L’entrelacs des traditions

Just hearing the names of Brentano and Plato put together is enough to highlight the queerness of a matching which finds almost no evidence in critical literature. The study of the texts in which Brentano explicitly deals with Plato, in particular in his lectures on the history of Greek philosophy, does not change much of the negative impression that emerges from a general overview: the place of Plato in the history of philosophy depends, for Brentano, on Aristotle or, better, on the accomplishment of Greek philosophy occurs in Aristotle’s work. We shall turn our attention towards the of certain relevant problems in order to open up, if possible, a less negative prospect for the relationship of Brentano to Plato: not so much directly by examining Platonic philosophy from a Brentanian point of view as by considering the concrete solution that Brentano provides to some Aristotelian questions. To put it differently, we shall take into account not so much what Brentano says of Plato, as what Brentano does with Aristotle, by tracking the Platonizing traces that can be found in the Brentanian commentary to Aristotle’s categories, the philosophical consequences of which seem to be reflected in Brentano’s overall philosophical project.