From International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 4,
December 1994, 419-432.
Posted June 6, 2008
Langer, Language, and Art
Jerry H. Gill
Suzanne K. Langer needs
no introduction for those who are the least bit acquainted with the
field of aesthetics. Her efforts to construct a comprehensive and
articulate approach to the philosophy of art are as impressive as they
are influential. In addition, Langer’s concern to combat the effects of
the monolithic and reductionistic emphases of modern logical empiricism
are to be commended. She has sought to overcome such philosophic
intolerance by establishing a legitimate space for art and emotive
expression alongside of logical and empirical expression. Langer has
systematically and cogently maintained that the former is every bit as
important and cognitive as is the latter; art and science are construed
by her as “separate, but equal.”
In this essay I would
like to focus on Langer’s overall philosophy of art in terms of her
fundamental distinction between the nature and function of language and
art, respectively. This distinction constitutes the true axis of her
approach to and vindication of art as a significant cognitive dimension
of human life. Moreover, and ironically, it is precisely the
absoluteness of this distinction that creates a fundamental tension or
inconsistency within Langer’s overall philosophy as well. In the latter
part of this essay I shall seek to pinpoint both the cause and the
effect of this tension, along with offering some suggestions concerning
its resolution. One hopes there are better ways to avoid reductionism
than by resorting to the sort of dualism that characterizes Langer’s
contrast between language and art.
I
The axis of Langer’s
philosophy of art is her absolute dichotomy between the discursive
and expressive functions of human symbolic communication. The
discursive function is served by language while the expressive function
is served by art. This all-encompassing dualism radiates throughout and
controls every aspect of Langer’s systematic effort to understand and
formulate the nature and meaning of aesthetic activity and prehension.
Although she acknowledges that both forms of communication arise from
human consciousness and its attempt to articulate the various dimensions
of human experience, Langer clearly thinks that there is a fundamental
difference between those aspects of human life which pertain to “inner,”
subjective experience and those that pertain to the “outer,” objective
experience. Discursive communication deals with the latter, while
expressive communication is apropos of the former.
Here is how Langer
introduces her notion of discursive thought and language:
The most astounding and
developed symbolic device humanity has evolved is language. By means of
language we can conceive the intangible, incorporeal things we call our
ideas, and the equally inostensible elements of our perceptual
world that we call facts. It is by virtue of language that we
can think, remember, imagine, and finally conceive a universe of facts.
We can describe things and represent their relations, express rules of
their interactions, speculate and predict and carry on a long
symbolizing process known as reasoning. And above all, we can
communicate, by producing a serried array of audible or visible words,
in a pattern commonly known, and readily understood to reflect our
multifarious concepts and percepts and their interconnections. This use
of language is discourse; and the pattern of discourse is known
as discursive form. It is a highly versatile, amazingly powerful
pattern. It has impressed itself on our tacit thinking, so that we call
all systematic reflection “discursive thought.” It has made, far more
than most people know, the very frame of our sensory experience—the
frame of objective facts in which we carry on the practical business of
life.1
There is
nothing surprising or original in this characterization of linguistic
symbolization. Through language we are said to “conceive” of ideas or
names, “describe” objects in the physical environment, whether present
or not, “represent” relationships between things, which constitute
“facts,” stipulate rules of logic for the “reasoning” process, et
cetera. As Langer says at the close of the above quotation, discursive
speech provides the form or framework whereby we structure and
communicate about the sensory, factual aspects of our experience. She
goes on to add that this form of symbolization has rather strict
limitations since it cannot communicate well, if at all, the subjective
aspects of consciousness and inner perception. Our knowledge of these
dimensions of human experience, says Langer, “defies discursive
formulation, and therefore verbal expression . . . . it is unspeakable,
ineffable; according to practically all serious philosophical theories
today, it is unknowable” (PA 22). We shall return to the obvious, and
to my way of thinking, unfortunately “positivist” flavor of such remarks
a bit later on.
Langer introduces the
expressive function of symbolic communication in the following manner:
A work of art presents
feeling (in the broad sense I mentioned before, as everything that can
be felt) for our contemplation, making it visible or audible or in some
way perceivable through a symbol, not inferable from a symptom.
Artistic form is congruent with the dynamic forms of our direct
sensuous, mental, and emotional life; works of art are projections of
“felt life,” as Henry James called it, into spatial, temporal, and
poetic structures. They are images of feeling, that formulate it for
our cognition. What is artistically good is whatever articulates and
presents feeling to our understanding. . . . Form, in the sense in
which artists speak of “significant form” or “expressive form,” is not
an abstracted structure, but an apparition; and the vital processes of
sense and emotion that a good work of art expresses seem to the beholder
to be directly contained in it, not symbolized but really presented.
The congruence is so striking that symbol and meaning appear as one
reality. (PA 25-26)
Langer takes
great care to emphasize that she is not thinking of expression in art as
certain “emotivist” philosophers have spoken of ethical and/or religious
discourse. For her, art functions as a symbol system through which
artists formulate and express the idea of various feelings,
rather than merely releasing or venting them. These feelings are
expressed through presentation in symbol form in art, rather than
signified through representation in discursive speech. In a sense,
Langer can and should be understood as engaged in an effort to broaden
the meaning of the term “symbol” so as to designate more than the mere
communication of information and concepts by means of representation.
In the vocabulary of current discussion, it might be said that she is
concerned with understanding symbolic activity more in terms of semiotic
than syntactics and semantics. As she puts it:
According to the usual
definition of “symbol,” a work of art should not be classed as a symbol
at all. But that usual definition overlooks the greatest intellectual
value and, I think, the prime office of symbols—their power of
formulating experience and presenting it objectively for contemplation,
logical intuition, recognition, understanding. That is articulation, or
logical expression. And this function every good work of art does
perform. It formulates the appearance of feeling, of subjective
experience, the character of so-called “inner life,” which discourse—the
normal use of words—is peculiarly unable to articulate, and which
therefore we can only refer to the general and quite superficial way.
(PA 132-33)
Although she clearly
wants to separate the functions of language and art as forms of symbolic
formulation, Langer does indicate that they both arise within the
metaphoric mode of communication. She maintains that metaphor is the
pivotal process for the growth of human understanding since “it is the
natural instrument of our greatest mental achievement—abstract thinking”
(PA 104). In discursive communication, we move from the familiar to the
unfamiliar by means of metaphorical expressions, which extend the
conceptual meaning of common terms by connecting them up in unfamiliar
and surprising ways. Langer says:
When we use a word for
breath to mean the element of life, we use it metaphorically, just as
when we use words like “brilliance,” “enlightenment,” and other
expressions literally referring to light, to denote intelligence.
Originally these are all metaphors directly conveying an image; and it
is the image that expresses the new insight, the nameless idea that is
meant. The image, the thing actually named, is the literal meaning of
the word; the metaphorical sense is the new concept which (when it is
first encountered) no word in the existing vocabulary literally denotes.
(PA 105)
In like manner,
according to Langer, our efforts to present the feel and structure of
our “inner life” through symbolic expression follow a similar metaphoric
pattern. At this crucial juncture, however, Langer makes an
interesting, albeit puzzling move. Rather than see this common rootage
in the metaphoric mode as a way to unite discursive and expressive
communication, she contends that metaphor itself transcends language and
is, thus, to be understood as exclusively presentational and expressive,
rather than in any way discursive. This is how she puts it:
The principle of
metaphor is simply the principle of saying one thing and meaning
another, and expecting to be understood to mean the other. A metaphor
is not language, it is an idea expressed by language, an idea that in
its turn functions as a symbol to express something. It is not
discursive and therefore does not really make a statement of the idea it
conveys; but it formulates a new conception for our direct imaginative
grasp. (PA 23)
This move is puzzling
because metaphor is universally classified as a linguistic device or
genre within language, but it is interesting to see the way Langer
employs it as a crucial feature of the transformative process in art.
In addition, however, this move strikes me as both unfortunate and
problematic, because it betrays a shallow understanding of linguistic
communication on Langer’s part. Once again, it will prove fruitful to
return to this issue a bit later on.
In general, then, Langer
views language as an indirect, representational symbol system by
means of which we formulate logical and factual relationships that exist
in the physical world and conceptual thought. Nouns are used to label
and refer to objects and qualities, verbs to depict actions, and
sentences to represent the relationships among them, be they physical or
conceptual. The focus in language is on semantic and syntactic meaning
and sequential and consistent thought, all represented by various
conventional symbols and patterns (PA 130-31). “Language is the
symbolic form of rational thought. . . . The structure of discourse
expresses the forms of rational cognition; that is why we call such
thinking ‘discursive’” (PA 124-25). According to Langer, the symbols
comprising language all function in a “non-iconic” fashion—they do not
embody their own meaning, they merely signify it.
It is scientific
activity, of course, which has given rise to the refinement and
ever-increasing power of discursive communication (PA 174). As the
necessities of practical life become increasingly complex, it becomes
necessary to refine and develop our vocabularies and theories in order
to deal with fresh discoveries and inventions. Thus our discursive
symbol system must become increasingly abstract and generalized. In this
way it becomes farther and farther removed from the experiential
dimensions of existence. In other words, since discursive communication
is inherently indirect and representational, the symbols and their
various patterns can actually take on a life of their own at the purely
conceptual level.
The symbol system
involved in artistic expression, on the other hand, is “iconic” in
nature, and thus it directly presents the context and structure
of “felt life.” “Artistic expression abstracts aspects of the life of
feeling which have no names, which have to be presented to sense and
invitation. . . . Form and color, tone and tension and rhythm, contrast
and softness and rest and motion are the elements that yield the
symbolic forms which can convey ideas of such nameless realities” (PA
94-95). In Langer’s view the artist draws upon his or her understanding
of a particular aspect or contour of the emotional dimension of
experience and finds a way to express this understanding in the elements
of a given medium which serves as its symbolic formulation. The work of
art in question constitutes the artist’s creation, a “virtual reality”
above and beyond the specific materials and physical features of the
given medium.
In the same way as the
work of art transcends the mere “stuff” out of which it is created, so
the feeling expressed by the work must be distinguished from the
individual emotions of both the artist and the prehender. The creative
imagination and skill of the artist enable him or her to render or
“transform” the imitative and/or emotional specifics involved in and
with the work into an aesthetic entity or “apparition.” In Feeling
and Form, Langer puts it this way:
The purpose of
abstracting vital forms from their natural exemplifications is, of
course, to make them available for unhampered artistic use. The
illusion of growth, for instance, may be made in any medium, and in
numberless ways: lengthening or flowing lines, that represent no live
creatures at all; rhythmically rising steps even though they divide or
diminish; increasing complexity of musical chords, or insistent
repetitions; a centrifugal dance; poetic lines of gradually deepening
seriousness; there is no need of “imitating” anything literally alive in
order to convey the appearance of life. Vital forms may be reflected in
any elements of a work, with or without representation of living things.2
Initially, in Feeling
and Form, Langer spoke of works of art as “symbolic forms” which
express concrete feelings. This locution, however, has the disadvantage
of entangling one in all of the conceptual and psychological confusions
surrounding the notion of “symbols.” Upon shifting to the term
“significant form,” made famous by Clive Bell, Langer once again became
uneasy, this time because of the overly informational connotations of
the word “significant.” In like manner, she was unhappy with speaking
of the “meaning” of a work of art; both of these terms seemed to have
too many direct ties to signification and representation. On the advice
of Melvin Rader and Ernest Nagel respectively, she switched to speaking
of “expressive form” and its “import,” rather than of “significant form”
and its “meaning” (PA 127). “A work of art is an expressive form
created for our perception through sense or imagination, and what it
expresses is human feeling” (PA 15).
Art, then, according to
Langer, is the formulation of iconic images, which embody their import
rather than refer to it, out of the elements afforded by a given
physical medium. What is created are “virtual entities” or
“apparitions” whose reality is rendered no less real by the fact that
they transcend the physical dimension of experience. These
“apparitions” formulate and express a non-discursive import, one which
goes beyond even the illusionistic and/or symbolic character possessed
by a given work.
All such elements,
however, are genuine symbols; they have meanings, and the meanings may
be stated. Symbols in art connote holiness, or sin, or rebirth,
womanhood, love, tyranny, and so forth. These meanings enter into the
work of art as elements, creating and articulating its organic form,
just as its subject-matter—fruit in a platter, horse on a beach, a
slaughtered ox, or a weeping Magdalene—enter into its construction.
Symbols used in art lie on a different semantic level from the work
that contains them. Their meanings are not part of its import, but
elements in the form that has import, the expressive form. The meanings
of incorporated symbols may lend richness, intensity, repetition or
reflection or a transcendent unrealism, perhaps an entirely new balance
to the work itself. But they function in the normal manner of symbols:
they mean something beyond what they present in themselves. (PA 136)
It should be
noted that although she understands language and art to be quite
separate modes of communication, Langer insists that they both involve
abstraction and cognition. For language, abstraction takes the form of
generalization, while for art it remains concrete. This difference is
related to that between the representational character of language and
the presentational quality of art. What is represented can be
symbolized by general descriptions and formulae, but whatever is
presented can be symbolized only in concrete specifics. Cows and
quarks, for instance, can be represented by words like “cow,” “angus,”
and “bovine,” or “quark,” “76.3,” etc., in sentences describing their
characteristics and behavior. Any painting or drama involving cows or
people, however, must incorporate particular instances thereof.
These artistic creations, nonetheless, remain abstract in the
sense that they also “go beyond” the particulars with respect to the
feelings they communicate by means of the “virtual reality” which they
present. Langer says:
To create a sensory
illusion is, then, the artist’s normal way of making us see abnormally,
abstractly. He abstracts the visual elements of experience by canceling
out all other elements, leaving us nothing to notice except what the
virtual space looks like. This way of achieving abstraction is different
from the usual way practiced in logic, mathematics, or science. In
those realms, i.e., the realms of discursive thinking, the customary way
to pass from concrete experience to conceptions of abstract, systematic
relation patterns is through a process of generalization—letting the
concrete, directly known thing stand for all things of its kind. (PA 32)
In addition, according
to Langer, the end result of both discursive representation and
expressive presentation, in language and art, respectively, is a form of
cognitive understanding. In the former case what is involved is
rational conception, while in the latter case it is artistic
perception. In connection with this aesthetic version of cognitive
activity, Langer introduces the notion of “intuition.” Artistic
perception is not based on an inductive or deductive process as a
process of sequential thought. What is perceived in an art work is
grasped directly, rather than indirectly, by means of insight. Here is
a passage which is typical of Langer’s approach to this issue:
But vital import, or
artistic expressiveness, cannot be pointed out, as the presence of this
or that color contrast, balance of shapes, or thematic item may be
pointed out by the discerning critic. You apprehend expressiveness or
you do not; it cannot be demonstrated. One may demonstrate that
such-and-such ingredients—chords, works, shapes, or what-not—have gone
into the structure of the work; one may even point out pleasant or harsh
sensory effects, and anybody may note them. But no one can show, let
alone prove to us, that a certain vision of human feeling (in the widest
sense of the word “feeling”) is embodied in the piece. This sort of
feeling, which is not represented, but composed and articulated by the
entire apparition, the art symbol, is found there directly, or not at
all. That finding of a vital import is what I mean by “artistic
perception.” It is not the same thing as aesthetic sensibility; it is
insight. (PA 60)
It seems clear that
Langer is not using the notion of intuition in any mystical or
mathematical sense. She borrows John Locke’s interpretation of this
cognitive faculty, reserving it for that “fundamental intellectual
activity comprising all acts of insight or recognition of formal
properties, of relations, of significance, and of abstraction and
exemplification” (PA 66). It is more basic or primordial than
beliefs about truth and falsity—it simply is and is grasped as it
is. One might suggest that Langer could also draw here on Aristotle’s
notion of intuition as that faculty which renders inductive activity
possible and/or Kant’s concept of “mother wit” out of which arises the
“categories of the understanding.” At any rate, Langer connects
intuitive activity with aesthetic prehension in the following manner:
Such perception is, I
think, intuitive. The import of a work of art—its essential, or
artistic, import—can never be stated in discursive language. A work of
art is an expressive form, and therefore a symbol, but not a symbol
which points beyond itself so that one’s thought passes on the concept
symbolized. The idea remains bound up in the form that makes it
conceivable. That is why I do not call the conveyed, or rather
presented, idea of meaning of the sensuous form, but use the
philosophically less committal word “import” to denote what that
sensuous form, the work of art, expresses.
The act of intuition
whereby we recognize the idea of “felt life” embodied in a good work of
art is the same sort of insight that makes language more than a stream
of little squeaks or an arabesque of serried inkspots. The great
differences between artistic import and meaning in a strict sense, lie
in the disparity of the symbolic modes to which, respectively, they
belong. (PA 67)
II
The
chief area of difficulty, as I see it, in Langer’s philosophy of art
pertains to the viability of those art forms which take language as
their medium, namely, poetry and creative writing. On the face of it,
given the way she has systematically dichotomized language and art as
modes of communication, it would appear that Langer has essentially
eliminated the possibility of such art forms. This is, of course, a
rather shocking result, and a result which might well cause one to doubt
the wisdom of such a thorough-going separation between art and language.
Langer, herself, seems aware of the negative potential of such a
conclusion, and she wrestles mightily to overcome it without dismantling
her overall position. In order to trace her efforts in this regard, we
must return to her point of departure, that is, to her claim that both
art and discursive expression “spring from the same root, namely, the
impulse to symbolic expression” (PA 177). Langer asserts that both
representational and presentational symbolism arise from the urge to go
beyond established cognition and usage, to express realities and
relationships for which we do not already have appropriate symbols, to
communicate about the unfamiliar by means of stretching and bending the
familiar.
It will be recalled that
Langer suggests that in such situations we resort to metaphor, a
device which lies at the root of both discursive and expressive
communication (see PA 23 quoted above, pages 421-22). Surely that is a
peculiar and puzzling statement for Langer to make, that “metaphor is
not language.” It is, to be sure, necessitated by her insistence that
language and art be thought of as absolutely distinct, if poetry and
story are to be preserved as viable art media. The main device in all
linguistic art would seem to be metaphor; thus either metaphor must be
viewed as not language, per se, or all so-called linguistic art must be
set aside.
Langer’s
rationale for this bold and paradoxical exclusion of metaphor from
language as such is to be found in her particular account of how
metaphors operate. As concrete items in any expressive symbol system,
metaphors play off of the conventional use of discursive terms in order
to “say one thing and mean another,” thereby mediating and symbolizing a
reality entirely distinct from that referred to at the discursive level,
a fresh “virtual reality.” See, for example, PA 105 (quoted above, page
421).
In the final essay in
Problems of Art, Langer directly addresses poetry as a creative art
form. After offering some interesting musings about the philosophy of
language in the twentieth century, musings to which we shall return in
the final section of the paper, Langer faces the question of how poetry,
which on one level is clearly comprised of words and formal patterns,
actually transcends their discursive function in creating an
“apparition” at the level of creative art. She focuses on the
formulative function of language as distinguished from the
discursive function by means of which the poet is said to have
“transformed” the symbols involved into vehicles of emotional expression
rather than information. This transformative process is described in
the following way:
Language is the material
of poetry, but what is done with this material is not what we do with
language in actual life; for poetry is not a kind of discourse at all.
What the poet creates out of words is an appearance of events, persons,
emotional reactions, experiences, places, conditions of life; these
created things are the elements of poetry; they constitute what Cecil
Day Lewis has called “the poetic image.” A poem is, in precisely his
sense, an image. This image is not necessarily visual; since the word
“image” has an almost irresistible connotation of visualness, I prefer
to call the poetic image a semblance. The created poetic
semblance need not be a semblance of corresponding actual things, facts,
persons, or experiences. It is quite normally a pure appearance, a sheer
figment; it is essentially a virtual object; and such a virtual object
is a work of art. It is entirely created. Its material is language,
its motif, or model, usually discursive speech, but what is created is
not actual discourse—what is created is a composed and shaped apparition
of a new human experience. (PA 148)
Langer demonstrates how
this process works in the case of Robert Browning’s infamous little song
in Pippa Passes:
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven —
All’s right with the world!
She argues,
quite cogently, that the rhythm and structural form of this poem are
more crucial to its significance, or “import,” than are the
representational symbols out of which it is constructed. Far from being
an affirmation of Browning’s confidence in God’s omnipotence, and a hymn
of “Christian fatalism,” this poem expresses the emotional
acknowledgment that everything is ready for a fresh adventure, by means
of the implicit metaphor of a maritime roll call, an “All present and
accounted for, Sir!” Langer rightly insists that we pay attention to
the sound of the poem.
An odd
structure: each short line a complete statement, and in the first three
lines the same colloquial turn of phrase, shifted from one colorless
assertion to another until, in the third occurrence, it sounds
artificial; then, the first image. The pattern of the verses is
insistently schematic: three lines saying something is “at” something,
then a statement of condition; three more lines saying something is “on”
or “in” something, and another statement of condition, this time
entirely general, universal. What does it sound like?—A roll call for
“all aboard.” This man is here, that man is there—one at this, one at
that—the side is clear; each on his post, the captain up there in his
place—she’s trim! (PA 156)
On the basis of such
insights and analyses, Langer concludes that in poetry and creative
writing the words employed do not function in their normal, discursive
manner, but serve rather as the elements out of which the artistic
apparition is created, much like notes and chords or paints and canvas
are employed in creating music and paintings. This is what she means
when she says that “metaphor is not language.” Because the linguistic
artist seeks to express specific feelings in the “virtual reality”
created out of the words used, the latter do not represent any real,
outer reality, but rather mediate an aesthetic import to the prehender.
Langer explains:
Poetic statements are no
more actual statements than the peaches visible in a still life are
actual dessert. The real question is what the poet makes, and
that, of course, depends on how he goes about it. The task of poetic
criticism, then, is not to learn from any and all available records what
was the poet’s philosophy, morality, life history, or psychosis, and to
find the revelation of his own experiences in his words; it is to
evaluate his fiction, the appearance of thought and feeling or outward
events that he creates. (PA 152)
An interesting parallel
to this posture toward poetry and creative writing can be found in
Langer’s treatment of dance as an art form. Here, too, she wants to
stress the idea that what is created in dance transforms the physical
particulars constituting it, namely, the specific bodies and movements
involved, into a “virtual reality” or “apparition” which transcends
these physical particulars. “The physical realities are given . . . .
All these are actual. But in the dance, they disappear; the more
perfect the dance, the less we see its actualities” (PA 6). Thus the
bodies and movements of the dancers are similar to the words employed
metaphorically in the linguistic arts, according to Langer. To put the
point in Plato’s idiom, they are but the “occasions” within or out of
which the work of art arises.
Langer never gets very
specific about how this transformative and mediational process works.
The way in which words, paints, sounds, marble, film, bodies,
etc., by virtue of being arranged according to certain formal patterns,
actually create another aesthetic reality is not made very clear.
Perhaps this is as it should be, since a degree of mystery is necessary
to account for emergent reality in any dimension of human experience.
It does seem, however, that especially with respect to the logic of
metaphor Langer could go a good deal further toward clarity while still
avoiding reductionism in the arts. There are thinkers who have shed a
good deal of light on the topic and on whom Langer could have drawn in
her treatment of the linguistic arts. We shall consider some of these
in the next section of the present paper. We can conclude this section
with the following summation by Langer of her overall point of view
regarding the nature of artistic expression:
It means to make an
outward image of this inward process, for oneself and others to see;
that is, to give the subjective events an objective symbol. Every work
of art is such an image, whether it be dance, a statue, a picture, a
piece of music, or a work of poetry. It is an outward showing of inward
nature, an objective presentation of subjective reality; and the reason
that it can symbolize things of the inner life is that it has the same
kinds of relations and elements. This is not true of the material
structure; the physical materials of dance do not have any direct
similarity to the structure of emotive life; it is the created image
that has elements and patterns like the life of feeling. But this
image, though it is a created apparition, a pure appearance, is
objective; it seems to be charged with feeling because its form
expresses the very nature of feeling. Therefore, it is an
objectification of subjective life, and so is every other work of
art. (PA 9)
III
In spite of her creative
and insightful efforts to explain away the problem posed for the
linguistic arts by her sharp separation between language and art, I do
not think Langer has succeeded. In my view her insistence on this
dichotomy distorts and impoverishes both art and language as fundamental
dimensions of human experience. Moreover, as we have learned in the
political arena, “separate but equal” usually turns out to mean less
than equal for one branch of any such division. Within the
philosophical arena this policy invariably leads to the very sort of
“second-class” citizenship for the arts that Langer is seeking to avoid.
In her efforts to establish artistic formulation and expression as
fully cognitive alongside of logic and science, she has bought into the
philosophical presuppositions that gave rise to the very “positivism”
which initially banned the arts, along with ethics and religion, from
the domain of cognitivity by labeling them “emotive” in nature.
To begin with, for all
of its insight and eloquence with respect to the nature of artistic
creation and prehension, Langer’s philosophy of art distorts and
impoverishes the aesthetic dimension of experience by limiting it
exclusively to the expression of feelings. It surely is possible
to acknowledge that the emotional thrust of art is a vital, if not the
most vital, aspect of its character, without going so far as to claim
that this is its only purpose or effect. At the heart of
Langer’s position lies the belief that emotional awareness can in fact
be cognitive in its own right, and this commitment empowers her
thoroughgoing dualism. I am convinced, however, that this means of
legitimizing the cognitivity of the arts is as wrong-headed as it is
ineffective since it distorts our understanding of emotional life. Far
better is that approach proposed by
Israel
Scheffler in his book In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions.3
My main concern here,
however, is not with understanding correctly Langer’s treatment of the
emotional dimension of life, but with her view of language in relation
to art. Specifically, I would suggest that her chief difficulty stems
from her shallow account of the dynamics of the metaphoric mode of
expression. As many of the quotations in the previous sections clearly
indicate, when Langer speaks of the process by means of which the
“materials” or the physical particulars constituting a given medium
become elements in a work of art, she views it as a fundamental or
ontological “transform-ation.” Moreover, she invariably goes on to
claim that after this transformation takes place, and the work of art
exists as a “virtual reality” in its own right, then the prehender no
longer perceives or experiences the materials or physical particulars.
There is, indeed, a strong element of Platonic dualism at large in
Langer’s position.
This dualism is
especially troublesome in her account of the role of metaphor in the
linguistic arts. For here she is forced to say that “metaphor is not
language” to maintain that the conventional meanings of the words
employed in a poem are essentially irrelevant to its formal structure
and import as an aesthetic reality. Surely this is at best confusing
and at worst blatant nonsense. To be more specific, in her analysis of
Browning’s poem the insight into its “All present and accounted for,
Sir!” character does not negate the fact that this roll call pertains to
certain aspects of the creation and to God the creator—and that our
awareness and appreciation of this poem hinges on our knowledge of the
conventional meanings of the terms used to designate these aspects,
including the term “God.” If this were not the case, Browning could have
used any words whatsoever, and surely Langer would not wish to assert
such an obviously self-stultifying conclusion.
What has gone wrong here
is that Langer has failed to acknowledge that in the transformative
process by means of which the materials of a given medium become
aesthetic elements and thereby give rise to a work of art, these
materials also continue to function as physical particulars. The
physical dancers involved in creating a dance do not cease to be or be
seen as dancers, nor do paints, sounds, or stones cease to exist in the
physical dimension of human experience. Rather, by means of the
transformative process, the aesthetic dimension is mediated in
and through the physical dimension. More pointedly, the words employed
in creating a poem do not cease to function according to their
conventional meanings, but the poem’s aesthetic import arises out of
these meanings, is supervenient to them. Thus, metaphorical
expression has and must have double meaning. But in following
out the a priori dictates of her initial commitment to the absolute
separation between language and art, Langer has been forced to deny, or
at least ignore, this symbiotic character of aesthetic awareness in
general and of metaphorical expression in particular.
As I indicated earlier
on, it seems clear that the root of the problems with Langer’s overall
philosophy of art, as provocative and powerful as it is, lies in her
acceptance of the presuppositions which underlie, rather than
counteract, the positivism of the twentieth century. In brief, this
boils down to buying into the “picture theory” of meaning as propounded
by the likes of Bertrand Russell in his “Lectures on Logical Atomism,”
Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and A. J.
Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic. Langer’s acceptance of this
brand of positivism, with its fundamental commitment to cognitivity as
representational and informative, is clearly evident in her early and
highly influential book Philosophy in a New Key. The following
passage from this book serves as a case in point:
Since any single
sense-datum can, logically, be a symbol for any single item, any
arbitrary mark or counter may connote the conception, or publicly
speaking: the concept, of any single thing, and thus denote the thing
itself. A motion of fingers, apprehended as one united performance,
became the name of a substance to little deaf-and-blind Helen Keller. A
word, likewise taken as a sound-unit, becomes a symbol to us, for some
item in the world. And now the power of seeing configurations as
symbols comes into play: we make patterns of denotative symbols, and
they promptly symbolize the very different, but analogous,
configuration of denoted things. A temporal order of words stands for a
relational order of things. When pure word-order becomes insufficient,
word-endings and prefixes “mean” relationships; from these are born
prepositions and other purely relational symbols. Just as mnemonic dots
and crosses, as soon as they denote objects, can also enter into
diagrams or simple pictures, so do sounds, as soon as they are words,
enter into word-pictures, or sentences. A sentence is a symbol
for a state of affairs, and pictures its character.4
Rather than question the
basic and debilitating dualism inherent within this view of language
offered by “logical empiricism,” Langer accepted it and then sought to
establish artistic expression as parallel to and equally cognitive as
representational expres-sion. Such an effort, no matter how valiant,
was doomed to failure from the outset. Thus, shying away from the
reductionism implicit in a “substitutionist” view of metaphor, the view
entailed by logical positivism, Langer opted for the unhappy conclusion
that “metaphor is not language.” To make a long story short, Langer was
backed into a corner by her initial acceptance of the “picture theory”
of meaning, a corner which forced her to deny, or at least overlook, the
symbiotic character of all human symbolic expression, including and
especially that of the metaphoric mode.
As is well-known by now,
the crucial short-coming of the view of expression and cognitivity upon
which Langer chose to ground her philosophy of art is its incredibly
narrow understanding of the nature and function of linguistic
communication. In order to overcome both the specific and foundational
difficulties in her philosophy of art, Langer needs a much broader and
deeper view of how language actually works in human experience.
Specifically, such a view must take into account (1) the many and
varied non-representational uses of speech, (2) the primordial
character of the metaphoric mode, and (3) the axial character of gesture
in all forms of expression. Let me conclude with a brief presentation
of these three themes.
The later work of
Wittgenstein has both provided and spawned an entirely fresh
appreciation for the vast multiplicity of linguistic expression. The
notions of “language-game” and “family resemblances” have virtually
revolutionized our understanding of the use and meaning of language.
Moreover, Wittgenstein’s reflections on the nature and grounds of
cognitivity5 have triggered a wide
variety of explorations into the role of social acknowledgment6 in the “construction”
of both knowledge and reality. Furthermore, J. L. Austin’s
investigations7 into the
performative character of much linguistic communication have gone a
long way toward dissolving the monolithic hegemony of the “picture
theory” of meaning. The acknowledgment of the importance of
“illocutionary” (purpose) and “perlocutionary” forces (response) in the
determination of linguistic meaning essentially undermines the neat
dualisms inherent within the philosophy to which Langer’s approach is
tied.
More specifically, it is
now possible to see that the dichotomy between discursive and expressive
modes of communication is as impossible as it is unnecessary. Each and
every form of linguistic expression must be understood as comprised of
several dimensions or forces acting simultaneously to create the meaning
appropriate to the context. Thus, representation cannot be parsed off
from the other functions of human discourse as neatly as Langer
maintains; nor can the emotive force or presentational quality of
aesthetic expression be said to stand independently of discursive form.
For example, while the utterance “the door is open” can serve equally
well as a literal description, a metaphorical invitation or
encouragement, and as an imperative meaning “close the door,” it can
also function as an example in a philosophy class, a private joke among
students who are tired of this example, and as a metaphoric warning
signal. Moreover, these various “meanings” overlap, intertwine, and
trade off of each other in fascinating and generally intractable ways.
To take one more
example, consider the evolution of the images surrounding the names
given to O. J. Simpson, the great football star of a few years back.
Seeking to avoid his given name (Othinel [sic: “Orenthal” was
meant.—A.F.] James), while in college Simpson went by his initials “O.
J.” This coincided with the Californian nickname for orange juice, so
Simpson became known as “The Juice.” A few years later as a
professional, the offensive linemen who did the blocking for Simpson
began to call themselves “The Electric Company,” trading on the
children’s television program of the same name. When asked why they
chose this name for themselves, the players answered “Because we bring
you the Juice.” The criss-crossing of the metaphorical images and
meanings even in this relatively simple example defies the strict
dichotomy between discursive and expressive communication.
Langer herself suggests
an interesting antidote to the narrowness entailed in such a dichotomy,
but unfortunately she never follows it up. In the midst of expounding
her dualistic view, she does acknowledge that a deeper understanding of
the manifold character of linguistic meaning is needed, and she mentions
the seminal work of Ernst Cassirer and Benjamin Lee Whorff in this
regard. She actually says: “More promising, however, than the
semantical approach to poetry is the approach from poetry to semantics”
(PA 150). She then proceeds, however, to insist that poetry is not
discursive but formulative and creative, completely unrelated to
description and/or the communication of information (PA 151). This does
not signal an approach “from poetry to semantics,” but rather it marks a
veering away from semantics altogether, a complete separation of the
two.
Had Langer followed up
on her own suggestion, she might have discovered the primordial
character of poetic and/or metaphoric expression in relation to every
form of human discourse. Although space will not permit even an initial
exploration of this important theme, it may prove helpful at least to
mention two thinkers who have developed the poetic approach to semantics
adumbrated by Langer. One pioneer in this investigation is Owen
Barfield, whose book Poetic Diction8 is devoted to
establishing and exploring the various levels of metaphor at work in
everyday as well as theoretic discourse. More recently, Mark Johnson,
in his book The Body in the Mind,9 has provided a
veritable tour de force in analytic philosophy by way of demonstrating
that even the more precise language of science and philosophy is
grounded in and continues to trade off of deep or “root” metaphors
embedded in ordinary language. Rather than coming after literal
speech as a means of illustrating and embellishing it, metaphoric
expression must come first since so much of literal speech is
composed of dead metaphors.
Finally, the
phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty10 has gone a long way
toward tracing the anchorage of all speech in bodily gesture and
onomatopoeia. The conceptual bridge between embodiment and movement as
the fundamentally human mode of existence and literal or discursive
speech is clearly the metaphoric mode. Bodily perception and
orientation are our means of finding our place and our way in both the
physical and social environment, and thus any symbolic communication and
expression must derive from this axis. Since it is logically impossible
to begin language with precise meanings, the initial significance
level must be that of ambiguity and vagueness. Such open-texture
provides the very heartbeat of metaphoric expression, which in turn may
lead to more precise or literal speech. This progression is clearly
evident in a child’s initial acquisition of language. At first all
meanings are discerned in relation to bodily movement and audial and
visual perception. Every symbol “means” many things. Gradually symbols
are associated with increasingly discrete aspects of the environment,
but the overlap and stretch factors remain constant. Eventually a child
learns to separate out these various levels and functions, but as
Wittgenstein reminded us, no language is ever “complete.”
The point of all this in
regard to Langer’s philosophy of art is to indicate how necessary and
possible it is to broaden one’s view of the nature of language by
incorporating the axial character of metaphoric expression at square
one.11 After having separated
language and art at the outset, Langer was hard pressed to explain the
place and function of metaphor. By beginning with metaphor,
however, as the primordial mode of human expression, she not only would
have been able to provide a more satisfying account of how metaphors
work, but she would have been in a position to develop a more
integrated, holistic philosophy of art.
Notes
1 Problems of Art (New York:
Scribners, 1957), p.21; hereafter PA. I have relied most heavily on this
book of Langer’s, since it reflects a more succinct and refined version
of her philosophy of art.
2 Feeling and Form (New York:
Scribners, 1952), p.310.
3 New York: Routledge, 1991.
4 Philosophy in a New Key
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1942), p.16.
5 See especially On Certainty
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1969).
6 Everything from N. R. Hanson’s
The Pattern of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958)
and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970) to Richard Rorty’s Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979)
and Hilary Putnam’s Mind, Language and Reality (Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1975).
7 See especially How To Do Things
With Words (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962).
8 Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1973).
9 Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1987.
10 See especially his Phenomenology
of Perception (New York: Humanities Press, 1961).
11 See my “Metaphor and Language
Acquisition,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 24, no. 2 (1986).
