Susanne K. Langer
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| One of the 20th century's leading philosophers; her works, from Philosophy in a New Key to the three-volume Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, pioneered new concepts in the field of aesthetics.
Susanne Knauth Langer was born in Manhattan to German immigrant parents and raised in a rich intellectual and artistic environment. She earned a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe in 1920, a master's in philosophy in 1924 and a doctorate in 1926, both from Harvard. For the next fifteen years, Langer taught philosophy at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Smith, and other colleges while also raising two sons and writing her first scholarly works. In 1954 Langer was named chair of the Philosophy Department at Connecticut College, retiring in 1962 as professor emeritus. Langer's first book was a study of myth and fantasy, The Cruise of the Little Dipper, and Other Fairy Tales (1924). Her first philosophical treatises were The Practice of Philosophy (1930) and An Introduction to Symbolic Logic (1937). With the publication of Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (1942) and Language and Myth (1946), her translation of the work of the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, Langer became known as a leading figure in the philosophy of art. From 1945 to 1950 she taught at Columbia University where she received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to write Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (1953). Langer spent the last years of her life at her colonial home in Old Lyme where she dedicated herself to the writing of the three volume Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (1967, 1972, 1982), the culmination of her life's work. Langer's best-known work, Philosophy in a New Key, sold over 500,000 copies by the time of her death, making it one of Harvard University Press's all-time best sellers. For decades it was one of the most commonly assigned texts on college campuses, appearing on the syllabi of a variety of courses, including anthropology, literature, psychology, religion, and art history, as well as philosophy. Susanne Langer received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, and in 1960 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her private papers are housed at the Connecticut College Library where a bronze bust of her was dedicated in 1988. | |||||||||||
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