HERMENEUTIC PRINCIPLE OF UNDERSTANDING AND ROMAN INGARDEN’S INTERPRETATION OF AESTHETIC OBJECT AS TWO CONVERGENT WAYS OF ARGUMENTATION STRENGTHENING THE NEED OF DIALOGUE AND COMMUNICATION
ZBIGANIEW
WENDLAND
Warsaw Agricultural University
Department
of Human Sciences
The
problems of dialogue and communication among people as individuals, among social
groups and nations, the need of dialogue and communication among cultures and
civilizations did become in contemporary times so important that we as
philosophers ought to seek argumentations strengthening these issues anywhere it
is possible. I think that the allies in this matter are many contemporary
philosophical currents like for example phenomenology, hermeneutics and — even
postmodernism. I would like to say some words about argumentations
strengthening the need of dialogue and communication coining from hermeneutics
and from the phenomenology of Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden.
Hermeneutics
has a long history of its own, dating back to antiquity, but today it is
regarded most readily as a “shoot on the tree of phenomenology” (in
accordance with the definition formulated by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur),
despite the considerable contribution made to hermeneutics by philosophers who
lived prior to the twentieth century and thinkers who did not belong to the
phenomenological tradition. Contemporary thinkers, who are regarded as members
of this philosophical orientation, acknowledge that all the reality resembles a
written text, which requires that its meaning and truth have to be understood
and interpreted. This is precisely what hermeneutics is trying to do by basing
itself on the premise that the meaning or truth of reality are never direct
data, nor do they impose themselves with irrefutable obviousness, but that
capturing them compels for indispensable, complicated and time-consuming efforts
of a cognitive-interpretative nature. The most important premise in hermeneutics
is that it is impossible to grasp the meaning or truth of text, speech, work of
art, or reality itself differently than in connection with some sort of subject.
The latter, i.e. the cognitive or interpretative subject, always consists of
individuals living in a certain historical period, in given cultural
conditions, and possesses some amount of fore-knowledge, prejudices,
superstitions as well as anticipations, practical interests and existential
problems. All this constitutes a sort of encumbrance; the burdened subject of
cognition or interpretation tries to become acquainted with its object; it aims
to determine its truth or to describe its meaning. The most important elements
which form the conditions for hermeneutic understanding of texts or reality as a
whole include such components as: concepts, words, linguistic structures, and
rules of thought and speech which possess its own indelible significance or
permanent functions, and thanks to which is predetermined the understanding and
interpretation of the objects which are the centre of our interest; subsequently.
they make it possible to express the obtained knowledge in a verbal display
because this two (understanding and its verbal expression) are the main tasks
of hermeneutics. The outcome of all those undertakings is a situation to which
contemporary hermeneutics draws attention by claiming that the truth which is
the target of cognition and understanding (not only of written texts or spoken
speeches) is a historical process that realizes itself in an infinite number
of revelations, through superimposed cognitive acts, fusions of different horizons,
assorted acts of understanding, and linguistic interpretation, and thanks to an
infinite input of collective effort, in other words, in the course of
inter-personal and inter-cultural communication.
The
above argumentation, present in works of representatives of hermeneutics,
intends to legitimize the critique of cognitive absolutism and objectivism, i.e.
metaphysical stands which claim to recognize absolute truth, historically
invariable and unconditioned. One could reduce this interpretation to several
statements, such as: representatives of each epoch, or each culture, are the
possessors of their own truth; truth as a whole is always open and incomplete;
no one can claim that his reasons are exclusive, etc. This situation was summed
up by Gadamer who in one of his studies expressed the laconic view that:
“Statements which are simply true cannot exist. One of the reasons is that the
truth of particular statements always depends on the truthfulness of our
holistic vision of the world in accordance with Hegel’s “Das Gauze ist das
Wahre”, and that the truth of the whole is a historical process realized
according to the principle of an incessant merge of eternally new and different
horizons. In other words, successive and differently determined points of view.
That is why from the hermeneutic point of view the task of understanding and
interpretation which leads to meaning and truth always involves communication
and dialogue among men, peoples and cultures.
Before
Gadamer also Heidegger described the problem of understanding in relation to the
individuals, which live in given historical and cultural conditions, regarding
this problem as the most important philosophical question presented by the
author of Sein und Zeit in the form of the analysis of Dasein. Heidegger
believed that philosophical reflection should be not concerned with Being but
with “being of Being”, and that understanding of “Being ‘s being” is
something which characterizes human existence in the most essential manner.
Moreover, “being of Being” is always an open question, a constant
“becoming”, and is always the result of human’s active participation. When
we speak about Heidegger’s view which essence is among others the recognition
that “man is the shepherd of Being”, that he permits “Being to be” and
that Being is the only object of his concern, i.e. he grants Being meaning and
direction, grasps its truth, and helps his truth to “take place”, and when
Heidegger proclaimed that the most essential ontological determinant of man’s
being is comprehending Being in general (“existence is possible only upon the
basis of understanding Being”2), etc., then all this means that at
a certain moment Heidegger’s analytics of Dasein passes into hermeneutics,
which was so successfully continued by Gadamer. By Heidegger himself the another
of most essential attributes of human being (beside understanding) is its
co-existence with the others (German Mitsein). So the Heidegger’s Dasein can
fulfill his tasks towards Being only in the way of historical process in which
both the thinkers and the poets have to play the most important role.
Beside
Heidegger and Gadamner, the Polish philosopher, founder of die phenomenological
center in Cracow (Jagiellonian University), Roman Ingarden was the man who
undertook a far-reaching destruction of metaphysics of Being which did not
acknowledge any contribution from the side of human being. Some of Ingarden’s
genuine philosophical ideas can be truly compared to those of the good known
representatives of contemporary hermeneutics. Ingarden, belonging to the
closed circle of Husserl’s co-workers, began his scientific carrier from a
trial, which consisted in applying the phenomenological method to create durable
phenomenological foundations for the theory of art, and in the next phase also
for the widely comprehended aesthetics. The good known book Das literarische
Kunstwerk3, published in 1931, was Ingarden’s result in this
matter. In this relatively early interpretation of many concepts in the fields
of theory of art amid esthetics the Polish philosopher was an author of some
philosophical ideas, which can be understood as a considerable weakening of
Husserl’s absolutism amid idealism. Nevertheless the most significant result
of Ingardens phenomenological philosophy was his book from 1947-1948: Der
Streit um die Existenz der We14. In discussion with his master Hussel
Ingarden expressed his own point of view on the question of ontological and
epistemological realism as considerable distinguished from Hussel’s attitude
of transcendental idealism. By Husserl the only kind of subject, which played
an important role in cognitive relation was the transcendental ego. In
Ingarden’s opinion sensational data originated from existing things are the
real ground of every process of knowledge. On the basis of these data the
transcendental consciousness passes in acts of eidetic intuition to indirect
watching the very essences of things (this watching is in German language called
Wesenschau). Even in cases of objects, which seem to be in principle creations
of consciousness, like an imagined hero of a literary novel, somebody’s
painted picture, or like a discovered by any researcher scientific theory (in
sum: all the works of art, culture and sciences), all objects of this kind were
not interpreted by Ingarden as exclusively creations of pure consciousness
(transcendental ego). The Polish philosopher considered this kind of objects as
“derivatively intentional”, i.e. lie said they had iii acts of consciousness
sources amid causes of their being, but the foundation of their existence amid
the basis for the inter-subjective identity for these objects were always
specific beings which were real-physical things; these are for example physical
books, pictured canvas, creations of technique and so on. The very achievement
of Ingarden in matters of truth and meaning which could be compared with the
achievements of representatives of twenties century hermeneutics like Heidegger
and Gadamner, was his interpretation of work of art as a creation by its
author not to the end defined, left by its creator in intended manner schematic,
amid without any ultimate concretization. The very significance of Ingarden’s
conception consists here iii the fact that the left by au author of work of art,
not to the end defined, aesthetic objects, containing many “empty” places,
cause that the life of work of art persists in time, and relies on perpetual
ever new concretizations undertaken by always new receivers. Thus every
receiver of work of art is iii the same time its cocreator: amid always
consist many possibilities of view concretizations. A work of art constantly
provokes its consumers to disclosing in it continually new meanings and to
create continually new interpretations. A really great work of art speaks to
people of different times and to men shaped in different cultures with many meanings
amid tells them many truths. Amid so in the case of Ingarden’s phenomenology
of aesthetics the existence of work of art causes its permanent transformation
into many aesthetic objects amid this hike in the case of hermeneutics involves
people to dialogue and communication.
1. Gadamer H-. G., Goz to jest prawda [What is Truth?], in: ibid., Rozum,
slowo, dzieje (The Reason, the Word, the History], Warszawa 2000. p. 45
2. Heidegger M., Kant a problem metafizyki [Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics], Warszawa 1989, p. 253.
3. Ingarden R., Dos literarische Kunstwerk. Eine Untersuchung aus dem
Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschafi, Halle 1931.
4. lngarden R., Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, German edition Bd. 1 Tubingen 1964, Bd. 2 Tubingen 1965.