On the first days of July 1862,
immediately after the writing and publication of his work on the several senses of being in Aristotle, Brentano sent a copy of the volume, and the request to obtain the doctorate in absentia, to the Dean of the faculty of philosophy in the University of Tübingen. A letter followed the dispatch of the volume from Josef Merkel, on 13 July 1862, to Professor Wilhelm Sigismund Teuffel (1820-1878), of the same University. In this letter, Merkel said, “the young Br[entano], (a son of the well-known Bettina von Arnim’s brother, nephew of the poet Clemens Brentano) has shown in this work such a dialectical acumen, such a thoughtfulness in the consideration of every aspect and such a profound seriousness that, if I’m not wrong [ni fallor], there would not be many Inaugural Dissertations of this value that may come out. From this praise, maybe quite interested, you can see that I take interest in this matter […] It seems that Professor Trendelenburg, who sent the fifth edition of his Elementa Logices Aristotelea, just published, to young Brentano, has been delighted by the thoroughness of his former student”
Dear Antonio Russo,
Thank you for this brief digression on Franz Brentano's intellectual career. You digression has much to be commended: Congratulations.
From my knowledge of Franz Brentano, the idea that I have more in my mind is its idea that our consciousness iis always intentional, that is, when we are conscious are are always conscious of something or somebody.
Kind regards,
Orlando
Caro Professor Russo,
This is an interesting thread. I know Brentano as a psychologist from his work, "Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint," and as a psychoanalyst from his influence on Freud (a negative one as Freud's teacher, who decided to choose medicine instead of philosophy and in many ways, psychoanalysis offers a different royal road to understanding the human condition, in opposition to philosophy).
In philosophy, I follow the work of my supervisor and mentor Alain Badiou who critiques subjective phenomenology which has its origins in Edmund Husserl and his teacher Brentano. Husserl took from Brentano the notion of intentionality from mediaeval philosophy to create phenomenology.
In my work, I align with Badiou in critiquing subjective phenomenology which at least in psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis has accomplished precisely nothing after more than a hundred years. If we must have a phenomenology, let us construct an objective phenomenology based on a new ontology of the Event.
Saluti,
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD
My interest in Brentano originated with Roderick Chisholm's concern to arrive at a criterion to demarcate the psychological or mental from the physical. Brentano thought intentionality (the “aboutness” or “directedness” of mental states) could serve that purpose. John Searle claimed that sensations lacked that sort of aboutness, but arguably in Brentano’s more nuanced understanding of sensations they do have the requisite aboutness. A stronger criticism comes from arguments to the effect that the various proposed characteristics of intentionality are also manifested by physical causal dispositions and therefore intentionality cannot serve to demarcate the mental from the physical.
I am just publishing a book on The Intellectual Re-volution of Franz Brentano and his Roots. The lines that I posted are the first lines of my first chapter (Brentano's education). Many thanks for your attention
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