Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

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The True and the Evident
concepts are realized only in individual things. But what are we to say of the content of an
indefinite affirmative sentence such as the one just considered? If this content is supposed
to exist, does it have an existence in and for itself, or in the contents of particular things,
or perhaps both? You have long considered this area from Marty’s point of view, and you
continue to feel fortified in the conviction that we are dealing here with what really exists
and not with mere chimeras. And so I would like very much to know your answers to these
questions. But I hardly dare to anticipate what they might be, for whenever I try to imagine
what one might say, I find myself sinking into a chaos of absurd assumptions.
Enough for today. I look forward to the enlightenment I expect to receive from you.
It would be distracting at this point if I were to comment on your belief that you know
the development of my own views better than I do myself. Perhaps you will understand
my doubts if I ask you some questions. Do you have any idea what could have led me to
accept such an untenable doctrine as that of the existence of contents, which was so alien
to my great teacher Aristotle? And (to leap from ancient times to the present) how could I
possibly have abandoned every doubt about taking thought or presentation (Vorstellung)
as one of the three basic classes, especially after having devoted a long period of time in
the attempt to get along without it, and this, once again, only for the sake of arriving at the
truth? You speak as though a certain resistance on the part of my students has had some
influence here. Nothing could be more inaccurate. The progress of my own psychological
investigations enabled me to overcome difficulties which stood in the way of accepting the
third category. And it is precisely at this point of progress that I have lost company with
those companions who once seemed to be inseparable. 44
IX
To Franz Hillebrand, Innsbruck
Florence, 25 February, 1911
Dear Friend,
You have not only given me a sign of life; you have also raised important theoretical and
practical questions. And so your letter has a twofold—a threefold—interest.
… You do not touch upon the supreme theoretical question that I would take up in
connection with the attempt that you discuss. Instead you speak of Köhler and Kastil and
discuss the immanent object, the possible distinction between the immanent object and
content, the distinction between being (Sein) and being so-and-so (Sosein), and the question
of an instinctive belief in outer perception. According to you, there is no such instinctive
belief; I would be interested to know how you reconcile your animal psychology with
this point. 45 Kastil does not accept Meinong’s doctrine, according to which there can be
a knowledge of Sosein without a simultaneous knowledge of Sein—a knowledge of what
characteristics a thing has without a simultaneous knowledge of whether there is such a
thing. And the fact that Kastil does not accept this doctrine is something we must keep in
mind if we are to understand his statement that one can describe a thing without believing
that the thing exists. If I do not misinterpret what you attribute to him, he contends that
one can say of something, what it would be if it were to exist: thus one can say that a