Lamberto, Maria-Luisa
Congratulations on passing the viva voce examination
on 10 November 2015.
Dissertation topic:
"Time and Existence - The Problem of Description and the Question of God in Franz Brentano."
Contact address at the University:
Institute of Philosophy
Residence - South Wing
97070 Würzburg
Phone (09 31) 31-2778
Fax (09 31) 31-2855
First supervisor: Prof. Dr Elmar Klinger (retired)
Second supervisors:
Prof. Dr Wilhelm Baumgartner
Prof. Dr Georg Stenger (Univ. Vienna)
Class in the Graduate School: "Antiquity, History and Religion"
Doctorate in the Graduate School since WS 2007/2008.
Abstract:
If we are to speak of a programme of description, description must prove to be fundamental to the overall development of Brentano's thought. The present work sets itself the task of investigating whether description, in the comprehensive and multifaceted meaning that Brentano assigns to it in psychology and philosophy, actually also functions as a programmatic stance in the discussion of the question of God.
The relationship between time and existence can be analysed on the basis of DP, whereby two concepts are essential: Consciousness and soul. They are not congruent for Brentano. The totality of psychic acts or each individual act is consciousness. This consciousness is something unified, not something simple: its analysis expresses the diversity of its parts and the differently structured relationships of these parts to one another. And it cannot exist without the soul.
Furthermore, a constantly evolving ontology is part of the description. Brentano reverses the Aristotelian substance-accidence relationship (interpreted through his mereology). The soul is the substance: every psychic act contains this soul and is an accident of it. Even if all psychic activity were to cease, the soul would continue to exist as the ultimate unifying, individualising substrate of the person.
The analysis of parts of consciousness is deepened by the further developed description: The modes of conceptualisation and the univocal concept of something eliminate all irrealia as existents. In every area, description demands a precise examination of the mental categories of epistemology: they belong to our experience, can be expressed precisely through language and are not abstract concepts. Existence is recognised through a conscious and motivated judgement: It is not in itself a concept, it does not name anything. The word existence is a synsemantic: the recognition of existence or of an assertoric judgement is embedded in the realisation (or process) of our mental activities, i.e. our acts of cognition. Existence can only be recognised thanks to its "interaction with experience".
The close relationship between soul and consciousness is the starting point for addressing the question of God. This question is part of the human condition and demands an answer. The descriptive analysis of consciousness allows this state of mind to be explicitly recognised: What descriptive analysis is able to achieve can and should be applied to the question of God. The descriptive unfolding of Brentano's concept of God shows whether this is possible or expedient. Temporality, the concept of the limit in the theory of the continuum, the coincidence of temporality and thinghood, the descriptive solution to the question of "esse" and "essentia", the continuum of transcendent time - all these are elements of a descriptive metaphysics: the relationships and the reciprocity between inner and outer experience and between temporality and the recognition of existence are the basis of this descriptive metaphysics and certify its reality.
