Abstract

The social philosophy of meaning and emotions represented in the work of Susanne Langer was recognized by Talcott Parsons, but has yet to be incorporated into mainstream sociological theoritizations. Langer's work is as potentially important to contemporary microsociology, and the sociology of emotions, as the work of Peirce, Mead, or Schutz. The impediment to appreciating her work resides in contemporary confusions regarding the nature of logic. Sociologists often subscribe to Wittgenstein's denial of the validity of formal logic in constructing theories of human behavior. Langer has been misunderstood because her theoretizations address more than discursive logics and meanings. The thrust of Langer's work is that logic and meaning exist on a nondiscursive level of emotions. Though her work is more than 50 years old, we are now in a position to appreciate it because we are now exploring and conceptualizing the notion of social inferencing as existing beyond formal logic