Langer's Platonism

Langer asserts that "music does not ordinarily influence behavior", and that its "affects do not long outlive its causes." Many Philosophers have contested these assertions, but perhaps the best refutation of them is her theory of Art itself--insofar as that theory is, as she explicitly acknowledges, motivated by her experiences of Music, clearly the effects of Music on her have long outlived their causes. What her notion of Art as "the creation of forms" seems to miss is that such creativity can also be transformative, for both the artist and the audience. Pointilist painting illustrates a new way of seeing; 12-tone Music explores a new way of listening; experimental Dance describes new ways of locomotility; and, a Philosophy "in a new key", as she puts it, transforms thinking, though she falls short of noting that it can thereby also transform Conduct. Her failure to recognize the transformative power of Art suggests that her experience of Art is primarily of Symbols as finished products, not of the creation of them, and only to the extent that a Symbol is present to her. Hence, her theory of Art is actually in the oldest of 'keys', namely, Platonism.