Introduction : Roman Ingarden : the life of a philosophical work

The present article discusses the main issues and threads of the ontological and aesthetic considerations of Roman Ingarden. The point of departure of this Polish thinker’s philosophy is the controversy over the existence of the world. It is around this problem that he focuses the systemicity of his thoughts in combination with complex structuring and precise analysis of detailed philosophical issues. Yet it is ontology that is Ingarden’s first study, free of any assumptions or premises derived from other disciplines. The first part of the present article, devoted to ontological issues, constitutes an introduction to the individual chapters of this book on the topic of ontology. The second part of the article deals with aesthetic issues, which Ingarden also understood systemically, meaning that his aesthetics remained closely related to his ontology and epistemology. Aesthetic research was particularly important for this Polish philosopher, as it was aimed at the creation of an original systemic proposal concerning phenomenological aesthetics. A discussion of the most important aesthetic issues raised by Ingarden serves as an introduction to the second part of this book, which concerns new interpretations of Ingarden’s aesthetics and philosophy of art.