Brentano’s Vienna teaching style shaped Husserl’s philosophical direction.

Evidence

Brentano was the sort of teacher who could work such miracles. A former priest trained in Aristotelian philosophy, he had resigned from the priesthood and lost an earlier teaching job after questioning the Church’s new doctrine of papal infallibility, which he considered indefensible. The unemployed Brentano spent a year travelling around Europe learning about other ideas, including those from the new field of experimental psychology, and decided that traditional philosophy needed reinvigorating from such sources. He then began teaching again in the more open-minded University of Vienna. There, he encouraged his students to break with tradition, criticise the great philosophers of the past, and think for themselves, while also taking care to be methodical. This was the combination that galvanized Husserl. Armed with Brentano’s innovations, he embarked on his own philosophical work. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 129

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Brentano as the teacher behind Husserl’s turn, grounding the phenomenology lineage that the rest of the chapter and book builds on.
• XREF: connects to: Both Heidegger and Husserl traced their starting points to the same teacher, Brentano — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 175; Husserl founded phenomenology after Brentano converted him from mathematics to philosophy — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 128; Brentano’s Aristotle thesis diverted Heidegger toward Being while other Brentano work turned Husserl inward — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 175

Broader Connections

• Both Heidegger and Husserl traced their starting points to the same teacher, Brentano #corroborates (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 175