From Empirical Psychology to Phenomenology. Edmund Husserl on the ‘Brentano Puzzle’

Gustave Flaubert is known to have believed that writers should be like God in the universe, present in all parts of their creation but in none of them visible. In what follows I want to suggest that Flaubert’s conviction may provide some insight into the puzzle of Brentano’s invisibility. For the influence teachers exercise on their disciples is often one of invisible form, rather than of visible content, and this may be particularly so in the case of students who, like Edmund Husserl, become original thinkers in their own right.