Ion Tănăsescu, “The Twofold Meaning of Brentano’s “Pure Theoretical Interest” and His Metaphysics and Psychology”, 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.
The thesis of this paper is that Brentano’s theory of the phases of philosophy, his metaphysics, and his psychology are the expression of the fusion of two meanings of “pure theoretical interest”: the traditional meaning of interest in the causes and principles of things and the modern meaning of interest in phenomena and their laws. In the first two parts of the study, I will show how the special attention paid by the current exegesis to Brentano’s fourth habilitation thesis has led to the interpretation of his theory of the phases of philosophy considering only the modern meaning of theoretical interest and leaving aside its fundamental metaphysical-theological dimension corresponding to its traditional meaning. The analysis of these problems constitutes the starting point for establishing Brentano’s position in relation to some of the most important orientations of the philosophy of the 19thcentury: Kantianism and German Idealism, the German Aristotle Revival, and the positive thought of Comte and Mill.
The last part of the paper deals with Brentanian psychology and argues that, although it retains an important metaphysical dimension, it is elaborated within the horizon of theoretical interest in the modern sense, i. e., psychology as a science of psychical phenomena working with a method inspired by natural science. At the same time, the study argues that Brentano’s empirical psychology and his descriptive psychology, despite their continuity, constitute two distinct theoretical projects elaborated mainly in the sphere of theoretical interest in the modern sense. To this end, six main differences between Brentano’s empirical psychology and his descriptive psychology are highlighted and analyzed. These differences concern the type of science, goals, methodology, types of laws, classification criteria, and classes of psychological phenomena with which the two psychologies work.