MEINONG' S CONCEPT OF IMPLEXIVE BEING AND NONBEING

Dale JACQUETTE The Pennsylvania State University

1. An Intertwining of Objects

In what is undoubtedly one of his most complex later works, Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit: Beiträge zur Gegenstands• theorie und Erkenntnistheorie, Meinong introduces the distinction between implexive being and nonbeing. Meinong uses the concept of implexive being and nonbeing to explain the metaphysics of universals, and as a contribution to the theory of reference and perception. The word 'implexive' derives from the Latin implecto, meaning to plait, weave or twist into, entangle in, involve, entwine, or enfold. I J.N. Findlay, in Meinong's Theory ofObjects and Values, translates Meinong's technical term 'implektiert' as 'embedded'. This fits the etymology and captures the right philosophical sense, once we understand the precise nature of the embedding relation Meinong me ans to describe. 2 Meinong says that incomplete objects (unvollständige Gegen• stände) have implexive being (das implexive Sein) by virtue ofbeing implected in complete objects. Similarly, incomplete objects have implexive nonbeing by virtue of being implected in beingless ob• jects. The terminology encourages us to think metaphorically of a

1. An earlier source is the Greek word 'EI-lJ'tAEXG:JV'. F.P. Leverett, ed., A New and Copious Lexicon of the Latin Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1950), p. 406. 2. J.N. Findlay, Meinong 's Theory of Objects and Values, Edited with an Introduction by Dale Jacquette, from the second edition, Oxford University Press, 1963 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1995) (Gregg Revivals), pp. 169- 170,210 (all references to this edition). 234

literal embedding of wh at is incomplete in what is complete. Meinong further extends the. concept of implexive being and non• being to the concept of implexive so-being (implexive Sosein). A beingless incomplete object is said by Meinong to have a certain constitutive property (konstitutorische Bestimmung) in its implexive Sosein when it is embedded in another object whose Sosein includes the property. 3 The concept of implexive being and nonbeing enables Meinong to offer a broadly Brentanian-Aristotelian empiricist object theory explanation of the metaphysics of universals. Berkeley and Hume disproved the existence or subsistence of universals by discovering their essential incompleteness. The universal 'the triangle' , for example, is neither red nor nonred, scalene nor nonscalene, isosceles nor nonisosceles. The predicational incompleteness of universals does not disqualify them for further consideration, but implies only that they belong among the other beingless objects in Meinong's extraontology. The problem that remains for Meinong is to explain how universals are nevertheless instantiated in different particular real world entities. Meinong follows Brentano's lead in Aristotelian• izing the metaphysics of universals.4 By the concept of implexive

3. Meinong introduces the distinction between konstitutorische and ausser• konstitutorische Bestimmungen (constitutive and extraconstitutive properties) in Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit: Beiträge zur Gegenstandstheorie und Erkenntnistheorie (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1915), rpt. Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe, eight volumes, edited by Rudolf Haller and Rudolf Kindinger in collaboration with Roderick M. Chisholm (Graz: Akademi• sche Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1969-1978) (hereafter, Gesamtausgabe) (same pagination as Barth), pp. 176-177. Findlay, in Meinong' s Theory of Objects and Values, p. 176, proposed the English translations 'nuc1ear' and 'extranuc1ear'. See also Terence Parsons, "Nuc1ear and Extranuc1ear Properties, Meinong, and Leibniz", Nous, 12, 1978, pp. 137-151. Parsons, Nonexistent Objects (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). 4. Franz Brentano, Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Briefe und Abhandlungen aus dem Nachlaß, mit einer Einleitung, edited by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (Bem: Francke Verlag, 1966). Brentano's later Aristotelian reism culminates a lifetime's effort to incorporate Aristotelian ideas into Austrian and middle Euro• pean philosophy against the then prevailing tide of German idealism, beginning with his (1862) Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles through the (1867) Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, (1911) Aristoteles Lehre vom