Franz Brentano

whoever deviates only a little from truth in the beginning is led farther and farther afield in the sequel.

Franz Brentano (January 16, 1838 – March 17, 1917) was an influential German philosopher and psychologist.

Quotes

On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862)

Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862) as translated by Rolf George (1975)

• Was klein ist im Beginn wird oft am Ende überaus groß sein. Und so geschieht es, das wer im Anfange auch nur um ein Weniges von der Wahrheit abweicht, im Verlauf immer weiter und weiter und zu tausendmal größern Irrthümer fortgeführt wird.
  • What is at first small is often extremely large in the end. And so it happens that whoever deviates only a little from truth in the beginning is led farther and farther afield in the sequel, and to errors which are a thousand times as large.

Quotes about

• As Brentano himself recognizes and recalls, intentionality is not his invention, but simply the rediscovery of a truth well known to classical and medieval philosophy, particularly Thomas Aquinas. However, Aquinas is not satisfied with phenomenologically observing that knowledge possesses the character of intentionality, but he adduces two arguments to prove that this quality necessarily belongs to him. The first is that if knowledge were not awareness representation of objects but simply awareness and representation of mental states, in that case scientific research would make no sense, which adiminates real things outside of us and not only the open species (images) found in the soul point the second argument is that if one contests knowing the intentional character, we must agree with those philosophers who profess relativism and affirm that the truth is what it seems to everyone.

• Father Battista Mondin, O.P., Il sistema filosofico di Tommaso d'Aquino. Per una lettura attuale della filosofia tomista, Editrice Massimo, Milan February 1985, 1st edition, ISBN 88-7030-462-0, p. 28 (in Italian).