1 Introduction
Allusions are often made to the more or less intimate relations between early analytic philosophy—Frege, Russell, Moore—and Austrian philosophy—Brentano and his students, Meinong, Husserl, Ehrenfels, Twardowski, Marty, Kerry and Stumpf. But my impression is that in spite of the pioneering efforts of Eva Picardi, 1 Roderick Chisholm, Michael Dummett, Peter Simons, Barry Smith and others, these relations are still unfamiliar and ill-understood. The relevant relations are of two kinds. First, the conceptual relations between the philosophies of the Austrians and the philosophies of the founders of analytic philosophy. Second, relations of influence and epistemic relations—the knowledge some of these philosophers had of the philosophies of the others, in particular what they learned from each other. Claims about relations of the second kind often presuppose some grasp of relations of the first kind particularly when they go beyond claims about who read, praised, criticised what.
In what follows I set out a series of sketches of some aspects of the relations between early analytic and Austrian philosophy.
2 Stout Opens Cambridge’s Doors to the Austrians
Stout, a teacher of Russell and Moore, seems to have introduced the philosophies of Brentano and his pupils to Cambridge. 2 Russell and Moore then quickly turn their attention to the ideas mentioned by Stout and to other publications in the Brentanian tradition. And other Cambridge philosophers, Broad, McTaggart and Laird and, for example, Findlay, were to keep this interest in Austrian philosophy alive. 3
Stout refers in his 1896 Analytic Psychology (I, II) to Brentano’s Psychologie (1874), Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889) and to his article „Das Genie“ (1882). He also refers to the work of three of Brentano’s students—Ehrenfels’ 1890 article “Über Gestaltqualitäten” (Stout 1896, I 65), Meinong’s 1891 article “Zur Psychologie der Komplexionen und Relationen” and to work by Stumpf (Stout 1896, I 56–59, 70–71, 250). Stout discusses in detail Brentano’s account of mental modes (Stout 1896, I 38–43), Brentano’s arguments in favour of the distinction between presentings, on the one hand, and believing or judging, on the other hand (Stout 1896, I 99–111) and “Brentano’s analysis” of the distinction between feeling and conation (Stout 1896, I 116–121). He briefly outlines Brentano’s views about intellectual and non-intellectual correctness or rightness, the correctness of judgings and of emotings, in the course of expounding Brentano’s distinction between presentings, on the one hand, and judgings, emotings and conatings, on the other hand:
Brentano points out that mere ideas cannot strictly speaking be right or wrong. They do not possess any virtue or vice, if we may be allowed the expression, by reason of which they can be approved or disapproved of. Within the sphere of desire,—of love and hate,—it is otherwise. Here we find a distinction between the morally good and the morally bad. Similarly, in the case of belief there is a corresponding distinction between truth and error. (Stout 1896, I 111)
As a summary of Brentano’s view, this is both incorrect and idiosyncratic but it does present Brentano’s main claim, a revival of a view to be found in Plato and Aristotle, that judgings as well as emotings and desiring—which Brentano calls phenomena of love and hate—are correct or incorrect. 4 Stout correctly notes that “Brentano seems to play with the word Lieben (liking), much as Mill does with the word ‘pleasure’” (Stout 1896, I 120).
Stout concurs with (what he calls) Brentano’s view that affirmation and denial can vary in intensity and goes on to distinguish the degrees of firmness or fixity of assurance and conviction from degrees of intensity of belief. Like some later philosophers, he accepts the former and rejects the latter (Stout 1896, I 110).
Chapter III of Stout’s (1896) Analytic Psychology is entitled “The Apprehension of Form” and deals with mereology and its epistemology. It begins as follows:
Every whole involves (i) component parts, and (2) the form of combination in which these parts are united. The nature of the components varies in different cases, and so does their mode of grouping. We have now to consider the following questions : How far is the apprehension of a certain form of combination distinct from and independent of the apprehension of its constituent parts? and, conversely: How far is the apprehension of the components of a certain kind of whole distinct from and independent of the apprehension of its form of synthesis? (Stout 1896, I 65)
These distinctions and questions are at the centre of the work of Brentano and his pupils. And Stout appends an interesting note to the introductory passage just quoted, referring to the already mentioned 1890 article in which Ehrenfels launched Gestalt Psychology:
Chr. Ehrenfels…has discussed certain aspects of this question …What I designate as form or plan of combination he calls a ‘shape-quality’. This use of words sounds strange in German, and it would certainly appear very uncouth in English. I have preferred to say ‘form’ instead of ‘shape’. It is advisable however to point out that my application of the word coincides rather with ordinary usage than with the technical usage of Kant. Form in the text does not stand for the universal and necessary as opposed to the particular and contingent. Forms of combination may be as concrete and particular as the elements combined.
In other words, the forms of combination of particular sounds are as concrete and particular as the sounds themselves, they are all what Stout will later call “abstract particulars” and what Husserl had already called “Momente”. Stout’s concrete, particular forms of combination are Husserl’s “moments of unity”, of which “figural moments” are a species.
Stout distinguishes sharply between mereology and its epistemology:
It should be noted that we do not propose to investigate the relation of combination to elements combined in the actual constitution of an objective whole; our problem concerns only the relation of apprehension of form to apprehension of matter. Even if an objective whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts taken collectively, it does not follow that our cognisance of this whole is to be identified with our cognisance of all its parts. In the next place it must be understood that we are not here concerned with mental combination. If the apprehension of form is in any sense distinct and independent of the apprehension of matter, it is itself not a form of mental combination, but a material constituent of consciousness, comparable in this respect with the perception of red or blue. In the sequel we shall have to inquire how, in mental process, the apprehension of the form of a whole conditions and is conditioned by that of its constituent parts. This will be in a strict sense an inquiry into mental form of combination. (Stout 1896, I 65–66)
He then asks: “Can the form of combination remain the same or relatively the same, while the constituents vary?” His affirmative answer is a variation on Ehrenfels’ account of the transposability of Gestalt qualities, although Ehrenfels is no longer mentioned. But Stout does refer to the discussion of an alternative answer given by Meinong (Stout 1896, I 70). Stout also asks: “Is it possible to apprehend all the components of a whole without apprehending their mode of connection?” and gives an affirmative answer to this question, too, quoting Stumpf’s view that
we may be aware of two notes differing in pitch, and we may be aware that they do so differ, without observing ...