ABSTRACT
In one of his major works, ‘Über Gegenstandstheorie,’ Meinong pro claims the existence of a hitherto neglected philosophical discipline, the so-called theory of entities.1 In describing this new and vast field of inquiry, he is faced with a particular philosophical problem. Having held for some time that there are two modes of being, namely, existence and subsistence, he has to consider the possibility that a third mode of being may have to be added in order to account for the ontological status of such entities as the golden mountain and the round square. Meinong, as almost everyone knows, introduces at this point the concept of Aussersein. This chapter is about his doctrine of the Aussersein of the pure object.
