Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Windelband’s Error with Respect to the Classification of Mental Phenomena
(4) Windelband wonders how I could think that the word “is” has one and the same
meaning in such sentences as “There is a God”, “There is a human being”, “There is
a deprivation”, and “There is something which is true” (p. 183). Referring to my Von
der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, he says that anyone who
thus writes on the manifold significance of being ought to take account of this manifold
significance himself (p. 184). I can only say that if Windelband cannot see what my theory
of judgement obviously implies in this case, then he has not understood the theory at all. 34
Aristotle, in treating this question, dividesbeing in the sense of what is a thing into
different categories and into actuality and potentiality but it never
occurs to him to do the same with “is” which transforms the expression of an idea
into that of a judgement, or with what he calls being in the sense of the true
Such a thing could be done only if, like Herbart and so many after him, one failed to
distinguish the concept of being, in the sense of the true, and being in the sense of a thing. 35
(Compare the following discussion of Sigwart’s doctrine.)
(5) I have said above that there are simple and compound judgements, and that there are
some compound judgements which cannot be resolved without remainder into judgements
which are simple. We must consider this fact when we try to reduce to existential form
those judgements which have a different linguistic formulation. For it is obvious that only
simple judgements—those which are truly unitary—can be so reduced. It goes without
saying that this qualification should be made, and therefore I did not mention it in the
Psychologie. And if the qualification holds generally, it also holds for the categorical forms
of traditional logic. The A, E, I, and O statements are interpreted by the formal logician as
expressions of judgements which are strictly unitary and therefore they can be reduced to
existential form.* But such reduction is not possible when the ambiguity of our language
allows us to use a single categorical statement to express a plurality of judgements.† The
existential formulas which can be used to express categorical judgements which are unitary
do not adequately express those which are compound. 36
Windelband should have taken these facts into consideration when, on page 184, he
asks whether the statement “The rose is a flower” can be put into existential form. He is
quite right in saying that the statement cannot be formulated as “There is no rose which is
not a flower”, but he is mistaken in thinking that I would disagree. I have never said—in
the passage cited or anywhere else—that it could be so expressed. “The rose is a flower”
cannot be expressed in this way, nor can it be expressed in the way in which Windelband
and so many others would have it. For the statement expresses two judgements, one of
which consists in the acceptance or affirmation of the subject of the judgement—which
could be “the rose”, in the usual sense of these words, or “that which is called a rose”, or
“that which is understood as a rose”. But, as we have remarked above, there are statements
of the form “All A are B” which do not express judgements in which the subject is thus
accepted or affirmed. 37
* See my Psychologie, Vol. I, p. 283, and Vol. II, pp. 5 3 ff.
† See Vol. II of my Psychologie, p. 183 and pp. 158 ff, esp. pp. 164 ff.
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