Brentano, Franz Clemens (1838–1917)

1. Life and intellectual development

Franz Brentano came from a talented family. He mastered ancient and scholastic philosophy as well as the works of Comte and the British empiricists. He always prized Aristotle above other philosophers, and regarded German Idealism as the nadir of philosophy. Brentano’s vision of philosophy as an exact discipline sharing its true method with natural science inspired his many famous students, who included such noted philosophers as Anton Marty, Carl Stumpf, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl, and Kazimierz Twardowski, as well as later political leaders German Chancellor Georg Hertling and the first President of Czechoslovakia, Thomas G. Masaryk.

Brentano’s life was one of controversy and disappointment. In 1864 he became a Roman Catholic priest and played an important role in the discussion of the proposed doctrine of papal infallibility. In a position paper commissioned by the Bishops of Germany he recommended that they reject the doctrine. When the doctrine was officially proclaimed, Brentano felt justified in giving in to other doubts that had been tormenting him, concluding, for example, that the doctrine of the Trinity was contradictory. In 1873 he resigned from the priesthood, the church, and his position in Würzburg. His career as a Professor in Vienna was short-lived. A legal controversy surrounding the question whether ex-priests could marry led him to resign his Professorship in 1880, a position to which, in a cause célèbre, he was never reinstated, remaining an instructor (Privatdozent) until he left Austria for Italy in 1895. In later years he became blind and was estranged from several of his older students. Brentano did not relish publication: apart from the uncompleted Psychology he published mainly short papers, lectures, and monographs on the history of philosophy. His views underwent continuous revision, but a major change occurred during the first decade of the twentieth century, when his ontological views went through a ‘Copernican revolution’ whose results even his closest followers found difficulty in accepting. Large quantities of letters, lecture notes and dictated pieces remained unpublished at his death. Many of these were edited from Prague between the wars, with support from Masaryk.