- Lived:
- 1838–1917 · born at Marienberg am Rhein; taught in Würzburg and Vienna; died in Zurich
- Tradition:
- Austro-German philosophy of mind; the bridge between empiricism and phenomenology
- The Big Idea:
- What makes a mind a mind is intentionality — every mental act is directed at something, is about something, while no merely physical thing is about anything at all.
- In their words:
- "Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object... reference to a content, direction toward an object."
- If you remember one thing:
- He gave up his priesthood, his professorship, and his citizenship — each time rather than say something he did not believe — and one sentence he wrote in 1874 still defines the deepest puzzle about the mind.