Franz Brentano, a German philosopher and psychologist, was the nephew of the poet Clemens Brentano and of the author Bettina von Arnim. He taught at Würzburg and at the University of Vienna. As a teacher he exerted extraordinary influence upon his students, among whom were Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl, Kasimierz Twardowski, Carl Stumpf, Tomas Masaryk, Anton Marty, Christian Ehrenfels, and Franz Hillebrand. Brentano became a Roman Catholic priest in 1864, was involved in the controversy over the doctrine of papal infallibility, and left the church in 1873. At his death he left behind voluminous writings and dictation (he was blind during the last years of his life) on almost every philosophical subject. Some of this material has since been published.

The most important of Brentano's works published during his lifetime is Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig, 1874). The two-volume second edition (Leipzig, 1911) includes revisions and supplementary...