Susan Lange Theory Symbol

Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985) is one of the famous philosophers, estheticians, semioticians in the20th century in America, who is often looked upon as the founder of semiotic aesthetics, together with Cassirer. The present dissertation attempts to trace her developmental process in semiotic research; indicate her change and transcendence in semiotic thinking; investigate her contribution to the development of modern semiotics in the aspects of the construction of a semiotic system, semiotic thinking in aesthetics and semiotic minding. Based on the diachronic observation and logical analyses, this thesis adopts the combined research methods of literature retrieval, synchronic comparisons and contrasts and theoretical analyses, so as to maintain her semiotic theory as a general system, expose her comprehensive and coherent thinking in semiotics and explore her heuristic and enlightening ideas in contemporary philosophical context. Therefore, this is an interdisciplinary research and a holistic examination of the functions of the symbols in language, art and mind fields.This investigation finds that Langer’s semiotic thinking has extensive criticism and adoption from the contemporary-philosophy. Though she adopts the cultural symbolic critical perspective from Cassirer in definition of the relations between human beings and the world, she surely benefits a lot from her tutor Whitehead, especially his universal outlook which is based on the process, generation and relation perspectives. Moreover, Langer inherits the zest in logical analyses from the logical positivism and the enthusiasm in meaning interpretation from the empiricism. Upon the clashes and dialogues with the contemporary philosophical ideas and semiotic theories, Langer proposes her own creative thinking regarding such categories as intuition, abstraction and logic, which lays a solid polynary foundation for her general semiotic theory. Langer defines a symbol from the perspective of function, discriminates signals from symbols on the basis of the different logic scheme, indicates the necessity of symbol-oriented meaning interpretation in terms of the human instinct of symbolic transformation. The classification and distinction of discursive symbols and representational symbols is a leap in her semiotic thinking. The earlier research in mathematic and scientific symbols renders her aware-of the nature of discursive symbols, especially the features and experimental generation of language as the typical discursive symbol. Nevertheless, the logic power of language also determines its limitation in interpreting our inner feelings, which is intended for the representational symbols. Langer’s research in art symbols as the typical representational symbol is the highlight in his entire semiotic theory. Her definition of art and her illumination of the nature of art in terms of the symbolic feeling, expressive form, and its semblance and illusion enlighten us considerably in artistic criticism. Also, Langer realizes that there exists a concrete mental image in artistic symbol projection, and the minding activity is the source of art symbols. Thus, Langer proposes that art is the key to the mystery of human minding and the way to art is the way to the mind. Langer’s establishment of an act theory and act principles is a research in-the genesis of symbols, which traces the construction of the symbolic world, reflects her endeavor and achievements in interdisciplinary and multi-methodology exploration, and affords a supportive epistemological and interpretive framework for her semiotic theory.Langer’s semiotic theory accords us a new way to meaning interpretation and a fresh theory in semiotics, which is based on her holistic, polynary, dynamic, and dialogic research perspective; and which is also the motive for her to interpret the meaning of being from both the rational and the perceptual perspectives. However, there inevitably exist drawbacks in her theory. Her attempt in seeking an ultimate for minding in physiology and biology is kind of fundamentalism and an antinomy and her illusion interpretation can not be supposed to include all of the artistic types. Despite these, Langer’s semiotic theory still has much enlightening significance in present philosophical and semiotic contexts, and her methodological innovative ideas are definitely worth learning, which is also the incentive and pursuit of this paper.