Carlo Ierna
I’m an assistant professor in history of philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
2019-2024 I was part of the HERMES consortium at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
I’ve previously been part-time, fixed-term lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Utrecht University, Leiden University, Radboud University Nijmegen, and the University of Groningen.
From 2012 to 2016 I was a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University with an NWO VENI research project on the renewal of the ideal of “Philosophy as Science” in the School of Brentano.
I have an MA in Philosophy (2002) and an MSc in Cognitive Artificial Intelligence (2008) from Utrecht University, and a PhD in Philosophy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2009).
2019-2024 I was part of the HERMES consortium at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
I’ve previously been part-time, fixed-term lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Utrecht University, Leiden University, Radboud University Nijmegen, and the University of Groningen.
From 2012 to 2016 I was a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University with an NWO VENI research project on the renewal of the ideal of “Philosophy as Science” in the School of Brentano.
I have an MA in Philosophy (2002) and an MSc in Cognitive Artificial Intelligence (2008) from Utrecht University, and a PhD in Philosophy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2009).
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Books by Carlo Ierna
Starting from the analysis of how the first American Scholars of Edmund Husserl's thought opened the door to the reception of his texts, the book explores the first encounters between Pragmatism and Husserlian Phenomenology in American Universities. The study focuses, then, on those Scholars who fled from Europe to America, from 1933 onwards, to escape Nazism - Felix Kaufmann, Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Herbert Spiegelberg, Fritz Kaufmann, among the most notable - and illustrates how their teaching provided the very basis for the spreading of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America.
The volume examines, then, the action of the 20th Century North-American Husserl Scholars, together with those places, societies, centers, and journals, specifically created to represent the development of the studies devoted to Husserlian Phenomenology in the U.S., with a focus of the Regional Phenomenological Schools.
Articles by Carlo Ierna
An attempt will be made at reconstructing the lost Habilitationsschrift (of which only the first chapter survives, which we know as Über den Begriff der Zahl). The examined sources show that the original version of the Habilitationsschrift was by far broader than the printed version, and included most topics of the PA.
The article contains an extensive and detailed comparison of these texts to illustrate the changes in Husserl’s position before and after February 1890. This date is taken as a turning point in his development, because of Husserl’s announcement in a letter to Carl Stumpf that he was mistaken in his basic assumption, i.e. that the (psychological) analysis of the concept of Anzahl would yield a foundation for arithmetic. Some interesting conclusions in this respect can also be drawn from an unpublished lecture that Husserl held in the WS 1889/90, in which he anticipates aspects of his position hitherto deemed to belong to the last phases of the PA.
Starting from the analysis of how the first American Scholars of Edmund Husserl's thought opened the door to the reception of his texts, the book explores the first encounters between Pragmatism and Husserlian Phenomenology in American Universities. The study focuses, then, on those Scholars who fled from Europe to America, from 1933 onwards, to escape Nazism - Felix Kaufmann, Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Herbert Spiegelberg, Fritz Kaufmann, among the most notable - and illustrates how their teaching provided the very basis for the spreading of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America.
The volume examines, then, the action of the 20th Century North-American Husserl Scholars, together with those places, societies, centers, and journals, specifically created to represent the development of the studies devoted to Husserlian Phenomenology in the U.S., with a focus of the Regional Phenomenological Schools.
An attempt will be made at reconstructing the lost Habilitationsschrift (of which only the first chapter survives, which we know as Über den Begriff der Zahl). The examined sources show that the original version of the Habilitationsschrift was by far broader than the printed version, and included most topics of the PA.
The article contains an extensive and detailed comparison of these texts to illustrate the changes in Husserl’s position before and after February 1890. This date is taken as a turning point in his development, because of Husserl’s announcement in a letter to Carl Stumpf that he was mistaken in his basic assumption, i.e. that the (psychological) analysis of the concept of Anzahl would yield a foundation for arithmetic. Some interesting conclusions in this respect can also be drawn from an unpublished lecture that Husserl held in the WS 1889/90, in which he anticipates aspects of his position hitherto deemed to belong to the last phases of the PA.
Franz Brentano’s 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint presents us with a framework and methodology for performing scientific research in psychology. Moreover, this project provides the foundation for the more ambitious ideal of the renewal of philosophy as a science, which had been Brentano’s aim ever since defending his habilitation thesis that “the true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences”. Brentano therefore needs to carefully articulate the precise position and role of his scientific psychology among the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften. What does his ideal of philosophy as science consist in? What is the relation between his scientific psychology and philosophy? How is psychology related to the natural sciences, in particular psycho-physics and physiology?
Nowadays Brentano is probably remembered mostly (if at all) for re-introducing the concept of intentionality in philosophy: that all mental acts (believing, fearing, willing, etc.) are directed at something or have something as content. However, though often forgotten and overlooked due to contingent historical circumstances, the scientific paradigm of the School of Brentano was very fruitful and highly
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OZSW Conference 2013 – Erasmus University Rotterdam
influential, throughout the second half of the 19th and into the 20th century. Brentano already started to attract disciples such as Carl Stumpf and Anton Marty to his cause right after his passionate defence of his thesis. His fame and influence increased when he was called to the chair of philosophy in Vienna and published his Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint in 1874. During the two decades in Vienna he taught ea. Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl, and Kazimierz Twardowski. Brentano’s students put his ideals into practice in the movements and schools they founded and influenced: i.a. the Berlin and Graz schools of Gestalt psychology, Prague linguistics, the phenomenological movement and Polish logic. Their diversity and success eclipsed the common background and shared origin of the underlying ideal and their unity as a school, acknowledging Brentano merely as precursor. Brentano’s central role was also insufficiently recognized because his theories had spread mostly through his unpublished teachings and the division of labour he had established in his School obscured the underlying methodological unity. This has even led scholars to speak of “Brentano’s invisibility”. Yet Brentano’s project of the renewal of philosophy as science formed the core of the general framework for doing scientific research in philosophy that all his students started out with. What did this framework consist in?
While philosophy would use the method of natural science, its domain would not be nature, but consciousness: a full-blooded science of the mind that did not require a reduction to the physical in order to be scientific. For Brentano, such a science of consciousness was empirical, but not necessarily purely experimental, and relied mostly, though not exclusively, on subjective methods, but was not introspective. Using intentionality as a criterion we can distinguish natural and mental phenomena, i.e. physical and psychical phenomena, or in other words, phenomena of external and internal perception. Physical phenomena would be colour, tone, warmth, etc.; psychical phenomena would be the seeing of the colour, the hearing of the tone, the feeling of the warmth, etc. Hence, philosophy and the Geisteswissenschaften in general would be the sciences that deal primarily with the mind, with consciousness, with its acts, contents, objects and its expressions. While making a clear distinction between the sciences of physical and the sciences of psychical phenomena, the Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften broadly understood, Brentano argues that they are essentially founded on the same empirical method, again broadly understood, and based on perception and experience. Brentano points out that both the sciences of the psychical and the physical have a common source in the analysis of sensations. From this common starting point we can then proceed inductively in both directions, outward and inward, in finding the laws of coexistence and succession of all phenomena. More specifically, we can first induce more general laws, then deduce more specific ones, and finally verify them through concrete experience. For Brentano, philosophy is not done by grandiose speculation, but by humble, detailed investigation. “We are taking the first steps towards the renewal of philosophy as science” he told his students, not by building up “proud systems”, but by humbly “cultivating fallow scientific ground”.
As we can see from the success and influence of his students and their schools, Brentano’s project of renewing philosophy as science turned out to be quite fruitful in highly disparate fields. My main goal is to provide a reconstruction and reassessment of Brentano’s project as a foundational and unifying factor in the School of Brentano. Brentano’s ideal of philosophy as science is to all effects “a programme for scientific research” showing that it is possible to conduct scientific research in philosophy and that the Geisteswissenschaften can be understood to be indeed full-blooded sciences in their own right: unnatural sciences.
Brentano meant to give an empirical foundation to philosophy and the Geisteswissenschaften through his well-known re-introduction of the concept of intentionality as criterion to distinguish internal and external perception. While philosophy would use the empirical methods of the natural sciences, its domain would not be nature, but consciousness. The philosophical psychology Brentano envisioned would then be a full-blooded science of the mind that did not require any further reduction to a physical level in order to be scientific. This science of consciousness would be empirical i.e. based on perception and experience, but not necessarily experimental, and it would use subjective methods, but without being introspective.
Brentano’s students Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl and others adapted and spread his theories far and wide in the schools and movements they founded and influenced: Gestalt psychology, Prague linguistics, phenomenology, etc..
Though often forgotten and overlooked due to contingent historical circumstances, the scientific paradigm of the School of Brentano was very fruitful and highly influential in philosophy and the human sciences in general, throughout the second half of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Still today it can offer a radical perspective on the independent scientific dignity of the humanities.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Preface by U. Melle
PART I The Nature and Method of Phenomenology
1 Husserl on First Philosophy by R. Sokolowski
2 Le sens de la phénoménologie by M. Richir
3 Transzendentale Phänomenologie? by R. Bernet
4 Husserl and the ‘absolute’ by D. Zahavi
5 Husserls Beweis für den transzendentalen Idealismus by U. Melle
6 Phenomenology as First Philosophy: A Prehistory by S. Luft
7 Der methodologische Transzendentalismus der Phänomenologie by L. Tengelyi
PART II Phenomenology and the Sciences
8 Husserl contra Carnap : la démarcation des sciences by D. Pradelle
9 Phänomenologische Methoden und empirische Erkenntnisse by D. Lohmar
10 Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences: Husserl’s early Criticism of Brentano by D. Fisette
11 Mathesis universalis et géométrie : Husserl et Grassmann by V. Gérard
III Phenomenology and Consciousness
12 Tamino’s Eyes, Pamina’s Gaze: Husserl’s Phenomenology of Image-Consciousness Refashioned by N. de Warren
13 Towards a Phenomenological Account of Personal Identity by H. Jacobs
14 Husserl’s Subjectivism: The “thoroughly peculiar ‘forms’” of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind by S. Crowell
15 “So You Want to Naturalize Consciousness?” “Why, why not?” – “But How?” Husserl meeting some offspring by E. Marbach
16 Philosophy and ‘Experience’: A Conflict of Interests? by F. Mattens
PART IV Phenomenology and Practical Philosophy
17 Self-Responsibility and Eudaimonia by J. Drummond
18 Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer phänomenologischen Theorie des Handelns: Überlegungen zu Davidson und Husserl by K. Mertens
19 Husserl und das Faktum der praktischen Vernunft:Anstoß und Herausforderung einer phänomenologischen Ethik der Person by S. Loidolt
20 Erde und Leib: Ort der Ökologie nach Husserl by H.R. Sepp
PART V Reality and Ideality
21 The Universal as “What is in Common”: Comments on the Proton-Pseudos in Husserl’s Doctrine of the Intuition of Essence by R. Sowa
22 Die Kulturbedeutung der Intentionalität: Zu Husserls Wirklichkeitsbegriff by E.W. Orth
23 La partition du réel : Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience by C. Majolino
24 Husserl’s Mereological Argument for Intentional Constitution by A. Serrano de Haro
25 Phenomenology in a different voice: Husserl and Nishida in the 1930s by T. Sakakibara
26 Thinking about Non-Existence by L. Alweiss
27 Gott in Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie by K. Held"