Ingarden's and Mukařovsky's binominal definition of the literary work of art
pp. 159-186
in: Bohdan Dziemidok, Peter McCormick (eds), On the aesthetics of Roman Ingarden, Berlin, Springer, 1989Abstract
An attempt to compare Ingarden's and Mukařovsky's on-tological positions on the work of literary art might seem equally incongruous to adherents of both phenomenology and structuralism. However, a closer look at these positions reveals that in spite of their manifestly different epis-temologies, on a number of other issues they are not as disparate as one might assume. Even though Ingarden, unlike Mukarovsky, "considered [the literary work] as something detached from the living intercourse of psychic individuals and hence also from the living cultural atmosphere and the various spiritual currents that develop in the course of history" (1973a, 331), and thereby gave preference to the inquiry as to its being as such, i.e., ontology, he by no means remained oblivious to its communicative function, i.e., semiotics. Such oblivion would have been inconsistent with the very notion of the heteronomy of the intentional object which, accordingly, in order to be, must enter into a specific relationship with the perceiving subject. In other words, the very being of such an object is contigent upon its potentiality or its peculiar forces "to bring [the observer] to constitute an aesthetic object" (1973b, 239).
