ABSTRACT
Ernst Mally was born on October 11, 1879 in Krainburg, then a town of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, today Kranj, Slovenia. Mally's philosophical work has been described as developing through several stages. In his initial phase, Mally was influenced by Alexius Meinong's Theory of Objects, but he tried to confront Meinong's thoughts with new philosophical and logical developments, especially with the results of mathematical logic. Philosophy in Austria during the first half of the 20th century was influenced by transcendentalism and neo-Thomism, and was also shaped by the School of Franz Brentano and the the neo-positivistic doctrines of the Vienna Circle. In his philosophy, the problem of reality and empirical knowledge occupied Mally to a considerable degree, and led him to a second step in criticizing Meinong's Gegenstand. To further clarify this crucial point, Mally developed his Theory of Determinates, with the important distinction between 'to exemplify' and 'to determine.'.
