Aesthetics Of Susanne Langer

As a symbol of aesthetic inheritance and development, Susan Langer’s Symbolic Aesthetics is one of the most widely popular Western aesthetics in the middle of last century. The famous American artist, writer and commentator——Richard Kostelanetz proclaimed:In the ten years after World War Two, Almost none philosophy of art took greater adventage than the theory which Susanne Langer outlined. American aesthetician Tuo Mashi Monroe also took the same view and thought, Signs and the Symbols was the dominant aesthetic theory at the time. This article aims to make a more systematic and comprehensive elaboration of Lange’s symbol aesthetics, at the same time, to contribute for Chinese academics research in the field of Symbolic Aesthetics.This article is made of five chapters:First, the author describes the purpose, significance of this study and domestic Research. Second, in the main sources of Lange’s aesthetic, the author believes that the main sources of Lange’s aesthetic are Cassirer, Croce, Collingwood and Gestalt psychology aesthetics. Again, the most important is the main content of Lange’s aesthetics, the author makes four questions as a clue——"What is art? How do Artists create such emotional signs? How do People understand and appreciate these works? Why can the intuitive of art understand the meaning of works? to comprehensively systematicly discuss the essence of art, art abstract and intuition and life form in Lange’s aesthetics step by step. In addition, the author discusses the revelation and positives of Langer’s Aesthetics. Finally, the author makes a brief summary of the content of the paper.