The Teaching of Jesus and its Enduring Significance

Franz Brentano is well known for his contribution to such diverse strands of modern thought as analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. What is less well known, however, was that he began his career as a priest and was considered one of the most promising intellectuals in the German Catholic revival movement of the nineteenth-century. Commissioned by the Bishop of Mainz in 1869 to draft a position paper on the proposed doctrine of infallibility, however, Brentano experienced deep misgivings about the truth of the new dogma. This, in turn, prompted him to question a host of other doctrines and led him to renounce both the priesthood, and eventually, the Church. He spent the rest of his life a committed theist, and continued to write on the subject of religion, but most of these texts remained unpublished in his lifetime. Here, for the first time in English, is his The Teaching of Jesus, a compendium of texts Brentano assembled for publication shortly before his death.Together, they constitute a frank, public settling of accounts with the Christian religion. Originally conceived by Brentano as a volume that might help others similarly led to doubt the doctrines of Christianity, the book is remarkably free of bitterness or spitefulness. On the contrary, what makes the book of singular importance, especially now, is its careful attempt at taking stock of the positive and negative influence Christianity has had in history.