# Philosophy in a New Key By Susanne K. Langer **URL:** **By** Jeff Riggenbach **Published:** January 1, 1974 --- “This is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read—and one of the most far-reaching.” This is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read—and one of the most far-reaching. In _Philosophy in a New Key_, Dr. Langer has set out to discuss the role of symbolism in human life and to show that the analysis of human mental processes as symbolic processes can provide a new and synoptic understanding of man and his mind. She has succeeded brilliantly—not only in showing that symbolism is central to human mental functioning, but also in using her “new key” to unlock dozens of perplexing problems in fields as diverse as cultural anthropology and musical aesthetics. Briefly, Dr. Langer’s thesis is that while the methodology of the perceptual level of consciousness is the recognition and interpretation of signs—perceptual clues to the presence of significant objects—the methodology of the conceptual level of consciousness, the methodology which distinguishes human mental functioning from animal mental functioning, is the creation, recognition and interpretation of symbols—perceptual concretes which stand for and call to mind concepts. “Rationality is the essence of mind,” she writes, “and symbolic transformation its elementary process.” Moreover, and this is Dr. Langer’s most original and important application of her theory, there are two distinct kinds of symbolism—discursive and presentational. The difference between the two is that “discursive symbolism is always general, and requires application to the concrete datum, whereas nondiscursive symbolism is specific, is the ‘given’ itself, and invites us to read the more general meaning out of the case.” The most highly developed form of discursive symbolism we possess is language; the most highly developed form of presentational symbolism we possess is art. And, as Dr. Langer argues brilliantly and at some length, each type of symbolism is rational, logical and necessary. Each does something the other cannot do. “Language, in its literal capacity, is a stiff and conventional medium, unadapted to the expression of genuinely new ideas, which usually have to break in upon the mind through some great and bewildering metaphor. But bare denotative language is a most excellent instrument of exact reason; it is, in fact, the only general precision instrument the human brain has ever evolved. Ideas first adumbrated in fantastic form become real intellectual property only when discursive language rises to their expression. That is why myth is the indispensable forerunner of metaphysics; and metaphysics is the literal formulation of basic abstractions, on which our comprehension of sober facts is based.” _Philosophy in a New Key_, then, is an elaboration of what it means to say that man is a being of conceptual consciousness and that his cognitive functioning must be logical. It is an excellent companion volume to Ayn Rand’s _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_, showing as it does what happens to concepts after they have been formed. And it is indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand the cognitive status of art or the logical status of his non-linguistic mental operations. _Reviewed by JEFF RIGGENBACH / Philosophy (313 pages, indexed) / BFL Price $2.45 (Third revised edition)_