Lotze and Brentano as Teachers of Metaphysics

In the nineteenth century, while metaphysics was falling on evil days, Hermann Lotze and Franz Brentano were nonetheless lecturing on metaphysical topics. Both of them were doing so with the conviction that this discipline could be developed in accordance with the methods of natural science. The science that they found most relevant to metaphysics was psychology, more specifically phenomenology: a kind of psychology that relied on immediate experience or inner perception. In this chapter their phenomenologically oriented metaphysics receives attention and is shown to be enhanced by Carl Stumpf, a common student of theirs, in his epistemological investigation concerning the origin of the concept of substance.