Feeling of the Form

<p><b><i>The Feeling of the Form</i></b><b> explores the concept of </b><b><i>Einfuehlung</i></b><b>--the projection of human feelings and life into inanimate forms--developed by German aesthetic theorists in the late nineteenth century. </b>The word would be translated into English as empathy and migrate in meaning from the aesthetic to the interpersonal sphere. Combining close analysis and cultural para-history <i>The Feeling of the Form</i> reads literary texts by Georg Buechner Adalbert Stifter and Rainer Maria Rilke alongside philosophical texts by Robert Vischer Vernon Lee and Theodor Lipps to uncover the often-uncanny intersections of aesthetic and interpersonal empathy.</p><p>Traveling both backward and forward in time from the 1873 invention of <i>Einfuehlung</i> Joseph R. Metz traces the diverse and multidirectional exchanges among subjects and objects feelings and forms and selves and others that together yield an expanded understanding of <i>Einfuehlung</i> empathy and the connections between them. In its surprising juxtapositions <i>The Feeling of the Form</i> also shows how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century texts prefigure a wide array of later thought including affect theory other minds artificial intelligence object-oriented ontology and cinema and video game aesthetics.</p>