Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

III
LANGUAGE
(Fragment of 16 November, 1905)
1. Whoever asserts anything gives expression to what he thinks. Language is thus primarily
a sign of thoughts, but indirectly a sign of events outside us.
2. This does not mean, however, that for each sound there is a corresponding thought or
for each thought a corresponding sound. Individual sounds, and even the combinations of
sounds which make up words, often have no meaning by themselves; and often they are
signs of a multiplicity of thoughts. 19
Thus individual syllables, particles, casus obliqui, have no meaning by themselves.
But the same cannot be said of statements or of names (substantives, adjectives).
These latter denote objects by means of concepts. They signify that the concepts are
being thought and they evoke the same concepts in the one who is listening.
3. But it may well happen that a word which has the grammatical form of a noun or adjective
actually denotes nothing at all and is therefore not a name in the logical sense.
For example: the abstracta (“colour” and “thinking”), also the negativa and modalia
(such as “the necessary” and “the impossible”);
Again, the objectiva (“an object of thought”, “an object of love”).
Again, “good” and “evil”, as well as “truth” and “falsehood” and the like. Strictly
speaking, there is no concept of the good, or of the beautiful, or of the true. 20
4. Nor is there a concept of a thing’s being. One erroneously assumes that there is and
defines it thus: “A being is that which is”. But what one is thinking when one says “A is a
being” is an acknowledgement or acceptance of A. And when one says “A is not a being”,
one is thinking of a denial or rejection of A. If one were to say simply “a being” one would
be thinking of a person who is accepting or acknowledging something. But this thought is
not itself the concept of being, for if it were, the word “being” would have to denote one
who asserts or acknowledges something.
5. But there is a concept of thing, even if there is no concept of the being of a thing, or of a
thing’s having being. And the concept of thing applies to everything.
For everything is a thing or entity—a Usie.
6. Here we have the most general concept. But only individual things correspond to it.
Everything that does correspond to it must be subject to still other determinations fixing
the concept of the thing more precisely.
7. If these more precise determinations specify and individuate the concept of the thing,
then they are called “essential”. 21