Alfred Kastil

Alfred Kastil (; 12 May 1874 – 20 July 1950) was an Austrian philosopher and Brentano scholar.

Life and work Alfred Kastil was born in Graz, Austria on 12 May 1874.

He attended secondary school in Brno. The son of a bank clerk, Alois Kastil, in 1892, the year of his leaving school, Kastil came to Prague due to the transfer of his father thumb Brentano (1898)He taught as a professor at the Innsbruck University from 1912. After Brentano's death in 1917, Kastil, with Oskar Kraus, worked on Brentano's Nachlass, transferring much of it to Innsbruck.

Kastil and Kraus succeeded in beginning the editing and posthumous publication of the many drafts, lecture notes and letters left by Brentano. Wolfgang Huemer comments that both "tried to present Brentano's work as best as they could, putting together various texts to what they thought were rounded, convincing works" but that they sometimes did so with a "questionable editorial criteria". notes that, 'as was his editorial practice', in Vom Dasein Gottes (1929), Kastil "altered the text of some of the earlier lectures so they would conform to Brentano's later views." McAlister regarded this as "an unfortunate scholarly practice because it effaces the traces of the development of Brentano's thought,"

Rush Rhees studied the work of Brentano with Kastil at Innsbruck (1932–1933) and continued visiting Kastil in Vienna up to 1937.

Engelbert Dollfuss and his clerical fascist Fatherland Front came to power in May 1933, and sources differ on whether it was (late) 1933 or (early) 1934, but at (or near) the end of the winter semester 1933/34, Kastil retired early from Innsbruck for 'political reasons.' Peter Gollerm talks of Kastil as being, along with fellow philosopher Theodor Erismann, amongst the very few openly democratically minded opponents of the emerging right-wing authoritarianism and, from around 1929, of Nazism, within the secular Innsbruck faculty of the 1920s onwards. Gollerm (and Urmann) also speak of Kastil giving up his teaching position in protest against the ('brown tide' i.e. tide of Nazism) at the university. Dietrich von Hildebrand also recalls Kastil reporting that he had left Innsbruck "because the conduct of my colleagues was such that I could only see brown" (this being a reference to the brown-shirts).

Kastil moved to Schönbühel near Melk, where he lived in what had been Brentano's summer house (this being made possible by Brentano's son Giovanni, who Kastil had tutored several years prior). There, his main concern was the editing of further writings by Brentano, though he also lectured at the University of Vienna for two semesters (over 1937–1938), latterly on Brentano's philosophy.

At the age of 76, Kastil died suddenly, without prior illness, on 20 July 1950, in Schönbühel an der Dona

Kastil had also begun the preparation of Brentano's Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik, and, under her own editorship, Mayer-Hillebrand completed this work in 1952. Mayer-Hillebrand continued Kastil's work with Brentano's Religion und Philosophie (1954) and Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil (1956). She also continued, as, Jan Srzednicki noted, with Kastil's aim, justified by their understanding of Brentano's own requests, that "his work should be continued, rather than reverently edited",

Works

Authored (1900) "Die Frage nach der Erkenntnis des Guten bei Aristoteles und Tomas von Aquin" ("The question of the knowledge of the good in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas"), Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschafen Vienna: Philosophisch-Historische Classe, 142 (1901) Zur Lehre von der Willensfreiheit in der Nikomachischen Ethik. Prague: Habilitationschrif (1909) Studien zur neueren Erkenntnistheorie. i.Descartes. Halle: Niemeyer. (1912) Jakob Friedrich Fries' Lehre von der unmittelbaren Erkenntnis. Eine Nachpru¨fung seiner Reform der theoretischen Philosophie Kants, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (1934) "Ontologischer und gnoseologischer Wahrheitsbegrif," Zur Philosophie der Gegenwart, 23–34: Prague: Brentano Gesellschaft, reprinted in Actes du huitième Congrè International de Philosophie (1936) pp. 918–929 (1949) "Ein neuer Rettungsversuch der Evidenz der äußeren Wahrnehmung. Kritische Bemerkungen zu Stumpfs Erkenntnislehre" in: Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, vol. 3, 1948, pp. 198–218) (1951) Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos: eine Einführung in seine Lehre. Bern: Lehnen. (1958) "Brentano und der Psychologismus", in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 351–359)

Edited

Works by Franz Brentano (1922) Die Lehre Jesu und ihre bleibende Bedeutung, Leipzig: Meiner translated as The Teaching of Jesus and its Enduring Significance, by Richard Schaefer, 2021 (1925) Versuch über die Erkenntnis, (Inquiry Into the Nature of Knowledge) Leipzig: Meiner 2nd edition, 1970, expanded, and with a new introduction, by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (1929) Vom Dasein Gottes, (On the Existence of God) Leipzig: Meiner translated by Susan Krantz, Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987 (1933) Kategorienlehre, Leipzig: Meiner (with introduction and notes by Kastil) translated as: The Theory of Categories by Roderick Chisholm and Norbert Guterman, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981. (with Kastil's notes, but without his introduction)

Works by Anton Marty (with Josef Eisenmeierand and Oskar Kraus)

(1916) Raum und Zeit. Halle, Niemeyer

Gesammelte Schriften ('Collected Writings')

(1916), Vol. I/1, Mit einem Lebensabriss und einem Bildnis, Halle: Niemeyer. (1916), Vol. I/2, Schriften zur genetischen Sprachphilosophie, Halle: Niemeyer. (1918) Vol. II/1, Schriften zur deskriptiven Psychologie und Sprachphilosophie, Halle: Niemeyer. (preface by Kastil) (1920) Vol. II/2, Schriften zur deskriptiven Psychologie und Sprachphilosophie, Halle: Niemeyer.