Abstract
In 1870, Franz Brentano withdrew to the Benedictine monastery at Andechs in Bavaria to re-evaluate his continued commitment to the priesthood. The Vatican Council had just promulgated the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, and Brentano was now confronted with a clear instance in which his Church—no matter how much they might deny it—had altered its position on a point of instruction fundamental to the faith. As a result, Brentano now considered himself permitted, and even obligated, to undertake a careful review of other doctrines, subjecting them to a new level of scrutiny. Up to this point, he had resisted such scrutiny because, as he himself puts it in the preface to this volume, “faith was presented to me as a sacred obligation, whose violation entailed eternal damnation.” If, however, the Church could now be shown to have compromised its teaching authority by contradicting itself on a point of dogma, then it was impossible that sustained critical scrutiny “could…be construed as a crime.” Nor could “a propensity towards having doubts [be] construed as a dangerous temptation.” He thus undertook a careful review of doctrines that he suspected of being untenable.
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26 August 2021
This chapter was inadvertently published with the Dr. Brentano as the chapter author instead of Dr. Schaefer. It is now corrected to reflect Dr. Schaefer as the author.
Notes
- 1.
Brentano also used this expression early in his career to describe the frustration he felt in trying to understand idealist philosophy and his doubts about the state of philosophy more generally. For more on the phrase and Brentano’s frustration with idealist philosophy, see: Richard Schaefer, ‘The Madness of Franz Brentano: Secularization and the History of Philosophy’.
- 2.
In her correspondence with her other children, Emelie Brentano admitted her deep sorrow over her son’s decision to leave the priesthood. But she was also very clear that she did not wish to stand in his way or be a hindrance. She also states that, though she had no ill-feelings towards his new wife, she considered a meeting with her “impossible” (Schad 1984, 84). Brentano, for his part, was also mindful of not upsetting his mother. In a letter to his former student, Carl Stumpf, he reports having decided not to attend a lecture by Ignaz Döllinger (noted critic of papal infallibility ) out of regard for his mother (Brentano 1989, 16).
- 3.
Brentano’s archive contains a number of draft letters he wrote to Hertling that attest to the closeness of their relationship and to their painful falling-out. In one letter, Brentano expresses his deep frustration over Hertling’s role in preventing him from securing a teaching post at the University in Munich (Brentano n.d.-a.). For a slightly contrasting view, one that suggests Hertling was perhaps less enamored of Brentano and more independent than is usually thought, see: Christof Rapp, ‘The German Chancellor, Confessional Struggles, therein Aristotle & his Allegedly Individual Forms’.
- 4.
Brentano himself seems to have felt as though this early religious zeal may have played a role in his sister’s decision to become a nun, and he sought to make up for this by asking that she be permitted to leave the convent and live with him (Hasenfuss 1978, 44).
- 5.
Clemens Brentano visited Emmerich on several occasions and wrote two books based on the visions she recounted. Europe experienced a wave of Marian apparitions throughout the nineteenth-century, the most famous perhaps being those reported at Lourdes. For more on this, and on the cultural and political significance of the cult of Mary in Germany, see David Blackbourn’s Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany.
- 6.
In a draft letter to his cousin, Georg von Hertling, Brentano recounts how his one-time mentor Johann Baptist Heinrich “covered his ears” rather than listen to his doubts about Christianity and the Church (Brentano n.d.-b.).
- 7.
Brentano’s unpublished correspondence (archived at the Houghton Library, Harvard University) also includes a variety of letters from Franz Adler, a childhood friend whom Franz had helped convert to Christianity from Judaism. In his letters, Adler continues to avow his love and support for Franz, but admits to praying for his return to the Church. Adler was also a priest in Steinamanger (Szombathely), Vienna and Graz.
- 8.
Though he was a progenitor of the movement, Döllinger himself remained ambivalent about it for the remainder of his life. For more on Döllinger see Thomas A. Howard’s The Pope and the Professor.
- 9.
The document carries the title Für und Wider das Christentum, and consists of a series of notes written on multiple pages. One of these is the back of an envelope carrying stamps showing that it was sent from Aschaffenburg to Starnberg in 1870. On the front of the envelope is written “Kloster Andechs” that I presume was written by someone routing the letter from Starnberg to Andechs. There is no conclusive proof that the notes on the envelope and the other pages were not written later. However, the substantial overlap between this document and another document—a ‘Draft Letter” to Haneberg from 1870—suggests that they were written around the same time.
- 10.
It should be noted that Brentano is not always clear about when he is discussing the Christian Church in a generic sense, or his former church, the Roman Catholic Church.
- 11.
Brentano made the same point in an earlier draft “Preface” to the book as well (Brentano 1917).
- 12.
Oskar Kraus, a student of Anton Marty and Brentano’s biographer, was an admirer of Schweitzer’s and the two corresponded for many years. It was through Kraus that Schweitzer came to know of Brentano’s work, of which he wrote: “But how can you say about the volume On the Existence of God, that ‘At the very least, I should read it’? I read everything that I can from Brentano since 1) he is significant and deep, and 2) I love him because of you” (Schweitzer 2006, 446). Kraus, for his part, comments on the parallels between the two men, observing how both men had outgrown the narrow confines of their religion, were committed to cosmopolitanism, and combined intellectual and artistic pursuits (Kraus 1944, viii).
- 13.
Viewed in this way, the book might be taken as an interesting counterpart to John Henry Newman’s Grammar in Aid of Assent. In a letter to Marty, Brentano commented on how losing one’s faith involved “seeing one the most internally beloved and glorious illusions lying torn at one’s feet” (Brentano 1873c).
- 14.
The only categories that Brentano listed in 1870 that are not addressed are: martyrs, saints and miracles (which he does touch on briefly when he seeks to explain why Pascal chose not to discuss them). He also does not pick up a fourth category, namely, the superiority of Christianity compared with other religions. The other categories are substantially the same.
- 15.
Brentano’s library (Handbibliothek) is currently housed at the Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für Österreichische Philosophie in Graz. It includes a number of Pascal’s works.
- 16.
Brentano was also convinced that the issue of apostasy was not an emotional issue, but an intellectual one, and that it demanded a review of the ‘arguments for Christianity.’ He stresses this point in his correspondence with Marty when the latter had decided to rethink his continued commitment to the priesthood (Brentano 1873b).
- 17.
Brentano himself was a victim of this kind of intolerance when, in the early 1870s, his cousin and once close protégé, Georg von Hertling, blocked his bid to teach at the University in Munich. Brentano discusses the matter in the draft of a letter to Hertling (Brentano n.d.-a.). It is unclear if the letter was ever sent.
- 18.
This quote comes from a letter Brentano wrote to Stumpf in March 1870. In it, Brentano refers to how difficult it is for anyone who is a Catholic priest to obtain a teaching post in philosophy. In addition to this “external suffering,” he also notes how being a priest involves an “inner tyranny” against intellectual freedom.
- 19.
Brentano believed that the history of philosophy followed regular cycles of rise and fall, and that philosophy was at its healthiest when it was imbued by a pure, theoretical interest untainted by practical motives. This was at the core of his famous ‘four phases of philosophy’ theory (Brentano 1998, 81–111).
- 20.
Brentano’s correspondence with his former student Hermann Schell is particularly illuminating on this issue, as the two discuss several shared acquaintances who have also suffered crises of faith (Hasenfuss 1978).
- 21.
Brentano was unremitting in affirming the role of providence in his life. In a letter to Marty written in 1871, he declared that it was only faith in divine providence that would help “free us from ourselves” and offer a path to learn the higher truths (Brentano 1871).
- 22.
In this, Brentano is not unlike Bertrand Russell, who in Why I am not a Christian said much the same: “Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching—an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence” (Russell 1953, 17).
- 23.
Brentano says virtually nothing about the other Christian Churches. Still, it is not hard to see how much of what he says against the Catholic Church is applicable to institutional Christianity as a whole. And there are many instances where he seems to be speaking of Christianity as a whole.
- 24.
In this, he might be seen to be arguing something akin to what Charles Hartshorne presents as an alternative vision of a process God in his Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes.
- 25.
Following the recommendation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, I join with Peter Hayes and other scholars who use “antisemitism” rather than the more common “anti-Semitism,” since the latter has the potential to unwittingly legitimate this pseudo-scientific classification.
- 26.
They were married in September 1880. Ida fell ill and died in 1894. The couple lived together with members of Ida’s family in a house at Oppolzergasse 6 in Vienna. The best account of how ‘Onkel Franz’ was viewed by members of the family is offered in Josefine Winter’s Fünfzig Jahre eines Wiener Hauses.
- 27.
This statement needs to be qualified, for I am not saying that Brentano was ‘still’ a Christian. This was a charge that Brentano himself suffered during his lifetime and I have no desire to engage in anything that might be taken as a similar kind of taunt. What I am saying is that, given his vision of history and the role of providence in it, Brentano was given to seeing a kind of ‘progress’ in history that led away from all religions and towards a new and as yet unrealized ‘philosophical humanism.’ He was convinced that all religions, past and present, were only imperfect surrogates of real wisdom. Given his approach to history, however, and what he took to be Jesus’s particularly outsized influence in it, he was more or less bound to see in supersession the best modality for describing the specific transformations he believed he was witnessing.
- 28.
The catalogue of Brentano’s manuscripts includes a listing for a manuscript titled “Die Jüdisch-Christliche Religion und das philosophisch-religiöse Bedürfnis” dated 1904. Unfortunately, the manuscript is listed as missing, and attempts to find it have been unsuccessful so far.
- 29.
It is important to remember too that Brentano was almost entirely blind in the last years of his life, and relied on his second wife to transcribe much of what he wanted to write.
- 30.
Brentano’s genuine desire to be helpful and supportive to those struggling with their religious doubts is evident in his correspondence with Anton Marty and Hermann Schell, to name just a few.
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Schaefer, R. (2021). Chapter 1 Brentano’s The Teaching of Jesus 100 Years Later: An Historical Introduction. In: The Teaching of Jesus and its Enduring Significance. Primary Sources in Phenomenology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68912-4_1
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