1The “critical” translation of Roman Ingarden’s Questions pertaining to Essence we offer is based on its German version (Essentiale Fragen). This habilitation work was originally written in Polish (completed in 1923) under the supervision of K. Twardowski. Since at the time a variety of circumstances thwarted its publication in Poland for the foreseeable future, Ingarden accepted Husserl’s invitation to have a German “translation” of it published in his Jahrbuch (v. VII, 1925). Needless to say, in the hands of its author it was far removed from being a translation in any strict sense, and more of a “new and improved” edition. Although to account for all the changes introduced in the transition would call for having two distinct translations, we felt some readers may find it instructive if we acknowledge a selection of them – hence, the “critical” aspect of our translation.
2Any text in the body of the translation embraced in brackets is the translators’. In particular, any changes from the Polish [P] to the German [G], as well as comments by the translators, are signaled in the footnotes by being enclosed in brackets [ ]. The changes may be classified into three major categories: a) text introduced into G; b) text in P that was left out in G; and c) text in P that was replaced (reformulated) in G.
- Text X new to G is signaled by: [X added (or inserted) in G]
- Text X in P that was left out in G is signaled by [Cont. in P: “X”]
- Text Y in G that replaces text X in P is signaled by [“Y” replaces “X”]
3We have conformed Ingarden’s century-old German punctuation to more current English practices, as well as taken some liberties with our own English conventions, e.g. omitting commas where they normally occur (following the abbreviations ‘e.g.’ or ‘i.e.’), and omitting hyphens where Word insists they belong (e.g. ‘selfsufficient’ instead of ‘self-sufficient’, or ‘countersensical’ instead of ‘counter-sensical’).
4The abbreviations we employ are: EF = Essentiale Fragen; P = Polish version of EF; G = German version of EF; Cont. = Continues;