The monotheistic religions made it normal to squash people: "I think there is something really special about the Bible [...] which is precisely this idea that the revelation of truth comes through the suffering of the weak." (Matthieu Poupart)

Then the Renaissance made it easier to blame the victim: With modernity, "it is the person who takes no initiative who is seen as responsible for the emergence of sexual promiscuity." (Matthieu Poupart)

#EstelleSays #longThread

3/3

"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

2/2

Thinking about the Warburg Institute prompted me to read this recently published biography of the founder of the library, Aby Warburg.

Knowing that Warburg was a humanist hostile to rigid disciplinary boundaries, I had imagined that Warburg himself was an easygoing chap, not at all inclined to academic territoriality.

This biography disabused me of that set of beliefs, as the author shows how insecurity with regard to his own scholarly identity led Warburg to engage in the unpleasant pettiness of academic politicking. I also learnt about his questionable activities as a propagandist for Germany during WWI, his abuse of his wife, and his disagreeable vanity.

I don't think this biographical detail discredits his ideas about images and the continuing influence of antiquity, Yet the biography did bring to my attention some of the problematic sources of Warburg's ideas, such as neolamarckian psychological theories that posited the heritability of memories.

Read the book if you're interested in art history, visual culture, the history of humanities scholarship, or the history of universities in Germany.

#AbyWarburg #HansHoenes #ArtHistory #WarburgInstitute #Hamburg #GermanHistory #IntellectualHistory #VisualCulture #Biography #Universities

https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/tangled-paths