Guillaume Fréchette: Brentano on Universals

Guillaume Fréchette (University of Geneva)

Abstract

Brentano’s late reism is interpreted by many as a kind of nominalism, according to which all categories of entities boil down to the category of real things: the only things that exist are real things. It suggests basically that the late Brentano was concerned about his beard and was looking to have it trimmed in a barber shop owned by a nominalist. My point in this talk is that those who think so got the picture wrong. Brentano didn’t consider to trim his beard but both allegorically and literally, he took his beard to the grave.