Franz Brentano was born January 16, 1838 in Marienberg, Germany. He became a priest in 1864 and began teaching two years later at the University of Würzburg. Religious doubts led him to leave the priesthood and resign from his teaching position in 1873.

The following year, he wrote Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. It was in this book that he introduced the concept that is most associated with him: intentionality or immanent objectivity. This is the idea that what makes mind different from things is that mental acts are always directed at something beyond themselves: Seeing implies something seen, willing means something willed, imagining implies something imagined, judging points at something judged. Intentionality links the subject and the object in a very powerful way. He was given a position as professor at the University of Vienna soon after.

In 1880, he tried to marry, but his marriage was forbidden by the Austrian government, who still considered him a priest. He left his professorship and moved to Leipzig to get married. The next year, he was permitted to come back to the University of Vienna, as a lecturer.

He was quite popular with students. Among them were Carl Stumpf and Edmund Husserl, the founders of phenomenology, and Sigmund Freud himself. Brentano retired in 1895, but continued to write until his death on March 17, 1917, in Zurich.