Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

xvi Introduction
to the confusion.* Brentano touched upon this confusion in volume 2 of his Psychologie
(appendix VII, p. 15 2ff.) * and in the fourth selection of the present book (originally an
appendix to the first edition of Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, 1889). 2 Windelband
never freed himself from the error of treating the “realm of values” as a realm of unreal
objects.
But Brentano was to expose the fictions and hypostatizations to which we are led by
such substantival expressions as “truth”, “eternal truth”, “value”, and “meaning”. The
renunciation of all such fictions is foreshadowed in the final four selections in Part One; it
is more clearly seen in the letters and dictations which are assembled in Part Two.
4. The final four selections of Part One were originally notes appended to the first edition
(1889) of Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis; they are omitted or abbreviated in subsequent
editions of the same work.† They are not directly relevant to the problem of the origin or
source of our knowledge of value and preferability; Brentano had used the publication
of the Ursprung merely as an occasion to set forth his critique. These selections, which
were notes 21, 22, 23, and 27 respectively of the original edition of the Ursprung, are:
“Descartes’ Classification of Mental Phenomena”; “Windelband’s Error with respect to
the Classification of Mental Phenomena”; “Sigwart’s Theory of the Existential and the
Negative Judgement”; and “On the Evident”.
In this context, I may call attention to the polemic against Windelband, particularly the
fourth point, which is discussed in the explanatory notes at the end of the book.
The polemic against Sigwart’s concept of existence is not only of historical interest; its
criticism of the correspondence theory is even more penetrating than the one to be found
in the lecture on truth. I have included the selection on the Evident despite the fact that it is
included in the second edition of Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. The essay had been
overlooked in its original context and has not yet been sufficiently noticed. In this essay we
have for the first time an attack upon construing the evident in terms of any kind of feeling;
in recent years this very point has been cited as one of the contributions of Husserl’s attack
upon psychologism.* We shall return to these questions below.
* Compare Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 6th edn, p. 205: “The knowing subject does
not ‘turn toward’ reality in order to become theoretically valuable; but it should turn toward
theoretical value if it is to know reality.”
* All references to Brentano’s Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt are to the 1925 edition,
edited by Oskar Kraus, and published by Felix Meiner at Leipzig. The 1925 edition, in two volumes,
includes the Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt of 1874, the Von der Klassifikation
der psychischen Phänomene of 1911, and an appendix selected from material dictated by Brentano
between 1915 and 1917.—R.M.C.
† The first edition was published by Duncker and Humblot at Leipzig in 1889, the second by Felix
Meiner at Leipzig in 1921, and the third by Felix Meiner in 1934; the second and third editions
were edited by Oskar Kraus. The original edition was translated by Cecil Hague as The Origin of
the Knowledge of Right and Wrong (Constable, London 1902).—R.M.C.
* See, for example, “Phänomenologie und Kritizismus”, by F. Klein, in Heidelberger Abhandlungen,
edited by Hoffman and Rickert, No. 21.