Abstract
In this paper, I will illustrate the way in which Franz Brentano applied the techniques of philosophical analysis to one of the most perplexing areas of metaphysics — a set of aporiae about motion and rest and about coming into being and passing away. These questions, which were suggested by Aristotle, were discussed at length by philosophers in the scholastic tradition. And they led Mendelssohn — at least, according to the way in which Kant interprets him — to conclude that the soul is immortal. I believe that anyone who is concerned about these questions could profit by considering what Brentano has said about them.
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Notes
Franz Brentano, Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Raum, Zeit and Kontinuum,ed. by Stephan Körner and Roderick M. Chisholm, Felix Meiner, Hamburg, 1976.
Concerning these problems compare: Norman Kretzmann, `Socrates is Whiter than Plato Begins to Be White’, Noûs H (1977), 3 —15; Incipit/Desinit’, in P. K. Machamer and R. G. Turnbull (eds.), Motion and Time, Space and Matter,Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1976, pp. 101–136. See also the references cited at the end of the first of these works.
See Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,trans. by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister, Humanities Press, New York, 1973, p. 357.
Physica 6. 5. 236a.
Physica 6. 8. 238b.
The quotation is from a brief undated manuscript of Brentano’s entitled Plerose’ and classified in Brentano’s Nachlass as Megethologie 15.
Or if we leave open the possibility that the thing bounces and immediately goes up again, we will say: “There is a moment which bounds a prior but not a subsequent downward motion, and this is the moment at which the thing ceases to go down”.
Critique of Pure Reason,B413–414; N. Kemp Smith edition, Macmillan, London, 1929, pp. 372–373.
Op. cit.,B414; Kemp Smith, p. 373.
See Brentano’s Kategorienlehre,ed. by Alfred Kastil, Felix Meiner. Hamburg, 1968, pp. 90–97.
This problem is discussed in detail by F. Suarez, Disputacidnes Metafisicas 50. 2. 16, ed. and trans. by S. Râbade Romea, S. Caballero Sanchez, and A. Puigcervar Zan6n, Biblioteca hisp pica de filosofia, Madrid, Vol 7, pp. 144–150.
Philip E. B. Jourdain, The Philosophy of Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss**ll, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1918, p. 49.
Kategorienlehre,p. 93.
14 The discussion appears on pp. 50–52 of Brentano’s Würzburger Metaphysik Kolleg’, classified as M96 among the upublished manuscripts of Brentano.
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Chisholm, R.M. (1980). Beginnings and Endings. In: Van Inwagen, P. (eds) Time and Cause. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3528-5_2
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