Vischer

Although this was a relatively dense reading and admittedly I spaced out on a couple of the sections, the beginning was well laid out. I was able to gleam off the introduction that he was expanding on his father's theory that argued against the Herbartian school. The idea that no form exist without content is built on with R. Vischer's theory that the observer fills a devoid object with emotional content if it lacks, therefore it never goes without content. I thought it was interesting how much of his own thought he contributes to other authors like Karl Albert Scherner, which is basically where he got his idea for empathetic art. The the ninth page of the article I found it interesting how he starts to relate eye muscles, movements and reactions to emotions in order to strengthen his argument. He defines the immediate sensation and then the responsive sensation in terms of stimulation. He then proceeds to explain how light can stimulate the eye muscles and their movement and calling it a responsive sensation. The part where I get lost is how he connects a responsive sensation to "these subtle emotions," as he refers to them at the end of the paragraph. Further up and through this latter sections he also chooses his words carefully to support his argument of emotion. He says the "so-called" after effect of color contrast, as if to discredit it as an objective test and to say it truly is just the eye reacting to an "unpleasant" sensation.