A Heideggerian Reading of the Philosophy of Art of Susanne K. Langer with Special Reference to Architecture by Edward P. Donohue Marist College Poughkeepsie, NY Martin Heidegger is an ontologist; Susanne Langer is a logician. 1 The ways in which they ground their philosophies of art are fundamentally different. Heidegger seeks arts’ grounding in being and Langer in the biological organism to which she attributes the essential organic form of art. 2 Nonetheless many of the statements that they make about art are strikingly similar. They agree that art’s significance is in the art object and not the artist’s own experience of actual feeling or personal biography; that, though art is an object, it is not a “thing” and functions differently from things; that art is not only the creation of beauty but an expression of truth; that the truth of art is grasped through an intuitive, sentient immediacy rather than the structure of propositions; that propositions spoken
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A Heideggerian Reading of the Philosophy of Art of Susanne Langer
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A Heideggerian Reading of the Philosophy of Art of Susanne
K. Langer with Special Reference to Architecture
by Edward P. Donohue
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY
Martin Heidegger is an ontologist; Susanne Langer is a
logician.1 The ways in which they ground their
philosophies of art are fundamentally different. Heidegger
seeks arts’ grounding in being and Langer in the biological
organism to which she attributes the essential organic form
of art.2 Nonetheless many of the statements that they make
about art are strikingly similar. They agree that art’s
significance is in the art object and not the artist’s own
experience of actual feeling or personal biography; that,
though art is an object, it is not a “thing” and functions
differently from things; that art is not only the creation
of beauty but an expression of truth; that the truth of art
is grasped through an intuitive, sentient immediacy rather
than the structure of propositions; that propositions spoken
2
in “everydayness” and through mathematical equations do not
articulate what art is; that artistic space is essentially
different from everyday space and mathematical space; that
intrinsically art has no utility; that architecture is the
creation of a human “world”. I am going to argue that a
logical principle that Langer proposes places her in a
compatible relation with Heidegger’s ontology that a
Heideggerian ontology would resolve ambiguities that are
inherent in her own theory or art and that their views on
architecture display both significant similarities as well
as dissimilarities in their conceptions of space.
In her major work on art, Feeling and Form, Langer
makes it clear, at the outset, that the essence of
philosophy is the logical clarification of ideas.3 She
claims that the logical principles of generalization and
fecundity, which drive philosophy, are both in the service
of the illumination of meaning.4 Since the philosophy of art
is indeed philosophy, it must be deliberated within this
logical context. Meaning in artistic literature, while rich
and diverse,5 is, in her view, mostly ambiguous, fragmentary
and in disarray6 She thinks that she can supply a principle
that is general enough to be applicable to all the arts and
whose fecundity can elucidate much of the confusion that
saturates statements about art. So, philosophy and the
philosophy of art are about the clarification of ideas and
3
Langer’s contribution is to provide a concept that will
logically resolve many of the important ambiguities present
in writings about art.7 While purporting to remain within
the context of logic,8 the principle that she supplies has
implications for an ontological principle of Heidegger, puts
her into a relation of some concert with him9 and at some
distance from her fellow logicians.10
The original concept that pervades Langer’s
interpretation of art is her notion of the “non-discursive
symbol” or “presentational symbol.”11 When Langer claims
that all art is the symbol of feeling,12 or, more
specifically, art is the non-discursive symbol of sentient,
emotional life, she clearly distinguishes this symbol from
discursive symbols. 13
We need to highlight Langer’s meaning of the non-
discursive symbol, show how other logicians (as well as
aestheticians) think about art without this principle and
how this principle has ontological possibilities.
The Nature of Non-discursive Symbolism
To make the contrast between discursive and non-
discursive symbols, we should begin with Langer’s
distinction between symbol and signal.14 Language
essentially is a system of symbols.15 When language is
4
being used symbolically (whether discursively or non-
discursively), it inevitably delivers insight. Insight is
directly related to form, structure and conceptualization.16
It does not require action or the anticipation of an actual
event.17 Neither does it need to provoke any special
emotional symptom in the beholder or user of the symbol.
The symbol differs from what Langer calls a “signal”,
“symptom” or “sign”.18 The name, Richard Nixon, may
provoke, in his dog, Checkers, the “tail-wagging” happy
anticipation of his owner’s immediate, anticipated presence.
For me, it evokes some insight into his Presidency without
expectation of his actual presence and without any
invariable, emotional symptom. This distinction between the
conceptual symbol and the signal operates within both
“autonomy,” or “self-sufficiency.”69 Her explanation for
this “otherness” includes the notion that art objects are
distinguishable from objects with practical functions and
therefore experienced as “other.” Some art objects also
have utility, say, a vase or a building, but it is not the
practical function that makes them artistic. The appearance
of the vase which was originally designed to carry water may
be so striking that it arrests the observer and claims her
attention. In this case, the sheer appearance and not the
practical function may have artistic value. The appearance
is the semblance (Schein),70 the “showing” that is, in this
case, accessible only to the eye. The distinction between
appearance and reality are clarifying concepts here. For
art, there is no reality that underlies the appearance of
art objects. There is no hidden essence which accounts for
the art object’s reality and which can be articulated as a
conceptual generalization. This accounts for the uniqueness
of art objects. The destruction of a single chair does not
nihilate the reality of this instrument, which is its
essential definition. On the other hand, a vandal’s
alteration of, say, a painting’s appearance destroys its
total reality. For art, the appearance, the Schein, is the
reality.71 The two thinkers are in agreement here.
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Langer also supports her contention that art objects
are experienced differently from everyday and mathematical
realities through the sensate homogeneity of the artistic
experience. While the artistic experience, of space, for
example, is homogeneous, experienced through only one sense,
the everyday experience of space, is heterogeneous.72 It is
capable of being experienced through several senses. I
orientate myself in space through sight, hearing, smell and
touch. I plot my special world through the location of my
body (egocentricity) and through my feelings (an enemy is
too close and a beloved friend too far away even though they
are both, say, six feet away). My everyday experience of
space is complex, fragmentary, various and multifaceted.
From a pragmatic view, it is real and actual. On the other
hand, the special arts are homogeneous because they are
given essentially to one sense, vision.73 A painting, for
example, has only visual values. You can touch and smell the
paint but not the painting. When I encounter artistic
space, my sense of egocentricity, my current emotions and
all my senses other than sight are irrelevant. The plastic
arts, indeed, all the arts are disengaged from the reality
and truth of the everyday world and in this
sense, they are “illusory”.
28
To stay with the special example, mathematical space is
also distinguished from the experience of artistic space
not because it is heterogeneous but because it is entirely
non-sensate and incapable of sentient imagery. The elements
of geometry are purely conceptual. When, for example,
Euclid defines a line as having length only and a point as
that which has no parts we are immediately transported into
a non-sentient world. A one-dimensional line cannot be
drawn on a two-dimensional plane nor can a point, which has
no actual physical dimensions. Such a line and such a point
cannot be conjured up even by the visual imagination. They
only exist as abstract concepts. Mathematical space is
similar to artistic space only because they are both
homogeneous. Their essential difference lies in the fact
that the plastic arts are homogeneously sensate and
mathematical space is homogeneously abstract. The truth
and reality of mathematics is uncontested by Langer. Since
artistic space is fundamentally different, she refers to it
as illusory.
For Langer, it is the symbolic character of the
artwork that divorces it from the status of the “thing” with
its claim to reality. The artwork, according to her, is a
sensuous symbol; it delivers insight into human feeling. It
is not a tool, not equipment (in Heidegger’s terminology)
and “not an artifact”.74 Yet it is an object that is
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accessible to my senses. It stands before me as though it
were any sensible thing. It is autonomous. Yet is unlike
other sensible things because it can be grasped
homogeneously, only through a single sense and because it is
indeed a symbol. If it is a symbol, can it be said to be a
thing? A discursive term, say, book, can be regarded as a
symbol of a thing, the actual book, but itself is not a
thing. Can a non-discursive symbol be similarly regarded?
Langer does not enter into a discussion of the possible
thing-character of the art object though she does raise the
issue. “The first crucial problem that finds solution is,
how a work of art may be at once a purely imaginative
creation, intrinsically different from an artifact -- not,
indeed, properly a physical ‘thing’ -- yet be not only
‘real,’ but objective. The concept of the created thing as
non-actual, i.e. illusory, but imaginatively and even
sensuously present, functioning as a symbol but not as a
physical datum, not only answers the immediate question.”75
For Langer, the created, symbolic, imaginative character of
the artwork removes it from the world of things into a
virtual world. Langer does not do the metaphysical analysis
of things that Heidegger does. She does not compare the
“thingly” character of art, as Heidegger does, with three
ontological theories of the thing: “the thing as a bearer of
traits, as the unity of a manifold of sensations, as formed
30
matter.”76 Perhaps Langer realizes that the path that
Heidegger followed led him to the conclusion that the truth
of art cannot be found from an analysis of the work of art
as a thing.
A more concrete understanding of the similarities and
differences between the art theories of both Heidegger and
Langer is possible by comparing their analyses of a specfic
art form. Since “dwelling” is so ontologically fundamental
in Heidegger and the notion of “world” so essential to
Langer’s understanding of the master builder, their views on
architecture should clarify their dispositions toward one
another.
The Notion of Architecture in Langer and Heidegger
Langer contends that architecture as art is, like
painting and sculpture, experienced homogeneously. That is,
it is given only to the eye. Of course, architecture can be
experienced through several senses when it is approached
from its non-artistic side. When architecture is encountered
through touch, smell, hearing, the egocentricity of the
viewer’s body location, the kinesthetic movement of the body
through it, architecture’s practical functions are revealed
and so it is experienced as “actual”. All art, including
architecture, is “virtual”. It is abstracted from the
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pragmatic functions of “everydayness” and eludes the
authenticating processes of scientific methods.
For Langer, architecture is a semblance, an appearance
given only to the eye. Of what is architecture an
appearance? It is a semblance, a domain that is essentially
distinguishable from the realm created by the pictoral arts
(virtual scene)77 and sculpture (virtual kinetic volume).78
Architecture is the semblance of a human world79, which
Langer also characterizes as virtual “ethnic domain”80
For Langer, there is a clear distinction between
domain, which she understands as an illusion, and space.
Space falls within the province of everyday actuality and
scientific reality. In the treatment of actual space,
architecture creates a virtual domain. “Domain is not a
‘thing’ among other ‘things’”81 It is rather a “sphere of
influence”82 that is created when buildings with their
practical functions are erected. That “sphere of influence”
is visibly made available through the architecture.
Architecture, as art, makes space visible by creating a
domain. The domain is a people’s sphere of influence made
visible. It is the overt, sensible manifestation of a
culture’s interlocking activities.83 A functional style of
interconnected, practical actions constitute a people’s
actual movement. There are individual, actual artifacts
that are associated with this movement but the systemic
32
pattern itself is not visible.84 Here Langer distinguishes
between the ingredients of a culture and its image. It is
the task of the architect to supply the latter.85 The
architect does not merely fill a given space with buildings.
The given space is inevitably transformed into a new kind of
dimension. The architect while manipulating actual space
creates a place that is the image of a culture’s world: a
virtual ethnic domain.
Since Langer clearly affirms that all art is abstract
in the sense that it is discontinuous with practical
functions, the instrumentality of architecture is not
relevant for its artistic value. Of course, she does not
doubt that most buildings must serve practical purposes. It
is necessary that the buildings are technologically and
functionally sound but that does not sufficiently explain
the artistic character of the work.86
For Langer, architecture “is the special semblance of a
world”87 Architecture is the virtual appearance of a human
world. This world has been clearly separated from the world
of nature as well as from the actual, everyday world of
instrumentality, or, what Heidegger calls, “equipment.”
This world is not bound to a cosmological geography. The
image of very different worlds can be set on exactly the
same territorial coordinates.88 When a significant section
of architecture has been razed, the return of that human
33
world to nature can be easily observed. The sky that was
once the canopy of that architecture is released from that
protective/alien relationship and becomes nature’s sky,
which is an actual (heterogeneously perceived) sky. The
land, which was shaped, into that architecture’s domain is
no longer part of that human world and returns to nature.
That sky and that land together recede to their shared
horizon in the actual observable cosmos.
Many of Langer’s concepts of architecture as human
domain are shared by Heidegger. With no direct reference to
architecture (or art for that matter) as virtual or
illusion, Heidegger does make several distinctions that are
reminiscent of Langer’s theory of architecture. In his
short treatise, “Building Dwelling Thinking”, Heidegger
argues that architecture is the unity of the fourfold of
gathering. Building is the gathering of earth, sky, human
mortals and divinities.89 The earth is not gathered with
bulldozers and earthmovers although these may or may not be
utilized in the construction of buildings. Like Langer, the
earth to which he refers is again, not the cosmological
earth. “What this word says is not to be associated with
the idea of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or with
the merely astronomical idea of a planet.”90 The earth is
not a space easily accessible to the geometries and to
physics. It is rather a domain, which shares similarities
34
with Langer’s notion of domain and architectural domain as a
“sphere of influence”.
In what sense can the earth be gathered in building?
Gathering is an arrangement that occurs with the building
and not prior to it. In the building (which necessarily
requires the mathematical/engineering conceptualizations of
the blueprint) a domain is created which is the gathering or
organizing into places. In Heidegger’s example, the
building of a bridge is not a solipsized event.91
Immediately, on either side of the bridge the earth emerges
as the bridge’s banks. Each of those banks organizes the
strips of land on either side. They are not mere strips of
land but bridge approaches and exits around which the land
is further developed. The water that is spanned by the
bridge is gathered toward it and then set free. The land,
the river, become domain. In Langer’s terms, the
architecture has created a sphere of influence.
Architecture is the gathering of mortals for their
dwelling, their protection, and their security. Heidegger’s
bridge, for example, does not only gather those who will
utilize a bridge crossing but will gather people who will
dwell on either side of it (merchants, river view residents,
human services personnel, etc.). The bridge, as building,
is not merely an isolated human location. It also suggests
other locations that are set in a relation to the bridge.92
35
A network of buildings expressing these interrelationships
will be erected.93 For Langer, this is reminiscent of her
position that architecture is a visible manifestation of a
people’s interlocking activities.
Since we are located as dwellers on earth, Heidegger
claims that the sky is already gathered.94 The sky is that
canopy that preserves (or threatens) our dwelling. The sky
is organized around our architecture and is noticeably
altered when that architecture is significantly changed. Not
only the earth, but also the sky becomes, through
architecture, a human location, a domain. This view of
nature’s sky as specifically humanized through architecture
is shared with Langer. Commenting on the domain of the
temple she writes, “The temple really made their greater
world of space -- nature, the abode of gods and ghosts. The
heavenly bodies could be seen to rise and set in the frame
it defined.”95 For Langer also, the sky has been gathered.
Heidegger thinks that architecture also gathers the
divinities. “The divinities are the beckoning messengers of
the godhead.”96 They dwell with mortals in the hope for
“what is unhoped for”97. In so far as it is a hope the
divinities are at a distance but preserved in their
concealment. They dwell with mortals in their concealment;
they are “awaited”.98 The divinities are mortals’
expectancies. In her discussion of the temple, Langer
36
recognizes it as the “abode of the gods”99. However, she
offers no analysis of the essence of divinities in
Heidegger’s terms of that which is awaited, that which is
expected. Nonetheless, with no explicit reference to
Heidegger, she implicitly refers to Heidegger’s fourfold and
its unity. “As it presented this space to popular thought
it unified earth and heaven, men and gods.”100
Both Heidegger and Langer make clear distinctions
between the abstract notion of geometric space and the
domain of human location. However, there is, for them, a
significant difference in which of the two is prior. This
difference is significant because it leads us to see the
explicit ontological thrust of Heidegger and the lack of an
explicit metaphysical task in Langer’s work.
We have seen that Langer makes clear distinctions among
the everyday experience of space, the
mathematical/scientific experience of space (both of which
are considered to be actual) and the virtual space created
by the plastic arts. We have seen her argue that
architecture is the creation of virtual space by treating
actual space. Her position appears to assume that before
the building can be erected there must first be an actual
space, perhaps referred to as the building site. This seems
to be consonant with our own experience of architecture.
Before a building is erected, a site must be chosen. If the
37
selected site is already occupied with a building, then that
building must first be razed to “clear the site” for the new
building. The suitability of the proposed site must include
important engineering considerations. The architectural
engineer will bring the abstractions of mathematics to bear
upon this actual space, which is heterogeneously accessible
to the several senses. However, Heidegger thinks that this
vision of spatial reality is truncated. When seen from the
perspective of ontology, the reverse is the case.
For Heidegger, spaces receive their being from
locations and not from ‘space’.101 The meanings of “location”
and “space” here are in the context of Heidegger’s ontology.
A location does not precede a building. The location occurs
with the building.102 Heidegger’s bridge could occupy any
number of spots along the river but just “one of them proves
to be a location, and does so because of the bridge.”103
Locations are constructed with the architecture.
Locations allow for spaces to emerge. Doing an
etiological analysis of the word that designates space, in
German, Raum, Rum, Heidegger finds that the word originally
means a clearing: “something that has been made room for,
something that is cleared and free, namely within a
boundary.”104 So, at bottom, the meaning of space is that
for which room has been created.105 Room and its space are
created with the building. The space and its boundaries are
38
“gathered” by the location, which is created by the
building. All other meanings of space follow upon this one.
The intervening distances between locations can be
regarded as “mere positions between which lies a measurable
distance”.106 Distances between myself and “mere positions”
and between and among locations considered as “mere
positions” can be understood as intervals of intervening
space.107 The anonymity of the building grows when it is
considered as bare position in its relation to other
positions. A further abstraction occurs when the
mathematics of position, i.e., the geometries, are taken
into account. Only extensio and its internal relations are
analyzed. Space as extension becomes, in Descartes’ phrase,
l’etendue intelligible, a purely intelligible dimension. It
is itself a spaceless space.
What these relations make room for is the
possibility of the purely mathematical
construction of manifolds with an arbitrary number
of dimensions. The space provided for in this
mathematical manner may be called ‘space,’ the
‘one’ space as such. But in this sense ‘the’
space, ‘space,’ contains no spaces and no places.
We never find in it any locations, that are things
of the kind the bridge is.108
39
The condition of the possibility of mathematical
extension is the intervening space of simple position and
the latter’s possibility is the space created, and gathered
by architectural location. The primordial character of
Heidegger’s fundamental ontology becomes evident. To be
human is to be always already in a world as one who dwells.
Dwelling is a primordial, ontological condition of Dasein.
All other forms of space are related to and derived from
architectural space and not the converse.109
To be human is to always already participate in space
in a primordial way. From the “da” of Dasein, it is known
that the human being is fundamentally in relation to space.
A condition for an understanding of that which is far away
or near at hand is the presence of Dasein in all space.
Dasein radically pervades space. That which is spatially
remote is present to me by its remoteness (I know that it is
remote) and in this sense I pervade the space of the
remote.110 “When I go toward the door of the lecture hall, I
am already there, and I am never here only, as this
encapsulated body; rather, I am there, that is, I already
pervade the room and only thus can I go through it.”111
Summary of Comparisons between Langer’s and Heidegger’s
Notions of Architectural Space
40
Langer’s notion of architectural space has important
similarities to Heidegger’s view. Langer’s description of
architectural domain as a sphere of influence and as the
creation of a human world is very similar to Heidegger’s
analysis of architecture. Neither philosopher thinks that
architectural space is fragmented. They agree that
architecture is not merely a collection of buildings each of
which has its own spatial autonomy.112 On the contrary,
Heidegger’s notion of “gathering” resembles Langer’s
description of architectural domain. Heidegger’s
architectural gathering of mortals, earth, sky and
divinities (for Langer, divinities occur in God dominated
cultures) is reflected in Langer’s creation of architectural
space into a human world -- a human sphere of influence.
Both thinkers clearly distinguish the space that is
created by architecture from other modes of space. Neither
thinker believes that architecture simply fills the space
that the physicist and mathematician describe and can be
entirely explained in terms of science and geometry. For
Heidegger, as we have seen, the space of physics and
mathematics are abstracted from the architectural space
of human dwelling which is ontologically primordial. Since
Langer has no systematic ontology of space, the space of
science and geometry are prior but not reducible to the
artistic space created by architecture.113 If a building is
41
razed, Langer seems to think that its architectural space is
destroyed and the vacated spot reverts back to the
quantitative dimensions of the site. For Heidegger, the
vacated spot has a primordial spatial, dwelling relationship
with the rest of the human environment. The quantitative
aspects of the site are derivable from this fundamental
human location.
Langer’s treatment of architecture as a non-discursive,
presentational symbol whose immediacy plunges us into a
world allows her to describe architecture in terms of a non-
abstract “world”. In this, she is aligned with Heidegger.
Since she does not explicitly pursue the ontological
dimension of her logical position, her description of the
priority of space over domain does not coincide with
Heidegger’s priority of location over place. Nonetheless,
Heidegger’s notion of architecture as “gathering” is
consonant with Langer’s description of it as “sphere of
influence.”
An important question for Langer is: How do we know
that architecture is an authentic expression of a culture’s
world? Putting it more broadly: How do we know that any
art is an adequate expression of human sentient, emotional
life? What is the truth of art?
The Truth of Art in Langer
42
In what sense can we say that art reveals the truth?
Both Heidegger and Langer agree that the truth of art has
nothing to do with an artistic representation of the actual
things in the world. A painting is not “true” because it
resembles a model, a landscape or a bowl of fruit. The
adaequatio, the matching of art object with actual things in
the world does not account for the truth of art. Heidegger
asks, “With what nature of what thing should a Greek temple
agree? . . . What is pregiven to the poet, and how is it
given, so that it can then be regiven in the poem?114 Langer
has comparable, rhetorical questions. “Yet the idea of
copying nature is not even applicable to all the arts. What
does a building copy? On what given object does one model a
melody?”115 The questions remain: Does art have anything to
do with the truth and if so, what is the truth of art?
Langer’s conclusion is that art is the non-discursive
symbol of human sentient, emotional life. This serves as
her fundamental definition of art. An object will be
authentically artistic insofar as it falls within the scope
of this definition. In this sense, art has its truth
established by the definition. An object will be truly
artistic if it is a non-narrative, non-practical,
presentational articulation of human sense and feeling. It
appears that this notion of truth is grounded in the
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conformity of the art object with the conception (the
definition).
The verification of this conformity cannot, of course,
be achieved by the structures of propositional logic. The
immediacy of non-discursive forms cannot be mediated by the
language of discourse. Non-discursive symbols are not
consummated and, unlike discursive symbols, have no general
meaning, are not subject to the principle of non-
contradiction and do not affirm or deny anything. An art
object which is a non-discursive symbol cannot say something
about human sense life and thereby fall under the
definition.
Artistic truth is verified by that which is consonant
with sensate immediacy, by intuition. “Aesthetic intuition
seizes the greatest form, and therefore the main import, at
once; there is no need of working through lesser ideas and
serried implications first without a vision of the whole, as
in discursive reasoning, where the total intuition of
relatedness comes as the conclusion, like a prize.”116 Langer
thinks that intuition also occurs in discourse. When the
meaning of individual elements of the proposition is known
and when the syntax is discerned, the meaning of the
proposition is directly intuited. Unlike the aesthetic
intuition, the immediacy of logical intuition is preceded
and mediated by an understanding of the proposition’s
44
elements. Since it is not only difficult to isolate the
elements of a work of art but also impossible to bestow
autonomous meaning on them, aesthetic intuition is directed
to the work as a whole. Where discourse builds toward
intuitions, “a work of art begins with an intuition of the
whole presented feeling.”117
In relegating the truth of art to intuition has Langer
left art’s authenticity in the undiscriminating hands of
both the individual artist and the particular beholder of
the art? On the contrary, Langer entrusts the truth of art
to the discerning insights of both. The intuitions that
have been prepared by an understanding of the artistic
medium with a thorough sensitizing experience with it can
claim some measure of legitimacy in determining whether this
work of art is true. The standard for this assessment still
remains whether or not the work of art is an appropriate
presentational symbol of human sentient, emotional life.
Art that does not meet that standard is bad art. It is “bad
because it is not true to what a candid envisagement would
have been.”118 Relative to her definition of art, bad art
lacks the candor required by her definition of art. It is
therefore corrupt art. Langer agrees with R. G.
Collingwood’s position that corrupt art cannot be properly
called “error” or “lie”, “because error arises only on the
higher level of ‘intellect’ (discursive thinking), and lying
45
presupposes ‘knowing better’; but lack of candid vision
takes effect on the deep level of imagination.”119 Since it
is neither error, which can be corrected, nor lie, which can
be retracted, corrupt art can only be repudiated and
destroyed.120
Langer’s definition of art contains an unresolved
ambiguity. She claims, on the one hand, that all art is
abstract in the sense that it is disengaged from any
practical, actual functions. On the other hand, her
definition states that art elucidates actual sentient,
emotional life. How can art, in truth, elucidate my actual
sentient, emotional life?121 However, in some places she
affirms that someone who has become sensitive to artistic
forms is in a position not only to understand our actual
inner life but also to shape our grasp of the external
world. “What Mr. Morgan says of drama may be said of any
work that confronts us as a major aesthetic experience: it
makes a revelation of our inner life. But it does more than
that -- it shapes our imagination of external reality
according to the rhythmic forms of life and sentience, and
so impregnates the world with aesthetic value.”122 The
logical relationships between the illusory world of art
which somehow “impregnates” the actuality of our actual
inner experiences as well as the actual external world need
clarification here.
46
Some commentators have sought the clarification in
terms of the analogical status of the presentational
symbol.123 When Langer remarks that music sounds the way
feelings move, she is claiming that the insight is delivered
by the symbol through analogy and someone who is sensitive
to music can intuit this meaning. Someone who is not only
sensitive but also creative may project this understanding
through the composing of music. So, the presentational
symbol is virtual, and non-actual but nonetheless real. The
artistic image is illusion only in the sense that it does
not meet the requirements for actuality held by science and
common sense.124
The notion of analogy raises important questions for
Langer. If the element of “likeness” in the analogy is
through the formal structure of both feeling and
presentational symbol, where does the “form” inhere? Is the
form inherent in the symbol and intuited there by the
sensitive artist or beholder of art? Or is the “form” buried
in the raw feeling itself, immediately recognized by the
artist and creatively projected into the artistic image?
Randall Auxier argues that Langer’s reliance on scientific
verifiability and without a metaphysic, Langer cannot
suitably respond to these questions.125
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The ambiguity of artistic truth in Langer is the result
of articulating an actual content (actual feeling) through a
symbolism that is virtual, illusory and has nothing to do
with the actuality. Heidegger does not have this problem,
because art, which he agrees is pure appearance, is not
virtual but a manifestation of the truth of being.
Heidegger and the Truth of Art
In seeking the origin of art,126 Heidegger moves from
the work of art to the possibility that the artwork is a
thing.
Moving quickly through the metaphysical analyses of the
thing,127 he discovers that although the work of art is also
a thing, it is not its “thingness” that constitutes its
artistic nature. Together with the art work’s thingness is
its symbolic character. “The work of art is, to be sure, a
thing that is made, but it says something other than the
mere thing itself is, allo agoreuei. The work makes public
something other than itself; it manifests something other;
it is an allegory. In the work of art something other is
brought together with the thing made. To bring together is,
in Greek, sumballein. The work is a symbol.”128 While
acknowledging the symbolic character of art as a way for
its understanding, Heidegger does not directly pursue it.
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His work predates that of Langer and so he cannot comment on
the power of the non-discursive symbol as the distinguishing
feature of art and as a significant way of grasping art’s
truth.
Instead, Heidegger seeks an ontological foundation for
art, not through art’s “thingly” character but through an
analysis of the “work-being” of the work of art. Taking Van
Gogh’s painting of a pair of peasant shoes as his example,
Heidegger explains that the essence of the difference
between an actual pair of shoes and Van Gogh’s painting is
that the actual pair of shoes is equipmental. The being of
the shoes is “used up” in the reliability of their
equipmental function. The peasant does not attend to her
shoes unless their reliability becomes problematic. On the
contrary, the painted shoes are not used up. Without being
equipment, the painting shows the equipmental being of the
shoes. (In Langer’s terms, the sheer appearance -- the
Schein and not the practical utility -- of the shoes is
their reality). For Heidegger, the ontologist, the truth of
the being of the peasant shoes, is unconcealed by the
painting. “Art is truth setting itself to work.”129
Heidegger thinks that every revelation made by art is
also a concealment because, by themselves, the color, stone,
marble, etc. out of which the artwork is created are hidden
by the art precisely as art. Scientific or everyday ways of
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knowing these materials are not artistic and therefore not
shown and concealed by the art.
For Heidegger, any attempt to explicate art in abstract
conceptual terms actually conceals art. Art is sensate and
the effort to penetrate it with thought leads away from the
sensate into abstract constructs. For example, “Color
shines and wants only to shine. When we analyze it in
rational terms by measuring its wavelengths it is gone. It
shows itself only when it remains undisclosed and
unexplained.”130 Here art shows itself; its reality is found
in the appearance. The struggle to illuminate art with
theoretical reflection may lead to philosophy, psychology or
a science of art but it will hide art itself.
Art remains “undisclosed” to reflection and therefore shows
itself when it is unexplained
Art issues from the earth. The earth’s material,
indeed the earth itself, is set forth in the work of art
even as it hides itself. “The setting forth of the earth is
achieved by the work as it sets itself back into the
earth.”131 But the truth of art is not only this self-
concealing disclosure of the earth. With the setting forth
of the earth comes the opening of the world.
The world is not the world of cosmology.132 It is the
ontological world that is related primordially to Dasein.
The “being there” of Dasein opens up a spaciousness that is
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specifically related to Dasein’s work. “A work by being a
work, makes space for that spaciousness”133
It is through the work that a world is opened and sustained
in that openness. The temple, for example, is a work that
opens and sustains the world that addresses our being for we
are never beings without a world. The temple, as well as
any work, sets the “paths of birth and death, blessing and
curse [that] keep us transported into Being.”134 This world
is “never an object”135 that visibly stands before us. In
opening a world through the work, “all things gain their
lingering and hastening, their remoteness and nearness,
their scope and limits.”136 It is through the work of Dasein
that we live and move and have our being and through the
work we are always already in a world.
The truth of the artwork is found in the tension (the
rift)137 created by the earth and the world. The earth which
shelters and conceals even while it reveals and the world
which is the “clearing of openness”138 establishes the
wholesome rift in which truth plays itself out. Here is
where the truth of art: the truth of architecture, the
painting, the sculpture, the dance the poem, and the like,
reside.
Besides art, many forms of work establish themselves
and reside in the rift. How can art, which is not merely
made but created, be distinguished from these other
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artifacts? Heidegger’s response is simple. Some artifacts
are created but their being created does not inherently
define them. A special kind of hammer may be created but
its serviceability not its creativity is essentially
disclosed by the hammer. An artistically created object has
createdness as part of it.139 “But in the work, createdness
is expressly created into the created being, so that it
stands out from it, from the being thus brought forth, in an
expressly particular way.140 In art, we should experience the
createdness as intrinsic to the art object.
The special place of the artwork in relation to truth
is also unveiled in its distinction from the ordinary. In
this sense, the experience is “solitary”, that is,
disengaged from the routines of “everydayness”. “To submit
to this displacement means: to transform our accustomed
ties to world and to earth and henceforth to restrain all
usual doing and prizing, knowing and looking, in order to
stay within the truth that is happening in the work.”141
Although this statement falls within Heidegger’s ontological
explanation of the truth of art’s being, Langer’s experience
of art as “other” and “strange” is strikingly similar to
Heidegger’s. The decisive difference is that the
“otherness” that Langer recognizes in art is characterized
as non-actual and illusory while Heidegger views this
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“solitary” aspect of art as a special form revealing the
truth of being.
Without an ontology and relying on the verifiability of
the truth of the symbol, Langer must struggle with questions
about the truth of her presentational symbol. Heidegger
remaining within the historicity of the development of
ontology regards truth in the context of the Greeks’ notion
of the unveiling of the truth within being. Art, then is the
revelation of the truth of being. Again, “art is truth
setting itself to work.”
Langer’s analysis of art breaks away from logicians
such as Carnap and places her within reach of a Heideggerian
ontology. Indeed many of the statements that she makes
about art are, by themselves, endorsed by Heidegger. Of
course, unlike Heidegger, her statements are informed by
logical principles. Her allegiance to logical parameters
leads her into an essential paradox -- art’s illusion is
its greatest truth -- and prevents her from resolving it
in Heidegger’s truth of art’s being.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington, Indiana. Indiana University Press. 1982. _________________. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. San Francisco, Ca. Harper and Row. 1962, _________________. The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Translated by Michael Heim. Bloomington, Indiana. Indiana University Press. 1984. _________________. Discourse on Thinking. Translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York. Harper and Row. 1966. _________________. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York. Harper and Row. 1971. Langer, Susanne K. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. 3 vols. The John Hopkins Press. Baltimore. 1967. _________________. Feeling and Form. Charles Scribner’s Sons. New York. 1953. _________________. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachussetts. 1979. Articles Auxier, Randall. “Susanne Langer on Symbols and Analogy: A Case of Misplaced Concreteness.” Process Studies. Vol 26, No 1-2, Spring-Summer, 1997. 86-107, Baffard, Samuel. “Susanne Langer’s Two Philosophies of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol 31, Fall, 1972. 5-14.
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Berndtson, Arthur. “Aesthetics of Susanne Langer.” Journal Of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol 14, No. 4. 485-492. Lachmann, Rolf. “From Metaphysics to Art and Back: The Relevance of Susanne K. Langer for Progress Metaphysics.” Process Studies. Vol 26, No 1-2, Sring-Summer, 1997. 107-125.
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ABSTRACT
A Heideggerian Reading of the Philosophy of Art of Susanne K. Langer with Special Reference to Architecture
Although Martin Heidegger is an ontologist and Susanne Langer a logician, many statements that they make about art are strikingly similar. They agree that art’s significance is in the art object and not the artist’s own experience of actual feeling or personal biography; that, though art is an object, it is not a “thing” and functions differently from things; that art is not only the creation of beauty but an expression of truth; that the truth of art is grasped through an intuitive, sentient immediacy rather than the structure of propositions; that propositions spoken in “everydayness” and through mathematical equations do not articulate what art is; that artistic space is essentially different from everyday space and mathematical space; that intrinsically, art has no utility; that architecture is the creation of a human “world”. While clearly acknowledging the distinctive differences between a logical and ontological perspective, this paper argues that a logical principle Langer proposes places her in a compatible relation with Heidegger’s ontology, that a Heideggerian ontology would resolve ambiguities that are inherent in her own theory of art and that their views on architecture display both significant similarities as well as dissimilarities in their conceptions of space.
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1Langer never openly criticized metaphysics. It has been suggested that Whitehead’s metaphysics is implicit in her theory on signs and symbols. See Rolf Lachman, “From Metaphysics to Art and Back: The Relevance of Susanne K. Langer’s Philosophy for Process Metaphysics,” Process Studies 26:1-2 (Spring-Summer 1997): 119. That metaphysics is never exploited by Langer. She explicitly works in the philosophy of mind.
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2Langer’s discussion of decoration as the illusion of growth within the stability of the design is clearly based on the process within permanence of the biological organism. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 65-66. Hereafter referred to as FF. This organic structure of the several arts is constantly grounded in biological life throughout her Feeling and Form. 3FF. 3. 4FF. 9. 5FF. 15. 6FF. 12-15. 7FF. 22. 8”The recognition of presentational symbolism as a normal and prevalent vehicle of meaning widens our conception of rationality far beyond the traditional boundaries, yet never breaks faith with logic in the strictest sense.” FF. 97 9In neither of her two major works on art, Philosophy in a New Key and Feeling and Form, does Langer make any mention of Martin Heidegger. 10Langer explicitly includes Carnap, B. Russell and Wittgenstein here. Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979): 83-84. Hereafter referred to as PNK 11NK. 97. 12FF. 40. 13NK. 94-97. 14NK. 30-31. 15FF. 30. 16FF. 18 and NK 72, 60-61. 17FF. 18. 18FF. 23 and note on same page. 19NK. 73 and 81-82.
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20NK. 92. 21 Langer does not deny that actual feeling may accompany the experience of art because art is given directly to the senses and so may easily evoke emotion. Her point is that stimulation of emotion is not necessary for a genuine experience of art. FF. 28. 22FF. 146-147. 23FF. 69. 24NK. 240-241. 25NK. 101. 26”This expression, moreover, is not symbolization in the usual sense of conventional or assigned meaning, but a presentation of a highly articulated form wherein the beholder recognizes, without conscious comparison and judgment but rather by direct recognition, the forms of human feeling: emotions, moods even sensations in their characteristic passage.” FF. 82. 27FF. 113. 28FF. 54. 29FF. 49. 30FF. 54. 31NK. 83. 32NK. 83. 33NK. 89. 34We shall see below that Heidegger fully supports this view. 35NK. 89. 36NK. 89.
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37NK. 89. 38NK. 90. 39NK. 89 40NK. 90 41NK. 91. 42Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Translated by Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 68. Hereafter referred to a MFOL. 43MFOL. 68. 44MFOL. 69. 45MFOL. 69. 46MFOL. 216. 47MFOL. 101. 48MFOL. 127. 49MFOL. 143. 50MFOL. 135. 51MFOL. 166. 52MFOL. 127. 53MFOL. 127. 54”That towards which the subject transcends is what we call world.” MFOL. 166.
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55”Because this primordial being of Dasein, as surpassing, crosses over to a world, we characterize the basic phenomenon of Dasein’s transcendence with the expression being-in-the-world.” MFOL. 166. Italics in text. 56MFOL. 126. 57MFOL. 166. 58Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 40. Hereafter referred to as OWA. 59FF. 10. 60OWA. 23. 61”Or could it be that even the structure of the thing as thus envisaged is a projection of the framework of the sentence”? OWA. 24. 62OWA. 26. 63The utility of equipment’s “readiness-to-hand” is discussed in: Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, seventh edition (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1962), 96-99. Hereafter referred to as BT. 64OWA. 46. 65OWA. 34. 66”It even remains doubtful whether, in the essential definition of equipment, what the equipment consists of is properly described in its equipmental nature as matter.” OWA. 48. 67Heidegger explicitly recognizes how art can be regarded as being-on-hand as well as being present-to-hand: “The picture hangs on the wall like a rifle or a hat. A painting, e.g., the one by Van Gogh that represents a pair of peasant shoes, travels from one exhibition to another. Works of art are shipped like coal from the Ruhr and coal from the Black Forest. During the First World War, Holderlin’s hymns were packed in the soldier’s knapsack together with cleaning gear. Beethoven’s quartets lie in the storerooms of the publishing house like potatoes in a cellar.” OWA. 19. When treated as mere things with no regard for their significant form, the paintings are not are not treated as art and their reality can be conceptualized and universalized. But
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when they are regarded for their artistic value, both philosophers agree that their sensible appearance is their unique essence. 68OWA. 46. “To be sure, the sculptor uses stone just as the mason uses it, in his own way. But he does not use it up. That happens in a certain way only where the work miscarries. To be sure, the painter uses pigment but in such a way that color is not used up but only now comes to shine forth. To be sure the poet uses the word -- not however like ordinary speaker and writers who have to use them up but rather in such a way that the word only now becomes and remains truly a word. OWA. 47-48. 69FF. 46 70FF. 49. 71For Langer, this also explains the “unreality” of art or its distinction from non-artistic objects. “Herein lies the ‘unreality’ of art that tinges even perfectly real objects like pots, textiles and temples.” FF. 50. 72”The harmoniously organized space in a picture is not experiential space, known by sight and touch, by free motion and restraint, far and near sounds, voices lost or re-echoed. It is an entirely visual affair; for touch and hearing and muscular action it does not exist.” FF. 72. 73FF. 73. 74FF. 386. 75FF. 386. 76OWA. 30. 77FF. 86. 78FF. 89. 79FF. 97. 80FF. 95. 81FF. 95.
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82FF. 95. 83FF. 96. 84FF. 96. 85The architect creates its image: a physically present human environment that expresses the characteristic rhythmic functional patterns which constitute a culture. Such patterns are the alternations of sleep and waking, venture and safety, emotion and calm, austerity and abandon the tempo, the smoothness or abruptness of life; the simple forms of childhood and complexities of full moral stature, the sacramental and capricious moods that mark a social order, and that are repeated, though with characteristic selection, by every personal life springing from that order.” FF. 96. 86Here Langer entirely disagrees with Frank Lloyed Wright’s often-quoted phrase that “form follows function.” Functional efficiency does not sufficiently explain architecture’s artistic authenticity. FF. 93. 87FF. 97. 88FF. 95. 89Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking” in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 149-150. Hereafter referred to as BDT. 90OWA. 42. 91BDT. 152-153. 92BDT. 152-153 93What Langer says of architecture that has been inspired by strong religious communities, can easily be applied to a bridge in a bridge community. “. . . the building dominates the community, and its outward appearance organizes the site of the town.” FF. 98. 94”But ‘on the earth’ already means ‘under the sky’”. BDT. 149. 95FF. 97-98. 96BDT. 150.
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97BDT. 150. 98BDT. 151. 99FF. 90. 100FF. 98. Italics mine. 101BDT. 154. Italics in text. 102”The location is not already there before the bridge is.” BDT. 154. 103BDT. 154. Italics in text. 104BDT. 154. 105BDT. 154. 106BDT. 155. 107BDT. 155. 108BDT. 155. 109”It is not that there are men, and over and above them space; for when I say ‘a man,’ and in saying this word think of a being who exists in a human manner -- that is who dwells -- then by the name ‘man’ I already name the stay within the manifold of things.” BDT. 156. Italics in text. 110In Being and Time, the bringing to proximity of that which is remote is a phenomenon of spatial “deseverence”. This phenomenon is primordially related to the fundamental ontology of being-in-the-world. BT. 142. 111BDT. 157. 112”The world is not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that are just there.” OWA. 44.
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113Langer’s distinctions among the abstract homogeneity of mathematical space, the heterogeneous experience of “everyday” space, and the sensate homogeneity of artistic space is a reflected abstraction from the primordial condition of Dasein as always already dwelling in space. To say that I orientate myself in space through sight, smell, touch and the like assumes that there is an empty space with which I become familiar in a heterogeneously sensate way. But this “empty space” is a conceptual construct abstracted from the primordial dwelling in space of the human being. 114OWA. 37. 115FF. 46. FF. 397. 117FF. 379. 118FF. 381. Italics in text. 119FF. 381. 120FF. 381. 121Langer generally emphasizes the non-actual, illusory character of all art. Each of the several arts has a primary illusion. Her language is often very emphatic about this point. For example, “the space in which we live and act is not what is treated in art at all.” FF. 72. And again, musical time “is something radically different from the time in which our public and practical life proceeds.” FF. 109. 122FF. 399. 123Randall Auxier, “Susanne Langer on Symbols and Analogy: A Case of Misplaced Concreteness?” Process Studies 26: 1-2 (Spring-Summer 1997): 86-105. 124All forces that cannot be scientifically established and measured must be regarded, from the philosophical standpoint, as illusory; if, therefore such forces appear to be part of our direct experience, they are ‘virtual,’ i.e. non-actual semblances” FF. 188. See also: “Illusion in art cancels the usual process of factual judgment and carries us beyond what is presented to our senses. Samuel Buffard, “Susanne Langer’s Two Philosophies of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 31 (Fall 1972): 11.
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125Auxier. Ibid. 99, 102 126”that from and by which something is what it is” OWA. 17. 127OWA. 20-35. 128OWA. 19-20 129OWA. 39. 130OWA. 47. 131OWA. 47. 132OWA. 44. 133OWA. 45. 134OWA. 44. 135OWA. 44. 136OWA. 45. 137OWA. 63. 138OWA. 61. 139OWA. 64. 140OWA. 65. 141OWA. 66.