Abstract

The subject of the dissertation is the concept of identity of a literary work of art. In the first chapter I discuss a few chosen representatives of the analytic aesthetics, in which the question of identity and identification was frequently raised. I argue that the nature of a literary work of art has not been adequately elucidated in the Anglo-American aesthetics, which resulted in the philosophically inadequate descriptions of its concept of identity. ;The major bulk of the dissertation is devoted to the discussion of philosophy of literature of Roman Ingarden, to whom we owe the most comprehensive study of the nature of a literary work of art. I discuss Ingarden's theory in relation to Husserl's phenomenology from which it derives, and offer three criticisms. First, Ingarden's concept of identity seems to be inconsistent with the phenomenological method he uses, for it presupposes the presence of the entities not to be found on phenomenological reflection, such as essences, ideal concepts and qualities, which we allegedly inspect in an aesthetic experience of a literary work. Second, Ingarden's concept of identity does not include the aspects of a literary work of art which Ingarden describes as essential for any work of art, such as aesthetic qualities and values. Third, Ingarden's concept of identity is an identity amidst the changes, "a self-sameness despite the differences", which stands against the way works of art are constituted in the history of their reception. In the final chapter, drawing from the rich resources of Husserl, Ingarden, and Hegel, I develop phenomenologically more adequate concept of identity, short of above inadequacies, and more faithful to the nature of a literary work of art, and the way it is given in our experience, as a persistent irreality, whose identity is possible not despite the changes but due to them.