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Viewed with hindsight, in many respects Brentano belongs to the tradition of Austrian liberalism whose exponents included Mach and Boltzmann. Shared by these thinkers was the endeavour to reform the theory of knowledge in general, and logic in particular, and a scientific conception of the world.1 The mainstream of this tradition flowed through the Vienna Circle, which acknowledged Brentano, Meinong and Höfler among its forerunners. As Neurath recalls, although Brentano started from entirely different premises, he prepared the way for foundational inquiry in logic, mathematics and theory of knowledge. The section of the Vienna Circle’s Manifesto devoted to the history of the movement declared:

To conclude, I would like to summarize my personal point of view on Brentano. Why should a contemporary scholar – and especially a scientist – undertake such painstaking analyses as those offered by Brentano and embark on such an internal anabasis on his or her own experience, constantly conducted on the boundary between inner and outer, or try to disentangle such a maze of conceptual architecture? Most of all, is Brentano’s main endeavour to reconstruct reality starting from inner experience a practicable one?