The problem of classification of psychic phenomena as a Cartesian motif of phenomenology: case of Kazimierz Twardowski

Wojciech Starzyński

Despite the common assignment of the Cartesian character of phenomenology to Husserl, this motif clearly appears in the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano and is expressed in a specific set of several theses. In the preface to The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong (1889), Brentano emphasizes the importance and originality of the Cartesian motif, expressing, in his opinion, “two highly significant thoughts”, ie. (1) Descartes’ classification of psychological phenomena, (2) “his view about the relation between joy and love and between hatred and sadness” (p. xii, English transl.). In my paper I would like to examine to what extent this double motif is present in the thought of the most important Polish student of Brentano, Kazimierz Twardowski. The thesis (1) is undoubtedly central in the PhD disstertation Idee und Perception (1892), where Twardowski analyzes the Cartesian regula generalis. He affirms the clarity and distinctness as a characteristic of a true perception, so of judgment and not of representation, as Brentano claimed.

As far as the thesis (2) is concerned, while the third class of the psychic phenomena seems completely omitted in Twardowski's epistemological analyzes, it appears within the text On the classification of psychic phenomena / W sprawie klasyfikacji zjawisk psychicznych (1900), and then is discussed extensively in his lecture on Psychology of desires and will / Psychologia pożądań i woli (1903/4), where Twardowski distinguishes as a fourth one, separate class of will. I will try to show that Twardowski's research remained strictly in the horizon of Brentano’s descriptive psychology, where one of the central motifs was the problem of classification of psychic phenomena, examined in first-person approach, within internal perception, and thus one can still speak about Cartesianism of his thought. This Twardowskian Cartesianism will still be focused on a modernization of Descartes' classical thesis, although it will ultimately make important displacements, emphasizing the analysis of concepts in epistemology and in the field of affective phenomena, he will move in the direction of its naturalization.