From Myth to Mechanism: Brentano’s Naturalistic Deconstruction of Artistic Creation

I. Introduction

The figure of the artistic genius has long been wrapped in mystery, traditionally seen as a bridge between the human and the divine. From Plato’s poetic madness to the Romantics’ obsession with the unconscious abyss, we often view creativity as an inexplicable flash of inspiration that bypasses the rational mind. In these accounts, the genius is a passive vessel for forces – divine, natural, or psychoanalytic – that operate far beyond our conscious awareness. As a result, the actual mechanics of art are often dismissed as ineffable and left outside the reach of rigorous psychology. Franz Brentano, however, challenges this. He offers a naturalistic deconstruction of the creative process, rejecting the dogma that genius is rooted in unconscious irrationality.¹ For Brentano, mental life is defined by one core principle: to be a mental act is to be a conscious one. This commitment leads him to reject the idea of an unconscious mind entirely. He argues that creativity does not bubble up from a hidden depths; instead, it is a conscious process.

This paper explores Brentano’s alternative model, arguing that the magic of genius is actually the result of ordinary mental activities intensified to an extraordinary degree. First, I examine Brentano’s continuity thesis – the idea that the genius and the ordinary creator differ only in degree, not in kind.² I then dive into the psychological mechanics of this view, specifically his distinction between genuinely unconscious mental activity and conscious processes that remain unnoticed or indistinctly apprehended. Next, I reconstruct how Brentano himself positions his account in relation to mimesis, the fusion of unconscious and reflective activity, and inspiration, showing that he qualifies the first while rejecting the latter two in favour of an explanation grounded in psychological laws. Finally, I address the internal compass of the artist: taste (Geschmack). For Brentano, taste is not a rigid rulebook but a refined emotional disposition that recognizes correct pleasure (als richtig charakterisiertes Gefallen). Ultimately, by relocating creativity from the myth of the unconscious to the mechanism of refined conscious habits and normative feelings, Brentano offers a robust, empirically grounded phenomenology of the creative mind.

II. Brentano’s Naturalization of the Genius

In his essay Das Genie (1892), Brentano aims to demystify creative activity without reducing it to mechanical production. The contrast he draws is not between ordinary psychology and supernatural inspiration but between degrees of refinement within a shared psychological structure. Extraordinary creation does not spring from an unconscious mind; it arises from a highly developed capacity for perception and intuitive response. The work of genius can thus be both natural and spontaneous. Genius and talented amateur are not different species but points on a continuum. Brentano begins from the ambiguity of the term, noting that, although we use ‘genius’ to mean ‘an unusual, quite superior talent’, there is little agreement about its precise sense. The term is applied to scientific pioneers and military strategists as well as artists, ‘but if one asks in what respect, or in what manner a mind must be distinguished in order to lay claim to the name, then opinions immediately diverge’.³

To clarify this point, Brentano compares the creative habits of the amateur with those of the genius. He identifies two primary differences. The first concerns how the work comes into being. The ordinary artist relies on a slow process of trial and error, constantly revising and refining the work. Brentano writes: ‘Purposefully, the artist who does not have the good fortune to be a genius fumbles about, seeking to blaze a trail now in this way, now in another. He improves, he files away, and thus gradually forms a work that satisfies artistic requirements’ (SE, p. 112). This laborious procedure marks the ordinary artist’s dependence on correction after the fact. The genius, by contrast, does not need to seek in the same way but recognizes beauty in natural forms at a glance. The work is essentially finished in the imagination with a single stroke; only the technical labour of bringing it into reality remains. Because this conception is immediate and spontaneous, it is called genius in the strict sense. Brentano makes the same point elsewhere: ‘The genial creator thinks of no rule; his nature is his rule (to which the swarm of imitators then seeks to adhere, though with less gratifying success).’⁴

This immediacy, however, should not be confused with unconscious production. For Brentano, genius involves a heightened form of conscious activity, not a loss of control. He therefore rejects any attempt to explain great works of art by appeal to the unconscious or to divine inspiration: ‘The so-called inspirations of the genius are therefore, just as they are no miracles, also no products of unconscious thinking that proceeds according to laws other than those of conscious thinking’ (SE, p. 123). The source of inspiration must instead be sought in discipline, accumulated experience, and a highly developed faculty of perception. Brentano makes this point directly: ‘There is no unconscious thinking that is added to the conscious one in the genius. On the contrary, we find the genius in certain cases acting with less thinking, in that he is spared a part of the labour – namely, the critical refinement – due to the excellence of his first thoughts’ (ibid., p. 126). The appearance of effortlessness thus marks, in Brentano’s account, not unconscious process but the exceptional refinement of ordinary conscious capacities.

The second element is artistic intuition. Genius achieves completion through a refined sensitivity to beauty, without the need for constant revision. As Brentano puts it, works of genius arise ‘without reflection’ and ‘effortlessly’, yet are ‘the most excellent of all’ (ibid., p. 105). Their excellence, however, is not lawless. It depends on cultivated habit and a ‘special feeling for the aesthetically effective’ (ibid., p. 123). This allows Brentano to connect artistic intuition with universal psychological laws. Creation involves emotion and spontaneous thought, but neither operates as a mysterious force outside consciousness. Rather, the decisive factor is ‘the vivid receptivity’ through which ‘the aesthetically effective makes an especially powerful impression’ (ibid., p. 119). This receptivity explains how the genius can draw from the abundance of experience with unusual certainty: ‘That special receptivity which […] characterizes the genius, then draws immediately from the abundance with its inherent certainty’ (ibid., p. 117).

Brentano is careful, however, to add that vivid imagination (Lebendigkeit der Phantasie) and receptivity of feeling (Empfänglichkeit des Gefühls) ‘do not suffice for an explanation’ (ibid., p. 118). To create something valuable, the artist also needs taste: a refined sensitivity to aesthetic value that enables the genius to sift through a rush of associations and feelings, selecting what, within the abundance of thoughts and sensations, is artistically significant, meets high standards, and carries genuine force. Brentano makes this point with Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s warning that ‘nothing is more frightening than imagination without taste’. He therefore describes taste as ‘correctly characterized pleasure’ that ‘brings forth precisely that which is aesthetically valuable’ (ibid.).

Brentano’s account of genius thus depends on two connected elements: a finely attuned awareness of one’s own mental life and a developed sensitivity to aesthetic value. The first provides the psychological basis of creative activity. On Brentano’s act theory, every mental phenomenon has a dual orientation: towards a primary object, such as a canvas or melody, and simultaneously towards itself as a secondary object. Brentano calls this secondary self-awareness inner perception. It is not reflective introspection, or a second act observing the first, but an immediate, concomitant awareness through which each mental act is given to itself while primarily directed towards its object. Genius therefore does not operate through a hidden subconscious but through conscious acts whose self-awareness may be implicit, rapid, and unnoticed, while still belonging to the structure of consciousness itself.

The second element, taste, is neither cold rational judgement nor the application of fixed rules. It is a refined disposition, formed through experience and training, in which the artist experiences pleasure as correct. This pleasure enables genius to recognize the beauty of form immediately, without the slow deliberation or self-critique that constrains ordinary artistic production. The genius need not infer what is right; through cultivated taste, it is felt directly.

III. The Structure of Mental Acts and the Scope of Consciousness

Brentano’s awareness principle (Prinzip des Bewusstseins) is the starting point.⁵ Every mental phenomenon is conscious, oriented both towards its object and towards itself, and often accompanied by an affective component. Any account of creativity must therefore respect this principle and the structural unity of mental acts, rather than appeal to theories of the unconscious that conflict with Brentano’s central commitments. To avoid a common misunderstanding, it is useful to distinguish between consciousness as a merely accidental feature of mental life and as something inseparable from it, whether understood as definitional or as a property.⁶ Brentano’s distinction between physical and mental phenomena clarifies this point. By physical phenomena, he does not mean external things existing independently of consciousness but sensory or imaginal contents as they appear to us, such as colours, sounds, or shapes. Mental phenomena, by contrast, are acts such as presenting, judging, loving, hating, desiring, or hearing.⁷ The sound heard is a physical phenomenon; hearing it is a mental phenomenon.

The difference lies not in the kind of object concerned but in the intentional and conscious structure of the act itself. A mental act is directed towards a primary object and concomitantly aware of itself. This secondary awareness is what Brentano calls inner consciousness or inner perception: not a further act of reflection added to the first but an intrinsic self-givenness belonging to the act itself (PES, pp. 105–6). This is why he rejects thinkers such as Eduard von Hartmann and William Hamilton, who allow for mental acts that are not objects of consciousness (ibid., pp. 80–81). For Brentano, consciousness is not a separate state standing above our thoughts but an inseparable aspect of the mental act, a point supported by the functional relation of equality between the act and its inner awareness (ibid., p. 106). If something is genuinely a mental phenomenon, it is already conscious, even if it is not explicitly noticed, attended to, or later remembered.

The epistemological consequence is just as important. Presentations (Vorstellungen), deep-seated hopes, fears, desires, and other mental phenomena are known through inner perception. Brentano accordingly characterizes psychology as the science of mental phenomena, since it explores the laws of the mind we discover directly within ourselves and then ‘infer, by analogy, to exist in others’ (ibid., p. 4). Inner perception is not a separate mental state watching another. It is the structural mode through which we ‘discover within’ ourselves our own mental acts (ibid.). Although this strict identification of mentality with consciousness creates a tension with modern psychology’s focus on the unconscious,⁸ leading Kriegel to proposes an ameliorative reading,⁹ Brentano’s original position offers its own distinctive resolution, rooted in the structure of inner consciousness.

This resolution becomes clearer once inner consciousness is related to Brentano’s broader classification of mental phenomena. He distinguishes three basic classes: ‘ideas, judgements, and a third class, comprising both emotions and volitions’ (PES, p. xviii). This classification does not make inner consciousness simply another instance of these three acts alongside ordinary object-directed acts. Rather, the secondary awareness that accompanies a mental act can itself be described in terms of the same fundamental classes. At minimum, every conscious act involves an inner presentation of itself: besides being directed towards its primary object, the act is also presented as occurring. An inner judgement, an instantaneous confirmation of the act’s own occurrence, accompanies this inner presentation. This structure is frequently accompanied by an affective moment, pleasure or displeasure directed towards the act or its object, especially in aesthetic experience.

The foundational dimension is inner presentation (innere Vorstellung). The term ‘presentation’ should not be misunderstood.¹⁰ Brentano argues that, when we hear a sound, the same mental phenomenon that makes the sound present to us also ‘simultaneously apprehends the mental phenomenon itself’. The act thus has ‘itself as content at the same time’ (PES, p. 98). Rather than a higher-level mental act, the relation is one of real identity. In Aristotelian terms, the act and our awareness of it are ‘one and the same reality’ (energeia).¹¹ Consequently, the presentation of the sound and the presentation of the act of hearing form a single, inseparable phenomenon.

The significance of this structure for genius lies in the difference between possessing immediate self-awareness and being able to rely on it creatively. Structural immediacy is a universal feature of mental life, whether of the ordinary person or of the genius. The crucial difference concerns the need for reflective intervention. The non-genial creator’s initial associations are often aesthetically unrefined and must be revised through a slow and deliberate process of trial and error (SE, p. 112). The genius, however, is ‘spared this labour’ (ibid., p. 126). Because the genius’s ‘first thoughts’ are already characterized by a refined disposition of taste, inner perception reveals an act that is correct from the outset. Thus, while everyone possesses immediate self-awareness, only the genius can fully rely on it to bypass the slow, reflective self-monitoring that burdens ordinary talent. Their awareness is intrinsic (en parergo) and immediate, rather than observational and detached.

The second dimension is inner judgement, or evident affirmation. An act is given in inner perception concomitantly, not observationally. Brentano notes that the act of hearing ‘is only apprehended concomitantly in the hearing of sounds’ (PES, p. 99). He therefore sharply distinguishes consciousness of our own acts from their observation. An act can be an object of consciousness but it cannot be observed in the same moment, since observation would require attention make the act a primary object (ibid.). This aligns with Brentano’s claim that inner perception has ‘immediate, infallible self-evidence’ (ibid., p. 70). In artistic creation, the artist’s inner sense of creative act can be direct and certain without becoming a detached act of self-monitoring.

The third dimension is inner feeling or emotional part.¹² This dimension matters because it supplies a phenomenological sense of rightness that can accompany and stabilize mental acts without being explicitly thematized. The sound’s presentation and the awareness of hearing belong to ‘one and the same mental act’ (PES, p. 98); likewise, the inner feeling accompanying sensation is included within the same conscious episode (ibid., p. 112). Although Brentano later softens the claim that every conscious act includes an emotional moment, affect remains central to his account of art. Secondary consciousness involves both presentation and an evident affirmation of itself (ibid., p. 315), but in aesthetic creation he emphasizes the decisive force of feeling. In genius, creation is guided by a distinctive pleasure, experienced not merely as pleasant but as intrinsically correct.

The explanatory question now arises. How can we account for the subtle mechanics of artistic intuition if there is no unconscious? The answer lies in distinguishing what is truly unconscious (unbewusst), which Brentano rejects, from what is simply unnoticed (unbemerkt) or implicitly conscious (implizites Bewusstsein).

Brentano’s terminology makes this point explicit: he uses the term ‘unconscious’ in two ways. In the first, active sense, ‘the expression “unconscious consciousness” would be a contradiction’. In the other, ‘an unconscious consciousness is no more a contradiction in terms than an unseen case of seeing’ (ibid., p. 79). The lesson for creativity is straightforward. An artist’s inability to reconstruct every link in a rapid chain of ideas or to report the spontaneous associations that led to a perfect brushstroke does not show that those acts were unconscious. It suggests only that many stages unfolded too quickly to be explicitly noticed, focused on, or recorded in memory as distinct.

Here Brentano’s methodological caution limits what can legitimately count as an explanation. The most common route he identifies is the inference from facts of experience to unconscious mental phenomena as hidden causes. Applied to genius, this cautions against explaining artistic intuition by appeal to the unconscious before the conscious features of creative activity have been established. As Brentano warns, such an inference is justified only if, ‘first of all, the fact itself [is] sufficiently established’ (ibid., p. 81). The extraordinary cases cited by figures such as Henry Maudsley, he argues, are not ‘sufficiently certain to be used as the basis for a conclusive argument’ (ibid., p. 82). Unless the creative act can be described with precision, we have no warrant to posit a hidden cause behind it. Moreover, the supposed unconscious phenomenon must genuinely explain the experience as its effect. In practice, this means clearing three hurdles. First, ordinary conscious processes must be able to explain the effects in question: sudden insights, rapid associations, and apparently effortless creative decisions. Second, we must not smuggle in extra powers absent from the original experience. Finally, any theory of the unconscious must follow the same rules as the conscious mind (ibid.).

Ultimately, Brentano demands explanatory continuity: we should not posit an entirely inconceivable source when ordinary conscious processes can account for the phenomenon. Applied to artistic intuition, these rules reveal not unconscious activity but unnoticed or implicitly conscious activity: mental processes lived through without being explicitly tracked. This is the logic behind Brentano’s uncompromising claim that ‘there is no unconscious mental activity’ (ibid., p. 105).

Consider a poet suddenly finding a metaphor, a painter sensing the rightness of a form, or a composer correcting a rhythmic imbalance almost instantly. Such cases need not be treated as mystical. They can be understood as rapid conscious operations, including perceptual discrimination, association, and evaluative feeling, which go unnoticed because the artist is absorbed in the work. The steps are too swift and fragile to be retained in memory. As Brentano asks, is it really more presumptuous to say that geniuses ‘have forgotten the conscious steps’ than to assume that ‘unconscious thought processes bridged the gap’ (ibid., 82)?

Recent scholarship has frames Brentano’s rejection of the unconscious in different ways. Tárik de Athayde Prata, for example, reads it primarily as a metaphysical position,¹³ whereas Mark Textor treats it more as an explanatory claim about the workings of the mind.¹⁴ Uriah Kriegel broadens the latter approach, presenting Brentano’s programme as grounded in descriptive psychology, intentionality, fittingness, and inner perception.¹⁵ For present purposes, however, what matters most is the psychological alternative Brentano offers: states we often call unconscious are better understood as conscious acts occurring at a very low intensity. Because inner awareness varies with the strength of the mental act itself (PES, pp. 92–93), a sufficiently faint thought or feeling may be so dimly apprehended that it escapes notice altogether.

Another resource is Brentano’s idea of confusion (Verworrenheit). He explains that ‘not everything which is apprehended is apprehended explicitly and distinctly. Many things are apprehended only implicitly and confusedly […] the notes combined in a chord […] are always really apprehended, but often not distinguished’ (ibid., p. 216, my emphasis). Textor illustrates this with the Tristan chord: ‘One hears F and B, but one does not know that one does so […] one is conscious of hearing F, for instance, but one does not know that hearing F is going on because one is not easily able to distinguish F from the other notes.’¹⁶ This state of fusion is the psychological reality of what Eduard von Hartmann, in his Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869), calls the ‘creative unconscious’, a metaphysical ‘deus ex machina’ that Brentano explicitly rejects (PES, pp. 80, 84). The artist does not lack consciousness but experiences a holistic, unified impression. Every element is sensed but not yet intellectually separated.

A further clarification is needed to avoid a common category mistake in contemporary Brentano scholarship:¹⁷ treating his awareness principle as directly incompatible with modern findings on subpersonal information processing. His rejection of the unconscious should not be understood as the trivial claim that whatever is not consciously apprehended is, by definition, not mental. More specifically, he denies that there are unconscious mental phenomena in the sense of presentations, judgements, desires, or feelings that occur as mental acts while remaining wholly outside consciousness. This leaves room for two possibilities. First, as the discussion of confused apprehension showed, a conscious act may contain features that are not separately noticed, distinctly discriminated, or subsequently remembered. Likewise, a weak mental act may be accompanied by correspondingly faint inner awareness and therefore fail to attract attention or be retained in memory (PES, pp. 92–93). Second, non-mental conditions, such as physiological processes, inherited dispositions, and habitual associative tendencies, may causally shape conscious life. They may explain why certain presentations arise with particular force or regularity, but they are not themselves unconscious mental contents. Brentano’s point, then, is not merely classificatory but explanatory. Phenomena often attributed to an unconscious mind may instead be explained either in terms of conscious acts whose contents are not distinctly discriminated or by non-mental conditions of consciousness, without positing hidden mental contents inaccessible to inner perception (ibid., pp. 97–105, 216).

The same distinction helps with a common modern puzzle. Kriegel notes that perceptual cases such as the Muller-Lyer illusion are now naturally explained by unconscious visual processing.¹⁸ From a Brentanian standpoint, however, two possibilities must be disambiguated. Either the operative process a presentation that is consciously apprehended only implicitly and confusedly or it is a genuinely non-mental physiological mechanism that belongs to the background conditions of consciousness rather than to the domain of mental phenomena. In both scenarios, we can explain how perception is shaped without inventing hidden, unconscious thoughts.

Association must be treated similarly. Brentano’s laws of association describe patterns we notice in our own minds, the data of consciousness, rather than a hidden unconscious engine (PES, p. 9). Indeed, he regards appeals of association as a frequent site of conceptual confusion, especially when psychologists slide from what appears in consciousness to alleged ‘efficient causes’ that are not themselves presented (ibid., p. 59). Moreover, even where associative regularities are granted, they cannot exhaust the explanation of higher mental kinds. Judgements in particular exhibit special laws of succession that psychology had long neglected because it mistakenly assumed that the laws of association of ideas would suffice (ibid., pp. 174, 182). When Brentano later appeals to a more general law of habit (Gesetz der Gewohnheit), he thereby shifts the explanatory weight from a quasi-mechanical associationism to dispositions acquired through repetition and practice, which shape what comes to consciousness with seeming spontaneity (SE, pp. 121–23).

Habit is thus central to the explanation of genius. The habit of association is not a mysterious second mind working in the shadows but the background structure that explains why certain ideas seem to strike an artist with spontaneous force. In discussing genius, Brentano states that the so-called inspirations ‘are neither miracles nor the products of unconscious thinking proceeding according to laws different from those of conscious thought’ but ‘the fruits of habit and practice’ arising from a distinctive feeling for what is aesthetically effective (ibid., p. 123). This explanation directly connects the seeming immediacy of creative insight to the third dimension of inner consciousness, inner feeling, since affective valuations reinforce and stabilize habitual associations over time, preparing the soil from which new configurations can emerge within conscious life.

Nor does this exclude biology. In his metaphor of the caterpillar and the butterfly, Brentano notes that, although ‘the crawling of the caterpillar is […] a precondition for the flight of the butterfly’, hereditary and biological influences remain ‘far removed from the realm of consciousness’ (PES, p. 43). He thus acknowledges biological factors but treats them as non-mental antecedents rather than as elements of a hidden mind.

The upshot for aesthetics is that genius lies in the capacity to navigate complex, fused presentations and follow the subtle, often unnoticed emotional cues that accompany thought. Creativity is a process of bringing to light, of making explicit what is already present in the rich structure of the conscious act. Brentano’s concluding reflections on aesthetics are therefore not merely descriptive but point towards aesthetics as a practical discipline: knowledge of the laws of the mind enables us to refine the emotional dispositions, or taste, that guide artistic creation.

IV. Brentano’s Critique of Traditional Theories of Creation

Having established Brentano’s theory of inner consciousness, we can now examine how he uses it to oppose traditional theories of artistic creation, which attribute creativity to mystical or unconscious forces.

Brentano develops the claim that genius is a conscious process of creation through contrastive argumentation. He critically engages with three dominant theories of artistic creation drawn both from his era and earlier traditions – mimetic, fusion, and inspiration theories – to highlight the explanatory power of his position. His critique is grounded in psychological phenomenology rather than logical refutation alone: he identifies these theories’ failure to explain the mechanisms of creation. In doing so, he underscores the central role of refined sensing in the process of artistic production.

The first view holds that every work of art is a form of imitation of nature (Nachahmung der Natur). Brentano, however, argues that a genuine work of art does not merely replicate nature; it abstracts from it retaining what is aesthetically essential while discarding incidental details. Art thereby transcends nature’s limitations. Brentano cites Joshua Reynolds and Titian to illustrate how artists abstract and elevate aesthetic features in nature that are not yet fully perceived or understood, transforming them into universally intelligible forms. These artists do not rely solely on the precise reproduction of detail; instead, they achieve artistic value by capturing the overall effect and accentuating characteristic elements (SE, pp. 110–12).

Accordingly, a true work of art is not simply a copy of nature but a distilled and elevated expression of its essence. Only by grasping and expressing these essential features does the work attain genuine artistic vitality and value. Otherwise, ‘it is neither a work of genius nor a true work of art, but merely the product of a spiritless copyist [geistlosen Abschreibers]’ (ibid., p. 112).

The second view, a fusion model, holds that artistic creation involves unconscious thinking that produces aesthetic effects analogous to those achieved through conscious deliberation (ibid., p. 113). It diverges significantly from Brentano’s position.

Historically, the idea that artistic creation mediates between conscious activity and deeper, non-reflective dimensions recurs in various forms. It appears, for example, in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s claim that conscious artistic production continues nature’s unconscious productivity.¹⁹ In psychoanalytic aesthetics, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung interpret artistic creation as a process in which unconscious material assumes symbolic form.²⁰ Likewise, vitalist and modernist accounts – such as those of Henri Bergson or Max Ernst – describe the artist as responding to dynamic or invisible forces underlying lived experience.²¹ These positions differ fundamentally in ontology, methodology, and philosophical ambition, and should not be conflated with Brentano’s. While Brentano is concerned with the structure of intentional mental acts, these theories suggest that artistic creation involves various interactions between unconscious or pre-reflective forces and conscious deliberation. Nonetheless, these views share a recurring aesthetic motif: the recognition that artistic production involves a structured relation between reflective consciousness and a non-discursive, pre-reflective dimension of experience.

Brentano rejects the explanations offered by fusion theory along two main lines. First, he argues that individuals differ innately in their capacity to perceive aesthetic efficacy (das ästhetisch Wirksame) and that training can amplify such differences. Gifted individuals can therefore discern aesthetic value in nature more readily (SE, p. 113). Drawing on Lessing,²² Brentano describes how a non-genius artist, through rational and methodical training, can gradually overcome the challenges of creation and ultimately produce works of significant artistic value (SE, pp. 115–16). The genius, by contrast, possesses such heightened sensitivity and intuition that the work can be completed without external rules, assistance, or subsequent corrections. Their refined sensibility supports intuitive aesthetic responses – discarding what is unsuitable and retaining what is valuable.

Second, Brentano emphasizes that artists extract essential aesthetic elements from nature through a process of abstraction rather than merely copying them. They rely on their superior aesthetic sensitivity (feine Empfindlichkeit) and capacity for abstraction to produce unique works – not on mysterious unconscious thought. This power of abstraction, when highly developed, allows the artist to bypass certain stages of reasoning, grasp the essence of a subject directly, and give it expressive form (ibid., p. 114).

The third view holds that a work of art is the product of creative imagination. As Immanuel Kant famously states, we can use imagination so that ‘material can certainly be lent to us by nature but the latter can be transformed by us into something entirely different, namely into that which steps beyond nature’.²³ Artistic genius uses its natural endowment to generate, through imagination, aesthetic ideas that surpass conventional concepts. Within Kant’s broader system, imagination, as the creative faculty of genius, contributes to the reconciliation of nature and freedom. It shows how nature, in the hands of genius, can be transformed into artistic works and thereby reveals the capacity of human beings to rise above mere natural determination, laying the groundwork for the realization of a higher moral and free existence.²⁴

Brentano acknowledges that certain artists possess a rich and vivid imagination, accompanied by intense emotional fluctuations (SE, p. 117). However, its products are often vast in number and lacking in order, and most lack aesthetic value. An abundance of imaginative content and emotional receptivity is therefore insufficient to create works of genuine worth. Aesthetically valuable features may occasionally emerge from this flux and be seized by the genius thanks to their refined aesthetic sensitivity, but this does make the creative process mystical or a form of divine revelation.

Brentano also emphasizes a further capacity at work in genius: the ability to produce aesthetically valuable works naturally and effortlessly. Genuine creativity requires not only a rich imagination but also a distinctive taste that enables the artist to generate works of high aesthetic merit frequently and almost automatically (ibid., pp. 118–19). Art, then, is not the product of accidental inspiration but the expression of an intrinsic capacity to select the right materials and intuitively grasp aesthetic effects, allowing the work to meet aesthetic demands.

Aesthetic taste, for Brentano, is not primarily a product of explicit deliberation but a cultivated disposition that enables genius to create forms experienced as both pleasing and correct.²⁵ This pleasure does not arise from rational calculation; it belongs to the artist’s heightened responsiveness to aesthetic value. Genius creates through an immediate sense of what is fitting, an intuitive capacity, developed through practice, to select and shape elements in a way that feels naturally right.²⁶ Ordinary talent may approximate this through reflection, but genius grasps aesthetic rightness at once.

V. Taste Experienced as Correct Pleasure

I now turn to taste, understood here from the artist’s perspective as the disposition that guides creation and gives correct pleasure its self-evident force. Brentano does not treat taste as a merely accidental or blind sensory impulse. He rejects such a view in his critique of both the associationist ‘junk-shop’ (Kramladen) model of imagination and the physiological reductionism of contemporaries such as Theodor Meynert, which sought to reduce aesthetic production to a biological accident (GÄ, pp. 109–11). Instead, Brentano conceptualizes taste as an educated disposition or educated imagination (ibid., p. 32). Its normative potential is demonstrated by his distinction between correct and mistaken taste (ibid., p. 5). This normative structure allows for a pleasure characterized as correct (ibid., pp. 17, 146), which elevates taste from a subjective biological reaction to a law-governed mental habit: the fruits of habit operating according to ordinary psychic laws (ibid., pp. viii, 161).

In Brentano’s philosophy, the good and the true share a deep structural affinity: ‘for something to be good is for that thing to be such that it can be loved with a love that is correct or fitting’.²⁷ This correctness is not a matter of logical deduction but an experiential feature, where attitudes are ‘experienced as correct’.²⁸ Since correctness is a primitive quality that cannot be defined through more basic terms, it must be grasped via what Jonas Olson calls a ‘comparative maneuver’:

The experience of correctness becomes manifest when I compare a judgement based on inner perception […] with a contrary judgement; I then see that the judgements differ in a crucial respect: the original judgement is experienced as being correct, while the contrary judgement is not.²⁹

For the artist, this structure is especially powerful in feeling: the rightness of an aesthetic choice becomes apparent when set against an imagined unfitting response, revealing the original pro-attitude as the one that imposes itself as correct. This contrastive structure grounds the normativity of taste. It shows why aesthetic response is not arbitrary but carries self-evidence: the sense that no other response would be fitting.

Brentano first defines taste as a psychological disposition: ‘Taste is not a judgment, but a feeling – specifically, a preference in feeling (for the beautiful over the ugly, and for the more beautiful over the less beautiful) or, rather, a disposition toward such a preference’ (GÄ, p. 31). Taste enables the subject to spontaneously generate a directional emotion in response to beauty and ugliness, or varying degrees of beauty. By refining our ‘innate capacity for discernment’, this disposition ensures that the subject is not experiencing simple pleasure but is engaged in an aesthetic activity characterized by a hierarchy of value. Furthermore, this ‘preference’ holds an independent and irreducible status within Brentano’s system.³⁰ As Olson emphasizes, preference is a distinct emotive act involving ‘comparing objects’ and cannot be simplified to mere love or hate: ‘Preferences “are emotive acts that relate and compare” […] [they] are not reducible to love or hate.’³¹

If preference essentially involves comparison, aesthetic activity cannot be understood as a blind or immediate stimulation of pleasure. It presupposes an evaluative structure in which objects are ranked, selected, and organized according to a hierarchy of value. Brentano’s account of artistic creation makes this structure explicit. Beauty is not defined merely by being worthy of pleasure; it must be presented in such a way that pleasure is actually elicited: ‘To make use of displeasure only where it will serve this purpose, while employing blind pleasure, not for its own sake, but solely for the purpose of supporting aesthetic pleasure, is one of the niceties of artistic creation.’³² Artistic production therefore involves not passive reception but active discrimination and regulation. The artist ‘not only avoids what is in fact displeasing, but also prefers and chooses what in fact affords pleasure, even if the pleasure is blind and instinctive or is based solely upon habit’.³³

Crucially, taste facilitates the kind of pleasure that Brentano regards as correct. As he writes, ‘It is not merely a matter of a presentation being valuable, but that its value is grasped in a joy that is characterized as correct and is actually experienced’ (GÄ, p. 32).

To achieve correct pleasure, the genius’s taste integrates multiple psychological dimensions. On one hand, good taste is rooted in the most basic sensory instincts (such as the intuition for tones, colours, and rhythm). Brentano notes that instinctive feelings are the ‘primary aids for the cultivation of such taste’ (ibid., p. 33). On the other hand, correct taste is intimately linked to ‘noble inclinations’ (ibid., p. 32). In a tragic work, for instance, taste guides us to direct our love towards noble presentations that shine even in destruction, thereby achieving a ‘subordination’ (an ordering and refinement) of emotion. This capacity to grasp correct pleasure translates into a normative power within the dimension of creation. For the creator, taste is not merely a filter for perception but an orienting force for action.

Although Brentano acknowledges the uniqueness of artistic genius, captured in the claim that ‘a poet is born, not made’ (Poeta nascitur, non fit; ibid., p. 5), he also insists that aesthetics can cultivate taste. Its task is to develop our natural capacity for estimating the value of presentations, so that ‘the beautiful is always preferred over the unbeautiful or the less beautiful’ (ibid., p. v). Aesthetics is therefore a practical discipline grounded in psychological analysis. It teaches us to respond to beauty and ugliness with correct taste and to produce works that are effective for a wider community (ibid., p. 5). These instructions are not rigid technical recipes but psychological and normative principles comparable to the laws of logic. For example, Brentano argues that, although admiration for an artist’s technical mastery may be entirely justified, it does not by itself amount to a genuinely aesthetic response. Correct taste directs our pleasure primarily towards the beauty presented in the work rather than towards the artist’s achievement as such.³⁴ Just as logic clarifies the conditions of correct thought, aesthetics clarifies the conditions under which presentations are felt, selected, and shaped with correct taste. The normative force of taste is not a departure from the laws of the mind but their most refined application, placing genius within the structure of conscious mental activity rather than in mysterious inspiration.

Taste thus exercises a threefold normative function. First, it operates as an internal maxim. For the genius, ‘his nature is his rule’ (GÄ, p. 6), and this nature includes a highly developed taste capable of discerning subtle merits and defects. Taste identifies the correct form through a self-imposing affective force. Olson describes this emotion as analogous to self-evidence: ‘we know it when we have it’.³⁵ Yet this does not make Brentano’s view subjectivist, since the fittingness of the response depends on the object’s own properties: ‘It is the properties that make it fitting to take up a pro-attitude toward g that make g good.’³⁶ Genius therefore does not create value through taste but discovers and calibrates the qualities that make the work worthy of love. Second, taste integrates the artist’s cognitive and affective capacities. It brings together associative power, imagination, and sensitivity to complex relations, ensuring the precise realization of the artistic conception. Third, taste has social and historical efficacy. It prevents creation from becoming merely solipsistic by anchoring it in the ‘most universal manner of instinctively feeling pleasure or displeasure’ (GÄ, p. 35). Although the best taste is not simply identical with the most common taste, this shared basis of feeling helps explain how works can retain vitality across historical development. In this context, the ‘most universal manner of instinctively feeling pleasure or displeasure’ becomes the chief support for the formation of correct taste. Brentano adds that only what is more universal can provide a suitable foundation for ‘a historical development toward perfection in the history of art’ (ibid., p. 36).

Thus, for Brentano, the cultivation of taste begins from the ‘most universal manner of instinctively feeling pleasure or displeasure’ (ibid.). Genius transforms these basic affective responses into more refined, fitting, and normatively significant aesthetic delight. Creation is therefore not a mere accumulation of presentations but a process in which higher emotions guide and organize lower ones. As Brentano writes, the artist’s heart must have felt ‘the noble and the ignoble according to their merit’ and made this visible in the work, so that correct taste can ‘approve the work’ (ibid., p. 5). Taste thus functions through preference. It calibrates the creator’s emotion into correctly characterized love, allowing the work to embody beauty and elicit an appropriate response. Brentano defines beauty as ‘a delight with the character of correctness being elicited in us’ (ibid., p. 17), and adds that only when a presentation is good and joyful do we call its primary object beautiful (ibid., p. 123). Correct taste, then, is not simply love of the good but the affective preference for what is more beautiful. In this sense, taste guides correct pleasure, while artistic creation gives that pleasure practical form.

VI. Conclusion

The central question has been how Brentano explains the apparent spontaneity and effortlessness of artistic genius without appealing to unconscious or mystical sources of creativity. His answer is that no such appeal is needed. His alternative explanation locates creative activity in conscious mental acts whose self-awareness may be rapid, implicit, and unnoticed but not unconscious in the strong sense. Habit, receptivity, and association explain the apparent spontaneity of genius; aesthetic abstraction explains its power to transform nature; and taste gives this process its normative direction. Genius is therefore not a rupture with ordinary mental life but an intensified exercise of the same psychological laws, guided by a cultivated disposition to experience pleasure as correct.

This reconstruction also suggests a broader consequence. At the same time as Brentano’s philosophy of mind has been increasingly rediscovered in contemporary discussions of consciousness, intentionality, and value,³⁷ contemporary aesthetics has increasingly focused on aesthetic normativity, fitting affective responses, and the relation between aesthetic value and emotion.³⁸ Against this background, his aesthetics deserves renewed attention as well.³⁹ His theory of genius is not an isolated or marginal doctrine but an application of his more general account of mental acts, inner consciousness, habit, and correct emotion. The present paper is only a first step in that direction: it shows how Brentano’s aesthetics can be read not as a residual nineteenth-century theory of genius but as a systematic extension of his philosophical psychology.