DALE JAQUETTE. ALEXIUS MEINONG, THE SHEPHERD OF NON-BEING. Moscow: Kanon + ROOI “Reabilitatsiia”, 2023. ISBN 978-5-88373-782-3

Abstract

In my review, I evaluate the first translation of Dale Jacquette’s book entitled Alexius Meinong, The Shepherd of Non-Being into Russian. First of all, I point out the relevance of the publication of this translation. It is conditioned, in my view, by the fact that the person of Alexius Meinong—one of the important representatives of the school of Franz Brentano—still remains undeservedly forgotten and not enough studied in both domestic and foreign history of philosophy. At the same time, studying the legacy of Meinong could shed the light on the peculiarity of the processes that took place in European philosophy at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, as well as show the common sources of such divergent directions in modern philosophy as analytical philosophy and phenomenology. Moreover, philosophy of Meinong could discover some perspectives for modern thought that other philosophers of the past cannot indicate. All these points, in my opinion, are taken into account in Jacquette’s monograph. The advantage of his research is that he reconstructs the philosophy of Meinong, his theory of objects in a very broad historical and philosophical context of both phenomenological (F.Brentano, E.Husserl) and analytical (B.Russell, W.V.O.Quine, D.K.Lewis, S.Kripke) traditions. Systematically, the center of Meinong’s theory of objects is the doctrine of so-called Außersein of the objects, which can be considered not only as existing, but as not yet existing, no longer existing and even impossible. As conclusion, I criticize the translations of some of Meinong/Jacquette terms used in the monograph under review.