Relativity of Taste without Relativism. An Introduction to Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

The author explores Ingarden’s aesthetics taking as a leading thread his repeated attempts at a refutation of the common locus of relativity of taste. Ingarden’s position is summarized in four theses: (1) values do exist as the proper correlates of aesthetic experience, (2) aesthetic values must be distinguished from artistic values, (3) artistic and aesthetic values are founded in other ontic strata, and finally (4) acts of valuation in aesthetic experience are presupposed by value judgements. In the light of the philosophical and phenomenological interpretation of the physical theory of relativity (special and general) by authors such as Weyl or Geiger, Ingarden’s refutation of the relativity of taste appears as incomplete. The phenomenology of aesthetic experience formulated by Geiger and Husserl and their own refutations of relativism in general and aesthetic relativism in particular suggest a more fruitful approach, which is undermined by Ingarden: the transcendental phenomenology of intersubjective aesthetic experience.