Mieczysław Wallis as a Representative of the Analytic Orientation in Aesthetics

Abstract

The article examines the substantive grounds for considering Mieczysław Wallis a representative of the analytic trend in aesthetics. Although analytic-logical philosophy developed primarily in the United States and England, similar tendencies also emerged in twentieth-century Polish aesthetics, especially within the Lvov–Warsaw School. Educated at the University of Warsaw by leading representatives of Kazimierz Twardowski’s School, Wallis adopted many of its methodological and meta-scientific principles. As a second-generation member of the School, he emphasized logical correctness, terminological precision, and clear conceptual classifications, employing semantic and problem analysis. He supported his theories with extensive empirical material – historical, social, artistic, and cultural – referring both to works of art, literature, and architecture and to objects and phenomena of everyday life. He also shared the School’s anti-irrationalist orientation, rejecting speculative, a priori, metaphysical, mystical, and intuitionist approaches, as well as essayistic and poetic-metaphorical forms of aesthetic reflection. Instead, he sought to formulate his ideas in a clear, precise, and scientific language. In this way, Wallis laid the foundations for important analyses of key aesthetic categories, including aesthetic values, experiences, objects, and judgments. He also conducted detailed studies of the specificity, function, and reception of works of art, addressing such issues as their semantic elements, the creative process, and the representation of the artist’s mental states and dispositions.