In debt to his teacher, Brentano, Meinong is known for an innovative, if not controversial, theory of intentionality, claiming that objects are totally independent of the mind, and that intended objects do not need to exist in order to be. In 1905, Bertrand Russell wrote a critical essay on Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie, entitled "On Denoting." This essay can now be found in a book of Russell's essays entitled Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901-1950, edited by Robert C. Marsh. More recently, Peter Simons has written an essay about the dispute between Meinong and Russell entitled "On What There Isn't: The Meinong--Russell Dispute."

See Also:

• Austrian Philosophy
• Psychology
• Intentionality
• Extensionalism
• Formal Semantics
• Metaphysics

Alexius Meinong and the Theory of Objects

From Descriptive and Formal Ontology website by Raul Corazzon

This page offers an extensive German, English, Italian and French bibliographies of works by and about meinong.

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Über Gegenstandstheorie / Selbstdarstellung
von Alexius Meinong, Josef M. Werle (Herausgeber)

Broschiert - 138 Seiten - Meiner, Hbg.
Erscheinungsdatum: April 1998
ISBN: 3787307206

Major Works:

• "Über Gegenstandstheorie," in Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, Leipzig: Barth, A. Meinong (ed.), 1904

• "Über Annahmen, 2nd ed., Leipzig: Barth, 1910

• "Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit, Leipzig: Barth, 1915

• "Über emotionale Präsentation, report of the Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 1917

Secondary Sources:

Meinongs Theory of Objects and Values by J. N Findlay

Hardcover: 408 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing; 2nd edition (October 1995)
ISBN: 0751201707
Available from

This book may be difficult to find.  Click on the title above to see if a used copy can be located.

Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski: Selected Essays by Peter Simons

Hardcover: 441 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.25 x 1.00 x 7.00
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff; (March 1992)
ISBN: 0792316215
Available from

Simon's essay on Meinong is entitled "On What There Isn't: The Meinong--Russell Dispute," pp. 159 - 191.

• "Meinong by Reinhardt Grossmann

• "The Transformation of Positivism : Alexius Meinong and European Thought, 1880-1920 by David F. Lindenfeld

• "Psychologie und Philosophie der Grazer Schule

• "The School of Alexius Meinong (Western Philosophy Series) by Liliana Albertazzi (Editor), Dale Jacquette (Editor), Roberto Poli (Editor)

• "Alexius Meinong's Elements of Ethics : With Translation of the Fragment Ethische Bausteine by Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi

• "Alexius Meinong on objects of higher order and Husserl's phenomenology by Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi

• "Meinong and the Principle of Independence : Its Place in Meinong's Theory of Objects and Its Significance in Contemporary Philosophical Logic by Lambert (Author)

• "On Assumptions by Alexius Meinong

• "Meinong's Theory of Knowledge (The Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, 28) by Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi

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