Commentaires sur le livre Dealing With Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.

This study is about Brentano’s criticism of a version of phenomenalism that he calls “mental monism” and which he attributes to positivist philosophers such as Ernst Mach and John Stuart Mill. I am interested in Brentano’s criticism of Mill’s version of mental monism based on the idea of “permanent possibilities of sensation.” Brentano claims that this form of monism is characterized by the identification of the class of physical phenomena with that of mental phenomena, and it commits itself to a (...) form of idealism. Brentano argues instead for a form of indirect or hypothetical realism based on intentional correlations. (shrink)

In this study, I will first introduce Husserl’s analysis in Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins by emphasizing the reasons that motivate these analyses on descriptive psychology and their status in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in the late Freiburg period. I will then focus on the structure of acts, with particular emphasis on three aspects stressed by Husserl in Studien: intentionality, the taxonomy of acts, and Brentano’s principle of the Vorstellungsgrundlage. The last three parts of this study outline the characteristic features of (...) three fundamental aspects of affective life in Husserl’s phenomenology: emotions, sense feelings, and moods. I will conclude with some general remarks on the status of affects and values in Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper is about the question: what is it for a mental state to mean (or present) something as an intentional object? This issue is addressed from a broad perspective, against the background of Brentano’s philosophical programme in Psychology from an empirical standpoint, and the controversy between the proponents of a non-canonical interpretation of Brentano’s theory of intentionality, and the so-called orthodox interpretation advocated namely by R. Chisholm. My investigation is divided into six parts. In the first section, I explain (...) the meaning and function of the notion of phenomenon in light of Brentano’s philosophical programme, and I briefly elucidate the notion of physical phenomenon which, in Brentano’s Psychology, constitutes the primary object of consciousness. In the next two sections, I look at two aspects of Brentano’s criticism of the identity thesis that he attributes to British empiricism, namely the psychological aspect, which concerns the identification of the two classes of phenomena, and the metaphysical aspect relating to the relationship between physical phenomena and the reality of an extramental world. Once this double distinction will be established, I will turn to the relation of intentional objects to presentations and put forward the hypothesis that intentional objects are conceptually dependent upon presentations and that this dependence rests, in turn, upon the content of the mental phenomena. The next step concerns Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects, and one of the main non-orthodox arguments against the canonical interpretation, namely that the latter conflates primary and secondary objects. In this context, I examine a second hypothesis: that the secondary object, or intentional correlate of an act, is an intentional content, which is distinct both from the intentional object and from the reality to which it relates, and I maintain that the intentional content has the function of mediating the mental acts’ relation to their objects. Finally, I shall examine some objections against the hypothesis of intentional content in Brentano’s Psychology, and I will conclude with a brief commentary on the bearing of this investigation with regard to the interpretation of the genesis of Brentano’s theory of intentionality, before and after the reistic turn of his philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is about the topic of psychologism in the work of Kazimierz Twardowski and my aim is to revisit this important issue in light of recent publications from, and on Twardowski’s works. I will first examine the genesis of psychologism in the young Twardowski’s work; secondly, I will examine Twardowski’s picture theory of meaning and Husserl’s criticism in Logical Investigations; the third part is about Twardowski’s recognition and criticism of his psychologism in his lectures on the psychology of thinking; (...) the fourth and fifth parts provide an overview of Twardowski’s paper “Actions and Products” while the sixth part addresses the psychologism issue in the last part of this paper through the delineation of psychology and the humanities. I shall conclude this study with a brief assessment of Twardowski’s solution to psychologism. (shrink)

This is the introduction to volume IX of Brentano’s Complete Published Writings: Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften: Vermischte Schriften. Brentano’s writings reproduced in this volume provide a substantial complement to important aspects of Brentano's philosophy which are less explicit in the other works he published during his lifetime. This volume contains thirteen writings: three of them belong to the period of Würzburg, two to the Italian period, and the others belong to the period of his teaching in Vienna. They can be grouped (...) under three broad categories. The first corresponds to the theme of the future of philosophy and the philosophical prospects in the late nineteenth century. This issue is recurrent in Brentano's work and is to be found in several of his writings published in this volume, notably in his inaugural address at the University of Vienna, in which he seeks, among other things, to trace the sources of discouragement with respect to the state of philosophy at that time and to rehabilitate confidence and optimism in the future of philosophy. The second topic pertains to Brentano’s philosophy of the history of philosophy and in addition to the article already mentioned in which Brentano elaborates his theory of the four phases, the article „Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht“ is an application of the principles of his philosophy of history to Plotinus’ philosophy. The last section entitled Reviews and circumstantial writings contains more circumstantial writings including four reviews, Brentano’s 1908 paper on Thomas von Aquin and a short polemical paper on research without prejudice. It includes „Der Atheismus und die Wissenschaft“ which is an anonymous article in which Brentano criticizes the author of an article published in a Vienna journal on the compatibility of theism with a philosophy that defines itself as science; the second is Brentano’s reply to a critical review of his Psychology by Adolf Horwicz, the third is a review of J. Delitzsch's book on Thomas von Aquinas , and the last is a significant review of a book by Franz Miklosich on the topic of subjektlose Sätze. (shrink)

This study attempts to situate Carl Stumpf's theory of emotions with regard to that of his teacher, Franz Brentano, and to the sensualist theory of William James. We will argue that Stumpf's theory can be considered an attempt to reconcile James's sensualism, which emphasizes the role of bodily feelings, with what we will call, for the purposes of this study, Brentano's intentionalism, which conceives of emotions as intentional states. Stumpf claims that James's sensory feelings and Brentano's affective intentional states are (...) two sides of the same coin in that they constitute two essential ingredients of a full-fledged theory of emotions. The question is whether Stumpf's ecumenism avoids the objections that he himself raises against James's and Brentano's theories. The paper is divided into four parts: the first part presents Stumpf's classification of psychical functions; the second part presents his criticism of James's theory of emotions; the third part is a summary of Stumpf's complex debate with Brentano on emotions and sensory feelings; the last part examines Stumpf's attempt to incorporate into his theory of affects the phenomenological and intentional aspects of emotions. I conclude with a note on the unity of consciousness. (shrink)

Study of the controversy between Franz Brentano and his student Carl Stumpf on emotions and sense-feelings. The issue is whether the pleasure that provides an object such as a work of art is intentional, as it is the case in Brentano's theory in which it is closely related to the class of emotions (love and hate), or merely phenomenal as Stumpf wants it. The paper is divided into two parts : I first examine several aspects of the relationship between Stumpf (...) and Brentano and I evaluate in the second part whether Stumpf's deviations from several theses of Brentano's descriptive psychology, namely on emotions and sense-feelings, challenge his commitment to Brentano's program in philosophy. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the meaning and value of the criticism that Stumpf address to Husserl's phenomenology in Ideas I. My presentation is divided into four parts: I briefly describe the relationship between Stumpf and the young Husserl during his stay in Halle (1886-1901); then I will comment Stumpf's remarks on the definition of Husserl's phenomenology as descriptive psychology in his Logical Investigations; in the third part, I examine Husserl's notice in section 86 of Ideas I (...) where he compares his own terminology to that of Stumpf; finally I comment on Stumpf's criticism of Husserl's phenomenology in his last book Erkenntnislehre. (shrink)

In this study, I propose to examine Marty's reconstruction of the general framework in which Brentano develops his theory of consciousness. My starting point is the formulation, at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of Brentano's Psychology, of two theses on mental phenomena, which constitute the basis of Brentano's theory of primary and secondary objects. In the second part, I examine the objection of infinite regress raised against Brentano's theory of primary and secondary objects and (...) Marty's interpretation of Brentano's theory of the unity of consciousness. The third part bears on the important distinction between implicit and explicit consciousness, which Brentano introduces in his lectures on descriptive psychology. Here, I analyse Marty's principle of individuation in light of the modifications which Brentano made to his theory of consciousness after the publication of his Psychology in 1874. The last section is an examination of Marty's conception of consciousness as self-consciousness with respect to his principle of individuation. (shrink)

This paper is the general introduction to a collection of essays entitled Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy (forthcoming). In this substantial introduction, I comment several aspects of the recent reception of Brentano’s philosophical programme in contemporary philosophy, and the actual debates on topics such as emotions, values, and intentionality, for example. It is divided in four parts corresponding to the four sections of the book. The first three sections contain 11 original contributions on Brentano’s philosophy and its place in the (...) history of philosophy in Austria, and the last section contains three unpublished manuscripts from Alfred Kastil et Moritz Schlick. I. Descriptive psychology and phenomenology: Brentano and Husserl II. Brentano and the Vienna Circle III. Brentano and the history of philosophy IV. Documentation: Alfred Kastil and the Vienna Circle . (shrink)

This paper is about the reception of Ernst Mach by Brentano and his students in Austria. I shall outline the main elements of this reception, starting with Brentano’s evaluation, in his lectures on positivism, of Mach’s theory of sensations. Secondly, I shall comment the early reception of Mach by Brentano’s pupils in Prague. The third part bears on the close relationship that Husserl established between his phenomenology and Mach’s descriptivism. I will then briefly examine Mach’s contribution to the controversy on (...) gestalt qualities. The fifth part bears on Stumpf’s debate with Mach on psychophysical relations and I shall conclude on Husserl’s criticism of Mach’s alleged logical psychologism. (shrink)

This article addresses the recent reception of Franz Brentano's writings on consciousness. I am particularly interested in the connection established between Brentano's theory of consciousness and higher-order theories of consciousness and, more specifically, the theory proposed by David Rosenthal. My working hypothesis is that despite the many similarities that can be established with Rosenthal's philosophy of mind, Brentano's theory of consciousness differs in many respects from higher-order theories of consciousness and avoids most of the criticisms generally directed to them. This (...) article is divided into eight parts. The first two sections expound the basic outline of Rosenthal's theory, and the third summarizes the principal objections that Rosenthal addresses to Brentano, which I, then, examine in sections 4 and 5. In sections 6 and 7, I discuss Brentano's principle of the unity of consciousness, and in section 8, I consider the scope of the changes that Brentano brings to his theory of consciousness in his later writings, which follow the 1874 publication of Psychology. I then draw the conclusion that Brentano's theory rests on a view of intransitive and intrinsic self-consciousness. (shrink)

My aim in this study is to show that the philosophical program elaborated by Brentano in his Psychology is largely indebted to the research conducted by Brentano on British empiricism and Comte's positive philosophy at Würzburg. This research represents the starting point of, and backdrop to, the project for philosophy as science, which is at the heart of his Psychology, and sheds new light on the philosophical stakes of many debates he leads in that work. Furthermore, Brentano's research informs us (...) about his philosophical preoccupations during the Würzburg period, and simultaneously provide us with a new perspective on the evolution of his thought from his habilitation at Würzburg in 1866 to his arrival in Vienna in 1874. In this study, I propose to examine some of the factors that motivated Brentano's interest in Comte's philosophy and to evaluate the influence that the latter exerted on Brentano's thought during the Würzburg period and beyond. (shrink)

This study is a commentary on Carl Stumpf's evaluation of Husserl's phenomenology as presented in the Logical Investigations and the first book of Ideas. I first examine Stumpf's reception of the version of phenomenology that Husserl presented in the Logical Investigations and I then look at §§ 85-86 of Ideas I, in which Husserl seeks to demarcate his "pure" phenomenology from that of Stumpf. In the third section, I analyze the criticism that Stumpf, in § 13 of his book Erkenntnislehre, (...) directs toward to the new version of phenomenology that Husserl develops in Ideas I, and in the fourth, I summarize the Spinozist interpretation of the noetico-noematical correlations that Stumpf proposes in his two studies on Spinoza. The last section addresses Husserl's self-criticism regarding the Cartesian aproach to the reduction in Ideas I and the parallelism that the late Husserl establishes between intentional psychology and transcendental phenomenology. I try to show that the version of phenomenology that Husserl develops during the Freiburg period anticipates in many respects Stumpf's criticism and partly confirms the latter's diagnosis of the version of phenomenology advocated in Ideas I. (shrink)

Mon objectif dans cette étude est de montrer l'influence que la philosophie positive d'Auguste Comte a exercée sur la pensée du jeune Brentano durant la période de Würzburg (1866-1874). J'examine d'abord quelques-uns des facteurs qui ont amené Brentano à s'intéresser à la philosophie de Comte et je résume, dans un deuxième temps, les grandes lignes de l'article de Brentano sur Comte dont la version française est reproduite dans ce numéro. Dans la troisième partie de cette étude, je commente brièvement quelques (...) passages de la Psychologie d'un point de vue empirique où Brentano discute de thèmes comtiens. Je conclue cette étude par quelques remarques sur les traces laissées par le positivisme de Comte dans l'œuvre de Brentano. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to assess Husserl’s debt to Lotze’s philosophy during the Halle period (1886-1901). I shall first track the sources of Husserl’s knowledge of Lotze’s philosophy during his studies with Brentano in Vienna and then with Stumpf in Halle. I shall then briefly comment on Husserl’s references to Lotze in his early work and research manuscripts for the second volume of his Philosophy of Arithmetic. In the third section, I examine Lotze’s influence on Husserl’s antipsychologistic turn (...) in the mid-1890s. The fourth section is a commentary on Husserl’s manuscript entitled “Microcosmus,” to which he explicitly refers in his Prolegomena, and which he planned to publish as an annex of his Logical Investigations. This work contains a detailed analysis of the third book of Lotze’s 1874 Logic. The last section examines Husserl’s arguments against logical psychologism in his Prolegomena, which I discuss through the lens of Stumpf’s critique of psychologism in his paper “Psychology and theory of knowledge”. I argue that Stumpf’s early works on this topic make it possible to establish a connection between Lotze’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of Ideas and Husserl’s antipsychologism. My hypothesis is that Stumpf’s analyses represent the background of Husserl's critique of logical psychologism in his Logical Investigations. I shall conclude this study by showing that Husserl’s position with respect to Lotze’s philosophy remains basically unchanged after the publication of his Logical Investigations, and that Husserl’s main criticism of Lotze pertains, in the final analysis, to the absence of a theory of intentionality in Lotze’s philosophy. (shrink)

This study is about an aspect of the reception of Herbatianism in Austria which has not been thoroughly investigated so far. It pertains to a controversy opposing Robert Zimmermann and Franz Brentano in the context of discussions which took place in the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna. This study looks more specifically at three important episodes involving the Philosophical Society, first, the controversy over Herbartianism, second that over the evaluation of Schelling’s philosophy, and finally the reception of Bolzano (...) in Austria. I will first describe the circumstances that led Zimmermann to get involved in the Philosophical Society and the source of his controversy with Brentano and his followers. I will then comment Zimmermann’s address as chairman of the Philosophical Society and Brentano’s reaction to Zimmermann’s remarks on Schelling and the historical period to which he belongs. I will complete my analysis of Brentano’s reaction with a summary of his evaluation of Herbart’s philosophical program to which Zimmermann adhered. The last part focuses on Zimmermann’s decisive role in the reception of Bolzano in Vienna in connection with the Bolzano Commission established by the Philosophical Society. I will conclude with brief remarks on Zimmermann’s legacy in Vienna. (shrink)

This paper is about Brentano’s philosophical program in Vienna and the overall architecture, which binds together the main parts of his philosophy. I argue that this program is based on Brentano’s project of philosophy as science and it aims to account for the unity of the main branches of his philosophy. The paper is divided into six parts. The first bears on Brentano’s philosophy of history, which is an important piece of the program. The second is on the close relationship (...) between philosophy and science, and the third is on Brentano’s classification of theoretical sciences. In the three remaining parts of the paper, I examine the two main axes of the program, i.e. psychology and metaphysics, and the question how the three normative sciences are rooted in psychology. In the conclusion, I argue that Brentano’s theory of the four phases in the history of philosophy provides his philosophical program with a justification. (shrink)

Introduction au numéro spécial de la Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger en hommage au centenaire de la mort de Franz Brentano.

Je soutiens que la prise en compte de Lotze dans la genèse de la phénoménologie du jeune Husserl fournit de nouveaux éléments qui supportent la lecture frégéenne de la phénoménologie. Pour ce faire, je vais d’abord retracer l’origine lozéenne des questions épistémologiques issues du développement de la nouvelle psychologie et de la logique au milieu du XIXe siècle en Allemagne et j’insisterai sur l’apport de trois de ses étudiants prestigieux; je montrerai ensuite que Husserl a acquis sa connaissance de cette (...) problématique via sa fréquentation de Brentano et de Stumpf; je me pencherai ensuite sur la tournant antipsychologiste de Husserl au milieu des années 1890 et examinerai brièvement un manuscrit de Husserl intitulé « Microcosmos » qui date de cette même période et qui montre clairement l’apport de la logique de Lotze dans ce tournant antipsychologiste; j’examinerai enfin brièvement l’apport de Lotze dans la critique que Husserl adresse au psychologisme logique dans ses Prolégomènes. Je conclurai avec quelques remarques sur l’importance de Lotze dans la phénoménologie de Husserl après la publication des Recherches logiques. (shrink)

This paper is mainly about Brentano’s commentaries on Ernst Mach in his lectures “Contemporary philosophical questions” which he held one year before he left Austria. I will first identify the main sources of Brentano’s interests in Comte’s and J. S. Mill’s positivism during his Würzburg period. The second section provides a short overview of Brentano’s 1893-1894 lectures and his criticism of Comte, Kirchhoff, and Mill. The next sections bear on Brentano’s criticism of Mach’s monism and Brentano’s argument against the reduction (...) of the mental based on his theory of intentionality. The last section is about Brentano’s proposal to replace the identity relation in Mach’s theory of elements by that of intentional correlation. I conclude with a remark on the history of philosophy in Austria. (shrink)

Je me propose de réfléchir ici sur la place de plus en plus importante qu’occupe la psychologie intentionnelle dans la phénoménologie transcendantale de Husserl à partir du milieu des années 1920. Pour ce faire, je commencerai par fournir quelques indications que l’on retrouve dans plusieurs textes appartenant à la dernière période de Freiburg sur ce qu’on pourrait appeler une réhabilitation de la psychologie au sein de la phénoménologie transcendantale et le projet d’une psychologie eidétique ; dans la deuxième partie, je (...) présente l’arrière-plan de cette problématique en rappelant la définition de la phénoménologie des Recherches logiques dans les termes de Brentano d’une psychologie descriptive et en rappelant les motifs qui ont amené Husserl, après la publication de cet ouvrage, à se dissocier nettement de cette définition. Je me demande ensuite ce qui motive ce nouvel intérêt de Husserl pour la psychologie dans la dernière version de sa phénoménologie et j’avance trois des facteurs qui me semblent justifier la réhabilitation, sur le tard, de la psychologie intentionnelle dans la phénoménologie : l’identification partielle de la phénoménologie avec la psychologie eidétique, le parallélisme entre les dimensions psychologique et philosophique de la phénoménologie et enfin la critique de la voie cartésienne et l’adoption de la voie psychologique de la réduction. Cette réhabilitation de la psychologie dans le giron de la phénoménologie soulève deux questions importantes dont je traiterai brièvement dans la dernière partie de cette étude. La première porte sur une version du psychologisme qu’il appelle, sur le tard, le psychologisme transcendantal ; la deuxième concerne les nombreuses références à Brentano durant cette période et elle porte sur la dette de cette version de la phénoménologie à l’égard de Brentano. (shrink)

Cette étude porte sur l’évaluation par Carl Stumpf de la phénoménologie de Husserl dans ses Recherches logiques et dans le premier livre des Idées directrices. J’examine, dans un premier temps, la réception par Stumpf de la phénoménologie des Recherches logiques. Je me penche ensuite sur les §§ 85-86 des Idées directrices dans lesquels Husserl cherche à démarquer sa phénoménologie « pure » de la phénoménologie de Stumpf. Dans la troisième partie, j’examine la critique que Stumpf adresse, dans la §13 de (...) son ouvrage Erkenntnislehre, à la nouvelle version de la phénoménologie que Husserl élabore dans ses Idées directrices, et dans la quatrième, je me penche sur l’interprétation spinoziste des corrélations noético-noématiques dans ses deux études de Stumpf sur Spinoza. Je conclus en me demandant si la version de la phénoménologie que Husserl élabore durant la période de Freiburg n’anticipe pas, dans une certaine mesure, les critiques de Stumpf tout en confirmant le diagnostic de ce dernier sur la phénoménologie des Idées directrices. (shrink)

This paper is about the question: what is it for a mental state to mean (or present) something as an intentional object? This issue is addressed from a broad perspective, against the background of Brentano’s philosophical programme in Psychology from an empirical standpoint, and the controversy between the proponents of a non-canonical interpretation of Brentano’s theory of intentionality, and the so-called orthodox interpretation advocated namely by R. Chisholm. My investigation is divided into six parts. In the first section, I explain (...) the meaning and function of the notion of phenomenon in light of Brentano’s philosophical programme, and I briefly elucidate the notion of physical phenomenon which, in Brentano’s Psychology, constitutes the primary object of consciousness. In the next two sections, I look at two aspects of Brentano’s criticism of the identity thesis that he attributes to British empiricism, namely the psychological aspect, which concerns the identification of the two classes of phenomena, and the metaphysical aspect relating to the relationship between physical phenomena and the reality of an extramental world. Once this double distinction will be established, I will turn to the relation of intentional objects to presentations and put forward the hypothesis that intentional objects are conceptually dependent upon presentations and that this dependence rests, in turn, upon the content of the mental phenomena. The next step concerns Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects, and one of the main non-orthodox arguments against the canonical interpretation, namely that the latter conflates primary and secondary objects. In this context, I examine a second hypothesis: that the secondary object, or intentional correlate of an act, is an intentional content, which is distinct both from the intentional object and from the reality to which it relates, and I maintain that the intentional content has the function of mediating the mental acts’ relation to their objects. Finally, I shall examine some objections against the hypothesis of intentional content in Brentano’s Psychology, and I will conclude with a brief commentary on the bearing of this investigation with regard to the interpretation of the genesis of Brentano’s theory of intentionality, before and after the reistic turn of his philosophy. (shrink)

This study focuses on the influence of the work of Carl Stumpf on the thought of Karl Bühler. Our working hypothesis is based on the philosophical program that Bühler attributes to Stumpf and to which several of his works are largely indebted. It is divided into five parts. The first is intended to establish a relationship between Bühler and the School of Brentano to which Stumpf belongs. In the second, I show that Bühler became aware of Brentano's ideas and of (...) Stumpf's program during a stay at the Institute of Psychology of Berlin during the winter semester 1904-1905, and I briefly comment, in the third part, Bühler's references to the work of Stumpf and two of his books in which he defends Stumpf's program against his critics. After having established the solid knowledge that Bühler had of Stumpf's work, I outline, in the fourth part, the main aspects of this program and evaluate, in the fifth, how Bühler uses it in the field of sensory phenomena (gestalt). I conclude this study with several remarks on Stumpf's positive evaluation of the work of Bühler. (shrink)

Reply to eight critical reviews of my paper "Franz Brentano and Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness" in the same issue of the journal Argumentos.

This study seeks to trace the boundaries of the sign in the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl. The approach adopted here is largely historical and has no other ambition that to identify those questions that pertain to the sign and have been of interest for phenomenology. The article is divided in four parts : the first examines an essay from 1890 entitled Semiotik and situates it in the context of the young Husserl's work in the philosophy of mathematics ; the (...) second part concerns the first section of the Logical Investigations ; the third one seeks to account for the changes that testify to the evolution of Husserl's thinking regarding the sign between the Logical Investigations (1900-01) and "Origins of Geometry" (1936) ; the last part considers the contribution of post-Husserlian phenomenology, from Martin Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty and beyond, to semiotics. -/- Résumé. Notre étude vise à délimiter l'espace dans lequel la question du signe s'est posée à la tradition phénoménologique depuis Edmund Husserl. Cette étude est largement historique et elle n'a d'autres ambitions que d'identifier certains aspects de la question du signe qui ont suscité l'intérêt de la phénoménologie. Elle se divise en quatre parties : dans la première, nous examinons le texte de 1890 intitulé Semiotik en le situant dans le contexte des recherches du jeune Husserl sur la philosophie des mathématiques ; la deuxième section est principalement consacrée à l'étude de la première des Recherches logiques ; la troisième partie vise à rendre compte des chan-gements qui ont marqué l'évolution de la pensée de Husserl sur le signe, des Recher-ches logiques (1900/1) à "Origine de la géométrie" (1936) ; finalement, nous esquis-serons à grands traits la contribution de la phénoménologie post-husserlienne à la sémiotique, de Martin Heidegger à Maurice Merleau-Ponty, et au-delà. (shrink)

Commentaires sur le débat nativisme-empirisme au XIXe siècle et la théorie des signes locaux de Lotze.

Husserl and Frege on the analysis of the concept of number and primitive logical concepts.

This study examines the place of the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna (1888-1938) in the evolution of the history of philosophy in Austria up to the establishment of the Vienna Circle in 1929. I will examine three aspects of the relationship between the Austrian members of the Vienna Circle and the Philosophical Society which has been emphasized by several historians of the Vienna Circle: the first aspect concerns the theory of a first Vienna Circle formed mainly by H. (...) Hahn, P. Frank and O. Neurath; the second aspect is the contention that the missing link between the Vienna Circle and the Bolzano tradition in Austria is Alois Höfler, a student of Brentano and Meinong; I will finally examine the link they established between the annexation of the Philosophical Society to the Kant-Gesellschaft in 1927 and the founding of the Vienna Circle in 1929. I will argue that this institution played a key role in the history of philosophy in Austria and is partly responsible for the formation of the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

This bibliography of Stumpf’s publications is the most comprehensive to date. It relies in part on the bibliography published by Stumpf in his autobiography (Stumpf 1924), which is incomplete and does not include his publications after 1924. In addition to the works of Stumpf published during his lifetime or posthumously, we indicate the translations of his works in several languages and some of the syllabus and lecture notes of his students that are available in different institutions.

El propósito del presente estudio es afirmar la deuda de Husserl con la filosofía de Lotze durante el período de Halle. Mi interés se centra especialmente en el pensamiento del joven Husserl desde su llegada a Halle en 1886 hasta la publicación de su Hauptwerk en 1900-1901. Primero me remontaré a las fuentes del conocimiento de la filosofía de Lotze por parte de Husserl durante sus estudios con Brentano en Viena y después con Stumpf en Halle. Luego comentaré brevemente las (...) referencias de Husserl a Lotze en sus primeros trabajos y en sus manuscritos de investigación para el segundo volumen de su Filosofía de la aritmética. En la tercera sección, examino la influencia de Lotze en el giro antipsicologista de Husserl a mediados de la década de 1890. La cuarta sección es un comentario al manuscrito de Husserl titulado "Microcosmos", al cual se refiere explícitamente en sus Prolegómenos, y que planeaba publicar como anexo a sus Investigaciones lógicas. Esta obra contiene un análisis detallado del tercer volumen de la Lógica de Lotze de 1874. La última sección examina los argumentos de Husserl contra el psicologismo lógico en sus Prolegómenos, que yo expongo a través del prisma de la crítica de Stumpf al psicologismo en su artículo "Psicología y teoría del conocimiento". Sostengo que las primeras obras de Stumpf sobre este asunto hacen posible establecer una conexión entre la interpretación de Lotze de la teoría de las Ideas de Platón y el antipsicologismo de Husserl. Mi hipótesis es que los análisis de Stumpf representan el fondo de la crítica de Husserl al psicologismo lógico en sus Investigaciones lógicas. Concluiré este estudio mostrando que la posición de Husserl respecto de la filosofía de Lotze permanece básicamente la misma después de la publicación de sus Investigaciones lógicas, y que la principal crítica de Husserl a Lotze se refiere, en un último análisis, a la ausencia de una teoría de la intencionalidad en la filosofía de Lotze. (shrink)

Abstract: In this study, I propose to examine Marty’s reconstruction of the general framework in which Brentano develops his theory of consciousness. My starting point is the formulation, at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of Brentano’s Psychology, of two theses on mental phenomena, which constitute the basis of Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects. In the second part, I examine the objection of infinite regress raised against Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects (...) and Marty’s interpretation of Brentano’s theory of the unity of consciousness. The third part bears on the important distinction between implicit and explicit consciousness, which Brentano introduces in his lectures on descriptive psychology. Here, I analyse Marty’s principle of individuation in light of the modifications which Brentano made to his theory of consciousness after the publication of his Psychology in 1874. The last section is an examination of Marty’s conception of consciousness as self-consciousness with respect to his principle of individuation. (shrink)

This study is about Carl Stumpf's achievements during his stay in Prague (1879-1884). It can be considered a piece of sociology of knowledge that is meant to uncover the institutional mechanisms used by Brentano from Vienna in order to implement his philosophical program in Prague. I claim that Stumpf and Marty have been instrumental in Brentano's plans and strategies to consolidate his hold on philosophy and its institutions in Austria. There are also several aspects of Stumpf's and Marty's scientific activities (...) in Prague, which I will also examine in this paper, including their scientific collaborations and exchanges with Ernst Mach, Ewald Hering, Gottlob Frege, and William James during Stumpf's stay in Prague (1879-1884). The last part of this study pertains to the circumstances surrounding Stumpf's departure from Prague and Brentano's reaction to Stumpf's arguments. (shrink)

The paper deals with the contributions of Jacques Herbrand to logic and philosophy in historical context.

Spinoza, le spinozisme et les fondements de la sécularisation est un ouvrage dédié à la mémoire d’Emmanuel Levinas, dont l’auteur a été l’élève durant plusieurs années. Il vise, à travers une analyse d’ordre philosophique, historique, épistémologique et théologique, à mettre au jour les conditions d’émergence interrelatées du spinozisme et de la sécularisation. Pour ce faire, il souligne, entre autres, l’importance des polémiques anti-maimonidiennes, des débats sur les attributs divins, la substance, l’infini, du marranisme et de la Kabbale sur la formation (...) du spinozisme, ainsi que son rapport à la pensée contemporaine. Il mène une recherche interdisciplinaire devant permettre d’éclairer l’origine des difficultés théoriques que ce système philosophique présente. (shrink)

It is widely held that assertions are partially governed by an epistemic norm. But what is the epistemic condition set out in the norm? Is it knowledge, truth, belief, or something else? In this paper, I defend a view similar to that of Stanley (2008), according to which the relevant epistemic condition is epistemic certainty, where epistemic certainty (but not knowledge) is context-sensitive. I start by distinguishing epistemic certainty, subjective certainty, and knowledge. Then, I explain why it's much more plausible (...) to think that "certain", rather than "know", is context-sensitive. After that, I respond to an important worry raised by Pritchard, according to which the proposed view is too strong to accommodate our current practice of assertion. I then show that the main linguistic and conversational data advanced in the recent literature in favour of the knowledge condition are best explained by the certainty view. Finally, I offer two principled considerations: the certainty view is the only one compatible with three independently plausible claims and it fits very well with the common thought that knowledge does not entail certainty. (shrink)

La question des rapports du spinozisme à l’axiologie a fait l’objet de nombreux débats. Certains commentateurs considèrent Spinoza comme étant profondément immoraliste, alors que pour d’autres, il maintient l'ensemble des valeurs humaines. Spinoza a cherché à dépasser l’utilitarisme propre au conatus de chacun, afin de fonder un altruisme rationnel. Il souligne que le bien auquel l’homme aspire lorsqu’il suit la vertu, il le désirera aussi pour tous les autres hommes. Cependant, les moyens mis en œuvre pour démontrer cette thèse semblent (...) problématiques. Cet article analyse la logique de la coopération interhumaine élaborée par Spinoza, ainsi que son idéal de l’homme libre, montrant, qu'en fait, il n'a pas réussi à surmonter la nature profondément égoïste du conatus. -/- The question of the relationship between Spinozism and axiology has been the subject of much debate. Some commentators consider Spinoza to be profoundly immoralist, while for others he upholds the set of human values. Spinoza sought to go beyond the utilitarianism proper to the conatus of each person, in order to establish a rational altruism. He emphasizes that the good to which man aspires when he follows virtue, he will also desire for all other men. However, the means used to demonstrate this thesis seem problematic. This article analyzes Spinoza's logic of interhuman cooperation, as well as his ideal of the free man, showing that, in fact, he failed to overcome the profoundly egoistic nature of conatus. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of this article is to bring to light some of the factors that allowed the emergence of secularization, and to understand to what extent and in what ways these factors contributed to the formation of the main lines of Spinozism. I will first examine the issues of secularization, emphasizing the importance of the transformations in the status of the Hebrew language during the Renaissance. I will then analyze the role that the Tractatus theologico-politicus may have had in European (...) culture. Finally, I will clarify Spinoza’s relationship to deism and atheism, specifying the nature of the controversies related to his religious attitude. (shrink)

In this essay Derrida reflects, for the first time at length, on secularization as a historical process. Whereas his earlier writings on religion focus on Jewish and Christian authors who blur the boundaries of religious belonging, this essay directly questions the categories of religion and secularization. Against this background, Derrida revisits the work of Kant, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, and he reflects on his own engagement with messianism, negative theology, and the khôra.

The question of Spinozist determinism and necessitarianism have been extensively studied by commentators, while the relationship between the notions of divine will and free will still requires elaborate studies. Our article seeks to contribute to such research, by clarifying the analyses of these questions by authors that Spinoza has confronted: Maimonides, as well as other Jewish philosophers, and Leibniz who criticized Spinozist determinism. We will study the consequences of these analyses on two examples that Spinoza gave to refute free will, (...) namely the dream and the situation of Buridan's ass. -/- Résumé: La question du déterminisme spinoziste et du nécessitarisme a été largement étu-diée par les commentateurs, tandis que la relation entre les notions de volonté divine et de libre arbitre nécessite encore des études plus élaborées. Notre article cherche à contribuer à ces recherches, en clarifiant les analyses de ces questions par des auteurs auxquels Spinoza s’est confronté : Maïmonide, ainsi que d’autres philosophes juifs, et Leibniz qui a lui-même critiqué le déterminisme spinoziste. Nous étudierons les conséquences de ces analyses sur deux exemples que Spinoza a donnés pour réfuter le libre arbitre, à savoir le rêve et la situa-tion de l’âne de Buridan. (shrink)

A certain number of cases suggest that our willingness to ascribe “knowledge” can be influenced by practical factors. For revisionary proposals, they indicate that the truth‐values of “knowledge” ascriptions vary with practical factors. For conservative proposals, on the contrary, nothing surprising is happening. Standard pragmatic approaches appeal to pragmatic implicatures and psychological approaches to the idea that belief formation is influenced by practical factors. Conservative proposals have not yet offered a fully satisfactory explanation, though. In this article, I introduce and (...) defend a third conservative proposal which I call “Refined Invariantism”. The two main claims of this proposal are that (1) we should distinguish between high stakes cases in which the subject does not believe (that he knows) the target proposition and those in which he believes (that he knows) the target proposition and that (2) we should adopt a psychological treatment for the first kind of case and a pragmatic treatment based on the epistemic standards for appropriate assertion and action for the second kind of case. I argue that this new combined approach avoids the main pitfalls of its two conservative rivals and that it gives new life to the generality objection levelled against revisionary views. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's notion of nomos is commonly regarded as the international equivalent to the national sovereign's decision on the exception. But can concrete spatial order alone turn a constellation of forces into an international order? This article looks at Schmitt's work The Nomos of the Earth and proposes that it is the process of bracketing war called Hegung which takes the place of the sovereign in the international order Schmitt describes. Beginning from an analysis of nomos, the ordering function of (...) the presocratic concept moira is explored. It is argued that the process of Hegung, like moira, does not just achieve the containment of war, but constitutes the condition of possibility for plural order. (shrink)

Many philosophers agree that there is an epistemic norm governing action. However, they disagree on what this norm is. It has been observed that the word ‘know’ is prominent in ordinary epistemic evaluations of actions. Any opponent of the knowledge norm must provide an explanation of this fact. Gerken has recently proposed the most developed explanation. It invokes the hypothesis that, in normal contexts, knowledge-level warrant is frequently necessary and very frequently sufficient (Normal Coincidence), so that knowledge-based assessments would be (...) a good heuristic for practical reasoning and epistemic evaluations of action. In this paper, I raise three problems for this approach. First, I argue that Normal Coincidence is ad hoc: it relies on an unsupported frequency hypothesis that we should expect to be false given the warrant account that Gerken also endorses. Second, I argue that, in any case, Normal Coincidence is insufficient to support the hypothesis that knowledge-based evaluation of action constitutes a good heuristic. Third, I consider three other hypotheses close to Normal Coincidence apparently more likely to support the heuristic hypothesis, but I argue that they seem even more ad hoc than Normal Coincidence. (shrink)

Logic and psychology overlap in judgment, inference and proof. The problems raised by this commonality are notoriously difficult, both from a historical and from a philosophical point of view. Sundholm has for a long time addressed these issues. His beautiful piece of work [A Century of Inference: 1837-1936] begins by summarizing the main difficulty in the usual provocative manner of the author: one can start, he says, by the act of knowledge to go to the object, as the Idealist does; (...) one can also start by the object to go to the act, in the Realist mood; never the two shall meet. He is himself inclined to accept the first perspective as the right one and he has eventually developed an original version of antirealism which starts, not from considerations about the publicity of meaning, in the manner of Dummett, but from an epistemic standpoint, trying to search in a non-Fregean tradition of analysis of judgement and cognate notions a way of founding constructivist semantics. The present paper ploughes the same field. We concentrate on the significance, for Sundholm’s program, of the perspective that has been opened by Twardowski in his important essay on acts and products (1912. (shrink)

The paper presents the notion of “Spirit of Nature” in Henry More and describes its position within More’s philosophical system. Through a thorough analysis, it tries to show in what respects it can be considered a scientific object and in what respects it cannot. In the second part of this paper, More’s “Spirit of Nature” is compared to Newton’s various attempts at presenting a metaphysical cause of the force of gravity, using the similarities between the two to see this notorious (...) problem of Newton scholarship in a new light. One thus sees that if Newton drew from Stoic and Neo-Platonic theories of aether or soul of the world, we need to fully acknowledge the fact that these substances were traditionally of a non-dualistic, half-corporeal, half-spiritual nature. Both More’s “Spirit of Nature” and Newton’s aether can thus be understood as different attempts at incorporating such a pneumatic theory into the framework of modern physics, as it was then being formed. (shrink)

Chapitre méthodologique d'un livre co-écrit par Éliane Pons et J.-J. Pinto. Ce dernier, pour raisons professionnelles, n'avait indiqué son nom que dans cette partie intitulée "Esquisse d'une psychanalyse scientifique" (allusion respectueuse au titre de Freud "Esquisse d'une psychologie scientifique"), où se trouve expliquée en détail la méthode originale d'analyse de discours inventée et enseignée par lui : l'Analyse des Logiques Subjectives© (A.L.S.©).