Franz Brentano and William James

Franz Brentano and William James FRED KERSTEN OVER THE LAST FEW DECADESthere has been a large body of literature written on William James, including many accounts of the various influences on James as well as of James on other philosophers. But the influence of Franz Brentano on William James has been neglected. The importance of this influence consists in the fact that its clarification contributes to unraveling the dilemma (which James himself faced) of the apparent inconsistency between certain views set forth in The Principles of Psychology and certain other views set forth in the Essays in Radical Empiricism. Broadly stated, the dilemma concerns the apparent inconsistency between James's theory of "multiple realities" and his theory of "radical empiricism ." To discuss James's dilemma, I shall first develop those views of Brentano which James explicitly takes over; then I shall show the use James makes of those views, including the necessary revisions entailed by that use; and third, I shall consider the consequences of James's Brentanoesque views when pushed to their extreme in the doctrine of "radical empiricism." By way of conclusion, I shall make a few general critical remarks setting a broader philosophical framework for problems pertaining to James's theories. BRENTANO'S CLASSIFICATIONOF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA~ In The Principles of Psychology ("The Perception of Reality"), James approvingly quotes the following passage from Brentano's Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt: x For a thorough discussion of James's "earlier" and "later" philosophies, see Milic Capec, "The Reappearance of the Self in the Last Philosophy of William James," Philosophical Review, LXII (1953), 526-544. For a discussion of some aspects of Brentano's influence on James, see Johannes Linschoten, Auf dem Weg zu einer Ph~inomenologischen Psychologic (Berlin, 1961), passim, espec, pp. 105 ft. For James's own account of inconsistencies in his earlier and later views, see his notes in R. B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston, 1935), II, 750 ft., especially 756-757; see also my conclusion below. 2 At the outset I wish to emphasize that I am only concerned with Brentano's views insofar as James can be said to understand them in the context of his thinking. No claim is 178 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Every object comes into consciousness in a twofold way, as simply thought of [vorgestellt] and as admitted [anerkannt] or denied. The relation is analogous to that which is assumed by most philosophers (by Kant no less than by Aristotle) to obtain between mere thought and desire. Nothing is ever desired without being thought of; but the desiring is nevertheless a second quite new way of receiving it into consciousness . No more is anything judged (i.e., believed or disbelieved) which is not thought of too. But we must insist that, so soon as the object of a thought becomes the object of an assenting or rejecting judgment, our consciousness steps into an entirely new relation towards it. It is then twice present in consciousness, as thought of, and as held for real or denied; just as when desire awakens for it, it is both thought and simultaneously desire.+ Although James does not quote it directly, there is another passage of Brentano's wiaicn should be juxtaposed to the one just cited: Every psychic phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or sometimes the mental) inexistence of an object, and what we should like to call, athough not quite unambiguously, the relation to a content, the directedness toward an object (which in this context is not to be understood as something real) or the immanent object-quality. Each contains something as its object, though not each in the same manner. In mere thinking something is merely thought of, in judging something is admitted or denied, in desiring something is desired, etc. This intentional inexistence is peculiar alone to the psychic phenomena. No physical phenomenon shows anything like it. And thus we can define psychic phenomena by saying that they are such phenomena as contain objects in themselves by way of intention? These two passages form the basis for Brentano's classification of psychic phenomena--a classification which James adopts and which...