Roman Ingarden

In this paper, I attempt to formulate an Ingardenian conception of the literary work’s aesthetic value. Following Mitscherling’s lead, I attempt to place Ingarden’s aesthetics within his overall phenomenological-ontological project. That is, I argue that Ingarden’s aesthetics can only be properly fathomed in the context of his ontological deliberations, since, as he himself often enunciated, all his philosophical investigations constitute a realist rejoinder to Husserl’s turn toward transcendental idealism. To this end, I bring together insights from his aesthetics and ontology (...) to establish a coherent account of values, where artistic and aesthetic values are analyzed as they manifest themselves in the literary work of art. By attending to the ontology of its aesthetic (and artistic) values, I argue, the literary work’s stratified formation becomes more explicit. Keywords: Roman Ingarden, aesthetic value, artistic value, the literary work of art, ontology, aesthetics. (shrink)

The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in 2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak” by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth, or (...) any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten (mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning. (shrink)

This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an insensitivity he insinuates to digestive processes. This is juxtaposed with an oenological explanation of phenomenal sedimentation offered by Jean-Luc Marion. It compares the dynamics of time in the former with the those of wine in the latter. Emphasis is given to lngarden's insinuation of time as fluid, liquid, or aquatic. It revisits Ingarden's physiological explanations of partially-open systems by way of the bilateral excretion and absorption of (...) semi-permeable cellular membranes. The importance he eventually grants to inner secretion is considered alongside perspiration and salivation collateral to skin and membranes. It suggests that Ingarden's interest in thermoregulation, partial permeation, and secretion invites alternative conceptions of temporal consciousness in physiological experiences, beyond sequential and linear clock-time and/or Kantian intuition. Temporality experienced as temperance becomes discernible at a permeable point in which the sedimentation of Husserl, the maturation of Marion, and the fluidity and secretion of Ingarden mix and mingle into the taste of time. (shrink)

This essay critically assesses Roman Ingarden’s 1915 review of the second edition of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations. I elucidate and critique Ingarden’s analysis of the differences between the 1901 first edition and the 1913 second edition. I specifically examine three tenets of Ingarden’s interpretation. First, I demonstrate that Ingarden correctly denounces Husserl’s claim that he only engages in an eidetic study of consciousness in 1913, as Husserl was already performing eidetic analyses in 1901. Second, I show that Ingarden is misguided, (...) when he asserts that Husserl had fully transformed his philosophy into a transcendental idealism in the second edition. While Husserl does appear to adopt a transcendental phenomenology by asserting–in his programmatic claims–that the intentional content and object are now included in his domain of research, he does not alter his actual descriptions of the intentional relationship in any pertinent manner. Third, I show Ingarden correctly predicts many of the insights Husserl would arrive at about logic in his late philosophy. This analysis augments current readings of the evolution of Ingarden’s philosophy, by more closely examining the development of his largely neglected early thought. I execute this critical assessment by drawing both from Husserl’s later writings and from recent literature on the Investigations. By doing so, I hope to additionally demonstrate how research on the Investigations has matured in the one hundred years since the release of that text, while also presenting my own views concerning these difficult interpretative issues. (shrink)

The time of the literary work of art is a schematized aspect of the represented objectivities of the literary work. Roman Ingarden’s analysis of the time of the literary work extends upon Husserl’s phenomenology of time consciousness but nevertheless remains consistent with it, insofar as within a literary work as well as actuality, an objective time or literary objective time is constituted from an experience of temporal objects. The time of the literary work of art is experienced through its represented (...) objectivities and depends on an already existent concept of objective time. The time of the literary work, however, gains an indeterminacy, as the author of the literary work is able to manipulate our experience of time within the literary work by predicting how the reader will concretize its events, characters, and objects with respect to time. I use Alain Robbe-Grillet’s representation of the centipede in La Jalousie as an example of the possible manipulations of time, explicable through Ingarden’s analysis of time in the literary work of art. (shrink)

Stein’s theory of empathy lies at the intersection of the phenomenological findings of E. Husserl and M. Scheler. By presenting the issue of “empathy” in a broader framework, including intentionality, the originality of experience, the issue of personality and the individual identity, as well as the so-called world of values, namely the culture, I argue for a dynamic, process-oriented concept of dealing with feelings, namely diapathy. -/- Koncepcja Edyty Stein rozumienia drugiego człowieka jest znana z jej dysertacji O zagadnieniu wczucia. (...) Niemniej, gruntowne przebadanie struktury osobowości ludzkiej, jakie podjęła w Filozofii psychologii i humanistyki, rzuca nowe światło na tę kwestię. Stein dokonuje swoistej syntezy Husserlowskiego prymatu prawdy i Schelerowskiej koncepcji miłości, unikając przy tym idealizmu i woluntaryzmu, którym obarczone są te stanowiska. Steinowska koncepcja znajduje kontynuację w fenomenologii M. Merleau-Ponty’ego i R. Barbarasa. (shrink)

Phenomenologists have no taste for desert landscapes. The early phenomenologists—Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, and Roman Ingarden—adopt stratified views of reality on which spiritual objects like artifacts and persons are distinct from their underlying matter. Call this view “pluralism.” After describing Scheler, Ingarden, and Husserl's pluralism about goods, literary artworks, and images, respectively, I reconstruct a phenomenological case for pluralism from Husserl's work and defend it against an objection. The phenomenological method reveals a special subset of objects' essential properties: modes of (...) givenness. On Husserl's view, there are necessary correlations between types of objects and the types of intentional acts through which they are given. Spiritual objects, unlike their matter, can only be given in acts belonging to the “personalistic attitude,” which has a motivational and expressive structure. My broader claim is that Husserl's phenomenology is a sophisticated metametaphysical view about the methodology of first‐order metaphysical inquiry. (shrink)

Based on chapter 3 “The musical Work and its score” of Roman Ingarden’s The Work of Music and the Problem of its Identity, this paper examines the semiotic theory from which the Polish philosopher develops his analysis of music.

In this paper I present the Ingardenian distinction between inseparability and dependence. My considerations are both historical and systematic. The historical part of the paper accomplishes two goals. First, I show that in the Brentanian tradition the problem of existential conditioning was entangled into parts—whole theories. The best examples of such an approach are Kazimierz Twardowski’s theory of the object and Edmund Husserl’s theory of parts and wholes. Second, I exhibit the context within which Ingarden distinguished inseparability and dependence. Moreover, (...) Ingarden’s motivations are presented: the problem of understanding the Husserlian concept of “immanent transcendence,” the issue of the existence of purely intentional objects, and finally the problem of the relationship between individual objects and ideas. The systematic part deals with the ambiguity of Ingarden’s definition of inseparability. I seek to improve this definition by reference to the distinction between absolute and summative wholes. I also present some divisions of inseparability and dependence and investigate whether these types of existential conditioning are reflexive, symmetric, or transitive. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the structure and elements of the intentional experiences of imagining fictional objects. The author critically examines the argument that whereas Husserl’s theory of imagination cannot do justice to fictional objects, Ingarden’s theory of purely intentional objects provides a basis for the theory of intentionality that explains the status of fictional objects. The paper discusses this argument to show that it is justified only in regard to Husserl’s early account of imagination, and on the condition of understanding contents (...) as the phantasmas. Moreover, the author sketches Ingarden’s theory of imagination, and compares it to Husserl’s later account of imagination in terms of noetic-noematic structures. Finally, the author questions the sharp distinction between Husserl and Ingarden with respect to their theories of imagination and fictional objects by showing that it is hard to classify clearly their theories as content or object theories respectively. (shrink)

The Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden gained recognition primarily due to his research on aesthetics. However, he considered the ontology to be the main area of his philosophical interests. At the beginning of his scientific career, Ingarden realized that he could not agree with his teacher Edmund Husserl, who considered phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy. From Ingarden’s point of view, the fallacy of this approach lies in the fact that it leads to metaphysical idealism and makes it impossible to grasp the (...) difference between real-life objects and intentional objects, i.e. objects generated by pure consciousness. In his main work Controversy over the Existence of the World, Ingarden tried to identify the difference between the ontological structures of real and intentional objects, expecting in this way to uphold the legitimacy of a realistic point of view and to prove that the real world is not a product of pure consciousness, but exists independently of him. Nevertheless, the result achieved by using the existential and formal ontological analysis of the a priori structures of various objects turned out to be insufficient to refute Husserl’s transcendental idealism. The article focuses on the last lifetime publication of Ingarden—his book On Responsibility. Its Ontic Foundations published in 1970. Since this work is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of responsibility, it may seem that here we are dealing primarily with research on ethics. The article attempts to show that the book can be read as an ontological study that continues the “debate about the existence of the world,” i.e. as an attempt to prove the reality of the world. However, this proof is no longer based on an analysis of the a priori structures of various objects, but on a direct experience of responsibility. (shrink)

The article is a critical elaboration of two phenomenological theories of imagination formulated by Ingarden and Blaustein in their discussion with Twardowski. Ingarden, as well as Blaustein were students of both Twardowski and Husserl, however, they defined imagination in two different contexts: whereas for Ingarden a proper way of analysis of imagination is ontology, for Blaustein imagination is the object of descriptive psychology, connected mainly with an aesthetic experience. As a result, the question of creativity of imagination is described in (...) two different, but intertwined ways. For Ingarden, creative imagination is understood as a noematical structure which generates the imagined object as a purely intentional object. Ingarden’s description expresses the ontological status of the imagined object as ontologically dependent on the act of imagining, and on the content of the imagined object. In his review of Ingarden’s Das literarische Kunstwerk, Blaustein was clear that one has to revise Ingarden’s theory of purely intentional object by adopting it to imaginative intentionality and aesthetic experience. To elaborate Ingarden’s theory of imagination, Blaustein discusses it also with reference to Twardowski. Blaustein claims that Twardowski’s Cartesian differentiation between perceptive, reproductive, and creative imagination is based on a vague criterion, and moreover it does not refer to two key notions of descriptive psychology, i.e., the notion of the representative content, and the intentional object. As a result of his critique, Blaustein limits the concept of creative imagination to ‘fantasy’, understood as secondary imagination. (shrink)

Here the concept of the human being as a “relatively isolated system” developed in Ingarden’s later phenomenology is adapted into an “aesthetics of isolation” that complements conventional environmental aesthetics. Such an aesthetics of isolation is especially relevant, given the growing “aesthetic overload” brought about by ubiquitous computing and new forms of art and aesthetic experience such as those involving virtual reality, interactive online performance art, and artificial creativity.

Roman Ingarden, one of Husserl’s most gifted students, devoted several thousand pages to the development of an ontological, epistemological, aesthetical and even anthropological framework that would allow him to firmly reject the so-called “idealistic turn” of his master Husserl. This paper aims at reconstructing an often overlooked side of his philosophy: his theory of consciousness and his analysis of the constitutive process involved in sense perception. After emphasizing the distinctive character of Ingarden’s ontological frame and its impact on understanding concepts (...) as fundamental as consciousness or intentionality, this paper tries to sketch Ingarden’s answers to several genetic questions raised by Husserl: the relation between time and consciousness, the nature of the ultimate sense data and the question of motivation. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the subject of the intersubjective constitution of intentional objects in Ingarden, particularly in the literary work. Subsequently, I cover certain topics of Husserl’s phenomenology adopted and developed further by Ingarden, which were certainly taken up in Reception Aesthetics, but were insufficiently recognized as Husserl’s legacy. In doing so, I attempt to show that Ingarden’s literature aesthetics, as regards its origin in Husserl’s essential-eidetic phenomenology, provides important clues to suggest that Ingarden may not necessarily be regarded (...) as the founder of reader-oriented hermeneutics. (shrink)

The paper develops the argument presented in my earlier article, Intentional Reference and Its Object in Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism. It contains further considerations on the proper understanding of Husserl’s notion of noema. My aim is not only to present an interpretation of Husserl’s text, but primarily to understand what constitutes an intentional reference of an act of consciousness. I agree with some of Husserl’s claims in Ideas, Book I, that noema, sense and intentional object are basically the same. This standpoint (...) implies, however, a drastic reinterpretation of the notion of an object. I refer to Ingarden’s conception of a purely intentional object to show the difficulties connected with regarding noema as an object separate from consciousness but still existentially dependent on it. Analyzing Husserlian notion of a noematic core I emphasize the relevance of universals for Husserl’s theory of consciousness. (shrink)

Autobiographical survey of interactions between the author and Barry Smith, especially as concerns the background and influence of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy and work on the relevance of Adolf Reinach, Roman Ingarden and other Central-European thinkers to contemporary analytic philosophy.

The Controversy over the Existence of the World (henceforth Controversy) is the magnum opus of Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. Despite the renewed interest for Ingarden’s pioneering ontological work whithin analytic philosophy, little attention has been dedicated to Controversy's main goal, clearly indicated by the very title of the book: finding a solution to the centuries-old philosophical controversy about the ontological status of the external world. -/- There are at least three reasons for this relative indifference. First, even at the time (...) when the book was published, the Controversy was no longer seen as a serious polemical topic, whether it was disqualified as an archaic metaphysical pseudo-problem, or taken to be the last remnant of an antiscientific approach to philosophy culminating in idealism and relativism. Second, Ingarden’s reasoning on the matter is highly complex, at times misleading, and even occasionally faulty. Finally, his analysis is not only incomplete – Controversy being unachieved – but also arguably aporetic. -/- One may wonder, then, why it is still worth excavating this mammoth treatise to study an issue apparently no longer relevant to contemporary philosophy. Aside from historical and exegetical purposes, which are of course very interesting in their own right, Ingarden’s treatment of the Controversy remains one of the most detailed and ambitious ontological undertakings of the twentieth century. Not only does it lay out an incredibly detailed map of possible solutions to the Controversy, but it also tries to show why the latter is a genuine and fundamental problem that owes its hasty disqualification to various oversimplifications over the course of the history of philosophy. -/- In this chapter, I first give an overview of Ingarden’s method, which relies mainly on a combinatorial analysis. Then, I summarize his examination of possible solutions to the Controversy, and determine which ones can be ruled out on ontological grounds. Finally, I explain why this ambitious project ultimately leads to a theoretical impasse, leaving Ingarden unable to come up with a definitive solution to the Controversy – regardless of the fact that the book is unachieved. I argue that his analysis of the problem yields a more modest but nonetheless valuable result. (shrink)

It is accepted that certain mereological concepts and phenomenological conceptualisations presented in Carl Stumpf’s Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung and Tonpsychologie played an important role in the development of the Husserlian formal ontology. In the third Logical Investigation, which displays the formal relations between part and whole and among parts that make out a whole, one of the main concepts of contemporary formal ontology and metaphysics is settled: ontological dependence or foundation. My main objective is to display Stumpf’s concepts (...) of partial content, independent content, spatial wholes, sound wholes, and the different kinds of connection among parts, in particular, fusion. Second, I will show how Husserl improved this background, in particular with regards to the exact nature of the theory of manifolds, in discussion with Georg Cantor, the father of set theory. Third, I will focus on Ingarden’s use of formal ontology and on the different modes of being that can be justified by appealing to the concept of ontological dependence in its Ingardenian variations. If my interpretation is adequate, it should be inferred that formal ontology is the operative theory of phenomenological philosophy, and this must be acknowledged in its full significance with respect to the supposed independence of the phenomenological method since 1913. A further consequence, not developed in this essay, is that formal ontology can be mathematised. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden, der große polnische Phänomenologe, glaubte den metaphysischen Idealismus in vielen Entscheidungen Husserls zu sehen. Er ist u.a. in der These des transzendentalen Idealismus Husserls enthalten. Diese These hat Ingarden folgendermaßen formuliert: » das Sein der uns in der Erfahrung gegebenen Welt ist auf das Sein und den Verlauf des reinen konstituierenden Bewußtseins angewiesen, ohne das die Welt überhaupt nicht existieren würde, und zweitens ist es absolut sinnlos, schon deshalb nach der Existenz der Welt zu fragen«. Demzufolge » ist (...) es nicht erlaubt, zwischen dem im Prozeß der Konstituierung entstandenen ›Sinn‹ des Gegenstands und dem bestehenden Gegenstand, zwischen dem ›Phänomen‹ eines gewissen Seins und diesem Sein selbst, zwischen dem Sinn seiner Existenz und der Existenz selbst zu unterscheiden.«. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden, der große polnische Phänomenologe, glaubte den metaphysischen Idealismus in vielen Entscheidungen Husserls zu sehen. Er ist u.a. in der These des transzendentalen Idealismus Husserls enthalten. Diese These hat Ingarden folgendermaßen formuliert: » das Sein der uns in der Erfahrung gegebenen Welt ist auf das Sein und den Verlauf des reinen konstituierenden Bewußtseins angewiesen, ohne das die Welt überhaupt nicht existieren würde, und zweitens ist es absolut sinnlos, schon deshalb nach der Existenz der Welt zu fragen«. Demzufolge » ist (...) es nicht erlaubt, zwischen dem im Prozeß der Konstituierung entstandenen ›Sinn‹ des Gegenstands und dem bestehenden Gegenstand, zwischen dem ›Phänomen‹ eines gewissen Seins und diesem Sein selbst, zwischen dem Sinn seiner Existenz und der Existenz selbst zu unterscheiden.«. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden fut un auteur prolifique. Ancien élève de Husserl, il publia de nombreux ouvrages et articles en près de cinquante ans de carrière et suscita un nombre impressionnant de commentaires tout en demeurant peu connu des francophones. Victor Kocay tente de réparer cette injustice en nous montrant l’intérêt de l’approche ingardenienne pour l’analyse littéraire et la théorisation de la réception esthétique de l’œuvre littéraire. Deux ouvrages constituent le cœur de l’exposition: Das literarische Kunstwerks et Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks. (...) Dans ces textes, Ingarden développe deux concepts centraux qui seront mis en application par Kocay dans la dernière partie de son ouvrage avec l’analyse du Journal d’un curé de campagne de Bernanos et du Journal du voleur de Genet: la concrétisation et la stratification. La concrétisation constitue «la notion de base de l’esthétique d’Ingarden» et ce terme renvoie au processus d’interprétation-compréhension du lecteur face au texte, processus qui résulte en la formation d’un objet esthétique. La concrétisation consiste au moins à remplir ce qu’Ingarden appelle les «lacunes d’ordre conceptuel», c’est-à-dire certains non-dits du texte. À aucun moment Conan Doyle ne dit que Sherlock Holmes est un être humain ou qu’il a trente-deux dents, et pourtant c’est ce que nous inférons de notre lecture, en utilisant nos croyances sur le monde, les traditions littéraires dans lesquelles s’inscrit l’auteur, etc. Il ne s’agit pas de combler tous les blancs, ce qui serait impossible, mais de constituer un objet en vue de son appréciation esthétique. Chaque lecteur peut concrétiser différemment un même texte, mais Ingarden refuse de sombrer pour autant dans le relativisme: l’objet esthétique constitué ne l’est pas pour la seule jouissance personnelle de son lecteur, mais il doit reposer sur les propriétés du texte lui-même et pouvoir être soumis au jugement d’autrui. Si plusieurs concrétisations d’un même texte sont possibles, toutes ne sont pas acceptables. De même, les qualités qui servent de base à l’appréciation esthétique doivent avoir leur source dans les qualités du texte lui-même, selon Ingarden. Lorsque Albert Cohen réussit à nous faire pénétrer dans l’esprit oisif d’Ariane d’Auble, dans Belle du Seigneur, à nous faire ressentir son désœuvrement en nous faisant participer aux mouvements incohérents de son imagination, c’est par un style particulier, un rythme de phrase qui épouse parfaitement les mouvements erratiques de l’esprit d’Ariane. La valeur que nous attribuons à ces pages repose sur des propriétés du texte lui-même, propriétés que nous valorisons parce qu’elles provoquent l’effet esthétique attendu. (shrink)

Ingarden distinguishes four strata making up the structure of the literary work of art: the stratum of word sounds and sound-complexes; the stratum of meaning units; the stratum of represented objectivities (characters, actions, settings, and so forth); and the stratum of schematized aspects (perspectives under which the represented objectivities are given to the reader). It is not only works of literature which manifest this four-fold structure but also certain borderline cases such as newspaper articles, scientific works, biographies, and so forth. (...) Ingarden specifies what is characteristic of a work of literature by asserting that all declarative sentences appearing in the stratum of meaning units of such work possess what he calls a quasi-judgmental character. We discuss here Ingarden’s theory of quasi-judgments and draw out its implication that all works of literature are works of fiction through and through. (shrink)

A short rebuttal to Antonín Mokrejš's hostile reply to my critical review of his translation of Roman Ingarden's 'The Literary Work of Art'.

Reinach is principally known for his anticipation in 1913 of many ideas subsequently developed by Austin, Searle and others under the heading of 'speech act theory'. This bibliography of primary and secondary literature by and on Reinach shows that his influenced extended more broadly into areas such as the theory of judgment, the ontology of states of affairs, and the philosophy of law.

For Meinong, familiarly, fictional entities are not created, but rather merely discovered (or picked out) from the inexhaustible realm of Aussersein (beyond being and non-being). The phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, in contrast, offers in his Literary Work of Art of 1931 a constructive ontology of fiction, which views fictional objects as entities which are created by the acts of an author (as laws, for example, are created by acts of parliament). We outline the logic of fiction which is implied by Ingarden’s (...) approach, showing how it distinguishes the properties possessed by fictional objects (for instance of having been created by such and such an author in such and such a work) from characteristics (for instance of smoking a pipe, of living in Baker Street) which are merely associated with such objects. (shrink)

An account of Roman Ingarden's ontology of literature.

As conceived by analytic philosophers ontology consists in the application of the methods of mathematical logic to the analysis of ontological discourse. As conceived by realist philosophers such as Meinong and the early Husserl, Reinach and Ingarden, it consists in the investigation of the forms of entities of various types. The suggestion is that formal methods be employed by phenomenological ontologists, and that phenomenological insights may contribute to the construction of adequate formal-ontological languages. The paper sketches an account of what (...) might be involved in this new discipline, an account which is illustrated in application to the formal-ontological problems raised by negative states of affairs. (shrink)

The philosophical press, in the United States as well as abroad, has not given the thought of the Polish philosopher, Roman Ingarden, the recognition that it rightly deserves. It is because of this state of affairs that Volume IV of Analecta Husserliana comes to us as a scholarly contribution in a time of need. The singular merit of this volume is that it not only makes available some noteworthy critical and constructive analyses by Ingarden but also offers a series of (...) systematic studies of various facets of Ingarden’s philosophy by his chief interpreters and critics. The first selection in Volume IV is part of the Oslo Lectures, given by Ingarden in 1967, and here made public for the first time in its original German transcription. In these very important lectures Ingarden distills the results of his many years of critical reflection on the possibilities and limits of Husserl’s program of phenomenological research. The general topic of these lectures is: "The Problem of Husserlian Reduction". However, as the discussion proceeds it is not only problems attendant to the celebrated reduction that come under critical review but indeed the whole gamut of Husserlian motifs from intentionality to inter-subjectivity. (shrink)

This volume is a translation from the third German edition of Roman Ingarden’s classic work in phenomenological aesthetics originally written in 1931. The book is not only one of the best exemplifications of the phenomenological method; it also ranks with the major products of Russian formalism, the Prague school of linguistics, and American new criticism as a fundamental contribution to literary theory. It is surely the most systematic and exhaustive study yet devoted by a Western philosopher to determining "the ontic (...) position of a literary work." If the early Husserl regarded physicalism and especially psychologism as the Scylla and Charybdis for logical theory, Ingarden likewise considers them the greatest obstacle to a proper understanding of das literarische Kunstwerk. When these two fallacious and influential theories are rejected the traditional dichotomy of real and ideal as assigned to the literary work is seen to be untenable. Ingarden’s most significant ontological conclusion states that the literary work of art is neither a physical, a psychic, nor a psychophysical entity, but rather "a purely intentional object," an ontically heteronomous system of significations essentially describable as "a polyphonic harmony of aesthetic value qualities.". (shrink)

Roman Ingarden published his two major works in aesthetics in the 1930’s. The Literary Work of Art was published first in a German edition in 1931 and The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art was published first in a Polish edition in 1937. A revised and enlarged edition of the second book was published in Germany in 1968 and it is the German edition translated into English in 1973 which is the subject of this review. Ingarden’s two works, founded (...) on the antipsychologism of Edmund Husserl are intended as companion volumes, the first responding to the question, "How is the object of cognition, the literary work of art, structured?" and the second answering the question, "What is the procedure which will lead to knowledge of the literary work?" In The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, Ingarden is concerned with the mode of cognition which corresponds to the necessary structures of the literary work of art which he has analyzed in his earlier study. He sets out to show that such a cognition is composed of heterogenous but closely connected processes and that it is accomplished in a temporal process. (shrink)