Table Of ContentArkadiusz Chrudzimski (Ed.)
Existence, Culture, and Persons
P H E N O M E N O L O G Y & M I N D
Herausgegeben von / Edited by
Arkadiusz Chrudzimski • Wolfgang Huemer
Band 5 / Volume 5
Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (Ed.)
Existence, Culture, and Persons
The Ontology of Roman Ingarden
ontos
verl ag
Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick
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Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................... 7
Substances, States, Processes, Events.
Ingarden and the Analytic Theory of Objects .......................................... 9
GREGOR HAEFLIGER / GUIDO KÜNG
Ingarden and the Ontology of Dependence ............................................. 39
PETER SIMONS
Roman Ingarden’s Ontology: Existential Dependence, Substances, Ideas,
and Other Things Empiricists Do not Like ............................................ 55
DANIEL VON WACHTER
Brentano, Husserl und Ingarden über die intentionalen Gegenstände ..... 83
ARKADIUSZ CHRUDZIMSKI
Ingarden and the Ontology of Cultural Objects .......................................115
AMIE L. THOMASSON
Concretization, Literary Criticism, and the Life
of the Literary Work of Art .....................................................................137
JEFF MITSCHERLING
Ingarden: From Phenomenological Realism to Moral Realism ............. 159
EDWARD SWIDERSKI
Roman Ingardens Ontologie und die Welt ............................................ 191
ANDRZEJ PÓŁTAWSKI
Notes on Contributors ...................................................................... 221
Index of Names ................................................................................ 225
Introduction
Roman Ingarden (1893–1970) belonged to those phenomenologists who
never accepted Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Beginning with the Be-
merkungen zum Problem ‘Idealismus-Realismus’ (1929) he devoted a great
part of his intellectual energy to the analytical studies in which he hoped to
develop an ontological framework suitable for an ultimate refutation of
Husserl’s idealistic doctrine. The most important of his works, like the
monumental Controversy over the Existence of the World (Polish edition
1947, German edition 1964/65) or The Literary Work of Art (1931) were
explicitly classified by their author as such preparatory studies; and even in
his later “personalist” studies, like Über die Verantwortung (1970), he still
returned to the old realism / idealism problem.
Nonetheless, it would be a huge mistake to think that a study of Ingar-
den’s work could be valuable only for those who are fascinated by all the
subtleties of the Husserlian tradition or esoteric dialectics of the idealism /
realism debate. Gregor Haefliger and Guido Küng are perfectly right, when
they write about The Controversy over the Existence of the World that “[a]
contemporary ontologist may find it more interesting to read this study
[…] not in connection with the realism / idealism controversy, but as a
treasury of numerous ontological distinctions, problem formulations, and
detailed analyses” (p. 9 in this volume), and exactly the same holds also for
Ingarden’s other “preparatory” works.
Actually, the majority of philosophers who find Ingarden’s work
valuable and inspiring belong to the growing community of “naïve” or
“straight” realists who typically don’t even consider transcendental ideal-
ism as a serious philosophical option. Ironically, the main goal of Ingar-
den’s philosophical struggle – the refutation of idealism – remained some-
thing that very few of his reader are really interested in.
Most of the papers collected in this volume follow this strand of Ingar-
den’s reception. The first three articles concern the basic ontological cate-
gories and distinctions. Gregor Haefliger and Guido Küng concentrate on
categories of substance, state, process, and event, and compare Ingarden’s
solutions with some contemporary developments. Peter Simons investi-
gates several concepts of ontological dependence that are central for the
especially Ingardenian branch of ontology that Ingarden called “existential
Existence, Culture, and Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden.
Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (ed.), Frankfurt: ontos, 2005, 7–8.
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8 INTRODUCTION
ontology”. Daniel von Wachter proposes “a Europe-in-seven-days tour
through Ingarden’s ontology” (p. 55 in this volume).
The next three papers concern the topic of Ingarden’s philosophy that
happened to become the best known of his achievements: the philosophy
of fiction and of cultural objects. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski sketches the
general problematic of intentional objects and argues that they are by no
means useless fictions. Amie L. Thomasson presents an Ingardenian ontol-
ogy of social and cultural objects such as money, churches, and flags.
Finally, Jeff Mitscherling investigates the difficult topic of the “life” of a
literary work of art.
The last two papers open a somewhat wider perspective on Ingarden’s
work. Edward Swiderski points out an interesting change of perspective
that occurred in Ingarden’s late work, which was devoted to the problem of
responsibility. He argues that there is a tension between the hypothetical-
scientific and phenomenological sides of his philosophy. Andrzej Pół-
tawski tries to answer the question of what Ingarden’s ontology would look
like if he developed it according to his deeply personalist picture of the
world.
I would also like to thank all of the contributors who have made this col-
lection possible. My particular thanks go Anna Sierszulska, who translated
the paper by Gregor Haefliger and Guido Küng from German and to Brian
Armstrong, Johannes Brandl, Norbert Gratzl, and Edward Swiderski for
their help with proofreading the English and German contributions. My
work was supported by the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissen-
schaftlichen Forschung (FWF).
Last but not least: Ingarden was not only a great thinker but also an ex-
cellent teacher and I want to dedicate this book to the memory of his most
famous student: Karol Wojtyła – John Paul II (1920–2005).
The editor
Salzburg, April 2005
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Substances, States, Processes, Events.
Ingarden and the Analytic Theory of Objects∗
GREGOR HAEFLIGER / GUIDO KÜNG
Decisively influenced by the phenomenologists in Göttingen, in 1913, the
year in which Ideas I appeared, Ingarden set himself the task of examining
Husserl’s transcendental idealism.1 The systematic results of these investi-
gations are contained in his monumental main work, Der Streit um die
Existenz der Welt (The Controversy over the Existence of the World).2 A
contemporary ontologist may find it more interesting to read this study,
which in fact remained unfinished, not in connection with the realism /
idealism controversy, but as a treasury of numerous ontological distinc-
tions, problem formulations, and detailed analyses. A good example is
Ingarden’s distinction, in the style of analytic object-theory (Gegenstands-
theorie), among substances (‘things’), states of substances, processes,3 and
events. However, we would like to begin with a presentation of Ingarden’s
conception of ontology, in order to show its connection with the analytic
theory of objects.
∗ The original German version of this paper appeared as: Gregor Haefliger / Guido
Küng, “Substanzen, Zustände, Prozesse, Ereignisse: Ingarden und die analytische Ge-
genstandstheorie” in: Hans Rainer Sepp (ed.), Die Münchener-Göttinger Phänomeno-
logie (Orbis Phaenomenologicus. Perspektiven), Würzburg: Königshausen & Neu-
mann 2006. With kind permission of the editor.
1 On the development of his considerations cf. Haefliger (2); (3).
2 Cf. Küng (2); Haefliger (2).
3 In the Polish edition of Der Streit Ingarden uses the expression ‘proces’, while in the
German edition, beside and instead of the expression ‘Prozess’, mostly the expression
‘Vorgang’ is used. The English expression ‘process’ is as a rule synonymous with
‘Prozess’, or to be precise ‘Vorgang’, as Ingarden understands these expressions,
whereas the English expressions ‘event’ and ‘occurrent’ may mean either processes or
events in Ingarden’s sense.
Existence, Culture, and Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden.
Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (ed.), Frankfurt: ontos, 2005, 9–37.
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