The Controversy over the Existence of the World

Introduction

Ingarden wrote the work largely during the war in Lwów and published it in Polish in two volumes (1947–48); a German version he revised himself appeared as “Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt” (1964–65), with a third volume on the causal structure of the real world in 1974. The book asks whether the real world exists independently of consciousness, as against Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Ingarden does not answer at once but first develops an existential ontology – distinguishing autonomous from heteronomous, original from derived, separate from inseparable and self-dependent from dependent being – and a formal and material ontology of things, processes and events. Its scope and technical vocabulary limited its reception abroad; an English translation began to appear only in 2013.

Connections

Criticizes

• Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology1913 · Edmund Husserl

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