Art And Human Being-the Study On Susanne·K·Langer's Cultural Philosophy

With the development of western philosophy, it happens two kinds of turn about the subject of western philosophy, which exerts the far-reaching impact. Occurred in the twentieth century, the linguistic turn is the second philosophical turn, which permeated throughout the twentieth century, not only changing the theme of western philosophy, but also directly contributing to the development of the semiotics. The linguistic turn expands to the aesthetics, psychology, logic and other fields of theoretical research and has had a broad and far-reaching impact on contemporary western philosophy. The theory of symbol before largely focused on logical analysis. Untile Ernst Cassirer's symbolic philosophy, the theme of western philosophy has come back to the human culture. The symbol here is not a logical form, but a cultural form created by human being.Susanne-K-Langer is a famous aesthetician with illustrious reputation in the history of western philosophy. Susanne-K-Langer's cultural philosophy directly inherites from Ernst Cassirer's symbolic philosophy. Ernst Cassirer defines the art as the symbol which is the starting point of her thought. The philosophical criticism to human creative activity from the point of symbol is the common theme between Ernst Cassirer's philosophy and Susanne-K-Langer's philosophy. Ernst Cassirer extends the philosophical criticism from Kant's ideas to the whole fields of human culture, and begins to explore the nature of human being. Susanne-K-Langer turnes Ernst Cassirer 's cultural criticism to artistic criticism, exploring the nature of human being and the regularity of human activities from human artistic activity. However, Susanne-K-Langer's artistic criticism is not simply a continuation of Ernst Cassirer's theory, but has undergone a fundamental change.Limited by the theoretical framework of traditional metaphysics based on the rationalism, Ernst Cassirer pursuits the nature of art under the background of epistemology and studies human artistic activity in terms of rationalism. He lacks both the whole sufficient attention to art and the depth of theoretical research. Different from him, Susanne-K-Langer looks art as the ontological category in her cultural philosophy and gives the art the ontological meaning and value. The problem of the nature of art is closely linked with the problem of the essence of human being. The nature of art is determined by the essence of human being. So, Susanne-K-Langer explores the essence of human being from human artistic activity and illustrates the features of human life from artistic phenomenologics.She looks human inner subjective world as the object of philosophy to study, and explores the characteristics and laws of human inner subjective world. Thus she developes Ernst Cassirer's cultural phenomenologics about how to achieve the general laws of human culture to her artistic phenomenologics about how to achieve the object of human inner subjective world. Overall, Susanne-K-Langer reveals the phenomenological characteristics of art from three aspects:creative, expressive and symbolic. These three aspects constitute the main contents of her artistic phenomenologics.On the phenomenological characteristic of creative, Susanne-K-Langer reveals the general nature of symbol and the division of symbolic function. First of all, the art's creative characteristic is rooted in human self-creative nature. Symbol creation is the essence of human life. Symbolic thinking and symbolic activity is the two basic aspects of human life. Symbolic thinking is the basic characteristic of human thinking, symbolic activity is a basic form of human activities.Through creating the symbol, human not only seprates himself from animals and confirms his existence as human being, but also creats all kinds of human culture to achieve human self-creation,self-development and self-transcendence. Then, Susanne-K-Langer explores the whole history of human culture. She not only investigates the original symbol-metaphorical thinking, but also reveals the division of symbolic function——the rational function and the emotional function. Through investigating human symbol development and the primitive function of symbol activity, Susanne.K.Langer proves that the presentational symbol and the discursive symbol have equally important status. Through investigating the division of symbolic function, Susanne.K.Langer divides all symbolic forms into the discursive symbols and the presentational symbols. Artibuted to the symbol's rational function, the discursive symbols correspond to the external objective world and help people to grasp the law of external objective world. Language and natural science are the representive of the discursive symbols. Artibuted to the symbol's emotional function, the presentational symbols correspond to mankind's inner subjective world and turn human subjective experiences into an external form that can be perceived. The art is the typical of the presentational symbols. The division of symbolic function is the result of human development and progress, which is rooted in the two different dimensions of human life and the duality of human mind. Susanne-K-Langer finds that the discursive symbols fail to measure human inner subjective world and can not be the symbol to express human inner subjective world properly and also can not provide it a full and accurate epistemological basis. Therefore, only to create and develop a new kind of symbol beyond the limits of the discursive symbol, can be achieved to express human inner subjective world. This task is ultimately completed by the typical presentational symbol——art.On the phenomenological characteristic of expressive, Susanne-K-Langer explains and illustrates that the art is the objectivity of human inner subjective world. She makes a more stringent regulations and instructions on the relation between the art and human inner subjective world. Art and emotion are closely related. Emotion is not only the driving force of human artistic activity, but also the content of human artistic activity, the purpose and the ultimate destination of human artistic activity. Susanne-K-Langer does a new understanding and explanation on emotions. Different from trational understanding, she looks emotion as human feeling. Human's emotion is part of human activities based on the physiological basis of living organisms. This makes the structure of human life is also the structure of human emotion, which have the basic features of organic,motive,rhythmic and growing.Since the art is the objectivity of human inner subjective world, it also has the basic characteristics of organic,motive,rhythmic and growing.On the phenomenological characteristic of symbolic, Susanne-K-Langer explains human how to creat the artistic symbol to express human inner sbujective world. Abstracting human experience is the basic function of the symbol. As a kind of symbol created by human being, the art also has the function of abstracting human inner sbujective world. Judging from the discursive symbol, the art has the symbolic significance in the self-evidence. First of all, the art is a form of emotion. Artistic content and form, the appearance and the essence is combined in the artistic form. Second, the art is a form of representation. The form of art can be divided into the internal form and the external form. The external form is the perceptual representation, which is the basis of artistic form. The internal form is the illusionary representation, which is the essence of artistic form. Thirdly, the art is a form of intuition. Artistic cognition is based on the intuition, follows the principles of human intuitive thinking. Intuition is not only a basic way of human thinking, but also the basic means of rational thinking. Artistic cognition consists of artistic perception, artistic imagination and artistic abstraction. It follows the law of over determination and the law of reduction.By the theory of artistic phenomenologics, Susanne-K-Langer gives the ontological meaning and value to the art. Susanne.K.Langer looks art as the reflection of human inner life and probes into the secret in human inner life. As for her, human artistic activity is not a kind of way to hold the world, but a way to explore human inner subjective world. She paies close attention to the human artistic activity, studying human how to separate from animals, how to establish himself and surmount himself through the artistic activity. In this way, the artistic philosophy is no longer a question of epistemology yet, but a question of ontology.Susanne-K-Langer's cultural philosophy has the ingenuity and the progress. She critisizes the traditional ontology established on the rationalism and has a powerful impact on western philosophy. She reveals the irrational characteristics of human being and guides human to concern and explore the inner subjective world, which greatly broadens the perspective of cultural philosophy. However, same as Ernst Cassirer, Susanne-K-Langer's idea is deeply affected by Kant. It is the different between Susanne-K-Langer's cultural philosophy and the cultural philosophy of Marxism.It is also the limitation of her cultural philosophy. She ignores the relationship between the art and the economy, the politics, the history, etc. As a result, she defies the function of the art to criticisize the society.