Robert Vischer
{{Short description|German philosopher (1847–1933)}}
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Robert Vischer (22 February 1847, Tübingen – 25 March 1933, Vienna) was a German philosopher who invented the term Einfühlung (esthetic sympathy, later translated in English as empathy), which was to be promoted by Theodor Lipps, Freud's admired philosopher.
Vischer’s use of ''Einfühlung''
Vischer postulated the as yet undescribed distinction between Verstehen and Einfühlung (“empathy”) in his 1873 doctoral thesis On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics.{{cite book |last=Vischer |first=Robert |date=1873 |title=On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics}} In {{cite book |date=1994 |title=Empathy, Form, and Space. Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6JqGQgAACAAJ |others=Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (eds., trans.) | location=Santa Monica, California |publisher=Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities |pages=89–123 |isbn=978-0-892-36259-2}} It was the first mention of the word Einfühlung in this form in print.{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |title=Empathy. 1. Historical Introduction |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empathy/#HisInt |last=Stueber |first=Karsten |date=February 14, 2013 |access-date=June 20, 2017}} His more-famous father, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, had used the term Einfühlen in explorations of idealism relative to architectural form, and related concepts were certainly already in the air. Indeed, the phrase "sich einfühlen" was used by Herder in the 18th century. Nonetheless, Robert Vischer's exploration was the first significant discussion of the concept of Einfühlung under that precise name.Mallgrave and Ikonomou, (1994). "Introduction", pp. 1-85.
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Category:19th-century German philosophers
Category:20th-century German philosophers
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