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The Brentano School and the History of Analytic Philosophy: Reply to Röck

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Abstract

In ‘Brentano’s Methodology as a Path through the Divide’, Röck makes two related claims. (A) Röck argues that there exists a philosophical dilemma between description and logical analysis, and that the current divide between continental phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of the dilemma. (B) Röck further argues that Brentano’s work integrates description and logical analysis in a way which ‘can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy’ (Axiomathes 27:475–489, 2017). Without disputing Röck’s claim (B) about the suitability of Brentano’s work for such an integration, this paper questions (A) by examining the influence of Brentano and his school on early analytic philosophy. As recent scholarship in the history of analytic philosophy demonstrates, contrary to Röck’s contention, many prominent analytic philosophers conversed with Brentano and his school’s conceptions of phenomenological description.

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Notes

  1. Under the banner of ‘early analytic philosophy’ I speak of those works and figures that are commonly acknowledged as canonical in the analytic tradition, though placing them under the banner ‘analytic philosophy’ would be, strictly speaking, an anachronism. The term only first occurs during the 1930 s (Beaney 2013, 44), though major figures and works already existed decades earlier. I do not mean to imply that early analytic philosophers, from Frege to the Vienna Circle, were somehow less ‘analytic’ than those that come later.

  2. It is clear that Röck’s thesis is not identical to Dummett’s, since she at times she speaks more broadly about Brentano’s influence on analytic philosophy through his work ‘on the refinement and clarification of language, of concepts, and arguments, and on the improvement of the logical structures on which the arguments are based’ (p. 482). Nonetheless, Röck also makes the claim that Brentano’s analytic reception is filtered through Frege’s semantic focus.

  3. On connected family resemblance accounts of analytic and continental philosophy (see e.g. Stroll 2000; Glock 2008; Reynolds and Chase 2011).

  4. It is also questionable whether Frege himself undertook the linguistic turn (see e.g. Baker and Hacker 1983; Glock 2008, p. 131).

  5. For further discussion of Moore’s influence by the Brentano school, (see Milkov 2004).

  6. Citing the same passage, Poli, goes as far as to call Brentano ‘one of the founders of the analytic movement and in particular of the Vienna Circle’ (2017, p. 5; see also Albertazzi 1996, 5). Interpreted literally this is true insofar as Brentano’s chair at the University of Vienna passed from Mach to Boltzman to Schlick (and later Carnap) (Poli 1997, pp. 19–20).

  7. See Haddock (2008, p. 5); Stone 2010; Carus 2016. Contrary to Haddock (2008), Stone (2010) argues that the waning of Husserl’s influence on Carnap already began in Der Raum. Contrary to both, Carus (2016) argues that this change of outlook only occurred after 1924.

  8. One such interesting case is that of Kurt Gödel, who at one time had been a member of the Circle, would later develop an interest in Husserl’s work (see Føllesdal 1995).

  9. Neumann wrote literary works, and did not publish any works in academic philosophy.

  10. Regardless of whether it is called ‘phenomenology’ or not, description took center-stage in Wittgenstein’s work. He went so far as to claim that ‘Philosophy really is “purely descriptive”’ (Wittgenstein 1958, p. 18).

  11. (See e.g. Mulligan 2003, pp. 264–266). Mulligan points to a number of convergences between the Brentano school and Oxford philosophers including Urmson, Grice, Kneale, Dummett, Gareth Evans, Bernard Williams, Kit Fine, and Timothy Williamson; some of these similarities relate to Brentano’s descriptive project.

  12. The following interesting pattern emerges from the history of Brentano’s analytic reception outlined above: a number of analytic philosophers, with Carnap and Ryle being the most prominent examples, acknowledge having been deeply influenced by Brentano’s school in the early part of their careers, while proceeding to disavow this influence in later work. Scholars have questioned such disavowals (e.g. Haddock 2008; Thomasson 2002), which played a significant role in creating the idea that there exists a divide between analytic philosophy and phenomenology (see Vrahimis 2013). Carnap, Ryle, and others listed above, would continue their engagement with both descriptive and analytic projects, even after having presented the Brentanian influence on both aspects of their work as waning.

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  1. Department of Classics and Philosophy, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Andreas Vrahimis

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Vrahimis, A. The Brentano School and the History of Analytic Philosophy: Reply to Röck. Axiomathes 28, 363–374 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-018-9374-6

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