Susanne K. Langer – författare

Modern theories of meaning usually culminate in a critique of science. This book presents a study of human intelligence beginning with a semantic theory and leading into a critique of music.By implication it sets up a theory of all the arts; the transference of its basic concepts to other arts than music is not developed, but it is sketched, mainly in the chapter on artistic import. Thoughtful readers of the original edition discovered these far-reaching ideas quickly enough as the career of the book shows: it is as applicable to literature, art and music as to the field of philosophy itself.The topics it deals with are many: language, sacrament, myth, music, abstraction, fact, knowledge--to name only the main ones. But through them all goes the principal theme, symbolic transformation as the essential activity of human minds. This central idea, emphasizing as it does the notion of symbolism, brings Mrs. Langer's book into line with the prevailing interest in semantics. All profound issues of our age seem to center around the basic concepts of symbolism and meaning. The formative, creative, articulating power of symbols is the tonic chord which thinkers of all schools and many diverse fields are unmistakably striking; the surprising, far-reaching implications of this new fundamental conception constitute what Mrs. Langer has called "philosophy in a new key."Mrs. Langer's book brings the discussion of symbolism into a wider general use than criticism of word meaning. Her volume is vigorous, effective, and well written and will appeal to everyone interested in the contemporary problems of philosophy.

The second volume of Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling contains Part IV of the six parts which will eventually compose Susanne Langer's masterwork. It confronts the crucial issue of "The Great Shift" from animal to man.

Volume III complete the publication of Susanne Langer's monumental treatise on the rise and development of mind—an exclusively human phenomenon— by evolution from animal intelligence to intellectual intuition. More than two decades in the making, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling is the crowning achievement of one of the most seminal and refreshing philosophers of our time.The conlusion of the Essay, originally intended to deal with epistemology and metaphysics, has been abrogated by the author's encroaching blindness. This curtailment notwithstanding, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling splendidly achieves its purpose: "to suggest ideas which other people may be able to use in their own work, anywhere and everywhere in the great domain of philosophical thought."