Beyond Literality:

Art as an Extension of the Human Sphere in Susanne Langer

Abstract

This article intends to examine the close relationship between Susanne Langer’s philosophical anthropology and philosophy of art. Since both fields are sustained, on Langer’s thought, by an epistemological and semantical concern, we will initially consider the philosopher’s  possible response to the Kantian question “What can I know?”, which is related to our possible ways of articulating meanings. Secondly, we will discuss the distinction between our two basic devices for generating and handling meanings: the signs and the symbols, classified, in turn, as discursive and presentational symbols. At the end, we will investigate the distinctiveness of the works of art as presentational symbols, in order to clarify concepts such as feeling, expression, self-expression, abstraction and ineffability, which, besides playing a central role in Langer’s aesthetics, reverberate on the question of the limits of human’s expressivity and knowledge. Along the proposed itinerary, we will verify how Langer may extend and deepen our self-understanding by the (theoretical and experiential) recognition of the sphere of art.