Brentano's Immanent Emotionalism

Brentano’s Immanent Emotionalism* It is well known that the ethical account developed by Franz Brentano exerted a decisive influence in the ethical-moral debate at the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, the theory he proposed in the conference of 1889 – published under the title “The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong” (Brentano 1969) – and in his lectures on practical philosophy delivered at the University of Vienna from 1876 to 1894 (Brentano 1978), made him in fact a theorist of value (Eaton 1930, Kraus 1937, Findlay 1970, Chisholm 1986, Baumgartner 2002). Moreover we can state that the psychology of evaluation he developed, plays in a more or less direct way a role of utmost importance in: a) the marginal theory of value (Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, von Wieser); b) the psychology of value (von Ehrenfels, Meinong, Urban); c) the phenomenology of value (Husserl, Scheler, Hartmann); and also d) the ethical intuitionism (Moore, Ross). Accordingly it is really surprising that Brentano’s ethical theory provided the basic grounding for not entirely amalgamable moral theories. In all probability it is the “not definitive nature” of Brentano’s ethics (Olson 2017) that allows it to be a reference-point for various ethical theories. Specifically what has been discussed is the kernel of his value-theory that, in turn, is grounded on his descriptive account of psychology according to which the primary role of psychology is to investigate the particular nature of psychic (mental) activities. Furthermore Brentano’s ethical-theory is widely discussed also in the contemporary debate, when we address questions (Kriegel 2017) aimed at showing whether emotions are “evaluative judgments” or “evaluative perceptions”. In a narrower sense, and depending on the answers we give to such questions, we can outline which kind of theory of value Brentano proposed. * Gemmo Iocco, University of Parma (gemmo.iocco@unipr.it) 1 In my paper I shall cover (a) the general traits of Brentano’s value-theory focusing primarily on his account of concrete intuitive presentation insofar as it allows us to acknowledge what it is right and wrong. I will then (b) discuss Brentano’s characterization of “intrinsic preferability” and will conclude by arguing that the immanent realism that characterizes the theory of knowledge he developed must however be rethought in the ethical field in terms of an “immanent emotionalism”, grounded on the assumption according to which what it is right can be recognized as such through a moral intentionality guaranteed by the evidence characterizing inner perception. I want to point out I will confine myself to the value theory Brentano proposed up until 1889. Taking up Aristotle’s distinction between theoretical and practical discipline, Brentano claims for ethics a coordinating function compared to the other knowledge-fields in as much as ethics is not “subordinate to any other, viz. one which instructs us about the highest end and the choice of means conducive to it” (Brentano 1978: 4-5). In the practical field ethics has a function analogous to that in the theoretical field metaphysics has: if the ultimate goal of metaphysics is the knowledge of being and truth principles, ethics for its part, is aimed at knowledge of practical principles. Methodologically speaking we can understand the metaphysical and practical principles only if we adopt the psychological method according to which we have to focus on the intentional nature that characterizes mental phenomena. In this regard it is noteworthy that, following one of the most important principles of Brentano’s theory of knowledge, the elucidation of a concept does not require some general determination but consist in an appeal to individual intuition (Brentano 1974: 29). As far as the ethical field is concerned, we deal with a specific class of phenomena or rather the class of emotions within which Brentano includes both acts of will and feelings. In light of 2 this, emotions are not states but acts and this means that the subject plays an active role: thus when we feel an emotion we intentionally refer to an object. More specifically we deal with a mental activity through which the subject assigns or identifies certain axiological qualities to an object or experience. Precisely in order to rightly understand the particular account of value experience Brentano points out, we have to focus on his account of intuitive presentation. According to Brentano, all mental phenomena are presentations or are grounded on presentations. Qualitatively speaking presentations are neutral compared both to phenomena of second class – judgments – and of the third class – emotions. Thus in phenomena of judgment we have an opposition between affirmation or acceptance, on the one hand, and denial or rejection, on the other; whereas in the sphere of emotion there is an opposition between love and hate. Making use of Husserl’s terminology we can state that judgments and emotions have an act’s character that presentations do not have: “I may think of things which are opposites – for example black and white – but there are not opposite ways of thinking of these things. There are two opposites ways of judging a black thing and two opposing ways of feeling about it, but there are not two opposing ways of merely thinking about it” (Brentano 1969: 18-19), in this context “thinking about” is equivalent to “presenting”. Presentation shall be intuitive (proper) or not-intuitive (improper or conceptual) – I have an intuitive presentation when I see a green triangle whilst I have a not-intuitive presentation when I think a green triangle. Nevertheless intuitive presentation, by mean of which we know and apprehend moral notions – for example the notions of right or wrong – do not have a physical content but rather a mental one. Accordingly when we intuitively present something as correct, from the moral point of view, we internally perceive its correctness, which does not depend exclusively on its being endowed with certain physical features but to a certain extent also on the presenting-activity of the evaluating-subject. Contrary to what Max Scheler 3 claims, in Brentano’s view value qualities are not material but psychological in nature. As we have already seen the content of this intuitive presentation is mental and this ensures evidence and correctness: according to Brentano indeed, the differentiation-point between external and inner perception lies in the fact that the latter does not run into error. Borrowing Scheler’s terminology (Scheler 1912), self-illusions i.e. illusions regarding psychical phenomena are not possible. For example I can make a mistake and confuse a dummy with a real person but I cannot make a mistake about the fact that on a specific occasion I perceive the fairness of my intention to help a troubled friend. Adopting the distinction between a presentation in modo recto and a presentation in modo obliquo that Brentano introduces in subsequent years, we can state that the mental content we intuitively present when what we mean is the valuequality of an object, is presented in modo obliquo. However an intuitive presentation alone is insufficient condition to understand what good is from the epistemic point of view: we need a further intentional characterization, which allows us to acknowledge its correctness and thus define it as “good”. Indeed, according to Brentano, among the multiple forms of emotional references there are some that are perceived as “correct”. Only if we have this second grade of awareness can we effectively speak of value, for example of “goodness”. This possibility concerns not only the presentations trough which we claim the title of good for a thing but also when we define a thing as true. Thus there is a certain similarity among the role that the concept of “true” in the logic and the role of “good” in the ethics inasmuch as both are understood through an intuitive presentation: “we call a thing true when the affirmation relating to it is correct. We call a thing good when the love relating to it is correct. In the broadest sense of the term, the good is that which is worthy of love, that which can be loved with a love that it is correct” (Brentano 1969: 19) – this is valid in a limited manner to the account of truth Brentano developed in the first phase of his philosophy up until about 1901 (Brandl 2017). 4 In order to realize how, according to Brentano, we can present something as good, we can assume for example that an emotion is normally considered as correct, for instance the love for knowledge: generally speaking we are inclined to consider knowledge as preferable to ignorance. The evidence of this assumption is grounded on the axiological preference of knowing compared to ignorance. In turn this kind of presentation has a twofold nature given that on the one hand it is an evident judgment – a form of universal judgment according to which knowledge is a good in itself –, whilst on the other hand it is a correctly characterized emotional feeling or rather a love-feeling for knowledge. Focusing on analogies between judgments and emotions, as we have to distinguish between judgments stated without demanding certainty on the one hand, and intrinsically evident judgments on the other, we have also to distinguish between emotions not endowed with the immediate awareness of their righteousness on the one hand and superior emotions endowed with this kind of awareness on the other. Choosing knowledge instead of ignorance means a preference for the former over the latter and it is precisely the preference-phenomenon the act through which the evaluating subject predisposes himself to a certain choice. This typology of act does not have a correspondence in the class of judgments in as much: “Everything that is true is equally true; but not everything that is good is equally good. When we call one good ‘better’ than another, we mean that the one good is preferable to the other. In other words, it is correct to prefer the one good, for its own sake, to the other. Using language somewhat more broadly, we also permit ourselves to say what is good is ‘better’ than is bad, or ‘better’ than what is purely indifferent” (Brentano 1969: 26). The truth does not admit “gradation” given that a proposition is either true or is not, whereas in the ethical-field we have that possibility since a behaviour, an object or a choice is not necessarily good or bad for in its own sake but may be preferable compared to another one. In examining the parallel between logic and ethics Brentano proposed, at stake there is the evidence characterizing the two fields, since there 5 appears to be an epistemological difference between logical truth and moral truth. If we compare the proposition “the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is 180°” with the proposition “love your neighbor like you love yourself”, the former is endowed with a more evident truth-value compared to the latter given that the love at issue seems to depend on meeting some criteria, for example the fact that the neighbor does not intend to kill me. With respect to the logical sphere, the ethical one admits a distinction between intrinsic value and extrinsic value: this distinction regards the modality by which something has value: in fact the former has ben characterized in terms of the value that something has “in itself”, or “for its own sake” whilst the latter has been defined in terms of the value that something has “for the sake of something else” to which it is related in some way (Zimmerman 2014). Thus the analogy Brentano stresses, refers only to the way in which the subject recognizes the correctness of both judgment and emotion but does not extend to the intrinsic nature of the notions of truth and good. Nevertheless the distinction between judgments and emotions and the resulting criticism regarding every naturalistic account of moral experience, made Brentano an ethical “intuitionist”, holder of the idea that there is an ontological and epistemological difference between facts and values. In this regard G.E. Moore in his Principia Ethica of 1903 writes: “Brentano appears to agree with me completely 1) in regarding all ethical propositions as defined by the fact that they predicate a single unique objective concept; 2) in dividing such propositions sharply into the same two kinds; 3) in holding that the first kind are incapable of proof; and 4) with regard to the kind of evidence which is necessary and relevant to the proof of the second kind” (Moore 1993: 36). I would focus on this point in order to show whether in effect Brentano is an intuitionist or not and consequently if Moore is wright. In my opinion and following the psychological roots of Brentano’s theory of knowledge, the theory of value 6 he develops, leads us to consider only an epistemological difference between facts and value. I return on this point in the concluding remarks of my presentation. Effectively on the one hand if we consider that ethical intuitionism is a form of moral realism, Brentano argues in favour of the possibility of an intuitive presentation of what is good supporting an intuitionistic position. However, on the other hand, in order to provide a definition of what it means, in the moral field, having a “realistic” position we can state that the shared aspect commits to the idea according to which exists a reality endowed with moral features which people try to represent whenever they issue judgments regarding what is wright and wrong (Shafer-Landau 2003: 13). In this regard the matter for discussion is the specific nature of this “moral reality”. We can define as “realistic” in such fashion the valuetheory developed by Brentano showing how the effective adaptability of the term realism may be extended to involve a philosophical position, grounded on the assumption that only psychology can guarantee evidence. Nevertheless the inner perception which ensure the evidence of the notion of good is a form of second order intentional reference which by virtue of its specific content i.e. an emotional content, does not coincide with the evidence of judgment and presentation phenomena. We can define it as an “emotional inner perception” which does not determine whether the intentional content is loved or hated but rather whether it worthy of love or not. If emotional phenomena involve a specific form of self-reference these are not triggered only by certain physical qualities possessed by an object but from this second level of intentional reference. For this reason probably in his Psychology of 1874 Brentano states “every mental act, even the simplest has four different aspects under which it may be considered. It may be considered as a presentation of its primary object, as when the act in which we perceive a sound is considered as an act of hearing; however, it may also be considered as a presentation of itself, as a cognition of itself, and as a feeling toward itself” (Brentano 1973: 219). That the 7 pivotal nature of this quotation helps us rightly understand the relationship between emotional phenomena and inner perception, is confirmed by Kraus’s footnote in which he highlights “it has become usual to ignore most of what Brentano wrote after 1874. Thus many scientists still have Brentano teaching ‘every mental activity is also object of an emotional reference included within it’, though later on he expressed the opposite opinion repeatedly” (Brentano 1973: 219). This means that almost until 1889 Brentano believed that emotional phenomena are endowed with a specific form of self-reference that it is different respect to the self-reference presentations have. Accordingly only the effective existence of this emotional self-reference justifies the Moore’s thesis according to which Brentano distinguishes facts from values but only from an epistemological point of view. In Brentano’s view only one reality exists and this reality is immanent to the subject, whilst the modalities of intentional reference are numerous. The fact that the intentional reference is threefold does not mean that we have three different levels of reality given that, to feel an emotion we have necessarily to present something. If presentations provide the objects to emotions it follows that there are not two different objects but only two different ways to understand the same object. In conclusion I will attempt to provide an answer to the question: in what terms can us speak of an “immanent emotionalism”? By this formula I mean that, although Brentano identifies a specific act trough which the subject understands moral notions such as the notion of good – namely an intuitive presentation – the fact that its content is mental and that it requires a specific form of self-reference, does not lead one to think that there are different typologies of reality. Brentano’s value theory is not a form of robust realism according to which values exist independently of human responses to them. Instead as reality is immanent, there is not a 8 separate reality existing independently of it but rather there is a relationship of reciprocal coexistence. From the qualitative point of view we can define this reality as “emotional” only if we focus on the disposition (Mulligan 1998, Kriegel 2017) of the evaluating subject inasmuch an object has value only if it is able to induce a certain emotional response. Indeed a dispositionalist view of value interprets value-qualities, such as goodness or fairness, in terms of whatever is perceived as correct under standard conditions. More precisely Brentano seems to be inclined to a “fitting attitude theory of value” (Jacobson 2011) given that we grasp the value of an action through an evaluative attitude. Moreover within the ethical scenario outlined, the fact that emotional phenomena are endowed with a specific form of selfevidence – or inner perception –stresses the pivotal role of subject and lead us to focus on the nature of this “reality”. Accordingly with “immanent emotionalism” I propose a particular way of looking into the subject-object relationship within which the emotional experiences outline themselves as processes requiring a deep analysis in order to understand their specific configuration. References Baumgartner, Wilhelm (2002): Franz Brentano: The Foundation of Value Theory and Ethics. In Embree, L. & Drummond J. 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