Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: … ESTHETIC EMPATHY AND ITS ORGANIC ACCOMPANIMENTS Translated by R. L. Shields from the original French of Vernon Lee in the Revue Pbilosophique, vol. briv (1907) I As already pointed out in the foregoing introductory essay, Professor Lipps laid the foundation of a new and real philosophy of beauty and art when he formulated his hypothesis of Empathy (Einfiihlung): an hypothesis which may be compared to that of natural selection in its originality and its far-reaching importance. To apply the idea of Empathy will be the principal method whereby the aesthetician of the future may solve the problems of morphology and artistic evolution: to analyse, verify, and refer the phenomenon of Empathy to more elementary phenomena of mind will be the main future task of psychology as applied to aesthetic activities. A new Darwin (and not without his Wallaces), Professor Lipps has given us the hypothesis of Einfiihlung; let us examine what he has done with his discovery and what it behoves us to do with it. II To begin with, let me remind the readers of my other studies on Professor Lipps, and let me explain to those who are unfamiliar with them, what is hidden beneath this very German and seemingly fantastic formula: Einfiihlung, or, as Professor Titchener has translated it, Empathy. This word, made up of fuhlen, to feel, and ein {herein, hinein), in, into, conjugated (sich einfiihlen) with the pronoun denoting the reflective mode–this word Einfiihlung has existed in German aesthetics ever since Vischer and Lotze; * and furthermore it has existed in literary phraseology at least since Novalis and the Romanticists. We shall see later on at the price of what ambiguity and deviation from his own thought Professor Lipps has bought the dangerous advantage…

Author: Lee, Vernon

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Media: Book
ISBN: 1230258418
Language: English
Pages: 114