Franz Brentano--Much Alive, Though Dead

Abstract

Discusses Franz Brentano's (1838-1917) works on various topics in psychology as well as concepts about the mind. For Brentano, experience revealed, not an inert context of sensations and their combination, but mental acts: sensations exist, but they are not per se mental. What is mental is the activity of seeing a color, smelling an odor, hearing a sound, etc. Brentano separated this active experiencing consciousness, for conceptual purposes largely (his overview tended in a holistic direction), into three aspects: (a) ideas or ideating, by which is meant largely sensing or imagining; (b) judging or judgment, which is not meant in an ethical or logical sense, but is perhaps closer to perception and attention; (c) feeling which develops out of a fundamental loving-hating axis as a point of departure. The author describes Brentano and the Würzberg School as one of the most influential systems of modern psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

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504
AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGIST
address
which
was a
"condensed summary"
of the
six-
year
study.
The
full
report
is now
available—Psychol.
Monogr.,
1962, 76(3, Whole
No.
S22).
FRANCES
K,
GRAHAM
University
of
Wisconsin
CLAIRE
B.
ERNHART
Washington University
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MAX
ROSENBAUM
Eastchester,
New
York
Franz
Brentano—Much
Alive, Though Dead
Franz
Brentano
was
born
in
1838
and
died
in
1917.
His
major work, Psychology from
an
Empirical Stand-
point,
appeared
in
1874.
In
addition
to his
major
publication,
eight others
out of his
total
of 38
publica-
tions dealt directly with psychological material. These
included
a
paper
on the
doctrine
of
sensations,
three
articles
on
optical illusions,
and a
paper
on the
quality
of
tone.
In
1911
he
published
Von
der
Klassification
der
Psychologie
Phenomene,
considered
by
some
a
second volume
to his
Psychology from
an
Empirical
Standpoint.
It is
interesting
that
Sigmund Freud
at-
tended
some
of
Brentano's
lectures
as a
young man,
and
translated
J. S.
Mill into German
for
him.
In his
major work Brentano
was
primarily interested
in
presenting
a
systematic
picture,
an
overview,
of
psychology, with
the aim of
developing
one
approach
to the
whole,
to
replace
the
many that were then
current.
Thus
he
took
into
account
J. S.
Mill, Bain,
Fechner,
Lotze,
Helmholtz,
all of
whom
he
respected
despite
his
disagreement with their viewpoint
and
conclusions.
As
Boring comments, however,
it was
not an
experimental psychology.
Citing Wundt,
the first
volume
of
whose Physiological
Psychology
appeared
in
1873, Brentano
emphatically
disagreed
that
physiological psychology
is in
itself
equivalent
to a
science
of
psychology;
he
interpreted
Wundt's
meaning
as the
stressing
of a
methodological
approach only.
He did
argue, however, that psy-
chology
ought
to
become
a
science,
but one
that
should
not be
delimited
and
circumscribed
in the
sense
of
making physiological psychology equivalent
to it as
the
whole
of it qua
science.
Brentano
disputed,
too,
the
notion
that
empiricism
should justifiably
be
considered
a
monopoly,
as
then
fairly
widely established,
of the
sense
or
sensation psy-
chologists.
He
went back
to the
Greek, Aristotelian
use of the
term, reviving
the
concept
of
activity,
as
the
fundamental essence
of
empiricism.
In
this sense
is the oft
used quote
from
him:
"Experience
alone
in-
fluences
me
as a
mistress."