Franz Brentano: A Biographical Sketch

Abstract

Franz Brentano, as his name tells us, was descended from an Italian family.1 Tradition relates that a knight named Brentanus occupied in 166 a castle on the river Brenta in the Italian Tyrol. This castle was destroyed toward the end of the year 1250; was rebuilt by Tebaldo da Brenta; and was again destroyed by the Caldomazzo family. There dwelt that Nicol6 da Brenta who lived in constant feud with the famous Ezelino da Romano. The name da Brenta appears for the first time in 1465; later it was changed to Brentano. In the seventeenth century, on account of wars and pestilence, the family of the Brentano di Tramezzo, from whom Franz was descended,-propter multifaria praeclarissimarum virtutum suarum specimina, as his family record has it,-left their native land to settle in the Rhenish provinces. Franz Brentano was born in Marienberg on the Rhine, January I6, 1838. His father, Christian, was a writer of ability; his mother, Emilia Genger, was a pious and highly cultivated lady. In the circle of his nearest relatives are found the illustrious names of Savigny, Clemens Brentano, Sophia Laroche, and Bettina von Arnim. Franz was but thirteen years old when he lost his father. From his early youth he showed an unusual bent for study, and a marked vocation for the religious life, for which his mother lovingly educated him. He went first of all to Berlin, where he lived with his uncle Savigny, to attend the university courses in philosophy. Here he made the acquaintance of Trendelenburg, whom he always regarded with grateful affection,-grateful, in particular, because Trendelenburg taught him to appreciate Aristotle. In the autumn of i856 he registered in the philosophical faculty of Munich, where he came to know and to esteem the great historian of the church Ignatius D6llinger, at that time one of the greatest orthodox theologians of German Catholic Romanticism, and one of the most subtle and courageous critics to suffer excommunication in the last century. From Munich he went to Tiibigen where he took his degree, July I7, I862. In the same year he published his first work, dedicated in gratitude to his teacher A. Trendelenburg: Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles,a work which shows how profound a knowledge of the great Greek philosopher Franz Brentano had even then acquired, and