ABSTRACT
The idea of an “Austrian philosophy” as a distinct historiographical category in the history of 19th- and 20th-century philosophy has been advanced and formulated in increasing detail since the 1970s. Rudolf Haller has tried in his works to establish both the historical as well as the systematical coherence of Austrian philosophy as a “more or less homogenous development”, providing a list of “essential traits”. Haller points to Herbart and Bolzano as early representatives of Austrian philosophy that exemplify such traits. One of the most influential groups, and the first actual school in Austrian philosophy, however, was born in the wake of Franz Brentano’s program of doing philosophy as science. A historical-genealogical examination of the context in which phenomenology developed would rather preserve a neutrality and objectivity not unlike those advocated by phenomenology itself. Not only would the School of Brentano then count as the school of Austrian philosophy, it also mediated between the earlier representatives and later movements.
