Today Poland celebrates 50th death anniversary of one of the most known Polish philosophers – Roman Ingarden.

 Ingarden was a philosopher with an extremely rich and diverse body of work. As a student of Edmund Husserl (famous German philosopher who established the school of phenomenology), Ingarden was phenomenologist in his philosophical orientation mostly interested in exploring ontological, axiological and aesthetic problems. Ingarden gained fame and recognition mainly due to his contributions to the field of aesthetics. His concept of aesthetics starts with a reflection on a literary work, but it is also supposed to be  applied to the analysis of other fields of art such as painting, theatre, architecture or music. He puts a work of art into a very broad context.

 Ingarden was born on 5th February 1893 in Kraków but graduated from secondary school in Lviv in 1911. A year later he moved to Göttingen in Germany, where he studied philosophy under Edmund Husserl and took part in the bustling intellectual life and philosophical disputes around phenomenology. During his studies, he moved also to Vienna and later finally to Freiburg where he defended his PhD.

In 1928 Ingarden returned to Poland where in 1933 he started to teach at Lviv University. He was in disputes with the representatives of the Lviv-Warsaw school, not convinced by their analytical philosophical language.

In 1937 he published one of his most famous book “The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art”, in which he developed his interests in the study of literature and which gained him acclaim and recognition from literary scholars around the world.

 After the 2WW  Ingarden started working in Krakow where in 1946 he received the title of full professor and the position of head of the Department of Philosophy of Jagiellonian University.  Unfortunately the communist regime saw Ingarden as anti-Marxist philosopher therefore he was suspended from teaching at the university between 1950-1956. This year he got back to teaching and academia life. Among his many friends and students there were for example Karol Wojtyla (the pope) and priest Jozef Tischner (another famous Polish philosopher).

Roman Ingarden died in Krakow in 14^th June 1970.

 More about life and works of Ingarden

The Roman Ingarden works Digital Archive

Pics  ©Archiwum Rodzinne Ingardena / Ingarden Family Archive