Conoscere il sentimento. Il confronto con la storia della filosofia e il problema della specificità della terza classe dei fenomeni psichici nella Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik

One of the main theses of Franz Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is the independence of the third class of mental acts, the acts of love and hate or acts of feeling. However, Brentano does not consider the feeling as the foundation of moral knowledge, because only a kind of knowledge can ground the principles of ethics. In the Foundation and Construction of Ethics, Brentano faces the history of moral philosophy, with particular regard to Hume’s theory that ethics rests on feeling. The paper deals with the criticism towards Hume’s moral doctrine and aims to shed light on the Brentano’s thesis according to which only the knowledgeof the feeling can provide the foundation for ethics. As a secondary act of intentional relation, as an act analogous to the judgment, feeling can be an evident act; it can also be a conscious act which, in a clear and distinct manner, is both capable of discerning its parts and their inner relations, and capable of knowing what is correct to feel as good, what is worthy of being approved from a moral standpoint.