 Theodor Lipps (1851–1914)was also very familiar with the work of David Hume (see the introduction to Coplan and Goldie 2011 in this respect). More importantly, it was Theodor Lipps, whose work transformed empathy/Einfühlung from a concept of nineteenth century German aesthetics into a central category of the philosophy of the social and human sciences. To understand this transformation we first need to appreciate the reasons why philosophers of the nineteenth century thought it necessary to appeal to empathy in order to account for our ability to appreciate natural objects and artefacts in an aesthetic manner. According to the dominant (even though not universally accepted) positivistic and empiricist conception, sense data constitute the fundamental basis for our investigation of the world. Yet from a phenomenological perspective, our perceptual encounter with aesthetic objects and our appreciation of them as being beautiful—our admiration of a beautiful sunset, for example—seems to be as direct as our perception of an object as being red or square. By appealing to the psychological mechanisms of empathy, philosophers intended to provide an explanatory account of the phenomenological immediacy of our aesthetic appreciation of objects. More specifically, for Lipps, our empathic encounter with external objects trigger inner “processes” that give rise to experiences similar to ones that I have when I engage in various activities involving the movement of my body. Since my attention is perceptually focused on the external object, I experience them—or I automatically project my experiences—as being in the object. If those experiences are in some way apprehended in a positive manner and as being in some sense life-affirming, I perceive the object as beautiful, otherwise as ugly. In the first case, Lipps speaks of positive; in the later of negative empathy. Lipps also characterizes our experience of beauty as “objectified self-enjoyment,” since we are impressed by the “vitality” and “life potentiality” that lies in the perceived object (Lipps 1906, 1903 a,b. For the contemporary discussion of empathy’s role in aesthetics see particularly Breithaupt 2009; Coplan and Goldie 2011 (Part II); Curtis &amp; Koch 2009; and Keen 2007. For a recent history of the empathy concept see also Lanzoni 2018).