The Famous Rabbit Incident
A trove of mysterious photographs and paintings has emerged, all related to the notorious “rabbit incident” of 1871. We are indebted to Professor Jo...
Author: Eli Alshanetsky
Man’s Duty to Society
From Meingast’s notebook circa 1880: “For many a man, the totality of social connexions is at bottom nothing but a grumpily dignified scheme—a dull procession t...
The Mark of the Mental
In a characteristically brisk manner, Brentano has postulated a single mark defining all things Mind, and has identified that mark as Intentionality, the direct...
On Mirrors
A man is lucky if he sees his own reflection in a mirror, for usually he sees only a reflection of his own reflection. (Prolegomena to Infinite Mirror Realism) ...
Irrelevance Logic
One of the pillars of Meingast’s Logic was his celebrated irrelevance logic, developed around 1895, in an attempt to systematize some of the bolder and more spe...
Curious Anomaly in the Structure of Self-Rationality
When I feel my beard flapping about in the wind, nothing could convince me that it is not my own beard but rather the beard of some other fellow that I feel fla...
The Eternal Recurrence of the Slightly Different
Although highly influenced by Nietzsche, Meingast departed from Nietzsche on several key points. One crucial point of contention concerns Nietzsche’s idea...
On Transcendental Arguments
“The fate of all transcendental arguments is abject failure. This is because the world is made possible by the individual himself. When one reflects, one ...
Hallowed Hollowness II
“Gentlemen! We find ourselves in a crucial epoch. We, so called ‘civilized’ men of intellect, are only now emerging from a primitive phase in which ...
Meingast’s Routine
I found an excerpt written by Alexandr (Shurik) Leonidovich Katz describing Meingast’s daily life in Graz: “Teaching obligations claimed two to thr...
On the Aim of Reason
“Knowledge, for Reason, is but a passing stage. Once, through its effortful striving, it has reached knowledge of the world entire, Reason coagulates into...
On Intuition
“There are hordes of people today who would like us to believe that in their wisest moments they were doing their thinking with the help of some special f...