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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
INTRODUCTION
First of all I had to apprentice myself to a master. But since I was born when philosophy had fallen into most lamentable decay, I could find none better than old Aristotle. To understand him, which is not always easy, I enlisted the help of Thomas Aquinas.' (ANR, p. 291)
This is Brentano's recollection of his first steps in philosophy, written toward the end of his life. Earlier he had entered a passionate poem in a student's autograph album, portraying himself as brother of Aristotle's famous students, and as his offspring:
I can even today claim to be of his issue. Welcome Eudemus you pious, welcome O brother, and you Godlike in speech Theophrast, sweet as the Lesbian wine. Since I was given him late, youngest of all his descendants Loves my father me most, more tenderly than all the others.
(AWV, p. xii)The derisive remark about the lamentable decay of philosophy was not aimed merely at philosophers active when he was a student, but at the German Idealist tradition from Kant to Hegel.
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