Hermann Lotze and Franz Brentano

Abstract

Franz Brentano was not a solitary figure who propounded his philosophy in lonely isolation from other contemporary philosophers in Germany, as some neo-Brentanists have claimed over the last years. The aim of this paper is to correct such misconceptions by establishing that Brentano developed his philosophical psychology while actively engaged in the rich intellectual-historical and academic context of his time—in particular, under the influence of Hermann Lotze. Specifically, Brentano: (i) adopted from Lotze the idea that judgment is not just an association of ideas but an assertion of content; (ii) he also embraced Lotze’s idea that the content of perception is something given; (iii) Brentano notion of intentionality, too, was inherited from Lotze; (iv) as well as the method of descriptive psychology; (v) finally, Lotze and Brentano shook hands admitting that perception and knowledge are intrinsically connected with emotions. At the same time, there were at least two points at which Brentano disagreed with Lotze: (i) he criticised Lotze’s logical sign theory of perception as well as Lotze’s atomism. These were clearly constructivist theories inspired by Kant. (ii) Brentano also criticized Lotze’s principle of teleomechanism. It was influenced by the German Idealists.