The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and WrongBrentano, Franz
Philosophy
The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong
Brentano, Franz
Ethics
[A] I had already written my Critique of Sigwart’s notion of existence
when I became aware of a note in his _Logic_, second ed, p. 390, a
passage which, while it has not made it necessary to alter anything
which I had written, has led me to insert it for the purpose of
comparison. “Das Seiende überhaupt,” Sigwart writes, “kann nicht als
wahrer Gattungsbegriff zu dem einzelnen Seienden betrachtet werden;
es ist, begrifflich betrachtet, nur ein gemeinschaftlicher Name.
Denn, da ‘Sein’ für uns ein Relationsprädikat ist, kann es kein
gemeinschaftliches Merkmal sein, es müsste denn gezeigt werden, dass
dieses Prädikat in einer dem Begriffe alles Seienden gemeinsamen
Bestimmung wurzle.” I fear that the reader will, just as little as
myself, attain by this explanation to clearness concerning Sigwart’s
notion of existence. He will perhaps the better understand why all my
efforts regarding it have proved futile.
s
Sigwart has failed to grasp the nature of judgment in general he
is not, of course, able to understand that of the _negative_ judgment
in particular. He has gone so far in error as to deny to it an equal
right as species along with the positive judgment; no negative
judgment is, he thinks, a direct judgment, its object is rather always
another actual judgment or the attempt to form such a judgment.
In this assertion Sigwart is opposed to some important psychological
views which I have made good in my lecture. It would therefore seem
fitting to resist his attack. For this purpose I shall show: (1)
that Sigwart’s doctrine is badly founded; (2) that it leads to an
irremediable confusion, as in that case Sigwart’s affirmative judgment
is a negative judgment, while his negative judgment if indeed a
judgment at all, and not rather the absence of one, is a positive
judgment, and that moreover his positive judgment really involves a
negative one, along with other similar confusions. (3) Finally I think
it will be possible--thanks to Sigwart’s detailed explanations--to
show the genesis of his error.
1. The first inquiry in the case of an assertion so novel and so
widely diverging from the general view, will be as to its foundation.
With regard to this, he insists above all (p. 150) that the negative
judgment would have no meaning if the thought of the positive
attribution of a predicate had not preceded. But what can this mean?
Either there is here a clear _petitio principii_, or it cannot mean
anything more than that a connection of ideas must have preceded. Now
granting this for a moment (although I have in my _Psychology_ shown
its falsity) this would by no means prove his proposition, since
Sigwart himself recognizes (p. 89 note, and elsewhere) that such a
“subjective connexion of ideas” would still not be a judgment; that
there needs rather to be added to it a certain feeling of constraint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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