Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond: an Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items

Richard Routley’s Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond is perhaps the most comprehensive and representative work in Neo-Meinongianism. It covers several topics: theory of items, ontology, logics, aesthetics, theory of knowledge, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of time. Routley aims at presenting a Meinong-inspired theory of items and at showing the advantages of such a theory within several fields. This book includes some articles published from the ‘60s and it partly inspired modal Neo-Meinongianism, even though Routley seems to accept the property-centered Neo-Meinongianism (see the Foreword). I cannot give here an exhaustive account of Routley’s whole investigation of noneism (i.e., the theory according to which, roughly, there are items that do not exist, or, in other words, that not all the items exist). Considering the structure of the book, it is possible to individuate: a brief presentation and defense of noneist theses (pp. 1–73); a critique of classical logic and the introduction of a revised, neutral (i.e., not existentially committed) logic grounded on the theory of items (this long part includes, among other things, some important remarks on the Characterisation Postulate, on identity, existence, possible worlds, inconsistency, definite descriptions, intensional contexts) (pp. 73–360); a defense of a Meinongian and presentist metaphysical theory of time (pp. 361–409); some replies to Quine’s article On what there is (in the short paper On what there isn’t) and to other objections