ABSTRACT
great books do not always take the world by storm; especially in philosophy they may lie neglected for many years before their significance becomes apparent. This may be due to their novelty, for we are always suspicious of new ideas that may upset our complacency; or to their difficulty, for most of us instinctively shy away from a book that obviously demands time and mental effort for its assimilation. And then, of course, there is the element of mere chance: an important work is neglected because it is in a difficult language, or is published in a small country. For these reasons Kierkegaard was neglected for nearly a century. In the case of Susanne Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key, none of these reasons holds good. It was first published by the Harvard University Press in 1942, and was even issued, some time later, but only in the United States, in a cheap popular edition. What success such a recondite book had in that form I do not know; but similar books, such as Whitehead’s Adventures in Ideas, have had a wide circulation in the same format. But Whitehead was already a famous name, and thousands of people with no specific interest in philosophy may be willing to spend a shilling or two to satisfy their curiosity about anything famous—“to see”, as they might put it, “if they can see anything in it”. But Susanne Langer was an unknown name, and what fame has come to her in the past fifteen years has been due to the slow recognition of the unusual interest of her book.
