Brentano’s Evaluative-Attitudinal Account of Will and Emotion

In contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, Franz Brentano is known mostly for his thesis that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental.’ Among Brentano scholars, there are also lively debates on his theory of consciousness and his theory of judgment. Brentano’s theory of will and emotion is less widely discussed, even within the circles of Brentano scholarship. In this paper, I want to show that this is a missed opportunity, certainly for Brentano scholars but also for contemporary philosophy of mind. Brentano’s accounts of the will and of emotion are, I will argue, both insightful, creative, and surprising, on the one hand, and strikingly plausible, upon reflection, on the other