Johannes Volkelt

Born July 21, 1848, in Lipnik, Galicia, now the USSR; died May 8, 1930, in Leipzig. German idealist philosopher, psychologist, and writer on aesthetics.

Volkelt was a professor in Jena, Basel, Wiirzburg, and Leipzig. He noted the internal contradictions in the epistemology of I. Kant and came to the conclusion that the “immanent” theory of knowledge, inevitably culminating in skepticism, was untenable. In Volkelt’s judgment, “transsubjective” assumptions must be made with respect to objective existence, the multiplicity of consciousnesses that admit the universal validity of judgments about objective existence, and the lawlike order that governs existence. To a certain extent, Volkelt adhered to the psychological school of thought in aesthetics, sharing the views of F. T. Vischer and T. Lipps with respect to the theory of empathy (Einfühlung).