The Practice of Philosophy

by Susanne K. Langer

Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Susanne Katherina Langer (née Knauth) (December 20, 1895 – July 17, 1985) was an American philosopher of mind and of art, who was influenced by Ernst Cassirer and Alfred North Whitehead. She was one of the first women to achieve an academic career in philosophy and the first woman to be popularly and professionally recognized as an American philosopher. Langer is best known for her 1942 book entitled, Philosophy in a New Key. (wikipedia)

Reviews

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susanne Langer's book Philosophy in a New Key is deemed as the entry point into her work. The Practice of Philosophy may be a better starting point, as it was written over ten years before New Key and it drafts Langer's foundation of her philosophical inclinations and her theories of symbolism, myth and aesthetics. Her language is lucid and remains highly readable to date as she explores the various tasks of philosophy in practice. Her aim in this work is to “attain a new orientation” (the new key, as she later terms it) and I believe she achieves this easily with grace and wit.

I am planning on reading her collection of writings and happy to have started here (and in tandem with her fairy tales)

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the other review here points out, the common advice to start with Philosophy in a New Key and move through the rest of Langer's work is bad advice. One should start with The Practice of Philosophy, as this is where she lays out what her entire project is about. There are multiple instances in this precious little book where she articulates her concepts in ways she doesn't do in her later works. I came to this book after reading almost everything Langer has written, and in that respect, this book helped me tie together a few loose ends, but it also raised some new questions, particularly since she spends a lot of time on metaphysics—a topic she avoids in her later works, confusingly, I might add.

This is where she first presents the distinction between discursive symbolism and presentational symbols or forms. She hasn’t yet coined the term "presentational forms" and instead calls it "Insight," which she admits is also confusing. She spends a chapter discussing the triadic nature of meaning-making, which becomes central to all her later work, but, to my knowledge, she never explicates it quite like this again. This framework is rooted in the then unpublished papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (you can read them now in Philosophical Writings of Peirce and I recommend you start with chapter 6: The Principles of Phenomenology for the triadic nature of meaning making).

In any case, this book is long out of print, which is a crime. Langer’s work is, in my opinion, crucial for providing the tools and narrative structures to counter the narratives emerging, maybe better said, frothing, out of the generative AI community. Meaning, as Langer convincingly explicates it here and throughout her career, is something AI, and all its iterations, simply cannot produce.