Thoughts Concerning Anton Marty’s Early Conception of Intentionality. Was He Thinking what Brentano Was Thinking?

Abstract

The paper focuses on a specific point addressed in the previous article of L. Cesalli and H. Taieb The road to “ideelle Verähnlichung”, namely, the correctness of Marty’s interpretation of the early (pre-reistic) Brentanian conception of intentionality. Moving from the distinction between immanent (or intentional) object and intentional correlate, as developed by Brentano in his lectures on Descriptive Psychology, and referring to Aristotelian theory of relativa, which Brentano always remained faithful to, I show that Marty interpreted Brentano’s early conception of intentionality in an immanentistic sense. Thus, the foundations for the so-called ‘ontological’ or ‘discontinuist view’ of Brentano’s intentionality thesis were put down, and through the exegesis of his pupils and Brentano’s Enkelschüler Kastil and Kraus it was then passed on, from generation to generation, until the present day.