Theodor Lipps was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 philosopher. Lipps was one of the most influential German university professors of his time, attracting many students from other countries. Lipps was very concerned with conceptions of art and the aesthetic, focusing much of his philosophy around such issues. Among his fervent admirers was Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

, Lipps then being the main supporter of the idea of the subconscious

Subconscious

The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....

. He thought that each state had its level of consciousness and that laughter was associated with hidden negative aspects. He adopted Robert Vischer

Robert Vischer

Robert Vischer was a German philosopher who invented the term Einfühlung , which was to be promoted by Theodor Lipps, Freud's admired philosopher.-Vischer’s use of Einfühlung:...

 notions of empathy

Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...

 or esthetic sympathy (Einfühlung). Late in life, Lipps adopted some ideas from Husserl. Disliking his psychologism, some of his students joined with some of Husserl's to form a new branch of philosophy called Phenomenology of essences

Phenomenology of essences

In disagreement with Theodor Lipps's psychologism, some of his students in Munich joined with some of Husserl's from Göttingen to form a new branch called Phenomenology of essences, or Munich phenomenology. Taking new directions from Logische Untersuchungen and supported by Edmund Husserl, they...

.

External links

• Some http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/library/search?-format=search&-op_referencetype=eq&referencetype=&-op_author=all&author=Lipps%2C+Th&-op_title=all&title=&-op_secondarytitle=all&secondarytitle=&-op_sql_year=numerical&sql_year=&-op_fullreference=all&fullreference=&-op_online=numerical&-op_id=numerical&id=&online=1&-op_volumeid_search=ct&volumeid_search=&-op_project=eq&project=&-max=25&-display=short&-sort=author%2Csql_year&-find=+Start+Search+digitized texts] by Lipps in the Virtual Laboratory
  Virtual Laboratory
  The online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life...
  
   of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from...