Abstract
This text attempts to analyze and inquire the relationship between virtuality and imagination in Susanne Langer’s art theory. One of my main purposes is to know whether the “actual-virtual” binomial can be applied, without any theoretical concern, to artistic objects and art in general. Since, in Langer, the symbol theory is directly connected with a theory of perception, it remains to scrutinize how aesthetic experiences mediated by the several artistic modalities imply the transformation of works of art into virtual objects. That such a transformation carries the effective power of imagination is a capital condition inherent to all artistic symbolization processes. That these latter, however, do not always express a linear dynamic of the “actual-virtual” binomial is, as will be seen, a critical point of view that must be applied to the aesthetic formulations and concepts developed by Langer.
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Notes
- 1.
On the influence of Schiller’s thought on Langer’s aesthetic theory, see, for example, Wilkinson (1955).
- 2.
Although the importance of music derives largely from Whitehead’s thought, Langer, to defend herself against the mimetic aesthetic theories, explicitly implies the Cassirerian concept of symbolic form: “Our interest in music arises from its intimate relation to the all-important life of feeling, whatever that relation may be. After much debate on current theories, the conclusion reached in Philosophy in a New Key is that the function of music is not stimulation of feeling, but expression of it; and furthermore, not the symptomatic expression of feelings that beset the composer but a symbolic expression of the forms of sentience as he understands them. It bespeaks his imagination of feelings rather than his own emotional state, and expresses what he knows about the so-called ‘inner life’; and this may exceed his personal case, because music is a symbolic form to him through which he may learn as well as utter ideas of human sensibility” (Langer 1953: 28–29).
- 3.
For more detail on this, see Braga (2012: 169–206).
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Braga, J. (2019). Imagination and Virtuality. On Susanne Langer’s Theory of Artistic Forms. In: Braga, J. (eds) Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_5
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