Theodor Lipps

This essay invites us to take Emmanuel Levinas’s thought in the spirit in which it was written: a profound engagement with Husserlian’s phenomenology and, secondarily, with Heidegger’s existential philosophy. Levinas’s central idea, whether called “responsibility,” “substitution,” or the “other-in-the-same,” has often been criticized as mere “smoke and mirrors”—an indemonstrable hermeneutics of ethical investiture. The purpose of this essay is to show how Levinas analyzed and exploited ambiguities in Husserl’s work on intersubjectivity and sensibility, in view of developing his own phenomenology. It is organized as follows: Following an initial discussion of Husserl’s importance as an intersubjective thinker, I situate briefly Husserl’s interest in, and his approach to ethics. I discuss his early equation of object sensations with sentiments of value. Section II turns to Husserl’s interest in “intropathy” (Einfühlung), a concept he appears to have adapted from Theodor Lipps (1851-1914). It was Einfühlung that allowed Husserl to attempt various phenomenological constitutions of the other person; just as it was Einfühlung that provided a bridge between his extensive investigations into intersubjectivity and passive synthesis. Section III develops Husserl’s phenomenology of passive synthesis in light of the evolution of his conception of the living present and of transcendental consciousness. Section IV returns to a moment (1908) when Husserl’s other, like Levinas’s other in 1961, was “absolute”. Section V discusses Einfühlung in Cartesian Meditation V and Husserl’s notes on intersubjectivity during the period 1921 and 1928. Section VI examines intropathy and pairing with the other’s body in view of self-objectification and what Husserl occasionally called Ent-fremdung (alienation). It ventures a rapprochement with concepts in Levinas’s later work (e.g., “recurrence”). Section VII explores Husserl’s approach to affective forces and a phenomenological “unconscious,” with an eye on Levinas’s 1974 resistance to the passive spontaneity of meaning-formation. Section VIII discusses Husserl’s reading of a master-servant relationship and the fusion of wills in praxis. Section IX examines his subjectivity “thrust into the interior” of another subjectivity, and the possibility that the Husserlian monad might have windows. Section X returns to Husserl’s conception of sensation, this time as originary (hyletic) contents that ‘feed’ the flow of time-consciousness. It summarizes Levinas’s interrogation of Husserl’s formalism, notably between 1905 and 1909. In each section, I emphasize ambiguities in Husserl’s thought and the way in which Levinas utilized these between 1961 and 1974. My hope is to sketch some of the lesser known, phenomenological sources of his thought, and thereby encourage discussion of Levinas as an unorthodox Husserlian.

In recent debates on empathy in various disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, psychopathology, cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, the discussion has focused on empathic experiences within the intersubjective context, either between two individuals or among groups. But this is only one side of the coin. Since ancient times, subject-object and even object-object relationships were described in a way that cultural anthropology has defined as “animation”, that rhetorics has named “personification”, and that we would today call “empathic”. The chapter aims at exploring these objectual implications of empathy. Pinotti particularly criticizes the projective “hydraulic” model of communicating vessels–from subject to object–which builds the hermeneutical mainstream paradigm of any theorization of such relationships. With recourse to alternative theoretical perspectives, such as Gestalt theory of expression, “realistic” phenomenology, and theory of symbolic forms, the author proposes a newfound characterological approach that engages with acknowledging the originary expressive and pathemic character of things in themselves, and therefore in defending the fundamentum in re of objectual empathy.

The first edition of The Sympathy of Things, published with V2_Publishing, was quickly sold out to later be published in a revised new edition with Bloomsbury: https://www.academia.edu/19435584/The_Sympathy_of_Things_Ruskin_and_the_Ecology_of_Design_2nd_ed_

In marked contrast to more recent discussions of cinematic affect, this article seeks to affirm the ineluctably passive experience of moving-images. In particular, the essay returns to the tradition of psychology and art history that developed, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, around the concept of Einfühlung. On this basis, I argue that cinema constitutes a kind of prosthetic perception whereby the brain is inhabited and vehicularized by images that are not its own.

This presentation looks at just one way that Munich psychologist and philosopher, Theodor Lipps, influenced the thought of early phenomenologists, viz., his concept of Einfühlung (empathy). Lipps originally posited empathy as important both in understanding aesthetic experience and in understanding why we succumb to certain geometrical illusions. However, he later expanded his theory, intending for the concept to explain the experience of other selves. I begin by explicating his theory that empathy operates in accordance with two tendencies or instincts, expression and imitation. In short, Lipps observed that mental states tend toward expression in the body and that embodied subjects tend to imitate expressions they observe. This imitation gives rise to a similar experience as the one perceived, and thus we come to understand experiences had by a foreign self (Fremderfahrung). Lipps theory had a significant impact upon early phenomenologists even if that influence was primarily negative. The second half of my presentation looks at the reception of Lipps’ theory by his phenomenological peers, Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Max Scheler. Husserl rejects Lipps’ theory because he believes that the Munich thinker’s emphasis on expression unwittingly assumes what Husserl takes it he is out to explain. Scheler and Stein share a similar worry vis-à-vis Lipps description of empathy in terms of imitation. If time permits, the longer version of the presentation goes through Husserl and Stein’s competing, positive accounts of empathy in an effort to argue that Stein is able to overcome difficulties that Lipps and Husserl cannot.

Two versions of this paper were presented at:
NASEP 2017: Seattle, WA (http://nasepblog.ophen.org/nasep-2017-conference/)

and

IASPES 2017: Portland, OR
(http://edithsteincircle.com/images/site/documents/RLFolder/EdithSteinConfereence_SaveTheDate.pdf)

The file uploaded represents the paper as presented at the latter.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the problem of the empathy from a philosophical point of view and particularly in the phenomenological meaning of it in Edith Stein. The first chapter offers a history of the development of the term. After having shown that already in the ancient ones the description of empathic acts can be found, the ethics of the simpathy of Hume and Smith are analyzed. In fact on the concept of simpathy of these authors they are founded the researches of Theodor Lipps, with who the term Einfühlung appears, in Italian translated in empathy. To this point it is taken in examination the phenomenological movement - in the detail the philosophers Husserl and Scheler - thanks to which the study of the empathic acts suffers a turn. In the second chapter it is analyzed the work of Edith Stein 'The problem of the empathy.' In it the young philosopher, being clearly influenced also by the teacher Husserl, she offers a new and original investigation, through which is clarified as the empathy is an experience on the generes. In the third and last chapter they are taken in examination the lapels of the phenomenological theory, through the thought of Heidegger and Levinas and their conception of intersubjectivity. To this point it is described the discovery of the mirror neurons and the consequences that it has also brought in philosophical field. In the last paragraph it is finally seen how the philosopher Dan Zahavi try to conjugate the phenomenology with the modern scientific discoveries, offering a minimalist approach of the empathy.

Nel panorama della filosofia contemporanea la figura di Theodor Lipps ha avuto un destino controverso. Mentre la storiografia filosofica sembra averlo relegato nella casella inventariale di esponente di spicco dello psicologismo di fine '800 e poco più, nella storia delle idee il suo nome è andato sempre più costantemente fregiandosi del titolo di "fondatore" del concetto di empatia...

5 Oltre al già ricordato Zahavi cfr. anche V. coSta, I modi del sentire. Un percorso nella tradizione fenomenologica, Macerata, Quodlibet 2009, pp. 105-116. Per una cooperazione tra fenomenologia e neurofisiologia si è invece espresso D. loHmar, Phänomenologie der schwachen Phantasie. Untersuchungen der Psychologie, Cognitive Science, Neurologie und Phänomenologie zur Funktion der Phantasie in der Wahrnehmung,

Für Theodor Lipps, Wilhelm Dilthey und EdmundHusserl ist die Erfahrung des Anderen eng verbunden mit dem Verstehen der Gefühle des Anderen: Ich mache die Erfahrung des Anderen, indem ich seine Gefühle verstehe. In der theoretischen Analyse der Erfahrung des Anderen stoßen diese Autoren jedoch immer wieder auf ein Problem. Die Erklärung erweist sich als zirkulär, weil sie jede Erfahrung des Anderen zunächst mit einer Wahrnehmung des anderen Körpers beginnen läßt. Erst Max Scheler gelingt mit einer radikalen Abkehr von der traditionellen Annahme eines Primats der inneren Erfahrung vor der äußeren Erfahrung eine plausible Analyse. Für ihn setzt die Erfahrung des Anderen zunächst am psychophysisch indifferenten Ausdruck des Anderen an. Schelers Denken erweist sich als attraktiv, weil es die Bedeutung von Gefühlen auf allen Ebenen der menschlichen Situation erhellt. Er kann zeigen, wie die verschiedenen Formen menschlichen Miteinanders von verschiedenen Gefühlen getragen werden: Gemeinsam geteilte Gefühle bestimmen unser Zusammenleben, lange bevor wir die Erfahrung des Anderen machen. Weil wir die Gefühle der Anderen verstehen, können wir die Erfahrung des Anderen machen. Und im Mitfühlen bzw. Teilnehmen an den Gefühlen der Anderen erfahren wir die Anderen als uns gleichwertig.

The paper questions Jacques Rançière's conception of the modern aesthetic regime as the correlation between visuality and language by returning to two fundamental figures of modern art history, Heinrich Wölfflin and Wilhelm Worringer. First, Wölfflin's " Prolegomena " (1886) is interpreted as an attempt to conceive architectural space in terms of affectivity. Second, this conception of space is related to the Th. Vischer's and J. Volkelt's theory of symbolism. Third, the paper integrates this aesthetics in a model that conceives form as force (Goethe). Fourth, this modulation of affectivity that justifies architectural space is confronted with Wilhelm Worringer's concept of abstraction. After all, this notion responds also to a conception of art in terms of space and affectivity. Finally, the paper debates the role of Wölfflin's " Prolegomena " from the perspective of architectural design and its relation to modernity.

Il tragico pirandelliano si contamina con il farsesco, attraverso una profonda metamorfosi delle sue strutture tradizionali, tuttavia sempre interna al campo specifico della tragedia, come una sorta di sviluppo, di «superamento», naturale. Dopo il recupero dei percorsi teorici sviluppatisi intorno a questa tematica nei saggi degli anni ’80 e la messa a fuoco del concetto schlegeliano di «farsa trascendentale» sarà ricostruito il nuovo campo semantico che il termine “tragico” acquista nell’universo pirandelliano.
Fondamentale per questa risemantizzazione è l’accostamento tra tragico e umoristico che affiora nella parte finale di Komik und Humor di Theodor Lipps (1898), un testo ancora inedito in Italia. Nel punto di passaggio dal comico all’umorismo, Lipps chiama in causa la categoria del tragico, definendolo «fratello» dell’umorismo, e teorizzando una «Erhabenheit», una «sublimità» anche del comico e dell’umoristico. Si tratta però, nel caso di Pirandello, di un sublime alla rovescia, in cui il tragico abita dentro una forma comica. Nel confronto con il genere della novella (che come la tragedia prende «il fatto, a dir così, per la coda») emerge la presenza ricorrente di una risata cupa, che agghiaccia. Se già in Leopardi «la disperazione aveva sempre nella bocca un sorriso» (Dialogo di Timandro e Eleandro), sul palcoscenico pirandelliano, più del pianto, diventa il riso la maschera teatrale del dolore: una smorfia grottesca, allegorica che, nell’impossibilità del tragico, lacera trame e corpi.

The concept of Einfühlung, which developed at the center of German aesthetics in the nineteenth century, is an effective concept in many fields from ethics to hermeneutics, from aesthetics to psychology, from phenomenology to art history. However, it becomes a concept that cannot be easily understood, with the changes it undergoes when passing from one field to another, from one language to another, but a rich concept that becomes very nutritious for many fields. To explain entirely the meaning of the concept of Einfühlung is as difficult as to follow the history of its development and these two difficulties are tightly interconnected. The concept of Einfühlung, on the one hand, is based on the concept of sympathy of David Hume and Adam Smith, on the other hand, J. Gottfried Herder and German Romanticism, and the aesthetics of R. Hermann Lotze and F. Theodor Vischer. The term Einfühlung, invented by Robert Vischer, became the more comprehensive theory with Theodor Lipps. Lipps regarded Einfühlung similar to the concept of sympathy. But Edward Titchener coined the term empathy as the translation of Einfühlung. Thus, on the one hand, the controversial distinction between sympathy and empathy became evident, on the other hand, in many languages the term empathy was increasingly adopted as translation of Einfühlung and used as a concept in itself. The concept of Einfühlung is also translated into Turkish in many different ways. Starting from this concept confusion, the history of the development of Einfühlung and its current heritage, as well as the Einfühlung-theory will be examined. In this way, it is aimed to elucidate the puzzling structure of the concept.

Since its introduction into English in 1909, as a translation of the German concept Einfühlung (feeling into), “empathy” has had a convoluted relationship to the concept of sympathy. This essay sorts some of this complicated conceptual history, with a focus on the primary subjects of their earliest overlap: late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century phenomenology and psychology. Out of this analysis emerges a surprising discovery. Within turn-of-the-century phenomenological conceptions of Einfühlung and empathy, on the one hand, and early American social psychological conceptions of sympathy, on the other, is a common concern to connect both concepts (respectively) to a claim about the recognition of other persons. Specifically, there is an attempt to use these concepts to explain our ability to experience other persons as just that—as “other.” Accordingly, the philosophical import and conceptual ramifications of this discovery are explored.

This presentation aims to show that Levinas, as a critical reader of Husserl, worked ‘phenomenologically’ by exploiting four ambiguities in Husserl’s thought. These ambiguities are as follows, they structure this presentation:
1. Husserl’s evolving conception of Einfühlung, alternately translated as intropathy or empathy; better, perhaps, would be in-feeling.
2. Husserl’s crucial distinction between perception and apperception, where “apperception” denotes what is co-given horizonally with perception, or: what you see and retain even if you’re not paying attention to it at a given time.
3. Husserl’s conception of pre-objective time, as the temporizing flow of consciousness, with at least its three aspects or ec-stases, its stretchings: retention, protention, and the standing-streaming present.
4. Finally, he exploits Husserl’s 1918-1927 research into passive synthesis, and notably into spontaneous association, memory, and affective forces.

Recent years have seen a resurgence in work on Edith Stein’s theory of empathy (Jardine 2015; Moran 2004; Szanto 2015; Taipale 2015; Vendrell Ferran 2015; Zahavi 2010) and of community and collective intentionality (Burns 2015; Caminada 2015; Calcagno 2014). Notably absent, however, is an account of the relationship between empathy and community. This chapter begins the work of making this relationship explicit. This can be of at least two-fold service to future research. First, it will show the conceptual richness and complexity of Stein’s theory of empathy, demonstrating that it cannot be confined to the theory-of-mind debate between simulation theorists, theory-theorists, and advocates of a direct perception model. Second, it may also serve to orient future research into collective intentionality by elucidating her original theory of communal experience. After establishing Steinian accounts of empathy and communal experience, I argue that empathy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for community.

In her frst research project, Edith Stein set out to defne the essence of Einfühlung (empathy) as an experience of another’s consciousness. Her objective was to justify the fact that such an act opened up the possibility of a transcendental subjectivity as a solution to the solipsism of consciousness, as Husserl had indicated. Stein found the key to that essence in the idea of originariety, but she tried to avoid the problem of aesthetic empathy by resorting to Scheler’s Idols of Self-Knowledge.
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1. Lipps e la psicologia della musica Ricordando la figura del maestro da poco scomparso, Georg Anschütz distingueva tre periodi nell'opera di Theodor Lipps: il primo, comprendente il ponderoso volume Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens (1883) e la prima edizione delle Psychologische Studien (1885), è pervaso da una visione associazionista e meccanicista della psicologia, influenzata da Hume e da Herbart; il secondo è caratterizzato dall'approfondimento di problemi di estetica, logica ed etica, la cui trattazione -soprattutto la dottrina dell'Einfühlung -darà a Lipps notorietà presso il pubblico filosofico ed artistico; il terzo, infine, che inizia all'incirca col nuovo secolo ed è segnato dal confronto con Husserl e la scuola di Brentano, rivela un Lipps sempre più impegnato in questioni metafisiche di portata universale 1 . In ragione di questa notevole evoluzione interna, Anschütz sottolineava la necessità di considerare l'opera di Lipps seguendone il complessivo cammino di pensiero, evitando cioè di ricercarne il verbo entro una sola -per importante e celebrata che fosse -delle sue opere o dottrine. Anschütz non mancava tuttavia di segnalare alcuni punti fermi, alcune costanti del pensiero lippsiano: la fedeltà al metodo introspettivo in psicologia, la dottrina dell'Einfühlung in estetica, il «monismo idealistico» mantenuto sul 1 G. Anschütz, «Theodor Lipps», in Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 34, 1915, pp. 1-13.

Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir.

Il volume analizza il problema del suono nella filosofia tedesca, dalla Critica del Giudizio di Kant alla psicologia della Gestalt. Vengono prese in esame la filosofia della natura del romanticismo e dell’idealismo, la psicologia filosofica della seconda metà del secolo e infine la scuola descrittivo-fenomenologica del primo Novecento. Il quadro che ne risulta è quello di un dibattito molto vivace che tocca fondamentali questioni di fisica acustica, psicologia della percezione ed estetica musicale, mettendo a confronto molti dei massimi autori del secolo. Tra i temi affrontati, il senso dei rapporti numerici insiti nelle relazioni tonali, l’indagine sui processi percettivi e cognitivi legati alle figure armoniche e melodiche, il significato estetico e metafisico del sentimento musicale. Sullo sfondo, le grandi trasformazioni nella prassi musicale del tempo e le notevoli conquiste della scienza acustica, delle quali i filosofi, in diversa misura, furono generalmente consapevoli.

This article discusses our experience of other people from both phenomenological and psychoanalytic perspectives. Drawing on Husserl and Freud, I will distinguish between different temporal modes of the other: while Husserl carefully examines the ways in which others are constituted as syn- chronous (present) or as asynchronous (past), Freud underlines that others may also appear in a temporally displaced, anachronous manner, whereby one’s ex- perience of some past other dominates in the experience of the present other. Freud discusses this third kind of relationship to the other under the rubric “transference”. The main objective of this article is to argue that the Freudian concept of transference is a structural element in our experience of others, and that, in this respect, the psychoanalytic concept of transference should be seen as complementing the phenomenological account of empathy and interpersonal understanding.

El presente estudio examina la presencia de Theodor Lipps en la estética de José Ortega y
Gasset. Analiza especialmente la influencia de ideas lippsianas en “Ensayo de estética a manera de prólogo”, a la par que se revelan las diferencias importantes en torno a su concepción de  la estética como ciencia.

In this paper, I compare Lotze's, Lipps', and Voigtländer's notion of feelings of self-worth. I identify three lines of thinking operative in Voigtländer's theory of self-feelings. While acknowledging the uniqueness of her theory, which presents a synthesis of quite heterogeneous traditions, I argue that her proposal must be read with due caution. For, not only do some of the traditions she seems to rely on present central points of reference in the genesis of the ideologies of National Socialism, her own views on self-feeling are also conspicuously compatible with eugenic thinking.

Negli ultimi mesi del 1899 Hans Cornelius e Theodor Lipps davano vita a una serrata polemica concernente la natura psicologica e dello statuto filosofico delle qualità figurali. Il problema, formulato da Christian von Ehrenfels in un celebre saggio del 1890, veniva allora ampiamente dibattuto da parte di filosofi e psicologi di diverse scuole e orientamenti. Tuttavia, lo scontro interno allo Psychologischer Verein di Monaco detiene una specificità che merita di essere isolata. Cornelius e Lipps focalizzano l'attenzione su due problematiche che nel saggio di Ehrenfels (così come nella letteratura successiva) emergono solo per così dire in filigrana, tra le righe della trattazione: il problema dell'astrazione e quello del sentimento. Non si tratta dunque -come si potrebbe superficialmente pensare -del provinciale diverbio tra un positivista seguace di Avenarius e un tardo herbartiano su una questione «alla moda» della psicologia del tempo. Nello scontro tra i due filosofi monacensi sulle qualità figurali si esprimono e si consolidano due posizioni del tutto originali, che ebbero un ruolo importante, ancorché non molto appariscente, nell'indirizzare alcuni significativi momenti del dibattito dell'epoca.

From his philosophical beginnings Husserl was a careful, but critical reader of Hume’s work. His discussions of Hume form part of a wider appreciation of Hume in the German speaking world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century. It is therefore unsurprising that the first work of Husserl’s philosophical breakthrough, the Logical Investigations, accommodates a number of Humean themes. Hume’s description of the self as a bundle of perceptions is one of them. But why did Husserl turn away from his original "Humean" view of the consciousness without the immanent self after the publication of the Logical Investigations? And how does his original concept of the ego-less consciousness compare to the early views of his teacher Franz Brentano, which formed the initial background of Husserl's descriptive psychology?

Cette expérience mondialisée inouïe de confinement m’ayant laissé un petit peu plus de temps pour penser et écrire qu’à l’accoutumée, je viens de publier et/ou déconfiner en télétravail un nouvel article consacré aux apports de la phénoménologie allemande du début du XXe siècle et leur reprise par Levinas & Ricœur sur les questions de temps et de sympathie.

Un sujet est-il confiné dans un cerveau, dans un individu, ressort-il d’un collectif de pensée, voire d’un peuple, une communauté ou un réseau social ?

Comment penser le rapport d’un sujet à ce qui lui est étranger ?

Pourquoi, malgré la révolution humienne et les perspectives éthiques ouvertes par Ricœur, le contemporain n’a-t-il de cesse de préférer le confinement dans une empathie cognitive cartésienne à l’ouverture à autrui que peut permettre une sympathie humienne bien élevée ?

Est-ce le virus étranger qui tue l’homme ou la réponse immunitaire disproportionnée indique-t-elle que la question du rapport à autrui demeure mal posée ?

Pourquoi la sympathie a-t-elle si mauvaise presse ?

Telle sont les questions qui n'ont de cesse de m'obséder…

Dans cet article s’entrevoit une sympathie conçue comme déconfinement spatio-temporel, voyage transdisciplinaire ou odyssée dans le temps et l’histoire à la recherche des coordonnées de l’ipséité, entre subjectivité psychique, intersubjectivité sociale et mystique de l’altérité personnelle…

This article provides the first English translation of Tanabe’s early essay, “The Limit of Logicism in Epistemology: A Critique of the Marburg and Freiburg Schools” (1914). The key notion that the young Tanabe seeks to define in relation to his detailed analyses of contemporary Neo-Kantian epistemology is the notion of “pure experience” presented in Nishida’s philosophy. The general theory of epistemology shared among the thinkers from these two prominent schools of philosophy in early 20th century Germany aimed to eliminate the empirical residues in Kant’s theory of knowledge while opposing naïve empiricism and the uncritical methodology of positive science. Their “logicistic” approach, according to Tanabe, seems to contradict Nishida’s notion of pure experience, for it cannot allow any vestige of empiricism in its systematic framework, which is specifically designed to ground scientific knowledge. Yet given that the Neo-Kantian configuration of epistemology does not create the object of knowledge, it must face sensation or representational content as its limiting instance. Thus, to ground a Neo-Kantian theory of knowledge while
taking account of this limit of logicism involves explaining their understanding of the unity of subject and object in human knowing. For this, Tanabe argues, recourse to Nishida’s notion of pure experience is
indispensable.

In recent years, some simulation theorists have claimed that the discovery of mirror neurons provides empirical support for the position that mind reading is, at some basic level, simulation. The purpose of this essay is to question that claim. I begin by providing brief context for the current mind reading debate and then developing an influential simulationist account of mind reading. I then draw on the works of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to develop an alternative, phenomenological account. In conclusion, I offer multiple objections against simulation theory and argue that the empirical evidence mirror neurons offer us does not necessarily support the view that empathy is simulation.

Burns, T. “Empathy, Simulation, and Neuroscience: A Phenomenological Case Against Simulation Theory.” Phenomenology and Mind 12 (2017): 208-216.

A Short History of Empathy, the book, available on Nov 24, 2014. Please note that the attached doc for download is ONLY the table of contents and preface in preliminary, mark up form. I ask your understanding and respect for copyright.
    The deep, underground history of empathy is surfaced and reconstructed in Hume, Kant, Lipps, Freud, Scheler, Stein, and Husserl. A Rumor of Empathy is engaged in vicarious feeling, receptivity, empathic understanding, empathic interpretation, and empathic intersubjectivity. A rumor of empathy becomes a scandal of empathy in Lipps' projections and Strachey's mistranslations. Empathy is reconstructed in Hume's many meanings of "sympathy"; in Kant on "the communicability of feelings" and "enlarged thinking" of the other; in Freud's introspection and free association; in Scheler's "vicarious experience" and perception of The Other; in Stein's sensual empathy; and in Husserl's late writing on empathic windows of consciousness accessing other persons as Husserl's empathy moves from the periphery to the foundation of community. Yet when all the philosophical arguments and categories are complete, the phenomenological methods reduced, and hermeneutic circles spun out, in empathy, we are quite simply in the presence of another human being.

For those who knew Michael Franz Basch personally, see the tribute to him in the Preface - an empathic moment indeed. The work is also available as a more reasonably priced electronic version. Available to ship as of this date (2014/11/24). 

Other interesting comments by a well known psychoanalyst and celebrity academic -

Review

Lou Agosta has written a delightful and much needed book on the evolution and genesis of the idea of empathy. His deep appreciation and understanding of the writings of Hume, Kant, Lipps, Freud, Scheler and Husserl allows him to recognize, explore and ultimately fashion a wonderfully clear and practical notion of empathy, one in which we not only come to know the other as we listen with care, understand with insight, and interpret with feeling, but also one in which we learn to communicate openly and respond with humanity. In bringing together the skills of the philosopher and the experience of the psychotherapist, Lou Agosta helps us to understand the steady rise of empathy and why it informs and inspires so many modern-day disciplines and professional practices. For all those wishing to revel in empathy's rich provenance, this is the book for you. - David Howe, Emeritus Professor, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK and author of Empathy: What It Is and Why It Matters
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A Rumor of Empathy is a masterpiece of philosophical-historical scholarship, presenting a rich and comprehensive account of the explicit and implicit conceptions of empathy that have appeared in the course of Western thinking from Hume through Kant, Lipps, Freud, and contemporary phenomenologists, both philosophical and psychoanalytic. Husserl's rewriting of his own publishing position as empathy shifts to the foundation of intersubjectivity is particularly eye opening. This book will be a valuable resource not only for scholars in philosophy, psychology and the human sciences, but for practitioners of psychoanalytic and humanistic psychotherapy as well. – Robert D. Stolorow, author of World, Affectivity, Trauma: Post-Cartesian Philosophy
***
An insightful and provocative exploration of a topic that has only begun to receive the attention it deserves and the conceptual clarity needed for proper understanding. Agosta's study of empathy is rich in historical context and thorough in covering the intersections of philosophy and psychology on the question of empathy. The deep history of a rumor of empathy in Hume, Kant, Lipps, Scheler, Stein, and Husserl is innovative and disruptive, the latter in a positive sense. Agosta rightly, in my view, finds in Husserl a primary vehicle for advancing the discussion, yet he has his own voice and sense of how to think it through. An impressive achievement. - Lawrence J. Hatab, Louis I. Jaffe Professor of Philosophy, Old Dominion University, USA
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The book is also available directly from the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan -  A Rumor of Empathy: Rewriting Empathy in the Context of Philosophy
http://www.amazon.com/Rumor-Empathy-Rewriting-Context-Philosophy/dp/1137492589/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416499569&sr=1-1&keywords=a+rumor+of+empathy
***
This post and all the processes and contents of this web site (c) Lou Agosta, Ph.D.

La conoscenza degli altri io è il saggio che chiude le Ricerche psicologiche (1907), volume della maturità della produzione filosofica di Lipps. In esso viene trattata la questione gnoseologica della possibilità di conoscere i vissuti interiori delle coscienze altrui. Il rapporto con gli altri io viene qui indagato a partire dall’esperienza percettiva dell’altro. Attraverso la gestualità della persona che ho di fronte posso comprendere i sentimenti che colmano i suoi vissuti interiori: su questa coscienza immediata si basa l’“empatia istintiva”, di cui Lipps fu grande sostenitore.

Im dritten Abschnitt, erstes Kapitel, seiner "Ästhetik: Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst (1903)" setzt sich Theodor Lipps mit der Ästhetik geometrischer Formen sowie jener der Mechanik auseinander und hält im Wesentlichen fest, dass "die mechanische Gesetzmässigkeit der Grund der Wohlgefälligkeit geometrischer Formen" sei. Ausserdem bemerkt er, dass wir jeweils unsere Hintergründe, Empfindungen, gegenwärtigen Situationen usw. mit in das Objekt und damit in dessen Interpretation transportieren.

The last few years have seen increasing research interest in moods and atmospheres. While this trend has been accompanied by growing interest in the history of the word Stimmung in other disciplines, this has not yet been the case within philosophy. Against this background, this paper offers a conceptual history of the word Stimmung, focusing on the period from Kant to Heidegger, as this period is, presumably, less known to researchers working with notions like mood, attunement or atmosphere today. Thus, considering this period might provide conceptual resources not yet considered in current debate. Stimmung has the remarkable feature of encompassing the entire semantic field of mood and atmosphere, insofar as both subjects and objects can literally be in Stimmung. Stimmung might refer to the state or condition of being attuned, which is understood as a dispositional state, as well as the process or act of attuning, which includes self-activating and foreign-determined forms of attuning. The word was first used for the tuning of musical instruments, but was quickly transferred to the fields of aesthetics, psychology, and physiology. This paper will focus on the contrast between the psychological canonization of Stimmung as a type of mental state, and the use of Stimmung as an untranslatable, irreducible metaphor with unique semantic force allowing for original theorizing.

Cette expérience mondialisée inouïe de confinement m’ayant laissé un petit peu plus de temps pour penser et écrire qu’à l’accoutumée, je viens de publier et/ou déconfiner en télétravail un nouvel article consacré aux apports de la phénoménologie allemande du début du XXe siècle et leur reprise par Levinas & Ricœur sur les questions de temps et de sympathie.

Un sujet est-il confiné dans un cerveau, dans un individu, ressort-il d’un collectif de pensée, voire d’un peuple, une communauté ou un réseau social ?

Comment penser le rapport d’un sujet à ce qui lui est étranger ?

Pourquoi, malgré la révolution humienne et les perspectives éthiques ouvertes par Ricœur, le contemporain n’a-t-il de cesse de préférer le confinement dans une empathie cognitive cartésienne à l’ouverture à autrui que peut permettre une sympathie humienne bien élevée ?

Est-ce le virus étranger qui tue l’homme ou la réponse immunitaire disproportionnée indique-t-elle que la question du rapport à autrui demeure mal posée ?

Pourquoi la sympathie a-t-elle si mauvaise presse ?

Telle sont les questions qui n'ont de cesse de m'obséder…

Dans cet article s’entrevoit une sympathie conçue comme déconfinement spatio-temporel, voyage transdisciplinaire ou odyssée dans le temps et l’histoire à la recherche des coordonnées de l’ipséité, entre subjectivité psychique, intersubjectivité sociale et mystique de l’altérité personnelle…

"S’il me fallait choisir entre le destin d’être un homme qui sait comment et pourquoi telle chose est ce qu’on nomme « belle », et celui de savoir ce que c’est que sentir, je crois bien que je choisirais le second, avec l’arrière-pensée que cette connaissance, si elle était possible (...) me livrerait bientôt tous les secrets de l’art"
Valéry ajoute : « (...) et je crains bien qu’elle (cette connaissance du sentir) ne soit même pas concevable".

La question qui nous préoccupe dans cet essai est davantage esthésique qu’esthétique. Comme Paul Valéry, nous pensons qu'il est intéressant, avant d’étudier une théorie de l'art en tant que telle, de réfléchir à ce que serait une connaissance du sentir. En ce sens, nous nous poserons la question suivante : une connaissance du sentir, unifiant sensations et sentiments, est-elle possible ? Nous nous questionnerons, dans un premier temps, sur les liens entre sensations et sentiments humains et tenterons d'expliquer en quoi la physiologie ne peut être suffisante pour expliquer notre rapport au monde dans sa dimension affective. Pour cela, nous naviguerons au sein des esthétiques dites de l'«Einfülhung». Nous nous intéresserons plus particulièrement à Lipps qui a fait glisser le concept d'empathie de l'esthétique vers la psychologie. Dans un second temps, nous élargirons notre réflexion aux animaux non humains. Nous tenterons de montrer en quoi le sentir est un medium entre l'animal et le monde; mais aussi qu’à travers le sentir, l’animal, en modifiant le monde, est à son tour modifié par le monde. Pour ce faire, nous étudierons la psychologie phénoménologique d'Erwin Straus, psychiatre allemand du 20ème siècle. Il décrira le sentir comme pré-objectif et pré-conceptuel; il sera, donc, commun à tous les animaux. Nous achèverons notre parcours en élargissant encore une fois notre réflexion, en montrant en quoi l’être sentant et l’être vivant finalement coïncident. A ce titre, nous évoquerons en guise d'ouverture et de conclusion, la pensée de Canguilhem au sujet des particularités propres à la vie et à la connaissance de la vie.