Note a Empatia, imitazione interna e sensazioni organiche di Theodor Lipps

This essay is intended to be a commentary on Lipps’ work Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung und Organempfindungen (1903). For this aim it is necessary to reconsider primarily the role played by empathy in Lipps’ reflection and the purely psychic nature of empathy. After carrying out this preliminary consideration, it is possible to proceed to an analysis of the most ambiguous and misleading passages of this work. From this analysis it is possible to infer: that empathy represents the core of Lipps’ entire intellectual path; that, according to Lipps, it is a purely psychological and autonomous mechanism, compared to both aesthetics and physiology; that, although most of the studies devoted to Lipps’ thought can be placed in the field of aesthetics, his work is to be interpreted as a psychologisation of Kant’s philosophy standing halfway between psychology and ethics.