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Franz Brentano and Cornelio Fabro: A Forgotten Chapter of the Brentanian Reception

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Abstract

In celebration of the centenary of the Italian philosopher Cornelio Fabro’s birth (1911–1995), this paper investigates the essential theoretical traits that undergird the framework of Fabro’s 1941 texts, by comparing them with Franz Brentano’s (1838–1817) project of renewing Thomism through a new understanding of Aristotle. The secondary literature concerning the comparison of both these authors is almost nonexistent. Our goal is to clarify some of the central issues regarding the relation between Fabro and Brentano through direct textual analysis of unpublished letters exchanged between Fabro and Agostino Gemelli about Brentano and his pupil Carl Stumpf.

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Notes

  1. As a Visiting Professor, he taught at Notre Dame University (USA) in 1965. He was the official representative of Italy at the international convention of UNESCO for the revision of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” (Oxford 1965). From 1968 to 1981 he held the position of Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Perugia. In 1974 he received the “Aquinas Memorial Medal” of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (Washington); he was also designated the official orator of the ministerial committee for the commemoration of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, in the presence of the President of the Republic of Italy. Fabro was a founding member of the University of St. Thomas (Houston, Texas); moreover he was also the founder of the “Italian Center for Kierkegaardian Studies” (Potenza 1987).

  2. Fabro (1941a), 39. The two texts of 1941 were reviewed by A. Rossi (1943), 413–416 and 416–419, who concludes that: “ … the two studies are valuable especially for their breadth of research; a breadth that rivals its depth of analysis, with secure and complete summaries, with the richness and profundity of its arguments … No philosophical scholar should ignore these two volumes” (ibid., p. 416).

  3. Fabro (1941a), 47.

  4. XXIX, 2–3, 1937, 207–245.

  5. Fabro (1937), 65–77 (review of F. De Sarlo, Vita e Psiche. Saggio di filosofia della Biologia, Firenze 1935).

  6. Fabro (1938a), 5–63.

  7. Fabro ( 1939), 117–135.

  8. Fabro (1938b), 337–368.

  9. Fabro (1941a), xxviii.

  10. Gemelli, Prefazione, in Fabro (1941a), ix.

  11. Fabro (1941a), 151.

  12. Ibid. 150–151.

  13. Fabro (Fabro 1941a), 38.

  14. Ibid., 151.

  15. Fabro (1941b), xiv.

  16. Fabro (1941b), xv.

  17. Ibid., v.

  18. Ibid., xiv.

  19. Ibid., 421.

  20. Ibid., xiv-xv.

  21. Ibid., 39.

  22. Ibid., 155.

  23. Ibid., 39.

  24. Ibid., 434.

  25. Ibid., 41.

  26. Ibid., 35.

  27. Ibid. 36. For more on the person and work of Carl Stumpf, and his relation to Franz Brentano, see Brentano Studien, X, 2002–2003, see also the monograph on the theme: Essays über Carl Stumpf und Franz Brentano, ed. W. Baumgartner and A. Reimherr; also see, the biography of Stumpf, ed. H. Sprung (unter Mitarbeit von L. Sprung), Carl Stumpf—Eine Biographie. Von der Philosophie zur experimentellen Psychologie, (München/Wien: Profil Verlag, 2006).

  28. Historical Archive Università Cattolica, Milan, (prot.82/127/1170). The book Fabro refers to here is the first of two posthumous volumes by C. Stumpf, Erkenntnislehre, as is evinced in other letters sent to the same Gemelli in addition to the review Fabro published in Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica, 1939, XVII, 431–435.

  29. Fabro, Prefazione, in Fabro (1941a), vii.

  30. Fabro (1941b), 87.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid. 89.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid. 90.

  35. Ibid 92.

  36. Ibid 93.

  37. Ibid. 94.

  38. Ibid. 95.

  39. Ibid. 97–98.

  40. Ibid. 99.

  41. Ibid. 100.

  42. Ibid. 103.

  43. Ibid. 148–149.

  44. Ibid. 149.

  45. Agostino Gemelli, was the founder of the Università Cattolica of Mila (Italy). The Psychology and Biology Laboratory that he established in 1924 was his main creation and featured exceptional research instruments for the time. The Laboratory became the Institute of Psychology in 1958 and then the Department of Psychology in 1983.

  46. Fabro (1941b), 149–50.

References

  • Fabro C (1937) Un saggio di filosofia della biologia, in Bollettino filosofico, 1, pp 65–77

  • Fabro C (1938a) Bollettino filosofico (Pontificia Università Lateranense), IV, 1, pp 5–63

  • Fabro C (1938b) The New Scholasticism, XII, 4, pp 337–368

  • Fabro C (1939) Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica, pp.117–135

  • Fabro C (1941a) La fenomenologia della percezione. Vita e Pensiero, Milano

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  • Fabro C (1941b) Percezione e pensiero. Vita e Pensiero, Milano

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  • Rossi A (1943) Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, XLIV, pp 413–416 and pp 416–419

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  1. University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    A. Russo

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Article translated by Joshua Furnal, Durham University, UK.

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Russo, A. Franz Brentano and Cornelio Fabro: A Forgotten Chapter of the Brentanian Reception. Axiomathes 24, 157–165 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-013-9208-5

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