Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Introduction xxv
to be evident. This “transformation of the concept of truth into that of the possibility of
evident judgement” is a thought which played a role in Brentano’s earlier lectures and
writings. In one passage in the Psychologie (Vol. 2, p. 90), where he takes up the problem
of correct evaluation, he asks “whether the object is of such a sort that one could stand in
the appropriate relation to it”. In the notes for his logic lectures of 1875, we read:” ‘The
object is’ means… that the object is to be accepted or affirmed, i.e., that it can be correctly
affirmed.”*
Here we have the source of the definition of the true—or of being in the sense of the
true—as that which can be correctly affirmed. This was incorporated in the writings of
Husserl and also in those of Anton Marty.
But this definition is the one which is least satisfactory. Among the alternatives are:
“that which is to be affirmed (das Anzuerkennensein)”;† Marty’s “that which it is possible
to affirm (das Anerkenntliche)”; “that which is affirmable”, or “worthy of being affirmed
(das Anzuerkenmnde oder Anerkennenswerte)”; and “that which ought to be affirmed (das,
was anerkannt werden soll)”. The latter expressions come closer to the correct one, viz.,
“that, the affirmation of which cannot possibly be false”, or “that, the denial of which
cannot possibly be evident”.
We have seen that Brentano finally rejected all those definitions which refer to the
possibility of evident affirmation and replaced them by those that we have been defending.
But why should we reject the attempt to characterize the true by reference to a possible evident
consciousness? First, because, as we have already shown, a possible evident consciousness
is not included in the so-called concept of the true. And secondly, such a definition leads
to the monstrous assumption of the a priori possibility of an evident consciousness, which
not only is aware of everything that is, but also denies with evidence everything that is not
and everything that cannot be. If we were to take this assumption seriously, we should be
led to affirm the a priori possibility of an omniscient mind encompassing all vérités de fait
and all vérités de raison. And this road, as we know, leads inescapably to the ontological
argument for the existence of God. 8 Husserl, to be sure, attempts to avoid this consequence
by distinguishing between “real” and “ideal” possibility.* He would have it that there are
evidences which are psychologically impossible but which—“to speak in ideal terms”—
constitute a possible psychical experience. These “ideal possibilities of evidence” are
finally transformed, in Husserl’s Ideen, into the fiction of a “pure consciousness”. Whether
it be “pure consciousness”, “transcendental consciousness”, or what, one wishes to avoid
“psychologism” and is driven instead into a kind of hyperpsychologism, with its invention
of a fairy-tale hyperconsciousness. All this only because, as we have already said, one
confuses “the impossibility of a judgement contradicting a judgement we call ‘true’” with
“the possibility of a judgement which is qualitatively the same as one we call ‘true’”.
But all these constructions have an element of truth, at least to the extent of indicating
that every thought about truth somehow includes the thought of an insightful consciousness
(ein einsichtiges Bewusstsein). 9 The whole question, however, turns upon this “somehow”,
and it is here that both phenomenology and transcendentalism go wrong.
* “‘Der Gegenstand ist’ bedeutet…das der Gegenstand anzuer kennen ist, d.h. dass er mit Recht
anerkannt werden kann.”
† Psychologie, Vol. II, p. 89.
* Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I, p. 185.