Brentano on Time-Consciousness
Guillaume Fréchette
1. The Reception of Brentano’s Account
For many years, the importance and significance of Brentano’s conception of timeconsciousness in contemporary philosophy was closely tied with Husserl’s adaptation of
this conception in his own lectures on time-consciousness. These lectures, which
Husserl held in Göttingen in 1904-05, were edited in the 1920s by the brilliant
phenomenologist Edith Stein and are the source of many of the central ideas of
transcendental phenomenology. In April 1926, Stein’s work was then taken over by
Martin Heidegger, a young careerist who, after spending some years as Husserl’s
assistant in Freiburg, took over many of Husserl’s ideas and published a volume on
being and time that would convince Husserl to choose him as his successor.i Soon
enough, and thanks to the publication of Husserl’s lectures, “Brentano’s conception of
time-consciousness” became the heading of a supposedly surpassed and defective
theory, which was to be replaced subsequently by transcendental phenomenology and
its heirs in Freiburg and later in France.ii
This brief and quite tragic history of the reception of Brentano’s conception of
time-consciousness has meanwhile been rectified to some extent by a number of works
that offer a less biased picture of Brentano’s various conceptions of timeconsciousness.iii The picture remains incomplete, however, without a consideration of
the motivations behind the different conceptions advocated by Brentano. By taking
Brentano’s metaphysical views into account as his background motivation, it is possible
to draw a comprehensive picture of the different conceptions he defended and to get
around the uneasy division of his works into early and ‘mature’ views, which has often
been taken as a starting point for assessing the importance of reism (see CHAP. 15) at the
expense of the rest of his works.iv While such divisions may be historically justified, they
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tend to hide the forest behind the trees. For this reason, I will first start with a
description of the forest (§§2-3) to finish with a classification of the trees (§4).
2. The Background Motivation
Brentano’s first (and last) answer to the question ‘What is there?’ was the following:
there are substances, which are also called things, or beings.v In his early 1867 lectures
on metaphysics from the Würzburg period (henceforth Metaphysics),vi a substance and
its accidents are taken to be only metaphysically separable. A thing, like the cup of coffee
on my desk, is a being (Seiendes) that is fully determined by the relation holding
between the underlying substance and the totality of its accidents. It is called a
substance to mark a distinction from its metaphysical parts, but “the substance together
with its accidents is one single being (Seiendes), … it constitutes with them a unitary
whole (einheitliches Ganzes)” (Metaphysics, p. 31793, §195).vii “The metaphysical parts
are posited as particular things only through a fiction of the mind” (Metaphysics, p.
31972, §478).
There are different sorts of accidents: Brentano considers spatial and temporal
accidents of substance as absolute accidents, which means that a substance, properly
speaking, cannot lose spatial or temporal properties. It is always at a place and at a time.
Now if location and duration are accidents, what about the species of these
accidents, namely time and space? Brentano considers both time and space to be
continua (see CHAP. 16). Here too, he follows Aristotle in conceiving of continuity as an
attribute applying to the quantity of substance. The water in the glass on my desk has a
certain spatial quantity (it occupies some place in the glass), and this spatial quantity is a
continuum. In Brentano’s view, continua are not composed of discrete atoms and as
such are potentially infinitely divisible. In that sense, the divisions of a continuum, the
boundaries, only exist potentially, since the existence of the parts of the continuum
depends on the existence of the continuum as a whole.viii
The case of time is dealt with analogously to space in the Metaphysics. As in the
case of spatial boundaries (e.g. a point on a line), Brentano rejects the idea that temporal
boundaries have any kind of reality. They rather are to be called fictions cum
fundamentum in rei. Taking such fictions seriously would lead to a vicious regress:
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admitting boundaries as realities would call for further boundaries to mark the
separation between boundaries as realities, etc. Boundaries are simply metaphysical
parts of the whole of which they are the boundaries.
In the Metaphysics, Brentano considers time and space to be two different kinds
of continua: space is a perfect continuum or reality (fertige Wirklichkeit), since all parts
of the spatial extension are real. Time is often characterized as an imperfect continuum
(unfertige Wirklichkeit), in which only the now-point of a given duration is real.
Therefore, in the strict sense of ‘real’, Brentano is a presentist with regard to time, but
still sees time as an unreal continuum.
3. Two Options on Time-Consciousness
With this metaphysical setting in place, we are now in a position to give an account of
our perception of time. If time is a continuum, of which only the now-point is real, then
trivially, any object purportedly extending over time (e.g. a melody, Socrates) is
perceivable as such only from the perspective of its now-point. And since the perception
of duration is by definition the perception of something with temporal extension, there
can’t be a perception of time in a strict analogical sense to spatial perception. In seeing
time as a continuum only in a special sense (as an ‘imperfect continuum’), Brentano is
bound to say that temporal objects like melodies are continua, though imperfect ones.
Not only are they different from the sum of the single tones, but, strictly speaking, they
are irrealia. Since a perception is always accompanied by consciousness of this
perception for Brentano, and since consciousness in general (and time-consciousness in
particular) is itself part of the general structure of the world⎯as an accident or
metaphysical part of the soul⎯time-consciousness (with its bearer) must be a temporal
continuum in the same relevant (non-real, or ‘imperfect’) sense, which is to say real only
at the now-point. In other words, if time is a continuum in the relevant sense, then there
must be a time-consciousness that is (with its bearer) a temporal continuum in the same
relevant, ‘imperfect’ sense, for the concept of time-consciousness to be intelligible at all.
This reflection seems to be at the origin of a fundamental assumption of
Brentano’s conception of the mind, namely that consciousness, both in its synchronic
and diachronic forms, is characterized by unity. In its synchronic form, it is the unity of
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the act with the content or the unity of different acts and contents at a time; in its
diachronic form, it is the unity of different acts and contents through time. Applied to the
latter case, the assumption of unity could be formulated as follows:
Unity of Time-Consciousness (UTC): our experience of succession is a unitary
phenomenon and not a succession of experiences.
Following UTC, but also taking into consideration the point mentioned above, namely
that consciousness is real only at its now-point, a retentional conception of timeconsciousness recommends itself. Brentano has two main options at his disposal when it
comes to accounting for UTC:
1: The properties of temporal consciousness are grounded in the perceived
properties of time itself;
2:The perceived properties of time are grounded in the properties of temporal
consciousness.
Following (1), the non-real continuity of the time-continuum itself (in its relevant sense)
is what makes our time-consciousness seem to be the perception of something that is
temporally extended. Therefore, temporal properties are special properties of objects in
the time continuum. Time-consciousness is unextended and the unity of our experience
of succession comes from the non-real continuity of the time-continuum itself. Following
(2), the relevant sense of non-real continuity describes a special temporal property of
our acts, often called ‘original association’ (in the sense of innate associative link), which
allows some of them to ‘reach back’ in the direction of the past or to anticipate
something to come. Under this description, the unity of our experience of succession
comes from the original association.
These two options are analogous to the options at Brentano’s disposal concerning
intentionality and the nature of intentional objects:ix
1: The special way of being contained in mental phenomena is what makes these
phenomena intentional.
2: The special kind of directedness or reference of mental phenomena is what
makes them intentional.
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In the case of both time-consciousness and intentionality, type-1 solutions involve the
treatment of non-real continuity as a ‘being in the sense of the true’, which is the sense
of being involved for instance in true attributions to entia irrealia:x in this case, both
realia and irrealia are beings, although in different senses. Type-2 solutions allow only
for real continua and attribute the relevant sense of non-real continuity to a feature of
the perception of continuity.
Finally, it is important to note that type-1 and type-2 conceptions are not
necessarily exclusive: one might want to say that temporal properties are special
properties of objects in the time continuum and that these play an important role in our
perception of change, without necessarily excluding the fact that our perception has
built-in retentional and anticipative features that also play a role in our perception of
time. In most of the numerous versions of his theory of time-consciousness, Brentano
adopts this alternative.
4. Five Variations
From this perspective, it seems that Brentano’s whole philosophical development
between 1862 and 1917 evolves around the relation between these two main
conceptions of reality (or to put it in Brentano’s words, of continuity) and around
different possible combinations of the two. As far as time-consciousness is concerned,
this is at least partly confirmed by the autobiographical reconstruction of the evolution
sketched by Brentano in his directives on how to lecture on time-consciousness, sent to
Marty in 1895:
My opinion is that it would be best for you to: (a) develop the old view, (b) point out the
objections to it, in particular the objection that heterogeneous elements are supposed to form a
continuum. Also, that there would be less difference between a non-thing and a thing than there
would be between two non-things; indeed there would be infinitesimally little difference between
them! Then, (c) you could speak about the earlier view I once entertained, independently of Mill,
but in agreement with him, and show why it had to appear untenable (according to it, time was
not a continuum at all). Then (d) how, in spite of this, I revived it, but with considerable
modifications. (e) The way for the revival was paved by the view, at which I arrived quite
independently of these considerations, that every sensation is bound up with an apprehension of
that which is sensed. (Irrevocably; this does not even cease to apply with the knowledge that the
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phenomenon is not real. Comparisons with higher and lower desires. This holds true also of
proteraesthesis). (Kraus 1930: 7/1976: 228)
Following Brentano’s personal reconstruction, it seems that his conception of time
consciousness between 1867 and 1895 is composed of three basic theories:
1) the ‘earlier’ view (c): continuum of modes of judgment (1867–1868)
2) the ‘old’ view (a): continuum of modified objects (1869–1893)
3) the ‘new’ view (d, e): continuum of modes of judgment (1893–1905)
After 1905, Brentano defended two further views:
4) the penultimate view: continuum of modes of presentations (1905–1915)
5) the last view: continuum of oblique modes of presentations (1915–1917)
4.1. View 1: The ‘Earlier’ View (1867)
The ‘earlier’ view, according to which time-consciousness is a matter of the attitude or
mode of the act of judgment, is exclusively a type-2 account. In the Metaphysics, the view
is developed in the context of a discussion of truth as correspondence. Brentano rejects
the idea that truth is adaequatio rei et intellectus, on the grounds that one may express
true judgments that are not about a reality, but he still believes that truth is a kind of
correspondence, though in a “very improper sense.” In his view, a judgment is true
“when it acknowledges (zustimmt) a presentation which corresponds to the thing, or
when it rejects (verwirft) a presentation which doesn’t correspond to it” (Metaphysics, p.
31951, §395). According to him, true judgments expressed by tensed sentences, such as
“Napoleon existed 200 years ago,” are also true for the same reason, but with the
following proviso: “if time were a perfect reality like space etc., a reality would
correspond to the presentation” (Metaphysics, p. 31952, §398). This conditional
formulation is what Brentano calls “a different mode of acknowledgement
(Zustimmung)” (Ibid.) and doesn’t involve any type-1 consideration. It technically offers
a type-2 explanation, since judgments are acts of the mind, but it is also complemented
by a basic account of what will later (around 1872) be labeled the ‘original association,’
and which explicitly accounts for UTC: following Aquinas’ view that “the multitude itself
of intelligible species causes a certain vicissitude of intelligible operations, according as
one operation succeeds another”,xi Brentano adds:
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Our presenting presents succession simultaneously, but [it presents it] as being successive.
‘Being presented simultaneously’ and ‘being presented as simultaneous’ are to be
distinguished. Our sensory presentation has a temporal depth (zeitliche Tiefe), so to speak.
Without this wonderful device, through which the teleology of the soul shows itself on a par
with the teleology of nature, we wouldn’t have any presentation of movement, melody, etc.
and [we wouldn’t have] any presentation of time at all. As a further consequence, we
wouldn’t have any memory. (Metaphysics, p. 31804, §257)
In short, the ‘earlier’ view sees time-consciousness as constituted by a modality of our
judgings, and as supported by the temporal depth of our presentings, without recourse
to any type-1 explanation.xii The rejection of such an explanation is particularly clear in
the Metaphysics when Brentano discusses the reistic paraphrase strategy to which he
will revert almost 40 years later, although with a restriction concerning tensed
sentences:
[I]n the case of ‘a dog is thought-of’, I cannot say … ‘a thought-of-dog is’, but I can say ‘a
thinker-of-a-dog is’. Is such a paraphrase (Übersetzung) also possible for past things? It does
not seem so, for if I say ‘a n-times-later-thing is’, this relation is an ens rationis… (Metaphysics,
p. 31952, §398.)
In other words, judgments expressed in tensed sentences, in contrast with all other
judgments seemingly about entia rationis, cannot even be paraphrased in a sentence
directly about a substance and indirectly about an ens rationis. This distinction will be
cast later in terms of modo recto/modo obliquo (see next section).
4.2. View 2: The ‘Old’ View (1869–1893)
The ‘old’ view stipulates that time-consciousness is a matter of the content of the mental
act; I hear past sounds as past-things: the ontological modification of the content (type1) is paired with what Brentano calls the original association (type-2), according to
which there are no pure sensations in reality, but these are always coupled with
phantasy, which gives us the impression that we hear the ‘past sound’, or that we hear a
melody. In 1873, Brentano used the following picture to illustrate this conception:xiii
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In this schema, the horizontal line a, b, c, d represents a series of sounds on the timecontinuum. The vertical lines represent time-consciousness; while hearing the tone b,
the tone a is part of the content b in a modified way, that is, through retention, a process
for which Brentano also uses the expression “original association.”
It is important to stress that the contents in retention (a, a b, a b c on the vertical
lines) are not proper sound contents: already in the logic lectures of 1869-70 and 187071, Brentano describes these contents as sounds “in obliquo”, abandoning the exception
made in the ‘earlier’ view (1) about the applicability of the in recto/in obliquo
distinction for the objects of judgments expressed by tensed sentences.xiv According to
the ‘old’ view (2), past sounds, like painted fish, are not real sounds or fish; rather, they
are sounds in a modified way, and their status in the presentations of the contents b, c, d
of the vertical line is the status of a part in a modified way. In the 69-70 and 70-71 logic
lectures, Brentano did not add any further element to this type-1 explanation, probably
because his first concern there was to revise the solution proposed in 1867 for the truth
of judgments about the past. It is in the Psychology lectures of 72-73 that he
supplements view (2) with a type-2 explanation in addition to the type-1 explanation, in
order to account for the psychological process underlying the presentation of contents
in obliquo. The basic idea behind the concept of “original association”⎯as discussed in
the Psychology lectures of 72-73⎯is that of a “persistence (Fortbestand) of the
presentations through a continual modification of their temporal determination”
(Brentano Ps 62, p. 54007).xv When hearing a sequence of tones a, b and c, my
presentation of a “persists” through time (notably ‘through’ the further presentations of
b and c) thanks to an original (i.e. innate) association of each presentation of the ‘now’
point with past and future presentations. According to Brentano, original association as
a psychological process is genetically determined by the central and fundamental law of
genetic psychology, namely the law of habit (Gesetz der Gewohnheit): “once a mental
phenomenon occurs, the occurrence of the same or of a similar phenomenon in the same
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or similar conditions is thereby prepared” (Ibid., p. 54001).xvi In other words, the
occurrence of a mental phenomenon ‘leaves a dispositional trace’ (see Brentano 1874:
86; Ps 53, p. 53071). The ‘original’ association therefore is the process that links
successive presentations on the basis of their dispositional trace.
On the level of type-1 explanation, we have said that the contents of the vertical
lines⎯the lines bound together by original association⎯are parts of the presentations
on the horizontal line only in a modified way. On the level of type-2 explanation, this
means that we only have the dispositional trace of the presentations, not the
presentations themselves; and since they are not presentations, judgments, or acts of
love and hate, they also are not conscious.xvii
A last important feature of view (2) is the possibility of inner proteraesthesis,
which is the original association proper to inner consciousness. Besides the fact that my
hearing of c also contains a and b as tones in a modified way, a similar phenomenon
would occur in inner consciousness: since all mental acts are conscious, my
consciousness of hearing c, which accompanies the hearing, would also reach back to my
consciousness of hearing a and b. Proteraesthesis of a and b in the presentation of c and
inner proteraesthesis of the consciousness of hearing a and b in the consciousness of
hearing c would be “inseparable from one another and so, from the standpoint of real
separability, they are not different parts… [I]t seems to be so e.g. in the tones of a
melody” (Brentano, EL 74, p. 12850a). The time-consciousness schema offered by
Brentano in one of his lectures looks like this:
Italicized expressions designate the inner proteraesthesis (formed by the lower
triangle), while non-italicized expressions designate the proteraesthesis (formed by the
9
upper triangle).xviii The idea of inner proteraesthesis is discussed in particular in the
lectures on descriptive psychology of 1890/91, as an option on view (2), but a mention
in Stumpf (1919: 136/1976: 38) indicates that it was taken into account as early as
1872.xix Its objective seems to be the following: where proteraesthesis explains the unity
of temporal perception (how the contents a, b, c, and d, are united in consciousness at a
time), inner proteraesthesis aims to explain how we experience this unity as such (and
not as a succession of sounds). A few years later, Brentano explicitly rejected this idea
(see for instance Brentano 1976: 109ff.),xx but at least three central ideas developed by
his students⎯Meinong’s theory of the self-evidence of memory (Meinong 1886), his
higher-order objects given in inner perception (Meinong 1899), and Ehrenfels’ Gestalt
qualities (Ehrenfels 1890)⎯are based on the idea of inner proteraesthesis.
4.3. View 3: The ‘New’ View (1893–1905)
The ‘new’ view is considered an expansion of (c), and according to it the intuition of time
is the intuition of a special mode of judgment.xxi Here, the modification is not a
modification of the content, as in (c), but of the attitude of acknowledgement in
judgments. The result is that time-consciousness is considered a limited continuum of
acknowledgements of the same object (Kraus 1930: 20/1976: 237). The new view is
mentioned in a letter from Brentano to Marty from November 23rd, 1893. As Marty puts
it, “with the blind belief encountered in external intuition and with the evident kind in
inner intuition there is connected a continuum of judgments which judge the intuited
content to be more and more past and temporally removed” (Kraus 1976: 227) (type-2).
The ‘new’ view is structurally analogous to the ‘old’ view (2), with the exception
that the continuum on the vertical lines is a continuum of modes of acknowledgement,
rather than a continuum of modified objects. The intuition behind the view is that
sensory presentations (e.g. of sounds) and proteraestheses of these presentations are
always bound up with a blind belief in the existence of the presented objects. An
important consequence of this view is that when hearing c now, the continuum in the
proteraesthesis (on the vertical line c, b, a) is a continuum of modes of judgments about
the same object (the sound c). Curiously enough, the ‘new’ view (3) is very similar to the
view presented in Husserl 1928, a view that Husserl presented precisely as an
improvement of Brentano’s ‘old’ view (2)!xxii
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4.4. View 4: The Temporal Modalities of Presentation View (1905–1915)
The ‘new view’ was defended between 1893 and 1905. Between 1903 and 1905,
Brentano became doubtful of his earlier classification of acts. In a short research
manuscript from 1903 (Brentano 1987c), reflecting upon his conception of sensations,
he came to the conclusion that “what we usually consider a presenting which is free
from any judicative character, is in fact a judgment” (Brentano 1987c: 28). In other
words, even the most basic presentations have the same kind of modalities that we find
in judgments.xxiii In a letter to Marty from 1905, he accepts the consequences of this view
for his conception of time-consciousness:
I must say that when I return from Aristotle to myself and I characterize the presentation as a
particular fundamental class, I do acknowledge in this class 1) the temporal modes as modes of
presenting, and 2) attributions (analogous to the reconstruction through phantasy). The
expression ‘presenting’ is not bad. It would be better however to say ‘thinking’. (Brentano 1977:
122–3).
This conclusion about the consequences of his new conception of the class of
presentations is sometimes seen as marking a fourth view, according to which temporal
modalities are already present at the level of presentations (type-2).
However, since presentations are thought to involve acknowledgement after
1903, view (4) should only be considered a specification of view (3): according to this
specification, temporal modalities are not only modes of acknowledgement, but also
modes of presentation. The case of temporal desires, emotions, and wills illustrates this
well: I can wish that something should have happened or that it will happen, “without
forming the least judgment as to whether the wish can or cannot be fulfilled” (Brentano
1976: 23/1988: 12).
4.5. View 5: The Final View (1915–1917)
Finally, a fifth and final view could be isolated from Brentano’s late manuscripts on time,
according to which temporal modalities such as past or future are not modes of
presentation in general, but aspects specifically of the oblique mode of presentation,
while the presentation of the present is in recto. This view is formulated in a dictation
from 1915, which was edited by Kraus in 1925:
11
It seems certain that we can never think of anything without thinking of something as present,
that is to say, however, as on a boundary line which exists as the connecting point of an otherwise
non-existent continuum or as providing its beginning or its end. So along with the idea of the
present, we also get those of the past and future in modo obliquo as that the boundary of which is
formed by the present. (Brentano 1973a: 326)
This last view (5) comes back to the point discussed in the earlier view (1) and, in some
way, closes the loop from views (1) to (5). First, view (5), like view (1), is based on
modes of judgments and rejects irrealia, and with them any kind of special temporal
properties of objects. The basic explanation is therefore in both cases a type-2
explanation. However, view (5) differs importantly from view (1) in two respects: it also
allows for temporal modes of presentations, but, more importantly, the late Brentano
changed his mind on the inapplicability of the in recto/in obliquo distinction to the
objects of judgments expressed by tensed sentences. In the case of “Napoleon existed
200 years ago”, the paraphrase should be read as “There is a thing that is 200 years later
than Napoleon”, in which Napoleon’s past existence is acknowledged in modo obliquo,
and this on the basis of the acknowledgement of this thing (i.e. a thinker of Napoleon) in
modo recto. In the case of the hearing of a series of sounds, the main difference from the
interpretation of the schema proposed in view (2) is that the presentation contents on
the vertical lines are not determined by their special ontological features, but by their
relations to a sound heard as present:
When hearing c now, I perceive:
i)
the tone itself, c;
ii)
something that stands apart from it as earlier (b) and
iii)
something that stands apart from it as later (d).
When I now hear d, c is no longer present, but something standing apart from c as later
is perceived as such. In other words, I cannot hear d now (as part of the tone series, in
modo recto) without presenting (in modo obliquo) something standing apart from c as
later.xxiv On this view (5), the psychological process of original association is given a pure
type-2 explanation, without imposing upon it a type-1 explanation, as was the case in
view (2).
5. Closing the Loop
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The five views discussed above seem to suggest that the development of Brentano’s
conception of time-consciousness directly depends on what seems to him to be the best
metaphysical account of time itself. Views (1) and (2) consider time to be some kind of
continuum and were abandoned precisely for this reason: in the late 1860s and early
1870s, Brentano rejected the idea of a “continuum in an improper or imperfect sense”
(view 1), and in the early 1890s he rejected the idea of a “continuum of real and unreal
moments” (view 2). This rejection of a conception of time as a special kind of continuum
also called for the rejection of all type-1 solutions to the problem of timeconsciousness.xxv Views (3) to (5) may be seen as a succession of attempts to offer a
type-2 solution that would match his conception of the fundamental classes of mental
phenomena. In some sense, view (5) might be seen as a purified version of view (1): it
preserves the gist without some of the difficult assumptions and adds a few
sophisticated devices that were developed over the years on the grounds of Brentano’s
investigations into the possibility and limitations of a type-1 account (view (2) and its
immediate critique, view (3)).xxvi
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Kraus, O. (1930), “Zur Phänomenognosie des Zeitbewußtseins: Aus dem Briefwechsel
Franz Brentanos mit Anton Marty, nebst einem Vorlesungsbruchstück über
Brentanos Zeitlehre aus dem Jahre 1895, nebst Einleitung und Anmerkungen
veröffentlicht von Oskar Kraus”, Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie vol. 75, 1930,
pp. 1-22.
Kraus, O. (1976), “Toward a Phenomenognosy of Time-Consciousness”, in L. McAlister
(ed.), The Philosophy of Franz Brentano, London, Duckworth, pp. 224-239.
Meinong, A. (1886) «Zur erkentnißstheoretischen Würdigung des Gedächtnisses»,
Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, vol. 10, n° 1, pp. 7-33 ;
reprinted in Meinong A., Gesamtausgabe, Bd II, Abhandlungen zur
Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie, Graz, Akademische Druck- und
Verlagsanstalt, 1970, pp. 185-209.
Meinong, A. (1899), Ueber Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältniß zur
inneren Wahrnehmung'. Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der
Sinnesorgane, 21 (1899), p. 182-272., Gesamtausgabe, Bd II, Abhandlungen zur
Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie, Graz, Akademische Druck- und
Verlagsanstalt, 1970, p. 377-480.
Meinong, A. (1978), “On Objects of Higher-Order and Their Relationship to Internal
Perception”, in M.-L. Schubert Kalsi (ed.), Alexius Meinong. On Objects of HigherOrder and Husserl’s Phenomenology, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, p. 137-207 (Engl.
Translation of Meinong 1899 by M.-L. Schubert Kalsi.
Ricoeur, P. (1988), Time and Narrative, vol. 3, English translation by K. Blamey and D.
Pellauer, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1985), Temps et récit. Volume 3: le temps raconté, Paris, Seuil, 1985.
Ryle, G. (1976), “Disgusted Grandfather of Phenomenology”, in Times Higher Education
Supplement, September 10, 1976, p. 15.
Sauer, W. (2013) “Being as the True. From Aristotle to Brentano”, in D. Fisette and G.
Fréchette (eds), Themes from Brentano, Amsterdam: Rodopi, p. 193-225.
15
Stumpf, C. (1919), “Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano”, in O. Kraus (ed.), Franz Brentano.
Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, Munich, Beck, p. 87-149.
Stumpf, C. (1976), “Reminiscences of Franz Brentano”, in L. McAlister (ed.), The
Philosophy of Franz Brentano, London, Duckworth, pp. 10-46.
Volpi, F. (1989), “The Experience of Temporal Objects and the Constitution of Timeconsciousness by Brentano”, The Object and its Identity: Supplements of Topoi 4.
Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1989, pp. 127-140.
Archive materials
Brentano, F. Ps 62: Psychologie 1872/73, Archives of the Houghton Library, Harvard
University, Cambridge (MA).
Brentano, F. Ps 53: Drittes Buch: Von den Vorstellungen (s.d.), Archives of the Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (MA).
Brentano, F. EL 74: Psychognosie. 2-stündig [1890-91], Archives of the Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (MA).
Marty, A. Br 7/1: F. Brentano, Logik Kollegien [Deduktive und inductive Logik] [Logic
Lectures of Franz Brentano: Summer Semester 1869-70 and 1870-71 (Deductive
and inductive Logic), abridged as Logic Lectures 1869/70]. Archives of Anton
Marty, Franz-Brentano Archiv, Graz.
Marty, A. IIIg č 46: Deskriptive Psychologie. in Lesefrüchte. Název O. Krause, výpisy
z různých autorů, Rukopis, 1. složka, s.d in Archiv akademie věd České Republiky
Praha, Osobní fond Antona Marty.
After succeeding Husserl in his position at Freiburg, Heidegger published Husserl’s lectures, mostly using
Stein’s editorial work, as Husserl 1928.
i
In 1930, Brentano’s faithful disciple Oskar Kraus reacted to the publication of Husserl 1928 by
publishing a short but insightful précis of Brentano’s conceptions of time-consciousness (Kraus 1930). The
1976 English translation of Kraus 1930 made Brentano’s conception of time-consciousness available to a
wider audience. Besides Ryle 1976 however, few philosophers became aware of this translation. On the
ii
16
French reception of Brentano’s conception of time-consciousness, see for instance Gilson 1955: 154-8,
Derrida 1973: 64, Derrida 1990: 114/2003: 58 and Ricoeur 1988: 36, 38, 272.
See for instance Chisholm 1981, Albertazzi 1990/91, Chrudzimski 1998/99 and 2005 (see also
Chrudzimski 2004: 157–64, 200-1, 204–7), Huemer 2002/03, Fugali 2004, Borsato 2009, Volpi 1989, De
Warren 2009: 50–87. On Brentano’s accounts in connection with Broad, see Dainton 2000 and elsewhere.
iii
From the 1920s onwards, Kraus, Kastil, and Mayer-Hillebrand played a major role in orienting the
scholarship on Brentano almost exclusively around reism, and in presenting it as a break with the earlier
works. See especially Brentano 1930/1966b, 1954, 1959, 1966a, on both the editorial and ideological
aspects.
iv
The late Brentano has a particular view of the relation between substance and accident, the latter being
then conceived of as a whole, while the former is considered as a part of the latter. Therefore, “accidents”
should be added as part of the last answer, insofar as they are constituted by substances (their parts).
v
The Metaphysics is still unpublished. M96 from Brentano’s Nachlass at Harvard is the main document of
the first 1867 lectures. When quoting this document, I refer to the draft edition of Baumgartner et al.
(Brentano forthcoming–1). All translations of these quotes and of other quotes from works that are still
unavailable in English or unpublished are my own.
vi
Here and elsewhere, all quotations from original manuscripts and from German editions are my
translations.
vii
See Aristotle, Physics, V, 3. Brentano agrees with Aristotle’s answer to Zeno’s paradox. See Metaphysics,
p. 31774 (§123). The account of boundaries in the Metaphysics will be developed further in the late
manuscripts on time, space, and continuum, published in Brentano (1976/1989).
viii
I discuss this alternative since it may also be found in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint in
Fréchette (2013).
ix
Brentano discusses this distinction between being in the sense of true and being in the sense of the
categories in many places in his works: it has a central place in Brentano (1975a)[1862] (esp. 1975a, 25f.;
1862, p. 37f) but also in the Metaphysics and in many later texts published in Brentano (1966b) [1930].
For a detailed discussion of being in the sense of the true in Brentano and Aristotle, see Sauer (2013).
x
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Quaestio 85, reply to the objection 1 (transl. by the fathers of the English
Dominican Province). Brentano refers to this passage in the Metaphysics, p. 31804, §257.
xi
Chrudzimski (2005: 49) suggests a different reading of what I call view (1), interpreting Metaphysics, p.
31952, §398 as a first step towards a type-1 solution. I doubt that the reduction of true judgments about
the past to conditional judgments and the restricted conception of truth as correspondence would speak
for such an interpretation.
xii
This schema is reproduced in Stumpf (1919), 136; 1976, 38. To my knowledge, we don’t find this
schema in any of Brentano’s manuscripts.
xiii
xiv
See Brentano, Logic lectures (1869/70), p. 24902 (classified as Marty, Br 7/1).
More fully: “The original associations. A case which belongs here (phantasy) and probably the only case
belonging here is the persistence of presentations under a continual modification of their temporal
determination. Proof that we have here a case of association and in particular of original association. The
more specific laws of this association still haven’t been studied. But it is certain that the associated
presentation is less intense than the one to which it is associated. This explains the decrease of intensity
which comes together with the temporal distance and proximity of the time length. A further consequence
is that the associated temporal segment is sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. The length of the
associated temporal segment is sometimes quite significant: discourse, melody. Some other conditions
might also be at play here.”
xv
17
Since Brentano (1874) contains only the first book and the first part of the second book of the six-book
project of Psychology from an empirical Standpoint, the part of the second book dealing with the law of
habit remained unpublished. An advanced draft of the chapter can be found in Brentano, Ps 53, p. 53070ff.
Stumpf (1919: 135/1976: 37) says that this formula is the “most correct and most comprehensive” in
Brentano’s psychology.
xvi
What I call here view (2) is view (3) in Chrudzimski 2005. Chrudzimski’s addition of a further view is
due in part to his interpretation of view (1) as a combination of type-1 and type-2 explanation, but in part
also to his inexact dating (1890/91) of the quotes given in Chrudzimski 2005: 47–8. These actually stem
from the logic lectures of 1869/70, which suggests, against most interpretations, that Brentano’s
acceptance of entia irrealia would have already begun in 1869 in Würzburg, and not in the 1880s in
Vienna.
xvii
Interestingly we find the exact same passages of text and the exact same schema in one version of
Marty’s lectures on descriptive psychology (Marty, IIIg č 46, p. 10).
xviii
The new edition of the lectures on descriptive psychology held by Brentano between 1887 and 1891 in
Brentano forthcoming-2 will include these parts, which were left out of the short edition in Brentano
1982/1995. Huemer (2002/03) notes the mention in Stumpf 1919.
xix
Chisholm (1981: 12ff) overstates Brentano’s point in Brentano 1976 in stipulating that the denial of
inner proteraesthesis is essential to his theory of time-consciousness.
xx
xxi
At first glance, it might seem that view (3) comes back to view (1), considering time-consciousness as a
continuum of modes of judgment. However, the similarity is superficial: judgements in view (1) are
considered as predications, and the continuum holds merely on the basis of conditional formulations of
tensed sentences. The predicative conception of judgements will be abandoned in the early 1870s. The
continuum of modes of judgements involved in view (3) is simply a continuum of blind and evident
judgings.
xxii Where Brentano speaks of modes of acknowledgement, Husserl speaks of modifications of
consciousness (Bewußtseinsmodifikationen). For a parallel between Husserl 1928 and Brentano’s ‘new’
view (3), see Kraus 1930: 18ff.
This view is presented in the following way: “While I here unite presentation with judgment, I
expressly emphasize that I withdraw nothing from what I have said in my earlier discussions of the
fundamental classes of mental relations in opposition to the dominant view on the nature of judgment. I
found myself obliged to correct my view not on the nature of judgment, but on the nature of presentation,
a view which was too much influenced by the Tradition.” (Brentano 1987c: 30)
xxiii
Brentano explains this in the following way: “The presentation of the tone in modo obliquo will always
include within itself something as present by way of a relation of later to earlier” (Brentano 1976:
157/1988: 94).
xxiv
A similar phenomenon occurring at about the same time is observable with regard to Brentano’s
rejection of type-1 solutions for his conception of intentionality.
xxv
Many thanks to Wilhelm Baumgartner, Johannes Brandl, Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, Marcello Oreste
Fiocco, and Uriah Kriegel for helpful comments. This paper has been written as part of the project “Franz
Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology” funded by the Austrian Science Fund, project number P-27215.
xxvi
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