Franz Brentano and the philosophical crises in the four phases of its history

Abstract

This paper analyzes the controversial "theory of the four phases of philosophy," as published by Franz Brentano in 1895, in order to present the role of philosophical crises within the Western historical-philosophical movement. We first describe how Brentano takes the classical division of history into three periods (ancient, medieval, and modern) in order to subdivide each of these periods into four distinct philosophical movements (pure interest philosophical movement, practical interest philosophical movement, skeptical philosophical movement, and mystical philosophical movement). Our analysis will make explicit that, according to the main thesis defended there by Brentano, (a) philosophical movements succeed each other within each historical period as a function of a crisis intrinsic to the historical process of philosophy itself and (b) what defines the philosophical crisis is the way in which each of the philosophical movements, constituent of the second, third, and fourth phases, differ from the philosophical movement constituent of the first phase. As a conclusion to our analysis, we will argue that the Brentanian philosophical historical presuppositions of his "4th habilitation thesis" are the fundamental criteria of ascending philosophy found in the methods of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Bacon, and Descartes. In other words, we maintain that it was a matter, for Brentano, of recognizing in such philosophical methods their power to sustain that kind of perception capable of guaranteeing evidence to knowledge, for this would be the way to prevent philosophy from (i) replacing its theoretical interest with practical interest, (ii) giving itself over to skepticism, or even, (iii) succumbing to mysticism.