Franz Brentano

“ It is therefore not surprising that Sigwart himself seeks to widen the notion. But he does this in a manner which I find it difficult to understand. At first sight he appears to say in order that something may exist it is not necessary that it can be perceived by me; it is enough if it can be perceived by anybody. Or what else can be meant when Sigwart, after what has just been said, that existence was the agreement of the thing represented with a possible impression, thus continues: “That which exists stands not merely in this relation to me but to all other existing beings?” ”

“ But to observe a fact does not mean to set forth its nature clearly and distinctly. As the nature of the judgment has, until recent times, been almost universally misunderstood, how could it be possible rightly to understand its self-evidence? It is just here that even Descartes’ discernment fails him. ”

“ Such a feeling of compulsion is certainly a force driving to action, but it is assuredly not a sanction conferring validity. Besides, the inclination to vice develops according to the same law of habit, and exercises, as an impulse, the most unbounded sway. The miser’s passion which leads him, in his desire of amassing riches, to submit to the heaviest sacrifices and to commit the most extreme cruelties, certainly constitutes no sanction for his conduct. ”

“ How do we know that anything is really the better? Assuming the existence of simple knowledge of things as good and bad, we appear, so analogy suggests, to derive this insight from certain acts of preferring which have the character of rightness. For, like the simple exercise of pleasure, so also the act of preferring is sometimes of a lower or impulsive, and sometimes of a higher kind, and like the evident judgment, is qualified as right. ”

“ Not every opinion regarding law and morality holding good in society to-day, and which has also the sanction of ethics, flows from these pure and noble sources which, even when hid, have none the less discharged their waters in rich abundance. Many such views have arisen in a way quite unjustifiable from a logical point of view, and an inquiry into the history of their origin shows that they take their rise in lower impulses, in egoistic desires through a transformation due, not to higher influences, but simply to the instinctive force of habit. ”

“ We should then have to say that all the while we are passing a negative judgment, we are in reality always seeking to pass a positive judgment, but that we experience a hindrance in so doing. The same consciousness, however, is felt by one who is clearly aware of the entire absence of a positive ground. For how can any one succeed in believing anything which he at the same time holds to be entirely ungrounded? Of no one, especially if Sigwart’s definition of the judgment be applied as the standard, is this conceivable ”

“ This positive code of morality also may contain both right and wrong enactments. To be truly binding they need to be in accord with the rules which, as we have already seen, are capable of recognition by the reason, as a duty of love towards the highest practical good.
And so we have really found the natural sanction of morality which we sought.
39. I do not linger here to show how this sanction operates. Every one would rather say to himself: “I am acting rightly,” than “I am acting foolishly.” And to no one capable of recognizing what is better is this fact entirely indifferent in choosing. ”

“ Those especially who teach that generally speaking the knowledge, pleasure, and perfection of each individual is, for him, good, their opposites bad, and that all else is in itself indifferent, will perhaps protest against my classing them among the subjectivists. It might even seem on a superficial survey, that they have set up a doctrine of the good equally valid for all. But on a more careful examination we find that this teaching does not even in a single instance, hold one and the same object to be good universally. ”

“ Every more intense pleasure would then be a greater good than one less intense, and a good having double the intensity would be equal to two of half the intensity. In this way everything would become clear.
A moment’s reflection only is needed to shatter an illusion born of such hope. Are we really able to find out that one pleasure is twice as great as another? ”

“ Apart from isolated individuals, I have been just as little able to convince the philosopher, as Miklosich, in his first edition, was able to convince philologists. Where a prejudice has, during centuries, become ever more and more firmly rooted, where a doctrine has penetrated even to the primary school, when a theory has come to be regarded as fundamental upon which much else rests, and so, as it were, by its weight rendered the foundation immovable, in such a case, it is not to be expected that the error will immediately disappear as soon as its refutation is established ”

“ It is certain that no one can entirely avoid error; still, avoidable or unavoidable, every error remains a judgment, which is what it should not be, and is opposed to the indispensable demands of logic. What applies to logic in respect of weakness of thought applies to ethics on the ground of weakness of will. Ethics cannot cease to demand from a man that he should love the acknowledged good and prefer that which is recognized to be better, not putting anything else before the highest practical good. ”

“ Miklosich has termed those simple propositions, in which there is contained no combination of subject and predicate, and in the recognition of which I am in agreement with him, “subjectless propositions.” I am not able entirely to approve his use of the term and the grounds which he has given for its use.
Subject and predicate are correlative conceptions and stand or fall together. A proposition which is truly without a subject must with equal right be regarded as without a predicate. ”

“ Equally true is it that an idea always forms the basis of a judgment, as also of a desire; but it is not true that, in a judgment, there are always several ideas related to one another as subject and predicate. This is certainly the case when I say: “God is just,” though not when I say: “There is a God.”
What, therefore, distinguishes those cases where I have not only an idea but also a judgment? There is here added to the act of presentation a second intentional relation to the object given in presentation, a relation either of recognition or rejection. ”

“ I except only Herbart. But he lost himself in the sphere of aesthetic feeling, until at last we find him so far from the track that he, who in the theoretical philosophy is the irreconcilable enemy of contradiction, nevertheless in practical philosophy (i.e. ethics) tolerates it when his principles—the highest universally valid ideas—rush into conflict with one another. Still his teaching remains in a certain aspect truly related with mine, while, on other sides, other celebrated attempts to discover a basis for ethics find in it points of contact. ”

“ The peculiar nature of insight, the clearness and evidence of certain judgments from which their truth is inseparable has little or nothing to do with any feeling of compulsion. It may well happen that at a given moment I cannot refrain from so judging, yet none the less the essence of its clearness does not consist in the feeling of compulsion, and no consciousness of an obligation so to judge could, as such, afford security as to its truth. ”

“ Aristotle himself, however, for whom the principle was self-evident, assuredly found its denial impossible.
Whatever is evident to any one is of course certain not only for him, but also for every one else who, in the same way, sees its evidence. The judgment, moreover, which is seen to be evident by any one has also universal validity, i.e. the contradictory of what is seen to be evident by one person, cannot be seen to be evident by another person, and every one who believes in its contradictory is in error. ”

“ When it ordains us to love our neighbour as ourselves, what else is taught but that, in the right choice, equality (be it our own or that of others) shall fall with equal weight into the balance, from which follows the subordination of the single individual to the good of the collective whole ”

“ Whoever can believe that the martyr facing with full consciousness the most terrible tortures for the sake of his conviction—and there were some who had no hope of recompense hereafter—was thus inspired by a desire after the greatest possible pleasure, such a man must have either a very defective sense of the facts of the case, or, indeed, have lost all measure of the intensities of pleasure and pain. ”

“ Thus it has often been observed that for thousands of years men have drawn right conclusions without bringing the procedure and the principles which form the condition of the formal validity of the inference into clear consciousness by means of reflection. Indeed when Plato first took the step of reflecting upon it, he was led to set up an entirely false theory which assumed that every inference was a process of reminiscence. ”

“ Thus it happens that the distinguished investigator who has disclosed to us the spirit of Roman law and to whom, as the author of Der Zweck im Recht, we also are bound in many respects to tender our thanks, has yet here, as we see, done nothing else than render the doctrine unclear by confounding it with an essentially different and false doctrine of relativity. According to this doctrine, no proposition in ethics, not even the proposition that the best in the widest sphere ought to be the determining standard of action, would have unexceptional validity. ”

“ Here we have one of the results of his improved theory of judgment!
If the degree of conviction of my belief that 2 + 1 = 3 were one of intensity how powerful would this be! And if the said belief were to be identified, as by Windelband (p. 186) , with feeling, not merely regarded as analogous to feeling, how destructive to our nervous system would the violence of such a shock to the feelings prove! Every physician would be compelled to warn the public against the study of mathematics as calculated to destroy health. ”

“ If only judgments are true, then of everything which is not a judgment the predicate “untrue” must be affirmed, though certainly not on that account the predicate “false.” “False” must therefore be regarded as a positive predicate; and so from Sigwart’s point of view absolutely false in principle, certain as it is that the merely not being convinced (nicht-überzeugt-sein) is no denial, it is equally certain that we have actually no choice; we should be compelled to regard every negative judgment as a positive judgment with a positive predicate. ”

“ It may just as truly be said, “a bird is black,” as, “something black is a bird”; “Socrates is a man,” as, “a man is Socrates”; but Aristotle has already observed that only the former predication is natural, the latter form is opposed to the natural order. And this is really so far true, that we naturally make that term the subject to which we first pay regard in forming a judgment, or to which the hearer must first attend in order to understand the proposition, or to gain knowledge as to its truth or falsity. ”