Ernst Cassirer
Ernst Cassirer (German pronunciation: [kaˈsiːʁəʁ]; July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science, but after Cohen's death he developed a theory of symbolism, and used it to expand phenomenology of knowledge into a more general philosophy of culture. He is one of the leading C20th advocates of philosophical idealism.
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Biography
Cassirer was born in Breslau (Wrocław), Silesia, into a Jewish family. He studied literature and philosophy at the University of Berlin. After working for many years as a Privatdozent at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, he was elected in 1919 to the Philosophy chair at the newly-founded University of Hamburg, where he lectured until 1933, supervising amongst others the doctoral thesis of Leo Strauss. Because he was Jewish, he left Germany when the Nazis came to power.
After leaving Germany he taught for a couple of years in Oxford, before becoming a professor at Gothenburg University. When Cassirer considered Sweden too unsafe, he applied for a post at Harvard, but was rejected because thirty years earlier he had rejected a job offer from them. In 1941 he became a visiting professor at Yale University, before moving to Columbia University in New York City, where he lectured from 1943 until his death in 1945.
His son, Heinz Cassirer, was also a Kantian scholar.
History of Science
Cassirer's first major published writings were a history of modern thought from the Renaissance to Kant. In accordance with his Marburg neo-Kantianism he concentrated upon epistemology. His reading of the scientific revolution, in books such as "The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy" (1927), as a “Platonic” application of mathematics to nature, influenced historians such as E. A. Burtt, E. J. Dijksterhuis, and Alexandre Koyré.
Philosophy of Science
In "Substance and Function" (1910), he writes about late nineteenth-century developments in physics and the foundations of mathematics. In "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" (1921) he defended the claim that modern physics supports a neo-Kantian conception of knowledge. He also wrote a book about Quantum Mechanics called "Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics" (1936).
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
At Hamburg Cassirer discovered the Library of the Cultural Sciences founded by Aby Warburg. Warburg was an art historian who was particularly interested in ritual and myth as sources of archetypal forms of emotional expression. In Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929) Cassirer argues that man (as he put it in his more popular 1944 book Essay on Man) is a "symbolic animal". Whereas animals perceive their world by instincts and direct sensory perception, humans create a universe of symbolic meanings. Cassirer is particularly interested in natural language and myth. He argues that science and mathematics developed from natural language, and religion and art from myth.
Heidegger Debate
In 1929 Cassirer took part in an historically significant encounter with Martin Heidegger in Davos. Cassirer argues that while Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" emphasizes human temporality and finitude, he also sought to situate human cognition within a broader conception of humanity. Cassirer challenges Heidegger's relativism by invoking the universal validity of truths discovered by the exact and moral sciences.
Philosophy of the Enlightenment
Cassirer believed that reason's self-realization leads to human liberation. Mazlish (2000) however notes that Cassirer in his "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment" (1932) focuses exclusively on ideas, ignoring the political and social context in which they were produced.
The Logic of the Cultural Sciences
In "The Logic of the Cultural Sciences" (1942) Cassirer argues that objective and universal validity can not only be achieved in the sciences, but also in practical, cultural, moral, and aesthetic phenomenon. Although inter-subjective objective validity in the natural sciences derives from universal laws of nature, Cassirer asserts that an analogous type of inter-subjective objective validity takes place in the cultural sciences.
The Myth of the State
Cassirer's last work The Myth of the State (1946) was published posthumously. It traces the idea of a totalitarian state back to ideas promoted by thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hegel. He claimed that in the C20th politics there was a return back, with the active encouragement of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, to the irrationality of myth, and in particular to a belief that there is such a thing as destiny.
Partial bibliography
- Substance and Function (1910) & Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1921), English translation 1923 (at archive.org)
- Kant's Life and Thought (1918), English translation 1981
- Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29), English translation 1953–1957
- Language and Myth (1925), English translation (1946) by Susanne K. Langer
- The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1927), English translation (1963) by Mario Domandi
- Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932), English translation 1951
- The Logic of the Cultural Sciences (1942), English translation 2000 by S.G. Lofts (previously translated in 1961 as The Logic of the Humanities)
- An Essay on Man (written and published in English) (1944)
- The Myth of the State (written and published in English) (posthumous) (1946)
- The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel (1950) online edition
- Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935-1945 ed. by Donald Phillip Verene (1981)
See also
Notes
Further reading
- Barash, Jeffrey Andrew. The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer (2008) excerpt and text search
- Friedman, Michael. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (2000) excerpt and text search
- Gordon, Peter Eli. Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (2010)
- Krois, John Michael. Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History (1987)
- Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.). The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1949)
- Schultz, William. Cassirer & Langer on Myth (2nd ed. 2000) excerpt and text search
- Skidelsky, Edward. Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (Princeton University Press, 2008) 288 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-13134-4. excerpt and text search
External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ernst Cassirer |
- Ernst Cassirer entry by Michael Friedman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- History of the Cassirer family
- Centre for Intercultural Studies
- Information Philosopher on Ernst Cassirer on Free Will