The knowledge of other egos

Theodor Lipps

Edited by
Timothy BurnsTranslated by Marco Cavallaro

pp. 261-282

in: Rodney K. B. Parker, Ignacio Quepons (eds), Phenomenology of emotions, systematical and historical perspectives, The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 16, 2018.

Abstract

Theodor Lipps (1851-1914) was a German psychologist and philosopher. Both wellknown and well-read during his lifetime, he taught first at the University of Breslau (1890-94) and then succeeded Carl Stumpf as the Chair of General and Experimental Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (1894-1913). Lipps remained in Munich as a professor of psychology and philosophy until his death. Though his scientific output was wide-ranging, Lipps is primarily known for being a key figure in the development of empathy theory in German philosophy and psychology at the turn of the twentieth century. Although Lipps did not coin the term, it is to him that we owe the development of Einfühlung from a concept in aesthetics into a more robust theory of “feeling-in” in general and eventually into a theory of the experience of other selves.