Analysis of Blaustein’s Critique of the Phenomenological Method

Abstract

The psychological themes in the method employed by Blaustein are pervasive, as shown in Chap. 3. In my analysis of these themes, I put forward the hypothesis that this attachment to psychology determined his view of phenomenology as an empirical discipline, rather than a priori eidetics or transcendental philosophy. Basically, Blaustein assumed that if phenomenology indeed concerns essences, this would mean that it abandons its proper object, i.e., lived experiences. For this reason, according to him, phenomenology ought to become, contra Husserl, an empirical discipline, which seems to suggest that it is possible only as a Brentanian-style descriptive or empirical psychology. Accordingly, Blaustein’s struggles with the phenomenological method can be viewed from a broader perspective. After all, as shown by, e.g., Theodore De Boer, Herbert Spiegelberg, or, more recently, by Andreea Smaranda Aldea and Denis Fisette, phenomenology emerged in a dispute with and in a critical assessment of the heritage of Brentano. Some may claim that Husserl’s break from Brentano was the cornerstone of his original philosophical project, i.e., transcendental phenomenology, which justified its claims as opposed to descriptive psychology. This, it seems, inspired Krzysztof Wieczorek to draw a parallel between Husserl and Blaustein; like Husserl, Blaustein discovered difficulties, inaccuracies, and even aporias in Brentano, and he “naturally” took the position of phenomenology. However, contrary to Wieczorek, I have argued that the psychological themes in Blaustein’s method are irreducible, and it is precisely for that reason that he was a proponent of descriptive psychology.

The psychological themes in the method employed by Blaustein are pervasive, as shown in Chap. 3. In my analysis of these themes, I put forward the hypothesis that this attachment to psychology determined his view of phenomenology as an empirical discipline, rather than a priori eidetics or transcendental philosophy. Basically, Blaustein assumed that if phenomenology indeed concerns essences, this would mean that it abandons its proper object, i.e., lived experiences. For this reason, according to him, phenomenology ought to become, contra Husserl, an empirical discipline, which seems to suggest that it is possible only as a Brentanian-style descriptive or empirical psychology. Accordingly, Blaustein’s struggles with the phenomenological method can be viewed from a broader perspective. After all, as shown by, e.g., Theodore De Boer,¹ Herbert Spiegelberg,² or, more recently, by Andreea Smaranda Aldea³ and Denis Fisette,⁴ phenomenology emerged in a dispute with and in a critical assessment of the heritage of Brentano. Some may claim that Husserl’s break from Brentano was the cornerstone of his original philosophical project, i.e., transcendental phenomenology, which justified its claims as opposed to descriptive psychology. This, it seems, inspired Krzysztof Wieczorek to draw a parallel between Husserl and Blaustein; like Husserl, Blaustein discovered difficulties, inaccuracies, and even aporias in Brentano, and he “naturally” took the position of phenomenology.⁵ However, contrary to Wieczorek, I have argued that the psychological themes in Blaustein’s method are irreducible, and it is precisely for that reason that he was a proponent of descriptive psychology.

Against this background, one may ask: if Blaustein indeed favored descriptive psychology over phenomenology, is it appropriate to think of him as a phenomenologist instead? It is true that his understanding of phenomenology is highly critical and often went beyond a simple repetition of Husserl’s train of thought or ideas—indeed, so much so that he definitely cannot be called a mere epigone of Husserl. This is precisely why opinions in the secondary literature are divided about whether Blaustein’s philosophy should be classified as a form of phenomenology. Such a classification is called into question by, for example, Mieczysław Andrzej Dąbrowski⁶ and, more recently, Marek Pokropski.⁷ Conversely, scholars such as Stanisław Pazura,⁸ Barry Smith,⁹ and Maria van der Schaar¹⁰ unequivocally classify Blaustein as a phenomenologist. Wioletta Miskiewicz goes even further, claiming that he was the founder of “an entirely new branch of phenomenology” that is “analytic, descriptive and interdisciplinary.”¹¹ The present chapter is an attempt to take stock of these divergent views. My fundamental aim in this chapter is to define and explore Blaustein’s original reformulation of Husserl’s method in more detail. I will argue, first, that a category that is more adequate here is that of a phenomenologically oriented descriptive psychology rather than phenomenology sensu stricto. Blaustein’s project seems to be related but not equivalent to the project presented (yet later abandoned) by Husserl in the first edition of his Logische Untersuchungen.¹² Second, and more importantly, I will attempt to show that Blaustein’s criticism of the method of phenomenology paradoxically adapted some elements of Husserl’s 1925 lectures devoted to phenomenological psychology, in which Blaustein had an occasion to participate during his stay in Germany. Thus, Blaustein used in his method some elements of Husserl’s phenomenological psychology which cannot be derived from the legacy of Brentano, Twardowski, or Dilthey. Overall, I argue that Blaustein’s method incorporates both descriptive-psychological and phenomenological tools.

5.1 Blaustein’s Main Arguments Against Husserl’s Method

Blaustein engaged in a polemic against selected elements of the phenomenological method primarily in the first, theoretical period of his research activity, i.e., in 1928–31. The polemic was usually,¹³ but not always,¹⁴ preceded by a reconstruction of Husserl’s position, which is a testament to Blaustein’s familiarity with his writings.¹⁵ In this part of the chapter, I will analyze this polemic by first outlining Blaustein’s understanding of Husserl’s method and then reconstructing the critique and, equally importantly, his positive proposal of how phenomenology should be understood.¹⁶

At the very beginning of his doctoral thesis, Blaustein took note of both the continuity of Husserl’s philosophical project and a major shift that occurred within it.¹⁷ Initially, in Untersuchungen, the project was focused on descriptive psychology, but beginning with Ideen I, it clearly moved away from these early premises. However, as Blaustein observed, although Husserl retained the originally developed terminology, he changed the method. Thus, the aim of descriptive psychology in Untersuchungen was to describe the basic elements, i.e., inseparable parts, of the act of consciousness, as well as the way this act was related to its content and object. The act of consciousness and its properties, such as intentionality, are not accounted for as an object that is separable from a lived experience but, according to Blaustein, as a “purely descriptive” element, i.e., as a “quality of certain lived experiences” or, more precisely, an “essential property of psychic phenomena.”¹⁸ A descriptive analysis abstracts from genetic relations. This enabled Husserl (in Blaustein’s interpretation) not only to present a classification of psychic acts based on differences in species but also to formulate specific psychological laws (prawa psychologiczne) which, however, were already well known prior to Husserl’s studies.¹⁹

The project was changed considerably in Ideen I, where Husserl developed and used the method of phenomenological reduction (epoché). As a result of applying this method, consciousness becomes pure consciousness, that is, the residuum of reduction,²⁰ while psychological laws are understood to be a “purely phenomenological state of affairs” (czysto fenomenologiczny stan rzeczy).²¹ This is possible by breaking the connection with empirical experience, i.e., with psycho-physical individuals, and focusing on the essence of a given act. In Blaustein’s interpretation, “[t]he phenomenological method consists in changing the natural attitude,”²² that is, bracketing the “general thesis” and accounting for it as a lived experience. Thus, phenomenology is a descriptive psychology that employs the method of phenomenological reduction, which is equivalent to treating it as descriptive eidetics of pure experiences of consciousness based on seeing essences or eidetic intuition (Wesenschau).²³ As we shall see in the following section, Blaustein’s interpretation of Husserl’s method has serious limitations.

Both in his doctoral thesis²⁴ and the later article entitled “Edmund Husserl i jego fenomenologia” [“Edmund Husserl and His Phenomenology”],²⁵ Blaustein mentioned that he had assessed the method critically in two lectures he delivered on April 28 and May 5, 1928, during the meetings of the Polish Philosophical Society. Already in the first lecture, Blaustein repeated the definition of phenomenology he had developed in his doctoral thesis whereby it was a “[…] descriptive discipline concerning the ideal essences of lived experiences in pure consciousness”²⁶ and linked the method of phenomenological reduction (epoché) with the analysis of essences. In other words, Blaustein seemed to be focused on the later version of phenomenology presented in Ideen I. Questioning the unclear understanding of essences as general objects, he formulated five different objections and doubts. To begin with, (1) in regard to logical doubts, Blaustein believed that to construct a real definition—that is, one that concerns the quid rei instead of a mere expression in a given language—one must assume the existence of a definiendum with specific properties; this would mean that one would have to begin with solving a problem that goes beyond logic and concerns ontology. (2) From an epistemological point of view, knowing essences requires the application of a specific method of seeing essences or eidetic intuition (Wesenschau), but the method turns out to be, as he put it, a schematic presentation.²⁷ This kind of presentation cannot be used to prove anything because, being schematic, its presenting content cannot represent all the properties of the presented object, which means that “[…] one can never be sure whether the choice is right, nor can one differentiate clearly between the right choices and the rest.”²⁸ As shown earlier in Sect. 4.3, schematic presentations were classified by Blaustein as relatively quasi-inadequate, i.e., they meet the following conditions: (a) they intend their object, but (b) the object cannot be intuitively given; for this reason, (c) they intend an artifact which refers to the object and, moreover, (d) only a few properties of the artifact are correlated with relevant properties of the object. For Blaustein, a schematic presentation enables one to comprehend a schema as a representation of the schematized object, whereas the schema presents typical features of the schematized object. By claiming that seeing essences or eidetic intuition (Wesenschau) is in fact a schematic representation, he undermined Husserl’s idea that this act is direct and presents its object as actually present.

(3) Blaustein also had ontological doubts, claiming that it is not clear how general objects “exist” given that the self-givenness (Selbstgegebenheit) of an object can be understood intuitively only through perceptual acts, and he did not believe Wesenschau is an act of perception. (4) Approaching the issue of essences from the perspective of psychology, Blaustein acknowledged the existence of lived experiences that are directed toward general objects and postulated that the way such objects are given should be described further²⁹; he also suggested that general objects were at best intentional objects of acts. Finally, (5) Blaustein expressed a methodological doubt when he argued that although the existence of general objects is assumed at the outset, the question of whether they truly exist remains to be answered. In other words, contrary to Husserl and Ingarden,³⁰ he believed phenomenology is not free of the petitio principii fallacy.

In light of these doubts, Blaustein claimed that the sciences may address general objects only as types rather than as an essence (existing as an ideal entity). By “type,” Blaustein understood the lowest species (individuals) abstracted from incidental properties.³¹ Types are identified through a series of observations (instead of seeing essences) by skipping certain properties. In other words, they are achieved through abstraction. Thus understood, a type is a correlate of a specific methodological process which does not require hypostasis in the form of an essence and does not entail necessitating an acknowledgment of its existence. Blaustein described the process as inductive reasoning from one case to a type (he also used the German phrase: Schluss vom Einzelnen auf Gesetzmässigkeit in einer Menge).³² Thus, to account for higher species, one should apply the method of gradual generalization, i.e., the inductive method. The essences addressed by phenomenology, being higher species, are therefore simple generalizations, not general objects. This is why, according to Blaustein’s conclusion, “[…] phenomenology is possible only as an empirical, descriptive science of types (the lowest species) of experiences in pure consciousness, not as an a priori, descriptive science of higher essences as ideal objects.”³³ Hence, in Blaustein’s opinion, phenomenology should use the method of inductive generalizations to ensure the level of certainty that is required of science.

In the lecture delivered on May 5, 1928, Blaustein considered the consequences of rejecting essences as general entities. He stressed that the step would not result in rejecting ontology itself (formal and material) but only the “categorical nature” of ontological findings, which are replaced by hypotheses. Therefore, science, including phenomenology, should ultimately put forward general propositions about individual objects of certain types instead of propositions about those very types (essences). To a limited extent, seeing essences may be retained to present states of affairs expressed by axioms but not to obtain axioms themselves.³⁴ This is because research should focus on what is individual, i.e., experienced, rather than on what is essential, i.e., general and existing in the “world of ideas” (świat idei) (Blaustein’s phrase, which refers to Plato’s theory of ideas). He stated that the phenomenologist makes too many unjustified assumptions, and for this reason, the approach is questionable. As he wrote:

The view that the eidetic sciences are the basis of the empirical sciences presupposes, from a realistic viewpoint, firstly the existence of certain unchanging states of affairs in the world of ideas, qualities, and other ideal objects, as well as their knowability, and, secondly, some necessary correlation between what occurs and what we know about the world of ideal beings and what happens and what we know about the world of empirically existing concretizations of these beings. There are more of these assumptions than a cautious scholar would be willing to accept.³⁵

Furthermore, according to Blaustein, experience is not shaped by ideas but the other way around. He concluded that this is precisely why phenomenology cannot serve as a foundation for other material sciences, although it may provide them with some basis in formal ontology. Finally, in Blaustein’s view, the fundamental difference between Husserl’s approach from Untersuchungen and that from Ideen I has to do with applying the method of reduction (what is psychic is taken as pure consciousness). One might be surprised that Blaustein did not discuss this difference at length, as it seems to be fundamental for distinguishing descriptive psychology (as defined in the first edition of Untersuchungen) from transcendental phenomenology (e.g., Ideen I). Instead, he seemed to take for granted that he proved that, first, essences are questionable and, second, seeing essences does not have any epistemic value; consequently, transcendental phenomenology seems to be simply false.

5.2 A Critical Analysis of Blaustein’s Reading of Husserl

5.2.1 Blaustein’s Position in Light of Husserl’s and Ingarden’s Early Theory of Ideas

Blaustein’s understanding of Husserl’s method and his critique of it may be summarized as the following train of thought: (1) at first—in Untersuchungen—Husserl defined phenomenology as descriptive psychology whose aim was to describe essential properties, i.e., types, of psychic phenomena; (2) next—from the publication of Ideen I onward—descriptions are made subject to phenomenological reduction that enables accounting for what is psychic as pure consciousness, which leads to the understanding of phenomenology as descriptive eidetics using the method of seeing essences or eidetic intuition (Wesenschau); (3) the problem is that the method of eidetic analysis makes use of the unclear concept of eidos as a general object, which is why it must be suspended or restricted to the benefit of the descriptive psychology from Untersuchungen. This critique, however, is questionable. Thus, in this section, I will show its limitations, drawing on the two early works by Husserl that Blaustein cited. By juxtaposing both propositions and showing the limitations of the polemic, I arrive at the thesis that the critique formulated by him does not so much concern Husserl as Ingarden.

In the first edition of Untersuchungen, Husserl indeed described phenomenology as descriptive psychology, which he opposed to explanatory or genetic psychology.³⁶ Its aim was to carry out an initial study of lived experiences by describing them within the framework of general structures to provide a basis for psychological or logical investigations. However, in the second edition of the work published in 1913, Husserl firmly said that phenomenology is not descriptive psychology, as it makes use of “pure” descriptions that have nothing to do with empirical ones³⁷; thus redefined, phenomenology uses “[…] its contemplation of pure essence on a basis of exemplary individual intuitions of experience (often freely imagined ones).”³⁸ In fact, Husserl moved away from descriptive psychology much earlier than 1913, having stressed in 1903 that phenomenology should not make assumptions about its object (as is the case of descriptive psychology) but rather focus on what is given as it is given.³⁹ Equally importantly, in Untersuchungen Husserl developed the method of eidetic analysis in discussion with the modern theory of abstraction, rejecting the view of hypostasizing ideas as general objects.⁴⁰ What is captured in ideation is not so much a general object as the moment of a given lived experience. Although in the secondary literature some authors, e.g., David Woodruff Smith and Roland McIntyre,⁴¹ interpreted this element as an ideal entity, namely, an ideal meaning, John Drummond⁴² demonstrated that this interpretation is questionable, as Husserl ultimately understands the ideal as irreal rather than ideal (i.e., not as something opposed to what is real).

To avoid misunderstandings when interpreting what is ideal, in Ideen I Husserl introduced the procedure of reduction. Naturally, the theory of reduction is complex and, historically speaking, dates back to Husserl’s reflections from the first years after the publication of Untersuchungen.⁴³ In the context that is of interest here, the procedure suspends all theses about existence or non-existence and thus does not solve the problem of the existence of ideas either. An essence is understood in Ideen I as the “what” of a given object. One reads that:

At first “essence” designated what is to be found in the very own being of an individuum as the What of an individuum. Any such What can, however, be “put into an idea.” Experiencing or intuition of something individual can become transmuted into eidetic seeing (ideation)—a possibility which is itself to be understood not as empirical, but as eidetic. What is seen when that occurs is the corresponding pure essence or Eidos, whether it be the highest category or a particularization thereof—down to full concretion.⁴⁴

The account of essences is objective, but, following Husserl, what is given in such an act is not accounted for as existing (daseiend).⁴⁵ In any case, when investigating the essence, a phenomenologist develops the ontology of a given domain, an ontology which Husserl divided into formal (dealing with the object in general) and material (investigating material essences). At the same time, Husserl was opposed to “Platonic hypostatization,” i.e., accounting for ideas as real beings.⁴⁶ For him, an essence is a correlate of corresponding acts whilst seeing essences is an originary presentive act; an essence cannot of course be reduced to these acts, being their correlate.

In light of this brief presentation, it is perhaps surprising that Blaustein was so determined to criticize Husserl. It turns out that Blaustein not only did not reflect upon but also did not accept Husserl’s arguments in favor of moving away from descriptive psychology. Moreover, he consistently accused Husserl of hypostasizing ideas, which was plainly not the case. One might even say that Blaustein misinterpreted Husserl. The fundamental difference between Husserl and Blaustein is that the latter did not accept the method of reduction that neutralizes or brackets the question about the existence of ideas. With this in mind, it could be at best argued that Blaustein attacked a specific interpretation of the phenomenological method that accounts for ideas as existing general objects. But why did he write about Husserl expressis verbis? To answer this question, one needs to consider the broader context of both lectures. My hypothesis is that, in the lectures, Blaustein did not argue with Husserl (even though the philosopher was expressly cited) but with Ingarden or at least with his early interpretation of the problem of essence in phenomenology. Twardowski writes in his journal that Ingarden was the only one to take the floor after Blaustein’s lectures.⁴⁷ This should come as no surprise given that already a year before, i.e., on April 30, 1927, Ingarden and Blaustein discussed the concept of consciousness on the occasion of another lecture delivered for the Polish Philosophical Society, accusing each other of the petitio principii fallacy.⁴⁸ The accusation relates directly to the epistemic value of seeing essences or eidetic intuition and the method of reduction: can seeing essences be the source of fully justified knowledge if it assumes a priori the value of a different kind of cognition—for example, scientific cognition? Radosław Kuliniak, Dorota Leszczyna and Mariusz Pandura emphasize that Blaustein’s lectures were targeted directly at Ingarden, with the aim of weakening his position after he returned to Lvov or even preventing him from holding a chair at the university. Indeed, the fact that the focus of Blaustein’s lectures is eidetic cognition and the question of essences suggests that he wanted to attack a particular understanding of phenomenology, made popular in Poland by Ingarden,⁴⁹ whereby the discipline is the study of the content of ideas in the act of immanent seeing essences (immanente Wesenserschauung). Ingarden’s understanding of ideas is not fully clear, which leaves some room for interpretation.⁵⁰ Nonetheless, his exposition does contain a quasi-Platonic account of ideas as “ideal objects” which do not exist in time or any real space and, as such, are invariable.⁵¹ Real objects are embodiments of ideal objects. Contrary to Husserl, in the case of Ingarden, the act of direct cognition results in the affirmation of the ideal existence of the object.⁵² Ingarden also wrote about the “world of ideal objects”⁵³—and it is worth noting that Blaustein used a similar expression when we wrote about the “world of ideas,” even though there is no equivalent expression in Husserl’s writings. Responding to Blaustein’s criticism, Ingarden delivered a lecture entitled “Idealizm transcendentalny E. Husserla” [“Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism”] at the meeting of the Polish Philosophical Society on December 6, 1928.⁵⁴ In the lecture, Ingarden focused on the problem of reduction, trying to demonstrate that pure consciousness does not exist in the same way as the world does. This being the case, it requires a methodological approach that is different from the one applied in natural sciences, i.e., an approach different from gradual inductive generalization. We know that Blaustein did not accept this response and later spoke against Ingarden’s concept of essence on several occasions, postulating the application of Ockham’s razor to essences treated metaphysically as existing general objects.⁵⁵

Summing up these arguments and the discussion presented thus far, it may be observed that, for Blaustein, the phenomenological method worked by inductive generalizations which yield or at least are intended to yield reliable results. This critique, which in fact misinterprets Husserl, seems to be targeted at Ingarden’s account of phenomenology. As a result of his critique, Blaustein assumed that phenomenology should be understood as a descriptive psychology that abandons the method of phenomenological reduction. The solution is undoubtedly questionable, if not simply wrong. This, however, does not end the discussion of his criticism of phenomenology. As it turns out, the proposal put forward by Blaustein shares some common elements with the project of phenomenological psychology that Husserl worked on in 1925. One proof of this affinity is that, in his polemic, Blaustein uses the term “Wesenschau,” which is absent in Husserl’s early works but does appear in his 1925 lectures.

5.2.2 Psychology and the Method of Seeing Essences in Husserl’s 1925 Lectures

Blaustein, who attended Husserl’s lectures entitled Einleitung in die phänomenologische Psychologie in the summer term of 1925, took note of the fact that Husserl attached great importance to them.⁵⁶ The focus of the lectures was to provide a phenomenological foundation for psychology and establish its place among the humanities.⁵⁷ Following Dilthey,⁵⁸ Husserl assumed that psychology had its proper method, which gave access to psychic life as a unity of lived experiences; he wrote:

The great significance of Dilthey’s expositions lay above all in what he said positively about the unity of psychic life as a unity of lived experience and in the demand derived therefrom for a descriptive psychology drawing purely upon intuition: a psychology which, in spite of being ‘mere’ description, should accomplish its own species of the highest performance of clarification, i.e., that which Dilthey expressed with the word understanding.⁵⁹

Dilthey termed the method “understanding,” while Husserl, analyzing Dilthey’s position and highlighting the connection between phenomenology and his project of descriptive psychology, believed that it was intuitive and based on seeing essences.⁶⁰ The method was also the subject of Husserl’s investigations later, be it in Erfahrung und Urteil,⁶¹ published posthumously in 1939 or in a series of research manuscripts on the method of variation.⁶² In this part of the chapter, I want to reconstruct selected elements of this method—such as its general properties and the procedure of seeing essences—solely on the basis of Husserl’s 1925 lectures to then be able to decide whether Blaustein’s critique discussed above was justified.

At the very beginning of his lectures, Husserl analyzed selected forms of late nineteenth-century psychology, opposing “explanatory” and “descriptive-analytic” kinds of psychology as developed by Brentano and Dilthey.⁶³ The former used a hypothetical-constitutive procedure which consists in taking certain elements, such as sense data, and then combining them in causal relations; the latter worked through pure intuition. After he analyzed the two projects critically, Husserl concluded that “new psychology” is a priori, eidos-oriented, intuitive or purely descriptive and interested in intentionality.⁶⁴ Husserl expanded on this general description in the following way: (1) the a priori nature is to be understood as a striving for essentially universal and necessary elements without which psychic life cannot be comprehended. (2) The source of a priori thus understood is intuition or description, i.e., “seeing” what is essential. (3) The procedure shows intentionality because, as Husserl wrote, “[p]sychic life is the life of consciousness; consciousness is consciousness of something.”⁶⁵ Importantly, (4) the procedure described by Husserl makes it possible to adopt a transcendental attitude which would provide a radical, i.e., philosophical, grounding for the knowledge of consciousness, but the attitude is not necessary for psychology, as it can function on the basis of the natural attitude. Nonetheless, (5) psychology, as “the pure essential theory of the mental” (die reine Wesenslehre des Geistigen),⁶⁶ provides a more reliable kind of knowledge than inductive sciences because it investigates essential laws which precede what is truly accidental. (6) At the same time, psychology cannot be a deductive science such as mathematics, as its aim is not so much to explain a finite set of axioms but rather to account for an intuitive and descriptive a priori. Thus, Husserl explicitly links description with intuition, claiming that the intuitive procedure consists in studying what is given in experience in “exemplary forms” and “inquiring after what is typically universal.”⁶⁷

In the “Systematic Part” of the lectures, Husserl explained the basic elements of the eidetic method. He has shown that individuals and the world itself have proper forms that can be filled with particular content. These forms can be studied in pure fantasy where “[…] factual experience gives me only an exemplary beginning for the style of free fantasies which I shape from it, without otherwise employing it as something to be accepted.”⁶⁸ Hence, according to Husserl, pure fantasy allows for an a priori which is understood as “the invariable” in a free variation of experience.⁶⁹ Notably, a priori in this context is not something general, i.e., something that can be known regardless of experience. Husserl often stressed that the process of variation begins with the experience of the world. Thus, a priori makes sense only when it concerns what is given in experience.⁷⁰ Husserl described this procedure of reaching an a priori as “the seeing of an a priori,” adding “[t]his universal essence is the eidos, the ‘idea’ in the Platonic sense, but apprehended purely and free from all metaphysical interpretations, therefore, taken precisely as it becomes given to us in immediate intuitiveness in the seeing of ideas which arises in that way.”⁷¹ In Husserl’s view, the world of essences is the world of pure fantasy, i.e., the world of pure possibilities. It must be stressed, however, that the eidos is understood without “metaphysical interpretations,” thanks to which it may be accounted for as “pure kind” (reine Art).⁷² As Husserl writes, “[…] the genus can become seen as pure eidos only if we do not ask about something real and thus not about actualities, but raise all actuality to pure possibility, to the realm of free optionalness.”⁷³ It bears emphasizing that, in the passage quoted above, Husserl uses the German word “die Gattung,” which was later adopted and translated into Polish by Blaustein as “gatunek.”

In any case, in Husserl’s thought, eidetic variation is given in the modi of “and so on optionally,” showing that the eidos is not a fixed and invariable structure that exists in an abstract “world of ideas” (as suggested by Blaustein) but is known through a complex procedure as a “synthetic unity,” i.e., as something that is “singularized.” This is important to the extent we bear in mind that the entirety of the procedure is accounted for metaphorically as seeing. Literally speaking, nothing is “seen” there. It is not “sensuous seeing” because variation in pure fantasy is given in the modi of “and so on optionally,” i.e., in the mode of consecutive changes and apprehended coincidences. The “seeing” mentioned here refers to consciousness in which a new kind of object is constituted, namely, the universal but given as itself. Thus, according to Husserl, “[…] the idea seen is here said to be seen because it is not meant or spoken of vaguely, indirectly, by means of empty symbols or words, but is precisely grasped directly and itself.”⁷⁴ In a nutshell, “seeing” is a mental operation that consists in forming an open multiplicity of variants which, modeled on a given experience, becomes independent of empirical determinations in pure fantasy. Husserl allows for a possibility of further generalization of the achieved results through, as he writes, the method of “pure induction” (die Methode der reinen Induktion).⁷⁵ The method works by deriving a more general cognition from individual “seen” types, provided that all references to what is natural are suspended (hence pure induction). It is worth noting that, further on in the lecture, Husserl did not expand on the method, writing about natural induction as a method of natural sciences (in contrast to pure sciences).

5.3 Phenomenology and Blaustein’s Psychology: Parallels and Differences

5.3.1 A Juxtaposition of Both Approaches: An Overview

As I noted at the end of Sect. 5.2.1, when criticizing the method of seeing essences or eidetic intuition, Blaustein used the term “Wesenschau,” which cannot be found either in Untersuchungen or in Ideen I. In each of these works, Husserl employed a different expression, namely, “Wesenserschauung.”⁷⁶ I believe that Blaustein intentionally opted for a term that did not truly refer to Husserl’s early work but rather to his 1925 lectures in phenomenological psychology, which he had attended during his stay in Germany. However, taking into account some elements of the “new psychology” method—presented in more detail above in Sect. 5.2.2—one may identify further limitations of the critique formulated by Blaustein. Here, I will also consider the differences and similarities between these two approaches by juxtaposing them.

I will start with the limitations. Regarding the polemic presented above in Sect. 5.1, it may be observed that the most unjustified objection is that Husserl supposedly accounted for eide as “general objects” that exist in the “world of ideas.” In phenomenology, essences simply do not have a metaphysical nature. This allows us to reject both the ontological and methodological doubts raised by Blaustein. An idea should rather be understood in a methodological and thus technical sense as a result of applying a certain research procedure. This is why an essence is not a real object with its own real definition but a synthesis of what is given in the act of variation. Therefore, one may also reject Blaustein’s logical doubts. This dovetails with the fact that seeing essences (Wesenschau) does not have to do with “seeing” in the sense of sensory perception, even though one does see the analogy between these two types of acts. In spite of the fact that the two acts are not equated, seeing essences is not a schematic representation (as understood by Blaustein) because it enables accounting for an a priori as “this here” (Dies-da).⁷⁷ Hence, one may also reject the epistemological objection formulated by Blaustein. On the other hand, what seems to remain valid is Blaustein’s psychological observation that an essence is a correlate, i.e., an intentional object, of relevant acts. However, the fact that it is a correlate does not mean that an essence is nothing more than a psychic entity. In Husserl’s account, essences are irreal. Thus, in the end, Blaustein’s critique is again exposed in its limited scope.

Paradoxically, however, in his critique, Blaustein borrowed many elements from the method described by Husserl. Thus, like Husserl, Blaustein stressed a strong connection between the psychological method and the experience of what is individual. Additionally, they both wrote about types and species (or genera) to explain the status of ideas (even though Blaustein eventually called for replacing the word “idea”—which he deemed to be unclear—with the more adequate “type”).⁷⁸ Both philosophers assumed that seeing essences or eidetic intuition does not prove axioms but can at best account for the state of affairs expressed by an axiom. Furthermore, they objected to the hypothetical-constitutive procedure in psychological descriptions.⁷⁹ They both distanced themselves from accepting induction at the beginning of an analysis, although they allowed for the possibility of introducing induction (pure induction in Husserl’s case), understood in a specific way, at further stages of research.⁸⁰ They both accounted for psychic life as a unity of lived experiences.

In sum, the analyses presented thus far lead to several conclusions. In spite of being targeted expressis verbis at Husserl, Blaustein’s arguments are limited and rather misinterpret his position. Considering the question of why Blaustein referred to Husserl in the first place, I defended the thesis that Blaustein was in fact aiming at a specific interpretation of the phenomenological method made popular in Poland by Ingarden, one that acknowledges the existence of essences as general objects. Finally, Blaustein not only refrained from rejecting the detailed procedures and descriptions developed by Husserl in his 1925 lectures in phenomenological psychology but also used them in his own original version of the rudiments of descriptive psychology. Considering these similarities, one should not forget that Blaustein’s descriptive psychology cannot be equated with Husserl’s phenomenology, even though, due to these analogies, it is clearly phenomenological in character. The two must remain separate because Blaustein did not accept the procedures of eidetic or transcendental reductions. If that is the case, how can Blaustein’s descriptive psychology be understood? To address this question, I first refer to the discussion between Blaustein and Irena Filozofówna⁸¹; the aim of psychology, thus understood, is to describe what is experienced and so to directly account for moments of lived experiences. We can look at the debate from a methodological point of view to read it as an illustration of Blaustein’s phenomenologically-oriented descriptive psychology.

5.3.2 The Blaustein–Filozofówna Debate: A Phenomenological Account

Filozofówna’s dispute with Blaustein can be read from two perspectives. More precisely, one may understand it either as an attempt to describe the structure of certain types of aesthetic experiences, e.g., watching a theater play, or as a discussion on the basics of a method that is relevant to consciousness studies. Regarding the former, Filozofówna’s main argument consists in arguing for judgments as necessary moments of every lived experience. She seemed to claim that Blaustein comprehends acts as intentional, i.e., as presenting their objects as “such and such”; in her opinion, however, by doing so, he confused presentations with judgments. I will discuss this part of the Blaustein–Filozofówna debate in Chap. 9. Here, I will focus on attempting to analyze Filozofówna’s argument that Blaustein adopted an ineffective method, as he was too hasty in accepting unjustified hypotheses. In other words, Filozofówna undermined how Blaustein’s method should be implemented.

In an interesting comment on the Blaustein–Filozofówna debate, Adam Wiegner rightly observed that both scholars indeed discuss the structure of aesthetic experience, yet their polemics also address methodological issues. For Wiegner, they attempt to define basic methodological claims in studies on consciousness.⁸² After a few decades of constant development of the descriptive or—as he put it—functional psychology of Brentano, Twardowski, and Husserl, it was evident that the descriptive approach had proven its claims and its advantage over the phenomenal psychology formulated by Mach. Whereas functional psychology is focused on acts, phenomenal psychology investigates the contents of consciousness. Wiegner remarked that both Filozofówna and Blaustein advocated for the former since they accepted that acts are intentional phenomena. According to Wiegner, the main disagreement between them arose in the question of how to describe acts: either descriptions are always partial and therefore have to be supplemented by hypotheses (Filozofówna) or they address a unity or a whole that is given directly, and for this reason, a phenomenologist should accept as few hypotheses as possible, if any (Blaustein).⁸³

In her criticism, Filozofówna indeed accused Blaustein of putting forward too many unjustified hypotheses to describe imaginative presentations. First of all, she criticized the concept of matter as an inseparable part of lived experience. From Filozofówna’s point of view, Blaustein introduced this hypothetical element to explain the phenomenon of grasping or apprehending presenting content.⁸⁴ In her reply to Blaustein, she even referred to matter’s function as a “hypothetical function of hypothetical matter” (hipotetyczna funkcja hipotetycznej materii).⁸⁵ In contrast to Blaustein, she stated that matter functions like judgments, and only judgments can be the basis of lived experience. She went even further by claiming that there is simultaneously a variety of clear and unclear judgments in every experience, and it is impossible to count them all.⁸⁶ If one accepts judgments as moments of lived experiences, the phenomenon of the directedness of lived experiences is explained, and no further descriptions are necessary. However, the description has to be, as she put it, as “simple” as possible. Filozofówna wrote:

The boundary between description and explanation is fluid, especially in the field of psychology. Mental phenomena are such an elusive reality that if one tries to put them into words, one is condemned to use metaphors. In such conditions, it is still doubtful whether there are “accurate” descriptions or unjustified hypotheses, and it is impossible to decide which is the case on many occasions. Perhaps the simplicity of the description, which often serves here as an explanation, should be decisive.⁸⁷

Given the claim of “simplicity,” Filozofówna finally postulated the use of “Ockham’s razor” against Blaustein’s imaginative presentations since such presentations can be described more simply, i.e., as a combination of perceptual presentations and judgments. This argument does not concern us here. The postulate raised by Filozofówna also plays another role. For her, the descriptions formulated by Blaustein bear the mark of subjectivism or latitude. Filozofówna stated that even if Blaustein held that he sees imaginative presentations, she does not see them at all.⁸⁸ To get around this problem, one has to accept a theory that explains a whole group of lived experiences in the simplest way. If Filozofówna’s criticism is correct in the context of phenomenology, it can be rephrased as follows: (1) a phenomenological description is (too) often hypothetical instead of essential or actual; (2) as such, it falls into subjectivism, and for this very reason (3) it should be guided by the rule of simplicity, which is objective, rather than the rule of adequacy, which seems to be subjective. How does Blaustein respond to this criticism?

Before addressing this question, it should be noted that Filozofówna was right in claiming that Blaustein comprehended hypotheses as being necessary when describing phenomena. In his Przedstawienia imaginatywne [Imaginative Presentations], he explicitly described the matter of an act as a hypothetical element which has been ascribed the function of apprehending the object.⁸⁹ However, again, the Filozofówna–Blaustein debate did not address the problem of whether hypotheses are necessary: it addressed how they may be verified and justified in consciousness studies. Blaustein held that hypotheses are “absolutely essential and useful” (nieodzowne i bardzo pożyteczne), but they are justified only on the basis of rigorous description.⁹⁰ For him, a description elucidates a phenomenon which can be explained only by a hypothesis. In other words, a description has to be adequate; if it is insufficient, one has to put forward a hypothesis, but this has to follow from or be based on the description. If the description is indeed insufficient and one has to ask about the functions or causes of a phenomenon, one has to overcome the descriptive level to accept a hypothesis.⁹¹ For Blaustein, any hypothesis is justified on the basis of a concrete description, whereas for Filozofówna, a theory is sufficient to accept a hypothesis. In other words, according to Blaustein, descriptions are the ultimate justificatory factor in phenomenology. For this reason, he did not accept Filozofówna’s postulate to use “Ockham’s razor,” since this tool is useless in the field of phenomena; rather, one has to describe the richness of phenomena.⁹² By claiming this, Blaustein questioned charges (1) and (3), as defined above. Thus, in contrast to Filozofówna, to justify hypotheses, a description should be as rigorous as possible, and the simplicity rule is inconsistent with the phenomenological demand that phenomena are accounted for in their fullness.

To omit the problem of subjectivism, i.e., charge (2), as defined above, Blaustein attempted to show that description is direct and addresses the requirement of what one may call psychological reduction, which consists in suspending the subjective perspective. Husserl did not use this phrase much. In a text written on January 28, 1926, he explicitly comprehended transcendental reduction as being preceded by psychological reduction, which consists in grasping “my pure subjectivity” as part of “this human being.”⁹³ Thus, psychological reduction is a procedure which allows one to bracket one’s personal, concrete, psychic life to comprehend it as pure subjectivity. Admittedly, Blaustein did not use this phrase, but his arguments seemed to accept this phenomenological tool. For him, the fundamental task of any consciousness study is to describe what is experienced and thus to directly account for moments of lived experience. The description is based on introspection and retrospection by taking note of what is currently experienced.⁹⁴ Blaustein understood introspection as clear and explicit seeing, and he considered it infallible.⁹⁵ Retrospection also allows ongoing lived experiences to be captured. Due to the direct nature of both forms of cognition, descriptions should be free of (unnecessary) hypotheses and should focus on what is given. Of course, one may notice that the reference to introspection and retrospection led Blaustein back to the descriptive-psychological path. However, the general idea here mirrors, for instance, Husserl’s aim to clarify the phenomenon of experience using a reference to introspection that abandons psychologistic consequences; in Husserl’s view, introspection exceeds someone’s concrete psychic life.⁹⁶ With this in mind, one may read the emphasis that Blaustein put on introspection and retrospection in the same manner. If this reading is indeed right and Blaustein’s reference to introspection is analogous to Husserl’s idea, for Blaustein, as for Husserl, describing the psyche reveals structures of consciousness which are not mere psychic entities of an individual person; by doing so, description based on introspection transcends the particular life of an individual. This last point is evident in Blaustein’s discussion with Filozofówna, where he implicitly formulated the postulate of the universality of psychological description. For him, this means that universality entails the analysis of types of experiences instead of essences of phenomena. The procedure makes it possible to reject the charge of subjectivism, according to which the object is reduced to mere concrete psychic experiences. It may be added that the description postulated by Blaustein is based on whether it is adequate for the investigated object and is “fertile,” i.e., whether it can be applied to “numerous related problems.”⁹⁷ By contrast, for Filozofówna, the description is “simple” if it entails a hypothesis which enables one to exclude vague notions and reduce (via “Ockham’s razor”) unnecessary phenomena.

5.3.3 A Return to Descriptive Psychology?

As shown above, Blaustein’s method can be read from a phenomenological point of view. However, this interpretation still demands a far-reaching compromise, i.e., rethinking the basic terms of descriptive psychology. One alternative way of interpreting Blaustein consists in treating his philosophy not as phenomenology but in terms of only descriptive psychology. Thus, one may hold that Blaustein indeed studied Husserl’s writings, but he was dissatisfied with their methodological value or even their thematic scope, and for this reason, he ultimately returned to descriptive psychology. A proponent of this interpretation could argue that, for Blaustein, descriptive psychology presents a more promising research program. By holding this, one in fact rejects Wieczorek’s thesis; as shown in Chap. 3, for Wieczorek, Blaustein “naturally” adopted phenomenology because he was dissatisfied with descriptive psychology.⁹⁸ Contrary to Wieczorek, Blaustein appears to be a strong critic of Husserl and a loyal student of Twardowski. Elsewhere, I have argued that a comparable thesis should be supported, and Blaustein’s position should be read as a reappraisal or renewal of descriptive psychology in the context of Twardowski’s students.⁹⁹ After a thorough re-examination of my early arguments, however, I would prefer to revise my radical interpretation. In short, I would now contend that it is not entirely right to think of Blaustein exclusively as a descriptive psychologist. To show this, it is worth discussing a few points.

First of all, one cannot ignore the clear parallels mentioned in Sect. 5.3.1. The fact that Blaustein’s theory resembles, to some extent, the project of phenomenological psychology as discussed by Husserl in his 1925 lectures suggests that he was inspired by Husserl’s project. It can also be argued that as Blaustein was trained in descriptive psychology by Twardowski in Lvov, after his arrival in Freiburg im Breisgau, he did not notice the important shifts in methodology that had been introduced by Husserl. To justify this claim, it must be mentioned that in one of his letters to Twardowski, he listed the name of his Lvov teacher, together with Husserl and Stumpf, as “descendants (potomkowie) of Brentano.”¹⁰⁰ I think that this was no mere façon de parler. This means that Blaustein saw all three scholars as having developed philosophical projects in line with Brentano’s. For this reason, the differences between their respective theories are dominated by overlapping parallels. After all, they agreed that one has to employ description rather than explanation in analysis; next, they emphasized what is concrete, e.g., experiences given in introspection (Brentano), directly introspected psychic facts (Twardowski), psychic functions (Stumpf), or phenomena (Husserl). They took rather non- or even anti-metaphysical positions; finally, they spoke of evidence as the epistemic basis of knowledge and the guiding rule of research. The list of further parallels is much longer, but the point is that Husserl’s phenomenology could present a reformulation of descriptive psychology for Blaustein. If so, Husserl’s psychological reduction, in Blaustein’s eyes, could be equivalent to Twardowski’s rejection of subjectivism; moreover, the role that Husserl ascribes to a “pure kind” (reine Art)¹⁰¹ (or a genus¹⁰²) seems to be parallel to the role that “types,” understood as lower species, play in the method of descriptive analysis employed by Twardowski¹⁰³ and Blaustein.¹⁰⁴ Of course, there are differences,¹⁰⁵ yet in Blaustein’s comment on Twardowski, Husserl, and Stumpf, he attempted to emphasize continuations.

In Blaustein’s writings, there are also a few themes which stem from Husserl and which cannot be found in Brentano or Twardowski. Just after declaring that “[…] phenomenology is possible only as an empirical, descriptive science,” in his lecture (discussed in more detail in Sect. 5.1) on the phenomenological method, Blaustein noted that lived experiences are given in “pure consciousness.”¹⁰⁶ It is hardly possible that he understood pure consciousness exactly as Husserl did, i.e., as the result of using phenomenological reduction; rather, he operated with the general idea that the subject matter of psychological inquiry is consciousness grasped “purely,” i.e., despite causal relations. In any case, the term “pure consciousness” is not present in Brentano’s or Twardowski’s writings, but it is present in Husserl’s texts. More importantly, Blaustein seemed to be inspired by Husserl when he redefined the subject matter of his psychology: Blaustein investigates not only content (like Stumpf) or acts (like Brentano) but also objects of consciousness. This type of psychology could be labeled “object-oriented psychology.” However, what is crucial here is not Twardowski’s distinction between actions and products. In his Das Gotteserlebnis in Hebbels Dramen, Blaustein was clear that the noematic, i.e., object-directed, perspective deepens a mere noetic, i.e., act-oriented, investigation.¹⁰⁷ The use of noetic-noematic language here refers to Husserl. Blaustein developed this idea in his later text, “Das imaginative Kunstwerk und seine Gegebenheitsweise” [“The Imaginative Work of Art and Its Way of Manifestation”], written in German; there he held expressis verbis that one has to study—as is announced in the title of the text—the ways of manifestations (Gegebenheitsweisen) of the objects given in lived experiences.¹⁰⁸ He showed that the experienced object has specific ways of manifesting which are correlated with relevant presentations. Thus, to study lived experiences adequately, one has to describe the presented object as it is presented. Importantly, the problem of ways of manifestation (Gegebenheitsweisen) is Husserl’s original idea. It seems that this step, which accounts for the object of psychology in a specific modus, i.e., “as,” determines the phenomenological nature of Blaustein’s descriptive psychology.

However, despite this and the many other similarities discussed above, two fundamental differences between the two projects still remain: while Blaustein treated the method of psychology as auxiliary, Husserl firmly claimed that phenomenology provides a foundation for other sciences. Both claims assume different functions with respect to experiments in psychology: whilst Husserl believed that eidetic-descriptive findings precede any empirical-explanatory findings, Blaustein sympathized with the claim that descriptions should be corrected through experiments. Indeed, when describing specific experiences, he himself used experimental methods and psychological interviews.¹⁰⁹ These differences indicate that, regardless of the similarities mentioned above, Blaustein’s project remains distinct. Both differences seemingly follow not from Brentano or Twardowski but from the heritage of Gestalt psychology. After all, Blaustein formulated his critique of the phenomenological method—as discussed in two lectures he delivered on April 28 and May 5, 1928, during meetings of the Polish Philosophical Society—under the influence of Gestaltists. In his letter to Twardowski, written on February 13, 1928, he noted that he had almost finished the text of the lecture that would later be presented at the meeting:

Frequent conversations about phenomenology with Stumpf, Hoffmann, Lewin, Baumgardt, etc. forced me to be increasingly precise about my own position. I have already written to the beloved professor that some of these scholars agreed with some of my theses and have taken a similar position. Now, I have systematically described them and presented them to Köhler. I received lively approval and encouragement to publish [this text]. For now, however, I will limit myself to delivering a lecture at the meeting of the epistemological section [of the Polish Philosophical Society] and initiating a substantive discussion on phenomenology at home [i.e., Lvov]. In this lecture, I try to discover and criticize the basic dogmatic assumptions of phenomenology.¹¹⁰

Blaustein’s words shows the background of his polemics against Husserl, i.e., exchanges with Gestaltists. Importantly, in his opinion, phenomenology is “dogmatic” since it accepts unjustified assumptions, and by doing so, it falls into the petitio principii fallacy. Admittedly, his criticism is rather misleading, as shown in Sect. 5.2; however, it can be argued that Blaustein was actually attacking a particular interpretation of phenomenology which comprehends ideas as general objects that exist as timeless entities. More importantly—given that his critique was coined in dialog with Gestaltists—his rejection of essences can be understood as a declaration that phenomenology should be developed as a non-transcendental project. This would mean that phenomenology would be open to experiments, although it would stop being the basis of all sciences and become an auxiliary science in Blaustein’s philosophical psychology.

Blaustein’s position is well illustrated by his commentary on Kurt Schneider’s text “Die phänomenologische Richtung in der Psychiatrie” [“The Phenomenological Trend in Psychiatry”], which was originally published in 1925/26 in Philosophischer Anzeiger. Blaustein’s commentary was published in 1930/31 in Ruch Filozoficzny [The Philosophical Movement]. He wrote:

The author sketches the history of psychiatry in the last century and the main research results in the field of phenomenology. This trend [i.e., phenomenological psychiatry] arose under the influence of new tendencies in psychology, especially under the influence of the psychology of acts (intentional lived experiences), psychoanalysis, characterology, and Dilthey’s humanistic psychology. Only the term connects him [i.e., Schneider] with Husserl’s pure phenomenology because he deals with the description of real experiences, not their ideal essences. Instead, it [i.e., phenomenological psychiatry] is influenced by the descriptive psychological phenomenology of Scheler’s works. Using a number of examples, the author tries to show that the direction of psychology as a method of psychiatry is indispensable for this science.¹¹¹

From reading this passage and the self-commentary quoted above, one might well conclude that Blaustein’s “phenomenology” also had nothing to do with Husserl’s transcendental project. At least, to paraphrase Blaustein’s own words, “[o]nly the term connects him with Husserl’s pure phenomenology.” One may claim that Blaustein’s position is in fact close to that of Schneider. Blaustein used a method which critically elaborates “pure” phenomenology; as a result, he rejected eidetic and transcendental forms of reduction. Paradoxically, however, this radical step broadens the scope of phenomenology and enables one to adopt it in psychology. If one reads the phenomenological theme in Blaustein’s philosophy in this way, it appears that he anticipated today’s attempts to apply phenomenology in non-philosophical disciplines, first and foremost by suspending the claim of reduction.¹¹² Certainly, Blaustein’s phenomenology does not repeat the path of Husserl’s ideas.***

It can be concluded that descriptive psychology and Gestalt psychology shaped Blaustein’s concept of phenomenology not as an a priori eidetic or transcendental project but as an empirical and descriptive psychology. Here, the term “empirical” denotes no form of sensualism of any kind but refers to the postulate of the rigor and absolute adequacy of descriptions of experiences. Thus understood, the “empirical” is the opposite of the “abstract” rather than—as it might seem—“a priori” or “transcendental.” Blaustein’s shift in understanding the method of phenomenology can be seen as an attempt to bridge the gap between the Twardowskian descriptive method and Husserl’s reduction. In this vein, Krzysztof Stachewicz holds that both methods admittedly have some parallels, but there are also irreducible differences; for him, whereas Twardowski emphasized empirical verification, Husserl was focused on non-empirical or a priori conditions.¹¹³ When he rejected Husserl’s apriorism, Blaustein bridged the gap. Of course, this understanding seems to allude to Brentano and his psychological project. However, a significant difference should be kept in mind. In a description, a psychologist, as understood by Blaustein, analyzes phenomena and psychic life by noting moments, i.e., the dependent parts, of an experience; thus, his method allows one to experience what is experienced as experienced. In the present chapter, I have argued that the idea of accounting for the subject matter of psychological inquiry in a specific modus, namely, “as,” ultimately constitutes a clearly phenomenological dimension of Blaustein’s philosophical psychology. Overall, it can be concluded that the method used by Blaustein is related (as it rejects transcendental reduction) but not identical (as it accepts experiments as correlated with descriptions) to the project presented by Husserl in the first edition of his Untersuchungen. Both psychological and phenomenological trends build a “double root” of his original methodological proposal.¹¹⁴

Finally, it is worth posing the straightforward question of whether, given the findings of the present chapter, Blaustein was indeed a phenomenologist. Is it appropriate to speak of his phenomenology? Dąbrowski emphasizes that “Blaustein was never a phenomenologist in the full sense of the word, although the impact of phenomenology on his research results is clear.”¹¹⁵ I do not think this opinion gives justice to the complexity of Blaustein’s philosophy. Scholars who consider him to be a “famous phenomenologist,” such as Schaar, or those who describe his method as “quasi-phenomenological,” such as Pokropski, probably go too far. Although Blaustein did not use the tools of epoché, imaginative variation (like Husserl), or investigation of the content of ideas (like Ingarden), he followed the basic intuition that analysis should be focused on an object as it is presented or manifested in experience. This is why it may ultimately be concluded that—due to the borrowing from and references to Husserl’s philosophy—Blaustein’s project of descriptive psychology is phenomenological. Walter Aurbach, a colleague of Blaustein, coined the term “a phenomenologist in a broad sense” to refer to scholars who, as he put it, are not happy to accept Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole.¹¹⁶ Blaustein was seemingly a “phenomenologist in a broad sense” who did not follow Husserl uncritically and who applied phenomenology in psychology. It should therefore not be surprising that, at the beginning of his book on Husserl, he emphasized 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.”¹¹⁷ We must always bear this statement in mind if we are to understand Blaustein correctly. His philosophy is at once phenomenological (in a broad sense) and descriptive-psychological (also including the heritage of the Gestaltists and humanistic psychology).