Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Notes 117
15 The example is not entirely appropriate. A more suitable one appears in paragraph 2. If I merely
think about the impossibility of a thing, I think about an apodoctic judgement which correctly rejects
the thing. The matter is different if one affirms the so-called “impossibility” of a thing; in this case one
not only thinks about someone rejecting the thing apodictically, but one also rejects it apodictically
oneself. For further details, see Vol. II of the Psychologie and the introduction to Vol. I.
16 Examples of temporal entia rationis would be the past, the present, the future, and also that which
is past (Vergangenes), that which is present (Gegenwartiges), that which is future (Zukünftiges). On
Brentano’s phenomenognostic theory of time, see Vol. II of the Psychologie; see also note 19 below.
17 If Marty’s theory were correct, I could not make the judgement “There is the impossibility of A”
without simultaneously rejecting A apodictically.
18 The important question for Marty was: What is the meaning of the sentence “The judgement that
‘A is’ is correct”? Marty supposed that correctness referred to the adequacy or correspondence of the
judgement “A is” with the “being of A”. Brentano thereupon replied, “The point is not that, if the
being of A is and someone judges A is, he then judges correctly; the point is, rather, that if A is and
someone judges A is, he then judges correctly.” What does this mean? Simply that if the A-affirming
judgement is correct and someone accepts or affirms A, then he judges correctly. But to say this is not
to answer the question, “What are we to understand by a correct judgement?” Brentano immediately
takes this up, however. In any case, what is said here is sufficient to show that “There is the being of
A”, correctly understood, says only that “A is”.
19 If I know that a judgement is correct, then I must have judged with insight myself. The strict
concept of “correct judgement” is “judgement with insight” or “apprehension”. But one does call
judgements “correct” which are not in fact apprehensions or cognitions and which, furthermore,
are not known by anyone actually to correspond with any cognition. We say, for example, that the
judgement “2 plus 2 is equal to 4” is correct even if no one makes this judgement with insight. In
saying this, we mean only to express our conviction that no one who contradicts the judgement in
question could possibly be judging with evidence himself (in any of the temporal modes). Compare
the letter by Brentano which is printed in my introduction to Vol. I of the Psychologie, and the
introduction to the present book.
Brentano assumes that the reader is familiar with the theory of temporal modes on which he had
been lecturing since 1894–95. He first published his theory in the Klassifikation der psychischen
Phänomene in 1911. This note may serve to correct Husserl’s lecture of 1928; the editor of the lecture
makes no mention of the fact that the theory which is there represented as Brentano’s had long been
abandoned in favour of a theory of temporal modes. See the Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, LXXV
(1930), where I juxtapose Brentano’s earlier and later theories and compare them with Husserl’s.
20 Suppose, for example, that A is in pain and that B judges “A is in pain”. In this case B’s judgement is correct,
for it agrees with the evident judgement of inner perception whereby A perceives his pain. A judgement
contrary to this perception could not possibly be evident. Suppose now that A’s pain ceases, because A
has lost consciousness, and that B’s judgement continues unchanged. An evident judgement referring
to A’s pain can no longer be affirmative, since the affirmative judgement of B can no longer be correct.
“The being of A begins (or ceases)” means no more nor less than “A begins (or ceases)”. To say
that the judgement “A begins (or ceases)” is correct, in those cases where the judgement is not itself
made with evidence, is to say no more nor less than this: “From now on, it would be impossible for
anyone, making an evident judgement with respect to A, to reject (or affirm) A”. In other words, an
evident negative (or affirmative) judgement with respect to A is no longer possible.
21 If it were necessary to grasp the being of A in order to apprehend A, then it would be necessary
to grasp the being of the being of A in order to grasp the being of A, etc.
22 See Vol. II of Brentano’s Psychologie, and in particular the appendix entitled “Von der psychischen
Beziehung auf etwas, als sekundäres Objekt”.
23 On Plato’s theory of ideas, compare O.Kraus, “Die ‘kopernikanische Wendung’ in Brentanos
Erkenntnis- und Wertlehre”, in Philosophische Hefte, Vol. III (1929).