Philosophy of symbolic forms

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Philosophy of symbolic forms is the title of the main work of the philosopher Ernst Cassirer . The first edition appeared in Berlin between 1923 and 1929. It comprises three volumes:

  • Volume 1: The Language , 1923
  • Volume 2: Mythical Thinking , 1925
  • Volume 3: Phenomenology of Knowledge , 1929

In general, the term “philosophy of symbolic forms” also refers to Cassirer's cultural-philosophical approach as his philosophy (see main article Ernst Cassirer, section “Cultural Philosophy” ).

The work

In the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer spreads his cultural philosophy and philosophy of science in a mixture of systematic and historical investigation. In the first volume he lays the foundations for the analysis of the general mental functions and forms of expression of man. The first volume thematically examines language , the second volume myth and religion and the third volume modern scientific knowledge .

The core message of his work is that we always experience the world through certain systems of sign and meaning formation such as art, science or religion, which he calls symbolic forms . As basic forms of the world view, they are “equivalent” to each other in a specific way. The equivalence does not arise from the fact that z. B. the explanation of lightning and thunder by means of the god of thunder or by means of electrodynamics a similar degree of truth should be assigned. Rather, Cassirer thinks that the different symbolic forms cannot be reduced to one another : the position of a work of art in the world and its reception cannot be explained by physics, the role of language cannot be explained by art, art cannot be explained by historical thinking alone capture.

In spite of everything, with Cassirer the myth has a special position, since he regards it as the archetype of human thought. In the myth, the world is first broken down, structures are created (even if not yet abstract structures), conciseness is developed and the various impressions are symbolically represented. For Cassirer, mythical thinking gave rise to other symbolic forms such as art, history, science, etc. in a process of dialectical development. However, Cassirer does not represent the idea of ​​a monolinearly ascending development scheme, for example from myth to religion to scientifically proven knowledge (as Hegel does). Rather, at the center of his cultural philosophy is the non-reducibility of the symbolic forms as independent worlds with independent internal structures.

literature

  • Ernst Cassirer : Philosophy of symbolic forms 3 vols. 1st edition: Bruno Cassirer, Berlin, 1923–1929. Digital copy: https://archive.org/details/philosophieders00cass . Reprint: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1964 (10th edition 1994) ISBN 978-3-534-16650-3 . New edition (edited by Claus Rosenkranz) in Ernst Cassirer / Collected Works , Vol. 11–13. Meiner, Hamburg, 2001-2002.
  • Alfred Jospe : The differentiation between myth and religion in Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer's meaning for the Jewish religious philosophy. Wiercimok, Opole 1932. (Dissertation at the University of Breslau)
  • Hans-Jürg Braun, Helmut Holzhey and Ernst Wolfgang Orth (ed.): About Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1988, ISBN 978-3518283059
  • Christine Magerski, The Power of the Symbolic. From Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms to Bourdieu's sociology of symbolic forms, in: Zeitschrift für Soziologie, vol. 34, issue 2 (2005), pp. 112–127.
  • Barbara Naumann : Philosophy and Poetics of the Symbol. Cassirer and Goethe . Munich: Fink, 1998, ISBN 978-3770532971 .
  • Birgit Recki : Culture as Practice: An Introduction to Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-05-003870-5 .
  • Guido Kreis: Cassirer and the forms of the mind . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3518295519 .
  • Raji C. Steineck : Critique of Symbolic Forms I: Symbolic Form and Function . frommann-holzboog, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3772826733 .

References

  1. ↑ , Cf. E. Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Part Two: The Mythical Thought , Section Four: The Dialectic of Mythical Consciousness.