Alexius Meinong
| Alexius Meinong | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 17 July 1853 Lemberg, Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria (now L'viv, Ukraine) |
| Died |
27 November 1920 (aged 67) Graz, Styria, Austria |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna (PhD, 1874) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School |
School of Brentano Graz School Austrian Realism |
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Main interests
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Ontology, philosophy of language |
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Notable ideas
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Meinong's jungle, noneism |
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Influences
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Alexius Meinong Ritter von Handschuchsheim (17 July 1853 – 27 November 1920) was an Austrian philosopher, a realist known for his unique ontology. He also made contributions to philosophy of mind and theory of value.
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 promotions of Christian von Ehrenfels (founder of Gestalt psychology) and Adalbert Meingast, as well as the habilitation of Alois Höfler and Anton Oelzelt-Newin.
Meinong wrote two early essays on David Hume, the first dealing with his theory of abstraction, the second with his theory of relations, and 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, they must have some sort of being. Meinong thus distinguishes the "being" of a thing, in virtue of which it may be an object of thought, from a thing's "existence", which is the substantive ontological status ascribed, for example, to horses but denied to unicorns. Meinong called such nonexistent objects "homeless"; others have nicknamed their place of residence "Meinong's jungle" because of their great number and exotic nature.
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