The Epistemology of Susanne K. Langer

Paper Summary:

The writer uses Langer's book to argue her theory that while discursive reasoning leads us to knowledge, we must look to what supplies us with the materials and desire to seek that knowledge. The paper takes a chapter by chapter look at the way in which Langer tries to define epistemology, the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge.

From the Paper:

"While verbal language is the overt activity of one kind of symbolic process, the mind transforms those experiences which lie beyond the ability of language to describe into other quite different activities. "Just as the results of that primitive process of mental digestion, verbal symbolism, may be used for the satisfaction of other needs than symbolization, so all other instinctive acts may serve the expressive function" (45). The direct motivation which lies behind magic, for example, "is the desire to symbolize great conceptions." The language of magic belongs to the greater phenomenon of ritual, the language of religion (49). Further, the language of human behavior, gesture, demonstrates that "symbolization is both an end and an instrument; and so far, epistemology has treated it only as an instrument." (51)."

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