I reached for the work of Roman Ingarden in the hope of some reconciliation between these two standpoints, essentialism and relativism, and also because my primary interest was in philosophy of literature, and literature was where the battles over âcorrect interpretationsâ had always been fought. Ingarden himself turned to literature to prove a larger philosophical problem, which for him took a somewhat scholastic shape of the controversy over the existence of the world. That would be intriguing in itself, but the fact that he wrote his magnum opus on the subject of realism versus idealism while his country was being ravaged by the war, and that he considered his work to be done in the spirit of resistance against the irrationalism of the Nazis, was fascinating.
Irrationalism was at the root of the spiritual sickness of Europe, according to Ingardenâs great teacher Edmund Husserl, who in his famous lecture in Vienna, a few years before the war, traced the origin of the malaise to âa misguided rationalismâ, which manifested itself in the objectification and naturalization of human subjectivity. Husserl saw only one good way out of this crisisââthrough a heroism of reason that overcomes naturalism once and for allâ.3 This was possible, he thought, through his newly developed transcendental phenomenology, which went against the misguided rationalism of the ânaturalismâ and âobjectivismâ, and turned back towards âlife-inwardness and spiritualizationâ, in the hope for âthe rebirth of Europeâ from âthe barbarityâ, and the anticipated political tyranny and violence.4
Ingardenâs work on philosophy of literature was inspired by his fascination with Husserlâs transcendental philosophy and by his reluctance to go along with it all the way. In order to understand Ingardenâs work and his motives, IÂ undertook the study of Husserl and began to understand the reluctance of all Husserlâs students to abandon the metaphysical presuppositions and embrace the uncertainty of the presupposition-less philosophy that Husserl initiated. I also understood why Ingardenâs work never took hold in analytically dominated American aesthetics, which had not availed itself of the opportunities offered by Husserlâs phenomenological analyses. Ingarden, on the other hand, while skeptical of Husserlâs larger project, embraced the phenomenological method in his analyses of the nature of works of art and the descriptions of our experiences with literature, often without sufficient explanation of the methodology he followed. This, and the fact that most of the English translations of his major works were not helpful in this respect either, by not following the already established English terminology of translating Husserlâs concepts, contributed to Ingardenâs lack of popularity amongst English speaking philosophers.
With the hope that this work might help bring Ingardenâs philosophy of literature from obscurity, I will first discuss major concepts of Husserlâs phenomenology on which Ingardenâs analyses depend. Then throughout my discussion of Ingardenâs philosophy I will relate his theses to the theses of Husserl, especially where Ingardenâs work can be seen as the direct application of Husserlâs theories to the field of aesthetics. I will also bring the quotations from Ingarden on par with the English terminology commonly used for rendering Husserlâs concepts.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Joseph Margolis who guided me in the process of writing my doctoral dissertation that became the first draft of this book, challenged my ideas about identity and difference, undermined my essentialism, and supported me spiritually. I would also like to thank Professor J.N. Mohanty with whom I studied Husserl and could understand the sources and motivation of Ingardenâs philosophy, and who taught me to question my entrenched metaphysical presuppositions. Both have continued to inspire me through their writings, and without their spiritual and textual presence this book would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Artur Blaim and Claudia Stolz for eliminating grammatical and stylistic infelicities in the penultimate version of my manuscriptâwhatever errors are still here is my responsibility. But the deepest bow goes to my mother who did not live to see my work completed, and to my daughter Katarzyna and my wife Magdalena, both of whom were neglected as my attention was directed towards this project for many years. I am also grateful to my students for challenging me to defend the identity of values in the increasingly relativistic mindset, without falling back on the predictable essentialist position, as the latter is no longer just quaint but has become dangerousâviolent in rejecting the otherâs perspective, and thus provoking and resulting in violence.