Gegenstandstheorie
Gegenstandstheorie
(Ger. the theory of objects). It is the phenomenological investigation of various types of objects, existential and subsistential — an object being defined in the widest sense as the terminus ad quem of any act of perceiving, thinking, willing or feeling. The theory was developed by H. Meinong under the influence of F. Brentano and is allied with the phenomonology of E. Husserl. See Phenomenology. — L.W.