Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano

by Barry Smith

Overview

When Franz Brentano introduced the concept of intentionality into modern philosophy, he initiated a revolution in philosophical thinking whose effects are still being felt - not least in contemporary developments in the field of cognitive science. Barry Smith's Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano is the first extensive study of the philosophy of the Brentano school. The Brentanian philosophy is oriented towards the problem of mental directedness, of how mind relates to objects. Thus in working out their 'theories of objects', the Brentanian philosophers - in contrast to Frege and his successors in the analytic movement - did not abandon psychological concerns in favor of an orientation towards language. Rather, their investigations in ontology proceeded always in tandem with work on the cognitive processes in which objects are experienced. In thus spanning the gulf between psychology and ontology, the Brentano school gave rise to movements of thought such as phenomenology and Gestalt psychology (the term 'Gestalt' was introduced as a technical term of philosophy by Brentano's student Ehrenfels). The Brentanists enjoyed close relations with Carl Menger and other early members of the Austrian school of economics and Austrian Philosophy contains a detailed study of the interconnections between their work on the general theory of value and subjective theories of value developed in the economic sphere. Brentano's student Kasimir Twardowski initiated the rich tradition of scientifically and logically oriented philosophy in Poland, and the role of Brentanianism in Polish philosophy, and especially in the development of Lesniewski's mereology, is here for the first time subjectedto extended historical treatment. Another Brentano student, Carl Stumpf, was responsible for introducing into philosophy the technical term 'Sachverhalt' or 'state of affairs', and the associated doctrine of realism in logic, too, is shown to have been a special preserve

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812693072
Publisher:	Open Court Publishing Company
Publication date:	01/29/1999
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	396
Product dimensions:	6.04(w) x 9.04(h) x 1.05(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	Introduction	1
1.	Austrian Philosophy and the Brentano School	7
1.	The Rise of Scientific Philosophy	7
2.	Philosophy and Politics	9
3.	The Neurath-Haller Thesis	14
4.	The School of Franz Brentano	20
5.	Brentano's Philosophy: A Preliminary Outline	29
2.	Franz Brentano I: On Mind and its Objects	35
1.	Intentionality	35
2.	The Psychology of Aristotle	35
3.	Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint	41
4.	The Unity of the Soul	45
5.	From Psychology to Ontology	51
3.	Franz Brentano II: On Substance and Accident	61
1.	Brentano's Metaphysics	61
2.	Mutual and One-Sided Separability	63
3.	Aristotle on Separability	65
4.	Brentano on Separability	68
5.	Mereological Potentialism vs. Mereological Actualism	76
6.	Places and Times	79
4.	Anton Marty: On Being and Truth	83
1.	Brentano and Marty	83
2.	Stumpf, Cantor, and the Doctrine of Immanence	86
3.	Bases and Operations	91
4.	Collectives and Relations	96
5.	Space	101
6.	States of Affairs	104
7.	A Correspondence Theory of Intentionality	109
8.	The Martian Theory of Truth	113
9.	On Value-Contents, Fictions, and Linguistic Form	119
5.	Alexius Meinong and Stephan Witasek: On Art and its Objects	125
1.	Meinong and the Problem of Non-Veridical Intentionality	125
2.	The Phantasy Modification	128
3.	The Marks of Phantasy Phenomena	131
4.	The Aesthetics of the Graz School	134
5.	Aesthetic Pleasure	140
6.	Art and Illusion	142
7.	Gestalt and Expression	146
8.	Empathy and Sympathy	148
9.	Musical Presentations	150
6.	Kasimir Twardowski: On Content and Object	155
1.	Twardowski and Polish Philosophy	155
2.	On the Absolute Theory of Truth	160
3.	The Theory of the General Object	162
4.	Sachverhalt vs. Judgment-Content: Immanence and Idealism	171
5.	Process and Product	174
6.	From Psychology to Logic	185
7.	Tadeusz Kotarbinski: On Things and Their Phases	193
1.	The Development of Reism	193
2.	Reism and Truth	200
3.	Kotarbinskian Psychology	205
4.	The Aristotelian concept of Thing	210
5.	Time and Tense	217
6.	In Defence of a Bicategorial Ontology	225
7.	Kotarbinski and Brentano	229
8.	The Varieties of Reism	239
8.	Christian von Ehrenfels I: On the Theory of Gestalt	243
1.	The Theory of Gestalt Qualities	243
2.	Husserl, Meinong, Stumpf	250
3.	The Graz Production Theory	257
4.	The Berlin School	261
5.	On the Parsing of Ontological Structure	269
6.	Gestalt Psychology	278
9.	Christian von Ehrenfels II: On Value and Desire	281
1.	Foundations of a General Theory of Value	281
2.	The Relation between Desire and Feeling	283
3.	The Objects of Desire	285
4.	On the Nature of Values	287
5.	The Struggle for Existence among Values	292
10.	Carl Menger: On Austrian Philosophy and Austrian Economics	299
1.	The Intellectual Background of Austrian Economics	299
2.	A Priori and Analytic Truths	305
3.	Linguistics and Economics	311
4.	Ludwig von Mises and the Synthetic A Priori	314
5.	Two Kinds of Subjectivism	317
6.	Austrian Aristotelianism	320
7.	Aristotelianism in the Social Sciences	325
8.	Fallibilistic Apriorism	329
	References	333
	Index	363

Editorial Reviews

Smith (philosophy, SUNY Buffalo) presents an account of the ideas and arguments of Franz Brentano, an Austrian post-Kantian philosopher and father of Brentanian philosophy, which is oriented towards the problem of mental directedness and how the mind relates to objects. Smith examines how Bretanian philosophers influenced the development of scientific philosophy in Central Europe around the turn of the century and provides a survey of developments in Austrian philosophy from the 1870s to the Anschluss in 1938. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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