Denis Fisette

Este artigo trata da recente recepção dos escritos de Franz Brentano sobre a consciência. Estou particularmente interessado na conexão estabelecida entre a teoria da consciência de Brentano e as teorias de ordem superior da consciência e, mais especificamente, na teoria proposta por David Rosenthal. Minha hipótese de trabalho é que, apesar das muitas similaridades que possam ser estabelecidas com a filosofia da mente de Rosenthal, a teoria da consciência de Brentano difere em muitos aspectos das teorias de ordem superior e evita boa parte das críticas geralmente dirigidas a elas. Este artigo é dividido em oito partes. As primeiras duas seções expõem o arcabouco básico da teoria de Rosenthal, e a terceira resume as principais objeções que Rosenthal dirige a Brentano, que eu, então, examino nas sçcões 4 e 5. Nas seções 6 e 7, discuto o princípio da unidade da consciência de Brentano, na secão 8, considero o alcance das mudanças que Brentano faz em sua teoria da consciência em escritos posteriores à publicação de Psicologia em 1984. Eu, então, concluo que a teoria de Brentano repousa sobre a visão de uma auto-consciência intrínseca e intransitiva.

I am grateful to the respondents for the time and effort they have put into their comments on my paper on Brentano’s theory of consciousness. Since many comments overlap, I will group them by theme and respond to the objections by clarifying certain aspects of my paper and by providing new elements in support of my reading of Brentano. First, I will justify the topic of my study in light of the various theories of mind that one can identify with the philosophy of Brentano. Second, I will summarize the main aspects of Rosenthal’s HOT theory, which constitutes the background of my study. I will then discuss what since Chisholm has been called “Brentano’s thesis,” which many commentators defend in light of the two theses that I attribute to Brentano early in the target paper. In the fourth section, I will discuss several objections raised against my reconstruction of Brentano and his principle of the unity of consciousness. The main hypothesis that I developed in the last sections of the target article is that the later Brentano’s introduction of the concept of mental agent aims at solving two main problems left pending in his 1874 Psychology. The first relates to the substrate of the modes of consciousness and of the complex mental state internally perceived. The second issue pertains to the status of the concomitant consciousness and to the second general thesis on consciousness: that all mental states are conscious. My hypothesis is that, to clarify the status of the Mitbewußtsein and to adequately answer the question: ”What is it for a mental state to be conscious?,” the later Brentano uses the concept of mental agent and conceives of consciousness as implicit and intransitive self-awareness.

How do we reconcile Husserl’s repeated criticism of Mach’s phenomenalism almost everywhere in his work with the leading role that Husserl seems to attribute to Mach in the genesis of his own phenomenology? To answer this question, we shall examine, first, the narrow relation that Husserl establishes between his phenomenological method and Mach’s descriptivism. Second, we shall examine two aspects of Husserl’s criticism of Mach: the first concerns phenomenalism and Mach’s doctrine of elements, while the second concerns the principle of economy of thought, which Husserl closely associates with a form of psychologism in his Logical Investigations. Our working hypothesis is that the apparent contradictory comments of Husserl regarding Mach’s positivism can be partially explained by the double status he confers to his own phenomenology—as a philosophical program radically opposed to positivism, and as a method akin to Mach’s descriptivism.

This study concerns an aspect of the reception of Herbartianism in Austria that has not been thoroughly investigated so far. It pertains to a controversy opposing Robert Zimmermann and Franz Brentano in the context of discussions that took place in the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna. This study looks more specifically at three important episodes involving the Philosophical Society: first, the controversy over Herbartianism, second, that over the evaluation of Schelling’s philosophy, and finally, the reception of Bolzano in Austria. I will first describe the circumstances that led Zimmermann to get involved in the Philosophical Society and the source of his controversy with Brentano and his followers. I will then comment on Zimmermann’s address as chairman of the Philosophical Society and Brentano’s reaction to Zimmermann’s remarks on Schelling and the historical period to which he belongs. I will complete my analysis of Brentano’s reaction with a summary of his evaluation of Herbart’s philosophical program to which Zimmermann adhered. The last part focuses on Zimmermann’s decisive role in the reception of Bolzano in Vienna in connection with the Bolzano Commission established by the Philosophical Society. I will conclude with brief remarks on Zimmermann’s legacy in Vienna.

This study concerns an aspect of the reception of Herbartianism in Austria that has not been thoroughly investigated so far. It pertains to a controversy opposing Robert Zimmermann and Franz Brentano in the context of discussions that took place in the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna. This study looks more specifically at three important episodes involving the Philosophical Society: first, the controversy over Herbartianism, second, that over the evaluation of Schelling’s philosophy, and finally, the reception of Bolzano in Austria. I will first describe the circumstances that led Zimmermann to get involved in the Philosophical Society and the source of his controversy with Brentano and his followers. I will then comment on Zimmermann’s address as chairman of the Philosophical Society and Brentano’s reaction to Zimmermann’s remarks on Schelling and the historical period to which he belongs. I will complete my analysis of Brentano’s reaction with a summary of his evaluation of Herbart’s philosophical program to which Zimmermann adhered. The last part focuses on Zimmermann’s decisive role in the reception of Bolzano in Vienna in connection with the Bolzano Commission established by the Philosophical Society. I will conclude with brief remarks on Zimmermann’s legacy in Vienna.

At first, I introduce two different paths, which lead from Husserl’s phenomenology to classical German philosophy : a. Psychologism: from Kant to the Logical Investigations through Fries, Beneke and Herbart; b. Idealism, from Fichte to Husserl’s late conception of philosophy as transcendental idealism). Then, I argue, in the first section, that Husserl’s transcendental turn after the Logical Investigations could be understood as a kind of idealism, deriving from Fichte. The next part deals mainly with phenomenology’s double meaning : as philosophia perennis and as intentional psychology. First Philosophy asunderstood by Husserl is twofold: as Wissenschaftslehre (a science of all possible sciences) and as justification. I argue that phenomenology’s main contributions to philosophy lie in the concepts of justification and evidence and that intentional psychology plays an important role in that context, methodological as well as conceptual. 4. The final section is a discussion of what Husserl calls in the Krisis the “paradox of human subjectivity”, i.e. the relation between transcendental and empirical ego. The paper concludes with two remarks on foundationalism and intuition.J'introduis, dans un premier temps, deux voies différentes qui mènent de La phénoménologie husserlienne à la philosophie allemande classique: le psychologisme (de Kant aux Recherehes logiques), en passant par Fries, Beneke et Herbart; et l’idéalisme (de Fichte à la conception tardive, chez Husserl, de la philosophie en tant qu’idealisme transcendantal). Je soutiens, en premiere section, que le toumant transcendantal de Husserl apres les Recherehes logiques pourrait etre compris en tant qu’idéalisme, tributaire de Fichte. La seconde partie porte principalement sur la double signification de la phénoménologie: comme philosophia perennis et comme psychologie intentionnelle. Husserl entend la philosophie première de deux façons: en tant que Wissenschaftslehre (une science de toutes les sciences possibles) et en tant que justification. Je soutiens que la contribution principale de la phénoménologie se trouve dans les concepts de justification et d’evidence. La psychologie intentionnelle joue un rôle capital dans ce contexte, tant au niveau méthodologique que conceptuel. La troisième section représente une discussion de ce que Husserl appelle le «paradoxe de la subjectivité humaine»dans la Krisis, c’est-à-dire la relation entre l’ego transcendantal et empirique. Je conclus par deux remarques sur le fondationalisme et l’intuition.

Je m'intéresse ici à la question de savoir ce qu’il y a de descriptif dans la phénoménologie et ce qu’il y a de phénoménologique dans l’usage de la notion de description dans la philosophie contemporaine. Pour répondre à cette question, je retrace, dans un premier temps, les origines de la notion de psychologie descriptive au dix-neuvième siècle et j’identifie ensuite quelques-uns des traits caractéristiques du concept husserlien de description; dans un deuxième temps, j’examinerai quelques aspects du concept de description tel qu’on l’utilise dans la tradition analytique depuis le dernier Wittgenstein en portant une attention particulière à la question de savoir s’il recoupe ou non le concept husserlien; dans la troisième partie, j’esquisse rapidement le problème de la conscience dans la perspective d’un fossé de l’explication et j’examine brièvement la question de savoir si et à quelle condition la phénoménologie descriptive peut y apporter sa contribution.

Mon objectif dans cette étude est de revoir ses textes principaux sur la conscience dans la perspective des deux thèses qu'il formule sur la conscience au tout début du deuxième chapitre du deuxième livre de sa Psychologie. Dans les trois premières sections de cette étude, je propose une analyse de ces deux thèses en accordant une attention particulière à la relation que Brentano établit entre la conscience et l'intentionnalité. J'examinerai ensuite sa théorie des objets primaires et des objets secondaires par laquelle il articule ses deux thèses sur la conscience. Dans la cinquième et la sixième section, j'examine deux problèmes que soulève la théorie de la conscience de Brentano, à savoir le problème de la régression et celui de la complexité qu'il cherche à résoudre à l'aide de son principe de l'unité de la conscience. Dans la dernière partie, je me pencherai sur quelques écrits de Brentano publiés à titre posthume dans lesquels il fait intervenir la notion d'agent psychique (psychich Tätige) dans ses propos sur la conscience et j'essayerai de montrer que la prise en compte de l'agent dans ces écrits vise à solutionner certains problèmes laissés en suspens dans sa Psychologie.

This paper focuses on Carl Stumpf’s evaluation of Husserl’s phenomenology in his Logical Investigations and in the first book of Ideas. I first examine Stumpf’s reception of the phenomenology of the Logical Investigations. I then turn to §§ 85-86 of Ideas, in which Husserl seeks to distinguish his “pure” phenomenology from Stumpf’s phenomenology. In the third part, I examine Stumpf’s critique of the new version of phenomenology that Husserl develops in his Ideas in §13 of Erkenntnislehre, and, in the fourth part, I examine the Spinozist interpretation of noetic-noematic correlations in Stumpf’s two studies of Spinoza. I conclude by asking whether the version of phenomenology that Husserl elaborates on during the Freiburg period does not anticipate, to some extent, Stumpf’s criticisms while confirming the latter’s diagnosis of the phenomenology of Ideas.

In this paper, I propose a reassessment of Brentano’s most important writings on consciousness. My starting point is the formulation of two theses on consciousness that Brentano expresses at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, which constitute the foundation of his theory of primary and secondary objects. My working hypothesis rests on the principle of the unity of consciousness, which is the key to most problems generally associated with Brentano’s theory of consciousness. In the second part of my paper, I examine three of these problems, namely, the problem of duplication, that of infinite regress, and that of complexity. In the last part of my paper, I propose an analysis of the principle of the unity of consciousness that takes into account Brentano’s writings after the publication of his Psychology, in 1874, and I briefly appraise the impact, on the atual debates regarding Brentano’s theory of consciousness, of the modifications that Brentano has subjected his theory in several lectures and manuscripts published posthumously.