Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Brentano’s relation to Aristotle
- 3 Judging correctly
- 4 Brentano on the mind
- 5 Brentano’s concept of intentionality
- 6 Reflections on intentionality
- 7 Brentano’s epistemology
- 8 Brentano on judgment and truth
- 9 Brentano’s ontology
- 10 Brentano’s value theory
- 11 Brentano on religion and natural theology
- 12 Brentano and Husserl
- 13 Brentano’s impact on twentieth-century philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Reflections on intentionality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Brentano’s relation to Aristotle
- 3 Judging correctly
- 4 Brentano on the mind
- 5 Brentano’s concept of intentionality
- 6 Reflections on intentionality
- 7 Brentano’s epistemology
- 8 Brentano on judgment and truth
- 9 Brentano’s ontology
- 10 Brentano’s value theory
- 11 Brentano on religion and natural theology
- 12 Brentano and Husserl
- 13 Brentano’s impact on twentieth-century philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
BRENTANO’S RECOVERY OF THE INTENTIONAL
The topic of “intentionality” is a well-known quagmire. There seems to be no doubt that the Scholastic intentio had fallen into disuse in modern philosophy until it was recovered by Franz Brentano in an arresting way in the original edition (1874) of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. There, Brentano recovers intentionality - or, adhering to the text, “intentional inexistence” - as the essential nerve of an empirical psychology centered on describing the various kinds of “presentations [Vorstellungen] and other activities which are based upon presentations and which, like presentations, are only perceivable through inner perception.” These activities, Brentano says, belong to their “substantial bearer,” the soul (in Aristotle's sense of a certain “form of life” [physis, morphé], which Brentano follows), “the subject of consciousness” (as Oskar Kraus adds, without prejudging whether it is “spiritual or material” in being a “substantial substrate”).
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Brentano , pp. 131 - 148Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004