Ion Tănăsescu – Monism and Particularism: Methodology in Brentano’s Psychology (Axiomathes, Vol. 29, Issue 4, 2019)

The paper argues that Brentano was the exponent of a methodological monism, which is based on the requirement that science should be grounded on  experience, and not on a speculative-idealistic principle, as in the case of German idealism. In Brentano’s psychological writings, this methodological requirement concretized in two different theses: (T1) The method of psychology is  identical with  the method of natural science; (T2) The method of psychology is  inspired by  the method of natural science. The thesis of this study is that an important part of  Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint  is elaborated in accordance with T1. By contrast, Brentano’s  Descriptive Psychology  illustrates the subsequent decision to give up this idea. In its place, the aforementioned requirement is elaborated in the spirit of a methodological particularism that recommends the scientist elaborate his methods according to the specificity of the phenomena under investigation and to the difficulties that need to be overcome when approaching them.