Leopold Blaustein

Leopold Blaustein (1905-1942/1944) was a Polish-Jewish philosopher, aesthetician, and psychologist. He was among the last generation of Kazimierz Twardowski's students[1] and is also noted for his critique of Edmund Husserl's philosophy. His philosophical works are based on a combination of phenomenology and the analytical approach of the Lwów-Warsaw School of logic.[2]

Leopold Blaustein
Born1905
Lemberg, Austria-Hungary
Died1942 or 1944
NationalityPolish
Alma materUniversity of Freiburg, University of Lviv
Notable workHusserlian science: on the act, content and object of representations
SpouseEugenie Ginsberg
SchoolLvov-Warsaw School

Blaustein is also cited as a pioneer in the description of mental reception of motion pictures and radio programs.[3]

Background

Blaustein was born in 1905 into a Polish-Jewish family.[4] He was educated in Lvov and studied philosophy and German philology at John Casimir University.[1][4] In 1925, he was recommended by Roman Ingarden and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz to study under Husserl in Freiburg. For his Ph.D., he wrote the dissertation Husserlian science: on the act, content and object of representations.[5] He finished his education during his study visits in the city (1925) and in Berlin (1927-1928).[6]

The circumstance of Blaustein's death is still uncertain. Some sources claim that the Germans murdered him and his family in 1942.[3] Along with his wife Eugenie Ginsberg, he was identified as one of the philosophers of the Lvov-Warsaw School who died in Nazi ghettos.[7] There are also those who claim he committed suicide in 1944.[8]

Works

Twardowski exerted the most influence on Blaustein. One of the latter's most important work - Husserlian science: on the act, content and object of representations - was completed under his supervision. This work, which was published as a book in 1928, was divided into three: the historical reconstruction of the problem of the act, content, and object of presentations; the presentations of Husserl's theory; and, Blaustein's critique.[2] The distinctions between the act, content, and object of presentations is considered a subject that is close to his mentor.[3] Twardowski's influence is also evident in Blaustein's efforts to develop the full heuristic value of Twardowski's theory of intentionality.[1]

Blaustein was also impressed with Husserl as a person and his philosophical commitment but he doubted his philosophy. He became interested in Husserl's content theory during his investigation of phenomenology and produced his definition of the concept as a descriptive psychology that can serve to investigate lived experiences.[2] Blaustein would complete several original works on descriptive psychology.[9] One of his noted positions was his critique of Husserl's doctrine of constitution. He maintained that content is not dependent on consciousness but on the world.[2] Blaustein, in his investigations of the structure of lived experiences - would, however, use the phenomenological methods that Husserl developed, particularly those that were introduced in the first edition of Logical Investigations (1900-1901).[6]

The philosophy of Roman Ingarden influenced Blaustein's theories on act and object.

Until his death, Blaustein continued to engage Ingarden over the concept of act and object, which were developed in Husserl's works (e.g. Logical Investigations). In this debate, he maintained that the object of representation is not a part of act itself since it accompanies it.[10] Blaustein also introduced a revised version of Ingarden's theory of purely intentional objects by adapting it to imaginative intuition. He maintained that an imaginative object is also an intentional object due to the following factors:

  • the imaginative object is founded on an imaginative presentation;
  • it can be reproduced by aesthetic experience; and,
  • it can become an object of derivative intentionality once it loses its connection with imaginative intuition.[11]

Blaustein's conceptualization is, however, differentiated from Ingarden's purely intentional objects based on his notion that the object is a strictly psychic phenomenon.[2] Ingarden only indirectly linked objects to the psyche.[6]

Aesthetics

There are three dominant interconnected fields in Blaustein's works on aesthetics. These are the theory of aesthetic perception, the theory of attitudes, and the theory of representation.[12] His theory of aesthetic attitude holds that three kinds of perception have to be distinguished in our aesthetic commerce with various realms of art: perceptive, imaginative, and signitive ones.[13] Each of these, for Blaustein, are different and applicable to different artistic realms.[13] It is suggested that Blaustein's views on aesthetics are founded on his opposition to Husserl's transcendental idealism.[14]

Blaustein also posited that "concretization" is crucial in investigating an artistic work because its aesthetic perception assumes the form of one of its concretizations.[15] His theory addressed concretization in three contexts:

  1. in connection with ontological analyses dealing with the structure of different types of works of art;
  2. while investigating the process of getting acquainted with a literary work; and
  3. in connection with the aesthetic experience.[15]

Blaustein has been credited for developing a groundbreaking theory that described the psychological reception of motion pictures and radio programs.[5][3] Drawing from Ingarden's phenomenological approach, he investigated the perceptual processes and the aesthetic and extra-aesthetic feelings that accompany the reception of these media.[16] In Przedstawienia Imaginatywyne, he described the objects represented in pictures as quasi-spatial objects for the spectators or objects that rest in its own space and independent of the space surrounding the spectator.[17] This spatial conceptualization was described as peculiar, constituting a certain type of aperture in the spectator's space so that the space represented in the picture blends with the space occupied by the picture. Blaustein's magnum opus, Die ästhetische Perzeption, was completed in 1939[6] but was lost during World War II.[2]

Blaustein was also one of the first to recognize the educational role of the cinema, treating it as a cultural institution capable of altering the views of its audience.[16] Some of his works in this area include Representations of Imagination (1930), Schematic and Symbolic Representations (1931), and On the principles of humanistic psychology (1935).[5]

References
  1. Miskiewicz W. (2009) Leopold Blaustein’s Analytical Phenomenology. In: Lapointe S., Wolénski J., Marion M., Miskiewicz W. (eds) The Golden Age of Polish Philosophy. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2401-5_13
  2. Płotka, Witold; Eldridge, Patrick (2020). Early Phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe: Main Figures, Ideas, and Problems. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. pp. 163, 165, 169, 179. ISBN 978-3-030-39622-0.
  3. Coniglione, Francesco; Poli, Roberto; Woleński, Jan (1993). Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School. Amsterdam: Rodopi. p. 60. ISBN 90-5183-508-6.
  4. Moran, Dermot; Parker, Rodney K. B. (2016). Studia Phaenomenologica: Vol. XV / 2015 - Early Phenomenology. Bucharest: Zeta Books. p. 93. ISBN 978-606-697-020-4.
  5. Spiegelberg, Herbert (2012). The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, Third Edition. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 262. ISBN 9789024725359.
  6. Plotka, Witold (2020). "Approaching the Variety of Lived Experiences: On the Psychological Motives in Leopold Blaustein's Method". Gestalt Theory. 42 (2): 181–194. doi:10.2478/gth-2020-0015. S2CID 221257557 – via SCIENDO.
  7. Drabarek, Anna; Woleński, Jan; Radzki, Mateusz M. (2019). Interdisciplinary Investigations into the Lvov-Warsaw School. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 38. ISBN 978-3-030-24485-9.
  8. Z. Rosińska, Leopold Blaustein - where psychology and aesthetics meet (in :) L. Blaustein, A Selection of Aesthetic Writings, Universitas, Krakow 2005.
  9. "Poland, philosophy in - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy". www.rep.routledge.com. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  10. Calcagno, Author Antonio (2016-06-07). "Studia Phaenomenologica: Vol. XV / 2015 – Early Phenomenology". Phenomenological Reviews. Retrieved 2020-08-21. {{cite web}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  11. Płotka, Witold; Eldridge, Patrick (2020). Early Phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe: Main Figures, Ideas, and Problems. Cham: Springer Nature. p. 179. ISBN 978-3-030-39622-0.
  12. Rosinska, Zofia (2011). "Leopold Blaustein: Imaginary Representations; The Role of Perception in Aesthetic Experience". Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics. 48 (2): 199–243. doi:10.33134/eeja.84. ISSN 0014-1291.
  13. Mitias, Michael H. (1986). Possibility of the Aesthetic Experience. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 153. ISBN 978-94-010-8443-7.
  14. Sepp, Hans Rainer; Embree, Lester (2010). Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 167. ISBN 978-90-481-2470-1.
  15. Dziemidok, B.; McCormick, P. (2012). On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assessments. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 34–35. ISBN 978-94-009-2257-0.
  16. Haltof, Marek (1998). "Film Theory in Poland Before World War II". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 40 (1/2): 67–78. doi:10.1080/00085006.1998.11092175. JSTOR 40869963.
  17. Ossowski, S. (2012). The Foundations of Aesthetics. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 80. ISBN 978-94-009-9768-4.
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