Franz Brentano, Gustav Theodor Fechner. Briefwechsel über Psychophysik, 1874-1878. Edition with Preface and Introduction.

This volume presents a critical edition of the previously unpublished correspondence between Franz Brentano and Gustav Theodor Fechner and a detailed introduction to provide context. A total of 11 letters (May to June 1974; October 1877 to January 1878) discuss in great detail Brentano’s critical arguments against Fechner’s psychophysics, already raised in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), and Fechner’s counterpoints. From the correspondence, in which Brentano, among other things, simultaneously but independently from Joseph Plateau proposes a power function as psychophysical law instead of Fechner’s logarithmic law, the different psychological and philosophical understandings of these two great Central European scholars of the late 19th century emerge.