Susanne Langer

Susanne Langer – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Discover the life, philosophy, and legacy of Susanne Langer—her unique theory of symbolism, her influence in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind, and her most powerful quotes.

Introduction

Susanne Katherina Langer (née Knauth; December 20, 1895 – July 17, 1985) was a pioneering American philosopher whose work sought to bridge the interior world of feeling with the exterior world of symbol, art, and meaning. Often underappreciated in mainstream philosophical surveys, she is best known for her major works Philosophy in a New Key, Feeling and Form, and her three-volume Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.

Her philosophical contribution lies in treating art, language, and aesthetic experience not as mere adornments on thought, but as central to the structure of human consciousness. In a time when philosophy was largely dominated by analytic logic or positivism, she brought a refreshing perspective that took seriously emotion, symbol, and the pre-linguistic dimensions of our experience.

Today, Langer’s ideas resonate in aesthetics, cultural theory, philosophy of mind, semiotics, and even in cognitive and media studies, wherever meaning, representation, and feeling intersect.

Early Life and Family

Susanne Langer was born in Manhattan, New York City, as Susanne Katherina Knauth, to German immigrant parents, Antonio Knauth, an attorney, and Else Uhlich.

Although she was American by birth, German was the primary language spoken at home, and she retained a German accent throughout her life.

Summers at the Knauth family cottage on Lake George exposed her to nature, quiet reflection, and a sense of space and place beyond urban life.

This upbringing in a culturally rich, musically attuned, and multilingual household deeply shaped her later interests in aesthetics, symbol, and feeling.

Youth and Education

Her early schooling included attendance at the Veltin School for Girls, a private institution in Manhattan, supplemented by home tutoring. Radcliffe College, Harvard’s coordinate institution for women, earning her undergraduate degree in 1920.

Afterward she remained in graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard, obtaining a master’s degree in 1924 and a doctorate (Ph.D.) in 1926, under the guidance of Alfred North Whitehead among others.

During those years she also spent time in Europe, including Vienna, where intellectual currents around philosophy, symbolism, and the arts deeply influenced her thinking.

Langer’s dissertation and early work already showed her desire to reconcile symbolic thought, meaning, and aesthetics—not merely as secondary phenomena, but as core to human consciousness.

Career and Achievements

Teaching and Scholarship

After completing her doctorate, Langer returned to Radcliffe as a philosophy tutor from 1927 to 1942. Columbia University from 1945 to 1950. Connecticut College, a position she held until she became emerita.

Over her career, she also lectured and taught at institutions including New York University, Northwestern University, Ohio University, the University of Washington, Smith College, the University of Michigan, Wellesley, and Vassar.

In 1960 Langer was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in recognition of her philosophical contributions.

Major Works & Philosophical Contributions

Langer’s most celebrated work is Philosophy in a New Key (1942), which reframed philosophy around the concept of symbolism—arguing that to understand human mind, one must understand symbolic activity as deeply as logic or perception.

Another landmark text is Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (1953), which elaborated her theory of how works of art embody “felt life” via presentational symbols (symbolic forms that cannot be reduced to discrete parts).

In later years, she undertook her magnum opus, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, a three-volume project published across 1967, 1972, and 1982, aiming to develop a comprehensive account of feeling, symbolization, and the life of consciousness.

She also published works such as The Practice of Philosophy (1930), An Introduction to Symbolic Logic (1937), Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures, Philosophical Sketches, Reflections on Art, and more.

Key Philosophical Innovations

• Distinction between discursive and presentational symbols:
  Langer argued that symbolic activity comes in two forms: discursive symbols (like language, where parts have stable meaning) and presentational symbols (like music or visual art, where meaning arises in holistic, non-linear ways).

• Symbolic transformation:
  She held that human thought and feeling constantly transform sensory, lived experience into symbolic form—not just in language but in ritual, myth, arts—creating a “second nature” of meaning.

• Art as objectified feeling:
  In her view, art does not simply represent or mimic reality, but objectifies subjective feeling and subjects nature to artistic vision. In her words, the arts “objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature.”

• Feeling and rationality:
  She challenged the strict separation of reason and feeling prevalent in much philosophy. Rather, she saw intellect itself as a refined form of feeling.

• Virtual experience / virtual world:
  Langer coined notions akin to virtuality, arguing that art constructs spaces or worlds (e.g., in painting, architecture) that are themselves objects of contemplation, independent of immediate surroundings.

• Interdisciplinary reach:
  Her work resonated beyond philosophy. She’s been cited by psychologists (e.g. Maslow), anthropologists (Clifford Geertz), media theorists (Janet Murray), urban planning (Kevin Lynch), and art scholars, reflecting the breadth of her symbolic theory’s reach.

Historical Milestones & Context

Langer did her professional work at a time when women were still rare in philosophy. She was among the first American women to forge a serious academic career in the field.

Her career unfolded during the mid-20th century, a period of intense philosophical debates: analytic philosophy, logical positivism, linguistic turn, formal logic, and the rise of phenomenology and existentialism. Langer was distinctive in resisting reductive scientism or pure logicism, instead emphasizing meaning, feeling, symbol, and form as irreducible dimensions of human experience.

Her work also emerged post–World War II, a time when questions of meaning, expression, and art’s role in rebuilding culture were urgent. In this milieu, Langer’s symbolic philosophy provided tools for thinking about art, myth, ritual, and feeling as central to human life.

During her later years, she witnessed the rise of cognitive science, semiotics, media theory, and cultural studies—fields that would intersect with many of her concerns about symbol and mind.

Legacy and Influence

Though not always prominent in mainstream philosophical textbooks, Langer’s influence persists in multiple domains:

• In aesthetics and art theory, her concept of presentational symbolism remains a reference point for understanding how non-linguistic forms convey meaning.

• In philosophy of mind and phenomenology, her insistence on feeling, embodiment, and symbol has anticipated or enriched later theories of embodied cognition and affective experience.

• Her work is cited by thinkers in anthropology, cultural studies, media theory, and digital arts, who see symbolic form as an essential link between human interiority and cultural artifacts.

• She stands as a model of a woman philosopher who sustained a long, creative, cross-disciplinary career at a time when academic philosophy was heavily male-dominated.

• Her papers are housed at Connecticut College Library, and a bronze bust was dedicated there in her honor in 1988.

Today, her ideas continue to inspire new scholarship, especially in bridging humanistic and cognitive frameworks of meaning.

Personality and Talents

Langer was not merely a theoretician but a deeply musical, reflective personality. Her lifelong dedication to the cello reflects how music was not an extracurricular interest but a living dialectic with her philosophy.

She was also deeply intellectual, rigorous, and persistent—completing multi-volume philosophical work into her old age. Even in retirement, she devoted herself to finishing Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.

Despite her scholarly ambition, she maintained a poetic sensibility. Her style often weaves metaphor, symbol, and rigorous argumentation in a way that resists purely technical reduction.

Langer also exemplified resilience: she and her husband, historian William L. Langer, divorced in 1942, at a time when such an event could be socially difficult, yet she persisted with her career and intellectual commitments.

In summary, she combined musicianly sensibility, philosophical rigor, cross-disciplinary vision, and creative courage.

Famous Quotes of Susanne Langer

Below are some of Langer’s most striking statements—each a window into her philosophical heart:

“Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.” “The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature.” “Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.” “The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it … may be given.” “Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.” “The function of art is to acquaint the beholder with something he has not known before.” “Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.” “In a work of art, however modest, the peculiar character of life is always reflected in the fact that it has no parts which keep their qualitative identity in isolation. In the simplest design, the virtual constituents are indivisible, and inalienable from the whole.”

These quotes point to her belief that art is not decoration or luxury, but the means by which interior life is shaped, expressed, and made shared.

Lessons from Susanne Langer

1. Take symbolism seriously
   Langer teaches us that meaning is not a superficial veneer on perception, but a constitutive process. To think deeply, we must attend to how symbols mediate feeling, thought, and culture.

2. Bridge feeling and reason
   She challenges the rigid divide between emotion and intellect. Her philosophy suggests we listen to feeling as much as logic, for the subtle textures of human experience often lie between.

3. Appreciate non-discursive forms
   Poetry, music, visual art, ritual—these forms of expression offer modes of meaning not reducible to prose or formal logic. Langer invites us to cultivate a sensitivity to presentational symbol.

4. Endure with creative tenacity
   Her life shows that intellectual creativity matures over time, often with persistence through marginalization, personal struggle, and academic challenges.

5. Think interdisciplinarily
   Langer’s work sits at the crossroads of philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, semiotics, and cognitive science. She reminds us that deep insight often lies between disciplinary boundaries.

Conclusion

Susanne Langer’s philosophical legacy is not limited to any one school or era. Her bold vision of a symbolic human mind, her insistence that feeling and form are inseparable, and her bridging of art and consciousness make her a timeless thinker.

In an age when data, algorithm, and formal logic often overshadow the poetic richness of experience, Langer’s voice calls us back to the realm of symbol, feeling, and aesthetic sense. Her thought invites us to see art not as ornament but as a central channel of human self-understanding.

If you’re drawn to the power of symbols and the texture of thought, I encourage you to explore Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key, Feeling and Form, and Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. Her work continues to offer deep, fertile ground for reflection—and perhaps, new symbolic keys for the modern world.