Husserl and Stumpf

Abstract

Carl Stumpf was Brentano’s “oldest pupil”,¹ for he began attending lectures of his mentor before any of the other Brentanists. He was already studying law in Würzburg (not because a career in this area interested him, but rather because it would allow him the leisure to occupy himself with music) when a transformation was initiated by Brentano’s defense of a number of theses for the sake of habilitation in 1866. Stumpf describes the impression which Brentano then made on him as follows:

Everything folded before the great tasks of philosophical and religious rebirth. Sharp thinking was in fact not my inclination until then; on the contrary, it was rather unpleasant to me. Only Brentano’s iron discipline made the need for logical clarity and consistency second nature. [ ... ] The thesis which he defended in his habilitation, that the true philosophical method is none other than the one of natural science, was and remained for me a guiding star.²