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Ernst Cassirer

German philosopher

Ernst Alfred C*irer (/kɑːˈsɪərər, kəˈ-/ kah-SEER-ər, kə-, German: ; July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science.

After Cohen's death in 1918, C*irer developed a theory of symbolism and used it to expand phenomenology of knowledge into a more general philosophy of culture. C*irer 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 C*irer'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, C*irer's work has additionally been seen as part of a long tradition of thought on ethical philosophy.

Contents

  • 1 Biography
  • 2 Influences
  • 3 Work
    • 3.1 History of science
    • 3.2 Philosophy of science
    • 3.3 Philosophy of symbolic forms
    • 3.4 The C*irer–Heidegger debate
    • 3.5 Philosophy of the Enlightenment
    • 3.6 The Logic of the Cultural Sciences
    • 3.7 The Myth of the State
  • 4 Partial bibliography
  • 5 References
  • 6 Further reading
  • 7 External links

Biography

Born in Breslau in Silesia (modern-day southwest Poland), into a Jewish family, C*irer studied literature and philosophy at the University of Marburg (where he completed his doctoral work in 1899 with a dissertation on René Descartes's *ysis of mathematical and natural scientific knowledge en*led Descartes' Kritik der mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis ) and at the University of Berlin (where he completed his habilitation in 1906 with the dissertation Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit: Erster Band ).

Politically, C*irer supported the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP). After working for many years as a Privatdozent at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, C*irer 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 theses of Joachim Ritter and Leo Strauss. On 30 January 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party Regime came to power. C*irer left Germany on 12 March 1933 - one week after the first Reichstagswahl under that Regime - because he was Jewish.

After leaving Germany he taught for a couple of years at the University of Oxford, before becoming a professor at Gothenburg University. When C*irer 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.

C*irer died of a heart attack in April 1945 in New York City. 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 C*irer, was also a Kantian scholar.

Other members of his prominent family included the neurologist Richard C*irer, the publisher and gallery owner Bruno C*irer and the art dealer and editor Paul C*irer.

Influences

Donald Phillip Verene, who published some of C*irer's papers kept at Yale University, gave this overview of his ideas:

"C*irer 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 Kavi language, Schelling’s Philosophie Der Mythologie, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and Vischer’s conception of the aesthetic symbol, among many others. C*irer’s own position is born through a mastery of the whole development of this world of the humanistic understanding, which included the rise of the scientific world view — a mastery evident both in his historical works and in his systematic philosophy."

Work

History of science

C*irer'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 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 C*irer 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 Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29) C*irer 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. C*irer 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 C*irer–Heidegger debate

Main article: C*irer–Heidegger debate

In 1929 C*irer took part in a historically significant encounter with Martin Heidegger in Davos during the Second Davos Hochschulkurs (the C*irer–Heidegger debate). C*irer 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. C*irer challenges Heidegger's relativism by invoking the universal validity of truths discovered by the exact and moral sciences.

Philosophy of the Enlightenment

C*irer believed that reason's self-realization leads to human liberation. Mazlish (2000), however, notes that C*irer 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) C*irer 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 natural sciences derives from universal laws of nature, C*irer *erts that an *ogous type of inter-subjective objective validity takes place in the cultural sciences.

The Myth of the State

C*irer'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 National Socialist German Workers' Party Germany. C*irer sees National Socialist German Workers' Party 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 mythos 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. C*irer claimed that in 20th-century politics there was a return, with the p*ive 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 p*ive acquiescence, C*irer 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.

Partial bibliography

  • Leibniz' System in seinem wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen (1902)
  • The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel (1906–1920), English translation 1950 (online edition)
  • "Kant und die moderne Mathematik." Kant-Studien (1907)
  • Substance and Function (1910) and Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1921), English translation 1923 (online edition)
  • Freedom and Form (1916)
  • Kant's Life and Thought (1918), English translation 1981
  • Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29), English translation 1953–1957
    • Volume One: Language (1923), English translation 1955
    • Volume Two: Mythical Thought (1925), English translation 1955
    • Volume Three: The Phenomenology of Knowledge (1929), English translation 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
  • "Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie." Jahrbücher der Philosophie 3, 31-92 (1927)
  • Die Idee der republikanischen Verf*ung (1929)
  • "Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Bemerkungen zu Martin Heideggers Kantinterpretation." Kant-Studien 26, 1-16 (1931)
  • Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932), English translation 1951
  • Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics: Historical and Systematic Studies of the Problem of Causality (1936), English translation 1956
  • The Logic of the Cultural Sciences (1942), English translation 2000 by Steve G. Lofts (previously translated in 1961 as The Logic of the Humanities)
  • An Essay on Man (written and published in English) (1944) (books.google.com)
  • The Myth of the State (written and published in English) (posthumous) (1946) (books.google.com)
  • Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst C*irer, 1935-1945, ed. by Donald Phillip Verene (March 11, 1981)
  • Ernst C*irer: Gesammelte Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Electronic Edition. (2016) – The electronic version of the definitive edition of C*irer's works, published in print by Felix Meiner Verlag, and electronically in the Past Masters series.
  • 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.

References

    Further reading

    • Aubenque, Pierre, et al. "Philosophie und Politik: Die Davoser Disputation zwischen Ernst C*irer und Martin Heidgger in der Retrospektive." Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2: 290-312
    • Barash, Jeffrey Andrew. The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst C*irer (2008) (excerpt and text search)
    • Burtt, Edwin Arthur. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, London: Paul Trencher (2000)
    • Eilenberger, Wolfram. Time of the Magicians: The invention of modern thought, 1919–29, Allen Lane (2020)
    • Folkvord Ingvild & Hoel Aud Sissel (eds.), Ernst C*irer on Form and Technology: Contemporary Readings, (2012), Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan (ISBN:978-0-230-36547-6).
    • Friedman, Michael. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, C*irer, and Heidegger (2000) (excerpt and text search)
    • Gordon, Peter Eli. Continental Divide: Heidegger, C*irer, Davos (2010)
    • Krois, John Michael. C*irer: Symbolic Forms and History (Yale University Press 1987)
    • L*ègue, Jean. C*irer’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) Online ISBN:978-3-030-42905-8
    • Lipton, David R. Ernst C*irer: The Dilemma of a Liberal Intellectual in Germany, 1914-1933 (1978)
    • Lofts. Steve G. Ernst C*irer: A "Repe*ion" of Modernity (2000) SUNY Press, ISBN:978-0-791-44495-5: at Google Books
    • Magerski, Christine. "Reaching Beyond the Supra-Historical Sphere: from C*irer'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.
    • Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.). The Philosophy of Ernst C*irer (1949) archive.org
    • Schultz, William. C*irer & Langer on Myth (2nd ed. 2000) (excerpt and text search)
    • Skidelsky, Edward. Ernst C*irer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (Princeton University Press, 2008), 288 pp.:ISBN:978-0-691-13134-4.
    • Hardy, Anton G. "Symbol Philosophy and the Opening into Consciousness and Creativity" (2014)

    External links

    • Friedman, Michael. "Ernst C*irer". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    • History of the C*irer Family
    • Ernst C*irer in family context
    • Centre for Intercultural Studies
    • Works by Ernst C*irer at Project Gutenberg
    • Works by or about Ernst C*irer at Internet Archive
    • Newspaper clippings about Ernst C*irer in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
    • Ernst C*irer Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and M*cript Library. Yale University.
    • Ernst C*irer Papers - Addition. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and M*cript Library, Yale University.
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