The Philosopher as Prophet and Visionary: Susanne Langer's Essay on Human Feeling in the Light of Subsequent Developments in the Sciences

Abstract

Langer's theory of the nature and evolution of human mentality, society, and culture anticipated subsequent developments in the sciences in claiming that consciousness, or subjectivity, should occupy a central place in the study of mind, which should in turn be grounded in the biological sciences but also in disciplined methods of phenomenological investigation (for Langer, a systematic study of the arts); and that a single set of cognitive capacities (which Langer called the power of conception, imagination, or symbolic transformation) underlies a wide range of cultural practices including language, myth, ritual, art, and the sciences that uniquely distinguish humans from other animals.