Abstract

Apart from Aristotle it is Comte who most influenced Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, especially with regard to methodological questions. Brentano follows Comte not only in his attack on 'metaphysical' sciences and in his claim that sciences in their positive stage deal with phenomena; he also takes over Comte's encyclopedic law, replacing, however, sociology with psychology. In order to lay the foundations of psychology, Brentano recommends all the scientific methods suggested by Comte, but states that psychology employs as its genuine method inner perception, the neglect of which had led Comte to deny the autonomous status of psychology as a science