The Soul and Its Parts: A Study in Aristotle and Brentano

While much has been written about the theory of intentionality that is sketched by Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint of 1874, comparatively little effort has been invested in Brentano’s other works, in spite of the fact that the Psychology itself reveals new and interesting perspectives when viewed within the wider corpus of Brentano’s writings. In what follows I shall attempt to show that interpretations standardly imposed upon Brentano’s text mask the peculiar nature of his thinking at the time of the Psychology, and that the key to a more correct interpretation can be derived from an examination of Brentano’s earlier attempts to come to grips with matters of psychology.