FRANZ BRENTANO ET LE PRINCIPE DE RÉFÉRENCE INTENTIONELLE

In this thesis, I show in what way Brentano’s notion of intentionality is tied to a form of Platonising Aristotelianism. For both his mereological theory and his theory of knowledge depend on this Platonic element. In the first part, I show that the notion of intentionality is present as early as the dissertation On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862) in which Brentano takes up the ontological distinction between ‘in itself’ and ‘in the other’ which is of Platonic rather than Aristotelian stamp, in order to deduce from it, according to a single principle, the Aristotelian categories.