More than an attitude: Roman Ingarden's aesthetics

In this article I develop the ontological category of Ideal Possibilities to account for the special existence of the aesthetic object. In Roman Ingarden's aesthetics, he makes a distinction between the work of art and the aesthetic object because the aesthetic object is dependent on the individual observer, whereas the work of art remains the same for all observers. But if the aesthetic object is only a part of the observer's experience, it would make aesthetics a study for psychology. In order to understand the aesthetic object's relation to the observer, and to the work of art, I will introduce Ingarden's ontological dependence relations in order to account for the mode of being of both the work of art and the aesthetic object. This is where I propose a new category within the ideal mode of being, which I call Ideal Possibility. I do this by expanding on the dependence relation of heteronomy, which will allow for a continuous conception of Ingarden's otherwise isolated modes of being.