Late in his life, Brentano wrote to Oscar Kraus that, when he was a young philosopher, he had had to apprentice himself to a master. But since he was born "at a time of the most lamentable decay of philosophy," he could find no better teacher than "old Aristotle." Thomas Aquinas, he said, helped him to a deeper understanding of the Philosopher.1  When a Viennese student (of Austrian nobility, presumably) asked Brentano for an inscription in his album, he wrote

You, who claim noble descent, hear who my ancestors were!

I am of Socrates seed through whom Plato came into being.

Plato begot the stagirite whose force has never abated…

Even today I can claim to be of his issue.

Welcome Eudemus, you pious, welcome O brother, and you

Godlike in speech, Theophrastus, sweet as the Lesbian wine.2 

Since I was given him late, youngest of all his descendants

Loves my father me most, more tenderly than all the others.3 

 

Now comes the punch line, the consummation of the whole enterprise: Immanuel Kant had the astonishing idea that objects obey the blind prejudices inherent and innate in our minds. His successors, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel carried this conceit forward. "I do not hesitate to assert that their [Schelling’s and Hegel’s] works are altogether devoid of any and all value from a scientific point of view."4  In an earlier piece, Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht, of 1876, this same view is adumbrated. The last phase is "pseudo philosophy."

Brentano was concerned to establish his own place in history. After the dark night comes a new dawn, another ascending phase. His own work starts a new cycle. He writes to Kastil "I would not have been immodest had I said Ecce, nova feci omnia."5  This is strong stuff, being a quotation from Ch. 21 of Revelation:

And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband… And he that sat upon the throne said Ecce, nova facio omnia – "Behold, I make all things new"… I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end…

 

I now turn to an issue arising from Brentano’s famous distinction between psychical and physical phenomena. To recapitulate, both kinds are mental occurrences. As examples of physical phenomena, Brentano cites: "a colour, a figure, a landscape that I see, a chord that I hear, a warmth, coldness, odour that I sense, as well as similar entities when they appear to me in imagination."6  A distinction is also made between the pain and the sensing of it – that is, whenever a pain occurs, a physical phenomenon is present, e.g. in the foot, and I sense this phenomenon with pain.7  As examples of psychical phenomena, he cites: "every representation through sensation or imagination, and by representation I do not here mean that which is represented, but the act of representing." There follows a list of examples of sensations; "every judgement, every recollection, every expectation, every inference, every conviction or opinion, every doubt is a psychical phenomenon; and such is also every emotion, joy, sadness, fear, hope, courage, despondency, wrath, love, hate, desire, will, intention, astonishment, admiration, contempt, etc."8 

In the Psychology of Aristotle, Brentano attributes to Aristotle a distinction between something being physically in a sense (or sense organ) and something being objectively there: my hand can be physically warm or cold, but I can also sense through my hand that something is warm. In the latter case, too, the sensory organ will be said to be warm (for sense receives the sensible forms without matter), but it will be warm objectively.9  This distinction between physical and objective inexistence is then applied to the interpretation of De anima 429a24, where Aristotle says "Hence it is not proper to say that the intellect is mixed with the body, for then it would be of a certain kind, either hot or cold." Aristotle cannot here be arguing that if the intellect were physically hot or cold by being mixed with the body, then it could not be objectively cold, for the two are quite compatible. Indeed, the hand is most sensitive to warmth when it is physically cold. Rather, Aristotle is speaking of what is in the intellect objectively, not physically.10  Thus, Brentano attributes to Aristotle an argument that, in its simplest terms, can be stated as follows. If the intellect were mixed with body, it would have to be hot or cold, or have some other sensible quality objectively whenever it thinks. It would have to have a proper object, as sound is the proper object of hearing, colour of sight, and so on. But there is no proper object of the intellect: the mind is in a way all existing things (De anima 431b20). Therefore it is unmixed with body. The senses, by contrast, because they are mixed with body, can perceive only their proper objects; the eyes cannot see warmth, the hands cannot feel colour, etc.

Given that objects somehow inexist in the mind, the problem arises how we become aware of the state the mind is in when it has them – for example, how we perceive that we see, hear, etc. – and this is the point taken up at the beginning of De anima III, 2 (425b12). The difficulty here raised is evidently the same as that hinted at in Metaphysics XII, 9 (1074b35) where Aristotle says that "knowledge and perception and opinion and understanding have always something else as their object, and themselves only by the way (en parergo)." Brentano discusses the matter at some length.11 

But Brentano’s second thesis results at once, if we add a further Aristotelian premise to the distinction between primary object of knowledge and knowledge en parergo. It is the doctrine that the mind is in actuality nothing other than the object that it thinks. While the mind is in a way (i.e., potentially) all existing things, it is in actuality only what it actually thinks. But a mind devoid of actuality cannot be known to itself. Hence there is no state of mind that can be known if there is no inexistent object. If we add to this Aristotle’s view that the object of desire must also be an object of cognition (De anima 433b10), we can see how Brentano arrives at his belief that "representation forms the basis ... of desire and every other psychical act. Nothing can be judged ... desired, nothing can be hoped or feared if it is not represented."12  If then the objects of desire, etc., are also objects of cognition, it follows from Aristotle’s premise that no psychical phenomena can be experienced en parergo, or even exist, unless an object intentionally inexists in the mind. The mind can know itself only if it knows another thing.

Let me recapitulate Aristotle’s argument as Brentano saw it: in order to be able to receive all intelligible forms, the mind must as such be pure potentiality. Only when the mind is an object (i.e., when one intentionally inexists in it) is there an attitude either of acceptance, desire, aversion, fear, and so on (toward that object). It follows that these attitudes – i.e., the psychical phenomena – always have objects. We can call this the deductive argument for the thesis that all psychical attitudes are intentional. For the special case of intellectual cognition this argument is clearly stated in section 11 of Part Four of The Psychology of Aristotle.13 

In Book II of the Psychology from an Empirical Point of View, Brentano endeavours to establish the very same conclusion by what he calls an inductive procedure.14  He tries to explain, by way of examples, what psychical phenomena are, then states that all of these have intentionally inexisting objects, and finally defends this view against competing theories.

The volume that is known in German as Psychology III, and in English as Sensory and Noetic Consciousness,15  opens by raising a skeptical question, leading to a new twist in the discussion of the primary knowledge of objects and the secondary knowledge of the activity; Which is more certain? Brentano’s answer is unequivocal; "mental activity always includes the evident consciousness of that activity"16  and – even more strongly – "Aside from our knowledge of ourselves as mentally active beings, we have no directly evident knowledge of facts."17  To put this in Chisholm’s adjectival form of expression: I can be certain that I am appeared to redly, but not that the object, even if described as a sense datum, is red. "In the final analysis I do not know that a colour exists, but that I have a presentation of that colour.18 

It seems that Malebranche was the first to hold that external impingements upon the senses must initially result in sensations, merely subjective modifications of the mind.19  The important insight here is not that all knowledge of external things begins with sensory awareness – many others held this view – and that some elaboration of the sensory input by central functions of the mind is needed before one can properly speak of knowledge or perception. It was, rather, that the mental states initially induced are non-intentional or non-referential.

Some cautions must be placed on the term "intentional." I am not using it here quite in the sense of Brentano, who would have considered the presence of a sensation an intentional act, the sensation being the object of that act.20  (In this sense, everything of which one is aware is an object. In Kant’s words: "Everything, every representation even of which one is conscious may be called object."21 ) I wish nevertheless to speak of sensations as non-intentional since they do not have objects, even if they are (in a sense) objects. It was common to think that reference to things (other than one’s own states) required some sort of mental token or symbol "by means of" which the object is thought,22  analogous to the way in which one refers to things by using words. Kant, accordingly, goes on to say that he is not concerned so much with representations insofar as they are objects, but only "insofar as they designate an object."23  Sensations, in this view, were not thought suited to designate anything. This is why I call them non-intentional.

The sensationist supposition demands an account of the mechanisms that engender reference to objects. This differs markedly from the criteriological concerns that had dominated epistemology earlier on, and seems to be revived in Brentano’s later work. The problem is no longer to discover a criterion that allows us to sort out ideas that truly represent external objects from those that merely appear to. It is, rather, to explain the very roots of reference, regardless of whether the object before the mind is real or merely virtual or illusory, or some conceptual object. Kant’s description of the problem is this: "How does it come about that we posit an object for these representations, or attach to them, beyond their subjective reality as representations, an objective reality?"24 

Leibniz’s thesis that the soul mirrors the entire universe is familiar. Less well appreciated is the fact that he also subscribed to its converse, that is, that everything in the soul mirrors something in the universe: "The nature of the monad is to represent." In the Principles of Nature and of Grace, he claims that all internal states of monads are perceptions (No. 2).25  Christian Wolff and his orthodox successors made the point with a clarity that leaves nothing to be desired: "We meet in the soul nothing but the ability (Kraft) to represent the world... hence all changes that are noticeable in the soul are due only to various limitations of this ability…"26 

Leibniz’s view has several troublesome consequences – for instance, that all people are deeply deceived about most of the objects of their thought, and that one does not usually know what one is really thinking about. I shall not pursue this matter beyond mentioning that Reid made very nearly this point when he remarked against Leibniz that "no man can perceive an object without being conscious that he perceives it."27  Reid does not deny unconscious mental states, but the possibility of inadvertent reference.

The excuses made in this connection are very poor. For example, it is said that a pain corresponds to (i.e. represents) an injury to the solid parts of the body. But the representation of the injury already corresponds to it. What then corresponds to the pain, of which we are clearly aware that it is something altogether different?28 

 

The answer is, of course: Nothing at all. J. N. Tetens, whose book was "always before" Kant when he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason,29  remarked that, on Wolff’s view "Joy, hunger, longing, fear, and all emotions and desires and passions are representations, just like the ideas of the sun, of a horse, of a man." He goes on to wonder what is gained if "the formation or representations is seen as basic to all forms of mental activity."30 

Leibniz takes all sensations (deriving from) certain objects for cognitions of them. But beings who are not the cause of the object through their representations must in the first instance be affected in a certain way so that they can arrive at a cognition of the object’s presence. Hence sensation must be the condition of outer representation but not identical with it . . . Hence cognition is objective, sensation subjective (Reflexionen § 695).31 

 

The term idea, as it occurs in British Empiricism, is notoriously ambiguous. It is, however, always construed as meaning an object before the mind. Ideas are what the mind "is applied about whilst thinking."32  For Berkeley, they are simply the "objects of human knowledge."33  In like vein, Hume takes the sentences "an object appears to the sense" and "an impression becomes present to the mind" to be equivalent.34  If to have an impression is to have an object present, the same must also hold of ideas. Since anything that may occur in a mind is an idea or (in Hume) an impression, it follows that any mental occurrence is to be described as the presence of an object to the mind.

Brentano’s debt to Aristotle is great. One can show for some of his theories that they grew out of his enquiry into Aristotelian problems, and I have done so for one of them. Not only this, it seems that whenever he took a major step forward, he asked himself how his new theory related to Aristotle’s teaching. This is a pervasive feature of his systematic work. Even as he moved away from his teacher, he rarely failed to make specific mention of the points of divergence. For example, he took it that reism implied that there is a univocal generic concept ‘something,’ covering everything that can be an object of thought. The contrast to Aristotle, who denied that there is a common generic concept above the ten predicaments, is duly noted.35 

Again, when he came to believe, late in life, that the primary objects of thought are universals, on the grounds that "what one sees, hears, tastes, believes, denies, wishes, enjoys, deplores could without contradiction equally well have many other things as (external? ) objects," he attributes the same view to Aristotle. For in Aristotle, accidents are individuated through substances, and the individual determination of a substance cannot be represented (since it resides in matter, presumably), so that Aristotle must be committed to the view that "all our representations, even sensory perceptions, basically represent something universal."36 

Aristotle’s claim, in Anal. Post. 87b37, that "perception must be of the particular," does not agree with this and is called "unclear and misleading."37  These are just a couple of issues to show that Brentano did not just begin his career as Aristotle’s student, but again and again, throughout his life, compared and contrasted his own discoveries with the views of the master. A full account of this development from discipleship to critical distance would form a substantial chapter of his intellectual biography.

  1. To Oscar Kraus on March 21, 1916, in Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Briefe und Abhandlungen aus dem Nachlass, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand, Bern: Francke, 1952; 1966, p. 291.

  2. In antiquity, the wine from the island of Lesbos was famous for its sweetness. Aulus Gellius, a Roman of the 2nd century CE who went to Athens for his higher education, describes how Aristotle appointed his successor as head of the Lyceum. The choice was between Eudemus of Rhodes, and Theophrastus of Lesbos: "Pretending to dislike the wine he was drinking, he asked for samples from Rhodes and Lesbos and remarked: ‘Both are very good indeed, but the Lesbian is the sweeter.’ When he said this, no one doubted that gracefully, and at the same time tactfully, he had by those words chosen his successor, not his wine… And when, not long after this, Aristotle died [in 322 BCE] they accordingly all became followers of Theophrastus." Aulus Gellius, The Attic Nights, ed. John C. Rolfe, 3 vols., Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1927, Vol. 2, pp. 425 f.

  3. Brentano’s preface to his Aristotle and His World View, tr. R. George and R.M. Chisholm, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.