Brentano, Franz (Clemens)

(born Jan. 16, 1838, Marienberg, Hesse-Nassau—died March 17, 1917, Zürich, Switz.) German philosopher. Nephew of Clemens Brentano, he was ordained a priest in 1864 and taught at the University of Würzburg (1866–73). Religious doubts led to his resignation from the priesthood in 1873. To present a systematic psychology that would serve as a science of the soul, he wrote the influential Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874). He became the founder of act psychology, or intentionalism, which concerns itself with the mind's “acts” or processes (e.g., perception, judgment, loving, and hating) rather than its contents. He later taught at the University of Vienna (1874–80, 1881–95) and published works such as Inquiry into Sense Psychology (1907) and The Classification of Psychological Phenomena (1911).

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica