Brentano and Husserl on Intentionality

Abstract

Brentano’s lectures attracted a large number of very gifted students who became fascinated with the idea of intentionality and developed it further in several different directions. Brentano followed up Aristotle’s view on our mind taking on the form of the object and he was particularly influenced by Thomas Aquinas’ approach. His students struggled with how to deal with acts without objects, for example hallucinations, and proposed different solutions. Husserl tried to agree with his teacher as far as he could. He even regarded agreement with one’s teacher as a duty, which could only be forsaken for very good reasons. But he thought he had such reasons. These led him to phenomenology, which is briefly presented in this paper. In a short appendix I use the connection between Aristotle and Husserl to examine the controversy between two prominent Aristotle scholars, Myles Burnyeat (1992) and Richard Sorabji (1974, 1992), and their many followers on both sides concerning the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of perception. The appendix was presented in lectures at conferences in 1995 and 1996, but never sent off for publication. It was published in Greek translation in 1997. In the following years, Burnyeat, who died on September 20, 2019, modified his view, probably without knowing about my criticism. As far as I know, Sorabji stands by his view.