Alexandru BEJINARIU

Academic Year:
2019/2020

Field of Study:
Philosophy

Research Program:
NEC Odobleja

Affiliation:
Romanian Society for Phenomenology, “Alexandru Dragomir” Institute of Philosophy, Bucharest

Position:
Research Assistant

Country:
Romania

Research project: What is Phenomenological about Descriptive Psychology? A Study of Brentano’s Inductive Method of Descriptive Psychology and Its Significance for Husserl’s Logical Investigations

The project investigates Brentano’s method of one-step induction in his descriptive psychology with respect to its role for Husserl’s establishing of phenomenology in Logical Investigations. In order to do this, it also approaches the intricate transformations that took place in Brentano’s thinking in his Viennese period between 1874 and 1895. The main research hypothesis is that Brentano shifts from his early explicative method of empirical psychology (1874) similar to the inductive method of natural sciences, reaching only empirical generalizations to a method able to provide apodictic knowledge necessary for the founding of normative sciences such as ethics, aesthetics, or logic, without sacrificing the only source of knowledge Brentano accepts, namely intuitive experience. Brentano’s descriptive methodology is however problematic, and much needed clarifications can be gained by analyzing how Husserl appropriated and further developed it into his method of pure phenomenological description.

A full-length study is available here.