Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

On the Meaning of “Veritas Est Adaequatio Rei Et Intellectus” 79
they pertain to what is past, present, or future. In the case of judgements that contradict
each other, only one of them in each case can be said to be the one that corresponds; yet
such judgements pertain to the same thing, and in the same temporal mode. Hence a thing
which is the object of contradictory judgements will be such that, of the two judgements,
one must be said to correspond to the thing and the other not to correspond to it.
Suppose I have the answer to a certain question and know, say, that such-and-such a
thing happened yesterday. If I know that another person says that it happened yesterday and
that some third person says that it did not happen, I may then compare the way in which
they judge with what it is that I know about the thing; I shall then find that the judgement
of one of them agrees with what I know and that the judgement of the other does not. Since
we are supposing that I know that the thing took place, we may say that if someone else
tells me what he thinks about the thing, then I have only to compare the way he judges
with what I know, in order to be able to say whether his judgement is true or false. If this
is all that is meant by the thesis in question, then, of course, the thesis would be obvious to
anyone who is aware that the truth is the same for all. Here we would have a criterion by
means of which I could decide the truth or falsehood of another man’s opinion; but use of
the criterion would presuppose that I already have the truth myself. Clearly, it would be a
mistake to suppose that such a criterion would provide me with a way of deciding whether I
have the truth. Some would say that I can decide this by comparing my judgement with the
thing that I am judging about. They do not seem to see that I cannot accomplish this unless
I am already sufficiently acquainted with the thing to be able to know what it is in reality.
And this means that I must already be in possession of the truth—something which is not a
result of my having compared my own judgement with what it is that I know. 22
6. The thesis has been misinterpreted in other ways too. According to some it tells us that
a true judgement exhibits a kind of similarity with something existing in reality. If a man
believes that a tree is green, then his judgement is said to combine tree and green in the
way in which these are combined in reality. If we raise the question of negative judgements,
we shall be told that if a man says that a tree is not blue, he separates tree and blue in the
way in which they are separated in reality, and if he says there is no devil, then he is saying
that there is the non-being of a devil. Actually, if I say that a tree is not blue, I am not
asserting the existence of a separation of tree and blue. And if I say that there is no devil,
my judgement is about the devil and not a bout the non-being of the devil. The latter is no
kind of a thing at all and cannot even be thought about. But if we were to suppose that the
non-being of a devil is a kind of a thing, it would not be the thing with which a negative
judgement, denying the devil, is concerned; instead it would be the object of an affirmative
judgement, affirming the non-being of a devil. For otherwise we would make the mistake of
supposing that there are no negative judgements at all, having replaced them by affirmative
judgements which have negative things as their objects.
Similar difficulties arise in connection with what is affirmed in the past and in the future
tense. Clearly it would be preposterous to say that what the sentence “Caesar is in the past”
asserts to be is, not Caesar, but the-being-in-the-past-of-Caesar.
7. Still another attempt at construing the so-called “adaequatio rei et intellectus” in terms
of a relation between a judgement and some existing thing would be this: One would say