An Introduction to Einfühlung

Abstract

Robin Curtis is professor of the theory and practice of audio-visual media at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. In this essay she delineates the evolution of the aesthetic category of Einfühlung (empathy) from its earliest stirrings in the mid-eighteenth century to its full blossoming in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the writings of such scholars as the psychologist and aesthetician Theodor Lipps and the architectural and art historians August Schmarsow and Wilhelm Worringer. Although it fell into disregard for most of the twentieth century, Curtis argues that Einfühlung still has insights to offer to this day, when reappraised in the light of current neurological research.

KEYWORDS:

• Einfühlung
• Empathie
• empathy
• Karsten Stueber
• Romanticism
• Friedrich Theodor Vischer
• Robert Vischer
• Rudolf Hermann Lotze
• Theodor Lipps
• August Schmarsow
• Wilhelm Worringer
• Jutta Müller-Tamm