ON FILOZOFOWNA'S CRITICISM OF BLAUSTEIN'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

Phenomenology originates in a critical assessment of descriptive psychology In this regard, scholars emphasize mainly the problem of psychologism. Yet, the question of a methodological divide between both approaches is rather at the margins of contemporary scholarship. In the present paper, I analyze and discuss the 1931-32 debate held by Irena Filozofowna and Leopold Blaustein as a case study of the phenomenology-psychology divide. The debate addresses the structure of aesthetic experience, as well as a methodological background for describing psychic life. My main task is to present arguments, concepts, and methodologies of the opposing positions. To do so, in Sect. (1) I outline biographical sketches of Filozofowna and Blaustein. They were members of the Lvov-Warsaw School, but they presented different approaches: whereas Filozofowna advocated descriptive and experimental psychology Blaustein-educated not only by Twardowski, but also by Ingarden, and Husserl-referred to the phenomenological tradition too. Sect. (2) summarizes Blaustein's phenomenological aesthetics. His approach consists in analyzing aesthetic experience as a combination of nonreducible presentations. His key observation is that different types of art require different presentations, say, imaginative, schematic, or symbolic. In Sect. (3), I analyze Filozofowna's criticism of this approach. Her main argument consists in emphasizing judgments as a necessary element of every lived experience. She claims that Blaustein comprehends acts as intentional, i.e., as presenting their objects as "such and such; but by doing so, he confuses presentations with judgments. In this section I follow Blaustein's replies to Filozofowna's criticism. In Sect. (4), I analyze Filozofowna's argument that Blaustein adopted an ineffective method, since he was too hasty in accepting unjustified hypotheses. In Sect. (5), I ask about a theoretical background of Filozofowna's criticism, and I juxtapose both positions.