Franz Brentano received his doctorate in Würzburg in 1862. He was ordained a priest in 1864 and habilitated at the Alma Julia in 1866. In 1872 he became an associate professor at the University of Würzburg.
In 1873 he left Würzburg and became a professor in Vienna.

Brentano was truly a revolutionary in science: he wanted experimentation to be the method of choice in philosophy. He came into conflict with the church when he drafted an expert opinion in which he wrote that he considered the claim of infallibility to be historically inconceivable and logically unjustified. When the dogma of infallibility was finally accepted, he resigned from the priesthood in 1873 and six years later he even left the church altogether. It can therefore be stated that the time and his life circumstances stood in the way of a wide dissemination of his teachings.