Language and Experience

Abstract

Among Ingarden’s writings on the philosophy of literature there is a special group of treatises which are rarely commented upon by those who examine his ideas. The group includes articles on Aristotle’s Poetics and Lessing’s Laocoön, on “various understandings of truthfulness in the work of art,” on the form and content of the work of art, and a number of studies concerned with the aesthetics of empathy. Indeed, if one reads these studies concentrating on the theses explicitly put forward, especially if one confronts them with the object they deal with, they may not arouse any special interest. These treatises, however, turn out to be extremely valuable material, shedding light on a number of statements the philosopher made about literature and the study of it that he initiated, provided they are looked at from the perspective of the method he applied (which he termed “style”) to his analyses of the tradition of aesthetics and literary theory.