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Roman Ingarden's early theory of the object

Marek Piwowarczyk

pp. 111-126

Roman Ingarden is one of the most well known phenomenological ontologists. Yet his phenomenological ontology is very different from Heidegger's. Ingarden rather follows Husserlian formal ontology and, in a wider perspective, post-Brentanian theories of the object. He held that one of the tasks of a proper theory of the object was to overcome the empiricist bundle theories. His mature neo-Aristotelian substantialism is a strong response to empiricism. Ingarden began working out his position very early on. In his phenomenological manifesto—class="EmphasisTypeItalic ">The Aims of Phenomenologists—he sketched a theory of the object as an alternative to the simple bundle theory of Ernst Mach and his followers. This early doctrine is the topic of the current chapter. I present this theory, classify it in contemporary terms and compare it to his mature substantialism. My thesis is that Ingarden's early view is a sort of sophisticated bundle theory or a sui generis doctrine which should be placed somewhere between sophisticated bundle theories and full-blooded substantialism. In The Aims the basic structure of a thing is a Gestalt-qualities structure, differing in many respects from a subject-properties structure.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-39623-7_7

Full citation:

Piwowarczyk, M. (2020)., Roman Ingarden's early theory of the object, in W. Płotka & P. Eldridge (eds.), Early phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 111-126.

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