Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf
Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf
Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf
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Notes 101<br />
him” (Präludien, p. iv), goes far beyond <strong>the</strong> historical Kant by allowing him nei<strong>the</strong>r a Ptolemaic nor a<br />
Copernican conception of truth; he would have Kant reject every version of <strong>the</strong> correspondence <strong>the</strong>ory.<br />
With a much finer touch than that of <strong>the</strong> Marburg Neo-Kantians, Windelb<strong>and</strong> would have truth consist in<br />
thought which accords with a normative rule (p. 114); “<strong>the</strong> mind brings this norm to its own awareness.”<br />
Windelb<strong>and</strong> writes (Präludien, p. 47): “<strong>The</strong> only thing that philosophy can do is to extract this normative<br />
consciousness from <strong>the</strong> flux of our empirical consciousness <strong>and</strong> to rely upon direct evidence;<br />
it is in this direct evidence that <strong>the</strong> normative consciousness, once it has been brought to light, has <strong>the</strong><br />
efficacy <strong>and</strong> validity which it ought to have for every individual.” <strong>The</strong>re is little to quarrel with in this<br />
statement, unless one takes too seriously <strong>the</strong> contention that it is “<strong>the</strong> only thing that philosophy can do”.<br />
All this is certainly fraught with confusion, if “judging” is not distinguished from “thinking about”,<br />
<strong>and</strong> if <strong>the</strong> logical ought is identified with <strong>the</strong> axiological <strong>and</strong> ethical ought. But this aberration from<br />
<strong>the</strong> intellectual to <strong>the</strong> emotional, against which <strong>Brentano</strong> correctly protests in <strong>the</strong> fourth essay, does<br />
show that Windelb<strong>and</strong> looked for <strong>the</strong> norm—that which is as it ought to be—in consciousness itself.<br />
And in doing this he was following <strong>the</strong> path which, indeed, Spinoza had taken before him (Ethics, II,<br />
prop. 43); see <strong>the</strong> review by Oskar Kraus of Cohen’s writings on philosophy <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>the</strong>ory of knowledge<br />
in Deutsche Literaturzeitung, No. 30 (1929). To be sure, one still finds traces of <strong>the</strong> doctrine of<br />
correspondence in Spinoza, but Freudenthal conceives <strong>the</strong>se traces as being no more than a gesture<br />
towards <strong>the</strong> venerable principle. Here too Spinoza bases his thought on that of Descartes.<br />
Unfortunately, Windelb<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> his circle, having set out in <strong>the</strong> right direction, soon become lost in<br />
<strong>the</strong> chimerical realm of absolute values <strong>and</strong> validities.<br />
But <strong>Brentano</strong>, at <strong>the</strong> time of his lecture on truth, tried merely to modify <strong>the</strong> correspondence <strong>the</strong>ory.<br />
Later he saw that this would not do ei<strong>the</strong>r. <strong>The</strong> <strong>the</strong>ory of <strong>the</strong> evident, which <strong>Brentano</strong> was one of <strong>the</strong><br />
first to revive, has been developed to <strong>the</strong> point where it clarifies <strong>the</strong> concept of truth, <strong>and</strong> removes<br />
<strong>the</strong> attendant difficulties, without resort to <strong>the</strong> fiction of ideal objects, “eternal realms of value”, <strong>and</strong><br />
<strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r non-things which serve only to restore <strong>the</strong> correspondence <strong>the</strong>ory in some form or o<strong>the</strong>r.<br />
3 Compare <strong>Brentano</strong>’s criticism of Sigwart’s doctrine in Essay V.<br />
4 <strong>Franz</strong> Hillebr<strong>and</strong> in Grünhut’s Zeitschrift für das Öffentlich- und Privatrecht (1884, XI, p. 633).<br />
5 Cf. <strong>Franz</strong> <strong>Brentano</strong>, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (Freiburg<br />
1862), p. 22.<br />
6 Compare <strong>the</strong> new edition of <strong>Brentano</strong>’s Psychologie vom empirischen St<strong>and</strong>punkt, Felix Meiner,<br />
Philosophische Biblio<strong>the</strong>k, Vols. I–III, esp. Vol. II.<br />
7 On <strong>the</strong> so-called “existential judgement”, see <strong>Brentano</strong>’s Psychologie, II (pp. 55, 195). Compare<br />
also <strong>Franz</strong> Hillebr<strong>and</strong>, Die neuen <strong>The</strong>orien der kategorischen Schlüsse (Vienna 1891); see notes 25<br />
<strong>and</strong> 38, below.<br />
8 <strong>Brentano</strong> later withdrew <strong>the</strong> assertion that collections of things, <strong>and</strong> parts of things, are not<br />
<strong>the</strong>mselves things. A boundary or limit is indeed not a thing on its own, but it is a thing which exists<br />
as part of a continuous thing.<br />
9 <strong>Brentano</strong> later attacks <strong>the</strong> doctrine. Everyone calls a house or a chair a”thing”, although it is<br />
considered as a joining toge<strong>the</strong>r of many things (bricks, pieces of wood, etc.). Certainly <strong>the</strong> old<br />
doctrine is correct in holding that a collection—a herd or an army, for example—is not something<br />
that may be added to <strong>the</strong> particular soldiers or sheep as still ano<strong>the</strong>r entity; it is a real totality in <strong>the</strong><br />
sense of a sum whose parts likewise consist of real things.<br />
10 <strong>Brentano</strong> held at that time that “a past pain”, “a former man”, “a future man”, <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> like,<br />
are expressions in which <strong>the</strong> adjective functions as a modifier converting a thing into a non-thing.<br />
Most of <strong>Brentano</strong>’s students have remained faithful to this doctrine or have fur<strong>the</strong>r elaborated<br />
upon it, extending <strong>the</strong> realm of non-things into that of <strong>the</strong> boundless. Husserl’s phenomenology<br />
<strong>and</strong> Meinong’s <strong>the</strong>ory of objects both tended to propagate this realm of irrealia to an extravagant<br />
degree. But Marty <strong>and</strong> Stumpf were content to defend <strong>the</strong> traditional stock of irrealia—“non-real<br />
things”, “essences”, “states of affairs”, “contents”—against <strong>Brentano</strong>’s repudiation of non-things. So<br />
far as “past” <strong>and</strong> “future” are concerned, <strong>Brentano</strong>’s later doctrine was that differences of praeterital