Abstract
In his 1928 doctoral dissertation on Husserl, Blaustein reconstructs and critically discusses the main concepts of Husserl's phenomenology. One of the objectives of his criticism is Husserl's understanding of sensation or hyle as a real (reell) component of consciousness.
In my paper, I want to recapitulate Blaustein's criticism and confront it with the mature Husserlian account of hyle and sensations, especially from the lectures on passive synthesis. I argue that Blaustein's arguments are indeed convincing but only in relation to Husserl's theories of Logical Investigations and Ideas I (to which Blaustein exclusively refers).
They lose, however, their persuasiveness in the light of Husserl's later philosophy, more specifically in the light of his "genetic turn". It is possible to show that in the light of Husserl's late transcendental-genetic concept of consciousness and subjectivity, the thesis about the inclusion of hyle in consciousness takes on a meaning that descriptive psychology-to which Blaustein is exclusively attached-is unable to spell out.
In this way, the systematic and historical value, as well as the limits of Blaustein's criticism will be defined.