THE THEORY OF IDEAS AS CONCEIVED BY EDMUND HUSSERL AND ROMAN INGARDEN

According to Husserl an idea (species) may be grasped by changing a visual experience of an individual object into a vision of the essence: ideation. On the basis of many individual perceptions we may become conscious of what is general. Later on Husserl acknowledged all ideal objects to be constituted by pure conscious experiences, thus to become intentional products of a transcendental subjectivity. Ingarden ascribes to an ideal being the following existential moments: autonomy, originality, non-actuality, distinctness, independence. An idea has two sides: a/ a content, comprising constants and variables and b/ the structure of idea as idea. It is the variables which determine the generality of ideas. Both constants and variables appear as components without differentiation.Ideas are beyond time and cannnot change. They are transcendent in relation to cognition and do not admit any interference. Then a relation between ideas and real objects is concerned. Husserl had detected the generality of ideas but it was Ingarden who stated what does it consist in, and namely in the presence of variables in the content of ideas.