ABSTRACT
We saw how tortuous Meinong’s discussion of the problem of non-existent objects is in the first edition of Über Annahmen. Clinging to the notion that an idea can have an intention only if that intention has being, he nevertheless tries to convince us and himself that even the idea of the golden mountain has an object in some sense, since it could have one. He even claims that the idea of the round square has an object, although it cannot have one. In the second edition of this work, he returns to this topic of nonexistent intentions.1 He reprints, without any changes, the relevant chapters of the first edition. But then he adds a new section under the title: ‘Self-Criticism: The View of Aussersein.’ In this section, he criticizes his earlier view, and proceeds to diagnose the reason for his mistake. The postulate that ideas can be intentional only if their objects have being, he says, rests on a prejudice in favor of the real or, at least, in favor of what has being. This prejudice in. favor of being, Meinong argues, is associated with a prejudice in favor of knowledge.2 If we overcome the first prejudice, then we realize that the characteristic relationship between a mind and its objects is, not that of knowledge, but that of apprehension. Intentionality, then, is not to be explicated in terms of the relationship between the knower and the known, but in terms of the relationship between a mind and what it apprehends from the limitless realm of Aussersein. Before something can be known about an object, the object must first be apprehended; it must be picked out from the realm of Aussersein. Thus Meinong is faced with the question of what kind of experience the apprehension of a pure object is.
