Riccardo Martinelli

Building upon Kant’s concept of intensive magnitude, Herbart developed a method for the measurement of the relative intensity of mental presentations. This relativistic strategy strongly influenced Austrian thinkers and scientists. Among those who further developed this approach, special mention is deserved by Hering, who strongly influences Brentano. With an audacious move, Meinong claimed that both intensive and extensive magnitudes occur within the mental. As a consequence of Russell’s criticism of this tenet, Meinong retreated and developed the theory of objects.

Building upon Kant’s concept of intensive magnitude, Herbart developed a method for the measurement of the relative intensity of mental presentations. This relativistic strategy strongly influenced Austrian thinkers and scientists. Among those who further developed this approach, special mention is deserved by Hering, who strongly influences Brentano. With an audacious move, Meinong claimed that both intensive and extensive magnitudes occur within the mental. As a consequence of Russell’s criticism of this tenet, Meinong retreated and developed the theory of objects.

Many nineteenth-century psychologists assume that the measurement of psychic intensity is a prerequisite to the development of a truly scientific psychology. In the first edition of the Psychology from an empirical point of view, Brentano deals with this question. He assumes that all psychic phenomena admit of a certain intensity. Later on, Brentano retreats this doctrine and claims that only sensible phenomena admit of an intensity, whereas intellectual presentations do not. As a consequence, Brentano introduces a radical gap between sensible and noetic consciousness. By contrast, Stumpf maintains a continuity between sensations and presentations. The main difference between them is the degree of their intensity. The essay provides a discussion and a comparison of the above mentioned points of view.

In his Spinozastudien Stumpf dismisses the commonplace interpretation of Spinoza’s parallelism in psychophysical terms. Rather, he suggests to read Ethics, II, Prop. 7, as the heritage of the scholastic doctrine of intentionality. Accordingly, things are the intentional objects of God’s ideas. On this basis, Stumpf also tries to make sense of the puzzling spinozian doctrine of the infinity of God’s attributes. In support of this exegesis, Stumpf offers an interesting reconstruction of the history of intentionality from Plato and Aristotle to the late Scholastics. Besides its intrinsic value, Stumpf’s confrontation with Spinoza is illuminating in explaining his own position concerning a crucial phenomenological question such as intentionality. Actually, Stumpf avoids defining the mental in terms of intentionality and maintains, rather, a moderate but professed dualistic position, thus deeply diverging from both Brentano and Husserl.

Oswald Külpe’s original interpretation of Kant’s philosophy influenced Külpe’s own philosophical thought. On the one hand, Külpe is critical of his illustrious predecessor. For him, in fact, Kant wrongly denies that human thought can address itself to truly non-intuitive objects; furthermore, his transcendental aesthetics is uterly misleading. Interestingly, both claims are supported by Külpe with reference to the psychological research of the time. On the other hand, however, Külpe is highly sympathetic with one of Kant’s central assumptions, namely the unreliability of the internal sense. Against Wundt and other psychologists of his time, Külpe conceives of the epistemological foundations of psychology in accordance with the rehabilitation of this Kantian claim.

Meinong’s early writings include a number of discussions that are in line with the mainstream psychological research of his time. This is not at odds with the parallel theorizing tendency of his philosophical psychology. Even after developing the theory of objects, and despite handing psychological research over to his pupils, Meinong kept thinking highly of psychology. Meinong’s psychology is in tune with his most relevant philosophical doctrines. The theory of “production” virtuously integrates that of founded objects. The manifold “dispositions” (including phantasy) and the different subjective “attitudes” (gestalt-like or analytical) lead to regular, lawful deviations from standard responses that can and should be investigated experimentally. While being an independent discipline, Meinongian psychology nevertheless fits into a fullfledged system of philosophical assumptions.

Ranging from Antiquity to contemporary analytic philosophy, this book provides a concise but thorough analysis of the arguments developed by some of the most outstanding philosophers of all times. Besides the aesthetics of music proper, the volume touches upon metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology, and scientific developments that have influenced the philosophical explanations of music. Starting from the very origins of philosophy in Western thought (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle) the book talks about what music is according to Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, the Romantics, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Susanne Langer, Bloch, Adorno, and many others. Recent developments within the analytic tradition are illustrated with particular attention to the ontology of the musical artwork and to the problem of music and emotions.

This essay addresses the attitude of some leading Neo-Kantian philosophers toward scientific psychology and psychophysics. Early influential figures like Friedrich A. Lange counted Gustav T. Fechner’s psychophysical law among their allies in the rehabilitation of the Kantian standpoint. Later on, however, Neo-Kantian philosophers firmly rejected psychological measurement as a whole and harshly criticized the methods adopted by several psychologists of their time. For example, the Marburg mathematician and philosopher August Stadler reduced the validity of Fechner’s law to the mere physiological sphere, and Hermann Cohen conceived the application of mathematical integration to human sensations as an inane enterprise.

Realism has been a central object of attention among analytical philosophers for some decades. Starting from analytical philosophy, the return of realism has spread into other contemporary philosophical traditions and given birth to new trends in current discussions, as for example in the debates about “new realism.” Discussions about realism focused on linguistic meaning, epistemology, metaphysics, theory of action and ethics. The implications for politics of discussion about realism in action theory and in ethics, however, are not much discussed. This collection includes essay which address from different and complementary points of view the issue of the social and political relevance of philosophical debates on realism.

Realism has been a central object of attention among analytical philosophers for some decades. Starting from analytical philosophy, the return of realism has spread into other contemporary philosophical traditions and given birth to new trends in current discussions, as for example in the debates about “new realism.” Discussions about realism focused on linguistic meaning, epistemology, metaphysics, theory of action and ethics. The implications for politics of discussion about realism in action theory and in ethics, however, are not much discussed. This collection includes essay which address from different and complementary points of view the issue of the social and political relevance of philosophical debates on realism.

Il presente lavoro considera le tesi kantiane sul carattere esposte nella prima Critica e nell’Antropologia pragmatica. Il problema filosofico principale sollevato dal concetto di carattere è quello della sua controversa mutabilità: noi ereditiamo un carattere invariabile, oppure l’educazione o altri fattori possono influenzarlo? La risposta di Kant, altamente complessa, coinvolge la metafisica e l’antropologia. La prima afferma che il carattere è la regola dell’azione causale, che altrimenti sarebbe casuale e imprevedibile. La seconda stabilisce che il carattere non è né ereditario e immutabile, né influenzabile dall’educazione. Kant pensa invece a una improvvisa rivoluzione che conduce alla formazione del carattere morale. Grazie allo studio del carattere empirico dell’uomo, considerato senz’altro come essere libero, l’antropologia indirizza pragmaticamente la ricerca al miglioramento dell’essere umano, dal singolo alla specie.

When not ignored by scholars, Lotze’s logic is understood as an example of either psychologism or Platonism. As a matter of fact, despite his allowance for the topic of the origin of concepts, Lotze manages to avoid logical psychologism. At the same time, concepts cannot be said to have validity in the same way as propositions in themselves do: were this the case, one could actually ascribe Lotze a form of Platonism. Avoiding the crass dichotomy between realism and nominalism, Lotze works out a meticulous analysis of the relation between general concepts and our knowledge of reality, which is perfectly compliant with his teleological worldview.

Hegel’s treatment of character in §395 of Encyclopedia is considered together with the commentaries given in his lectures. In these texts Hegel addresses some philosophical problems concerning character. In Hegel’s view, in fact, human character has a “natural basis” and yet depends on a free individual choice. Attention is drawn at Kant’s treatment of the same subject matter in Anthropology form a pragmatic point of view, which is the source of Hegel’s tripartite arrangement of Naturell, temperament and character. Diverging from Kant, however, Hegel introduces a dialectic development within the development of character.

The work of Theodor Waitz is an important but hitherto unnoticed source of Dilthey’s concept of ‘human sciences’. Waitz was an outstanding philosopher and psychologist who, in the late 1850s, devoted himself wholeheartedly to empirical anthropology. In this field Waitz distinguished himself for his defence of the unity of humankind against mainstream polygenic and racial doctrines. Waitz inspired Dilthey’s articulation of psychology into two branches: the ‘descriptive’ one and the ‘explanative’ one. Even more remarkably, in a work reviewed by Dilthey in warmly favourable terms, Waitz explicitly mentioned and defined the ‘sciences which treat of the spirit ’. Some of Dilthey's most interesting ideas are thus prefigured in Waitz’s long underrated work.