Schriften zu Aristoteles
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Franz Brentano
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Edited by:
Mauro Antonelli
Edited by renowned Brentano scholars Mauro Antonelli and Thomas Binder, this edition makes available for the first time all of Franz Brentano’s writings that he published himself. It includes systematic works such as Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong as well as many shorter essays, including those on the history of philosophy.
Topics
The notion of contradiction is of fundamental importance in several fields. It is a central topic in the history of ancient philosophy: the very beginning of philosophy in history seems to be closely connected to the discovery of contradictions in the Greek language. It is of crucial importance in metaphysics: Aristotle’s inquiry into the nature of being is inspired by the need of avoiding (and diagnosing) the occurrence of contradictions. It is evidently, in many senses, one of the basic concerns of logic. The problem of contradiction is also the problem of disagreement, so the theme is also the core of any political reflection about democratic confrontation, relativism and the role of the concept of truth in political practice. A complete theory about the problematic and heuristic relevance of contradictions in any field has been typically given by the authors of German Idealism, and specifically by the tradition of Hegelianism, so the issue is crucial for the history of philosophy after Kant. The problem of the existence, uses, and nature of contradictions is finally at the core of many contemporary discussions in philosophy: discussions about paradoxes, and the plausibility of paraconsistent logics, but also about the status of human subjects, as located in social and political contexts, and about the destiny of Marxism.
The papers collected in this volume present some of the most recent results of the work about contradictions in philosophical logic; examine the history of contradiction in crucial phases of philosophical thought (in ancient philosophy and in German philosophy after Kant); consider the relevance of contradictions for political and philosophical actuality. From this consideration, and despite the differences between approaches and styles, a common question emerges, crossing all the papers. It is the question of the irreducibility, reality and productive force of (some) contradictions.
Brentano’s 1867 habilitation thesis on the Aristotle’s view of psychology is of fundamental significance in two ways: First, it had a considerable influence on Aristotle studies in that it sparked a vigorous debate with Eduard Zeller. Second, it drew particular attention within Brentano studies, as Brentano used it to draw out certain aspects of Aristotelian psychology.
This volume presents Brentano's last word in a decades-long literary feud with the eminent Berlin historian of philosophy, Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), in which he once again lays out his arguments for Aristotle's creatianism, that is, the doctrine that the human nus as a part of divine thinking has not existed for eternity but is created by the Aristotelian deity directly and survives the body's decay.
Aristotle and his World View is the final word in Franz Brentano’s lifelong engagement with Aristotle. By concentrating on Aristotelian metaphysics and its idea of god, he tries to show that Aristotle’s teachings, often regarded as dark and self-contradictory, can be coherently reconstructed, and that Aristotle may be viewed as an advocate of metaphysical optimism.
