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For more information on Alexius Meinong, Ritter (knight) von Handschuchsheim, visit Britannica.com.
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The Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong, Ritter von Handschuchsheim (1853-1920), made important contributions to the general theory of reference and to the understanding of values.
Alexius Meinong was born in Lemburg, Poland, but his family soon returned to Austria. All his formal education was in Vienna, first at the Academic Gymnasium and then at the university, where in 1874 he took his degree in history and philosophy. Like the other important figures in Austrian philosophy, he then came under the influence of Franz Brentano. Brentano encouraged him to study David Hume, and in due course Meinong produced two books on the English philosopher. His philosophical apprenticeship was thus in the tradition of British empiricism, and his subsequent work owes more to this tradition than to any German philosopher.
Meinong taught at Vienna as a lecturer for four years (1878-1882) and then moved to Graz, where he taught for the remainder of his life. The major event of his long tenure at Graz was his founding of the Institute of Experimental Psychology, the first such institution in Austria.
Meinong's most original contribution to philosophy is his theory of objects. His starting point is that the theory of objects is too narrowly construed. There is a general tendency in philosophy to deal only with those objects which exist and, moreover, a tendency in commonsense thinking to equate the existent object with material entities. Against these two tendencies Meinong argues that there is an important distinction between talking about nonexistent objects and talking about nothing. It is, for example, possible to sort out true and false statements about Santa Claus, and this could not be the case if the name denoted nothing at all. What it denotes is an object with quite definite properties ("lives at the North Pole," "drives reindeer") which does not happen to exist. In general, says Meinong, it is always possible to distinguish the characteristics of an object (sosein) from its being (sein). This principle allows him to introduce highly imaginative discussions of impossible objects, incomplete objects, defective objects, inclusive objects, and the like.
In a posthumously published book, On the Foundations of the General Theory of Values (1924), Meinong extends his theory to ethics and esthetics. Here he tries to show that values are objects which we apprehend through various modes of feeling. He then attempts to provide criteria for situations in which these feelings could be said to be correct or incorrect, appropriate or inappropriate.
Even though Meinong's work is still largely unread, it has had considerable influence on English philosophy through the interpretations of Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. More recent work indicates that these early interpretations were defective and that Meinong may yet receive a more adequate hearing.
Further Reading
J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values (1933; 2d ed., 1963), is a largely sympathetic exposition, but some criticisms are added together with a brief biographical sketch and an overall assessment of Meinong's significance. Gustav Bergmann, Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (1967), offers a full-length appraisal.
Additional Sources
Lindenfeld, David F., The transformation of positivism: Alexius Meinong and European thought, 1880-1920, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
| Philosophy Dictionary: Alexius von Meinong |
Meinong, Alexius von (1853-1920) Austrian psychologist and philosopher. A pupil of Brentano at the university of Vienna, Mein-ong taught at Graz from 1882 until his death. He there established a laboratory for experimental psychology, and in the tradition of Brentano his philosophical interests derived very largely from the problems of establishing a satisfactory psychology. Meinong's most famous doctrine derives from the problem of intentionality, which led him to countenance objects, such as the golden mountain, that are capable of being the object of thought, although they do not actually exist. This doctrine was one of the principal targets of Russell's theory of definite descriptions. However, it came as part of a complex and interesting package of concepts in the theory of meaning, and scholars are not united in supposing that Russell was fair to it. Meinong's works include Über Annahmen (1907, trs. as On Assumptions, 1983) and Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit (1915).
| Wikipedia: Alexius Meinong |
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| Western philosophy 20th century philosophy |
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| Full name | Alexius Meinong |
| Born | July 17, 1853 |
| Died | November 27, 1920 |
| School/tradition | Analytic philosophy |
| Main interests | Ontology. philosophy of language |
| Notable ideas | Meinong's jungle, noneism |
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Alexius Meinong (July 17, 1853 - November 27, 1920) was an Austrian philosopher, a realist known for his unique ontology.
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Meinong was born in Lemberg, Austria (now L'viv in Ukraine) and died in Graz, Austria. He studied at the Akademisches Gymnasium, Vienna and later the University of Vienna, where he read history and philosophy as a pupil of Franz Brentano. He was professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Graz, where he founded the Graz psychological institute (in 1894) and the Graz School of experimental psychology. Meinong supervised the promotion of Christian von Ehrenfels (founder of Gestalt psychology), as well as the habilitation of Alois Höfler and Anton Oelzelt-Newin.
Meinong wrote two books on David Hume, the first dealing with his theory of abstraction, the second with his theory of relations; Meinong was relatively strongly influenced by British empiricism. He is most noted, however, for his Theory of Objects (Über Gegenstandstheorie, 1904), which grew out of his work on intentionality and his belief in the possibility of intending nonexistent objects. The theory is based around the purported empirical observation that it is possible to think about something, such as a golden mountain, even though that object does not exist. Since we can refer to such things that do not exist, they must have some sort of being. Meinong thus distinguishes the "being" of a thing, which it possesses in virtue of its ability to be intended toward, from a thing's "existence", which is the substantive ontological status ascribed, for example, to horses but denied to unicorns. The "place" that such things exist has been nicknamed Meinong's jungle.
Historically, Meinong has been treated as an eccentric who was dealt a well-deserved death blow in Bertrand Russell's famous essay On Denoting, especially by Gilbert Ryle. However, Russell himself spoke (and wrote) highly of the vast majority of Meinong's work. Further, Meinongians such as Terence Parsons and Roderick Chisholm established the consistency of a Meinongian theory of objects, while others (e.g., Karel Lambert) have defended the usefulness of such a theory.
Meinong is also seen to be controversial in the field of philosophy of language for he is often attributed to the view that "existence" is merely a property of an object, just as color or mass might be a property. Closer readers of his work, however, accept that Meinong held the view that objects are "indifferent to being"[1] and that they stand "beyond being and non-being".[1] On this view Meinong is expressly denying that existence is a property of an object. For Meinong, what an object is, its real essence, depends on the properties of the object.[2] These properties are genuinely possessed whether the object exists or not, and so existence cannot be a mere property of an object.
Meinong holds that objects can be divided into three categories on the basis of their ontological status. Objects may have one of the following three modalities of being and non-being:
Certain objects can exist (mountains, birds, etc.); others cannot in principle ever exist, such as the objects of mathematics (numbers, theorems, etc.): such objects simply subsist. Finally, a third class of objects cannot even subsist, such as impossible objects (e.g. square circle, wooden iron, etc.). Being-given is not a minimal mode of being, because it is not a mode of being at all. Rather, to be "given" is just to be an object. Being-given, termed "absistence" by J.N. Findlay, is better thought of as a mode of non-being than as a mode of being. Absistence, unlike existence and subsistence, does not have a negation; everything absists. (Note that all objects absist, while some subset of these subsist, of which a yet-smaller subset exist.) The result that everything absists allows Meinong to deal with our ability to affirm the non-being (Nichtsein) of an object. It is given or absists, as evidenced by our act of intending it, which is logically prior to our denying that it has being.
Meinong distinguishes four classes of "objects":
To these four classes of objects correspond four classes of psychological acts:
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| Franz Brentano (German philosopher & psychologist) | |
| Christian von Ehrenfels | |
| Meinong |
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