Roman Ingarden and the Language of Art and ScienceAuthor(s): Gregory G. ColombReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Autumn, 1976), pp. 7-13Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430840 .Accessed: 25/05/2012 19:02

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GREGORY G. COLOMB

Roman Ingarden and the Language

of Art and Science

IN THE FIRST of the three concluding chap- ters of The Literary Work of Art,l Roman Ingarden examines what he calls "border- line cases." These are compositions, resem- bling the literary work in various ways, which are not literary works of art and which define the limits of the literary work. Three of these borderline cases-the stage play, the cinematographic drama, and the pantomime-are excluded because, despite the literary and artistic character of these works, language occupies in them a struc- tural position substantially different from that in the true literary work. The fourth borderline case, the scientific work, is ex- cluded because, despite its very similar use of language, it does not have a literary or artistic character. The distinction between the literary work and the scientific work (which represents for Ingarden most works we would call non-fiction) is essential to the edifice of Ingarden's theory of literature. Without such a distinction, Ingarden's study would represent not a theory of literature but a general theory of language use. And still more important for his later study, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art,2 the lack of such a distinction would mean that Ingarden's theory of the constitution of an aesthetic object must apply, at least potentially, to all language use.3 The sig- nificance of these two consequences will be considered later. GREGORY G. COLOMB is a fellow in the department of English, University of Virginia.

The distinction between the literary work of art and the scientific work is present, though often just below Ithe surface, throughout The Literary Work of Art. In- garden acknowledges it in section 2, the setting of the range of examples. The first specific discussion of the distinction occurs in the unfortunate and clearly mistaken consideration of "living" and "dead" words-dead words being represented as "the scientific termini of an artificially con- structed scientific terminology" (p. 43). The first full treatment of the distinction, in section 25, concerns the nature of judicative and quasi-judicative sentences. This section (which will be examined in detail) presents those language functions that form the basis on which the distinction between the liter- ary work of art and the scientific work must ultimately rest. From Ithis point to the end of the book, the distinction between the two kinds of works is repeatedly considered, culminating in the above mentioned con- cluding chapter.

Despite its central role in Ingarden's theory, the distinction is given relatively little space in Literary Work. This matter is examined more fully in Cognition, where the relevance and necessity are greater. There Ingarden devotes a substantial chap- ter to "Remarks on the Cognition of the Scientific Work." Expanding his discussion in Literary Work, Ingarden locates two ma- jor areas of difference between literary and scientific works. The first is a difference in

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function. The scientific work is character- ized as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge of objectively existing states of affairs: "An essential feature of the scientific work is that it is intended to fix, contain, and transmit to others the results of the scientific investigation in some area in order to enable scientific research to be continued and developed by its readers" (Cognition, p. 146). On the other hand,

The literary work of art does not serve to fur- ther scientific knowledge but to embody in its concretization certain values of a very specific kind, which we usually call "aesthetic" values. It allows these values to appear so that we may see them and also experience them aesthetically, a process which has a certain value in itself. If in a particular case the literary work of art is unable to embody these values for some reason, then the whole supply of transmitted knowledge of one sort or another which may be present in it is of little help. The work is a failure and only appears to be a work of belles-lettres. What we have said holds also when the work manifests no aesthetic values but (loes express important philosophical or psychological in- sights; it is still no work of art (Cognition, p. 147).

The second major area of difference is in the structure of the two types of works. Given the nature of the structure Ingarden develops in Literary Work, it follows that a difference in function (i.e., a difference in intention) must be reflected by a corre- sponding difference in structure. In devel- oping the structural basis for the distinction, Ingarden concentrates his attention on a list of six specific points of difference (Cogni- tion, pp. 147-53). Careful consideration of the six points reveals that only the first- the absence of true judgments in the literary work-is essential to the determination of a structural difference: the rest are either irrel- evant ito the theoretical position or necessary consequences of the first point. Although several kinds of features are considered, the distinction must ultimately be made at the level of the meaning units,4 the stratum which "provides the structural framework for the whole work" (Cognition, p. 29). For the effect of this list is to eliminate or, at the very least, greatly minimize all struc- tural features of the scientific work above the level of meaning units-precisely those

structural features Ingarden will later iden- tify as the chief source of "aesthetically rel- evant qualities" (Cognition, pp. 249-50). So the structural basis for the distinction between the scientific and literary work rests on the quality of the judicative sen- tences in the work: "All assertions in a scientific work are judgments. ... By con- trast, literary works of art (or at least works that claim to be works of art) contain no genuine judgments" (Cognition, p. 147).5 In this way, the constitution of an aesthetic object (for Ingarden, the goal of all lit- erary works of art) is not only intentionally out of place, but structurally impossible in the scientific work.

We are left then with only the two major distinctions between the scientific work and the literary work of art: the functional dis- tinction - the scientific work is intended to contain and transmit knowledge of objec- tively existing states of affairs, whereas the literary work is intended to create, through the synthesis of aesthetic values, an aesthetic object-and the structural distinction-

the sentences in the scientific work are true judgments whereas those in the literary work are quasi-judgments. As one would expect, these two are mirror-images. The intention of containing and transmitting knowledge can only be fulfilled through judicative propositions, which are in turn only suited to statements of fact. The in- tentional constitution of an aesthetic object is only possible through quasi-judicative propositions, which are only suited to the creation of the "independent reality" that is the basis of the aesthetic object.

The distinction Ingarden makes between the scientific work and the literary work of art is troubling, both in itself and in the implications he draws from it.6 On the one hand, it seems too limiting to allow the scientific work only pure judicative sen- tences -a mode of discourse that is, after all, very naive and simplistic. On the other hand, Ingarden would have it that all aspects of the literary work that do not contribute directly to the constitution of an aesthetic object (in his relatively narrow sense of the aesthetic object) are irrelevant

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In garden and the Language of Art and Science

or, if they are too prominent, flaws. Thus polemic, instruction, panegyric, satire, and all information-bearing elements are in this view out of place in the work of art. Many objections to this conclusion can be raised on purely empirical grounds. There are, for example, works such as Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy whose literary status has changed through time, from science to art. There are also the many ars poetica's- Horace's, Vida's, Scaliger's, Boileau's, Pope's -which are intentionally and in fact both art and science. Or there are the in- numerable didactic works throughout all of literary history, whose instructional aspect, usually central to the author's own view of his purpose, Ingarden would have to con- sider irrelevant to art. And what of works such as Thoreau's Walden, Henry Adams's Education, or Mailer's Armies of the Night? Ingarden must have a work be one or the other, and literary history presents too many works that seem somehow mixed. This problem, the disjunction between In- garden's claims and the facts of literature, is enough to create serious questions about the statements which bring about such con- clusions. But Ingarden's theory, especially as stated in Literary Work, can be convinc- ing on its own terms. Also, because of its tightly-knit structure and a priori basis - the theory is directed to the essence of the literary work, not to its various manifesta- tions - the theory is resistant to empirical argument. Ingarden only makes his defini- tions normative and judges those works that do not fit to be flawed. Thus, in order to "break into" the theory I will turn back to the basis on which the distinction was originally made and examine those aspects of Ingarden's theory that bring about these unacceptable conclusions.7

Both criteria for the distinction made be- tween literary and scientific works are subject to question. Serious objections can be raised against the functional distinction, based as it is not only on discovering but also on prescribing original authorial in- tentions. But it would be too involved and not sufficiently fruitful to pursue this part of the problem, for it is the structural and not the functional argument that is deci-

sive. Deprived of its structural foundation, Ingarden's statement of a functional dis- tinction becomes only an opinion without basis. So I will concentrate on the argument for a structural distinction. This argument, as has been shown, rests on the concept of the judicative and quasi-judicative sentence. There are several areas of difficulty, all cen- tering on the notion of the transparency of the represented objects in the judicative sentence. Since the concepts involved are complex and difficult, and since Ingarden is prolific of special terminology, I will care- fully work through Ingarden's position be- fore my particular questions are raised.

In the true judicative proposition, the intentional directional factor of the subject nominal expression "which at first is di- rected at the corresponding purely inten- tional object, refers . . beyond this object, as it were, to a real object" (Literary Work, 25, pp. 160-73). The intentional directional factor of the predicate, in turn, also refers through the purely intentional object to a real object. In this sense the predicate be- comes a judgment, implicitly claiming that the state of affairs determined by the sen- tence is "truly existing." The sentence cor- relate is then transposed into and existen- tially set in another ontic sphere (real or ideal) which "corresponds" to the ontic sphere of the object to which the intentional directional factor points. This transposition brings about an adjustment, "in terms of all the material and formal determinations that are not relative to the cognitive operation," of the purely intentional state of affairs to the actual state of affairs.

Speaking purely ontically, both states of affairs must constitute-with respect to the above-named moments-two different kinds of concretizations of the same ideal essences or ideas: the purely intentional concretization, ontically heterono- mous in form and relative to the subjective operation, and the objectively existing concre- tization, characteristic, in form, of the respective ontic sphere and thus, in a state of affairs that exists in the real world, in the form of an ontically autonomous realization of the cor- respondliIlg essences or ideas (Literary Work, p. 162).

Through the adjustment, the matching- intention is fulfilled and the two states of

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affairs are identified. Thus, the purely in- tentional state of affairs is "passed over"- it is transparent and our attention is di- rected only at the objectively existing state of affairs.

Those sentences which directly contrast to judicative propositions are purely affirma- tive propositions. In these sentences, the intentional directional factor refers to no object independent of the sentence correlate. These sentences then lack those features characteristic of judicative propositions: transposition, existential setting, matching- intention, and identification. The sentences in the literary work fall somewhere between judicative propositions and purely affirma- tive propositions. Called quasi-judgments, they "have the external habitus of judica- tive propositions, though they neither are nor are meant to be genuine judicative propositions." Quasi-judgments as Ingarden develops them are sentences which possess a degree of judication: they have some, but not all, of the features of the true judicative proposition. Although there are theoreti- cally many degrees of quasi-judgment, for the purpose of his discussion in Literary Work, Ingarden examines only three.

Ingarden identifies three "stages" of quasi- judgments characteristic of three kinds of literary works, with the criterion for the de- gree of judgment being the strength of the claim to historicalness. The least judicative sentences are to be found in works which make no claims to be historical. "There is a total absence of the intention of an exact matching-which is characteristic of genuine judicative propositions- of the projected state of affairs of the corresponding state of affairs that is objectively existing and is to be found in an ontically autonomous sphere." Ingarden says that the sentence correlates are transposed and existentially set in the real world, but without either a matching-intention or an identification. In other words, the intentional directional fac- tors do not point to objects in an objec- tively existing sphere. This is considered by Ingarden to be a transposition that is not "fully serious."

The second stage of quasi-judgment oc- curs "in some of the socalled contemporary

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or period novels." In these works the setting and the transposition functions are still only "simulatedly serious" but there is now a matching-intention, although not an iden- tification. "The individual assertive propo- sitions are given in such a way that the states of affairs projected by them are to be matched, not with any entirely determinate individual state of affairs truly existing in a given epoch, but only with a general type of states of affairs and objects that would be 'possible' in a given time and milieu." Although Ingarden allows that the sentence correlates "are at times even related to objectively existing states of affairs which could also be ascertained through genuine judgments," he will not allow that these sentences might themselves be genuine judgments.

The third state of quasi-judgment is found in works which are historical and "which undertake to be as 'faithful' as pos- sible in representing facts and objectivities from history." Here Ingarden says that the setting and transposition functions are seri- ous. So too is the matching-intention, which in this case is exact and directed at determinate individuals. But he argues that "there should be no identification" of the represented objects with real objects; in- stead there is an intention of substituting the represented objects for the real ones. The reason for this altogether new function is clear, for without it Ingarden has no structural way to differentiate the work of art from the scientific historical report.

If true judicative propositions were to appear in such a novel, neither such a "duplication" nor simulation could occur; instead, the inten- tional directional factor would ultimately have to indicate objects which at one time really existed. The intentionally projected states of affairs would then have to coincide fully with the real ones, so that, as such, in the under- standing of the sentence, they would have to disappear entirely from our field of vision. In artistic historical representation, however, it is precisely the purely intentional correlates which are visible to us in the understanding of the sentences (Literary Work, p. 171).

Since it is the stratum of represented ob- jects which is most necessary to the primary function of the literary work of art, the

Ingarden and the Language of Art and Science

constitution of an aesthetic object, it is not possible for Ingarden to allow identifica- tion in any literary work.

There are problems with Ingarden's char- acterization of each of these three stages of quasi-judgment. I will not consider the case of those works which make no his- torical claims. If we accept Ingarden's defi- nition of truth and reality,

By "reality" in the strict sense of the term we understand a determinate relationship between a true judicative proposition and an objectively existing state of affairs selected by its meaning content. If this relationship exists, then the given judicative proposition is characterized by a relative quasi-feature, which we express by the word "true." In a figurative sense, then, the true judicative proposition is itself called a "truth" (Literary Work, pp. 300-1),

then it is obvious that these works (In- garden mentions symbolist drama as a repre- sentative of this type) embody a wholly different kind of truth. Though one may wish to reject the conception of truth In- garden proposes, that would not essentially question the structurally based argument.

The second stage of quasi-judgment in- cludes those works which purport to be his- torical in the sense of "typical" or "pos- sible." These works are characterized by a matching of sentence correlates with identi- fiable general types. The sentences in these works are said to be quasi-judgments because there is no identification of the sentence correlate with "entirely determinate indi- vidual states of affairs."' That is, the objects to which the sentence correlates are matched are not particular, individual, objectively existing objects, but representatives of a class. If that is the case, then these sentences do not constitute judgments as Ingarden de- fines them. The problem is that this use of language is just as characteristic of a large body of scientific work. Often the sentence correlates in a scientific work do not refer to entirely determinate individual states of affairs. Even in the simplest case, when a scientist discovers a physical prop- erty of an object and writes of his observa- tion, he does not refer to that particular, individual object but to that object as a

general type, a representative of a class of physical objects. (It is exactly this kind of class statement that gives any science its explanatory power.) And when another scientist reads these observations, he does not refer back to the particular, individual object that was the basis of the original observation. There is, of course, the as- sumption that physical laws are constant and uniform, and that any object can faith- fully represent its class; but that is a fact of science, not language use. This situation can be far more complex. A biologist study- ing the mating ritual of a particular species is not concerned with a particular object (action), but with a general type which no individual object can exactly embody. Or, in linguistics since Saussure one dominant assumption has been that the proper object of study is not speech (parole) but language (langue), which is defined as a type of many different individual objects and which is thought to exist nowhere in its totality ex- cept as a type. In each of these cases, the scientist's language process is, according to the criteria by which Ingarden examined the literary works, characterized not by judgments but by quasi-judgments.

Another problem in the analysis of this stage of quasi-judgment is Ingarden's ob- servation that there are sentences which in other contexts would be genuine judgments (i.e., sentences which refer to real places, people, etc.). Ingarden argues that these sentences must in this instance be quasi- judgments: "since it is merely a question of matching with a type, this transposition cannot lead to a complete 'transparency' of the purely intentional states of affairs: they still remain merely transposed and set, with a clear stamp of their intentional relativity to the corresponding sentence meaning con- tents." I take this to mean that these sen- tences which might otherwise be genuine judgments cannot be so in this case because they are interconnected in a larger structure with sentences that are not judgments. Those sentences which are clearly not judg- ments then impose their quasi-judgmental character on the sentences which could be judgments. Again, this argument is plau- sible only if based on the transparency of

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the sentence correlates in judicative sen- tences. That is, since the states of affairs projected by connected sentences must themselves be connected, that relationship disallows the possibility that some states of affairs be represented and others transparent.

The problem of the transparency of sen- tence correlates in judicative sentences is even more serious in the case of the third stage of quasi-judgments. Here, using the example of the fully historical novel and the scientific historical study, Ingarden finds that the only structural distinction to be made is in that transparency. These literary works have all the features of judg- ments- transposition, setting, matching- intention, and identification (which in this case is called substitution). They lack only transparency. The reason for this is not based on structural evidence, but on expedi- ency: the sentence correlates in this kind of literary work do not achieve trans- parency because the transparency would eliminate the aesthetically relevant qualities. Transparency is a feature which "cuts off" all meaningful functions of the language strata above that of the meaning units. And, of course, in that case art is also cut off. The important question is, though, not wlhether the sentence correlates in the liter- ary work of art can achieve transparency, but whether the sentence correlates in a scientific work do so. The answer is that most often they do not.

Although he attempts to minimize the force of his admission, Ingarden must finally allow that in any thoughtful reading of a reasonably sophisticated scientific work- i.e., any reading where the sentences are not immediately and easily assimilated - trans- parency is not achieved. He does argue that once the sentence meanings are fully under- stood, transparency is then effected; but it is not convincing to argue that the repre- sented objects, once constituted, can then disappear. Ingarden says that this kind of reading occurs only when there are ambi- guities in the text or when the truth of the judgments is doubted. Surely one or both of these conditions will be present when- ever the text includes assertions that are not patently obvious. He goes on to say,

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The attitude of the reader toward the reality determined by the work is then noteworthy. He can no longer think of it as existing fully de- termined in itself. The judgments which were formerly simply made, formed (or, more pre- cisely, made, formed, at the suggestion of the work), are now made with some reservation. The stratum of merely portrayed objects, which becomes completely transparent in the case of judgments simply read and formed at the sug- gestion of the work, then begins to emerge in its ontic character, which appears in the con- tent of the portrayed objects. This stratum then reaches toward an ontically autonomous sphere of being but is yet not fully posited there. The transcendent sphere of being begins to dis- tance itself; it is not actually capable of being apprehended, although the sentence meanings and assertive functions are still directed at it. The judgment sentences formulated unambigu- ously in the work nevertheless allow the reader to get a foothold on this reality which is tran- scen(lent to the work and(-already independently of the work-to seek in it facts which could allow him to emerge from the uncertainty and ambiguity whiclh have ariscen (Cognition, pp. 159-60).

This account of the reading process (and structural features) of the scientific work presents some of the very problems I have considered here. On the one hand, it di- rectly contradicts the prohibition (raised in the second stage of quasi-judgments, above) against the "mixing" of transparent and merely portrayed sentence correlates, which prohibition was the sole means of excluding judgments from those literary works. As Ingarden here explains, it is just such a mixing that is necessary for the transmis- sion of new knowledge of any sort. On the other hand, this account is, with minor ad- justments, as true for many literary works of art as for the scientific work. Just as the reader of the scientific work uses those sen- tences which are more strongly judgmental to "fix" the sentence correlates which are "not fully posited" in "an ontically autono- mous sphere of being," so the reader of the literary work uses the more strongly judg- mental sentences to fix the range and char- acter of the reality of the portrayed world that is created in the sentence correlates. These are two very similar reading pro- cesses that differ only in the frequency and degree of judgment, not in any funda- mental features.

Ingarden and the Language of Art and Science

Finally, then, I would argue that Ingarden attempts to make too fine a distinction be- tween the literary work of art and the scien- tific work. He has not adequately proved his case either for the transparency of all the sentence correlates in the scientific work, or for the necessary absence of trans- parent sentence correlates in the literary work of art. His discussion of transparency characterizes the most naive and simplistic referential use of language which occurs in- frequently, if at all, in either scientific or literary works. Without this transparency, the sharp distinction between the literary and scientific work breaks down, leaving only Ingarden's pronouncement on the func- tion of these kinds of works, which is at best only generally true. Lacking the sharp dis- tinction, the relevant discussion of the rela- tionship between these kinds of works is in terms of "degree" of judgment - scientific works tending to have more, literary works less. Thus we need not ignore or minimize the role of the upper language strata and their attendant artistic and aesthetic values in the scientific work - not only in those works to which even Ingarden admits the upper strata are necessary (microphysics, mathematics, etc.), but in any scientific work. Similarly we need not underrate the considerable importance fact and informa- tion can have in the work of art. And we are also given a means of handling the many works that seem somehow in between.

1 Roman Ingarden. The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic and Theory of Literature, George G. Grabo- wicz, trans. (Evanston, Ill., 1973).

2 Roman Ingarden. The Cognition of the Liter- ary Work of Art, Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson, trans. (Evanston, Ill., 1973).

3The "aesthetic object" is, for Ingarden, both the essence and the goal of the literary work of art. In general, the aesthetic object is an intersubjective object-created in the intentional acts of both art- ist and perceiver-which represents the fullest realization of any work of art. In this case, the aesthetic object comes into being through the syn- thesizing efforts of the reader. The literary work of art presents the reader with a partially deter- mined world that must be 'filled out" or "con- cretized." In the process of concretization, the reader with the proper attitude toward the work will experience the "original aesthetic emotion" and the "aesthetic values" which are then syn- thesized to constitute the aesthetic object.

4There are four levels or strata in the language of the literary work of art: the stratum of lin- guistic sound formations, the stratum of meaning units, the stratum of represented objects, and the stratum of schematized aspects or determinate fea- tures under which the represented objects appear in the work. These four strata are complexly in- terrelated in a polyphonic harmony which fo.rms "an organic structure whose uniformity is grounded precisely in the unique character of the individual strata" (Literary Work, p. 29).

5 In addition to his listing of the six differences, Ingarden at other points (Cf. Literary Work, pp. 179-80; Cognition, pp. 64-8), argues that the pres- ence of quasi-judgments is not the sole difference in the language of the literary and scientific work. But in each case Ingarden can cite only general features that are either structurally irrelevant or necessary consequences of the use of quasi-judg- ments.

6 Kate Hamburger (The Logic of Literature, Marilynn J. Rose, trans. [Bloomington, Ind., 1973]) has previously objected to Ingarden's concept of the quasi-judgment (pp. 18-23), but on other grounds than those proposed here.

7 The objections raised here do not directly affect the purely aesthetic arguments presented in Cog- nition. They would not, for example, impinge on the issues of the "location" of the aesthetic object which created some controversy when a chapter of Cognition was published under the title "Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 30 (1961), pp. 289-313. My arguments would, however, affect the range of applicability of Ingarden's aesthetic ideas to literary works of art.

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