## 1. Biographical Sketch




Ernst Mally was born October 11, 1879 in Krainburg, then a town of
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and today Kranj in Slovenia. After the
death of his father in 1888, the family moved to Laibach, today
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. There, Mally attended the Gymnasium
from 1890 to 1898. At this time, Mally already formed a nationalist
attitude, becoming a supporter of Georg Ritter von Schonerer, the
leader of the Austrian "*deutschnationale Bewegung*", a
German national, anti-semitic, anti-liberal and anti-catholic group
that demanded the "*Anschluss*" (annexation) of Austria to
Germany even before the First World War. During his years in the
Gymnasium, Mally developed a serious interest in philosophy, and in
1898, he started studying philosophy with Alexius Meinong at the
University of Graz, Austria. There he also studied mathematics and
physics, for he felt that this would enable him to achieve greater
precision in his philosophical thinking and writings. During this time,
Mally developed a special interest in formal logic.




Mally earned his philosophical doctorate in 1903, with the
dissertation *Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie des
Messens* (*Investigations in the Object Theory of
Measurement*), which was published in 1904. Alexius Meinong was
his supervisor. In 1906, he started teaching at a Gymnasium in Graz,
yet stayed in contact with the university, especially with Meinong and
the then already famous Laboratory for Experimental Psychology, which
had been founded by Meinong in 1894. In 1913, Mally became Dozent with
his Habilitation thesis, which was titled *Gegenstandstheoretische
Grundlagen der Logik und Logistik* (*Object-theoretic
Foundations for Logics and Logistics*) and published in
1912. Again, Alexius Meinong was his supervisor. During World War I,
Mally served in the Austrian Army from 1915 to 1918. In this period,
Mally contracted "a serious disease called rheumatoid arthritis,
[resulting] in a 70% invalidity that led to a growing and painful
immobility" (Wolf 1971: 3), lasting for the rest of his
life. After the end of the war, he started teaching at the University
of Graz, where he eventually succeeded to Meinong's Chair in 1925. He
stayed there until 1942. After his retirement, he moved to Schwanberg,
Styria, where he lived two more years and died rather unexpectedly
March 8, 1944. For an extended biography of Mally in German, see
Roschitz 2016a, and also Roschitz 2016b, ch.3, 15-44.


## 2. Ontology and Logic


### 2.1 Mally's Ontological and Logical Background




Mally was trained not only in philosophy but also in mathematics,
and was influenced by Ernst Schroder, and later, of course, by
Whitehead and Russell. He therefore learned how to apply modern logical
methods to philosophical theories, and in particular to the theory of
objects (*Gegenstandstheorie*) developed by his teacher Alexius Meinong
as well as to the theory of norms in his development of deontic logic.
Among the Austrian philosophers, Mally was one of the pioneers of
formal methods in discussing philosophical problems. Note that Mally's
disciple Hans Mokre was the first to translate the introductory
chapters to Whitehead and Russell's *Principia Mathematica* into German,
with Mally's assistance (Russell/Whitehead 1932). Mally had originally
planned to translate the complete *Principia* himself.




Since many of the problems giving rise to the theories of objects
are covered elsewhere in this encyclopedia, we restrict ourselves to a
very short sketch of what led to Mally's contribution to that field.
One of the main impulses for the development of theories of objects
were the problems that arose in connection with
 intentionality.
Mally's teacher Meinong followed Brentano in concluding that the
distinctive and defining feature of intentional mental acts is that
they are always directed towards something. That is, thinking,
believing, intending, etc., all involve thinking, believing, or
intending *something*. Meinong took this a step further by believing that
we have to be ontologically generous when analyzing intentional mental
acts: every such act is directed towards an object, even if sometimes
that object does not or cannot exist. So, when we search for the
fountain of youth or think about the round square (and conclude that
the latter is impossible), Meinong required that there be such objects
like the fountain of youth and the round square. According to Meinong,
the former is an object (the waters of which confer everlasting life
but) which doesn't exist, while the latter is an object which is round,
square, and which couldn't exist. (For a more complete discussion of
Meinong's theory of nonexistent objects, see the entry on
 nonexistent objects.)




This ontologically generous attitude commits us to the acceptance of
contradictory and incomplete objects: if we accept contradictory
objects then we are at least dangerously close to tolerating
contradictions (unless we take appropriate precautions), and if we
accept incomplete objects, we deny the intuitively plausible Law of
Excluded Middle, namely, that for any property *P*, an object either has
*P* or fails to have *P* (*tertium non
datur*). Meinong adopted one of Mally's distinctions for solving
the first of these problems, namely, the distinction between nuclear
(*formal*/*konstitutorisch*) and extra-nuclear
(*ausserformal*/*ausserkonstitutorisch*)
properties (see Meinong 1915: 176; Findlay 1963: 176; as well as
section 4.4.3 of the entry on Alexius Meinong). But later, Mally
developed an even more profound distinction with which he was able to
cope with the incompleteness problem as well.




Mally's first work on Meinong's theory of objects is the published
version of his dissertation (Mally 1904). His own, mature theory of
objects can be found in the published version of his Habilitation
thesis (Mally 1912). (For a detailed comparison of the two theories,
see Poli 1998.) Mally addressed the topic also in his later works,
taking a critical point of view with respect to Meinong's as well as
his own theory (Mally 1935, 1938b, 1971). Since Mally's
theory of objects is one of his most interesting and most influential
contributions to philosophy, we want to provide a more detailed account
of the theory itself as well as of the problems it seems to be able to
solve, in the following section.


### 2.2 Mally's Theory of Objects




Mally's most important distinction was between an object's being
determined (*determiniert sein*) by a property and an object's satisfying
(*erfullen*) a property. This distinction allowed Mally to speak of
objects that are neither contradictory nor incomplete (with respect to
satisfaction), although they may be contradictory or incomplete with
respect to determination:



> 
> 
> Every object satisfies a complete complex of objectives and is thus
> "complete" with respect to its actual determinations. But
> there are objects that are mere formdeterminates of certain (defining)
> objectives (without satisfying these objectives): such an object is
> only incompletely determined by its defining objective (which is an
> incomplete complex of objectives), and thus it has to be called
> "incomplete" with respect to its formal determination.
> Nevertheless, according to the first statement, it is complete with
> respect to the objectives it satisfies: since it satisfies the
> objective to be the formdeterminate of its definition, and it also
> satisfies everything implied by this objective. (Mally 1912: 76; this
> translation, and all subsequent translations, by the authors)
> 
> 
> 




It would help to reread this passage with the following interpretative
suggestions in mind. First, following Zalta (1983), we want to
interpret Mally's notion of objectives (*Objektive*) in terms
of the modern notion of a *property*, though the notion of
attribute would also be appropriate. The linguistic expressions which
signify objectives are just open formulas like
'*Px*', '*Rxy*', etc. Therefore,
in what follows, we use 'property' instead of
'objective'. Second, we can understand Mally's notion of
satisfying an objective in terms of the modern notion
of *instantiating* or exemplifying a property. Finally, let us
replace Mally's talk of 'formdeterminates' by the talk of
'*conceptual objects*'. In contrast to ordinary
objects, the characteristic form of conceptual objects is determined
by certain properties rather than by the properties it may
instantiate. Although we have made these terminological substitutions
for interpreting Mally, we hope that the new terminology is close to
Mally's original intent. So, using our modern terminology, we would
say that conceptual objects are determined by a certain group of
properties and don't necessarily instantiate the properties that
determine them. Moreover, the property of being a conceptual object
is one which implies that the objects which instantiate it are
abstract entities. For an alternative interpretation of Mally's
concept of determination, understood as encoding, see Linsky 2014.




With Zalta's interpretation in mind, we can understand the above
passage from Mally as follows. According to Mally, a group of
properties determines a conceptual object and thereby ensures that
there is such an object. E.g., the property of being triangular (alone)
determines the conceptual object we might identify as *the triangle*.
This object is conceptual because it is not the case that it is a
specific triangle in the ordinary sense of the verb 'to be'
(understood as a copula). Mally would say *the triangle* does not
instantiate the property of being triangular. But since every object is
complete with respect to instantiation, *the triangle* instantiates the
property of being non-triangular. Indeed, this latter property is
implied by the property of being a conceptual object. Or, to put it in
a different way: the property of being triangular is excluded by the
property of being a conceptual object--conceptual objects have
no shape at all. (For the concept of inclusion (*Einschliessung*),
see Mally 1912: 4 ff.) This results in the claim that *the triangle* is
non-triangular, which is perfectly understandable if we understand
'is' in the sense of 'instantiates'.
Additionally, Mally offers us an algebra of properties that ensures
that for each given property *F* there is an property non-*F*, i.e., its
negation, which behaves in the usual manner (see Mally 1912: 14 ff.).
For example, he implicitly assumes that instantiating non-*F* is
materially equivalent to not instantiating *F*:



> 
> *x* instantiates non-*F* iff *x* does not instantiate *F*.
> 
> 
> 




Now, if there were objects incomplete with respect to instantiation
problems would arise, since the law *tertium non datur* would be
violated. For example, if we ask the question, is *the triangle*
right-angled, then the Law of Excluded Middle tells us that either it
is right-angled or it is not. Although the conceptual object identified
above as *the triangle* neither is determined by being right-angled nor
is it determined by being non-right-angled, it nevertheless
instantiates the property of being non-right-angled. So, according to
Mally, for every property *F* and every object *x*, the following
holds:



> *x* instantiates *F* or *x* instantiates non-*F*.
> 
> 
> 




Each object, whether it is conceptual or not, either instantiates a
property or its negation. *The triangle* instantiates the property of
being abstract, but not its negation; it does not instantiate the
property of being triangular, but it instantiates its negation. There
is, of course, no object that instantiates both a property *F* and its
negation non-*F*, since this would clearly be a contradiction.




On the other hand, there are objects, namely, conceptual ones, that
are incomplete with respect to determination. So the following is a
consequence of Mally's theory:



> 
> 
> There is an *x* and there is an *F* such that *x* is
> not determined by *F* and *x* is not determined by
> non-*F*.
> 
> 
> 




Note that this consequence of Mally's theory does not violate any
logical principle because (a) being determined by *F* does not imply
instantiating *F*, and (b) not being determined by *F* does not imply being
determined by non-*F*. There are objects that are not determined by a
property F, but which are also not determined by non-*F*; as noted above,
*the triangle* is not determined by being right-angled, but it is also
not determined by being non-right-angled; the triangle is only
determined by being triangular.




There are even objects that are determined by contradictory
properties; Mally would assert the following:



> 
> 
> There is an *x* and there is an *F* such that *x* is
> determined by *F* and x is determined by non-*F*.
> 
> 
> 




The non-square square may be seen as such an object. But, again, no
logical principles are being violated, because being determined by
non-*F* does not imply not being determined by *F*, nor does its being
determined by these properties imply that it instantiates them.




As is well known, Bertrand Russell criticized Meinong's theory
of objects in "On Denoting" (Russell 1905: 482-484).
(See also the entry on
nonexistent objects
 (section 4), as well as the
entry on Alexius Meinong, section 4.4.) According to Russell, Meinong
has to accept entities like the round square:



> 
> the round square
> is round, and also not round [...]. But this is intolerable; and
> if any theory can be found to avoid this result, it is surely to be
> preferred. (Russell 1905: 438)
> 
> 



As we have already seen above,
Mally's theory of objects is a theory that avoids this result. For
Mally, it holds that there is an *x* such that *x* is determined by
roundness and *x* is determined by non-roundness. But we have already
shown above that this is no problem, because it does not violate any
logical law.




Conceptual objects can be incomplete and even contradictory with
respect to the properties that determine them, but neither of these
circumstances violates a logical law. Like ordinary objects, conceptual
objects are always complete and consistent with respect to
instantiation, and thus the laws of logic are respected. Now, these
conceptual objects serve as the content of intentionally directed acts.
Mally says that there may be no object that is instantiated by the
properties we posit (*setzen*) in our judgments, but there is always a
conceptual object that is determined by these properties. Intentional
acts will never be deprived of their content.




We want to stress that ordinary concrete objects are not determined
by any property, they merely instantiate properties. So, the current
Pope, e.g., instantiates the properties of being human, being Catholic,
etc., but there is no property that determines the current Pope. On the
other hand, there is the conceptual object which we could call
'*the Pope*' which is determined by being Pope. Indeed,
Mally's view also allows us to talk about *the Pope\**, which is
determined by all the properties implied by (included in) being the
Pope. Understood this way, *the Pope* and *the Pope\** are neither human nor
Catholic nor do they instantiate any other "ordinary"
property. These conceptual objects are abstract, and are determined by
being Pope, being human, being Catholic, etc. *The Pope* is, like *the
triangle*, a conceptual object (*Begriffsgegenstand*), while the (current)
Pope is concrete and a living human being. (Note that we use the verb
'to be' in the sense of 'to instantiate',
because we think that this suits best the everyday intuitions about the
meaning of 'to be', understood as a copula.) Mally says,
"we grasp *through* the conceptual object at the object which
instantiates a set of determinations" (Findlay 1963: 183). In our
example, we apprehend the current Pope *by way* of the abstract
conceptual object the *Pope\**, which is determined by all the properties
implied by being the current Pope.




We see from the above that the existence of conceptual objects
depends on which properties are accepted. If we assume with Mally that
we have a full Boolean Algebra of properties then the only question
left to be answered, is: what are the primitive properties? We can only
make a suggestion inspired by the theory of intentionality here: the
primitive properties are all the non-complex properties that can be
posited by the subject(s). (For other English translations of crucial
passages of Mally's work on his theory of objects, as well as a summary
of Mally's theory of conceptual objects, see Zalta 1998.)


### 2.3 Discussing Mally's Theory




Mally's theory of objects has been acknowledged and validated in Zalta
1983 and 1988 (see also Rapaport 1978, for an informal development of
something like Mally's view, though the ideas developed there are
traced to Meinong, not Mally). Zalta utilizes Mally's ideas and
conceptions in order to establish a full-fledged axiomatic theory of
abstract objects that ensures the existence of these objects with the
help of comprehension principles. Zalta also translated Mally's
terminology into modern terms by formulating the distinction between
an object *x* instantiating and being determined by a property
*F* in terms of the distinction between *x*'s exemplifying
property *F* ('*Fx*') and *x*'s encoding
property *F* ('*xF*'). Zalta calls exemplifying
and encoding two (different) "modes of predication". But
there is some controversy as to whether Mally's distinction in two
modes of predication can be reduced to the distinction between nuclear
and extranuclear properties (recall, this is a distinction introduced
by Mally but adopted by Meinong in his work). Dale Jacquette calls
Mally's introduction of these two modes of predication "Mally's
heresy" (see Jacquette 1989: 3). He tried to show that the
distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties is "more
fundamental" than the distinction between two modes of
predication in the sense that there is a reduction of the latter to
the former but not vice versa (see Jacquette 1989: 5). However, Zalta
showed (1992) that a reduction of two modes of predication to two
kinds of property has not yet been developed. Moreover, Mally's
theory (in modern guise) can cope at least with all the problems
Meinong's theory can solve. Along these lines, Mally's student Findlay
wrote, 



> 
> [Mally's theory] removes many
> difficulties in Meinong's theory, without abandoning the general
> standpoint of the theory of objects. (Findlay 1963: 110)
> 
> 




Mally therefore established a real alternative to Meinong's theory
of objects; his theory avoided different modes of being (such as
Meinong's famous *Aussersein*) as well as the duplication required
by the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. (In
reconstructions of Meinong's theory, e.g., Parsons 1980, every
predicate has both a nuclear and an extranuclear version, and this is
avoided in Mally's theory.) Mally's theory, however, requires an
ontology with a sufficient number of properties--enough to
jointly determine all the conceptual objects we might use to cognize
and conceptualize ordinary everyday objects. And, of course, it also
presupposes a kind of comprehension principle that guarantees the
(abstract) existence of these conceptual objects determined by its
properties.




We have seen in detail now that even in his earlier ontological
writings Mally developed viable alternatives to Meinong's theory of
objects. Later he distanced himself from Meinong's philosophy. In
unpublished letters to Hans Pichler, Mally writes:



> 
> 
> 
> I realized that the theory of objects is based on a big mistake; it
> can be described as a mix-up of intending and grasping. [...]
> Meinong's fundamental error is his mistaking the (objective) meaning
> and content of a thought for an object (or the object) of the thought.
> [...] Once you have realized this, you are done with the theory of
> objects, and with the foundations of Meinong's philosophy as well.
> (Mally 1934a, January 5 1934)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It may well be that you [Hans Pichler] are already caught by
> Meinong's thoughts like by an infection, which has to take effect in
> order for its antidote to develop. That is how I experienced it. (Mally
> 1934a, January 6 1934)
> 
> 
> 




Mally's critical stance towards Meinong's philosophy paved the way
to his new ontological conceptions, which we want to discuss in the
next section.


### 2.4 Mally's Dynamic Ontological Conceptions




In his later works, Mally criticized Meinong's "static
conception" of objects (Mally 1935, 1938b, 1971).
Meinong and many other philosophers shared and still share the belief
that the world is constituted by completely determined elements or
completely determined individual things and processes which taken
together make up the universe. Christian von Ehrenfels
(1859-1932), a student and friend of Meinong, doubted this view
by pointing to the *Gestaltproblem:* when we consider a definite shape or
*Gestalt*, the parts of the shape are determined by the whole. For
example, the colored parts of the shape, when considered in their
environment, differ from what they appear to be when each single part
is presented to a spectator in isolation. Mally was influenced by this
observation and added that such colored parts, in isolation, are no
longer genuine elements of the whole, no longer determined objects.
Thus, whatever we can experience is--as a whole--only
vaguely determined: the borderlines of things become more or less
blurred; sometimes they appear sharper as in the case of tools,
sometimes more hazy as in the case of clouds.




According to Mally, reality objectively tends to a separation of
individual things, but this separation can or will never fully be
reached, but only approximated. In other words, ours is a world without
exact individual things; instead it is a world with a dynamic nature,
with many tendencies or strivings (*Strebungen*). In Mally 1935, there
are many examples from everyday life with which he wants show that
subjects do not primarily apprehend rigid or static individual things,
but rather tendencies of events. For example, a portrait painting does
not show how a person looks at a given point of time and place, it
rather expresses a certain tendency by indicating a direction to which
the painting "idealizes" the given status. Or, a plane
surface of a lake reminds us of the geometrical concept of a plane
figure, but actually the lake is only approximately plane. In this
sense, even the so-called natural laws are precise expressions of
natural tendencies which are never fully realized. Mally writes,



> 
> No longer material elements, but probabilities (this is the
> tendency) of describable forms of happenings are the final
> apprehensible which can be met by researching reality. (Mally
> 1938b: 11; translation by the authors)
> 
> 


### 2.5 Mally's Deontic Logic




We conclude this section by noting again that Mally developed the
first formal logical system of deontic logic, in Mally 1926. This
system is described and analyzed in some detail in the entry
 Mally's deontic logic.
 This entry explains how Mally introduced an operator (!) to
form statements of the form 'It ought to be the case that
*A*' ('!*A*'), and how the logical axioms of his system
implied the following, problematic claim:



> 
> !*A* - *A*
> 
> 
> 




This scheme states that something is obligatory if and only if it is
the case. In other words, in Mally's system, the obligatory and the
factual collapse. This, of course, is unacceptable. The first one to
show this was Karl Menger in 1939. Further discussion of Mally's
deontic logic can be found in Morscher 1998, as well as in the entry
cited above, i.e., Lokhorst 2013a. We would like to reiterate
Lokhorst's claim that despite the flaw in Mally's deontic logic, his
"pioneering effort deserves rehabilitation rather than
contempt". See also Lokhorst's papers on an intuitionistic
reformulation of Mally's deontic logic, where he tries to capture
Mally's basic ideas whilst avoiding the collapse referred to above
(Lokhorst 2013b and 2015).




It is to be noted, however, that a proper understanding and analysis
of Mally's deontic logic can only be reached through his
particular meta-ethical view. This will be sketched in 
section 3, and it is also touched 
by Mally 1940 in his paper on
"objective truth". Yet not even the most recent study of
the critical work on Mally's deontic logic (Krickler 2008) seems
to be aware of Mally's philosophy of values and its peculiar
description of value (*Wert*) and *ought*
 (*Sollen*): "Value and ought
can only be understood via emotional presentation" (Mally 1926:
74 or Mally 1971: 312). Much more about that will be explained in the
following section, especially at the end of
 section 3.3.3 below.


## 3. Ethics: Norms and Values




Mally's entire philosophical oeuvre shows three tendencies
that indicate the philosophical heritage of Brentano and Meinong: 1.
The rehabilitation of the emotional versus the widespread
intellectualism of his time, 2. the emphasis of what is objectively
given versus subjectivism and 3. the philosophical re-discovery of the
unity of reality and value versus all forms of dualism (Wolf 1952a:
169).


### 3.1 New sources and lecture notes discovered




New research on Mally's philosophy in general, ethics, and
logic of norms has brought forward so far unknown material.
Mally's unpublished work in the Library Archives of the
University of Graz contains a number of philosophical texts and
personal documents as well as private letters. Some lecture notes by
Mally himself seem to be of particular relevance, partly laid down in
illegible shorthand. Yet some lecture notes have been edited by his
students in manuscript form, especially the lecture notes of some
*Vorlesungen* between 1926 and 1938. It is to be expected that
more research work in the years to come will shed more light onto
Mally's philosophical work and development. There are new indications
contained in those manuscripts that promise a deeper understanding of
Mally's post-Meinongian philosophy, in particular his ethics and
deontic logic. Recently, Markus Roschitz published a book on Mally's
post-Meinongian philosophy (Roschitz 2016b). He mainly discusses Mally
1935 (*Erlebnis und Wirklichkeit*), which Mally himself called
"*Zauberbuch*" ("magical book").
Roschitz (2016b, Chapter 5) describes Mally's four parts of a new
ontology and epistemology: (1) forms of objects and thinking, (2)
reality and empirical knowledge, (3) sense and spirit, and (4) the
life of the soul. Mally's three key notions for his ontological
discussion of everything there is, concrete as well as abstract, are:
form, striving, and fulfillment (see Roschitz 2016b, 177 ff.).
Roschitz presents (Chapter 8) a summary and critical discussion of
Mally's *Wirklichkeitsphilosophie*. In particular, he discusses
Mally's concept of a magical experience and points out that Mally's
does not provide a rational criterion for distinguishing those magical
experiences from pure superstition (see Roschitz 2016b, 164 ff.).




So far, some of these texts have been studied to find a better
answer to the question to what degree Mally's philosophy was influenced
by National Socialism (Sagheb-Oehlinger 2008). Among the aforementioned
lecture manuscripts we find the following: "Ernst Mally: Value
Theory and Ethics". This is a lecture delivered by Mally at the
University of Graz, winter semester 1926/27, elaborated and typed by
Hans Mokre in 1927.


### 3.2 Mally's background and development in ethics




It seems justified to distinguish three phases of Mally's work on
value theory and ethics:




(1) The early period until 1923 is influenced and coined by
Meinong's philosophy. Two years after Meinong's death, Mally edited
Meinong's *On the Foundation of a General Theory of Values* (Meinong
1923a). In his short preface to this volume, Mally points out that he
does not see any reason to change or complement Meinong's text. In
other words, this ethical point of view is molded by Meinong's value
objectivism: values exist independently of value experiences. Just as
sensations are the basis of perceptual judgments, evaluations are the
basis of value judgments. The value of an object triggers, via
*emotional presentation* (Meinong), a certain value experience or value
feeling in the subject. Mally accepted not only Meinong's distinction
between object and objective but also the distinction between
dignitative (object based on feeling) and desiderative (object based on
willing). To the class of dignitatives, Meinong counted the classical
triad of true, good and beautiful (maybe even pleasant) (Meinong 1923b,
120; see also the excellent summary of Meinong's value philosophy from
a modern point of view in Reicher 2009: 114 ff.). Mally continued his
investigations in value theory on this foundation of the
 natural law tradition in ethics
 (Wolf 1952b; see also below 3.3.1).




(2) Mally has then developed his own views on value theory and ethics,
partly based on Meinong but also with reference to his contemporaries,
ethicists like Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann. He offered his views
in a lecture on "Value Theory and Ethics" in 1924/25 and
then again in a reviewed and expanded version in 1926/27. This seems
to be of central importance for Mally's work on deontic logic which he
elaborated at the same time, most probably between 1924 and 1926
(Mally 1926). It was Melanie Sagheb-Oehlinger who looked through the
unpublished work of Ernst Mally. She retyped and edited this lecture
manuscript--originally typed by Mokre (1927)--as an
*Appendix* to her master's thesis (Sagheb-Oehlinger 2008). It
offers an extensive outline of Mally's philosophical approach to value
theory and ethics, of course in the broad tradition of Franz Brentano
and Alexius Meinong. What is described below is mainly based on this
*Appendix*.




(3) In the 1930s, Mally further developed his philosophy of reality
(Mally 1935). Although it seems he had some ethical consequences of
this "realistic approach" in mind, he did not elaborate
them beyond this book. He even mentioned explicitly in his article on
truth (Mally 1940) that he has left aside questions of the
normative.


### 3.3 Mally on value theory and ethics




The lecture notes by Hans Mokre of "Ernst Mally: Value Theory
and Ethics" contain four chapters (many references below refer to
the re-typed version in Sagheb-Oehlinger 2008, *Appendix*,
which will be cited as SOM):


* Introduction: the concept of values; several theories of
value
* Psychology of value: objects of emotions (feelings), types
of emotions, value feelings and their objects, counter-feelings
* Theory of objects of value, the relationship between
objective values and value emotions
* Ethics: morality and values; morally relevant values; ethics
and the individual person.


#### 3.3.1 Humans possess a natural evidence for values




This is the central ethical hypothesis of Mally: "Whatever has
(objective) value ought to be" (SOM: 49). Moral values are not values
for somebody, but are values of the act of the human person herself. It
is difficult to see, he maintains, that the moral value of an act does
not collapse with the intended utility value of that act. A moral value
is logically prior to its utility value, because moral values cannot be
willingly or consciously intended. Moral values are not assigned to
objects of reality but are inherent to them (SOM: 51).




In the tradition of Brentano and Meinong, Mally asserts that moral
values can be perceived emotionally. This conception roots even further
in the classical tradition of the convergence of being and value from
Aristotle to Leibniz (Mokre 1971: 20): *esse et verum et bonum
convertuntur*. Mally refers to the triad of the true, the good and the
beautiful two times in his lecture (SOM: 10; also 44 where he mentions
"primary values" in regard to what is true, good and
beautiful for which we humans seem to possess a sort of "natural
evidence"). But it is questionable to him if a supreme value
exists at all, like pleasure for Epicurus, lawlike duty for Kant or
love for Christians. He rather suggests that the order of moral values
is infinite--upwards as well as downwards. Since we grasp the
objects of reality with our sense perception and then form an
intellectual judgment, at the same time we experience a particular
value feeling that is our emotional response to the inherent value of
every object of reality. For example, when we look at a clock and judge
that it is working correctly, then at the same time we experience this
fact as something positive, pleasant--through our *value feeling*,
although we don't perceive anything like "the pleasure of
the clock being in time". Mally even asserts:



>  If an object is valuable
> (*wertvoll*)--emotionally felt correctly by one
> person--then it should be valuable to all people. (SOM:
> 46)
> 
> 


#### 3.3.2 Preconditions of moral values are internal and external utility values




Mally emphasizes again: "Every value corresponds to an (at
least relative) ought" (SOM: 53). The foundation of moral values is
the value of life: "All moral life is connected to the animalist
'vital sphere'" (SOM: 56). E.g., a small amount of water
is of particular utility value for the human being to preserve his life
(15). Particular utility values of this kind are more important than a
given quantity of value institutions like art, legal order, state,
government or literature. Only through subjective acting on the
individual's part can utility values be created--of course
within the framework of those institutions (SOM: 55). Therefore, Mally
contends, there is no such thing as a universal law of morality like
Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. The reason for this lies
in the fact that the individual creates utility values. In the complex
variety of life situations, no single rule can cover the total quantity
of culture, science, religion etc. (SOM: 55).




As *internal utility values*, Mally lists the value of life, the value
of consciousness, of conscious activity, of suffering: "To open
our eyes for many and even for the highest values, suffering is
unavoidably necessary" (57); the assertion that the experience of
suffering is "unavoidably necessary" for the grasping of
moral values has to do with Mally's own painful and handicapped living
conditions (see section 1). Furthermore he lists the values of power
and the value of freedom that is the basic value of all moral acting.
Foreseeing is another precondition because it is necessary for our
willing. Finally, we act teleologically (= directed towards a purpose)
which is equally necessary in order to reach a goal.



*External utility values* are natural goods like air, water etc. as
preconditions for our moral life. The causal order of reality enables
us to purposeful planning whereas the concrete situation of each act is
of particular value. Concrete situations make up the whole of moral
life. Other external values are power, luck and goods like wealth,
riches but also social communities like family, society, all of
humankind and whatever constitutes them or keeps them together like
law, language, culture, traffic, etc. (SOM: 61)


#### 3.3.3 Kinds of moral value and the total life value




Moral values are categorized by Mally into basic values and values
of virtue. The most general moral basic value is "the
good", not meaning "good for something" or
"good for somebody". "We signify as good the free
intention to(wards) objective values" and "evil is the
intention towards disvalues or the intention against values"
(SOM: 62). Essential for the moral good is the fact that preferring the
higher value is not done through intellectual weighing of alternatives
but through *our immediate value feeling* (SOM: 62). Mally asserts a special
sense for the varying degree of values
("*Werthohensinn*"). This special value sense works in a
person's conscience and makes us immediately feel the right and
the wrong behavior. In addition he uses a *metaphysical hypothesis* that
helps building a transition from this subjective value feeling to the
objective value:



> 
> Whatever is in accordance with the innermost
> essence of reality is objectively valuable and at the same time the
> essence-related most probable. (SOM: 62) 
> 
> 



The latter is not
necessarily the empirically most probable, i.e., not what probably will
be realized in the individual case but what *ought* to be realized (or
what is worthy to be realized). Objective values are an *a priori* given
essence relatedness in our value feeling (SOM: 63).



> 
> The values
> themselves are ideal forms (*Gebilde*) which exist timelessly and
> unchangeably. (SOM: 74)
> 
> 



 Yet the value behavior of humans following
them is changing, mainly because it loses the immediate emotional
contact (feeling) to the values. Instead of this immediate value
feeling and its ensuing insight humans accept the value tradition of
society. Moreover, Mally talks about "value forms"
(*Wertgestalten*) which can be seen as ideal types of personality (SOM: 75).
One of the many value forms (depending on value perspectives and value
hierarchies) corresponds to each individual human being: in her
empirical character we find the ethical norm of her value form. This
ethical norm occurs in that character as essence-directed tendency
towards the value form. Mally adds that this assertion corresponds to
the above mentioned metaphysical hypothesis "that only the
objectively valuable exists in the essence of reality" (SOM: 76). The
moral task of each individual consists in the fulfillment of his
personal ethical norm. The way to find that norm will be shown to him
by his conscience.




In other words: to Mally, the concept of a subjective value
constituted by the feeling or willing of the individual is untenable.
Rather, in her feeling and understanding the person corresponds to
various objective values in reality. With her willing, she responds to
the *ought* that is dwelling in the objects of reality. Karl Wolf
summarizes Mally's central point:



> 
> In her feeling the human
> being responds adequately to various value qualities of reality; in her
> willing she corresponds to the ought that is contained in the
> 'objects'. (Wolf 1971: 12, translation by the
> authors)
> 
> 



The problem of different value experiences by different
people is explained by Mally with the hierarchy of ranks of
perspectives. Each concrete situation conveys an objective value as
well as a value perspective of that particular reality to the person
(see the reflection of this view in Mally's deontic logic in the
next paragraph). Since each situation is different depending on the
temperament, the mood, the age, etc. of the beholder, as well as the
zeitgeist reflected by him, each result of such a personal situation
experience is genuine, i.e., indubitable. This is the reason why there
cannot be a general moral norm to act in certain situations in a
certain moral way (SOM: 76). Yet there is a hierarchy of experienced
perspectives. Some are better because they make more distinctions, some
are worse because the particular feeling experience is not adequately
corresponding to the situation. The main tendency of a person's
striving should be towards the total value of the life of that person
(SOM: 49). Moral behavior that supports a striving towards this total value
is better than the pursuit of other strivings that miss this total
value (Wolf 1971: 12-13).




At this point, a short remark about the consequences of Mally's value
theory in regard to his deontic logic seems to be in order. His
deontic axiom III is seen at least as "problematic" by all
known critics so far. This axiom states the equivalence of the factual
with the obligatory. This has been judged as problematic or even
absurd because in modern meta-ethical discourse the is-ought gap is
accepted as logical basis for all ethical deliberations, and,
moreover, the collapse would mean that our actual world is a morally
"ideal" one. Mally, however, broadens this view. To him,
the ought is contained in the objects of reality. With
'objects' he does not refer to sensually perceived
entities but to the more complex essence of objects (on Meinong's
object-theoretic basis). According to Meinong's view on dignitatives
(an expression not used by Mally, who refers to them as
"*Forderungen*" in Mally 1926: 12, or Mally 1971:
243), a value constitutes an object of higher order. This value is
complex and can only emotionally be grasped but it cannot be defined,
nor even propositionally characterized. E.g., a donation to a
charitable fund can be understood or felt as a morally good deed
(Marek 2008: ch. 6.2). Although this would not be a sensory
perception of an object, to Mally it is the emotional impression or
feeling that reveals the "essence of the object"
considered. It is interesting to note that Mally must have been aware
of some of the criticisms of his controversial axiom III (by Laird
1926 or Menger 1939), but it is not known if he ever defended it or at
least tried to clarify his underlying value theoretical viewpoint.


#### 3.3.4 Trends in Mally's ethics after 1926/27




Although Mally denies the possibility of a universal moral principle
(Mally 1935: 75), he emphasizes the important role of our moral
responsibility. Our responsibility must be exemplified through moral
decisions: "Morality is always the striving after the most
perfect meaning and its best exemplification" (Mally 1935: 77).
There is, however, a formal moral duty, "Follow your
conscience", or more precisely, "Act in the way that you
recognize as right according to the best of your knowledge and
conscience" (Mally 1938a: 27).




Ultimately, morality is connected with the divine. For the
religiously inspired person, morality is a matter of religion, because
religion is necessarily linked to morality. For the philosophically
oriented person, morality is the supreme task of her character to
transcend her ego. This striving beyond one's own person is again
a kind of meaning exemplification of the dynamic structure of reality.
As a sort of moral behavior, it is always related to fellow humans.
Doing the right thing is not only a private matter for oneself and
one's neighbors. No human belongs to himself or to some other
people next to him. He belongs to everyone, foremost to the community,
Mally asserts, and to the reality of the world: "The world is
beautiful in him, just like a tree blossoms in each of its
flowers" (Mally 1935: 77). Pursuing this responsibility makes the
person a microcosmos, an image of a deity (*Gottheit*). And:



> 
> the
> most original feature of a human being and her deepest personality
> magically shine through in the case of love, a loved person is always
> experienced as a miracle. (Mally 1935: 62)
> 
> 




Mally's dynamistic-holistic world-view with its central notion
of strivings (*Strebungen*) has further been developed and applied to a
number of moral issues by his student Karl Wolf (1947). In chapter 11
of *Realistic Ethics*, Wolf asserts,



> 
> Every tendency is basically
> good when it remains within the order of the whole, and every tendency,
> even the most ideal, becomes evil, when it transgresses the
> order. (Wolf 1947: 78)
> 
> 



Thus, a balance is morally required with
a view to the dynamic order of the whole. Compromise as a rule of
nature justifies the power of the stronger, because the stronger is
more capable of guaranteeing a balance in conflicts than the weaker.
This idea is also applicable to education: the stronger parent helps
the weaker child, thereby creating a balance within the whole of
strivings of both people involved. More detailed discussions by Wolf
are elaborated in the collection of his essays (Rothbucher/Zecha
2012).


## 4. Philosophy and National Socialist Ideology




After the end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy 1918, Mally became a
member of the *Grossdeutsche Volkspartei*, a German
national and mostly anti-semitic party in the Austrian parliament,
which agitated, like Schonerer and his followers, for Austria's
annexation to Germany. In February 1938, Mally joined
the *Volkspolitisches Referat*, an organisation with the goal
to unite all Austrian nationalist movements (including the National
Socialists). The same year he also entered the *NS Lehrerbund*
(National Socialist Teachers' Association). Two months after the
annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938, Mally became a member
of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party), i.e., the Nazi
party. Given all this political involvement in Austria's and later
Germany's national movements, the question has been legitimately
raised whether and how his political attitude influenced his
philosophical work. It seems to be appropriate to pursue this question
and some answers to it in its historical development.




First, it is interesting how the Nazis themselves classified Mally's
philosophical work with respect to their ideology. According to their
judgment of the political reliability of philosophy professors in
Germany (then including Austria) by the
*Reichssicherheitsdienst* of the *Reichsfuhrer SS*,
there were six groups:



> 
> 1. Denominationally bound philosophers;
> 2. Liberal philosophers;
> 3. Indifferent philosophers;
> 4. Politically positive philosophers;
> 5. National Socialist philosophers;
> 6. Positive junior scholars (*Nachwuchskrafte*).
> 
> 
> (Korotin 2007: 8; translation by the authors)




Mally was ranked in group 2 and thus categorized as
"liberal", which here meant "neither national
socialist nor system dependent" according to Korotin (2007:
8). The term 'liberal' was used by the Nazis for German
nationalists who were not considered to be National Socialists.




Second, after World War II, no one seemed to have serious concerns
about Mally's philosophical work (or even just parts of it) in view of
his political attitude. In 1971, a collection of essays (including
*Grosses Logikfragment* and *Grundgesetze des
Sollens*) was edited by Karl Wolf and Paul Weingartner, with
introductory comments by the editors as well as by Hans Mokre. It was
only in the 1990s when a critical and serious discussion of the
question how Mally's political views influenced his philosophical work
began.




Third, Sauer 1998 claimed that Mally's National Socialist views
clearly shaped his philosophical writings. Sauer provides a number of
quotes from, and references to, Mally's writings and private
correspondence, as well as a critical evaluation. He condemns Mally's
entire later philosophical work as not being worthy of any further
investigation. Thus Sauer challenged the philosophical community to
seriously investigate all of Mally's work, including some of his
unpublished manuscripts and personal correspondence. Schonafinger 1994
comes to similar results, based on previously unpublished work by
Sauer and referencing to personal documents and lecture notes in the
archives of the Graz University Library. In 2008, Sagheb-Oehlinger
devoted her entire master's thesis to this problem. She analyzed
thoroughly all "later" philosophical writings of Mally by
providing ten categories like racism, anti-semitism, cult of
the *Fuhrer*, anti-democratic, National Socialist education,
etc. In addition she studied Mally's private correspondence with his
philosophical "soulmate" and pen friend, Gertraud Laurin,
which extended over a period of ten years
(1934-1944). Sagheb-Oehlinger's final result can be summed up
the following way: Mally cannot clearly be seen a "National
Socialist philosopher", but there is no doubt about the national
socialist ideological content of his *Anfangsgrunde der
Philosophie* (1938a) (Sagheb-Oehlinger 2008: 143). This is
different from what Sauer (1998) had concluded. To give just one
example, in his description of *Anfangsgrunde der Philosophie*
(Mally 1938a) Sauer names the two National Socialist main values
emphasized in Mally's book, the "basic value of blood" and
the "duty to keep the race clean and breed it higher"
(Sauer 1998: 184). He then continues:



> 
> With one brief word, the
> philosophical placet is granted to the whole barbaric madness of the
> racist legislation and racist separation, of the legislation of
> hereditary health and the forced sterilization in huge numbers of
> insane people (or what was identified as such) and social
> nonconformists. (Sauer 1998: 184)
> 
> 



 Whilst it is correct that Mally (in
Mally 1938a) certainly supported this ideology that led to these
atrocities, Sauer's general conclusion that all of Mally's late
philosophy stands in one row with the works of all the other Nazi
philosophers is questionable. Also his concluding question whether
there remains anything of Mally's philosophy worth to be saved finds
its positive answer in the preceding sections. For more details see the
following paragraphs.




Finally, considering these opposing views, we want to give our own
additional assessment of Mally's philosophical writings with respect to
his national socialist involvement. Though Mally was an analytic,
scientifically oriented philosopher who produced original contributions
in various fields of philosophy, it is a fact that National Socialist
ideas and principles inspired some of his later philosophical works. He
presents us with a case where, in certain parts of his work, it is not
easy to separate his private political convictions from the content.
Nevertheless, it is important to stress that many of Mally's works are
free from any untoward political influences, and their philosophical
value should in no way be diminished by his political views. But, of
course, there are works that do contain National Socialist ideology. We
will outline the grades of National Socialist involvement in Mally's
work below, but first we present a short sketch of Mally's central
Nationalist Socialist (NS) theses.




In NS ideology, the concept of *das Volk* (the people),
especially *das deutsche Volk* (the German people), plays a
central role. From the early 1930s on, Mally tried to provide a
philosophical justification for the value judgments (1) that *das
Volk* is more important than its individual members, and (2) that
the Germans constitute the dominant people. He further stated an
anti-reduction thesis, namely, that the concept of *das Volk*
cannot be reduced to the concepts of each of its members (the
individual persons). He thus wanted to



> 
> "fight against
> subjectivist, Jewish-positivist and related doctrines ... and
> replace them by something healthier".  
>  (From Mally's curriculum
> vitae, dated September 23, 1938, six months after the *Anschluss*;
> unpublished, University of Graz Library/Nachlass-Sammlung. This is,
> however, not a *philosophical work* but can rather be seen as an
> opportunistic self-description).
> 
> 



This fact also explains why Mally saw himself in opposition to the
Vienna Circle and the logical positivists, who he thought of as being
the prime exponents of the "individualist
ideology"--an ideology which (according to Mally) tries to
deprive the world of its meaning (*Sinn*). Mally saw *das
Volk* as a "quasi-person", having a body, a mind, and
a soul; *das Volk* cannot be completely rationally
comprehended, it rather has to be experienced (*erlebt*). He
maintains that the "essential reality" of *das
Volk* is revealed through this experience, i.e., its meaning, and
thus, the meaning of its "dynamic development" is
revealed. Furthermore, different *Volker* (peoples) have
different properties, depending on their origin, their development,
culture, etc. These properties allegedly yield a significantly moral
difference: the German people are supposed to rank among the peoples
with the highest value and have therefore to be kept
"pure". External influences have to be eliminated, so that
*das deutsche Volk* can be "bred" to even higher
states of development, and thus gradually strive towards a state where
its meaning can be totally fulfilled (see Mally 1934b, 1935 and
1938a).


 From any reasonable perspective today, all his NS
"theses" are either barely understandable, or simply
false. Obviously, his allegations reflect Nazi ideology. In any case,
much of what we find in the writings just described has nothing to do
with serious and solid philosophy. If we summarize the NS involvement
in Mally's writings between 1904 and 1944, we may distinguish three
different grades, not in chronological order. Grade 1 is
"NS-ideology free". These are purely philosophical
writings such as Mally 1904, 1912, 1923, 1926, and 1938b. In grade 2,
we count philosophical writings partially interpretable by, and
applicable to, Nazi ideology, such as Mally 1935 and 1940. Finally,
we can count as grade 3 the pure Nazi propaganda in articles or
pamphlets such as Mally 1934b and 1938a. For an assessment of Mally's
philosophical involvement in NS-ideology, see also Roschitz 2016b,
ch.7, 143-157.




As we have shown above, Mally's logical as well as ontological
ideas, concepts and theories are still being discussed in contemporary
philosophical research. His value theory and ethical philosophy,
however, are largely unknown and deserve widespread attention as his
views are diametrically opposed to what is generally accepted today.
Moreover, this short overview should make clear that there are many
parts in Mally's writings that deserve serious further philosophical
investigation.