Franz Brentano and the 19th Century Idea of Philosophy as a Science

Upon the Sesquicentennial of Franz Brentano’s ›Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint‹

Susan Krantz Gabriel, Ion Tănăsescu

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9783111042084
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

The idea of philosophy as science expands throughout 19th century philosophy; first instantiated by German Idealism's systems in the shape of absolute science which start from pure subjectivity to further gather deductively the entire world under its categories. This idea is later found within the works of Franz Brentano in the form of philosophy as inductive science that has to work according to the method of natural sciences. However, despite this methodological commitment, Brentano did not give up the metaphysical dimension of philosophical research and accepted natural theology as philosophical science. In this way, his inductive-scientific philosophy is fundamentally different from Comte's and Mill's positive philosophy, which purposely bracketed metaphysical problems in order to focus upon the constant relations of phenomena. Within this framework, the volume starts from Brentano's conception of philosophy as science and aims to analyze the source of this idea in Mill and Comte, its criticism and further development by Marty, Stumpf, Meinong,Twardowski, and Husserl, and also the alternative competing views on the topic of Reinhold, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Paulsen, and Dilthey.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Frontmatter
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Who Needs Modern Philosophy?
• Auguste Comte and Philosophy as Science
• Could Philosophy be an Empirical Science? On Brentano’s Fourth Habilitation Thesis
• Brentano and the Idea of Philosophy as Science in German Idealism
• From Kantian Philosophy as Wissenschaft to Nietzschean Philosophy as Gaya Scienza
• Representation, Consciousness, and the Foundation of a Philosophy in General: On the Reappearance of Conceptual Themes from the Kantian Systematic Philosophy of Karl Leonhard Reinhold in the Psychology of Franz Brentano
• The Twofold Meaning of Brentano’s “Pure Theoretical Interest” and His Metaphysics and Psychology
• Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy in Brentano’s Metaphysics Lectures (during His Vienna Years)
• Natural Theology and Its Discontents: Brentano and Kierkegaard
• Beyond Brentano: Stumpf and the Scientific Method of Philosophy
• Meinong’s Empirical Philosophy from Below
• On Twardowski’s Early Idea of Philosophy as Science: Sources and Context
• Is Science in a Reistic World Possible at All? Marty’s Critique of Brentano in Raum und Zeit
• “Was gilt?” On Husserl’s and Brentano’s Standpoints on Ideal Objects and Evidence
• Philosophy as Science as Core Feature of the School of Brentano: Comparing Brentano and Paulsen
• Dilthey’s Philosophy of Philosophy: Science, Worldview, and Critical Self-Reflection
• Appendix: Franz Brentano on Induction and on Metaphysics as Wisdom
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects