ABSTRACT
In 1894, there appeared a rather slim book by K.Twardowski, a student of Brentano’s, which influenced the course of philosophy.1 In this book, Twardowski argued that the intention of a mental act-its ‘object’—is in no sense of the term ‘immanent’ to the act. He argued, in other words, that the intention of a mental act is never a part of that act. Twardowski, therefore, distinguished between the content of an act of presentation-what I shall sometimes call an ‘idea’—and the object of this act. Without this distinction, I am convinced, there would be neither phenomenology nor a theory of entities. Meinong, as we shall see presently, adopts Twardowski’s distinction. He even presents the same arguments for it as Twardowski. For this reason, we shall briefly turn to Twardowski’s work in order to assess the soundness of one of Meinong’s most basic and enduring views.
