Abstract

The philosophical writings of Susanne K. Langer spanned almost six decades and throughout that period she believed that philosophy is the pursuit of meaning as a relational factor of forms and not a property or quality of terms. She also realized that philosophy is not subject specific: to structure a philosophy of music education is to practice philosophy. Therefore, to understand Langer's philosophy of music education, it is necessary to examine her philosophical posture "in toto." ;Regarding philosophical procedure, Langer held that the form in which a question is posed greatly influences the possible forms of its answer. Therefore, in attempting to understand any philosopher's work, it is essential that the study begin with the initial suggestions and questions from which the philosopher began her investigation and not with the conclusions. There are six prominent questions which are identified and examined. ;One of the principal findings was the discovery of a fundamental shift in Langer's philosophy from a categorical approach to one centered upon process; from the discursive and presentational categories of the New Key to the process of symbolization found in the trilogy Mind. In the New Key, the symbol was a categorical device whereby an abstraction was enabled. Langer's late work uses the symbol as an element in an organistically based process of symbolization involving a continuous dialectic of autogenic subjectification and exogenic objectification. ;The New Key defines music as expressive of the morphology of the life of feeling through an unconsummated presentational symbol. Langer first admits to the consummate character of the musical symbol in Feeling and Form and through an application of Langer's own criteria for discursivity, music is shown to be a discursively functioning system; not a language but of the same logical set. The analysis also demonstrates that "change in permanence," and not "feeling," is the configuration of formal correspondence with music. Inferences for music were drawn from the organistic philosophy of Langer's late work