PHENOMENOLOGICAL AESTHETICS OF ROMAN INGARDEN ON THE BACKGROUND OF EUROPEAN HUMANISTICS OF THE 40-60-s OF THE 20-TH CENTURY: CULTUROLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The cultural situation that has developed in European territories has led to the deformation of the critically reflexive component of aesthetic knowledge and the devaluation of the phenomenon of «aesthetic value». The search for ways of transforming or updating the aesthetic and artistic foundations of postmodernism led to actualization of the experience of theoretical quest during the twentieth century. In the context of the aforementioned, phenomenological aesthetics is also Roman Ingaden. Arguing their ideas in the development of European philosophy of the 20-40s of the twentieth century, the Polish theorist selects a comparative analysis of such key concepts as «realism», «idealism» and «materialism». Understanding the historical traditions of coexistence of the ideological plane, «realism – idealism – materialism» made R. Ingaden engage in an ontology of art, which allowed «touching» all historical and cultural layers, including the late-Latin ones. Due to this approach, «realism» acquired transcultural significance.

Developing a positive position, R. Ingaden sought a path between reductive physicist realities, popular among the analytic philosophers of his time, and the transcendental idealism adopted by E. Husserl.

One can not overlook one more factor, which also influenced the views and mood of Polish aesthetics. I mean the polemic in Poland in the middle of the twentieth century regarding the essence of aesthetic. The initiator of the clarification of the essence of aesthetic was a representative of the so-called «Catholic aesthetics». In the circles of the Polish ecclesiastical elite, the theory of so-called «dynamic Catholicism», in which theology, ethics and aesthetics link together, becomes popular. The main problem of this theory is the problem of personality spirituality. It is noted that some of R. Ingarden’s ideas are echoed with the moral-ethical quest of Karol Wojtyla ‑ the future of the Pope John Paul II. This applies in particular to personality problems.

A peculiar focus of scientific insights becomes for R. Ingaden a problem of values, primarily aesthetic and moral. According to the position of the Polish philosopher, the work of fiction is not a concrete (or almost concrete) object of aesthetic perception. Taken on its own, it is just like a skeleton, which in a number of relationships is supplemented or filled by the reader, and in some cases also subject to changes or distortions. Only in this case, the work of art becomes a direct object of aesthetic perception and pleasure. But, as stressed by R. Ingarden, the degree of aesthetic perception depends on the ability to aesthetically perceive the work of the recipient. R. Ingarden puts a number of important issues not only for aesthetics, but also for epistemology. What makes an object an object of art and aesthetic value? How does the aesthetic experience of this subject arise? What does it represent? And it corresponds to the fact that the formation of aesthetic value in general, and especially in that particular form, in which it appears in this concretization of a work, depends not only on the work itself, but also on the method of concretization by his reader. Much depends on the reproductive fantasy of the reader, on the diversity of his experience, on his taste, on the subtlety of aesthetic sensation. The way in which this addition is carried out is crucial both for the degree of fidelity to the reconstruction of the work, and for the aesthetic value embodied in this particularization.

Aesthetic experience, for Ingaden, is not a one-time event, but a process that extends over time that passes through certain phases. These phases represent an interconnection of active and passive states of aesthetic experience, in the process of which an aesthetic object is formed. Aesthetics of R. Inggarden is in some way related to his ethical concept: a man for him is a man because he has overgrown the biological conditions in which he finds himself, and on this basis a person builds a new world that is dissimilar to the former.