Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond: The Sylvan Jungle - Volume 1

In this first volume of The Sylvan Jungle, the authors present a scholarly edition of the first Chapter of Routley’s 1000-plus page book, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle. Going against the Quinean orthodoxy, Routley’s aim was to support Meinong’s idea that we can truthfully refer to Non-Existent and even Impossible Objects, like Superman, Unicorns and the (infamous) round-square cupola on Berkeley College. The tools of Non-Classical logic at Routley’s disposal enabled him to update Meinong’s project for a new generation.

This volume begins with an Introduction from Dominic Hyde, The “Jungle Book’ in Context, an essay that situates Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond historically. We provide the original Preface by Routley, followed by the Chapter 1: Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond. Routley revisits his position from this time in his article, Re-Exploring Item-Theory. Filippo Casati, who has worked in the Routley Archives takes up the question of the future of Routley’s research program in his essay, The Future Perfect of Exploring Meinong’s Jungle. With his essay, Why the Original Theory of Items Didn’t (Quite) Go Far Enough, Nicholas Griffin closes the volume arguing that Routley’s project was insufficiently radical.

Iconic and iconoclastic Australian philosopher Richard Routley (ne Sylvan) published Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond in 1980. This work has fallen out of print, yet without great fanfare it has influenced two generations of philosophers and logicians.