ARON GURWITSCH
Richard M. Zaner
In retrospect, it may seem that Aron Gurwitsch was destined to come to the New School at the very time when great interest in phenomenology was beginning to blossom in the United States and the New School was still the only doctoral program featuring it. Greater detail can be found both in Embree’s biographical sketch of Gurwitsch1 and in my Gurwitsch essay several years ago.2
Aron Gurwitsch was born in 1901 in Vilna, Lithuania. His father soon moved the family to Danzig to escape the 1905–6 pogroms. Aron finished gymnasium in Danzig and then began at Berlin in 1918. There he became a protégé of Carl Stumpf, who sent him to Edmund Husserl at Göttingen, where he was deeply impressed by the lectures on “Natur und Geist.” However, the bureaucracy somehow did not permit him, now a stateless alien, to study there. Instead, he had to go to Frankfurt, where, fatefully, Gurwitsch came to work with Adhemar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein on brain-injured persons, which was very suggestive for Gurwitsch’s interest in the problem of abstraction.
He knew the famous patient Schneider, whom some call the hero of Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception (1945). In 1929, Gurwitsch finally finished his dissertation on “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich.” After its acceptance, it was sent to Husserl, with whom Gurwitsch subsequently met regularly until he was obliged to leave Germany.
After defending his dissertation, Gurwitsch married Alice Stern, whom he had met at a Zionist congress in Frankfurt, and moved back to Berlin where he had a stipend on which to write his Habilitationschrift. But when Gurwitsch’s stipend was cancelled in early 1933 by the new government, he and Alice fled to Paris—he had read Mein Kampf and was clear about what was shortly to occur. They were without passports, and he was again a stateless alien. He knew only Alexandre Koyré, whom he had met at the famous Davos meeting where Cassirer and Heidegger debated (Gurwitsch reported that Goldstein took him there to fatten him up!). He was able to give courses of lectures at the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques at the Sorbonne, which were attended by Merleau-Ponty. Gestalt theory was already known in France, but not Goldstein’s work. Meanwhile, Alice met and worked with Hannah Arendt, helping Jewish orphans go to Palestine, where she had herself worked on a kibbutz in the mid-1920s.
Earlier, Gurwitsch had met Dorion Cairns, Eugen Fink, and Ludwig Landgrebe in Husserl’s kitchen. Alfred Schutz began to visit Husserl only after Gurwitsch had already gone to Paris, but after Husserl encouraged the two to meet,3 the first and unfortunately undocumented phase of their long and deep friendship began.
Schutz immigrated to the United States first, and he later helped bring Aron and Alice. During the war, Alice worked in a factory, often commenting years afterward that there were wives of Harvard professors working on both sides of her. Aron managed to obtain various short-term positions, most often for teaching mathematics or physics at Johns Hopkins University (1940–42), Harvard (1943–46), and Wheaton College. Eventually, he became an assistant professor of mathematics at Brandeis University (1948–51), where he soon became an associate professor of philosophy (1951–59).4 While at Brandeis, Gurwitsch influenced Hubert Dreyfus and Harold Garfinkel.5 And in her acceptance of the Friedenspreis peace prize at the Frankfurt book fair in October 2004, Susan Sontag, also a Harvard student, spoke of having private seminars with Gurwitsch, whom she characterized along with others she met there as “models of the serious.”6
As Embree points out in his biographical sketch of Gurwitsch, the last dozen years of teaching at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City were clearly his happiest. Alfred Schutz had joined the Graduate Faculty in 1943 and became professor of philosophy and sociology. He had the idea of making the philosophy department a center for phenomenology. Dorion Cairns was added to the department in 1954, and plans were well-advanced to add a chair in 1960 for Gurwitsch. Then Schutz’s death brought Gurwitsch there as his replacement. The last part of Alfred Schutz’s idea was realized in 1969 when the Husserl Archive at the New School was established in Schutz’s memory, with Gurwitsch chairman of its board of directors. He taught with the Graduate Faculty regularly for twelve years.
As for his writings, the best thing is to refer you to the fine web site, http://www.gurwitsch.net/. This website was constructed for the Grupo Estudio de Gurwitsch/The Aron Gurwitsch Study Group, by Daniel Marcelle, and is currently maintained by him.
As I have indicated, the place in America where Gurwitsch truly belonged was The New School’s Graduate Faculty. When he arrived in 1959, I was already a student—working with Schutz, Werner Marx, Cairns, and Jonas, among others. Schutz had twice tried to bring Gurwitsch to the New School. The first time was in 1948 when he had already gained the support of Riezler and Kallen, but the faculty chose Karl Löwith instead. The second time was in January 1954, but as it happened, different factions in the faculty led to a vote over who should be invited to the Graduate Faculty, with Hans Jonas winning with nine votes compared to seven for Gurwitsch.7 So, it was not until 1959 that he finally was able to join the Graduate Faculty—where, together with Cairns and Werner Marx, it finally became the place for the serious pursuit of phenomenology, but, most sadly, without his dear friend, Alfred Schutz.
So far as I know, a list of Gurwitsch’s courses at the Graduate Faculty has not been compiled. Although I was almost through with doctoral coursework, I managed to take several of his seminars: one focused on the mathematization of nature from Galileo through Kant; another concerned the development of a phenomenological psychology. I was also able to attend his wonderful seminar on Kant’s first critique, and one on Bergson and William James. He also taught seminars on Leibniz’s Discourse on Metaphysics, Husserl’s theory of intentionality, and others, including courses such as “Conceptions of Mind in Modern Philosophy,” “History of Philosophy IV (Descartes-Kant),” “Philosophical Foundations of Modern Psychology,” and “Philosophy of Mathematics.” He also offered seminars on Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, Logical Investigations, and other texts.
During his years at the Graduate Faculty, Gurwitsch directed quite a few dissertations. I must mention that although Cairns was scheduled to direct my dissertation, things did not pan out that way, for he became incapacitated and I had to seek out another for that task. Gurwitsch came to my rescue and proved to be a remarkable mentor. He not only let me continue with my original plan to probe the historical roots of the phenomenon of embodiment. He also literally took over its oral examination, and left me in a second-row seat at this august proceeding! But not only that, he also wrote my doctoral exam8 (one question: the history of ideas from Galileo through Kant and Hegel), and vigorously defended my exhausted response to that question. He later stepped aside and asked the editors of Social Research to publish my very first article, which had already been accepted, instead of his, which came out a year later. “It vill,” he told me, “look much better for you vhen you seek a position.” It did. I must say, too, that he and Cairns were quite instrumental in the publication of my first book—my rewritten dissertation, which was accepted and is still available in the Phaenomenologica Series (#17) by Martinus Nijhoff.9
I was in 1961 the first of Gurwitsch’s doctoral students, and I was followed by a long list of outstanding graduates of that program. Among them were Fred Kersten, Lester Embree, Pina Moneta, Gilbert Null, Anthony Corello, William McKenna, and Osborne Wiggins. The latter two were Gurwitsch’s final doctoral candidates; they were, however, still writing when Gurwitsch made his final visit back to Europe, where he died in Zurich. He must have had a premonition, though, for he had asked me if I would take over their dissertation direction should he be unable to do so. I gladly agreed.
THE PROBLEM OF CONTINUATION
Both Gurwitsch and Cairns died in 1973, Cairns in January, Gurwitsch in June; Werner Marx, moreover, had left in 1964 to assume Heidegger’s chair at Freiberg. This might well have spelled the end of one of the richest and most important periods in the history of phenomenology in the United States. Gurwitsch was already cognizant of that possibility and had set to work in his last years with the Graduate Faculty to try and ensure the continuation of what had been well established.
An early attempt to have Maurice Natanson join the faculty was unsuccessful. Then, Robert Sokolowski came as a visiting professor, and Gurwitsch proposed him to colleagues. But they were unsympathetic and the effort died. By then, I was setting up a new humanities and social sciences in medicine program close by at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Gurwitsch called to meet with me in early 1972. We got together and he urged me to take over his position so that the tradition could be continued. He was most emphatic, but I was suspicious—not of him, but of whether the Graduate Faculty would truly support such an effort, and in particular if they would support funding for additional faculty.
As things eventually worked out, the Graduate Faculty was not sympathetic to Gurwitsch’s dream. It was not prepared to provide the kind of support needed to realize that dream. Hence, our discussions soon petered out, Gurwitsch left for his vacation, and his death truly seemed to end any possibility of continuation, at least in the way he had envisioned. By this time, however, phenomenology had put down many serious roots in other places, and thus the tradition did in fact not only continue but managed to flourish at a number of institutions.
WHAT I LEARNED FROM HIM
Merely as a meager beginning to this impossible chore, let me note how utterly unlikely it is for any student to have been as fortunate as I was. I was mentored by not one, not two, not even three, but five philosophers, all of them outstanding and original scholars by any scale of values. A mark of this has been the times I have been called on to contribute a piece of writing in honor of Alfred Schutz,10 Dorion Cairns,11 Aron Gurwitsch,12 Werner Marx,13 and Maurice Natanson14—philosophers set far apart from the run-of-the-mill and whose teaching and writings have given them all significant places in the development of philosophy and especially of phenomenology in this country.15
Acknowledging my own debt to such as these is not easy, so far-reaching has it been. I will get to Gurwitsch in a moment, but I must say at least a brief word about the others it has been my good fortune to have known as teachers. First, Schutz’s brilliant unraveling of sociality has been decisive for me in grappling with the “finite provinces of meaning” of medicine’s clinical and research practices, as was his penetrating explication of such matters as presence, the stranger, and intersubjectivity. Second, Cairns’s incredibly careful and detailed explication of the central place and significance of Husserl’s work has been, to say the least, decisive for me. Third, Natanson, who helped me discover my path at the outset, is one whose brilliant and wonderfully articulate writings have always been a model—as was his encyclopedic range of knowledge. Always intimidating, it still serves as the epitome of the true scholar. And Werner Marx, with whom I did not, unhappily, study as much as I had hoped, I remember mostly for his patient probing of Hegel and his explications of Heidegger; I vividly recall spending an entire semester grappling with just the introduction to Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes and, I think it can be said, finally ending up with something like real understanding.
As for Gurwitsch, I have tried more than once to let this great and gentle man’s genius be known, never succeeding but always wishing I could do so adequately at least once. I won’t succeed here, either, but I need to try once again. Which of his many brilliant ideas have most influenced my own thinking and writing? I have thought about this many times, and something like the following seems most responsive to that complicated question. Complicated and difficult, for the truth is that my thinking has been so deeply imbued not only by Schutz, Cairns, and Natanson, but also by Gurwitsch in unaccountable ways, in so many ways that I can no longer tell which is what or whose or even how. I long ago gave up the effort, but now I need to tell that story as best I can at this time in my life.
Some of you may know at least the title of the book of mine that seems to me to be the most difficult but most rewarding to read—The Context of Self, which has the most accurate sub-title I have ever written, A Phenomenological Inquiry Using Medicine as a Clue.16 Husserl’s method of taking something as a “clue” (Leitfaden) has most assuredly guided my own efforts from the time I first started publishing in 1961. In any event, while I still regard that book as something of a failure—I simply was not able, maybe not capable, at that time of doing what needed to be done and which I then only dimly understood—it was, all things considered, inspired and guided by a single rich idea, which was Gurwitsch’s native air: the idea of “field,” in particular of “context.”17 I continue to believe that most of my own work—after my discovery that, after years of thinking that Gurwitsch had not understood Husserl on the key point, and finally coming to appreciate that, to the contrary, he was in fact quite correct18—has been fundamentally guided by Gurwitsch’s remarkable analysis of the idea of “whole and part,” which, as is well known, so preoccupied Husserl in the fifth of his Logical Investigations.19
As even a cursory glance at the literature of more than one field of endeavor shows clearly—philosophy and any of the human sciences, much less medicine and most fictional works—the idea of “self” is among the most prominent yet is also among the least examined. This long puzzled me, and I set out to try and see what this was all about. By working through the many real enigmas so plaguing the idea of self, I gradually understood that Gurwitsch’s idea of “context” was fundamental. Not only, then, my book The Context of Self, but most of my subsequent writings were centrally guided by his insights, including my later notion that the most accurate and adequate expression of the complexities of human life are perhaps found in narrative, that is, in the stories we tell one another. Thus, my latest efforts owe their core idea to Gurwitsch’s exploration of context, contexture, field, and in particular his woefully brief but suggestive analysis of “incomplete contexts.”
Obviously, I can only hint at the range of phenomena his explication serves to elucidate. Plus, there are other key ideas that have long been basic to my efforts. I think especially of his elaboration of a notion key to Husserl’s phenomenology: namely, that at bottom, every theory must be capable of accounting for its own possibility. Or as Natanson used to say, philosophy cannot tolerate what is hidden, unexamined, ulterior, or taken-for-granted—including, importantly, itself. It is just this sense that leads into Husserl’s famous notion that phenomenology is presuppositionless, that is, it is the persistent pursuit of foundations—but by no means therefore their final disclosure. Though not within this tradition, R. G. Collingwood had it right: “Philosophy . . . has this peculiarity, that reflection upon it is part of itself . . . the theory of philosophy itself . . . is an inevitable [problem for itself].”20 Gurwitsch’s consistently articulated point was that phenomenological inquiry is precisely what must be undertaken in response to that “inevitable” problem.
In my own efforts to understand this idea more fully, I was eventually led to the very same set of phenomena to which Gurwitsch’s idea of “context” also led: the idea of “self,” which, phenomenologically explicated, ineluctably leads strictly not only to Husserl’s method of free-phantasy variational inquiry,21 but also into what Collingwood called “reflection.” I came to think that the notion of reflexivity itself is key. Again, though, this must remain a mere hint at the treasure lying within that idea and the methods suggested for probing it more fully.
Most of Gurwitsch’s career was, I think, devoted to the examination of these two ideas so fundamental to the very idea of philosophy: that of context, which led him to his probing critique of Husserl’s early explorations of whole and part and to his own great study, The Field of Consciousness; and that of the task of accounting for the very possibility of philosophy itself. In any event, these two notions have certainly played a most fundamental role in my own work.
TO CONCLUDE, THERE IS THIS . . .
I have not tried to lay out for you what Gurwitsch himself saw by way of the direction of his own work, not even of those he wrote toward the end of his richly varied life. Clearly, much of his career was indebted to his work within the early years of Gestalt psychology and especially with Carl Stumpf. Indeed, it could without exaggeration be said that his body of writings is an in-depth exploration of the very idea of “wholeness” (Gestalt). It is in view of that, indeed, that I came to one of my main critiques of his work, namely, that by being so focused on the idea of the “whole,” he never quite appreciated that for the most part our lives are chock-full not of fully-formed wholes but of incompleteness. Most wholes and parts, in other words, are not yet quite the wholes we most often conclude they are; they are, rather, incomplete wholes; wholes, so to speak, still and perhaps always on the way—in Marcel’s phrase, en route merely. And, in appreciating this, we approach much more closely, I think, to the real character of the “whole-part” relation, to the essential feature of “Gestalten.”
Gurwitsch himself hinted at this. One can best appreciate the significance of “context” (or, as Gurwitsch prefers to say, “contexture”) by turning precisely to cases of incomplete contextures: a melody in the course of its being played, a face incompletely drawn, a sentence the last part of which is left unstated, and so on. But why is this the “best” way to appreciate what “contexture”—and that means also, “field”—is all about? There is in each case not only an experienced incompleteness but, more important, a tendency toward completion that he, with Wertheimer and other Gestaltists, termed “good continuation.” All such instances, Gurwitsch wrote, appear “as in need of support and supplementation along the lines of, and in accordance with, their functional significance.”22
How is it that such “good continuation” is constituted in the first place? But this question—clearly akin to his insistence that every theory, to be genuine, must be capable of accounting for itself—to which Gurwitsch does not seem to have had a clear response, must be taken up at another time and place. However one may respond, moreover, it must be emphasized that it was Gurwitsch’s work and its guiding ideas that lead to it and, it may be, somehow contain its basic response. For myself, I am increasingly convinced that there is indeed such a response in his work, but it is one that will require a good deal more probing and examining that I have yet been able to bring to this task. And I think that the basic response will lie within the subtle interstices of reflection, of reflexivity, and free phantasy, which in the end constitute the core meaning of wholeness, of context and contexture, and the method of their discovery and disclosure.
NOTES
1. Lester Embree, “Biographical Sketch of Aron Gurwitsch,” in Life-World and Consciousness: Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. Lester E. Embree (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972), xvii–xxx.
2. R. M. Zaner, “The Phenomenon of Vulnerability in Clinical Medicine,” Human Studies, (2006): 283–94.
3. “It was Edmund Husserl who urged me in 1935 to meet during my forthcoming trip to Paris Dr. Gurwitsch, whom he considered to be one of his most promising students. I was immediately fascinated by his personality, his erudition, and the originality of his philosophical thought. Since then I have had the privilege to follow the development of his work. I read great parts of his forthcoming book and am deeply convinced that his theory of the field of consciousness is one of the few genuine achievements in the realm of phenomenological philosophy which continues Husserl’s work.” Alfred Schutz to Kurt Riezler, Dean of the Graduate Faculty of the New School, November 12, 1948, in Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939–1959, ed. R. Grathoff (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 106. Horace Kallen also developed a high opinion of Gurwitsch in this time. Idem, 127, 7, 132.
4. One of his students in those days recalled that “with his Central European accent and melodramatic mannerisms, philosopher Aron Gurwitsch was an impersonator’s dream. In the first meeting of one class we felt sure he was discussing the philosophic concept of ‘essence’ until he startled us by referring to ‘Essence und Shparta.’ As a Phenomenologist for whom all reality was ‘bracketed,’ he scoffed at formal academic distinctions: ‘In ze beginning God created ze departments!’ Nor did he have a high opinion of university administrators: ‘Zey are ze hotel manatchers!’ We imagined him pacing the hallway with his cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, puffing away, but being badgered by the janitor, Saldi, trailing after him and saying, ‘Sorry, Dr. Gurwitsch, no smoking in Science Hall.’ He would look back, snort, and continue smoking, saying, ‘Vut does he know about philuzuphy?’ And in the variety show Hi Charlie, he was depicted giving his usual intro in the basic Phil class, but with a twist: ‘Zis is the story of philuzuphy—philo meaning luff, Sophie being a Russian peasant girl.’ Gurwitsch would doubtless have said, as he often did, ‘Zis is past a joke.’
“And then there was the time—this really happened, I was there—when he came into class, wrote on the blackboard the number ‘1493,’ turned to us with a supercilious, gold-toothed half smile and asked in a deep and somber voice, ‘Fourteen ninety-sree. Vot is ze significance of zis date?’ We were all stumped, and he was beside himself with smug contempt. ‘Vot do zey teach you in zees American high schools?’ he snickered, snorting several times to rub it in. Finally, one brave soul, Burt Berinsky, raised his hand to reply and offered the only possible lame answer that had occurred to us all: ‘Year after Columbus discovered America?’ To which Gurwitsch reacted with a rumble of dismissive laughter. Finally, after pausing for dramatic effect, he revealed the ‘correct answer’: ‘Fourteen ninety-sree; ze fall of Constantinople!’ ‘But sir,’ we protested, practically in unison, ‘That was 1453.’ He looked back at the blackboard, realized he was trapped, turned to us undaunted, and said with a smile, ‘And vot is forty years to me?’” http:alumni.brandeis.edu/web (accessed January 16, 2007).
5. “Tutorial meetings with Aron Gurwitsch began in 1946. The dissertation and subsequent EM [ethnomethodological] studies originated in phenomenologically tutored concerns with description and analysis of the coherence of objects. These were directed to their practical objectivity and practical observability. Carried out by deliberately misreading Gurwitsch’s The Field of Consciousness, Part Two, Some Principles of Gestalt Theory.” Harold Garfinkel, Ethnomethodology’s Program, ed. and intro. Anne Warfield Rawls (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 257.
6. S. Sontag, “Between Europe and America: The Friedenspreis Acceptance Speech,” Just Response, October 19, 2003, justresponse.net/Sontag.html.
7. Schutz wrote to his friend: “Things have changed pretty drastically since my last letter to you. Yesterday we had committee and faculty meetings, and contrary to my expectations it came to a vote. I am sorry to report that we suffered an honorable defeat. In the committee meeting I managed to convince them that you and Jonas be recommended pari passu as the only candidates. Albert Solomon supported me in this meeting and in the faculty meeting in the most commendable manner. Jonas had the strong support of Leo Strauss and his clique” (Grathoff, Philosophers in Exile, 223).
8. Probably because there was little experience on such matters before my time—I was the first doctoral candidate since Werner Marx completed his nine years previously—it was not clear just what such exams should include and exclude.
9. R. M. Zaner, The Problem of Embodiment: Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body, Phaenomenologica 17 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964; [new edition, 1971]).
10. I was honored to deliver an Inaugural Address for the Alfred Schutz Memorial Center: The Husserl Archives, Graduate Faculty, The New School for Social Research: “Alfred Schutz,” 1969; in addition, I participated in the volume honoring his memory with an article, “The Phenomenology of Epistemic Claims: And Its Bearing on the Essence of Philosophy,” in Phenomenology and Social Reality: Essays in Memory of Alfred Schutz, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 17–34.
11. Fred Kersten and I edited the volume Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism; Essays in Honor of Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), to which I contributed the essay “The Art of Free Phantasy in Rigorous Phenomenological Science,” 192–219.
12. See my “Reflections on Evidence and Criticism in the Theory of Consciousness,” in Embree, Life-World and Consciousness, 209–30.
13. See my “A-letheia” and “Ode” (two poems), in Der Idealismus und Seine Gegenwart: Festschrift für Werner Marx, ed. U. Guzzone, B. Range, and L. Siep (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1976), 452–54.
14. See my “Interpretation and Dialogue: Medicine as a Moral Discipline,” in The Prism of Self: Essays in Honor of Maurice Natanson, ed. S. G. Crowell (Dordrecht & Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 147–18.
15. I have also been deeply honored to have contributed to several others, in particular honoring Hans Jonas, whose work is not so much directly within the phenomenological tradition. See my “Ontology and the Body: A Reflection,” in Organism, Medicine, and Metaphysics: Essays in Honor of Hans Jonas, ed. S. Spicker (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel, 1978), 265–82. Another figure, very much within phenomenology but not one of my own teachers, is Herbert Spiegelberg, with whose concerns some of my own have long intersected. See my “Hume and the Discipline of Phenomenology: An Historical Perspective,” in Phenomenological Perspectives: Essays in Honor of Herbert Spiegelberg, ed. P. Bossert (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 14–30.
16. R. M. Zaner, The Context of Self: A Phenomenological Inquiry Using Medicine as a Clue (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981). Amazingly, this book is still in print.
17. As Embree points out in his biographical sketch, Gurwitsch began to write his systematic work while at Harvard. This book (The Field of Consciousness), into which much of his unfinished Esquisse de la phénoménologie constitutive was incorporated, was written in English but first published in the French translation of Michel Butor, now a prominent novelist, as Théorie du champ de la conscience (Paris: Desclée, De Brouwer, 1957). It appeared later in English as The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1964).
18. First, in my “Context and Embodiment,” a memorial lecture on behalf of Aron Gurwitsch given at The Graduate Faculty in March 1978. After much reflection and correction, I eventually came to understand these issues much better and published “The Field-Theory of Experiential Organization: A Critical Appreciation of Aron Gurwitsch,” British Journal for Phenomenology 10, no. 3 (October 1979): 141–52.
19. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: The Humanities Press, 1970 [from the 2nd rev. ed., 1913]), esp. 441–47.
20. R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 1–2.
21. I have probed this to a degree in several articles: “The Art of Free Phantasy in Rigorous Phenomenological Science,” in Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism: Essays in Honor of Dorion Cairns, ed. F. Kersten and R. Zaner (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 192–219; and “Examples and Possibles: A Criticism of Husserl’s Theory of Free-Phantasy Variation,” Research in Phenomenology 3 (1973): 29–43. I have also devoted a more lengthy study to this, At Play in the Field of Possibles: An Essay on Free-Phantasy Method and the Foundation of Self (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2012).
22. Gurwitsch, Field of Consciousness, 151.