Judgment, Perception and pragmatic existence in Franz Brentano’s Thought

Abstract

Brentano’s philosophy, best known for introducing the ancient concept of intentionality to distinguish physical from psychical phenomena, eventually became a peculiar metaphysic in which the object is function of the self-perceptive activity of the subject. The concept of judgment as recognition and the secondary conscience as inner perception play a fundamental role in this process, because they establish, from the beginning of his doctrine, a field of unquestionable reality that fulfills the classical concept of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus, albeit with a very original meaning, because the perceiver is, at the same time, the percept. Finally, through a comparison with phenomenology , we may understand that this new relation introduced by Brentano between subject and object is close to the pragmatist conceptions, anticipating, in its deeper meaning, important philosophical changes of 20^th century existentialism and the vital reason.