Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

On the Concept of Truth 15
object, and that in those cases where our attitude is incorrect, the emotion contradicts the
object and is not in harmony with its value. 19
54. We have thus an exact analogue to the correspondence which holds between a true
judgement and its object, or between a true judgement and the existence or non-existence
of its object. And in this case we are not dealing with a being in the sense of that which
may be said to be a thing. 20
55. In the light of all this, if we now ask about the relation between truth and reality, we
find a very simple answer.
(1) For one class of true judgements, there is, so to speak, a direct relation between their
truth and some thing or other; these are the judgements which are such that the idea or
thought which is at their basis has a thing as its object. Clearly the truth of the affirmative
judgement—and, in the inverse sense, that of the negative—depends upon the existence,
the coming into being, or the passing away, of the thing to which the judgement pertains.
The judgement itself may not undergo any change; but it will become true if the thing in
question comes into being, and it will cease to be true if the thing is destroyed. 21
(2) For the other class of judgements, those which are such that the underlying thought
or idea does not have a thing as its object, there are two possibilities.
(a) It may be that, so far as truth is concerned, the judgement is not at all dependent upon
any thing. This may be said of those judgements whose objects are in themselves necessary
or impossible. The law of contradiction, and with it all analytic judgements, belongs to this
category. 22
(b) It may be that the judgement is not directly dependent upon a thing, but is indirectly
dependent upon a thing. The object of the presentation or thought underlying the judgement
is not itself a thing; yet it may be said to exist, or not to exist, as a result of the fact that
a certain thing (or things) happens to exist, or did exist, or will exist. Consider an empty
space, any kind of lack, deficiency, or deprivation, a capacity, an object of thought, or the
like: these exist, and come into being and pass away, as the result of alterations among
objects that are things. 23
56. Thus I think we have the essential points involved in clarifying the definition of truth
as correspondence of judgement with the object—a definition which has been the occasion
of so much misunderstanding.
57. I can imagine that many will be disappointed with such a result.
For it may seem that very little is expressed by this definition, no more than would be
expressed by saying that a judgement is true if it judges an object suitably or appropriately—if
it says of something that is, that it is, and of something that is not, that it is not.
The expressions “to judge truly” and “to judge appropriately” would seem to be
tautologically equivalent* and the rest to be only an explication in terms of correlative
expressions. If we explicate the conception of the truth of an affirmative judgement by
* “Wahr beurteilen” und “antreffend beurteilen” scheint einfache Tautologie.