Abstract
Brentano was not only a great philosopher, but also a productive and inventive historian of philosophy. In his eyes, philosophy and its history are not two contiguous discipline: the virtuous philosopher is also historian of philosophy, and vice versa. Brentano develops his views on the nature of history of philosophy (HP) and its relation to philosophy in a discipline he himself calls “philosophy of the history of philosophy” (PHP). In Sect. 2, I present PHP and locate it within the Brentanian comprehensive body of sciences. In Sect. 3, I relate Brentano’s PHP with some elements of his early intellectual biography. In Sect. 4, I consider the claim that, provided HP is developed according to the appropriate method, it will lead to its own suppression.
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Notes
- 1.
The literature on Brentano’s PHP is scarce, but substantial: B. Mezei, Barry Smith (1998), D. Fisette, G. Fréchette (ed.) (2007, esp. 63–70), D. Fisette (2006, 11–112), D. Fisette (2018, 9–40), K. Mulligan (1997, 61–103), L. Geldsetzer (1968), H. Bergmann (1965, 94–99), É. Gilson (1976, 56–67/[1939], 1–10).
- 2.
This paper is mainly based on the following texts by Brentano: “Was ist Geschichte der Philosophie?” (WGP), “Zweck der Geschichte der Philosophie” (ZGP) = the first two sections of the introduction of Brentano’s (1866–1870) Würzburg lectures on HP, F. Brentano (1963, 1–14, 14–17); see also F. Brentano (1987, 2–12, 1867, 526–584); “Philosophie der Geschichte der Philosophie” (PGP), ca. 1878, in Brentano (1987, 77–80); “Zur Methode der historischen Forschung” (MHF), ca. 1888, in Brentano (1987, 81–84); Über die Zukunft der Philosophie (ÜZP) (Brentano 1893); Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand (VPP) (Brentano 1895).
- 3.
I am following here the introductory considerations made in WGP.
- 4.
- 5.
In his Cours de philosophie positive (Paris, 1830–1842) Comte puts forward the idea that humanity developed in three stages: the theological one, where explanatory principles and causes are taken to be supernatural, the metaphysical one, where abstract principles such as the absolute or the will are considered as explanatory, and the positive one, where empiricism and induction dominate.
- 6.
The successor of Clemens in Münster was Albert Stöckl, author of a monumental Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (1864), one of Brentano main sources in his own writings on scholastic thought.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
P. Schulthess (2017, 5–40).
- 10.
See J. Nettesheim (1962, 284–296). Brentano received his doctor title in Tübingen in 1862 (in absentia, however, for at that time, he was in residence at the Dominican monastery in Graz).
- 11.
Schlüter’s letter to Brentano (11.12.1862), in J. Nettesheim (1962, 292).
- 12.
J. Nettesheim (1962, 294).
- 13.
J. Nettesheim (1962, 294–295).
- 14.
That letter to Schlüter is written in 1861, almost 2 years before the addressee had the opportunity to read Brentano’s dissertation, and thus, to react to it.
- 15.
Brentano to Schlüter (1861), in J. Nettesheim (1962, 287).
- 16.
See M. Antonelli (2001, 140).
- 17.
- 18.
An orientation beautifully expressed in this aphorism: “Sine Thoma mutus esset Aristoteles” (F. Brentano 2015, 163).
- 19.
- 20.
In the delicious Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht, Brentano talks of the philosophy of his times through a presentation of that of Plotinus, thus delivering a very clear message to his audience ….
- 21.
Here, Brentano is obviously alluding to that part of contemporary philosophy that has already taken the methodological turn he is pleading for (the text is from 1893).
- 22.
Here, by contrast, Brentano certainly alludes to philosophy as it developed after Kant and Hegel and up to his own time—in short then, to German Idealism and its consequences.
- 23.
Mezei and Smith (1998, 37–76), have continued Brentano’s work and confirmed the validity of its law in identifying the new climax as Brentano’s philosophy up to the time of the early Husserl, the decline starting with the very same Husserl’s Ideen. Then things get worse and worse—via Heidegger—until one reaches the bottom with thinkers like Sartre, Lévinas and Derrida. Interestingly, these authors, like some happy few other philosophers in history, are precisely located where things cannot get worse ….
- 24.
See Gilson (1976), where he shows that the succession of phases can be observed at different scales (there are shorter cycles within longer ones) and even within the intellectual biography of a single author (as one can see, at least partially, in the case of Husserl, according to Mezei and Smith).
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Cesalli, L. (2020). Brentano as a Historian of (Medieval) Philosophy. In: Fisette, D., Fréchette, G., Janoušek, H. (eds) Franz Brentano’s Philosophy After One Hundred Years. Primary Sources in Phenomenology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48563-4_13
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