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Although I get through a lot of books, for all sorts of reasons I don't post about much of what I read.
Recently, however, I've finished a book that I found most stimulating, Susanne K Langer's "Philosophy in a New Key: a study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art" ; it's a book that deserves a revival in popularity, and is one that might well be of interest to anyone with an interest in aesthetics, and philosophy, the arts and humanities more generally, whether that interest be academic, professional, or purely personal.
I was prompted to read this book by the pleasure I've taken in watching the Kpop video I mention in this post: https://c.im/@jemmesedi/111640046489730383
I wanted to gain a better understanding of how a piece like this could express feeling through music and dance. ""Philosophy in a New Key" has helped me think about, even if not entirely resolve, that problem in aesthetics. Langer's thinking on aesthetics depends in large part on a distinction she makes between discursive and presentational forms of symbolism.
For more on this distinction and Langer in general, read the article linked in the second post in this thread.
Image: Susanne Langer 1925 -- Monozigote -- Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 -- Wikimedia Commons.
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Robert E Innis, the author of a 2009 study of Langer, writes here about discursive and presentational symbolism, the part these forms play in Langer's philosophy, and her importance as a thinker.
I've also discovered a more recent monograph, " The Philosophy of Susanne Langer: Embodied Meaning in Logic, Art and Feeling" by Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin.
#Philosophy #SusanneKLanger #RobertEInnis #AdrienneDengerinkChaplin
https://archive.philosophersmag.com/susanne-k-langer-a-snapshot/
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"Philosophy in a New Key" was published in 1942, so today's readers, as well as wincing at her some of her discussion of "primitive" peoples, may also be aware that more than one revolution has since taken place in the philosophy of language and that university presses and learned journals have printed countless pages on the topics in linguistics, psychology, and anthropology on which Langer touches.
Nevertheless, I believe her thinking about aesthetics and symbolism in general is of enduring interest. I very much want to read a later book she wrote devoted to aesthetics, her 1953 'Feeling and Form".
"Philosophy in a New Key" is also of interest from a historical point of view. The book's original publishers, Harvard University Press, were surprised by its popularity; appearing as a Mentor paperback, it went on to sell more than half a million copies. I would guess that popularity is explained by both the postwar expansion of higher education and a public thirst for meaning and value beyond science and technology in a world haunted by memories of the Depression, world war, and extermination camps, and now living with the threat of an atom bomb apocalypse.
In spite - or perhaps because of - this popularity, Langer did not get a full time long term faculty position for years, despite her excellent academic pedigree (Radcliffe/Harvard - Ph.D supervised by A. N. Whitehead), teaching at Columbia, and scholarly productivity. As well as just plain jealousy and suspicions of dilettantism, part of the explanation perhaps lies in the marginal position that aesthetics occupied in US philosophy departments blinded by Quine's dictum that "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough".
Yet one must also suspect that both individual prejudice and institutional discrimination against Langer as a woman kept her trapped in part time and temporary positions. All this would have added to suspicion of aesthetics and talk of feeling as "girly".
I'm glad to see renewed interest in Langer, and I will be reading and think more by her and about her to make sense of kpop and much else besides.
#SusanneKLanger #Philosophy #History #IntellectualHistory #CulturalHistory #Sexism
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6c/Langer_Susanne_K_Philosophy_in_a_New_Key.pdf