Ernst Alfred Cassirer ( ;[ "Cassirer". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.] ;
After Cohen's death in 1918, Cassirer developed a Semiotics and used it to expand the "epistemology" into a more general "logic of the cultural sciences". Cassirer was one of the leading 20th-century advocates of philosophical idealism. His most famous work is the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929).
Though his work received a mixed reception shortly after his death, more recent scholarship has remarked upon Cassirer's role as a strident defender of the moral idealism of the Enlightenment era and the cause of liberal democracy at a time when the rise of fascism had made such advocacy unfashionable. Within the international Jewish community, Cassirer's work has additionally been seen as part of a long tradition of thought on ethical philosophy.
Biography
Cassirer was born in Breslau in
Silesia Province (modern-day southwest Poland) into a
Jewish family. After graduating from [[:de:Johannesgymnasium Breslau|Johannesgymnasium Breslau
]] he studied Jurisprudence at Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Berlin and Leipzig University, Germanic Philology, Contemporary Literary History, and Philosophy at Ruprecht Karls Universität Heidelberg and Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Berlin, and Philosophy and Psychology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He then did his doctoral work at the University of Marburg where he studied Philosophy under
Hermann Cohen and
Paul Natorp and Mathematics under Friedrich Schottky.
[1945 Curriculum Vitae, Ernst Cassirer Papers - Addition. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. ] In 1899 he graduated with a
dissertation on René Descartes's analysis of mathematical and natural scientific knowledge entitled Descartes' Kritik der mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis (
Descartes' Critique of Mathematical and Scientific Knowledge) and completed his
habilitation in 1906 at the University of Berlin with the dissertation Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit: Erster Band (
The Problem of Knowledge in Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age: Volume I).
[A second volume appeared in 1907, a third one in 1920, and a fourth one in 1957.]
Politically, Cassirer supported the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP).[Die Zeit 4/2020: Der Geistesgegenwärtige]
After leaving Germany he taught for a couple of years at the University of Oxford, before becoming a professor at University of Gothenburg. When Cassirer considered Sweden too unsafe, he applied for a post at Harvard University, 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, then moved to Columbia University in New York City, where he lectured from 1943 until his death in 1945.
Cassirer died of a heart attack in April 1945 in New York City. The young rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who was a student of Cassirer's at Columbia University, conducted the funeral service.[Arthur Hertzberg: A Reminiscence of Ernst Cassirer The Leo Back Institute Year Book, Volume 15, Issue 1, January 1970, pp.245-246, [3]] His grave is located in Westwood, New Jersey, on the Cedar Park Beth–El Cemeteries in the graves of the Congregation Habonim. His son, Heinz Cassirer, was also a Kantian scholar.
Other members of his prominent family included the neurologist Richard Cassirer, the publisher and gallery owner Bruno Cassirer and the art dealer and editor Paul Cassirer.
Influences
Donald Phillip Verene, who published some of Cassirer's papers kept at
Yale University, gave this overview of his ideas:
"Cassirer as a thinker became an embodiment of Kantian principles, but also of much more, of an overall movement of spirit stretching from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, and on to Herder's conception of history, Goethe's poetry, Wilhelm von Humboldt's study of the Kawi script, Schelling's Philosophie der Mythologie, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and Vischer's conception of the aesthetic symbol, among many others. Cassirer's own position is born through a mastery of the whole development of this world of the understanding, which included the rise of the scientific world view — a mastery evident both in his historical works and in his systematic philosophy."
The Kantian scholar Lewis White Beck noted that Cassirer's Substance and Function (Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff) served as a major source of inspiration during his early studies as an undergraduate with Leroy Loemker in the 1930s.[ Falling in Love With Wisdom Karnos, David D. Shoemaker, Robert G. Eds. Oxford University Press, New York, 1993 pp. 13-15 "How I became Almost A Philosopher" by Lewis White Beck on Google Books]
Work
History of science
Cassirer's first major published writings were a history of modern thought from
the Renaissance to
Immanuel 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 "
" 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 including relativity theory 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 surviving forms of emotional expression. In
(1923–29) Cassirer argues that man (as he put it in his more popular 1944 book
Essay on Man) is a "
symbolicum". Whereas animals perceive their world by
and direct sensory perception, humans create a universe of
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.
The Cassirer–Heidegger debate
In 1929 Cassirer took part in a historically significant encounter with
Martin Heidegger in
Davos during the Second Davos Hochschulkurs (the Cassirer–Heidegger debate). 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
discovered by the exact and moral sciences.
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment
Cassirer believed that reason's
self-realization leads to human liberation.
Bruce 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 be achieved not only in the sciences, but also in practical,
cultural, moral, and
aesthetic phenomena. Although inter-subjective objective validity in the
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; at one level it is an attempt to understand the
intellectual origins of
Nazi Germany. Cassirer sees Nazi Germany as a society in which the dangerous power of
myth is not checked or subdued by superior forces. The book discusses the opposition of
logos and
mythology in Greek thought,
Plato's
Republic, the
medieval theory of
the state,
Machiavelli,
Thomas Carlyle's writings on hero worship, the
racial theories of Arthur de Gobineau, and
Hegel. Cassirer claimed that in 20th-century politics there was a return, with the passive acquiescence of
Martin Heidegger, to the irrationality of myth, and in particular to a belief that there is such a thing as
destiny. Of this passive acquiescence, Cassirer says that in departing from Husserl's belief in an objective, logical basis for philosophy, Heidegger attenuated the ability of philosophy to oppose the resurgence of myth in
German politics of the 1930s.
The Myth of the State discusses the surrender of rational logic to fascist mythology.
Partial bibliography
-
Leibniz' System in seinem wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen (1902)
-
The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel ''Das (1906–1920), English translation 1950 ( online edition )
-
"Kant und die moderne Mathematik." Kant-Studien 12, 1–40 (1907)
-
Substance and Function Substanzbegriff (1910) and Einstein's Theory of Relativity Einsteinschen (1921), English translation 1923 ( online edition)
-
Freedom and Form ''Freiheit (1916)
-
Kant's Life and Thought ''Kants (1918), English translation 1981
-
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms ''Philosophie (1923–29), English translation 1953–1957
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Volume One: Language ''Erster (1923), English translation 1955
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Volume Two: Mythical Thought ''Zweiter (1925), English translation 1955
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Volume Three: The Phenomenology of Knowledge ''Dritter (1929), English translation 1957
-
Language and Myth ''Sprache (1925), English translation 1946 by Susanne Langer
-
The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy ''Individuum (1927), English translation 1963 by Mario Domandi
-
"Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie" "Epistemology. Jahrbücher der Philosophie, 3, 1927, pp. 31–92
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Die Idee der republikanischen Verfassung (1929)
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"Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Bemerkungen zu Martin Heideggers Kantinterpretation." Kant-Studien 26, 1–16 (1931)
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The Philosophy of the Enlightenment ''Die (1932), English translation 1951
-
Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics: Historical and Systematic Studies of the Problem of Causality ''Determinismus (1936), English translation 1956
-
The Logic of the Cultural Sciences Zur (1942), English translation 2000 by Steve G. Lofts (previously translated in 1961 as The Logic of the Humanities'')
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An Essay on Man (written and published in English) (1944) ( books.google.com)
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The Myth of the State (written and published in English) (posthumous) (1946) ( Internet Archive)
-
Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935–1945, ed. by Donald Phillip Verene (March 11, 1981)
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Ernst Cassirer: Gesammelte Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Electronic Edition. (2016) – The electronic version of the definitive edition of Cassirer's works, published in print by Felix Meiner Verlag, and electronically in the Past Masters series.
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The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 4, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms. Edited and translated by John Michael Krois and Donald Philip Verene from manuscripts left after Cassirer's death. Published 1996, New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
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The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology. Translated and with an Introduction by S. G. Lofts with A. Calcagno. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
See also
-
Ontic structural realism
[ "Structural Realism": entry by James Ladyman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.]
Further reading
-
Aubenque, Pierre, et al. "Philosophie und Politik: Die Davoser Disputation zwischen Ernst Cassirer und Martin Heidegger in der Retrospektive." Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2: 290-312
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Barash, Jeffrey Andrew. The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer (2008) ( excerpt and text search)
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Burtt, Edwin Arthur. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, London: Paul Trencher (2000)
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Eilenberger, Wolfram. Time of the Magicians: The invention of modern thought, 1919–29, Allen Lane (2020)
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Folkvord Ingvild & Hoel Aud Sissel (eds.), Ernst Cassirer on Form and Technology: Contemporary Readings, (2012), Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan ().
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Friedman, Michael. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (2000) ( excerpt and text search)
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Gordon, Peter Eli. Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (2010)
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Krois, John Michael. Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History (Yale University Press 1987)
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Lassègue, Jean. Cassirer's Transformation: From a Transcendental to a Semiotic Philosophy of Forms. Springer, 2020. (Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics book series. volume 55)
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Lipton, David R. Ernst Cassirer: The Dilemma of a Liberal Intellectual in Germany, 1914–1933 (1978)
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Lofts. Steve G. Ernst Cassirer: A "Repetition" of Modernity (2000) SUNY Press, : at Google Books
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Magerski, Christine. "Reaching Beyond the Supra-Historical Sphere: from Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms to Bourdieu's Sociology of Symbolic Forms." ´´Pierre Bourdieu and the Field of Cultural Production.´´ Ed. J. Browitt. University of Delaware Press (2004): 21-29.
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Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.). The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1949) archive.org
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Schultz, William. Cassirer & Langer on Myth (2nd ed. 2000) ( excerpt and text search)
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Skidelsky, Edward. Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (Princeton University Press, 2008), 288 pp. .
External links
