Susanne Langer on Symbolism and Artistic Expression

Dr. Ellie Anderson, philosophy professor and co-host of Overthink podcast, discusses Susanne Langer's theory of art and music, particularly drawing from her book "Feeling and Form". Langer discusses how art expresses and symbolizes human emotion-and life itself-and describes how symbolism is crucial to artist and musical form. Textbook is Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology reader, ed. Cahn and Meskin (Blackwell, 2008).
This video is part of a series introducing philosophers' views of art and aesthetics.
For more from Dr. Anderson, check out Overthink on KZbin, or listen to our conversational podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We've got numerous audio podcast episodes on the philosophy of art!

[@UtkarshPhilosophy]

Hi Ellie, I'm about to start with my PhD in Philosophy soon. Thanks a ton for your insightful videos and lectures. Much love and support from India,

[@meesalikeu]

i hope you will think about doing youtubes for us when you can. for one thing, i would love these topics from an indian perspective. all the best in your studies.

[@aek12]

Do it in advait vedant.

[@TheNodden]

Ellie is really gifted at explaining deep stuff in a clear easy 2 understand way. She is sharp and articulate like Devdutt Patttanaik.

[@PenalbaToday]

On The Absent Structure (Umberto Eco, 1968), he quotes this book of Susanne Langer and uses same ideas of signs, symbols and the vocalulary to communicate.

[@entelektuel.yolculuk]

Come to Islam. Only Islam can be ultimate drug of human soul and can solve humanity's problems.

[@michitealatte]

Hi Ellie! I love your discussions on philosophy. I wish these videos are also available for listening in your Overthink podcast

[@patcupo]

Feeling and Form was one of my favorite books in college as a music major, and I've since used Langer's definition of art when teaching. It's worth noting that she also wrote about visual arts in the book, not only music. Her idea of creating a virtual reality through art is super interesting, like virtual space in visual arts and virtual time in music. The symbol is virtual. Dance creates virtual time and space, cinema creates virtual history, etc. I have the edition with the bright green cover, which always catches my eye and influences whatever I'm thinking about.

[@richardsonthony]

Thank you Professor. You and Prof Guzman have pushed me to buy a new textbook. Gratis!

[@artlessons1]

Hi Elle , my mind reflected on a few things as you spoke . One of Hegel symbolic art as pre-art The other ( being a artist myself and having the fortune of having Dr Marion Woodman for a drama and English teacher for give yrs before becoming an internstionaly acclaimed Jungian analyst and author of five books…. Mostly on the repressed feminine and healing through art and symbols ) Jung thought symbols to be greater than signs and unconsciously through images connect with unconscious feelings! ( ps l think of Dr Woodman sometimes when listening to you. She was a minister's daughter who searched for her individuality through the great thinkers in time ) Thanks again !

[@vp4744]

Langer was my gateway drug to semiotics because she is so easy to understand. I wonder what she said or would say about Derrida?

[@TheTimeshadows]

I think Langer and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to describing the perception of phenomenology of the media. First I'd heard of her; thanks, Ellie.

[@papajohnloki]

Hi Ellie, really enjoy the various and varied videos on your channel. Truthfully, some goes over my head and not being as academically learned as your other viewer, I tend to 'play favorites' as to my preferences but I watch your videos in their totality and I'm working through your various playlists. (You may not be able to tell from this but English is my first and only language) . best

[@TheStugbit]

I think one thing that is missing here is the unconscious side of art. Art in some ways goes into a subjectivity that is beyond symbolic relations, in my way of seeing it. But I'm not claiming that there are no symbols in the unconscious, and certainly, afterwards, our understanding of the end art product can only be given through symbolic structures, our cultural lens and so forth. However, the unconscious isn't 100% symbolic, that's what I want to point out. And I can say this from my own experience. As sort of an impressionist painter myself (grunge impressionist, actually), I can tell you that there is a significant struggle for having "control" in my work. There are things that appear in the paintings that didn't go there by my pure rational thought and control, nor by any sort of direct handling of my emotions through the brush, but yet they make total sense when finished and are in harmony with the rest. I don't know if you could call "expression" something that isn't in direct relation to our emotional reason, you see? It's like driving a race car in a rally over heavy gravel. The dust powder carries you along with everything else as if it had power in itself and then, when you see it, your rational actions alongside your emotions are already far away. So, did the dust have anything to do with carrying you along? It has no wheels, no engine, fuel or grip, but in my opinion it did. Kind regards.

[@robertalenrichter]

I love it when these little clips on the history of aesthetics pop up. Sometimes I think of it as the most important thing of all, implicated in everything else -- after all, sensations, thoughts are in fact forms, or can at least be interpreted, or have to be interpreted, in this way. Do we "give form" to a thought, or does it already appear as one? Which, of course, we instantly trans-form. Aren't all feelings aesthetic in nature? Feeling "good" is almost by definition harmonious. Then there's the universe of stylistic decisions, the way that people clothe themselves, decorate their apartments; richly informative, these choices can be reverse-engineered to learn a great deal about a person's "make-up" -- which can literally be thought of as "what made us", as well, of course, as what we're "making up". Many years ago, I formed a conviction that people who relegate form to a secondary role, simply as decoration for the essential, are completely missing the point, getting it backwards. I presume that Prof. Anderson puts these on here as an aid for her students, but there's a congenial side effect on others as well.

[@dilbyjones]

Am I understanding this comment as anti minimalism ? or the minimalistic asthetic?

[@robertalenrichter]

@@dilbyjones Not at all. Though everything that I do, painting, writing, thinking, feeling, tends to be extravagant, I can quite enjoy minimalist work.

[@synapse71]

I realize it's just a summary, but some questions pop out. Doesn't music always point back to the creator? For example, there's something trivial about "Mood" music that we know is generic, and produced just to play in the background in public spaces. Then there's music where the creator has cultivated an image, and this impacts feelings about the music. Or for music that comes from a certain time period, where we have ideas about the creators and people who liked it back then, which affects our feelings and what it symbolizes. Maybe part of what makes something art is that we know it's a communication from another person. This is inherent in our experience of it, even if we don't know anything about the creator. We know it's a message from someone, with something of them in it. It seems more accurate to say that the creator is inseparable from the music, the feeling it stimulates, and so finally the feeling that the music symbolizes (which ends up coming last in the timeline of the music's coming into existence) .

[@meesalikeu]

its true there are things close to a musical piece, in fact just outside it, like the things you describe, but i think langer is trying to stay within the musical composition itself. there certainly is a wider range to discuss than that when it comes to the arts. i mean yeah its pretty hard to remove the personality of a picasso or an elvis from their works.

[@SineEyed]

No, I don't think so. Does generic mood music tell you that the one who composed it has a boring personality, or not much charisma? No. At least it shouldn't have. Because there's no good reason to infer that from the music. And why is that?... Music is not a form of communication between the musician and the audience--at all. Nowhere in the process of making, performing, or listening to music is there any kind of coherent dialog between individuals. That's simply not what's happening..

[@QuestionsIAskMyself]

Hey, I was wondering if you guys can talk about postcolonial theory, given the current issues happening

[@kmscheid3303]

Hi, I'm glad I found your channel. Your discussion of analytic v. continental philosophers was soooo useful. Now I know why my teachers were kind of weird and off-putting (guess which brand?).

[@dilbyjones]

I remember those. The corse material would have been nice here.

[@dilbyjones]

Great abstract.

[@Jay_The_Cat]

Dr. Ellie! 🧠🧠💪💪

[@diagorasofmel0s]

Can you talk about the asymmetry of colonizer and colonized, like Frantz Fanon i would want to learn something in regards to this.

[@Beredeemed]

Who wrote the aesthetics anthology you use? Thanks

[@mac2phin]

Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets.

[@hrr6851]

❤❤❤

[@agarcia1786]

This is kind of a big topic considering all the changes in what's considered "music" from avant garde composer John Cage to the soulless mass produced k-pop of BTS. Like all things in this world, it seems to be suffering from postmodern angst.

[@michaelvandenheuvel317]

Fallen closer and deeper within. 😉