Love and Hate: Brentano and Stumpf on emotions and sense-feelings

Abstract

This paper studies the controversy between Franz Brentano and his student Carl Stumpf regarding emotions and sense-feelings. The issue is whether the pleasure provided by an object such as a work of art is intentional, as in Brentano’s theory, in which it is closely related to the class of emotions (love and hate), or merely phenomenal, as Stumpf would have it.
The paper is divided into two parts: the first part describes several aspects of the relationship between Stumpf and Brentano. The second part evaluates whether Stumpf’s deviation from several theses of Brentano’s descriptive psychology, namely that on emotions and sense-feelings, challenges his commitment to Brentano’s program in philosophy.
On July 14, 1866 Stumpf met Franz Brentano for the first time during the disputation of his habilitation at the University of Wurzburg.
Stumpf’s debt to Brentano and his philosophy is well documented in his writings published during his lifetime and in many manuscripts.
The starting point of the controversy between Brentano and Stumpf is the distinction proposed by Stumpf between emotions (joy, envy, disgust, etc.) and what he calls Gefuhlsempfindung (pain, pleasure, etc.), which can be translated as sense-feeling or “algedonic sensation”). Stumpf argues that there is a specific difference between sense-feelings, which are sensory qualities such as sound and color, and emotions, which are intentional states directed towards objects. The issue is whether the pleasure provided by an object, say a work of art, is intentional, as it is in Brentano’s doctrine in which it is closely related to the class of affects, or phenomena, as argued Stumpf and the sensualists James and Mach. It is this issue that divided Brentano and Stumpf.