Brentano, Franz Clemens 1838-1917
German psychologist and philosopher

He was born in Marienberg, the nephew of Clemens von Brentano and brother of Lujo Brentano. He became a Catholic priest in 1864 and taught philosophy at W�rzburg until 1873 when he abandoned the priesthood, rejecting papal infallibility, and moved to teach at Vienna until retirement in 1895. He spent his later years in Florence and Zurich. He stressed the connection between psychology and philosophy and in his most important work, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874, 'Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint'), developed the important doctrine of 'intentionality', characterizing mental events as involving the 'direction of the mind to an object'. Among his students were Edmund Husserl, Alexius von Meinong and Tom�s Masaryk.