A TEMPORAL TURN: THE CASE OF MEINONG

Abstract

The author advances the hypothesis that there was a temporal turn in European culture during the first third of the twentieth century. Unlike other recognized intellectual turns, this temporal one involved more than merely a change of the subject matter or methodology for studying time; it was even more concerned with the personality changes among individuals who were considering time because time had become constitutive of the structure of their subjectivity. Works by German-speaking authors — Georg Simmel, Karl Jaspers, Otto Neurath, Othmar Spann, Moritz Schlick, Ludwig von Mises and others — are cited to substantiate this claim. However, demonstrating the significance of the temporal turn for social life requires more than references to philosophical theories. The important thing is to show how the temporal turn affected the individual lives of philosophers. It is instructive for this purpose to consider the case of Meinong, whose texts and ego-documents are analyzed to reveal the trauma of time he suffered through from the beginning of the twentieth century and especially after World War I. While Alexius Meinong left no works particularly focused on analyzing time, his biography and some of his writings indicate that he had to react to the existential challenge of time, comprehend his placement in it, and build the kind of life that would cope with time’s exigencies. The article interprets Meinong’s individual experience of time as well as his approach to ethical values in the light of the temporal turn. © 2021, Gaidar Institute Press. All rights reserved.