137, 161, 172, 178, 184, 185, 188, 190, 192, 286, 301, 360, 365, 384, 409, 416 Melle, U. 371, 374, 418 Merleau-Ponty, M. 11, 12, 19 Meylan, A. 335 Mezes, S. 328, 336 Mill, J.S. 101, 102, 113, 116, 223, 226, 238, 362, 363, 389, 401, 415,

460, 494, 503-505, 510, 515-518, 523 Millikan, R. 32, 40 Mirabeau, G. 363 Moerbeke, W. 211, 212, 226 Montague, M. 88, 90 Moore, G.E. 11, 12, 14, 15, 375, 394 Moran, D. 18, 21, 86, 91, 119 Mulligan, K. 13, 16, 73, 86, 117, 139, 141, 150, 162, 281, 317, 319, 328, 329, 331, 335, 337, 367, 417, 429 Münch, D. 122

O Oaklander, N. 70, 72, 86 Oberkofler, G. 279, 304, 339, 347, 355, 356, 357, 418

P Parfit, D. 70, 72, 86 Park, D. 264, 271, 400, 403, 406 Pasquerella, L. 260, 270 Perler, D. 122, 128, 130, 137 Pitcher, G. 321, 337 Plato. 78, 255, 264, 321, 337, 342, 384, 451, 454 Poirier, P. 17, 21 Poli, R. 9, 16, 161 Potrč, M. 5, 89, 165, 166, 167, 175, 180, 188

Q Quine, W.V.O. 13, 91, 92, 119

R Rachels, S. 328, 337 Raynaud, S. 139, 162, 386, 417 Reboul, S. 161, 162, 367, 429 Reicher, M. 65, 131, 137 Reid, T. 37, 40, 310, 313, 314, 336, 337 Reisenzein, R. 289, 292, 299, 301, 302, 304, 317, 337 Révész, G. 348, 355, 394

Index of Names Rhees, R. 392, 393, 394 Ribot, T. 11, 16, 276, 279, 293 Riha, J. 394, 395 Rogge, E. 388, 391, 394, 395 Rollinger, R. 44, 65, 139, 140, 155, 157-159, 161, 162, 356, 357, 419, 431, 449, 501, 513 Rosenthal, D. 17, 18, 20, 21, 43, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 65, 70, 86 Rosier-Catach, I. 140, 162 Ross, D. 197, 199, 200, 202, 226 Routley, R. 132, 137 Russell, B. 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 90, 115, 171, 176, 188, 328, 337 Ryle, G. 12, 14, 16, 314, 337

S Sartre, J.P. 11, 19, 41, 64 Sauer, W. 6, 98, 106, 119, 190, 193, 424, 425, 429 Schad, B. 418 Schaffer, J. 73, 74, 86 Scheler, M. 41, 317-319, 335, 337, 338 Schell, H. 362, 389, 456, 491 Schönpflug, W. 292, 301, 304, 317, 337 Schrenck-Notzing, A. 346 Schuchardt, H. 151, 163 Schuhmann, K. 9, 367, 410 Scott, D. 129, 130 Seager, W. 56, 65 Searle, J. 13, 31, 40, 88, 90, 110, 119, 139, 142, 162, 163, 286, 304, 313, 337 Seidl, H. 202, 226 Shoemaker, S. 37 Siewert, C. 18, 21, 72, 77, 79, 86 Simon, A. 344, 356 Simons, P. 12, 13, 14, 16, 117, 191, 192, 242, 244, 410 Smith, B. 13, 16, 27, 73, 74, 79, 86, 88, 94, 98, 102, 108, 114, 116, 119, 121, 137, 139, 163, 257, 270, 326, 337, 345, 355, 366, 424, 429 Smith, D.W. 40, 42, 60, 61, 64, 65 Soldati, G. 42, 65

529

Specht, W. 361 Spiegelberg, H. 14, 16 Srzednicki, J. 119, 407, 418 Stegmüller, W. 369, 370, 418 Stein, E. 269, 271 Stevenson, C.L. 142, 163 Stout, G.F. 11 Strawson, P. 143, 163 Stroud, B. 72, 86 Stumpf, C. 6, 9, 10, 12, 16, 20, 39, 82-86, 93, 99, 107, 114, 117, 119, 139, 140, 156, 161, 163, 190, 192, 238, 244, 273-279, 281-284, 286290, 292, 294-302, 304, 305, 307, 309-311, 316-319, 322, 323, 331, 336, 337, 339, 340-346, 348-357, 360-362, 365, 367, 378, 384-386, 389, 394, 415, 418, 446, 456, 460, 480, 491, 494

T Tanasescu, I. 194, 202, 226 Tassone, B. 9, 16 Teichroew, A. 402, 418 Teroni, F. 335 Terrell, B. 40, 64, 259, 270, 336, 366 Textor, M. 5, 18-21, 42, 59, 65, 67, 332, 335- 337 Thomasson, A: 19, 21, 42, 60, 64, 65 Tiefensee, E. 247, 248, 255, 259, 266, 271 Tienson, J. 90, 166, 167, 188 Titchener, E. 11, 16, 276, 279, 287, 292, 293, 305, 316, 317, 319, 337 Trendelenburg, A. 231, 237, 245 Twardowski, K. 9-11, 16, 39, 65, 142, 161, 190, 192, 238, 245, 314, 337, 394 Tye, M. 60, 65, 84-86, 321, 331, 337

U Utitz, E. 278, 340, 357, 359, 360, 365, 367, 385, 386, 394

Index of Names

530

V Vailati, G. 11, 462, 497 Van Breda, L. : 371, 372 van der Schaar, M. 11, 16 Verri, P. 321, 338 Vogel, S. 362, 373 von Wright, G. 347, 357 Vosgerau, G. 41, 65

W Warnock, G. 327, 338 Weber, E. 12, 16, 343, 357 Welby, V. 140, 163 Werle, J.M. 365, 367 Williford, K. 18, 21, 42, 61, 62, 64, 65 Windelband, W. 301

Wittgenstein, L. 13, 16, 142, 162, 177, 188, 337, 369, 370, 374, 393 Wohlgemuth, A. 328, 338 Wundt, W. 11, 141, 150, 151, 160, 163, 282, 287, 293

Y Young, T. 55, 264, 348, 349

Z Zaborowski, R. 317, 338 Zahavi, D. 18, 21, 41, 60, 64, 65 Zalta, E. 124, 137 Zeller, E. 237 Ziehen, T. 276 Zumr, J. 384, 418