Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Notes 125
latter would be impossible, if judgement were a genus having only specific differences which exclude
each other, as the specific differences of affirming and denying exclude each other. But this is not
the case, since the judging relation may be specified in other ways; for example, it may be specified
according to its object. Hence it might be possible to think of evidence as a specific difference of
judgement. Brentano believes, however, that such a possibility must be ruled out; if a thing loses its
specific difference, the difference must be replaced by another, since nothing can exist as a universal.
But an evident judgement may cease to be evident without thereby becoming a universal. Hence the
only remaining possibility is that evidence is to be thought of as an accident of the judgement; for if
an accident falls away from a subject, it is not necessary that the subject acquire something else in
its place.
But Brentano does not feel that the question has been entirely settled. Thus he calls attention to
the fact that, in the case of secondary consciousness, if the evidence falls away then the judgement
is changed; this could be reconciled with saying that evidence is an accident of judgement
only if two secondary perceptions could fit into each other, so to speak; in which case, the perception
of the entire evident judgement would include another secondary perception of the
judgement apart from its evidence, and this latter would underlie the former as a substratum.
Such considerations, then, lead back to the third possible solution, mentioned at the end of the
previous note.
41 The dictation reads “factual judgements” (tatsächliche Urteile), but what is intended is “vérités
de fait”, or assertoric judgements.
42 For further details see Part I of Vol. III of the Psychologie, i.e., Vom sinnlichen und noetischen
Bewusstsein.
43 To remember something means, according to this, to believe that one has experienced suchand-such
states of consciousness, and to believe this directly or immediately, that is, without any
motivation, but with a certain blind impulse. In other cases of believing about the past, however,
one’s belief is based upon certain documents, reports, or other indications; in such cases one believes
indirectly and trusts in the reliability of these signs of what is past.
44 “Lack of external evidence” here means: lack of evidence from external perception.
45 Compare Vol. II of the Psychologie, Appendix, p. 142, and Vol. III, note 15, p. 131.
46 That is to say, the question arises whether that which is empirically valid for us—namely, the
restriction of direct factual knowledge to knowledge of the perceiver himself—is also valid, without
exception, for all knowing beings.
47 Compare Oskar Kraus: Franz Brentano, mit Beiträgen von Carl Stumpf und Edmund Husserl
(Munich 1919).
48 Compare Vol. III of the Psychologie, Chap. I, Sect. 8.
49 At this point the dictation breaks off. Probably the following is what was meant: our rational
knowledge, which is always a matter of a priori apodictic denial, implies simple assertoric denial;
similarly, a universal and unconditional knowledge of necessity, though not within the reach of human
beings, would imply simple assertoric affirmation. See Brentano’s Versuch über die Erkenntnis.
APPENDICES (References 1–20)
1 When Brentano speaks of logic as an “Art”, he is referring to an applied art, a in the sense
of the Greek philosophers, an ars cogitandi.
2 To understand Brentano’s defence against the accusation of “psychologism” and his own
objections to Husserl’s views, we need not ask whether the characterization in the letter corresponds
to Husserl’s later point of view.
3 This is the principal point of Husserl’s critique.