Roman Ingarden’s Ontology and Non-anthropocentric Humanities: On (Non-)Obvious Relationships

The discourse on non-anthropocentric humanities has an essentializing and ontologizing character, allowing connections to be made with Roman Ingarden’s own ontology. The problems considered by researchers such as Bjørnar Olsen and Graham Harman appear to allign with those of the Polish philosopher. Concepts problematized in both non-anthropocentric discourse and Ingarden’s theory include self-containedness, autonomy and independence of the object from the cognizing subject, together with the manner in which the object itself is endowed as a subject with its own merits. Although functional questions (how things act as non-human actors in reality and what relations they form with human actors) seem to be the most important for modern researchers, the essential points they raise allow for a better understanding of what conditions objects require for their action and even causality. Introducing the discourse of non-anthropocentric humanities into the context of Ingarden’s ontology could allow, among other things, for the clarification of certain concepts. In this way, the return to things, a subject hitherto lacking its own vocabulary, can be perceived as a significant new discourse within contemporary humanities.