 This understanding of empathy rapidly attracted criticisms in the Munich and Göttingen circles. One of the most striking criticisms was that Lipps’ account is not able to explain the explanandum: why the fact that the other’s expression induces a certain mental state in me (which I then project onto the other) is supposed to explain my understanding of the other’s mental state? And can’t I understand the other without living through his mental state? (see Zahavi 2014: 131f). As an alternative solution, phenomenologists argue that mental states are not unobservable entities that lie “behind” our bodily expressions and gestures. Rather, mental states can be genuinely perceived: they are perceived in these very movements and gestures (see Scheler 1923).