Animal symbolicum

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The term animal symbolicum was coined by Ernst Cassirer . The term emphasizes the typical human ability to produce symbols and to think and live in a world of symbols. The term is mainly used in philosophical anthropology . With other terms like animal rationale , homo ludens , zoon politikon, it belongs to the topoi of anthropological discussion.

In his main work Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and, above all, in his later anthropological work, Experiment about Man , he explains the term: Man does not live in a purely physical environment, but in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, religion and all other areas of cultural activity form the threads of the symbolic fabric. Every advance in human thought and experience strengthens and expands this fabric.

The human being understood as animal rational makes up only part of this symbolic universe. In addition to the language of concepts, there is a language of feeling; in addition to the language of logic or science, there is the language of poetic imagination. In its origin, language does not express thoughts and ideas, but feelings and affects. The expression animal symbolicum therefore includes all areas of human culture . The symbolic ability of man develops mainly with and in language, which is not only a means of communication but also a means of thinking, but it is a special achievement of Cassirer's symbolic philosophy that his concept of symbolization - in contrast to the more language-oriented Kant's epistemology - is by no means limited to language. Rather, humans are characterized by the fact that they use the symbol to give the world both individual and collective connotations.

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