This summer I will be visiting the Forschungsstelle und Dokumentazionszentrum für Österreichische Philosophie (FDÖP) in Graz, which among other things holds Brentano’s personal research library (around 900 books). By combining my successful visit to Harvard’s Houghton Library and to this Brentano-Archive, I will be in a better position to assess which of the unpublished materials from Brentano’s Nachlass might be suitable for publication and in which form and venue this might best be done.

After the summer, I have two conferences scheduled: the Making of the Humanities IV: Connecting Disciplines, to be held at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR) like last time, and the annual OZSW Conference, to be held in Nijmegen this year. I will be speaking about closely related themes, but with different focus and emphasis, about the interdisciplinary character of Brentano’s Science of Consciousness and how, as a “Geisteswissenschaft” to all effects, it is directed against the mechanization of the mind. In both I will try to argue in more detail why and how Brentano’s approach is still relevant to current philosophy of mind and cognitive science, along the same lines as in my earlier sketch at the “Philosophy around 1900” workshop.

Furthermore, I’ve started taking the first steps to organize a conference here in Utrecht next Spring on the overall theme of “Philosophy as Science”, both in line with my own project as well as in close collaboration with another project. Stay tuned for more details in the Fall!

Now that I am halfway my grant (I’m doing it part-time at 75%, so I have 4 years), I already need to start thinking about my next project and how to get it funded. The logical choices for me would be to prepare a VIDI project, the next step up in the “Innovational Research Incentives Scheme” of the Dutch NWO or to shoot for an European ERC Starting Grant. Actually, the safest option would be to do both and propose two related projects that would each be feasible on their own as well as integrate if I would obtain them both. Still, I would do well to have a plan B, that would allow me to bridge the gap year and prepare an even better project or explore my options outside of the Netherlands, such as a Humboldt Fellowship.