Arkadiusz Chrudzimski

The history of twentieth century philosophy is characterised by the gap between analytic and continental philosophy -- even though both have their roots in a tradition referred to as 'Austrian' or 'Central-European' philosophy. The essays in this volume show in historical and systematic studies, how a reassessment of this 'Central-European' tradition can build an interesting bridge between phenomenology and analytic philosophy and, thus, create a new foundation that allows for an original perspective on central problems of philosophy.

The history of twentieth century philosophy is characterised by the gap between analytic and continental philosophy -- even though both have their roots in a tradition referred to as 'Austrian' or 'Central-European' philosophy. The essays in this volume show in historical and systematic studies, how a reassessment of this 'Central-European' tradition can build an interesting bridge between phenomenology and analytic philosophy and, thus, create a new foundation that allows for an original perspective on central problems of philosophy.

It is often claimed that the beginnings of Brentano’s ontology were Aristotelian in nature; but this claim is only partially true. Certainly the young Brentano adopted many elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics, and he was deeply influenced by the Aristotelian way of doing philosophy. But he always interpreted Aristotle’s ideas in his own fashion. He accepted them selectively, and he used them in the service of ends that would not have been welcomed by Aristotle himself. The present paper is an exposition of the development of Brentano’s ontology, beginning with the Lectures on Metaphysics first delivered by Brentano in Würzburg in 1867 and concluding with his late work from 1904–1917.

Die Neuausgabe von Franz Brentanos Schriften zur Ethik und Asthetik basiert auf den von ihm zu Lebzeiten veroffentlichten Aufsatzen. Eine systematische Abhandlung zu diesen Gebieten im Sinne eigenstandiger Monographien aus Brentanos Feder existiert leider nicht. Es gibt lediglich Vorlesungsskripte, aus denen ersichtlich wird, wie Brentano Ethik und Asthetik konzipiert und in welchem Zusammenhang sie mit den anderen Teilen seines Werkes, allen voran der Psychologie, stehen. Die hier vorliegenden kurzen Abhandlungen und Vortrage behandeln spezielle Aspekte und Fragen aus dem Bereich der Ethik und der Asthetik und sind auf die jeweilige Leser- bzw. Horerschaft zugeschnitten. Sie konnen allein stehen, konnen aber auch als Exemplifikationen von Brentanos empirisch-analytischer Philosophie betrachtet werden."

"Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung" ist Franz Brentanos letztes Wort in seiner lebenslänglichen Auseinandersetzung mit seinem ersten und größten philosophischen Lehrer. Indem er sich auf die aristotelische Metaphysik und hier vor allem auf die Gotteslehre konzentriert, versucht er einerseits zu zeigen, dass die oft als dunkel und widersprüchlich hingestellten Lehren des Aristoteles sich konsistent rekonstruieren lassen, und dass Aristoteles andererseits als ein Vertreter des metaphysischen Optimismus, als ein "antiker Leibniz" also, betrachtet werden kann.

Franz Brentanos (1838-1917) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte aus dem Jahre 1874 gehört zu den Klassikern der Philosophie und der Psychologie. Mit diesem Werk, das den Ausgangspunkt sowohl für die phänomenologische Tradition als auch für die heutige Philosophie des Geistes markiert, konnte sich Brentano im damaligen philosophischen Panorama durchsetzen - sein Name ist auch heute noch unauflöslich mit diesem Werk verknüpft. Die Entdeckung bzw. Wiederentdeckung der Grundstruktur psychischer Phänomene, d. h. deren Intentionalität, stellt wohl den wichtigsten Beitrag Brentanos zum Aufbau einer Analytik des Geistes dar.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus [6] contains some very striking theses. We read, e.g., that \in a sense" we could not be wrong in logic, and that the whole subject matter of the theory of modalities could be reconstructed on the ground of the insights in the mechanism of the linguistic reference. Yet in the light of the last sentences of Tractatus the whole semantics turns out to be principally ineffable. In our paper we will try to clarify these matters. We show how these theses could be made plausible in the context of the transcendental method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

In a paper entitled A Semantical Version of the Problem of Transcendental Idealism, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz gives a very impressive analysis of transcendental idealism. He approaches the matter using the tools of formal semantics developed by Alfred Tarski and draws a rather surprising conclusion. According to Ajdukiewicz, the idealist position, claiming that the world around us is ontologically dependent on our cognitive activity can be shown to be implausible on purely logical grounds. It is worth taking a closer look at this insightful argument, since Ajdukiewicz’s analysis, if sound, has a relevance reaching far beyond purely historical questions concerning the right interpretation and proper assessment of past idealist doctrines. These days various species of idealism are thriving under such labels as ‘anti realism’ or ‘pragmatism’. Ajdukiewicz’s venerable paper goes to the very core of many contemporary metaphysical discussions.

Die oberflächengrammatische Form einer Beschreibung der inten-tio-nalen Beziehung suggeriert, daß wir es mit einer Relation zwischen dem Subjekt und dem Objekt zu tun haben. Angesichts der logischen Anomalien der intentionalen Kontexte postulieren jedoch viele Philosophen spezielle Entitäten, die den intentionalen Zugang zum eigentlichen Referenzobjekt vermitteln. Wir untersuchen drei Intentionalitätstheorien dieser Art: eine Meinongsche Theorie; eine Brentanosche Theorie; und eine Repräsentationstheorie sensu stricto. Alle Theorien akzeptie-ren die These, daß die vermittelnden Entitäten nur in der Weise repräsentieren können, indem sie eine Beschreibung des Referenzobjektes involvieren. Die Unterschiede zwischen ihnen betreffen drei Fragen: ob zwischen den Eigenschaften, die die vermittelnden Entitäten haben, und den-jenigen, die den Referenzobjekten zukommen, das Verhältnis der Identität besteht; ob die Weise, in der die Eigenschaften „gehabt" werden, in beiden Fällen die gleiche ist; und ob die Weise, in der es die betreffenden Entitäten gibt, immer ontologisch verpflichtend ist.

In Reinach’s works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs. Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Despite this claim of the “ontological equality” of positive and negative states of affairs, there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs can be directly “extracted” from our experience, while to acquire a negative belief we must pass through a quite complicated process, starting with certain positive beliefs. A possible and reasonable explanation of this discrepancy would be a theory to the effect that these epistemological differences have their basis in the ontology of the entities in question. Our knowledge of the negative states of affairs is essentially dependent on our knowledge of the positive ones precisely becausethe negative states of affairs are ontologically dependent on the positive ones. Such a theory has, in fact, been formulated by Roman Ingarden. According to him, negative states of affairs supervene on some positive ones and on certain mental acts of the conscious subjects.

In this paper I propose a certain classification of entities which are introduced in various theories of intentionality under the label ‘intentional objects’. Franz Brentano’s immanent objects, Alexius Meinong’s entities ‘beyond being and non-being’, or Roman Ingarden’s purely intentional objects can serve as examples of such entities. What they all have in common is that they have been introduced in order to extensionalise the so called ‘intentional contexts’ (‘intentional’ with ‘t’). But not all entities which function this way deserve the name of intentional objects. In particular, neither Frege’s senses nor mental contents of the early Husserl are to be classified as intentional objects in my sense. Roughly speaking, to be properly called ‘an intentional object’ a postulated entity must be supposed to function as a quasi-target of the subject’s intention. In other words: intentional objects are supposed to stand ‘before the subject’s mind’, so that they, in a sense, ‘replace’ the common sense objects of reference. It turns out that the intentional objects that were introduced in the history of philosophy make up groups which, from the ontological point of view, are very heterogeneous. Nevertheless it is possible to formulate certain systematic criteria of classifying them.

In Reinach’s works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs. Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Now in spite of this claim of the “ontological equality” of positive and negative states of affairs there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs could be directly “extracted” from our experience while to acquire a negative belief we must pass a quite complicated process starting with certain positive beliefs. A possible and reasonable explanation of this discrepancy would be a theory to the effect that these epistemological differences have their basis in the ontology of the entities in question. Our knowledge of the negative states of affairs is essentially dependent on our knowledge of the positive ones precisely because the negative states of affairs are ontologically dependent on the positive ones. Such a theory has been in fact formulated by Roman Ingarden. According to him negative states of affairs supervene on some positive ones and on certain mental acts of the conscious subjects.