The article explores the influences and reinterpretations of Roman Ingarden’s philosophy that can be found in Leopold Blaustein’s work. The latter studied in Lvov under Ingarden and established a long‑life philosophical dialogue with his mentor. There is a common agreement in comparative literature on the two authors which claims that Blaustein was influenced by Ingarden mainly in the field of aesthetics. This author supports a different proposition that these influences were much wider and encompassed methodology and theory of consciousness as well. The article is divided into three main parts. First, Blaustein’s critique of eidetic methods in phenomenology is reconstructed. In this context, it is claimed that Blaustein’s arguments aim at Ingarden’s concept of phenomenology rather than at Husserl’s. Yet, even if Blaustein tended to understand phenomenology as descriptive psychology, and Ingarden – as eidetic analysis, they both seemed to agree that phenomenology consisted in rigorous description of the ways of how the objects are given in experience. Secondly, Blaustein’s argument against Husserl’s theory of consciousness is reconstructed. The author claims that the argument is based on Ingarden’s differentiation between ‘living through’ and ‘experiencing’ sense data. Finally, the author examines some points that connect or divide both aesthetical theories.

The article is an attempt to define reduction – a phenomenological methodological device – as the beginning of philosophy. The author considers such questions as: What motivates a phenomenologist to do reduction? Can one speak of philosophy before reduction? What is the essence of reduction? To answer these questions the author refers to Edmund Husserl and Jan Patočka, and tries to show that reduction is to be understood as an unmotivated expression of philosopher’s determination to overcome evidence inherent to natural attitude. The author argues that reduction enables one to perform a conceptualization of the world as such. Finally, reduction is defined as an attempt to take thinking seriously.