Alexandru Bejinariu, “‘Was gilt?’ On Husserl’s and Brentano’s Standpoints on Ideal Objects and Evidence”, in Susan Krantz Gabriel, Ion Tănăsescu, (eds.), Franz Brentano and the 19th Century Idea of Philosophy as a Science: Upon the Sesquicentennial of Franz Brentano’s Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, De Gruyter, 2025.
It is well-known that one of Husserl’s main departures from Brentanian orthodoxy is his acceptance of meanings in themselves. This view further allowed him to establish the theoretical domain of pure logic, which Brentano strongly opposed. This paper aims to revisit and reinterpret this divide in the light of the fact that both Brentano’s descriptive psychology as well as Husserl’s early phenomenology of the Logical Investigationswork with apodictic evident truths. The first section shows how Brentano accounts for apodictic knowledge on the ground of what he calls induction in a broader sense and thus avoids postulating any sort of ideal object. Drawing on the correspondence between Brentano and Husserl from 1904 – 1905, the second section sketches Husserl’s central arguments for the acceptance of ideal meanings and explores Brentano’s main points of criticism. By following the theoretical consequences of Husserl’s account of ideal meanings for his early analyses of expressions, the third section sets the stage for a new critical approach to Brentano’s account of irrealia.Finally, the fourth section delves deeper into Husserl’s species-conception of meanings in order to elaborate an argument against Brentano’s claim that Husserl’s envisioned science of pure logic would be nothing else than a mere game of wits.