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Ernst Mally's Theory of Properties!

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Ernst Mally's Theory of Properties! ERNST MALLY'S THEORY OF PROPERTIES! Roberto POLl University of Trento 1. Of Meinong's pupils, Ernst Mally is the one who probably made the most significant contribution to furthering the ideas of his teacher.2 It is sufficient, in this regard, to cite Meinong's explicit acknowledgement of Mally's work in his "The Theory ofObjects".3 Of greatest importance in this respect are Mally's unravelling of the distinction between Sein and Sosein4 and between nuclear and extra-nuclear properties,S and his introduction of important termi­ nological refinements which for the most part Meinong accepted.6 Nevertheless, the recent revival of interest in Meinong's theories has not been matched by equal consideration of Mally's work and insights. If we inspect the literature of the last fifteen years, it is immediately apparent that the overwhelming majority of references to Mally concern just two passages in his works, the two that Findlay quotes and comments on in his classic book on Meinong.7 One 1. I thank Liliana A1bertazzi, Johannes Brandl, Rudolf Haller, Dale Jacquette, Karl Schuhmann, Barry Smith and Jan Wo1enski for their comments on a previous version of this paper. 2. Ernst Mally was born in Krainburg (now Kranj, Yugoslavia) in 1879 and died in Graz in 1944. He studied philosophy, mathematics and physics at the University of Graz and in 1913 wrote his dissertation in philosophy under Meinong's supervision. On Meinong's death he was appointed director of the psychology laboratory that has been established by Meinong. In 1925 he became full professor and retained his chair in the university until 1942. For further information on the life and work of Mally see WOLF 1971. See also MOKRE 1971 and WEINGARTNER 1971. 3. See MEINONG 1904B. I shall quote from the English translation. 4. I shall examine here the version expounded in MALLY 1904. 5. MALLY 1912. The first part of this work has also been published as MALLY 1912B. 6. See for instance MEINONG 1904B, 112. 7. FINDLAY 1963. 116 cannot avoid the impression, therefore, that these references to Mally are mostly second-hand, and that they do not derive from direct contact with his work.s There are several reasons why this should be so. Thus Mally, for the most part, has still not been translated.9 Moreover, he changed his theoretical position profound­ ly from a general adherence to and development of the arguments of the Gegenstandstheorie to a peculiar brand of dynamic ontology which showed the influence of Bergson and Whitehead. to His early works, moreover, are so explicitly and directly connected to Mei­ nong's output that the reader inevitably gains the impression that it is nothing but a restatement in logical form of Meinong's thought.!! Further, if we remember that: a) we still do not have a thorough treatment of Mally's work comparable to Findlay on Meinong; b) that Mally employed the logical symbolism of Schroder, a symbol­ ism which seems odd to the devotees to the Frege-Russell ortho­ doxy; c) that his systems were more a tentative exploration than a set of explicitly developed calculi,!2 then we acquire a sufficiently detailed picture of some of the reasons why interest is lacking in Mally's work. Here, I shall only deal with Mally's theory of properties. More precisely, I shall examine Mally's progress from the theory of Sein 8. On the other hand, as Rudolf Haller has pointed out, recent literature on Meinong quotes Findlay more than Meinong himself. See HALLER 1989. Since I have set myself the task of presenting the basic features of Mally's theories, I shall not deal here with the critical literature that has recently developed with particular regard to his two modes of predication and the difference between nuclear and extra-nuclear properties. See in particular PARSONS 1980, LAM­ BERT 1983 and ZALTA 1983. 9. As far as I know, the only English translation is MALLY 1914. Jacquette reported to me that he is currently at work on the English translation of MALL Y 1912. 10. See WOLF 1948,22-3; WOLF 1952, 146-48; WOLF 1968.586-7. where there is also mention of a connection with the reism of the late Brentano; WOLF 1971,3-5. 11. In effect, careful examination of Meinong's own words on the subject should have shown how erroneous this impression was. See, for example, the last chapter of "The Theory of Objects", in CHISHOLM 1960. 12. At least as far as his works published during his lifetime are concerned. .
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