Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling [Abridged Edition]

by Susanne K. Langer, Gary A. van den Heuvel (Editor)

' An Essay on Human Feeling' is the crowning achievement of one of the most seminal, refreshing, and influential philosophers of our time. It treats the origin and evolution of mind, tracing the roots of science and art to a common ground in the special realm of human feeling.

Langer's masterwork was published in three volumes between 1967 and 1982. It is republished now in a superb one-volume abridgment, it's 1,200 pages reduced by nearly two-thirds. The abridged version skillfully preserves the range, complexity, style, and coherence of the original 'Essay.'

Langer's thesis is the inverse of Descartes who suggested that imagination is a byproduct of the intrusion of the body on thought, and feelings in particular are muddled modes of thinking. Rather, Langer shifts 'feeling' to center stage as the essence of being, rather than 'thought.' This shift of feeling to center stage in our mental life must in her case be explained by the shifting of art to center stage in what she supposed was a philosophy of the human spirit.

Genres: Philosophy, Family Law, American, Nonfiction, Psychology

464 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1967

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

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is remarkable to read this in 2025 knowing the life of Susanne K Langer, her entire background and philosophical oeuvre and as she was going blind stating that she simply can not continue to write more, knowing this would be the last words she leave the world with after everything - it is chilling:

So great a stride in the evolution of man cannot fail to throw his whole ambient, social and physical, into convulsion and cause world-wide waves of emotional conflict to build up in every society, savage, barbaric or civilized. We live in a precipitous, heady transitional age, the Age of Science. Transitional-from a past whose image itself is changing under the influence of that very transformation which is triggering the new mentality, to a future (if our use of Science does not abrogate the further life of man on earth) as unpredictable today as were the towers and tunnels of New York when the first self-propelled organisms crawled out of the ocean for little sojourns on its brineless edges.

It will surely take long and different ages to retrieve the moral and mental balance mankind itself has blasted in the last three or four centuries (to start only with the time of terrifying acceleration), and there is no way of guessing whether or how we shall retrieve it, because that newest of natural phenomena-Mind-still faces the mystery of all things young, the secret of vital potentiality.

[Sara G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, though some of the science the conclusions it draws are based on is outdated at this point. It still discusses some incredibly interesting things, especially, for me, in the chapter on individuation and involvement.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

fewer pages may have made for more stars - I really enjoyed it, but there was too much of it and focus (mine or hers or both) wanes and waxes all through

[Jon Stout · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susanne Langer’s book, while an essay on mind and feelings, relies heavily on a discussion of the nature of art. She argues that art is the expression, in sensual or material form, of feelings, which she defines in a very broad way to include everything from perceptions to complicated impressions, and certainly including emotions. Within art she is including visual arts, as well as music, drama, sculpture, dance, literature, architecture and probably others. She basically says that art expresses a feeling that the artist has in the form of colors, or sounds, or movements, or other medium characteristic of the art form involved.

In taking this position she reminds me of other philosophers who take a similar approach, such as John Dewey, who wrote Art as Experience, which conveys the idea of art as the experience of the artist as well as of the audience. Another such philosopher is my one-time mentor, Arthur Danto, who wrote Embodied Meanings, again emphasizing that art puts into material form something of the life of the artist. Danto studied under Susanne Langer at Columbia University, where John Dewey was an earlier presence.

Langer has a wide range of experience in the arts, quoting extensively from artists, writers, musicians and other art professionals. There are references and excerpts from musical works in musical notation. Many of the footnotes are in French or German, which I am trained to read, but which I am daunted by the effort to work out. Her erudition is impressive.

She also devotes considerable energy to bridging the gap between the material sciences and the realm of the artist, including examining how life arises in chemical and biological terms, and becomes capable of the life of the mind and the feelings expressed in art. Her use of sources from scientific literature again goes way beyond my ability to evaluate.

Her ideas are stimulating, such as examining how agency or periodicity bridges the gap between the material world and the artistic world, but they are difficult to assimilate into our usual categories of thinking. Her learning overwhelms, and I wish she provided an introductory course in how to understand her work. I should probably read her first book, Philosophy in a New Key. While I admire her work, I cannot say that I am moved by it.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable. It is a crime this book is out of print.