Abstract
As is well known, Franz Brentano claimed that “the true method of philosophy is none other than that of the science of nature.” The claim is striking for a number of reasons. For one, philosophy has traditionally dealt with questions that science tends to avoid, such as the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the problem of evil. Brentano himself insisted both that philosophy’s method should be scientific in the sense of empirical science, and that philosophy should pursue those questions that empirical science typically shuns. Thus he agreed with Auguste Comte in pressing for positive science but disagreed when Comte evicted metaphysics and theology from the positive realm. Among philosophers inspired by work done in the 19th century taking a scientific approach to philosophy, there are to be included not only some of Brentano’s students, such as Husserl, but also the Bertrand Russell of logical atomism, and his student/colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this paper, I propose to examine the question of whether philosophy can be an empirical science, by contrasting Brentano’s view with Wittgenstein’s. The Viennese engineer-turned-philosopher devised a way of thinking about philosophical questions which retained the precision of a science but limited the scope of such questions to the examination of certain grammatical puzzles. By contrast, although he shunned the system-building of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, Brentano remained mindful of the big picture in a way that Wittgenstein seems to rule out. I first present Brentano’s view that philosophy is a science, as it is contained in his early lecture, “Auguste Comte and Positive Philosophy.” Then I present a reply in the spirit of Wittgenstein. In conclusion I attempt to sort out the truth of the matter.