The Brentano-Sellars Puzzle

Various recent publications on Brentano are focusing on the so-called ‘Brentano-Puzzle,’ i.e., the question why Brentano, whose work was very influential, is discussed less among contemporary philosophers than might be expected. In this paper I argue that Brentano’s ‘invisibility’ can — at least in part — be explained by mechanisms that determine the way we look back on the history of our own discipline. The Brentano-Puzzle is a result of the way we write the recent history of philosophy, and is thus a phenomenon we encounter not only in the context of Brentano’s philosophy, but also with other philosophers. I will elaborate this point by drawing an analogy between Franz Brentano and Wilfrid Sellars. This analogy concentrates exclusively on their place in the history of philosophy and abstracts completely from the content of their philosophical positions. First I discuss this analogy in detail and then draw some conclusions concerning the Geography of Reason and the dynamics of the history of philosophy, using Brentano’s model of the Four Phases of Philosophy.