Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

On the Evident 89
The distinctness of a perception will depend upon whether, in our psychical relation to
the primary object, we are thinking distinctly or indistinctly. Inner perception shows us
precisely what this degree of distinctness is. Obviously degrees of distinctness are not to be
identified with degrees of evidence.
9. All attacks aimed against the unexceptionable evidence of inner perception rest upon
the confusion of inner perception with something which is not inner perception. Mental
phenomena can also become the primary object of thinking. 45 Similarly, the assertion that
external perception may sometimes be directly evident is a result of taking some fact of inner
perception for one of outer perception. It is sometimes said that, in presenting us with an
instance of red that does not exist, outer perception shows a red that “phenomenally exists”;
but what one should say is that inner perception makes it known that outer perception
presents us with a red—a red which, in truth, does not exist.
10. There remains the further question whether we are justified in asserting that what is
true of our own experience holds more generally, and without exception, for all knowing
beings. 46
The great philosophers of antiquity have indeed affirmed that directly evident affirmative
knowledge is limited to self-awareness, even in the case of God’s knowledge. 47 And rightly
so. The same grounds of proof are valid for all knowing beings.
To be sure, God knows himself, not only as actual, but as immediately necessary, whereas
we know ourselves only as actual. But the knowledge God has of himself includes the actual
knowledge of himself. Our knowledge of him is in accordance with a general concept; but
his knowledge shows him in his individuality and thus in complete independence of any
external influence; therefore, since nothing can be absolutely accidental, it shows him as
immediately necessary.
A man can be said to have direct, affirmative, and therefore factual evidence concerning
the existence of a thing only if it would be contradictory to say that, although he is thinking
of the thing, the thing does not exist. 48 And one cannot recognize something affirmative as
necessary without also grasping it as a fact. We will understand this, when we turn to the
discussion of rational knowledge, or insights 49