Conclusion

Abstract

This book has aimed to present, discuss, and critically analyze Leopold Blaustein’s philosophy in different frameworks which determined its thematic scope, main concepts, arguments, and developments. This goal stemmed from the lack of exhaustive studies on the legacy of Blaustein. Some scholars have examined selected topics in his writings, wherein his view on Edmund Husserl’s theory of intentionality is probably the most discussed, but there has not yet been a systematic examination of his various contributions to philosophy. This is not to say, of course, that his thought was unimportant. Just the opposite. In the scholarly literature, one can easily find authors who testify that Blaustein was an important and novel thinker whose ideas were ahead of his time. This opinion is fully justified. I have presented his intellectual biography in the previous chapters, and against this background, I have discussed his theoretical struggles with the question of the methods used in descriptive psychology and phenomenology, as well as his philosophy of mind, his aesthetics, and his pioneering analyses of the experience of media. Considering the results of our analysis, one can agree that Blaustein’s explorations were indeed eclectic, but his readings of, among others, Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski, Moriz Geiger, and Alexius Meinong were marked by careful questioning of the analyzed theories and, as a result, critical assessments. Undoubtedly, Blaustein referred to other theories not so much to repeat their main points but to attempt to achieve original outcomes; for instance, he critically reformulated and enlarged Twardowski’s taxonomy of presentations to describe phenomena such as cinemagoers’ experiences or embodied perception.

This book has aimed to present, discuss, and critically analyze Leopold Blaustein’s philosophy in different frameworks which determined its thematic scope, main concepts, arguments, and developments. This goal stemmed from the lack of exhaustive studies on the legacy of Blaustein. Some scholars have examined selected topics in his writings, wherein his view on Edmund Husserl’s theory of intentionality is probably the most discussed,¹ but there has not yet been a systematic examination of his various contributions to philosophy. This is not to say, of course, that his thought was unimportant. Just the opposite. In the scholarly literature, one can easily find authors who testify that Blaustein was an important and novel thinker whose ideas were ahead of his time.² This opinion is fully justified. I have presented his intellectual biography in the previous chapters, and against this background, I have discussed his theoretical struggles with the question of the methods used in descriptive psychology and phenomenology, as well as his philosophy of mind, his aesthetics, and his pioneering analyses of the experience of media. Considering the results of our analysis, one can agree that Blaustein’s explorations were indeed eclectic, but his readings of, among others, Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski, Moriz Geiger, and Alexius Meinong were marked by careful questioning of the analyzed theories and, as a result, critical assessments. Undoubtedly, Blaustein referred to other theories not so much to repeat their main points but to attempt to achieve original outcomes; for instance, he critically reformulated and enlarged Twardowski’s taxonomy of presentations to describe phenomena such as cinemagoers’ experiences or embodied perception.

How, then, should one define Blaustein’s philosophy? To consider Blaustein’s contribution and to address the question of how to understand and assess his philosophy, it is important to realize that his thought was developed at the crossroads of different trends present in nineteenth- and twentieth-century psychology and philosophy. Blaustein’s references—direct or indirect—make reading his writings challenging. Furthermore, he discussed not only mainstream authors but he often also considered peripheral theories; for example, his readings of Wilhelm Schapp or Geiger are unique not only within the context of Polish philosophy but also rare in regard to the reception of these authors outside Germany in general. Consequently, it is difficult to solve the problem of the novelty of the theories formulated by Blaustein himself; at the same time, it is too easy to underscore only parts of his complex philosophy. Unfortunately, this is often the case for some readings formulated in the scholarly literature. In general, his contribution is commonly regarded as focused only on Twardowski and Husserl, but his references to, e.g., Gestalt theory, the Graz School or humanistic psychology—not to mention seemingly peripheral polemics, such as those with Irena Filozofówna—are often overlooked. As a result, one is unable to define his philosophy properly. An example of such a misleading reading is Jan Woleński’s and Marek Pokropski’s idea of calling Blaustein a proponent of “analytic phenomenology.”³ This label is enigmatic since it does not explain in what sense Blaustein’s philosophy is indeed “analytical” or “phenomenological.” At the very beginning of the book, I critically elaborated Woleński’s and Pokropski’s idea by tracking its confusing consequences. In this context, I have suggested that a more adequate classification of Blaustein was formulated by Wioletta Miskiewicz and, in part, by Guido Küng, both of whom situate him within the broad context of the Brentanian tradition.⁴ From Miskiewicz’s point of view, the “analyticity” of Blaustein’s philosophy consists in his attempts to describe conscious experience, whereas its “phenomenological” nature is rooted in the subject matter, i.e., intentionality. Similarly, Küng emphasized that Blaustein’s interest in Husserl’s philosophy is just as important as the legacy of descriptive psychology. In general, it is clear that Miskiewicz’s and Küng’s position is more promising when one is attempting to understand Blaustein’s philosophy, even if their idea requires a more detailed discussion. First and foremost, however, Miskiewicz and Küng did not follow Woleński’s and Pokropski’s puzzling view on “analyticity.” By doing so, Miskiewicz and Küng did not fall into a misleading or false reading of Blaustein’s philosophy as an example of purely conceptual analysis.

It is important to keep in mind that Blaustein’s philosophy is rooted—due to critical elaborations and hidden inspirations—in different traditions. Therefore, one should be careful in categorizing his thought. Thus far, it is clear that one example of such a misleading and oversimplified typology is an attempt to comprehend Blaustein solely as a kind of Husserlian phenomenologist. By claiming this, some argue that Blaustein seemed to overcome Brentano’s descriptive psychology (which seemed to be outdated in the 1920s and 1930s) and accepted Husserl’s phenomenology (which was much more popular at that time and promised to omit the theoretical dilemmas raised by Brentano’s project). Zofia Rosińka, for instance, held that Blaustein’s turn toward phenomenology was dictated by the methodological difficulties of combining aesthetics with descriptive psychology. She recalled that aesthetics in Blaustein’s philosophy was developed on the “border with psychology,”⁵ but he faced problems with combining both fields. For this reason, according to Rosińska, Blaustein seemed to seek “[…] a research method which allows one to omit, on the one hand, psychologism, i.e., a reductionism of the investigated phenomenon to empirical psychic lived experiences, and, on the other, abstractionism, i.e., a full detachment of research from experience, from the experienced concrete.”⁶ Rosińska concluded that “[s]uch a method became for Blaustein a phenomenological method,”⁷ which Blaustein, as she put it, “took” from Husserl. A comparable argument was also used by Krzysztof Wieczorek, who stated that Blaustein “naturally” favored Husserl’s phenomenology over descriptive psychology. Wieczorek wrote:

However, [Blaustein] soon discovered difficulties, inaccuracies and even aporias in the object theories derived from Franz Brentano and developed by his students […] and naturally he followed the trail of phenomenology, understood by him as a research method of describing mental acts which are given in the immanent experience of the subject of knowledge.⁸

Rosińska and Wieczorek were not the only ones who insisted on comprehending Blaustein as a (Husserlian) phenomenologist. This interpretation was also formulated by Barry Smith⁹ or, more recently, Maria van der Schaar.¹⁰ Stanisław Pazura even goes a step further by claiming that Blaustein was an eminent member of, as he put it, the “Polish phenomenological school of aesthetics.”¹¹ The fact that Blaustein investigated a phenomenological theory—more precisely, Husserl’s theory of intentionality—seems to imply that he was a phenomenologist as well, but this line of reasoning is hardly convincing. Contrary to the aforementioned unequivocal acknowledgments, one may point out that they are one-sided. Admittedly, Blaustein discussed and critically elaborated Husserl’s philosophy, as examined in Chap. 6, but it is surely too hasty to comprehend him as a follower or a mere epigone of Husserl. Importantly, as we observed in Chap. 5, Blaustein combined Husserl’s early view of phenomenology, understood as descriptive psychology, with his 1925 phenomenological psychology project. This fusion shows that one goes too far in claiming that Blaustein’s phenomenology can be fully understood only in the context of Husserl and with no reference to descriptive psychology. On the contrary, the topic of descriptive psychology, as shown in Chaps. 3 and 4, is an important and seemingly even dominant trend in Blaustein’s thought. Of course, there are clear phenomenological themes—reexamined in light of Gestalt psychology or a clear humanistic approach—in Blaustein’s philosophy, yet clearly, there are not enough to agree with Rosińska, Wieczorek and others in claiming that Blaustein was but a (Husserlian) phenomenologist. How, then, should one categorize Blaustein’s philosophy?

The outcome of our analysis can be described as follows: admittedly, Blaustein’s philosophy has an eclectic character because it combines different trends, but he achieved original results because of his novel method, which was developed by him in the form of descriptive psychology with phenomenological background. The value of the method used by Blaustein consists in analyzing not only concrete lived experiences, e.g., embodied aesthetic experiences or cinemagoers’ experiences but also the objects which are manifested or present in these experiences, e.g., a work of art or a radio drama. Blaustein himself explicitly called this approach “descriptive psychology” (psychologia deskryptywna).¹² Because of the affinities between Blaustein’s project and Husserl’s 1925 view on psychology, one may call this method phenomenological psychology, but its phenomenological background is understood here in the original framework of the legacy of descriptive psychology. Thus, Blaustein’s philosophy is at once descriptive-psychological and phenomenological. With these ideas in mind, one can list the following components of Blaustein’s psychology: (1) following Brentano, Twardowski, and Dilthey, Blaustein defined the subject matter of his analyses as psychic phenomena or the psychic life. Next, (2) he emphasized introspection, yet (3) he also accepted retrospection and memory as sources of justified psychological knowledge. (4) He valued psychological experiments, both introspective and based, e.g., on interviews. As a result, (5) Blaustein adopted a naturalistic (in a broad sense) attitude in his psychology; nonetheless, (6) he still accepted a holistic approach when analyzing psychic life, which for him meant—like for Stumpf or Wertheimer—that one should describe experiences as focused not only on concrete and individual objects but also on organized wholes, forms, or Gestalts. (7) The aim of ongoing psychological analyses is to classify presentations in regard to relevant or described types of experiences. Furthermore, (8) Blaustein used some elements of (Twardowski’s) analysis of cultural artifacts as psychic products. Finally, (9) he seemed to accept methodological psychologism, even though he rejected ontological psychologism as he attempted (despite some difficulties in his aesthetics) to focus on types of experiences rather than on mere tokens.

In turn, the phenomenological background of Blaustein’s philosophy consists in the following factors: (1) Blaustein accepted adequacy as a criterion of descriptive analysis. Moreover, (2) the basis of any psychological description is intuition. (3) Analysis concerns the different attitudes that are adopted by the experiencing subject. (4) Following Ingarden, Blaustein drew a divide between objects of consciousness, which are only experienced (erlebt), and intuition, which is living itself or lived through (durchlebt). Next, (5) he emphasized the direct givenness of experienced objects. As a result, (6) he was able to analyze different ways of givenness or manifestation (Gegebenheitsweisen). To do this, (7) he adopted a metaphysically neutral attitude, which, in turn, allowed him to omit problematic metaphysical presuppositions. (8) Whereas Blaustein did accept a sort of psychological reduction (as he emphasized that descriptive analysis concerns types of lived experiences and, as such, it omits the charge of subjectivism), (9) he rejected both eidetic and transcendental forms of reduction. This rejection should come as no surprise since, as just noted, he accepted a naturalistic approach instead of a transcendental approach. Of course, Blaustein’s phenomenology has points in common with Husserl’s, but because of its naturalistic or non-transcendental attitude, it is also close to Stumpf’s view of phenomenology. To label this kind of phenomenology, in Chap. 5, I mentioned Walter Auerbach’s phrase “a phenomenologist in a broad sense,” which, according to Auerbach, refers to scholars who do not want to blindly accept Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole.¹³ It seems that Blaustein was exactly such a “phenomenologist in a broad sense,” choosing not to follow Husserl uncritically but trying to find his own path to “the things themselves.” He shared with other phenomenologists, including Husserl, a general intuition that description has to follow experience or be guided by what manifests itself in lived experiences.

However, it should be mentioned that both attitudes present in Blaustein’s philosophy—the descriptive-psychological one and the phenomenological one—also share commonalities. To begin with, (1) they emphasize experience and lived experiences (e.g., Brentano, Stumpf, Twardowski, Husserl). Furthermore, (2) they are founded on a descriptive approach, which is often contrasted with an explanatory approach (e.g., Brentano, Dilthey, Husserl). Additionally, (3) they presuppose an understanding of philosophy as a scientific enterprise (e.g., Brentano, Husserl). Finally, (4) they express skepticism about abstract analyses and instead focus on what is concrete (e.g., Dilthey, Ingarden). This summary shows that one may simultaneously define Blaustein as both a descriptive psychologist and a phenomenologist. For him, then, there was no conflict or sharp distinction between the two attitudes since they present the unity of his descriptive method. With these ideas in mind, it is understandable why he included Twardowski (descriptive psychology), Husserl (phenomenology) and Stumpf (Gestalt theory) in the Brentanian line of philosophy: after all, he called them “descendants (potomkowie) of Brentano.”¹⁴ It is precisely in this context that one should read Blaustein’s remark from the beginning of his Husserlowska nauka… [Husserl’s Theory…], where he underlined that “[a] phenomenologist […] may interpret these thoughts as an application of phenomenological claims in descriptive psychology, [whereas] a psychologist [may interpret these thoughts] as an analysis that is independent of any phenomenology.”¹⁵

A somewhat similar conclusion was reached by Wojciech Chudy, who wrote about the “double root” of Blaustein’s philosophy, which in Chudy’s opinion was developed on the border between the school of Twardowski and Husserl’s phenomenology.¹⁶ Although both trends are present in Blaustein’s writings, as Chudy argued, there is no clear-cut affiliation between Blaustein and any of these schools. Chudy added that Twardowski’s approach seems to be closer to Blaustein’s approach. Chudy’s idea, however, is still fragmentary. Contrary to Miskiewicz and Küng, Chudy did not refer to the Brentanian tradition in a broad sense but only to Twardowski. As we observed in Chaps. 3 and 4, Blaustein referred to Twardowski’s writings and was certainly inspired by his project of descriptive psychology, but it is pointless to refer here only to the school of Twardowski. In doing so, one overlooks Gestaltists or humanistic psychology as other important backgrounds of Blaustein’s philosophy. The emphasis put on Husserl alone is equally misleading. When juxtaposing Blaustein’s criticism of the phenomenological method against Husserl’s Untersuchungen in Chaps. 5 and 7, one noticed that Blaustein in fact misread Husserl; moreover, Blaustein also referred to other phenomenologists (e.g., Ingarden, Geiger, Schapp, and Schneider). Thus, if one attempts to simultaneously classify Blaustein as a descriptive psychologist and a phenomenologist, one must consider the divergent yet intertwined contexts that shaped Blaustein’s philosophy.

In Chaps. 8 and 9, I showed that Blaustein used the aforementioned fusion of different methodological devices in the field of aesthetics. Certainly, the Brentanian legacy refers to the theory of presentations as the basis of aesthetics, whereas the phenomenological framework concerns the question of the ways of givenness (Gegebenheitsweisen) of aesthetic objects. Blaustein analyzed the structure of different types of aesthetic experiences to pinpoint their intentional character. This was necessary since, according to Blaustein, the objects of aesthetic experiences are represented by other objects, and this representation is realized in a psychic act in which both objects are presented. This theory of psychic representations allowed Blaustein to introduce more detailed descriptive nuances in Husserl’s analysis of Dürer’s “Knight, Death and the Devil”; thus, Blaustein drew a parallel between depicting picture objects and visual objects, i.e., objects which can function as representations, but he disagreed that these objects should be comprehended as imaginative objects. This idea, however, is challenging because it seems to lead to ontological psychologism. Of course, for Blaustein, an aesthetic experience intentionally aims toward the aesthetic object, but the object has to be decomposed into diverse but intertwined objects that have different ontological statuses that are at once real and non-real. Because of these difficulties, I have attempted to juxtapose Blaustein with Ingarden to address the question of whether the aesthetic object is real or purely intentional. In this regard, some, e.g., Bohdan Dziemidok¹⁷ and, more recently, Robert T. Ptaszek,¹⁸ held that Blaustein’s aesthetics was influenced by Ingarden. Contrary to this, I have shown that despite the evident similarities between both theories, there are still gaps that cannot be bridged. In any case, I have also addressed some detailed topics discussed by Blaustein within his aesthetics, such as the theory of attitude(s), the idea of embodied aesthetic experiences, and his view on the role that judgments play in aesthetic experiences. All of these topics can also be tracked in Blaustein’s original “phenomenology” of media. In Chap. 9, I argued—following Jan Czerkawski (together with Antoni B. Stępień and Stanisław Wielgus),¹⁹ Rosińska,²⁰ Miskiewicz,²¹ Jagna Brudzińska²² and Joanna Pluta²³—that Blaustein formulated one of the very first “phenomenological” analyses of the experience of media. In this context, by “phenomenology” I mean the application of descriptive tools in describing the structure and character of the first-person experience of media. Blaustein explored the ways of givenness or manifestation (Gegebenheitsweisen) of mediated objects. He descriptively analyzed how one experiences film or radio drama. I will not present a detailed description of the outcomes of his analysis of the experience of media here; instead, let me shed light on another feature of Blaustein’s philosophy.

In his analysis of the cinemagoer’s experience or the phenomenon of acousion (as defined in Sect. 9.2.1), Blaustein attempted to apply his findings in practice. For instance, he formulated concrete tips for teachers who wanted to use films in the educational process, and he listed suggestions concerning how to compose a radio drama to improve its reception by the audience. This general approach stemmed from consequent attempts to apply descriptive psychology in non-philosophical disciplines. I have argued above that this idea of Blaustein’s seems to mirror Brentano’s conviction that the future of psychology lies in its practical applications.²⁴ With this in mind, one may conclude that Blaustein’s contribution to the heritage of philosophy of the twentieth century lays in applying philosophy in new fields. As noted, Blaustein applied philosophy in non-philosophical disciplines, such as pedagogy,²⁵ penitentiary science,²⁶ in film studies,²⁷ and even military ethics.²⁸ This shows that he did not reject interdisciplinary research. To the contrary, he often referred, especially in the 1930s, to results in other disciplines, e.g., developmental psychology, to confront his descriptive psychology with concrete results. This constant transition of Blaustein’s research from philosophy to non-philosophical disciplines was clear in his late writings. In this context, one should agree with Miskiewicz, who claimed that Blaustein developed “an entirely new branch of phenomenology” that is “interdisciplinary.”²⁹ This interdisciplinarity is, as it seems, an important aspect of Blaustein’s philosophy.

In closing, one may summarize Blaustein’s philosophy as a complex project rooted in ninetieth- and twentieth-century debates over the methodological status of descriptive psychology, the scope of phenomenology, and the humanistic claims of psychology. His quest for an efficient method can be understood as a careful reexamination of Brentano and his followers’ attempt to reawaken philosophy as a scientific enterprise. Blaustein’s theory also bore the mark of different polemics with—to mention only the most important contexts—Husserl, Twardowski, Ingarden, Geiger, Schapp, and Filozofówna, all of which shaped his original thoughts. His work can be understood as descriptive psychology that adopted some phenomenological tools but which remained a natural (non-transcendental) project; Blaustein’s philosophy was also open to the use of experiments and made interdisciplinary claims. All these aspects contextualize the philosophy of Blaustein and determine its novelty. Although some of Blaustein’s concrete views remain controversial, e.g., his assessment of eidetic procedures in phenomenology or his concept of the aesthetic object, it is difficult to deny Ingarden’s conviction, who wrote that Blaustein’s legacy should not be forgotten.³⁰ Rather, one should reassess Blaustein. Of course, a comprehensive appraisal and assessment of his detailed proposals requires further studies on his contributions to descriptive psychology, phenomenology, Gestalt theory, and humanistic psychology, not to mention non-philosophical developments.