Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

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The True and the Evident
in which we can refer to things makes it impossible to require that each thing to which a
correct judgement refers be something that exists. The requirement holds only in case the
thing is thought in modo recto, and even here it holds, not for the negative judgement, but
only for the affirmative judgement. 30 It is only in this last case, then, that we can speak of an
agreement in the sense of any kind of equality. But if we consider the matter more closely,
we shall see that even here we cannot speak of equality or sameness in the strict sense of
the terms. It is one thing for the person who judges to accept or to affirm a tree and to think
of it in the thought which the judgement presupposes; it would be quite another thing for
the one who judges to be the tree.
3. And so we cannot speak in that sense of an adaequatio rei et intellectus. Can we find
some other interpretation for “adaequatio” which might make the thesis more acceptable?
My answer would be that the thesis tells us no more nor less than this: Anyone who judges
that a certain thing exists, or that it does not exist, or that it is possible, or impossible, or that
it is thought of by someone, or that it is believed, or loved, or hated, or that it has existed,
or will exist, judges truly provided that the thing in question does exist, or does not exist,
or is possible, or is impossible, or is thought of…etc. And what all this comes to, strictly
speaking, is the following:
Truth pertains to the judgement of the person who judges correctly—to the judgement
of the person who judges about a thing in the way in which anyone whose judgements were
evident would judge about the thing; hence it pertains to the judgement of one who asserts
what the person whose judgements are evident would also assert. 31