Grazer Philosophische Studien

Volume 5, 1978

On the Significance of the Correspondence Between Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl

This correspondence, still unpublished, extends over fourty years. Its significance is both biographical and philosophical. Biographically it shows Brentano's tolerant friendship for his emancipated student and Husserl's unwavering veneration for his only philosophical teacher. The philosophical issues taken up are Euclidean axiomatics, Husserl's departure from Brentano in the Logical Investigations by distinguishing two types of logic as the way out from psychologism, and the possibility of negative presentations, but not Husserl's new phenomenology. Few agreements are reached, but the dissents were clarified.