LINGUISTIC & LITERARY STUDIES IN EASTERN EUROPE LLSEE Volume 1 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE & MEANING I: Problems of Literary Theory Edited by John Odmark Offprint 1979 AMSTERDAM / JOHN BENJAMINS B.V. ROMAN INGARDEN: ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY Barry Smith 1. Introduction The Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden (1893-1970), follower and student of the early Husserl, was probably the most significant of all those philosophers who came within Husserl′s sphere of Influence. He lived a long and productive life, despite economic and political difficulties, and he made contributions to many areas of philosophy. Yet he has acquired a reputation--until now--within one field only, that of aesthetics.1 This is to some extent surprising since from the very start Ingarden himself conceived his aesthetic writings as part of a much larger, ontological project, that of providing the materials which would make possible the solution of what to him appeared to be the most important __________ 1Ingarden′s first major work was in this field: The Literary Work of Art: Investigations on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic and the Theory of Literature original German edition, (Halle, 1931); English translation by George C. Grabowicz (Evanston, 1973). This was followed by The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, original Polish edition (Lwów, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING problem in philosophy, the so-called ′′idealism realism′′ problem: der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, in a massive work (l500pp.) bearing this title Ingarden went a long way toward providing such materials, and it is one of the scandals of present-day philosophy that this work is so little known.2 This is from one point of view understandable: the realism idealism problem was, it is true, vital to philosophy in the early 1900′s. (The realist works of Brentano, Meinong, Moore and Russell, for example, can all be seen as reactions to various forms of Hegelian idealism). But it is a problem which is no longer to be found amongst the central concerns of philosophy. Yet Ingarden′s work on this high ontological plain is not thereby without significance for present-day philosophers, nor, indeed, for literary theorists who may look to philosophy in the hope of finding ontological foundations for their discipline. For Ingarden′s Streit book has, I want to suggest, a significance __________ 1937) English translation by Ruth A. Crowley and Kenneth B. Olson (Evanston, 1973); and then by Investigations in the Ontology of Art: Music, Painting, Architecture, Film, original German edition (Tübingen, 1962) English translation (Evanston, forthcoming). 2The work was, for political reasons, originally published in Polish: Spór o istnienie świata (Kraków 1947-48), 2 vols., partial English translation of vol. I as Time and modes of Being (Springfield, 1964). Expanded German version: Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, vol. I, Existentialontologie (Tübingen, 1964); vol. II, Formalontologie, part 1, Form und Wesen, part 2, Welt und Bewuβtsein, both Tübingen, 1965, vol. 3, Über die kausale Struktur der realen Welt (Tübingen, 1974). Cf. the discussion of parts of vol. II, 1 in my ′′An Essay in Formal Ontology′′, Grazer Philosophische Studien, IV (1978). 374 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY which resides elsewhere than its author had supposed: it is the by-product of Ingarden′s larger ontological investigations which promise to yield their true value for presentday thinkers. Indeed the book contains a huge mass of individual ontological insights systematically developed and applied to specific areas (for example, causality, theory of language, philosophy of mind, clarification of specific ontological issues in the tradition of philosophy . . .)-always for the sake of Ingarden′s larger goal, that of justifying in a critical manner his realist opposition to those, such as Husserl, who argued in favour of some form of idealist conception of the world and of the foundations of consciousness.3 Now one further field in which this system of ontological insights can profitably be applied is, of course, that of literary theory, the area where Ingarden himself carried out his most detailed investigations in ′′applied ontology′′. But we must not be overoptimistic in regard to the results of such application. It is difficult to see, for example, how problems of value theory can be solved by direct application of the kind of descriptive ontological method practised by Ingarden. The most we can hope for-in the beginning--is that we should come to a clearer conception of the locus of aesthetic value, that is, of what __________ 3Ingarden characterised the idealist position as one according to which the real world was conceived too closely after the fashion of fictional worlds projected by works of literature; hence the onto1ogical character of his investigations of the literary work of art, which Ingarden hoped would reveal the untenability of any narrowing of the gap between real objects and products of consciousness. 375 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING kind of thing it is to which aesthetic value can properly be ascribed. At first it might be supposed that there is a simple answer to this question: that it is the ′′work of art′′ which has aesthetic value. But as yet this tells us nothing of the intrinsic nature, the ontological structure of the ′′work of art′′. As can be seen by reflection upon the case of, say, the dramatic work, this structure may be tremendously complex, for in our determination of its constituents we must find a way of taking account of all those features which may contribute to the status of the work as an aesthetically formed whole, take account, that is, of all that may be phenomenologically given in the various different kinds of appreciation of the work, not only by the spectator in relation to the concrete visual and aural material of a given performance and by the actors performing the work in relation to this visual and aural material and to the script, but also by subjects outside any context of performance who accede to the work as an abstract whole, either in a temporally extended way (in some kind of mental ′performance ′, or ′reading′ of the script), or in such a way that the work is treated as an unextended unity, for example within contexts where it is merely referred to in passing. Yet however complex nay be the structure of works of art of each of the various different species, it is crucial to the whole of aesthetics that the appropriate ontological analyses of this structure be carried through. For only when we know what kind of thing the work of art is can we determine the various axes along which it may acquire aesthetic value, be compared with other works, etc. Only then, that is to say, would we be in a position to tackle the central 376 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY Value-theoretical problems of aesthetics itself. 2. The Ontology of Fiction In the present essay I want to sketch one plank of such an ontological foundation for literary theory, using the problems which arise as a means of introducing the Ingardenian mode of argument to the practising literary theorist. A literary work conceived as an organised whole has various constituents, e.g. the characters of the work, the individual word-meanings, sentence-rhythms, plotsegments , historical allusions, and so on. Clearly there is no question that these ′constituents′ be conceived after the pattern of matches in a box (side by side with each other). They exhibit, rather, a whole series of interrelations and mutual dependencies. It is Ingarden′s service to have unravelled this texture of interrelationships, to have shown that in order to make clear the structure of the literary work it is necessary to conceive it as a ′′stratified′′ whole, constituents of one particular stratum acting together to ′′found′′ constituents of ′′higher′′ strata when the text of the work is ′′concretised′′ in our acts of reading.4 __________ 4The technical terms introduced in the text are all of them drawn from Ingarden′s The Literary Work of Art. Note how, given the stratified conception of the literary work, Ingarden can then begin to determine in an extremely precise way the types of aesthetic quality which such a work may possess. For he will argue that particular sets of valuequalities can be associated, in a systematic way, first of all with the constituents of each particular stratum: of sound-material, meaningunities, represented objects, aspects, metaphysical qualities, etc., 377 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING Ingarden′s account of the various strata of the literary work, and the resultant conception of the work as a twodimensional formation, have received adequate treatment in the literature.5 Here, therefore, I want to consider in more detail than hitherto one particular subsidiary problem in the ontology of literature, the problem of the nature of individual fictional characters. Some schools of philosophers would wish to dismiss this very formulation of a ′′problem′′ as itself misleading from the start. Such philosophers would assert that there are no such things as fictional characters __________ reflecting the fact that different ranges of value criteria are applied by the critic in his estimations of the work according to whether he is concerning himself with, say, the poetic qualities of individual sentences, or with the subtleties of the plot, or with the delineations of the characters, and so on. But then secondly the critic may concern himself with the interrelations between constituents of the various different strata. And this is reflected in Ingarden′s theory by the fact that va1ue-qualities are associated with the different types of interrelationships which exist between the various strata. Ingarden speaks, indeed, of a polyphony of the literary work, quite deliberately suggesting a parallel to the case of musical polyphony, where our appreciation of the subtlety of the interrelations of the various different voices plays a role in our evaluation of the work which is no less important than our estimation of the themes and variations articulated by these individual voices taken separately. 5Cf. the various standard philosophical reference-books, as well as the English translation of The Literary Work of Art (summarised in my review in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, VI (1975), 111-114 and also, from a different point of view, in the paper referred to in note 11 below.) Ingarden′s stratificational analysis lies at the root of the central, ontological chapter of Warren and Wellek′s Theory of Literature (Penguin Books; originally published 1949)--but 378 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY rather only, say, the concrete printed material of particular texts and the sequences of mental events associated with the readings of such texts (themselves regarded as somehow intrinsically private). But it seems clear that once who would maintain such a reductivist position is incapable of providing an acceptable foundation for the theory of literature, i.e. one which could satisfy the criteria of adequacy to all that is phenomenologically given in our commune with works of literature. For whilst fictional characters clearly have no kind of real, concrete existence, even the most cursory glance through works of literary criticism or literary history will show that there are certain kinds of deliberative, critical concern with literary works within which a central role is played by fictional characters as such. Indeed there is no way in which we can achieve a faithful reading of a fictional work without presupposing from the start that it is correlated with its own specific field of fictional characters. We can gain some idea of the nature of this ′′field of characters′′ if we spend some time reflecting upon the notion of ′′access′′ --a notion which has always stood at the very centre of phenomenological ontology. 3. Ontological and Epistemological Incompleteness We have access to those flesh-and-blood human beings who are our contemporaries through physical contact of various kinds (shaking hands, etc.). We have progressively weaker access to no longer existing human beings through __________ cf. Ingarden′s criticisms reproduced on pp. 1xxviii to 1xxxiii of Grabowicz′s translation. 379 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING memories, newspaper reports, historical remains, etc., and it seems clear that this kind of ′′documentary′′ access is a well-founded extension of the more primitive physical modes of access. I want to argue that one of the underlying justifications for the conception of fictional characters as individual objects forming a well-demarcated ′′field′′ associated with each particular novel is a further, analogous extension of this notion of access, extended beyond historical documents, now, to include also literary works. The analogy involved here should not, however, mislead us into supposing that there is any similarity in ontological structure between the two kinds of object (real and fictional). Perhaps the most radical dissimilarity turns on a quite peculiar ontological incompleteness which is enjoyed by fictional objects. This notion may be explained as follows: In the case of historical figures it is true that our knowledge is always incomplete, owing to the fact that it rests on only a finite quantity of information,6 where the objects of our knowledge, like all temporally existing things, have (more correctly: had, when they existed) an infinite number of ever-changing concrete properties. Nevertheless the incompleteness invo1ved here is purely epistemological: if we know only that Henry Nth lost an arm in the Battle of X, but not which arm, then we do not suppose that after the battle Henry himself was ontologically structured in such a way that the missing arm was indeterminately neither right nor left. With __________ 6Problems arise owing to the fact that in particular cases some or all of this information may be false; this may even lead, on the epistemological side, to the existence of conflicting properties in the stock of all that we know about a given object. 380 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY fictional characters however we have to come to terms in our theory with just this kind of intrinsic incompleteness (an incompleteness suffered by the characters themselves, independently of any additional epistemological incompleteness which may arise due to inadequacies in particular readings of the appropriate works). Real objects cannot be ontologically incomplete in this sense, for although every act of perception of such objects is partia1 and one-sided, there exists (or, in the case of real objects in the past, did exist) the constant possibility of further, complementary perceptions (Husserl talks of ′turning the apple in one′s hand . . . ′), such that there is in principle no point where indeterminacies in the object may lay undetected.7 Fictional objects on the other hand are such that from the very start we can exclude the possibility of supplementary information, information which would be additional to that which is to be found in (or, within certain limits, read into) the texts themselves. Note however that this problem of ontological incompleteness is something which raises its head exclusively on the theoretical level: we are never aware of the intrinsic incompleteness of fictional characters in our actual readings of works. This is because the possibility of a complete perception or complete knowledge is excluded also in the case of real objects, owing to the ever-present epistemological incompleteness involved in our access to such objects. Thus we can do no other, in our pre-theoretical commune with real objects and with the quasi-real objects of fiction, than ascribe all inadequacies in our knowledge to the side of __________ 7This situation may fail to hold on the level of quantum physics. 381 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING epistemological incompleteness: this explains why our mode of reading works of fiction is--from this point of view-almost identical with our mode of reading not only historical works but also e.g. newspaper reports concerning our contemporaries. In no case do we find it possible, in our reading, to draw a line between indeterminacies which are merely epistemological and indeterminacies which may be contributed by the objects themselves. 4. The Double Structure of the Objects of Fiction Parallels of this nature between our mode of access to real and fictional objects respectively should not be allowed to mask the radical heterogeneity of the two types of object from the ontological point of view. However complex may be the interrelations between the various properties possessed by a real object (say between the perceptual, biological, chemical and physical qualities of a given apple), there remains an intrinsic unity amongst these properties, in consequence of the fact that these interrelations exist, that the properties in question are bound up together within the structure of the object itself. For the case of fictional objects however, Ingarden argues that we have to deal with a quite peculiar kind of ′double structure′ in the fabric of properties possessed by these objects. That is, where the real object possesses a single rank of properties all of which are bound together within the object itself, the fictional object possesses two ranks of properties with no non-arbitrary relationships existing across the ′barrier′ between them. This ′double structure′ is reflected in the fact that we encounter two quite different sets of statements about fictional characters, with two quite different kinds of truth-behaviour. Statements of the first kind (A) might 382 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY be, e.g.: (1) Sherlock Holmes was presented by Conan Doyle in work W as a detective who lived in Baker Street, played the violin . . . . (2) Dr. Watson is a less adequately developed character than Holmes. (3) Raskolnikov did not exist as a flesh-and-blood human being; ′his′ status is exclusively that of an ontological correlate of particular networks of conscious acts on the part of certain appropriately qualified subjects. (4) (Shakespeare′s) Hamlet is a fictional character. And of the second kind (B): (5) Sherlock Holmes was a detective who lived in Baker Street, played the violin . . . . (6) Dr. Watson is a more likeable character than, has a warmer personality than Holmes. (7) The Blagdon rapist imitated Raskolnikov. (8) I know more about Hamlet than I do about Hannibal. Now our account of the structure of fictional objects must reflect (i) the fact that A-statements may be true, unconditionally , and that such statements satisfy the law of excluded middle;8 and (ii) that we can acknowledge B-state__________

The law of excluded middle states that for any given sentence either it or its negation is true. In particular if ′S′ is the name of an object, then for any predicate expression ′p′ (′is red′, ′is taller than 3 feet′, and so on), one or other of the two sentences, ′S is p′, 383 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING ments as (in some way) ′correct′ or ′incorrect′ only if we interpret the predicates involved more or less metaphorically : Sherlock Holmes was not, after all, a detective in the strict sense of this term--since only flesh-and-blood human beings may qualify for the status of detectivehood. We must also note that B-statements fail to satisfy the law of excluded middle, in the sense that there are many incorrect B-statements which are such that their negations, too, are incorrect. (Consider, e.g., the statement-pair: ′Hamlet was left-handed′, ′Hamlet was not left-handed′.) This means that whilst we may associate with each true A-statement concerning a given fictional object some determination within the object itself, B-statements must be dealt with in a quite different way. Ingarden′s suggestion is, then, that we develop a conception of fictional objects as radically distinct, in their property behaviour, from real objects of the material world. Fictional objects are to be conceived, namely, as possessing two quite distinct ranks of properties, one rank corresponding to true A-statements about a given object, and a second rank--of properties which are merely ascribed--corresponding to correct B-statements , i.e., in effect, to the sentences of the appropriate novel. Any resultant incompatibility is made harmless by the fact that members of each group are acceded to within two quite distinct contexts, for it is only on the level of theory that we accede to rank A properties, where it is exclusively rank B properties which hold our attention during any actual reading of the work. Only within certain __________ ′S is not p′, is true. Thus failure of the Law of excluded middle for names of objects of a given type correspond to ontological incompleteness of those objects. 384 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY quite peculiar ontological contexts does our commune with fictional objects suffer a certain ′′bifocal′′ character (as, for example, within the context established by the present essay). But then again, of course, that there are such contexts can itself be accounted for only if we accept some kind of double-rank ontology along the lines suggested by Ingarden. 5. Ontological and Epistemological Nodality: the Nature of the Objects of Fiction We might summarise our results thus far concerning the ontological structure of fictional characters by saying that such characters are individual objects possessing two ranks of properties, members of the first rank being all, as inspection reveals, ′′non-material properties′′ (being either formal or ′′purely intentional′′), members of the second rank consisting of those properties which seem to be assigned to the given characters by the sentences of the appropriate works.9 In the final section of this paper I shall attempt to clarify this peculiar structure and at the same time to show how the problems which it reveals are relevant to the practical concerns of the literary theorist, by going beyond the Ingardenian ontological mode of investigation and calling into aid certain considerations relating to the ′′act phenomenology′′ of our reading of literary works.10 __________ 9Here we include also all those properties which are, within certain limits, deducible from the properties assigned by the given sentences. Cf. the discussion in J. Wood, The Logic of Fiction (Paris and the Hague 1974), § 13. 1OThe group of analyses which pertain to act phenomenology of the kind which is illustrated in the text are drawn not only from Ingarden′s 385 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING Let us recall, first of all, the notions of epistemological and ontological incompleteness introduced in 3 above. For the sake of the present argument we may risk talking in terms of two ′′spheres′′, an epistemological and an ontological sphere, and it will be clear, I hope, that the degrees of completeness on either side of the boundary between the two spheres may vary, more or less independently of each other. Thus we can encounter, on the one hand, cases of epistemologically incomplete access to ontologically complete objects--this is true, indeed, of every perception of a real object. And we can encounter also, on the other hand, cases of access to objects where the degree of epistemological completeness is greater than is warranted by indeterminacy intrinsic to the object in question. This arises, e.g., when in reading a work of fiction we import from our own experience aspects which are additional to those held in readiness within the work itself. (As when I identify myself with the hero of a work of detective fiction, and ascribe to him qualities which I possess). Further the axes of epistemological and ontological completeness may lie wholly skew to each other. This occurs when the ′′matter′′ with which I epistemologically ′′complete′′ an object is alien to the material-ontological constitution of that object itself (when I mistake a sand-dune for an oasis, or a Van Meegeren for a Vermeer). What is important is that it is not only in regard to the notion of relative completeness incompleteness that we encounter this kind of two-sided independence of variation __________ works but also from those of his mentor, Edmund Husserl, in particular from the latter′s Ideas (originally published, 1913). 386 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY (i.e. among acts and their objects). An act may be temporally extended even though its object be temporally punctual (as when I reflect for some time on a particular instantaneous event). And it is possible also to relate to temporally extended objects in temporally instantaneous acts, (e.g. in acts of passing reference to performances of musical works). And again, an act and its object may be ′′skew′′ in regard to their temporal extendedness: I may re-live, in memory, a particular performance of a musical work, succeeding only partially in re-creating the original temporal relations introduced by the conductor, introducing gaps of my own, etc. An act may have a more or less discursive character (acts of assertion, of argument, of deduction . . . ), and so too may the ontological correlate of an act (e.g. of an act of reference to a proposition, a syllogism, a theorem . . .). Yet clearly we may have a wholly nondiscursive act (an act of pure reference) whose ontological correlate is itself discursive, just as we may have highly complex discursive acts involving reference to entities which are in themselves non-discursive. An act may be such as to be perceptually fulfilled, just as the object of an act may possess its own ontological ′′fulfilling qualities′′--those of its determinations which give rise to corresponding perceptual fulfilment In appropriately directed acts. All perceptual objects are ontologically ′′full′′ in the sense here delineated, and clearly it is possible that an act of reference to such an ontologically ′′full′′ object should itself be epistemologically ′′empty′′. (As when I refer to the no-longer-perceivable perceptual object Julius Caesar). But so too it is possible that an act should be characterised by an imported perceptual fulfilment which is alien to the object of the act. This 387 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING is the case, e.g., in those acts which may--rightly or wrongly--accompany our acts of reading works of fiction, acts which project more or less sensually ′′filled′′ images of the characters involved. And here at last we are beginning to see how these considerations may throw light on the nature of our acts of reading works of fiction and on the ontological correlates of such acts, including fictional characters. We have seen that our acts on one side and their objects on the other are characterised by various different kinds of epistemological, respectively ontological variation possibilities. And what I wish to claim is that it is the existence of coherent, determinately structured manipulations of such variationpossibilities which makes possible our access to non-real objects of all kinds, not only to the objects of fiction but also--where appeal is made to a quite different selection of axes of variation--to the objects of the various natural sciences, of mathematics, etc.11 In the case of acts of reading fiction we make a continuous appeal to the possibility of epistemological fulfilments of specific kinds which are not rooted in ontological filling qualities in the objects themselves. Thus whilst the objects of fiction are clearly not themselves perceptual objects, our acts of attention to such objects yet involve treating them as if they were perceptually filled, even though the filling qualities which we introduce __________ 11For a discussion of the mathematical work as a borderline case of the literary work of art see my paper ′′The 0ntogenesis of Mathematical Objects′′, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, VI (1975), 91-101. 388 ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR LITERARY THEORY are--in the case of adequate readings--determinately ′′neutralised′′, (i.e. do not involve any sensual filling out on our part, by means of actual images of the objects involved). Similarly when we move from the level of perceptual features to the level of events and actions depicted in the novel: ontologically speaking fictional characters are not involved in any actually existing plot. Fictional characters can in no way become embroiled in actual murders, suffer from fear, make decisions, engage in conversations. Yet in our readings of works we ′′fill out′′ the objects depicted by conceiving them as involved precisely in actions and events of this sort. Indeed because our only accessroute to such objects lies through the understanding of a determinately structured set of sentences involving action and event-verbs of determinate types, it follows that we cannot accede to fictional objects in a fulfilled way at all except as bound up with corresponding actions and events. Yet this epistemological filling out on the level of plot is again something which is ′′neutralised′′, ′′suppressed′′--at least in adequate readings of a work: aesthetically adequate readings involve a certain detachment of our own personal interest from the fate of the characters depicted. In fact similar epistemological fillings out--each determinately neutralised or suppressed--pertain to every level of the work. In each case we have to deal with objects which are in themselves in a certain sense ′nodai′, i.e. purely non-extended: they serve as mere co-ordinate points of our attention in our acts of reading works of fiction. Yet they are at the same time objects which bring-forth in determinate ways epistemological fillings out, in consequence of the fact that it is only be making an adequate concretisation of relevant sequences of sentences that we can gain 389 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND MEANING access to those objects at all. Just as the access-route to perceptual objects, through an array of perceptual experiences of certain kinds, determines the nature of our epistemological model of such objects, so the access-route to fictional objects through an array of sentences of particular types determinates the nature of the model which we bring to bear in our re-creation of such objects in particular readings. It is the task of the literary theorist to clarify the consequences of this dependence of fictional objects upon determinate types of readings of particular sequences of sentences. In particular he must find a way of determining the axes along which epistemological fillings out of the various different kinds may take place in such a way as to remain faithful to the work and then, eventually, to yield a reading which is adequate to bring to light the aesthetic qualities of the work on each of its various different levels. I hope that I have shown that both ontological arid phenomenological analyses--of the type so well demonstrated by Ingarden--may be of help to the literary theorist in his execution of these tasks.