Empathy Theory

This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.

This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.

All comments & questions are welcome!

Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s essay “The Symbol” (1887) considers empathy in aesthetics in relation to meaning. He outlines three modalities of the symbol. The first points to a conflation of the image and its meaning. At the other extreme, the image and its meaning are set apart from one another. Finally, there is the linkage “with reservation” between image and meaning, in which the beholder knows that the image and that to which it refers are distinct. Vischer’s discussion of the symbol was influential on twentieth-century art historians, such as Aby Warburg and Edgar Wind. His study of symbols is still relevant to conceptual questions that drive the study of images today.