The Davos Dispute: New Aspects

The Philosophy of Cassirer in Light of His Dispute with

Heidegger

Irit Katsur
PhD student at the Center for German Studies, the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem

I am grateful to the Center for German Studies of the Hebrew University of

Jerusalem, whose support made this project possible. I express special thanks for
additional support that I received from the center for a journey to Leipzig, where I had
an opportunity to meet with Dr. Thomas Meyer to read Cassirers unpublished
lectures, which are in his possession. A special acknowledgment is due to Dr. Meyer,
who acquainted me with Cassirers manuscript, helped me read and translate it, and
gave me much valuable advice about the secondary literature on this subject. I am
also grateful to the Center for Austrian Studies of the Hebrew University for giving
me an opportunity to go to Austria and participate several times in German-language
courses there. I would also like to thank Prof. Elhanan Yakira for his supervision and
Dr. Michael Roubach for helping me with the secondary literature. In addition, I am
indebted to Ilia Dvorkin who organized regular philosophical meetings and to Dr.
Tatiana Karachentsev and Yoel Regev, who participated in these meetings. Long and
intense discussions with them clarified many ideas for me. Finally, I owe much to my
beloved friend Alexander Zablotsky for his help in checking and correcting this
manuscript.

Contents

Abbreviations.......

Introduction...

1: Phenomenology versus Neo-Kantianism

1.1 The First Principle of Phenomenology.....

14

1.2 Critique of Husserl.... 18

2: The Davos Dispute: Cassirer versus Heidegger

2.1 Heideggers Critique of Cassirer......

22

2.2 Cassirers Critique of Heidegger......

26

3: The Symbolic Philosophy

3.1 The Dilemma of Life and Culture...

29

3.2 The Concept of Symbol...

35

3.3 The Phenomenon of Expression......................

39

3.4 Symbolic Pregnance: The Meaning.

40

3.5 The World of Organic Forms..............

43

4: Ethics within the Symbolic Philosophy

4.1 Discussion of the Place of Ethics in Cassirers Philosophy.....

46

4.2 Why Did Cassirer Have Difficulty Integrating Ethics with Symbolic
Forms?......................

52

4.3 Basis Phenomena......

56

Conclusion................ 60
Bibliography........

63

Abbreviations
For the most frequently cited texts by Cassirer, the following abbreviations are used:
DD

Davos Disputation between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger", in

Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics [1929].
Appendices, pp. 171-186. Fourth edition, enlarged. Trans. Richard Taft.
Indiana University Press, 1990.

Works by Cassirer
MS

The Myth of the State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946.

PSF IIV

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. I, Language [1923], trans.

Ralph Manheim, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953, Vol. II,
Mythical Thought, [1925] trans. Ralph Manheim, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1953, Vol. III, The Phenomenology of Knowledge,
[1929] trans. Ralph Manheim, reprinted: The Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965, Vol. IV, The
Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms (including the text of Cassirers
manuscript on Basis Phenomena), ed. J.M. Krois and D.P. Verene, trans.
J.M. Krois. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Works on Cassirer
CSFH

Krois, John Michael. Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

Works by Heidegger
BT

Being and Time [1927]. Trans. from the German Sein und Zeit (seventh
edition, Tbingen, Neomarius Verlag) by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

KPM

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics [1929]. Fourth edition, enlarged.

Trans. Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

EC

Ernst Cassirer: The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Part Two: Mythical

Thought [Berlin, 1925]. Review in Martin Heidegger, Kant and the
Problem of Metaphysics [1929], Appendix II (pp. 181-190). Trans. Peter
3

Warnek. Fifth edition, enlarged. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1997.

Works by Husserl
I

Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology [1913]. Trans.

W.R. Boyce Gibson. London: Allen & Unwin, 1952.

LI

Logical Investigations, Vol. 1. Trans. J.N. Findlay from LU, Vol. 2

[1913]. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.

Works by Kant
CPR

Critique of Pure Reason [1787]. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen
W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

(For full bibliographical details, see Bibliography, p. 62.)

Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer and to
clarify some points in the discussion between him and Martin Heidegger, which took
place in Davos in 1929 and subsequently continued in their writings. At the end of the
1920s, Heidegger and Cassirer were the most prominent philosophers in Germany.
Heidegger started his philosophical career as a disciple and assistant of Edmund
Husserl, who began a new philosophical methodology that was called
phenomenology. Heidegger, however, introduced many changes in phenomenological
inquiry. In his famous book BT, Heidegger developed a new hermeneutic approach to
the question of being that many consider the main achievement of twentieth-century
philosophy.
Cassirer began his philosophical career as a disciple of the neo-Kantian
philosopher Hermann Cohen. Heidegger and many others viewed him as a
representative of the neo-Kantian movement, the philosophical school that competed
with phenomenology and was strongly criticized by Heidegger. However, in his threevolume work that was published in the 1920s, Cassirer proposed a new philosophy
that deviated from the neo-Kantian position. It was called the philosophy of symbolic
forms, and its purpose was to reconcile two major philosophical movements:
phenomenology and neo-Kantianism.
In March 1929, at the annual meeting of the II. Davosser Hochshulkurse", the
two philosophers and many other academics from various parts of Europe presented
lectures. 1 The discussion topic was Was ist der Mensch? (What is man?). During
the first week of the conference, Cassirer gave three lectures on the philosophy of
anthropology, and on March 26 the famous encounter between him and Heidegger
took place.
In the debate both Heidegger and Cassirer offered their own way of interpreting
Kant, based on which they justified their respective philosophical positions.
Heidegger maintained that the main goal of philosophy is to find a basis for the
philosophical, cultural, and scientific domains of being, and criticized Cassirer and
other neo-Kantian philosophers for lacking such a basis. Heidegger claimed that all
human values must be bounded within finite existence and cannot presume to go
1

The meeting held at the Grand Hotel and Belvedere, Davos-Platz, lasted from Sunday, March 17, to
Saturday, April 6, 1929.

beyond it. Cassirer, for his part, charged Heidegger with lacking a transcendent
dimension and, hence, being unable to go beyond the given in his existential
extrapolation of being. Cassirer argued that without this dimension, Heidegger was
unable to explain the objective aspects of human being or, what is more important, the
objectivity of ethical values.
Having studied in a theological college, Heidegger had a good acquaintance with
theological tradition and was influenced by religious outlooks even though he
developed a strictly atheist position. 2 Heideggers existential philosophy posited
immanent being, within which every realm of human is structured. This philosophy
can be viewed as the apex of the secular thought that was initiated by Nietzsche,
according to whom all transcendence, not only divine and moral values, but also
every determination of objective significance such as scientific laws should be
discarded as exhausted and speculative. 3 Heidegger also did away with theological
relicts of Self", which he replaced with Dasein, or immanent extension of being.
Heidegger thereby weakened the ties with the dualistic Cartesian tradition of mind
and body, which had dominated European thought. His ideas indeed appeared
revolutionary and provocative and hence attained more support than those of Cassirer,
who wanted to preserve meaning, the ideal, and truth i.e., to animate the God who
had been killed.
Cassirer was, indeed, considered a philosopher of transcendence. He advocated a
universality of values and forms both in the domain of knowledge and of ethics. He
strongly opposed Heideggers ethical relativism, which resulted from the annihilation
of transcendence. The common view is that Cassirer developed a highly rational,
ethical philosophy based on universal principles, but lacked the basis of being. This
one-sided view is, however, disputable. Cassirer did not try to make existence
dependent on transcendence, without roots in the immanence of experience. We shall
see that the originality of Cassirers symbolic doctrine lay in integrating the
immanence of life with the transcendence of form. I will maintain that both Cassirer
and Heidegger broke with the Cartesian dualistic mind-body conception, though
Cassirer did not want to eschew the domain of transcendence. According to Cassirer,
the sphere of the beyond should be discovered in the very immanence of life, not in

2
3

Cf.: Ernst Cassirer, Geist and Life, in PSF IV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 200.
Cf.: Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche. 2 Bd. Pfullingen: Neske, 1961.

self-consciousness and not in being to death. This something his contemporaries did
not properly understand was the task of Cassirers philosophy.
Cassirers philosophy, like Heideggers, reveals the ground of being and also
contains an irrational aspect that can lead to the undermining of moral values. Hence,
despite many evident differences between the two philosophies, Cassirers cannot
completely avoid the ethical problems that he discerned in Heideggers thought.
Nevertheless, Cassirer by no means wanted to arrive at ethical relativism. His doctrine
was related to the old endeavor to preserve transcendence by means of practical
philosophy. This endeavor began with Kant, who posited ethics in place of God, was
continued by Hermann Cohen, and was also shared by Cassirer, who desired to
incorporate ethics in his symbolic philosophy though he did not managed to do it.
After the Davos dispute, Heideggers philosophical doctrine received much more
support and had greater success in the philosophical community than Cassirers
position. Cassirer can be called the last advocate of transcendence. Already at the
Davos meeting, the majority of the philosophers followed Heideggers doctrine,
which was considered more promising and original than Cassirers. Moreover, after
World War II the optimistic nineteenth-century belief in the moral and rational
essence of man, shared by Hermann Cohen and Cassirer, nearly collapsed. As a result
of the Nazi period, Heideggers view of finite human existence as filled with fear and
worry and subordinated by destiny appeared much more realistic than Cassirers
claims about the eternity of the good. Hence Heideggers thought strongly influenced
the later continental philosophy; especially postwar French philosophy, as well as
cultural studies and literary criticism. As a result of this influence, Cassirers ideas
were nearly forgotten.
The other reason for the neglect of Cassirers ideas is the difficulty of reading his
works, a difficulty that has several aspects. One is the incompleteness of Cassirers
philosophy. Being in exile since 1933, along with the circumstances of this period,
made it hard for Cassirer to complete his philosophy as he intended.4 He planned to
produce works dealing with ethics as well as with art that must appear in the next
volumes of PSF. He began to develop an ethical and art philosophy of symbolic
forms, but he was only able to compose notes about it. As the researchers of
Cassirers philosophy, John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene remarked:
See J.M. Krois and D.P. Verene, Introduction, in PSF IV (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996).
4

These were war years, and the explanation for Cassirers not finishing this project
may be the same as the reason he gave later, in the United States, for not producing a
work on art the malice or Ungust, of the times. 5
Another difficulty with Cassirer is the complexity of his philosophical task of
integrating immanence with transcendence and explaining the manifoldness of human
culture. And as Lofts points out, Cassirers main principle, which dominated all his
thought, is that the whole always comes before the parts. The parts do not exist prior
to the whole, and cannot be understood outside their place and function in the
whole. 6 This principle, however, makes it difficult for Cassirer scholars to
characterize his ideas clearly and causes the obvious embarrassment in which
Cassirer scholarship finds itself when it attempts to define a satisfactory frame of
reference for its interpretation of the Cassirerian project. 7
Furthermore, the highly erudite Cassirer tended to stress the unity of his thought
with that of other philosophers. His books are filled with ideas of numerous thinkers
that Cassirer tried to integrate with his philosophy, and this increases the difficulty of
his texts, creates uncertainty about his position, and puts the cogency of his
philosophy in question.
As a result of all these factors, Cassirers doctrines, compared to Heideggers,
were relegated to the sidelines of philosophical development. In my view, the only
partial continuation of Cassirers ideas is the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel
Levinas, though he never said this was the case. Levinas developed an ethical theory
based on the unperceivable expression of the Other, of the Others transcendence a
theory that can be viewed as a kind of extension of Cassirers original, unfinished
project.
The Davos dispute immediately attracted attention in intellectual circles and
became almost legendary in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. It seemed a
kind of return of the Socratic living philosophical dialogue, certainly more vivid than
books and papers. By the turn of the last century, many scholars agreed that this
meeting gave a certain sense of the future of German philosophy. 8 Gordon

Ibid., xxiii.
Steve G. Lofts, Introduction, in Ernst Cassirer: A Repetition of Modernity (Foreword by John
Michael Krois) (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000), 19.
7
Ibid.
8
...bei dem es im gewissen Sinne um die Zukunft der deutschen Philosophie ging ( Raymond
Klibansky, Erinnerung an ein Jahrhundert. Gesprche mit Georges Leroux, Frankfurt/M., 2001, 44) in
6

characterized this dispute as almost the most frequently cited conversation in the
history of modern European thought that conversation was so closely bound with
the fate of European culture. 9
Interest in the political aspect of the Heidegger-Cassirer dispute arose after World
War II and was impelled by Cassirers last published work, The Myth of the State, that
was published in 1946. In it Cassirer inquired into the roots of the new political
mythology that had emerged in Germany in 1933. Among other things, he cited
Heideggers existential philosophy as one that did enfeeble and slowly undermine
the forces that could have resisted the modern political myths. Such philosophy
renounces its own fundamental theoretical and ethical ideals. It can be used, then, as a
pliable instrument in the hands of the political leaders. 10
Hence, what had been considered a purely philosophical dispute between two
thinkers suddenly assumed political-ideological importance. 11 The theoretical
argument about the place of temporality in existence appeared to have a practical
application. If human existence is structured by temporality and is a finite, limited-toitself Dasein, as Heidegger claimed, no objective values are possible, but only values
that are relative to historical situations. Cassirer criticized Heidegger not only for
having initially supported a totalitarian regime, but also because the basis for a
nonhumanistic worldview was already laid down in the philosophical doctrines he
articulated at Davos. In Cassirers view, Heidegger had wrongly characterized human
Dasein as passive and incapable of self-impelled independent action and
responsibility.
However, as we shall see in the last chapter of this paper, a similar claim can be
made about Cassirer. Since 1946, the discussion on the possibility of ethics within
Cassirers philosophy has not come to an end. Some studies have viewed Cassirer as a
liberal humanist whose position is unequivocally opposed to the antihumanistic views
of Heidegger 12 that led him to support the National Socialist regime. Other studies

Vorwort in Cassirer-Heidegger: 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation, ed. D. Kaegi and E. Rudolph

(Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002).
9
Peter Eli Gordon, Continental Divide: The Davos Disputation between Cassirer and Heidegger,
1929, Modern Intellectual History (Summer 2003): 1-41,6.
10
MS, 293.
11
Cf.: Enno Rudolph, Freiheit oder Schicksal? Cassirer und Heidegger in Davos, in CassirerHeidegger: 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation, ed. D. Kaegi and E. Rudolph (Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag, 2002).
12
Cf.: Deniz Coskun, it is obvious that what we have called here the Davos debate involved the
clash of two different conceptions of philosophy or even eras, i.e., between humanist philosophy and

assert, however, that despite Cassirers proclamations about the importance of ethics,
his own philosophy lacks ethics. 13
Some studies have also seen the opposition between Cassirer and Heidegger in a
nationalistic context. They suggest that Heideggers critique of Cassirer as lacking a
grounding for his theory can be interpreted in terms of the well-known anti-Semitic
claim that Jews are cosmopolitans by nature, living in lands that are not their own and
having no strong link to the soil.
Many studies, however, cast doubt on any ideological opposition between
Heidegger and Cassirer and deny that political or anti-Semitic views were connected
to this dispute. Gordon and Meyer argue that the Davos dispute had only a
philosophical dimension and that linking Heideggers position to his political
engagement with National Socialism is not justified. 14 Meyer claims that the
relationship between Heidegger and Cassirer was friendly, citing the letter Heidegger
wrote to his wife during the Davos conference. In it Heidegger mentioned Cassirer
with sympathy and without any allusions to a quarrel between them, noting that
Cassirer had spoken of inviting him to give a lecture at the Warburg Library
[Cassirer u. andre Prof. die in meinem Vortrag waren, wollen mich im nchsten
Herbst fr eine Vorlesung in der Bibliotek Warburg haben,...]. 15 Therefore Meyer
maintains there was no political aspect to the Davos dispute, and if history had
developed differently the issue would never have arisen. According to this view, the
connection between the participants political and philosophical positions was made
only after the war.
From the perspective of the postwar period, however, the special curiosity about
the Davos dispute is understandable. Even today the interest in this topic has not run
its course; over the past decade it has even increased.
This fact is closely connected to the rising interest in Cassirers whole
philosophical project, which was almost forgotten after his death in 1945. Until the

the existentialist, non-humanistic philosophy of the new era. Both traditions were aware of the presence
and appeal or force of one another. Cassirer in Davos: An Intermezzo on Magic Mountain (1929).
Law and Critique 17 (Springer 2006): 1-26.
13
See below, ch. 4.1.
14
See Peter Eli Gordon, Continental Divide: The Davos Disputation between Cassirer and Heidegger,
1929, Modern Intellectual History (Summer 2003): 1-41. And Thomas Meyer, Am Abgrund
wamdernd, ins Unbekannte gestoen. Das Davoser Treffen von Ernst Cassirer und Martin Heidegger
hat eine bislang unbekannte Vorgeschichte in Hamburg 1923, Frankfurte Allgemeine Zeitung 44
(2006): 45.
15
Ibid., from Heideggers letter to his wife, Elfride Heidegger, Hambg. 19. Dez. 23.

10

1960s, except for the volume devoted to Cassirer in the Library of Living
Philosophers series, 16 only a few critical works about him and his encounter with
Heidegger were published. Since the 1990s, however, more and more new researches
and monographs about Cassirer have appeared, in German as well as English. Why
was this sudden upsurge of interest in Cassirer and Davos after more than half a
century?
The trend began with Kroiss book CSFH, published in 1987. This is the first
thorough book about Cassirer to give a systematic, in-depth account of his
philosophical project and point to its not insignificant influence on many thinkers of
the century, including Heidegger himself and also Merleau-Ponty. Krois noted
regretfully that only five monographs on Cassirer had been published in English.
Moreover, Cassirers thought has been much neglected in the German-speaking
world. Nonetheless, due to the many-faceted nature of Cassirers publications, his
work has influenced thinking in many fields, including linguistics, semiotics,
anthropology, art history, education, psychology and psychoanalysis, and history. 17
Krois attributed this neglect to the common misunderstanding of Cassirers thought.
He also argued against viewing Cassirer as a neo-Kantian philosopher whose main
concern was the scientific epistemology or history of philosophy. Krois entirely
rejected the claim that Cassirer was not a philosopher in his own right, stressing new
motifs in contemporary thought that had their roots in Cassirers work. 18 Kroiss book
illuminated complex aspects of Cassirers thought that subsequently, and quickly,
attracted the attention of scholars.
The next phase of the growing interest in Cassirer came with the publication of
PSF IV, which was called The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms. The 1995 English
edition of this volume, edited by Krois and Verene, appeared after the publication of
the German edition of PSF IV, which contained Cassirers unpublished texts marked
Symbolic Forms, Volume IV. 19 This volume is important to understanding the
project of the philosophy of symbolic forms, which in some aspects was incomplete.
The newly published PSF IV continued to deal with the phenomenology of
knowledge, which Cassirer had introduced in the third volume of his work. In the
The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. (The Library of Living Philosophers, No. 6,) ed. Paul Arthur
Schilpp (Evanston, IL: The Library of living philosophers, 1949.)
17
CSFH, 4.
18
CSFH, 33-38.
19
See Introduction, PSF IV.
16

11

fourth volume Cassirer developed the concept of the basis phenomena, which
elaborated the concept of the original phenomenon of expression from the previous
volume.
Since then many conferences on Cassirer have been held and many papers on him
have been published. The seminar Ernst Cassirer: Symbol, Science and Culture was
held in May 1998 in Jerusalem. In September 1999, a seminar on the Davos dispute
was held in Heidelberg. 20 Friedmans detailed book on the Davos dispute was
published in 2000. 21 More recently, the above-cited article by Gordon and many other
articles, books, and doctoral dissertations on Cassirer have been published.
The revived interest in Cassirer also may reflect the interest in the German
Romantic and humanistic tradition as mainly represented by Goethe. Cassirer was
greatly inspired by Goethe and tried to integrate his ideas with his philosophical
approach.
Other important factors explain the current interest in Cassirer. His philosophy is a
philosophy of culture that aims to describe the spiritual development that embodies
itself in the richness and multiplicity of cultural forms. As Lofts suggests, this twopoled project of seeking the unity of structure in the variety of forms, and the variety
of possibilities in a single structure, accords with todays growing and radical new
awareness of the plurality of cultures. 22 The thoroughgoing study of Cassirers
philosophy can offer a means of investigating and illuminating this plurality.
The interest in Cassirer is also impelled, as Lofts notes, by the growing
awareness that postmodern thought has arrived at an impasse. 23 The postmodernism
that was influenced by Heidegger, and continued his rejection of the transcendent,
seems to be lost in its own labyrinth. 24 Neither postmodernism nor its opponent, the
Anglo-American analytical tradition, has any means to explain the rich spectrum of
human life, culture, and being; hence the turn to Cassirers old-fashioned project of
seeking transcendence within immanent existence. As we shall see, the aim of

See Cassirer-Heidegger: 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation, ed. D. Kaegi and E. Rudolph (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002).
21
Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago: Open
Court, 2000). This book includes the bibliographies and a description of the philosophical and political
background of the three philosophers who took part in the discussion: Carnap (a logical positivist from
the Vienna circle), Cassirer, and Heidegger.
22
Steve G. Lofts, Introduction, Ernst Cassirer: A Repetition of Modernity (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2000), 1-5.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid.
20

12

Cassirers philosophy is to combine immanence with transcendence, life with culture,

intuition with form. Although there has been no major continuation of his ideas, it is
likely that there yet will be.

13

1. Phenomenology versus Neo-Kantianism

1.1 The First Principle of Phenomenology
This investigation begins with the controversy between the constructive method of
neo-Kantianism and the intuitive method of phenomenology, which was a preliminary
to

the

Davos

dispute.

The

disagreement

between

neo-Kantianism

and

phenomenological philosophy arose with the question of the possibility of intuition.

The debate on this issue between Edmund Husserl and Paul Natorp began after
Husserl had published Logical Investigations at the beginning of the last century.
Whereas Husserl based his research on intuition as a source of knowledge, Natorp
rejected the possibility of intuition.
Husserls aim was to create a special method to investigate consciousness, which
would differ from the scientific method of inquiry into the world. Husserls method
was intended to reveal a new domain of pure consciousness that was not yet known.
Psychology, whose aim is also consciousness, uses the scientific method that
investigates the contents of consciousness as events in the world, or as facts that occur
in the causal framework known as the world. Phenomenology, however, aimed to
criticize the method of psychological investigation, which Husserl termed the
naturalization of consciousness. According to Husserl, psychology tries to explain all
the experiences in consciousness with psychophysical descriptions, reducing all the
processes of consciousness to facts that can be explained like any other facts.
In contrast to this empirical approach of psychology, Husserls phenomenology
attempts to describe the pure experience of consciousness without its involvement in
the world. This antinaturalistic, antipsychological tendency was shared by all the
thinkers discussed in this paper: Husserl, Natorp, Cassirer, and Heidegger. They all
tried to develop a priori method of investigation that was unique to philosophy.
Husserl began his investigation of consciousness, very similarly to Descartes, with
the

principle

of

freedom

from

presuppositions

[Prinzip

der

Voraussetzungslosigkeit]. 25 This term assumes that the first level of knowledge

should not be conditioned by any primary presupposition. According to this principle,
See Preface to the Second Edition, LI, 263. However, there are many differences between LI, 1901,
and I, 1913. In the former, Husserl described the structure of consciousness from the inside, without
separating it from the existence of the world. In I, however, he carried out a phenomenological
reduction, distinguishing between existence in the world and the existence of consciousness.
25

14

each and every assumption should be rigorously tested in terms of phenomenological

knowledge or fulfillment [Erflling]. Husserl explained that, in contrast to verification
by induction or deduction as used in science, fulfillment is a kind of clarification
[Aufklrung] of the ideal meanings and the relations between them. Whereas
theoretical scientific explanations are based on rules and laws that assume the unity of
nature, the essence of consciousness cannot be explained in this way and needs
clarification. Its [the phenomenological theory of knowledge] aim is not to explain
knowledge in the psychological or psychophysical sense as a factual occurrence in
objective nature, but to shed light on the Idea of knowledge in its constitutive
elements and laws. 26 Clarification is directed at the living experience or Erlebnis 27 of
consciousness that is, the self-givenness of the act of consciousness. If, in science,
experience is the source of empirical knowledge, Erlebnis is the source of
phenomenological knowledge. Husserl defined intuition as pure Erlebnis of
consciousness.
Hence, the starting point of Husserls philosophy is intuition. According to this
principle, phenomenology does not use abstract concepts to explain processes in
consciousness but, instead, goes directly to the description of consciousness. Husserl
claimed that a new, previously unknown science had thereby emerged. Its purpose
was to describe pure consciousness as a complex structure of acts and essences.
Husserl maintained that previous philosophers had not succeeded to reveal the
realm of phenomenology; even Descartes had only reached the border of this realm
but had not entered it. 28 However, Husserls conviction that the principle of
phenomenology differs from the Cartesian Ego cogito may be questioned. Indeed,
Husserls phenomenological principle that nothing should be taken for granted
appears similar in many regards to Descartes principle of evident knowledge.
Descartes principle that only the self-awareness of thought is beyond doubt accords
with Husserls claim that the only real knowledge is the self-givenness of
consciousness. Consciousness is the starting point for both of them.

26

Preface to the Second Edition, LI, 265.

I prefer not to translate this term, since the German word Erlebnis comes from Lebenlife, and
indicates identity between an experience and a life process. An English translation as experience
loses this.
28
See Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: an Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion
Cairns, (The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1960.)
27

15

At first glance, Husserl aimed to discover the source of evident knowledge.

Nevertheless, Husserl did not stop at the epistemological level; he claimed his
principle was also an ontological one since intuition reveals not only evident
knowledge but also the mode of things existence. As he wrote: every primordial
dator [Originr gebende] Intuition is a source of authority [Rechtsquelle] for
knowledge, that whatever presents itself in intuition in primordial form (as it were in
its bodily reality), [in seiner leibhaften Wirklichkeit] is simply to be accepted as it
gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in which it then presents itself. 29
In other words, intuition not only reaches the knowledge of a thing, but also of the
way the thing exists. The way in which the thing gives itself to intuition is the way of
its actual being in its bodily reality. Thus intuition is the source of knowledge as
well as existence, and the ontological principle is unified with the epistemological
one. As Levinas wrote in his early work on Husserls notion of intuition: To say that
intuition actualized the mere intention which aims at the object is to say that in
intuition we relate directly to the object, we reach it. 30 Phenomenology as a science
based on unmediated knowledge is opposed to the Kantian distinction between the
ways in which a thing appears and the thing in itself. Husserl asserted that the act of
intuition gives the thing self as it is: Through acts of immediate intuition we
intuit a self. 31
Husserl distinguished between two kinds of intuition: intuition of essence, or
seeing of essences [Wesensschau], and intuition that presents objects external to
consciousness. The common feature is that both are based on the concrete givenness
of the object. The seeing of essences reaches the concrete essence of consciousness in
the same way that perception reaches the concrete thing. The way we perceive the
evidence of this table, or lamp, is the way we perceive the evidence of the rules of
logic, or the essence of red, of man, and so on. Just as the datum of individual or
empirical intuition [Anschauung] is an individual object, so the datum of essential
intuition is a pure essence. 32
Therefore, intuition discovers two completely different ontological structures:
seeing the essence and perceiving the external thing. The first is complete, adequate
I, 24, 92.
Emmanuel Levinas, Intuition, The Theory of Intuition in Husserls Phenomenology [1930], trans.
Andre Orianne (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 65-97.
31
I, 43, 136.
32
I, 3, 55.
29
30

16

seeing, and the second is incomplete and representative. Husserl explained that
Erlebnis of consciousness is given in the absolute, complete way, but the existence of
things in space is given fragmentarily. The phenomenological method discovers
Erlebnis of consciousness as an immanent occurrence that is given as temporal flow,
where every point is known. Perception of the thing in space, however, is given
partially. We perceive only numerous aspects of the thing, but we cannot see the thing
in its wholeness in three-dimensional space. The characteristic feature of the thing is
that, while it can be perceived by its sides that represent the whole thing, it cannot be
reached directly by all its sides in a single act of actual perception. The multiplicity of
changing aspects fills perception with the living presence of the thing itself. This is
the essential characteristic of all external perception: whereas it is an essential mark
of what is given through appearances that no one of these gives the matter in question
in an absolute form instead of presenting just one side of it, it is an essential mark of
what is immanently given precisely to give an absolute that simply cannot exhibit
aspects and vary them perspectively. 33 Therefore, Husserl distinguished two
different modes of existence: the existence of consciousness and the existence of the
thing in the world. The former is immanent, continuous, complete existence; the latter
is uncompleted, discrete, and represented. The two of these modes is perceived
directly by intuition.
In Husserls view, this essential distinction between two modes of existence led
Kant to think that the incomplete character of the things perception indicates the
limited manner of perception that is peculiar to human beings. Such perception is
unable to provide full, unmediated knowledge of the thing. Hence Kant assumed the
possibility of another kind of consciousness, different from mans. According to him,
human perception has incomplete character and can know the thing only as it appears
to intuition, represented by aspects. Kant wrote that, in contrast to human knowing,
God apprehends things in their entire existence. Husserl, however, considered this
distinction between human and divine modes of perception as an error. This error was
based on the mistaken assumption that the physical thing has to be given to perception
in a way similar to how the immanent object is given to consciousness; Kant did not
see any difference between the inner and outer modes of existence. According to this
assumption, the external thing has to be given in completeness exactly as Erlebnis is

33

I, 44, 139-140.

17

given to consciousness. This mistake, Husserl pointed out, stemmed from the
common comparison between complete existence in consciousness and representation
of the thing in perception. The incompleteness of the spatial thing is considered a
result of the defective manner of human perception, which lacks the capacity to know
the thing directly in its fullness. Hence Husserl maintained that there were no different
modes of being, such as divine and human, but two modes of existence: the thing in
the world and Erlebnis of consciousness. Both are given directly in their own living
mode of existence.

1.2 Critique of Husserl

The neo-Kantian philosopher Paul Natorp, who followed Kants critical method",
made an important critique of Husserl. The Marburg school of neo-Kantianism
declared that the direction of its philosophy was back to Kant. The aim was to end
all the speculation generated by the influence of Kants thought and to return to his
original views. Neo-Kantian philosophers maintained that Kant defined his program
as an epistemological one. In other words, his CPR was intended to answer the
questions: How is empirical knowledge possible? How is mathematics possible? To
answer these, he chose the transcendental or critical method of inquiry, seeking to
reveal the a priori structure or conditions of the possibility of experience. This method
takes scientific facts as a point of departure for rediscovering the concepts that made
these facts possible [Das Faktum der Wissenschaft]. Thus Kant argued that these
conditions include two different elements: intuition of time and space through which
the material is given, and the of understanding by which the given material turns into
the unity of the object. Neo-Kantians argued that this was Kants main position, as he
himself indicated. They sought to continue philosophical inquiry from the Kantian
transcendental standpoint.
This method of investigation presupposes that our experience is constituted by
transcendental conditions or concepts and intuition. The conditions or concepts of
understanding, however, play a dominant role in the constitution of knowledge.
Perception is interpreted as a dualistic process, where the concepts or categories of
understanding are spontaneous, creative forces of mind that organize the passive and
chaotic givenness of sensory intuition. As Kant put it: the connections of anything
manifold can never enter into us through the senses, and cannot be contained,
18

therefore, already in the pure form of sensuous intuition, for it is a spontaneous act of
the power of representation. 34 The chaotic manifold cannot be unified by itself and
constitute the object, since it has no creative power. But the concepts embody creative
capacities of the subject, and can be said to capture the sensory intuition; they unify
the chaos presented by intuition into objects. That, at any rate, was how the Marburg
school interpreted Kant.
According to Kant, the only intuition that is possible for human consciousness is
pure intuition of time and space, but it gives only framework and not content. The
same impossibility of unmediated knowledge applies to the I. The I thought is the
source of all thoughts, and it cannot be apprehended directly by the thought.
Following Kant, Natorp maintained that the self-reflection of consciousness is
impossible. Consciousness apprehends only the empirical I", something that appears
in the world as any other things through the mediation of spatial-temporal intuition.
Hence pure consciousness can only be known by the critical method, which Natorp
called reconstruction. It cannot be discovered directly without mediation, as Husserl
assumed in his main principle of phenomenology. In Kants structure of
consciousness, any datum can be reached only through concepts, which make this
datum understandable to us. Hence Natorp could not agree with Husserls
phenomenology. He claimed that unmediated knowledge of consciousness is
impossible since everything that becomes knowledge is already constructed by
concepts, and these concepts are intersubjective rules that make objective knowledge
possible. In other words, knowledge is mediation, the immediate knowledge of
consciousness is impossible. The retrospection of the process of consciousness is also
perceived through concepts, and hence becomes objectified as any other things.
Natorp maintained, as Luft noted, that Subjectivity is found in the objects it creates,
and critical, transcendental philosophy clarifies solely what is involved in
constructing these objects. 35

Subjectivity cannot be touched directly as

phenomenology assumes, and the pure subjective consciousness can only be

understood by objective knowledge. Hence we are unable to make a pure description
of consciousness. The self-reflection of consciousness is mediated by concepts that

CPR, 15.
Sebastian Luft, A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp,
and Cassirer, New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 218.
34
35

19

already modify the purity of the reflection. 36 In addition, Natorp pointed out that if
intuition aims to reach the moment of consciousness, it can only be the static moment
of here and now. Therefore, Natorp claimed that the phenomenological description is
static and cannot reflect the dynamic, continuous flow of consciousness, Erlebnis des
Stromes as Husserl called it. 37
Thus Natorp rejected the method of phenomenology, though he did not give up
other attempts to investigate the domain of consciousness. He argued that this domain
cannot be explored by the pure, descriptive, phenomenological method but rather by
the reconstruction method. It is, indeed, a critical method, diverted from objective
knowledge and expressions to the subjective structure of consciousness, that makes
possible the construction of knowledge.
To Natorps and others 38 criticism Husserl responded that the reflection of
Erlebnis is not like knowledge in the world that is perceived in the external manner.
Hence, the claim that initial Erlebnis is modified by the act of introspection is not
justified. However, Erlebnis of consciousness and reflection upon it are the same act;
Erlebnis is the flow of consciousness and is given to consciousness in its
completeness 39 . Moreover, it is also given as one continuous flow stream of
experience and not as a static moment. 40
Nevertheless, as Luft observes, Husserl took Natorps critique seriously and, as a
result of it, added the reconstructive method to phenomenology. 41 Hence Luft
claimed that the two methods, reconstructive and descriptive, cannot really be
separated and one necessarily supplements the other. 42 Cassirer also recognized the
deficiency of both the pure neo-Kantian and pure phenomenological approaches, and
tried to present in his symbolic philosophy a unification of the two. He used Natorps
reconstructive method to rediscover the first principles of knowledge, and he followed
Husserls phenomenological method in describing the first principles of knowledge
and life 43 . Moreover, according to Cassirers new symbolic concept, not only does the

36

Ibid., 226.
Cf.: ibid., 227.
38
See I, 79, 223-225, Husserls discussion with H.J. Watt.
39
Ibid.
40
I, 34,116.
41
Sebastian Luft, A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp,
and Cassirer, New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 220233.
42
Ibid., 230.
43
Cassirer used rather the concept of life instead of being, see below.
37

20

method of intuition supplement the construction-based method, but unmediated and

constructed aspects of knowledge are unified in every act of perception.
The problem of construction versus intuition is key to understanding the
philosophical underpinnings of the Davos dispute and of Cassirers philosophy. Both
the philosophy of symbolic forms and Heideggers hermeneutical approach provide
their own solution for the debate between Husserl and Natorp.

21

2. The Davos Dispute: Heidegger versus Cassirer

2.1 Heideggers Critique of Cassirer
The starting point of the controversy between Heidegger and Cassirer was the
interpretation of Kantian philosophy. The neo-Kantian interpretation was the main
target of Heideggers criticism. Heidegger argued that the neo-Kantian philosophers
built their philosophical position on a superficial understanding of CPR. The neoKantians interpreted Kantian philosophy as epistemology and not as ontology. They
thought this philosophy dealt with the justification of mathematical and empirical
knowledge. However, given the successful development of natural science, all
domains of knowledge that belonged to philosophy had become fields of empirical,
scientific investigation. Therefore, said Heidegger, neo-Kantian philosophy began
with the question: what still remains of Philosophy if the totality of beings has been
divided up under the sciences? 44 This question could arise only when philosophy
identified the question of being with the question of knowledge. Heideggers critique
of Cassirer stemmed from his conviction that Cassirer was a neo-Kantian who
followed Cohen and Natorp.
Cassirer rejected this critique by saying that neither he, nor Cohen and Natorp,
were neo-Kantians in this sense. Moreover, Cassirer argued that no essential
differences arise between Heidegger and neo-Kantians and that he [had] found a
neo-Kantian here in Heidegger. 45 This assertion stemmed from his conception of
neo-Kantianism. He said he defined neo-Kantianism not as a dogmatic doctrinal
system but rather as a matter of a direction taken in question-posing. The neoKantians direction went back from given facts to the a priori conditions of these
facts. At the beginning of BT, Heidegger claimed that the meaning of being is already
known to us, as we live within this understanding of being, but it is so close to us that
we cannot properly clarify it. He proposed, therefore, the hermeneutical method for
discovering how to interpret being. Cassirer identified this method of investigation
with that of neo-Kantians, arguing that Heidegger, as a neo-Kantian, also directed his
investigation toward the a priori structure of existence.

44
45

DD, 171.
Ibid.

22

Heideggers conviction of the neo-Kantian character of Cassirers philosophy was

rooted in his previous reading of PSF II, which was devoted to mythical thought.
Heidegger wrote a positive review of Cassirers analysis of mythical thought. 46 But
already in this review Heidegger claimed that because of the neo-Kantian point of
departure, Cassirers explication of the mythical Dasein was lacked a foundation. He
asserted that Cassirer had begun his philosophy with a dualistic process of perception
and presupposed the dominant role of concepts in the formation of objective reality.
Indeed, in this as well as in his first volume, devoted to language, Cassirer used the
term form in the sense of the construction of reality. The concept of construction
requires material, that is, sense impressions from which objects can be constructed. In
his introduction to PSF, Cassirer said he began his philosophy from the Copernican
Revolution", that is, from the statement that the unity of form is constituted by the
spontaneity of consciousness, since there is no given form. Cassirer declared that he
began his philosophy, like Kant, with the creative process of concepts or, in other
words, the spontaneous act of mind that organizes the chaos of sensation in the
structure of the world. Yet Cassirer considerably extended Kants critique, since in his
philosophy constructive acts are not dominated by a single structure as in Kants, but
can be employed by the multiplicity of structures by which reality can be constructed.
Language, myth, art, and religion embody different forms of culture that are
constructed in different manners. However, although Cassirers philosophy is
definitely not limited to the theory of knowledge but extends to the critique of culture,
according to Heidegger it still remains at a neo-Kantian, critical starting point since it
presupposes construction and dualism.
Heideggers central disagreement with the neo-Kantians and Cassirer focused on
their mistaken understanding of Kants conception of Copernican Revolution.
Heidegger claimed they understood it to mean that all actuality", in Kants sense,
was a formation of productive consciousness.47 In other words, they considered mans
mind to resemble the Demiurges in Platos sense. Concepts of the understanding
become the productive powers by which objective reality is constructed. It seems that
the concepts actually create the world from the given chaos of sensation", just as, in
the Demiurges paradigm, an artist creates forms from raw material according to
divine ideas in his mind.
46
47

See EC.
Ibid., 185

23

The active powers of mind that presume to construct reality in the neo-Kantian
model, according to Heidegger, suppress the passive perceptive level or sensory
intuition, which is the real ground of being. Therefore, he argued, Cassirer could not
find a foundation for the mythical Dasein that he described. As Heidegger put it:
beginning with a chaos of sensation that is formed is not only insufficient for the
philosophical problem of transcendence but already covers over the original
phenomenon of transcendence as the condition for the possibility of any
passivity. 48
In contrast to Cassirer, Heidegger argued that the main point of the Copernican
Revolution was ontology, the question of being. The concepts had no dominant
function in the constitution of reality; they were only servants of the intuition. The
constructive interpretation of reality, as proposed by Cassirer, mediated the Dasein,
which should be clarified through its givenness to intuition. Since Cassirers starting
point was active formation of a passively given chaos of sensations, his project of
the phenomenology of mythical consciousness remained without firm foundation.
Heidegger concluded: the interpretation of the essence of myth as a possibility of
human Dasein remains random and directionless as long as it cannot be grounded in a
radical ontology of Dasein in light of the problem of Being in general. 49 Cassirers
mistake was that he put active powers before intuition. Consequently he had no access
to being, which, according to Heidegger, originates in passive intuition. Heidegger
suggested that until Cassirer gave up his ideas about the spontaneous capacity of
thinking that dominates receptivity, his point of departure would remain problematic
and his interpretation of Kant would be unsatisfactory. Therefore, Heidegger argued
in Davos that Cassirers problem was the lack of a starting point. 50 He spoke of forms
and values but could not bring them down to earth. It was like the joke, told by Plato,
about the philosopher who while observing the heavens fell into the hole. This
philosopher observed great things, such as eternity or remote stars, but did not see
what was going on under his feet. So Cassirer also aimed to reach the domain of
transcendence, but it was suspended in air. Heidegger argued that Cassirer could not
discover the domain of transcendence without rooting it in existence. He was left,

EC, 189.
Ibid., 187.
50
DD.
48
49

24

instead, with relicts of theological dogmas of the past, shades of God in the words
of Nietzsche. Heidegger and many of his young followers saw Cassirer in this light.
According to Heidegger, intuition is primary to constructive knowledge, and
concepts of understanding serve the intuition. 51 Thus, Heidegger thought
reconstruction in the neo-Kantian sense was impossible, since intuition is not
constructed. Hermeneutics, he maintained, should replace the critical reconstructive
method.
Because of their preference for construction, Heidegger argued, neo-Kantians
missed the true metaphysical core of Kants philosophy. Although Kant himself
wanted to present his philosophy only as a justification of experience, Heidegger
claimed that nevertheless, despite Kants own intentions, his philosophy revealed the
new domain of metaphysics and ontology. According to Heidegger, the fundamental
point of Kantian metaphysic was the distinction he made between the finite and the
infinite divine mode of perception. Heidegger based his original interpretation of Kant
on this distinction. Whereas Gods knowledge identifies itself with its object, 52 not
requiring experience or, therefore, sensory intuition in order to perceive, the finite
consciousness bases knowledge on experience, which is given by sensory intuition.
Heidegger pointed out that mans finite consciousness defines and discovers the
ontology that is unique to mortal beings. The finitude of mans being is the starting
point for the revelation of the ground of being. From this point Heidegger developed
his interpretation of being, that is, Dasein. Finite being is characterized by its
necessarily temporal structure, which Kant described according to a transcendental
scheme. This scheme combines temporal intuition with the concepts of the
understanding. If the concepts of the understanding were prior to the receptivity of
intuition, our perception would be as spontaneous as Gods and could not be based on
sensory intuition. Hence finite intuition, unlike infinite divine intuition, has to be
receptive: it cannot give the object from out of itself. 53 Since the concepts of the
understanding are not characterized by receptivity, they do not determine the structure
of finite human being. Heideggers main argument against the neo-Kantians, and in
particular Cassirer, was that they neglected the finite mode of mans being and gave
preference to construction over intuition, making man into a sort of God. For
KPM, 17-25.
Ibid.
53
Ibid.
51
52

25

Heidegger, intuition was primary to thinking, since intuition defined the structure of
existence for finite being, and discovered the foundation of this kind of being.

2.2 Cassirers Critique of Heidegger

In light of Heideggers critique, it is worth clarifying Cassirers position, which in
many regards is not unequivocal. In the Davos dispute, however, Cassirer did not
provide a thorough exposition of his philosophy. He argued that Heideggers
interpretation of Kant, which limited all domains of human being to temporal being,
distorted Kants original intention to reveal the possibility of human freedom in the
realm of ethics and to overcome the finitude of temporal existence. Cassirer
maintained that man participated in infinity through the medium of form. The infinite
form created by finite man overcomes the primordial finitude of man and integrates
infinity with his experience. However, Cassirer in Davos did not give a thoroughgoing
explanation as to how he unified the realm of transcendence with immanence. In the
lectures he presented at Davos, he pointed out that he solved this problem in PSF
III. 54 The next chapter of this paper will focus on this issue.
During the dispute Cassirer criticized Heideggers weaknesses and the
implications of his philosophical arguments concerning relativism for questions of
ethics and freedom. Since, according to Heidegger, human values and truths must be
grounded in the finitude of human existence, these values are relative, historical, and
not universal. But the main point of Cassirers critique was much broader. As
discovered in Cassirers unpublished lectures in Davos, he had thoroughly studied
Heideggers BT and criticized his philosophical position. Heidegger introduced two
key concepts of his philosophy: present-at-hand [Vorhanden] and ready-to-hand
[Zuhanden], which are used to describe various attitudes toward things in the world.
The ready-to-hand is a tool, and is that with which our every-day dealings
proximally dwell. 55 The present-at-hand is an observation of something from a
theoretical, detached viewpoint. Cassirer argued that Heideggers philosophy was
unable to go beyond the ready-to-hand to the present-at-hand. As Cassirer wrote: We
ask: what is a medium by which we could proceed from the domain of the ready-to-

See Heidegger Vorlesungen, Manuskript Davos 1929, handschriftlich. ERNST CASSIRER

PAPERS, MSS 98, Box 42, Folder 839.
55
BT, 15, 99.
54

26

hand to the present-at-hand, from bare data to real objectivity. 56 The ready-to-hand,
according to Cassirer, stays close to itself and cannot be linked to the public world,
since it has no bridge to objectivity. Cassirer claimed that Heideggers
phenomenology reduced everything to the idea of deficiency and could not give an
account of objectivity.
Whereas Heidegger maintained that the ready-to-hand is primordial compared to
the present-at-hand, Cassirer in his lecture compared this assertion to perceptual
disorders. Cassirer adduced examples from the pathology of the perception called
Aphasia. 57 Cassirer described the situation where the patient of Aphasia was able to
use objects as tools, such as a fork and knife for eating, but unable to recognize the
objects by their names. The patient named the tools indirectly by their function. He
identified a knife with cutting and a pencil with writing. Cassirer wrote that
although the patient used the knife and fork correctly during the meal, after the meal
he did not know what to do with them. 58 Likewise, Cassirer claimed that Heidegger
could not reach the level of objective knowledge that is constituted by all normal
perception just from his ready-in-hand description of the being of entities, which
dealt only with their use as tools. Perhaps Cassirers most decisive criticism of
Heidegger, wrote Gordon, took aim at the deepest and most troublesome moment
of conceptual tension in Heideggers own philosophy, between its claim to objectivephenomenological description (the ontological inquiry into Daseins apparently
constitutive existential-structure) and its concession to non-objective hermeneutics
(the doctrine that even phenomenological description occurs within local-subjective
bounds). 59 In other words, the problem with Heideggers philosophy is that it could
not explain objectivity and transcendence, and this is Cassirers most serious criticism
of it.
I described above some central aspects of the Davos dispute. Many researchers
concluded that Cassirers weakness in the controversy was his starting point, since his
56

Heidegger Vorlesungen, Maniskript Davos 1929, handschriftlich. My trans. (ERNST CASSIRER

PAPERS, MSS98, Box 42, Folder 839), p.13.
57
Aphasia is the pathology of speech that is causes by injury to brain. Cassirer dealt with the theory of
aphasia in PSF III, pp. 205-233.
58
Heidegger Vorlesungen, Maniskript Davos 1929, handschriftlich. (ERNST CASSIRER PAPERS,
MSS98, Box 42, Folder 839), p. 14: Wo eine Benennung versucht wird, da erfolgt sie auf einem
Umwege dass Messer zum Schneider, der Bleistift zum Schreiben. <..> der Objekte der
Aphasiker Messer und Gabel werden zur Stunde der Mahlzeit richtig gebraucht, aber ausserhalb
derselben weiss der Kranke nichts mit ihnen anzufangen.
59
Peter Eli Gordon, Continental Divide: The Davos Disputation between Cassirer and Heidegger,
1929, Modern Intellectual History (Summer 2003): 1-41, 25.

27

philosophy, as Heidegger claimed, had no access to the ground of existence. On the

other hand, they concluded, Heideggers problematic issue was a finishing point,
because he had no access to objectivity and the justification of ethical values. I
maintain, however, that Heideggers critique of Cassirer did not achieve its goal
because it was based on misunderstanding of Cassirers symbolic-forms project.
Heidegger based his arguments only on the first two volumes of PSF, which give an
incomplete picture of Cassirers philosophy. At Davos, Heidegger did not mention the
third volume and, apparently, had not yet read it. His review of the second volume
was written in 1925, before the third volume was published.
However, Cassirer provided the essential exposition of his thought only in the
third volume, The Phenomenology of Knowledge, which was published in 1929. It
reveals Cassirers phenomenological assumptions and the ground [Grundlichkeit] of
his philosophy. I will demonstrate that Cassirer was not neo-Kantian in Heideggers
sense, and his philosophy did not lack a foundation. The main task of his project was
to unite the constructive method of neo-Kantianism with the intuitive method of
phenomenology through the philosophy of symbolic forms, and to provide a solution
to the problematic aspects of both neo-Kantianism and phenomenology. Compared to
other neo-Kantians, Cassirer did not base knowledge primarily on construction. He
maintains that construction is neither prior to intuition, nor intuition prior to
construction, since both are aspects of a single representation. Cassirer presents the
unity of intuition and thinking in the new concept of the symbol.

28

Alles Vergngliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Unzulngliche
Hier wirds Ereignis;
Das Unbeschreibliche
Hier ist es getan;
J.W. Goethe, Faust

3. The Symbolic Philosophy

3.1 The Dilemma of Life and Culture
In the first two volumes of PSF devoted to language and mythical consciousness,
Cassirer was close to Natorps reconstructive method. But as we shall see, in the third
volume, The Phenomenology of Knowledge, Cassirer incorporated many aspects of
Husserls doctrine. 60 Cassirers phenomenology, like Husserls, aimed to come back
to the thing itself or to the concreteness of life. Nevertheless, Husserls and
Cassirers philosophies deal with different domains of existence since they go in
different directions. Husserls point of departure is the inquiry into pure
consciousness, and Cassirers the symbolic forms or cultural expressions.
At the beginning of PSF I, Cassirer mentioned Natorps critical method as
developed in Allgemeine Psychologie nach Kritischer Methode. Cassirer asserted that
Natorp, like Husserl, went against the naturalistic tendency in contemporary
philosophy. However, Natorp rejected the possibility of the immediate knowledge of
consciousness.

Following

Natorps

critique,

Cassirer

also

doubted

the

phenomenological project, asking: How can we penetrate to this pure inner world of
consciousness, this ultimate concentration of all spiritual life, if in exploring and
describing it we must avoid all the concepts and criteria which were created for the
exposition of objective reality?61 In other words, the description of pure

60

Despite Cassirers remarks in the introduction to this volume that he uses phenomenology in the

Hegelian rather than the modern usage of the term (PSF III), I, as Luft, see a similarity between
Cassirers and Husserls usage of this term. Cf.: Sebastian Luft, A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of
Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer, in New Yearbook for Phenomenology
and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 209: the sense of phenomenology of Cassirer need
not be so different from what Cassirer terms the modern usage. Cf. also: Christian Mckel,
Symboliche Prgnanz ein phnomenologischer Begriff? in Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie 40
(1992).
61

PSF I, 53.

29

Thus -philosophy cannot turn directly to pure consciousness, but should first turn
to the multiplicity of cultural forms in which the spirit of mankind is expressed. Only
after investigating the objective side can one try to understand the domain of pure
consciousness, which is the origin of any objective cultural achievement. The aim of
this method is to investigate the cultural manifestations of spirit that Cassirer called
symbolic forms; from there he diverted to the conditions that enable these forms.
Pursuing this reconstructive direction, the first volume of PSF investigates language
and the second, myth. Cassirer considered both of these to be forms of different
symbolic expressions of the spirit. The investigation of the original concepts of
knowledge comes after the inquiry into language and myth. Apparently, in order to
pursue this critical method, Cassirer needed to regard all cultural forms as
constructions of consciousness, which, consequently, stems from active power and
not from receptiveness. Therefore, the pure experience that can be given through
receptiveness is not possible. That is how many contemporary philosophers, including
Heidegger, understood Cassirers philosophy, but they missed the main point.
Although Cassirers philosophy began with the critical method, it deviated from
the doctrine that Heidegger considered to be the central doctrine of neo-Kantianism.
Cassirer did not agree that the origin of knowledge is primary spontaneous action,
maintaining instead that the origin of knowledge is symbolic. This matter needs
further explanation.
One of the major dilemmas of philosophy that Cassirer intended to solve in PSF
III, and to which he returned many times in his subsequent works, was the gap
between life [Leben] and culture.

63

He thought this dilemma, though very old, was

part of the contemporary dispute between neo-Kantianism and phenomenology.

Cassirer used the term life in many different senses and contexts. In his 1942
lecture, he gave the following explanation: Life, reality, being, existence are nothing
62
63

Ibid.
See PSF I, 110-114; PSF III, 1-40; PSF IV, 131-136.

30

but different terms referring to one and the same fundamental fact. They are to be
understood as names of a process. 64 Life, in a broad significance, is a sense and
intuition of lifes process; it is unmediated knowledge and perception of existence. In
contrast, culture along with spirit and intelligence can be understood in a broad sense
as a creative, conceptual, and meaning-giving aspect of mans being.
Cassirer thought this dilemma had emerged at the beginning of philosophy
together with the separation of philosophy from the world of myth. If the mythical
worldview was based on the immediacy of life impressions, philosophy moved away
from this to the clearness of concepts. Philosophy begins as the explanation of
something, a direct experience, by something else, abstract words. The immediacy of
life is understood according to concepts, something very different from life itself,
whereas myth did not know the distinction between existence and meaning. But the
decisive characteristic of the new thinking was the awareness of the difference
between immediacy and symbols, which are the representation of reality. Cassirer
pointed out that this distinction could already be found in Plato who had distinguished
between sign and idea, between something that appears real but in fact only represents
reality, and the reality itself.
Hence the concept is the only instrument of philosophy, and philosophy has no
means to reach the immediacy of intuition without it. Philosophy knows only one way
to investigate reality: by means of concepts. Cassirer wrote: To philosophy, which
finds its fulfillment only in the sharpness of the concept and in the clarity of
discursive thought, the paradise of mysticism, the paradise of pure immediacy, is
closed. 65 Thus Cassirer distinguished between pure immediacy and philosophy, since
he denied to philosophy any means to reach the immediacy of life. Philosophy as well
as human culture on the whole mediates the pure immediacy of life by theoretical,
symbolical, and conceptual knowledge. Philosophy, then, created a gap between life
and culture.
Religion, like philosophy, aimed to free culture from the mythical world of
immediate life. Religion takes the decisive step that is essentially alien to myth: in its
use of sensuous images and signs it recognized them as such a means of expression
which, though they reveal a determinate meaning, must necessarily remain inadequate
Ernst Cassirer, Language and Art II, in Symbol, Myth and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst
Cassirer 1935-1945, ed. Donald Philip Verene (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 194.
65
Ibid., 113.
64

31

to it, which point to this meaning but never wholly exhaust it. 66 Or as Lofts
explained it: Religious consciousness thus constitutes itself through the recognition
of the opposition between meaning and existence, between the Ur-Bild and the UrSache that is essentially alien to mythical consciousness. 67 Religion deepened the
gap between life, or existence, and spirit.
Cassirer noted 68 that the medieval mystics revived the opposition between
unmediated life and knowledge, which can be viewed as a longing for immediate
mythical perception. Mystical thought assumes that culture, the whole world of forms
and words, hides the reality from mans eyes. Forms and words in themselves are only
means, an illusive veil that covers the immediacy of real being, or God. From
Cassirers standpoint, this doctrine represented a kind of reminiscence of the break
that occurred in the past between the immediacy of life and the symbol. Mystical
thought of this kind gave rise to the distinction between mans and Gods mode of
understanding, which was frequently made in medieval theology. Man perceives by
means of senses; he does not have Gods intellectual intuition. In contrast to the
human discursive mode of thinking, Gods understanding is immediate. He does not
need any tools in order to know, because he knows directly.
Understanding of this kind became the paradigm of intuitive, unmediated
knowledge and influenced Kants position on mans structure of knowledge. Hence
Heidegger thought Kants main idea in CPR was the distinction between infinite and
finite knowledge. In Heideggers view, the sense-limited structure of human
knowledge is the essential mark of mortal being. This was Kants most important
discovery, and on this basis Heidegger developed his own ontology. Although, as an
atheist, Heidegger did not believe in the divine mode of understanding, he considered
the finitude of human knowledge to be the principal feature of being in general, since
he thought there was no other kind of knowledge. However, Cassirer saw the
distinction between Gods creative type of knowledge and the human, sense-limited
type of knowledge as a presupposition of the tradition that was inherited from
mystical religious thought. From this point of view, both Heidegger and Kant were
influenced by mysticism.

PSF II, 239.

Steve G. Lofts, Ernst Cassirer: A Repetition of Modernity (Foreword by John Michael Krois)
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000), 132.
68
PSF I, 112.
66
67

32

Cassirer emphasized that the conflict between intuitive and conceptual knowledge,
which arose in mystical thought, was renewed and reinforced by Romanticism and
had become the main problem of philosophy over the past 150 years. Although
Cassirer believed this problem should be solved, apparently he was not sure how it
could be done completely. He asked:
How can we do justice to the Goethean demand for the recognition of primary
phenomena and to the Cartesian-Kantian demand for reflection in knowledge
and philosophy? How can we uphold that form of certainty and immediateness",
which Goethe attributes to primary phenomena and at the same time grant the no
less unassailable right of thought", which wants to bring everything before its
bench for investigation and accreditation? Is there still some sort of synthesis
possible here? 69
Cassirer suggested that this contradiction gave rise to the opposition between the
unmediated knowledge of phenomenology and the mediated knowledge of neoKantianism, as well as between Romanticism and positivism, irrationalism and
rationalism, and between mysticism and physicalism. 70 He continued: This conflict,
this antinomy, has been set forth again and again, and has left an indelible mark in
particular on the present-day philosophical combatants. The intellect is hated,
denigrated, and rejected in the name of another deeper, more original substance that
might be called soul, life, or whatever. 71
This dilemma is reflected in all the volumes of PSF. Cassirer began PSF I with an
introduction to this conflict: The cleavage between these two antitheses [concept and
intuition] it would seem cannot be bridged by any effort of mediating thought
which itself remains entirely on one side of the antithesis: the farther we advance in
the direction of the symbolic, the merely figurative, the farther we go from the primal
source of pure intuition 72 (emphasis added). The phrase it would seem emphasizes
Cassirers ambiguous attitude toward this issue. I argue that one of his main purposes
in PSF was to show that symbols do not necessarily oppose immediacy, that symbolic
functions are already found at the primordial level of perception. At first Cassirer
aimed to resolve the conflict, though he always hesitated or perhaps had a kind of
unease about denying the old philosophical conception. He asked:

On Basis Phenomena, in PSF IV, 136.

See ibid.
71
Ibid.
72
PSF I, 112.
69
70

33

Would it not be an offense against this immediacy, a totally unjustified

intellectualization of intuition and perception, if we sought to extend the
hegemony of the symbol over them?... To question or efface this dividing line
between the immediacy of perception or intuition and the mediacy of logicaldiscursive thinking would be to disregard one of the securest insights of
epistemology to abandon a truly classical distinction, growing out of a centuriesold tradition. 73
He pointed to the assumed opposition between symbol and intuition, an opposition
that he himself doubted. In his view there was a synthesis between primary
phenomena of intuition and thought, and this synthesis emerged in the new concept of
the symbol. Thus the opposition between symbol and intuition should be resolved,
and the conflict between the arguments for constructive knowledge and for intuition
should be reconciled. It was a quite revolutionary idea, one that Cassirer scholars have
not fully noticed and discussed. For example, Luft claimed that Cassirer was on
Natorps side and did not think Cassirer had provided a new resolution of this
debate. 74
We shall see that Cassirers project was to bring together life and spirit,
unmediated and mediated knowledge, neo-Kantianism and phenomenology,
rationalism and irrationalism. His philosophy of symbolic forms aimed to show that
conceptual symbolic knowledge is not opposed to the immediacy of life. This purpose
of Cassirers philosophy was not properly understood by Heidegger and his followers
at Davos, and they continued to consider him a neo-Kantian philosopher. However,
Cassirer created an original theory that reconciled the neo-Kantian school with
phenomenology, and in some respects he was close to Heideggers hermeneutics
despite their many differences.
Cassirer began to revise a long tradition of the opposition between symbolic and
intuitive knowledge. In PSF III Cassirer developed a phenomenological approach, and
despite his above-cited antiphenomenological arguments, he described the immediacy
of life as an Erlebnis of the original phenomenon of expression. Afterward, in his
unfinished fourth volume of PSF, he continued to develop his unique

PSF III, 47.

See Sebastian Luft, A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl,
Natorp, and Cassirer, New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV
(2004): 233-247.
73
74

34

phenomenological-symbolic approach but introduced many significant changes in his

initial position.

3.2 The Concept of Symbol

To put an end to the antagonism between intuition and thought, Cassirer introduced a
new meaning for the symbol. In the commonly accepted view, a symbol as a sign
represents (or stands for) something else; it is a material object that is used to
represent something different from itself. Heidegger defined the symbol in this way.
He even widened the gap between symbol and being. At the beginning of BT, he
distinguished between phenomenon and appearance. He defined a phenomenon as
something that shows itself by itself, or makes itself seen 75 . It can also show itself in
the wrong way, that is, as something other than itself. In any case, a phenomenon is
something that shows itself, in a correct or a deceptive manner, and it is completely
different from appearance. Appearance, Heidegger wrote, is something that does not
show itself; 76 it can be known only through the mediation of something else. Symbols
as well as indications and signs have the same mediating function as appearance; they
do not show themselves. The phrase: the world is only appearance means that we
do not know the real world; we know only something different from it, which points
to it. Here, then, Heidegger made a strict distinction between symbol, which is a mere
appearance or mediation, and phenomenon, which shows itself. According to this
definition, phenomenology, in contrast to symbolic perception, is a question about
something that shows itself as it is in itself. The ontology or science of being can only
be phenomenology, since only phenomenology can clarify being, present being as it
shows itself, and open a path to being. In contrast to phenomenology, no theory that
deals with symbols and appearances has any access to being, since medium cannot
discover being.
Therefore, according to Heideggers definition, symbol means mediation; it
differs from reality. To say that perception of reality is symbolic is the same as saying
that perception cannot reach reality or true being, since it can only apprehend symbols
that represent reality. Thus, when Cassirer claimed that the symbolic function is
fundamental to perception, many researches have understood that as a neo-Kantian he
presumed that there is no access to immediate reality, since reality is mediated by

75
76

BT, 7, 51-55.
Ibid.

35

symbol. But this interpretation stems from the identification of symbol with
mediation.
According to Cassirer, however, the symbol is not a mere medium. Although
symbols are indeed useful in scientific theories where they have a function of
representation and signification, Cassirer claimed that symbols are not a prerogative
of scientific thinking and significations.
Cassirer asserted that the function of the symbol is to unify mediation and
immediacy. According to Cassirer, the symbol is not something different from reality;
rather, it integrates certain aspects of reality. The very structure of reality is symbolic;
it includes something that necessarily goes beyond or transcends its material limits.
Reality includes both concreteness and transcendence. Cassirer identified the concept
of symbol with every kind of phenomenon in which sensory content is unified with
meaning. This primordial phenomenon is also called the phenomenon [Urphnomen]
of expression [Ausdruck]. Cassirer affirmed that sense data embody meaning, or fill
themselves with meaning. Cassirer like Hegel played on the German word Sinn",
which means sense and meaning", Bedeutung.

77

The double meaning of the

word Sinn points to the original unity of sense data and meaning. Only theoretical
philosophical thought distinguished between these two components; they are unified
in the phenomenon of expression, which is the first Erlebnis and the origin of
perception. Hence Cassirer maintained that the symbol was a necessary structure of
reality. Primordial reality is not given as something completely defined; it is, rather,
symbolic. It does not know any distinction between an image and a thing or between a
mark and what is marked. The symbolic structure of life points beyond its content; it
points to something that gives meaning and life to strictly material content. This
symbolic structure is the expressive moment of life.
Cassirer developed his concept of the symbol from his analysis of mythical
thought that reveals the primordial level of perception. His inquiry into mythical
consciousness and language brought Cassirer to conclude that the symbol had not
always been understood as a medium, and in the mythical world no strict distinction
existed between symbol and reality. In myth, the symbol does not have a mediating
function; it is not something that substitutes for reality. Thus it is a mistake, said

77

PSF III, 108: Sinnerflling des Sinnlichen sich darstellt.

36

Cassirer, to restrict the symbolic function to the theoretical framework, in which the
symbol represents abstract contents. 78

If it is the symbolic concept which actually opens up the realm of theoretical and
exact science, it would seem to be confined to this realm and unable to pass
beyond it. The analysis of language and myth has granted us an insight into
fundamental forms of symbolic apprehension and formation, which by no means
coincide with the form of conceptual abstract thinking but possess and preserve an
entirely different character. 79
Mythical thought does not distinguish between thing and image, sign and what is
signified, dream and reality. Cassirer wrote: Where we see mere representation,
myth, insofar as it has not yet deviated from its fundamental and original form, sees
real identity. The image does not represent the thing; it is the thing. 80 In mythical
consciousness the role of the symbol is not representative but real. The word or image
do not represent something different from themselves; they are not only appearance
but also the exposition of reality. The symbol is identified with the thing that it
represents. This identification is evident from the examples of magic spells and
witchcraft, which were widespread in the mythical world. To harm someone, adepts
of magic cults would destroy his image since they assumed that the image and the
actual person were interconnected. 81 Another example is language magic, which
presupposes a connection between real persons and their names. Adepts of these cults
regarded a persons name as his inner essence.82 Therefore, the unity between symbol
and the immediacy of life, which appears strange from the theoretical viewpoint, is
very natural in the mythical worldview, which is closer to the concreteness of original
natural perception.
Cassirers concept of symbol is close to the concept of scheme, which, in Kants
CPR, is responsible for the power of imagination. The function of the symbol as the
function of scheme is to unify sensory content with categories of understanding.
Therefore Cassirer remarked: for me as well [as for Heidegger] the productive
power of imagination appears in fact to have a central meaning for Kant. From there I

See PSF III, 107-118.

Ibid.
80
PSF II, 38.
78
79

See ibid., 27-60.

Cf.: Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002).

81
82

37

was led through my work on the symbolic. 83 Cassirer considered the unity between
categories and intuition to be primary to distinction. Since the symbol presents the
unity of receptive and spontaneous aspects, to speak of the priority of one of the
components over the other does not make sense.
Herein lies the main disagreement between Cassirer and Heidegger. As already
mentioned, Heidegger argued that intuition is primary to knowledge and that the
concepts of understanding serve intuition. Heidegger criticized Cassirers position on
the constructive character of knowledge. Cassirer, for his part, clearly rejected
Heideggers position on the priority of intuition. He also did not accept Heideggers
theological assumption that the human being is characterized by a finitude of
receptivity. But he also did not agree that construction or concepts of understanding
are prior to intuition. Heidegger and others, however, misunderstood Cassirers
concept of the symbol, which constitutes the core of his philosophy. Cassirer did not
give priority to the concepts of understanding as set forth in Kants scheme. In his
new concept of the symbol, the sensory and conceptual aspects were unified. The
receptive or intuitive aspect together with the conceptual or constructive aspect
represent, in their unity, the very ground of knowledge and being.
According to the phenomenology of knowledge, the symbolic function lies at the
first level of perception, which includes the sensory and meaningful aspects. This first
level is not constructed by the spontaneous power of mind but rather is given together
with this power. Thus, the original phenomenon of perception is not constructed but
given. Cassirer pointed to the receptive character of the original phenomenon,
remarking: For all experience and expression are at first a mere passivity, a beingacted-upon rather than an acting and this receptivity stands in evident contrast to
that kind of spontaneity in which all self-consciousness as such is grounded. 84
The spontaneous power that is able to construct objective knowledge emerges
from the symbolic function of the phenomenon of perception. This power, however,
does not appear at the first level but with the further development of perception, in the
functions of representation and signification. 85 Only at these next levels does the
differentiation between various cultural forms and science emerge. The primordial
level of perception, however, lacks construction and accordingly self-consciousness,
DD, 172.
PSF III, 75.
85
PSF III, 105-205.
83
84

38

that is the spontaneous act of consciousness. This primordial level is the ground of
Cassirers philosophy, which Heidegger did not appreciate when he claimed
Cassirers philosophy had no ground. 86 This is the reason for Cassirers difficulty in
incorporating ethics in his philosophy of symbolic forms. That problem will be
discussed in the last chapter.

3.3 The Phenomenon of Expression

Cassirer defines the primordial level of perception, which includes symbolic
functions, as the original phenomenon of expression. Life expresses itself and is
perceived at this primal level as an expression that points beyond itself. The pure
phenomenon of expression is experienced as pure, immediate Erlebnis of life. It
cannot be analyzed and described by concepts, since concepts belong to certain
spheres of meaning whereas, as Cassirer asserted,
[the purely expressive function] precedes differentiation into the various
spheres of meaning, it precedes the divergence of myth and theory, of logical
reflection and aesthetic intuition. Its certainty and its truth are, in a manner of
speaking, premythical, pre-logical and pre-aesthetic; 87
To explain this, it helps to consider other expressions, such as facial expression, for
example. Facial expression is not the collection of features that together create the
unity of expression. It does, however, display unity that goes beyond the material
limits of a face. A sad or happy expression does not exist in the face in the way that
the nose or eyes exist; instead the whole face conveys the specific expression. A face
is not a representation of sadness, rather a facial expression embodies sadness.
Moreover, a facial expression points beyond the given content of a face; it reveals the
owner of the face. The perception of the other is not theoretical and discursive; it is
the direct apprehension of the others facial expression, gestures, bodily movements,
and so on. To better clarify the phenomenon of expression, which is prior to any kind
of knowledge, Cassirer turned to the Gestalt psychology and specifically the
experiments of Kurt Koffka and B.W. Kohler. He noted that, from their research on

86
87

See EC.
PSF III, 81.

39

newborns, they concluded that the infant recognizes the familiar face and reacts
differently to different expressions, before he knows anything about the world. 88
Erlebnis of the original phenomenon of expression is the unmediated source of life
and perception. It discovers life as it is, as pure expression. It is the origin of life as
well as the ground [Grund] of symbolic forms. Therefore, Cassirer not only
investigated objective cultural formations, as evident from only the first two volumes
of PSF; he also offered a description of pure Erlebnis, the original phenomenon of
life. Cassirer, like Husserl and Heidegger, aimed to reveal the ground of being and
knowledge. Hence all of them are philosophers of Grundlichkeit. Each found his
own way to the original source of life: Husserl calls it original givenness [Originr
gebende]; Heidegger, Dasein, or Being-here; and Cassirer, rphenomenon, the
original phenomenon of expression.

3.4 Symbolic Pregnance: The Meaning

The concept of the symbol reveals that the origin of perception and life is given
together with the structure, that is, with the framework of meaning, or it can be called
form. This original structure is the source of knowledge, from which the function of
representation emerges. Thus every perception perceives form; only within the form
can something be given. This view of Cassirer was misunderstood and was interpreted
in neo-Kantian fashion, such that the conceptual moment is prior to the immediacy of
life and every perception mediates something that can be given directly. But this
interpretation is superficial. Cassirers position on the origin of perception and life is
not epistemological but, rather, an ontological claim: the fact that every perception is
given in a form indicates that nothing can exist in isolation, in discrete manner,
without any meaningful formation. Everything exists and is perceived only in the
context of meaning. This is the way of perception and this is the way life expresses
itself. The very moment of reality is structured. From this standpoint, Cassirers
philosophy is an entirely rational worldview since it claims that nothing exists without
meaning, or structure. But what kind of structure is it? Cassirer criticized sensualistic
empirical philosophers who claimed that sense data alone is the basis of human
perception. 89 According to Cassirer, every primordial experience of life is already
88
89

Ibid., 58-67.
See PSF III, 22-35.

40

structured and carries meaning within itself. The moment of meaning is a symbolic
moment that points beyond the given; it brings the transcendent dimension to the bare
concreteness of life. This moment, Cassirer argued, was absent in Heideggers
hermeneutic philosophy, which was unable to go beyond immanent existence.
To clarify his claim that without meaning the perception of the objective is
impossible, Cassirer turned to pathological theories.90 Using examples from
pathology he pointed to the difference between the symbolic unity of normal
perception and the discursive character of defective perception. He was referring to a
kind of defectiveness that is not caused by local damage to the organs of perception
but concerns the inability to perceive the whole, to identify the meaning. Such
defectiveness is called agnosia or aphasia, both of which are kinds of a single
pathological phenomenon that comprises a number of disturbances whose common
characteristic is a grave impairment of the perceptual knowledge of objects. 91 A
patient with this syndrome can recognize an object only when he perceives some parts
of it, which are known to him, and through which he tries to guess about the whole
thing. For example, a patient can touch the object and recognize different qualities of
it, but not the object itself. The collection of qualities does not unite in his perception
into a single object. Cassirer suggested that such a patient lacks the symbolic function
of perception, which is essential for objective knowledge. For example, one patient
could recognize different colors but not the objects: where he is dependent on
optical data alone, he gains no knowledge of objects and of what they objectively are
and signify. 92 It is only through the symbolic function, Cassirer asserted, that we can
make a distinction between true perceptual pregnance and merely discursive
knowledge of objects, based on pointers. 93 By these examples Cassirer showed that
without the symbolic function of perception, all our perceptions function similarly to
cases of agnosia or aphasia. He claimed that only in symbolic perception we have a
unity of view by virtue of which the diverse aspects appear as different perspectives
of an object which in them is intuitively intended as. 94
Cassirer defined the moment of transcendence in the given content as symbolic
pregnance [symbolische Prgnance]. This was a phenomenon in which a
PSF III, 205-279.
Ibid., 233.
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid., 240.
94
Ibid.
90
91

41

perception as a sensory experience contains at the same time a certain nonintuitive

meaning which it immediately and concretely represents. 95 Although meaning and
sensory intuition are not two different things but two aspects of a single perception,
Cassirer allowed some degree of flexibility in the relation between these aspects.
Therefore, he called sensory content and meaning independent variables
[unabhngig variable]. This modality of meanings points to a certain ambiguity in
Cassirers thought. It is not clear how two aspects that are not separate can exist in
different combinations between each other. Is this not the presupposed dualistic
structure that Cassirer intended to avoid?
In any case, the phenomenon of symbolic pregnance leads from the first level of
expressive perception to the next representative level. Symbolic pregnance points to
different models that can be applied to a given context. This is a key to understanding
the development of different cultural forms and modes of perception, on which
Cassirers cultural philosophy focused.
Note that Cassirers notion of meaning harbors an irrational interpretation, since
he has changed the traditional meaning of meaning to the new expressive bodymeaning. There is no meaning, according to Cassirer, that contains only a pure,
conceptual, theoretical essence. Every meaning includes a sensory component.
Cassirer linked meaning to bodily expression. As Krois explained, [Expressive
meaning] characterized the first stages of perception and bodily awareness. Cassirer
argued at length that perception is originally expressive expressiveness is more
primitive than the epistemological notion of sensation. Hence, the feeling of the
body, our basic self-awareness, is an understanding of meaning. 96 It was from this
point of departure, Krois maintained, that Merleau-Ponty developed his
phenomenology of perception. 97

95

Ibid., 202.
CSFH, 57.
97
Ibid., 58:
96

In his examination of the body-subject in The Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice MerleauPonty refers again and again to Cassirers analysis of meaning in the Phenomenology of Knowledge
and particularly to the key idea of symbolic pregnance. Cassirers thesis that the relationship
between the body and sensitive nature (soul) constitutes the prototype of all symbolic relations,
that is, that the expressive meaning perceived in the world has its original seat in the body, is
Merleau-Pontys starting point in his phenomenology.

42

3.5 The World of Organic Forms

The pure phenomenon of expression correlates directly with the organic mythical
worldview. Therefore, the description of myth is very important for Cassirer since it
reveals not only the primitive stage that was reached many centuries ago but also the
unmediated experience of perception. Mythical thought is discussed in PSF II, which
presents an organic and hierarchical worldview that is incomprehensible from the
scientific standpoint but reflects the original stage of perception. Myth embodies the
concreteness of life before the categorization of theoretical consciousness.
Consequently, myth discovers the ground for all the further formations of spirit such
as religion and science, both of which originated from the phenomenon of expression.
In myth, the relation between the part and the whole is very unusual from the
standpoint of theoretical consciousness. The whole is not composed of the parts, but
every part represents the whole. The whole does not have parts and does not break
down into them; the part is immediately the whole and functions as such. 98 This
description applies as well to the expressive moment of perception. Perception
perceives only one sensory aspect of the thing, and this sensory aspect expresses the
whole. Thus our perception of life is based on organic forms. We perceive a thing
through perceiving its inner unity, its organic structure. Cassirer explained that the
pure phenomenon of expression makes itself known to be inwardly animated. 99 The
primordial moment of perception does not perceive things; it discovers physiognomic
and organic characteristics of life. It can be said that life is primarily perceived and
experienced as filled with living beings. In his meditations about the organic structure
of expression, Cassirer mentioned the works of the Italian philosopher Tito
Vignoli, 100 who arrived at the radical conclusion that perception is a personification.
Vignoli pointed to striking similarities between animals and mans acts of
perception:
Apprehension is the act, both in animals and in man, by which the spontaneous
and immediate animation of things and of phenomena is accomplished. It is
therefore necessary to pause and consider this act, since it is, even in man, the

PSF II, 49-50.

PSF III, 92.
100
Tito Vignoli, Mito e Scienza [1879]. Eng. trans., Myth and Science (New York, 1882). International
Scientific Series, Vol. 38, trans. Kegan Paul, 3rd ed. (London: Trench, 1885).
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17802.
98
99

43

source and foundation of the origin of myth, and in it we shall find the causes,
elements, and action by which such a genesis is effected. 101

101

Ibid., 116.

44

Animals, children, and savage, according to Vignoli, perceive everything as

similar to their own structure. Since every emotion, event, or physical object is
perceived as a living organism, we can observe in myth the personifications of natural
phenomena and emotions. Only by progressing in theoretical understanding does a
child, as well as a mythical man, learn to make a distinction between living beings
and inanimate objects. Although Cassirer took Vignolis ideas about the nature of
perception into account, he was far from Vignolis positivistic and Darwinist
naturalistic position.
According to Cassirer, Vignolis error was that he did not realize that mythical
consciousness cannot be called consciousness, if consciousness means selfconsciousness. Mythical and expressive perception lacks the determination of I. The
awareness of I appears at the later stages of development, those of representation
and signification. As noted earlier, the primordial level of perception is receptive and
lacks the spontaneous act of I. Cassirer wrote: receptivity stands in evident
contrast to that kind of spontaneity in which all self-consciousness as such is
grounded. In the same sense it is true that the world of expression does not from the
start include a determinate, clear developed consciousness of the I. 102 From here
arises a serious problem. We have demonstrated that the phenomenon of expression is
the ground of culture and life, but can it also be the ground of ethics? Cassirer
revealed this phenomenon as the purely receptive immediate experience of life, which
is prior to self-consciousness. The question, then, is: how does this guarantee the
possibility of ethics? Certainly a possible answer is that ethics emerges from the later
stages of development. It does not appear at the stage of pure expression but at the
subsequent stages, when the symbolic functions of representation and signification are
introduced. But, as mentioned in the introduction to this paper, Cassirer criticized
Heidegger in MS 103 because his Existenzialphilosophie claims that human existence
has only a passive and unchangeable character, which leads to ethical indifference.
Thus, the question is how Cassirer could justify the receptive character of his own
foundation of existence.
The other question concerns the possibility of bringing the domain of practical
philosophy into theoretical philosophy. How could Cassirer, who dealt with the
epistemological and phenomenological dimension, also extend it to ethics? The main
102
103

PSF III, 75.

MS, 293.

45

tension of the ethical problem is: if, in Davos, Cassirer defended the universality of
moral values versus the ethical relativism of Heideggers Dasein, and argued that
through the symbolic forms he had demonstrated the universality of these values, why
did he not develop an extensive moral philosophy? The next and final chapter is
devoted to this issue.

46

4. Ethics within the Symbolic Philosophy

4.1 Discussion of the Place of Ethics in Cassirers Philosophy
The place of ethics in Cassirers philosophy was extensively discussed in the postwar
philosophical literature. This discussion began with Leo Strausss review of MS, in
which Strauss claimed Cassirer had no right to criticize Heideggers ethical position
while he himself had not developed a philosophy whose center is moral
philosophy. 104 Strauss also asserted that Cassirer not only lacked an ethical core in
his philosophy but completely eschewed ethics: Cassirer had transformed Cohens
system into a new system of philosophy in which ethics had completely disappeared.
It had been silently dropped: he had not faced the problem. Heidegger had faced the
problem. He had declared that ethics is impossible. 105 With this claim Strauss
sought to refute not only the validity of Cassirers ethical philosophy but also
Cassirers pretension to follow the philosophy of Herman Cohen. 106
In CSFH, published in 1987, Krois rejected Strausss view of Cassirer and
claimed Cassirer had developed a philosophy with ethics at its core. Krois defined
ethics as a symbolic form like language, myth, and knowledge. He pointed out that
this form, as other symbolic forms, had passed through different stages of
development until it became independent of other forms. Ethics came from myth and
religion. In the mythical worldview, ethics is still not possible since there is no place
for individual responsibility for actions. Mythical consciousness did not know the
concept of the individual agent who can act independently of the world according to
his own will. According to Cassirer, the mythical world had a hierarchical organic
structure in which the existence of individuality, separate from all the other parts of
this world, was impossible. In this world the difference between I and not I was
not clear. Man did not distinguish between his thoughts and outer events. Every action
of hero in myth was explained by circumstances or destiny. As there was no
individual sin, bloodshed was explained in terms of an inherited curse.
Cassirer maintained that the emergence of the awareness of personality was
connected to the cult of sacrifice. The perception of personality as a principle different
Leo Strauss, Review of The Myth of the State by Ernst Cassirer, Social Research 14 (1947): 125128.
105
Leo Strauss, An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism, in The Rebirth of Classical Political
Rationalism, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 28.
106
See DD, 172. Cassirer said: I do not conceive of my own development as a defection from Cohen.
104

47

from the world resulted from the long process of development from primitive cults to
monotheistic religion. The cult of sacrifice led to the appearance of the first clear
distinction between the inner domain of man and the outer world. Cassirer suggests
that the central function of sacrifice is the limitation of mans desires. Sacrifice
defines the world as something completely alien to man. Through the sacrifice, the
awareness of the gap between I and the other emerged. When performing sacrificial
rituals, man learned to recognize the will of others (i.e., the gods) and to limit his
desire according to it. Cassirer asserted: ...every sacrifice implies a negative factor: a
limitation of sensory desire, a renunciation which the I imposes on itself. 107 In
sacrifice, trying to make contact with gods and to secure their assistance, man
perceived himself and his will as different from them and their will; he began to
identify himself with his own will. The growing independence of the gods is the
condition for mans discovery in himself of a fixed centre, a unity of will, over against
the dispersal and diversity of his sensory drives. 108
The crucial point in the development of a personality that is independent of the
world is the identification of a person with its action. Hence personality emerged
coterminously with the emergence of ethics: they mutually condition each other.
Cassirers view of the emergence of ethics was influenced by the philosophy of his
teacher Hermann Cohen, who linked the individual I responsible for his sins with
the transcendent God of monotheism. 109 However, in contrast to Cohen, Cassirer
pointed out that the idea of mans responsibility already appeared in myth before the
development of monotheism. He referred to Aeschyluss Oresteia, in which Orestes is
judged for killing his mother. 110 Cassirer also mentioned the Egyptian Book of the
Dead, where a dead person is judged by the god, Osiris, for his own deeds and
punished or rewarded accordingly. In the Book of Gates [part of the Book of the
Dead] the dead man appears before Osiris to confess his sins and justify himself. 111
Thus the emergence of the individual was bound up with the gradual separation of
religion from the world of myth. Monotheistic religion regarded man as a free agent
who is able to act in a wrong or a right way. Hence myth and religion are the
symbolic forms that condition the possibility of ethical symbolic form. In his book
PSF II, 221.
Ibid., 223.
109
See Herman Cohen, Religion of Reason: out of the Sources of Judaism [1918], trans. Simon Kaplan
(New York: F. Ungar, 1972).
110
See CSFH, 144-148.
111
See PSF II, 167.
107
108

48

Krois noted that Cassirer had discussed the conditions for ethics and how these
conditions had developed. Krois asserted: Moral action depends upon the agents
standards or criteria of moral judgment and personal sense of self. 112 However, this
is not enough to prove that morality is necessarily integrated with human existence.
Even if Cassirer described the essential phases that produced morality, this did not
make morality the core of his symbolic philosophy. On the contrary, Cassirers
philosophy showed that morality depends on myth and religion and could not have
emerged at the early stages of human civilization. From this standpoint, morality is
linked to a certain epoch and is not essentially integrated with human being.
Krois, however, remarked that What Strauss did not realize, and what is still
unrecognized today, is that Cassirers thought had taken that very [moral] turn.
Following the publication of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, the center of his
work becomes moral philosophy. 113 Krois claimed he had discovered that during the
exile years, 1933-1945, Cassirer had developed an original ethical theory at the core
of the philosophy of symbolic forms. This claim, however, appears strange because
symbolic philosophy deals with theoretical areas of philosophy that are not applied to
the practical philosophy of ethics.
Nevertheless, Krois maintained that Cassirer had succeeded to integrate theory
[Denken/Erkenntnis] with practice/action [Tun/Handel]. From their junction, ethical
philosophy emerged. 114 Krois noted that for Cassirer, practice is not distinct from
knowledge; they remain in correlation. The link between them is made by language;
Krois called this the linguistic turn of Cassirers philosophy. 115 In fact, Cassirer
already spoke of the phenomenon of language at the Davos meeting. Although he
defined the language form as a bridge between one individual and another, 116 in his
Davos lectures he did not clarify this issue. Krois explained that for Cassirer language
has two functions: a representative, descriptive one and a performative one, which is
presented in the act of promising.

117

Because of this double function, language

became a medium between the theoretical and practical aspects of existence and
ethics were integrated with the philosophy of symbolic forms. In language, meaning
and expressions can be used in the act of promising, which presupposes ethical
CSPH, 151.
CSFH, 152.
114
Ibid., 142-172
115
Ibid.,156.
116
DD, 183.
117
CSFH, 156.
112
113

49

relations between persons. As Krois noted, the act of promising and then keeping
ones word bears directly on a persons humanity and personality in an ethical
sense. For Cassirer, the ability to enter into agreement with others, the ability to
promise and to recognize the ensuing legality of this promise, is constitutive for man,
a necessary precondition for the humanitas ipsa.118
According to Krois, Cassirer discovered the immanent ethical structure of human
perception through the reconstruction of language. The linguistic form of expression
is united with the original phenomenon of expression, which is the root of practical as
well as theoretical activities. Further reconstruction of this form could reveal the
primordial prelinguistic level, where the perception of the other is given directly in the
expression. Krois wrote:
Even prelinguistic understanding of others is based upon the understanding of
(expressive) meaning. In Cassirers reconstruction of the development of
consciousness of the ego, he shows that understanding of the other is present
from the beginning. Language permits giving this feeling of generality a
conceptual form; it permits conceiving actions in a way that transcends
immediate expediency. 119
As noted in the previous chapter, an evident example of expression is facial
expression. Perception of a face is an action that points immediately beyond the
physical content of what is perceived. Perception of a face discovers expression,
which is expressed by the other. Therefore, Cassirer not only demonstrated how ethics
developed, but also that ethics is integrated with mans being.
This mode of thought reemerged in Levinass ethical philosophy. 120 Levinas
maintained that ethical relations originated in face-to-face meetings with ones fellow
man, whom he called the Other. He differentiated between the perception of the
object and the discovery of the Other. The face of the Other, claimed Levinas,
discloses an eternity that cannot be limited to the perception of the physical content of
the face; the face of the Other points beyond its content. Here Levinas is close to the
thought of Cassirer, though for Cassirer every perception has a transcendent feature,
not only the face of the other person. 121

118

Ibid., 157.
Ibid., 167.
120
See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979).
121
This issue needs special investigation.
119

50

Thus, Krois viewed the perception of the other as an essential moment of

perception and the ground of ethics in the philosophy of symbolic forms. However, an
accomplished, extensive ethical philosophy did not emerge in Cassirers works. As
Krois noted, Cassirers ethical doctrine is scattered in essays, lectures, his book about
Swedish philosopher Axel Hgerstrm, and other texts that went unpublished during
his life. Krois made an effort to reconstruct Cassirers ethical doctrine, but apparently
it was insufficient as Kroiss arguments did not convince other scholars.
Since that time, many scholars have continued the discussion of ethics in
Cassirers philosophy. In a article on this issue, 122 Recki argued that Cassirer had
difficulty including ethics in his philosophy of symbolic forms. Although Cassirer
indeed considered morality a symbolic form that was applicable to action
[Handlung], 123 the place for practical symbolic forms was already occupied by other
symbolic forms.
Reckis claim indeed pointed to the problematic moment in Cassirers philosophy.
According to Cassirer, all cultural forms originate from the symbolic pregnance that
consists of spontaneity and intuition. It was the spontaneity of thinking that made
possible the creative process and the development of cultural forms. Thus, the
spontaneity of consciousness is already the act of consciousness. Moral responsibility,
however, also presupposes spontaneity of action. Hence, Recki posited that Cassirers
philosophy should contain two different spontaneities: practical spontaneity, which
enables freedom of action, or ethics and theoretical-cultural spontaneity, through
which the variety of cultural forms and art has developed. Recki argued that Cassirer
failed to distinguish between these two spontaneities; he did not clarify the difference
between them. The reason for this ambiguity is that Cassirer presumed there was only
one kind of human freedom or spontaneity, while never speaking about two different
acts of spontaneity. Thus, Recki considered that Cassirer used this practical human
spontaneity as the theoretical-cultural spontaneity. Hence, she concluded that the
central place for ethics is already occupied. 124 As a result, Cassirer could not create a
moral philosophy at the core of his philosophy of symbolic forms. Here it is necessary
to refer to Kant.
122

Brigit Recki, Kultur ohne Moral? Warum Ernst Cassirer trotz der Einsicht in den Primat des
Praktischen keine Ethik schreiben konnte [1997], in Kultur als Praxis: Eine Einfhrung in Ernst
Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Akademie Verlag, Deutsche Zeitschrift fr
Philosophie, Sonderband, 6, 2003), 151-171.
123
Ibid., 164.
124
Ibid., 167: Die zentrale Stelle der Moralphilosophie ist damit bereits besetzt.

51

According to Kant, the spontaneous act of understanding presupposes the I

consciousness or I thinking that accompanies all human activity. In CPR, the I
thinking is the center of the epistemological subject, who constitutes knowledge. But
knowledge is not the outcome of the free creativity of I. The I does not construct
objects at will, but according to special categories. An individual, however, acts
according to the autonomy of his will. Therefore, the subject of knowledge differs
from the subject of action. Only an individual can be responsible for his intentions
and actions; the subject of knowledge is not responsible for nature.
Thus, on the one hand, there is no overlapping sphere between I as a subject of
knowledge and I as a subject of action. On the other hand, Recki pointed out that
Kant made a strong analogy between two kinds of spontaneity. 125 I thinking is also
the action of I. Certainly Cassirer was well aware of that analogy. Therefore, he did
not distinguish between these two kinds of spontaneity, and he seems not to have seen
any problem with this so-called unclearness [Unschrfe]. He did not think there
were two separate Is", but the same I that thinks and acts; the practical and the
epistemological selves belong to one and the same subject. The same I is the center
of spontaneity of thinking and of autonomy of will. Cassirer viewed the spontaneous
power that enables knowledge as the same creative power that applies to the practical
domain. Since practice and theory, acting and thinking are two aspects of the same
spontaneity, despite their evident difference they should not be separated. This also is
the answer to the critical question presented at the end of the last chapter: how can the
domain of knowledge be applied to the domain of ethics? Are ethics and knowledge
not different domains of human life? For Cassirer, they definitely are not different.
The connection between practice and knowledge was one of the main beliefs of
Socrates and is one of the everlasting goals of philosophy. 126 Thus ethics presupposes
not only practical but also theoretical activity.
This position of Cassirer explains perfectly why he defended the concept of
construction in contrast to Heideggers preference of intuition. Although, as
demonstrated in the previous chapter, Cassirer viewed receptivity as the origin of
perception, he constantly criticized Heidegger for the receptive character of his
Dasein. For Cassirer, preserving the moral nature of man meant that spontaneity must
125

Ibid., 169.
Cf.: Thomas Meyer, Einige berlegungen zur Ethik Ernst Cassirers, Simon Dubnow Institute
Yearbook VII (2008): 93-111.

126

52

not be subordinated to sensory intuition. Thus he criticized Heidegger 127 for putting
intuition before construction and calling spontaneity of thinking only a servant of the
intuition. 128 Cassirer maintained that receptivity denies spontaneous powers in the
domain of knowledge and consequently in the domain of practice. Receptivity
subordinates mans thinking as well as actions to destiny and makes ethics
impossible. This clarifies the phrase from MS that was partly quoted in the
introduction:

But the new [Heideggers] philosophy did enfeeble and slowly undermine the
forces that could have resisted the modern political myths. a theory that sees
in the Geworfenheit [the being-thrown] of man one of his principle characters
have given up all hopes of an active share in the construction and
reconstruction of mans cultural life. Such philosophy renounces its own
fundamental theoretical and ethical ideals. It can be used, then, as a pliable
instrument in the hands of the political leaders. 129

4.2 Why Did Cassirer Have Difficulty Integrating Ethics with

Symbolic Forms?
I maintain that there is also another key reason for Cassirers difficulty in developing
an ethical philosophy: namely, his phenomenological position denies the possibility of
morality. The necessary condition for the possibility of morality is the existence of a
moral agent who acts according to his will and is responsible for his actions. This
assumption, however, is inconsistent with the receptive and nonsubjective character of
the phenomenon of expression.
As I have argued, although the subject of knowledge and the subject of action
have different functions, they still refer to the same self. In this structure the subject of
action is the other aspect of the subject of knowledge. If one is absent, the other is
also absent. Therefore, it is possible to assume the existence of a moral agent only in
the presence of the subject of knowledge, of the I-center from which the acts of
spontaneity emerge. Without this center, no free action is possible.

127

Ernst Cassirer, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics: Remarks on Martin Heideggers
Interpretation of Kant, in Kant: Disputed Questions, ed. and trans. Molte S. Gram (Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1967), 131- 157.
128
See Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics [1929], 4th ed., enlarged, trans.
Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
129
MS, 293.

53

The conception of the subject is related to Cartesian dualism. Descartes

distinguished between the mental domain, which is usually called subjectivity, and the
bodily world, the domain of material things. The first exists as self-consciousness; the
second exists outside consciousness. According to this worldview, self-consciousness
is separate from the world and identified with the thinking process, which is
characterized by its act of reflection. This means any spontaneous, meaning-giving
activity can exist only as self-consciousness. In contrast, world and body lack any
spontaneity and do not carry meaning within themselves. The Cartesian distinction
has determined the development of European thought and has become widely
accepted in philosophical as well as everyday language. Despite the attempts of many
thinkers to reject this distinction, the mind-body problem remains prevalent.
In his philosophical investigations and innovations, Kant followed the path of
Cartesian tradition. According to Kant, the original act that unifies sensory intuition
with my representation is the act of I think", the spontaneous act of consciousness.
Representation is the integration of intuition with my thought and can only be mine,
that is, belongs to my consciousness. Kant emphasizes that the I think should
accompany all my representations: all the manifold of intuition has therefore a
necessary relation to the I think in the same subject in which that manifold of
intuition is found. 130 The result of this conception is that anything that is represented
to me and can be meaningful to me is part of my consciousness.
Husserl also remained in this tradition. He shared the paradigm of meaning as part
of consciousness. In Husserls phenomenology, the act that gives meaning is the
Erlebnis of consciousness. The center of the meaning-giving act is I", which unifies
all the acts as acts of one consciousness.
Compared to Kant and Husserl, both Cassirer and Heidegger broke with the
division between world and consciousness. Heidegger created a new philosophical
language with the concepts of Dasein and Being-in-the-world, which replaced the old
Cartesian language and revealed the structure of Being without using the concept of
consciousness. 131 At first glance, Cassirer remained within the framework of
philosophical tradition since he used traditional language. However, when using
philosophical concepts such as consciousness, subjectivity, symbol, and so on, he
altered their meaning.
130
131

CPR, 150.
Cf.: DD, 180.

54

Cassirer aimed to dissolve the Cartesian opposition between the outer world and
the inner domain of consciousness through the phenomenon of expression. As he
asserted: In expression there is no cleavage between the mere sensuous existence of
a phenomenon and a spiritual-psychic meaning which it mediately divulges. It is
essentially an utterance yet an utterance which remains entirely within itself. Here
there is neither kernel nor shell; there is no first and second, no one and other. 132 He
also stated: For the question of the nature of the relationship between body and soul
is raised for us by the phenomenon, which shows us the two never separate but always
in their mutual relation. 133 According to Cassirer, then, in expression the distinction
between inner consciousness and external life disappears. Consciousness is no longer
identified with pure thinking activity. Husserls distinction between the inner
experience of consciousness and the outer perception of things has no place in
Cassirers philosophy. In Cassirers view, perception is not directed from the inside
outward, but is an immediate experience of expression.
The symbolic function of the phenomenon of expression is that it integrates
sensory intuition with meaning. Cassirer extended the term meaning to encompass
expressive meaning, in which sensory intuition is unified with thought. There is no
such thing as meaning without body. For Cassirer, expressive meaning is not a
function of the I think. The identification between consciousness and thinking, or
any meaningful activity, does not exist in his philosophy. Meaning is not a
prerogative of mental activity; it is expressed by life and not by pure consciousness,
since no pure consciousness exists. Instead of a process that is associated with
consciousness, Cassirer spoke of spiritual powers that are expressed by symbolic
forms. Spiritual powers are self-creative powers of life and not functions of mind.
To know what this consciousness-spirit-life is, one needs to investigate how it
expresses itself in the multiplicity of forms; that is, one turns to the philosophy of
culture. The experience of the phenomenon of expression reveals the immediacy of
life and not the inner structure of consciousness. Therefore, Cassirer began his
investigation of Being with symbolic forms and not with a description of
consciousness, as Husserl did. Thus Cassirer denied the accessibility of subjectivity or
of pure consciousness. This was not because of the neo-Kantian assumption that
immediate knowledge is impossible, but because no consciousness exists in isolation
132
133

PSF III, 93.

Ibid., 97.

55

from its objectification in spiritual forms. Cassirer did not agree that Husserlian
phenomenology describes the living experience of consciousness, because he did not
accept the dualistic tradition in general. He did, however, accept phenomenology as a
science that describes the experience of life-spirit processes.
Luft claimed that Cassirer denies any direct access to subjectivity he remains
bound to the neo-Kantian dogma of the inaccessibility of subjectivity. 134 I maintain
instead that Cassirer did not accept access to subjectivity because he denied that
subjectivity, or consciousness, exists without objectivity. For him What is
experienced in every simple phenomenon of expression is an indissoluble correlation,
a thoroughly concrete synthesis of the physical and the psychic. 135 Cassirer saw
the solution of the soul-body problem in a return to the primary phenomenon of
expression. 136 There is no pure mental subjective activity; instead the experience of
expression includes both subjective and objective modes. Therefore, to obtain access
to spirit, one needs access to its expression the objective formation of spirit. Hence,
whereas Luft asserted that because experience can only be symbolic any analysis
of subjectivity can only be indirect as well", 137 I clarify that because experience
discovers the symbolic character of life, we can approach the immediate experience of
life through the whole expression of life. Thus I disagree with Lufts conclusion that
Cassirers account only deals with the structures that are needed to clarify the
functioning of cognition, not subjectivity itself, that is, the concrete dynamic life of
the subject. The dynamic vivacity of the subject remains untouched. 138 Luft denied
Cassirer access to the living, dynamic experience of subjectivity. This claim of Luft
resembles Heideggers criticism that Cassirers philosophy lacks a foundation.
Cassirers philosophy, however, did apprehend concrete, dynamic life the
primordial expressive character of life in its various forms.
Luft, however, also made an important, accurate observation that the omission of
subjectivity made it systematically impossible for Cassirer to draft an ethics. Where
there can be no access to subjectivity, any talk of moral agency, ought, volition, and
134

Sebastian Luft, A
Natorp, and Cassirer,
(2004): 240.
135
PSF III, 94.
136
Ibid.
137
Sebastian Luft, A
Natorp, and Cassirer,
(2004): 240.
138
Ibid.

Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl,

New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV

Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl,

New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV

56

personal responsibility is meaningless. 139 This remains the main problem of Cassirer,
who presumed to include ethical philosophy in the philosophy of symbolic forms. On
the one hand, he united meaningful and bodily aspects; on the other, he needed an
agent who was independent of the receptiveness of body. The phenomenological
principle of Cassirers philosophy does not accord with his ethical intention.
This was the main reason, I assume, that Cassirer did not suggest further
elaboration of the promising phenomenological-ontological ideas he introduced in
The Phenomenology of Knowledge. He hesitated about the possibility of integrating
ethical philosophy with his phenomenology. That is apparently why Cassirer did not
provide a thorough explanation of his phenomenology during the Davos dispute.
Thus Krois and Verene, in mentioning the Davos meeting in the introduction to
the fourth volume, again raised the question about the ground of Cassirers symbolic
forms. They wrote: Perhaps the strongest critical point persistently raised in relation
to Cassirers thought is: How are his symbolic forms, which are forms of culture,
metaphysically or ontologically grounded? 140 Thus Krois and Verene at least
partially accepted Heideggers claim that Cassirers philosophy has no firm starting
point. They asserted that Cassirers conception of symbolic forms in PSF I-III is
strongly epistemological orientated and is non- or even antimetaphysical. 141 I
claim, however, that Cassirer already discovered a ground for a new ontology and
metaphysics in the third volume. There, however, he did not ground ethics, even
though he claimed this was the main goal of philosophy; he did so only in the fourth
volume. Krois and Verene wrote: As to the grounds of the various symbolic
formsthe unpublished texts of the fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms remained Cassirers fullest answer. I add, however, that in PSF IV Cassirer
rather provided the ground for ethics that was lacking in the previous volumes.

4.3 Basis Phenomena (Primary phenomenon) 142

The issue of ethics led Cassirer to introduce changes in his philosophy. During the
1930s, he began to develop new ideas about ethics. In the unfinished text On Basis
Phenomena, he started to work on an ethical basis for symbolical philosophy, and he
139

Ibid., 246.
J.M. Krois and D.P. Verene, Introduction, in PSF IV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996),
xxiv.
141
Cf.: ibid.
142
See PSF IV, 127.
140

57

demonstrated how ethics is related to the Basis phenomena. These phenomena are
composed of three aspects, each of which Cassirer named the primary phenomenon
[Urphaenomen]. Cassirer modified the impersonal, lacking-I-center original
phenomenon of expression from The Phenomenology of Knowledge into the primary,
whose first aspect is I. This is the important difference between the third and the
fourth volume of PSF.
Cassirer took the concept of the primary phenomenon [rphenomen] from
Goethes Maxims. This phenomenon is the rotating movement of the monad about
itself, knowing neither pause nor rest. 143 This primary phenomenon has three
aspects, for which Cassirer gave only preliminary explanations because he was not yet
sure how and according to which philosophical approach this phenomenon should be
defined. The first aspect is the phenomenon of I [Ich-Phnomen], which is also the
monad and life itself. Thus Cassirer proposed several options. He suggested that the Iphenomenon
could be described in a biological and vitalistic way (Bergsons
intuition..),psychologically (as the phenomenon of self-consciousnessas it
was originally intended by Descartes), or in the transcendental sense. For the
present we will ignore all these differences. We take the monas 144 in the sense that
Goethe gave to it. 145
Here Cassirers explanations were not sufficiently elaborate. What is evident,
however, is that Cassirer again approached the Cartesian position on selfconsciousness that he had earlier rejected. However, Cassirer clearly was not prepared
to make a complete identification between I-consciousness and thinking activity. He
pointed to Cartesian self-consciousness but also associated the I-phenomenon with
life, which includes physical and biological features. Cassirers intention to return
even partially to the I-consciousness paradigm in Descartes sense means that he
decided to develop ethics at the phenomenological level and searched for a way to
resolve the difficulties of this task.
The second aspect of the basis phenomena is the phenomenon of action
[Wirkens-Phnomen]. It is here that awareness emerges of the interconnection
between the monad and the other; the monad cannot remain limited to itself. Cassirer
Maxims 391-393, from Maximen und Reflexionen, Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, cited in PSF
IV, 127.
144
Sometimes Cassirer uses the Greek term monas instead of monad.
145
PSF IV, 138.
143

58

aimed to reveal the structure of consciousness, where perception or as he also called

it, consciousness of reality comes together with consciousness of interaction,
action, and influence, from which ethical relation arises. This influencing and acting
is a second essential, constitutive aspect in all our consciousness of reality. [There
is] no consciousness of reality without this original, nondeductible consciousness of
action. 146 Theoretical and practical knowledge appeared together, and their
appearances were interrelated. Thus Cassirer discovered the ground where perception
and action cannot emerge without each other. If in PSF III Cassirer revealed the
symbolic ground of knowledge, where sensory intuition is unified with meaning, in
On Basis Phenomena he showed the common root of knowledge and praxis.
Compared to the receptive character of the phenomenon of expression, here action is
an essential characteristic of the basis phenomena. Ethics arose from the I-action.
The third aspect is the phenomenon of work [Werk-Phnomen], it is the
movement of action that has found expression in a work. 147 Work, as compared to
action, is something objective. It is only with the third aspect, then, that Cassirer came
close to the concept of expression, from which cultural forms and human
development originated. By producing things, man became aware of objects.
The perception of the other as You is prior to the awareness of the self and
essential for the perception of objectivity. For Cassirer this is a principal point. First
of all, the monad encounters another animated reality that is acting and reacting, that
has his own will. This other will puts a limit on the monads will, and only by means
of this restriction is ones own individual self created and defined. Acting and reacting
are constitutive aspects of perception, whereas theoretical and practical actions
depend on each other.
For Cassirer the interconnection between the practical, epistemological, and
ontological features created a foundation on which he intended to build his renewed
philosophical project. In any case, Cassirer described this ground by using a direct
phenomenological approach, and without the reconstructive method that he used in
PSF I-II.
Nevertheless, we cannot regard the text of On Basis Phenomena as the finished
version of Cassirers philosophy. Given that the fourth volume is a fragmentary work
that was not published in his lifetime, it is not possible to redact his philosophy from
146
147

Ibid., 139.
Ibid., 141.

59

all the texts that were included in it. These texts are only working papers, drafts. If
Cassirer had been sure about them, he would have continued to work on them and
publish them. Since he did not do so, we can regard these texts only as his unfinished
attempts to renew his philosophy and give it an ethical foundation. These texts do,
however, offer various possibilities of interpretation and extension of his thoughts and
ideas. In this investigation I have confined myself to a brief discussion of the text of
On Basis Phenomena, which is valuable for my previous arguments about ethics in
Cassirers philosophy. A more thorough discussion and research of this text requires a
special investigation.

60

Conclusion
The point of departure for this investigation was the debate between Husserls
phenomenology and neo-Kantianism, which dominated the philosophical discourse of
the first decades of the twentieth century but subsequently was almost forgotten. This
debate centered on the question of the origin of knowledge; specifically, whether
knowledge originated from intuition or from construction.
My investigation then turned to the Davos dispute between Cassirer and
Heidegger. I presented this dispute as a kind of continuation of the older debate
between neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, in light of which many aspects of the
Davos dispute become understandable. These include Heideggers charge that
Cassirer was a neo-Kantian philosopher who employed a critical reconstructive
method of investigation and therefore could not accept intuition as the basis for
human being.
The next part of my research offered a systematic exposition of Cassirers
philosophy, whose center is the concept of symbol. This new symbolic philosophy
proposed to solve the problem of Heideggers hermeneutics and to reconcile neoKantianism and phenomenology. From this symbolic perspective, Cassirers
philosophy differs from neo-Kantianism in Heideggers sense. Cassirer did not base
his theory of knowledge exclusively on construction; nor did he deny that intuition is
the basis for epistemology and ontology.
For Cassirer the controversy between intuition and construction was the outcome
of a very old conflict between life and culture, or, in other words, between the
immediacy of given life and culture as an artificial construction of knowledge.
Cassirer aimed to resolve this traditional conflict by proposing the new concept of the
symbol, according to which the symbol is not a medium that can be employed only as
a representation of reality. Instead, reality discloses itself to be primary symbolic.
Cassirer defined the symbol as a function that integrates immanence and
transcendence within itself. The symbol manifests transcendence, which is given in
immanence.
Life is symbolic and is given as symbolic at the primordial level of perception.
Cassirer characterized the immediate givenness of life in perception with the term
phenomenon of expression. Expression has a symbolic character where sensory
61

content extends beyond its limits and discovers more than it contains. For Cassirer,
expression is living experience [Erlebnis] where the distinction between
consciousness and world, meaning and sense, subject and object disappears.
Expression reveals the organic form of life.
This organic form is manifested already in the mythological consciousness, in
which life is given as filled with expressive physiognomic features. Cassirer tried to
describe and analyze the mythical world thoroughly. Reconstructing this world was of
great importance to him because through myth he also discovered the immediate level
of perception.
The last part of my investigation deals with the problem of ethics. The
Phenomenology of Knowledge presents an organic picture of life in which there is no
place for the free subject of action. At the same time, Cassirer maintains that the
possibility of ethics depends on the possibility of the existence of the agent of action;
hence he had difficulty developing an ethical philosophy within his phenomenology.
For Cassirer, however, the need for practical philosophy was critical since he rejected
any separation between ethics and knowledge. His main critique of Heidegger is that
Heideggers philosophy denies universal ethical values. Yet, if Cassirer himself had
not developed an extensive moral philosophy, did he have any right to criticize
Heidegger? In order to answer this question, I reviewed the postwar German and
English philosophical literature on the problem of ethics in Cassirers philosophy,
analyzing different approaches and arguments concerning this problem.
The monistic, organic structure of the life excludes the possibility of free action of
the self. The possibility of the concept of the individual as different from the
wholeness of lifes circumstances depends on the concept of the subject as different
from the world.
Thus, I maintain that the inconsistency between the phenomenology of ethics and
moral intentions caused Cassirer to modify some of his positions. Cassirer attempted
to solve the problem of ethics in his text On Basis Phenomena, which was
posthumously published in PSF IV. In this text he introduced the concept of the
primary phenomenon as a basis for theoretical as well as practical knowledge. The
first moment of the primary phenomenon is the I aspect from which both perception
and action emerge. However, the development of the concept of the primary
phenomenon remained incomplete and the reconstruction of it requires separate
research.
62

I have demonstrated that Cassirer conceived a project of philosophy that should

comprise a rich spectrum of aspects of human existence and culture combining
various philosophical motifs. This task was not easy and not always successful. The
integration of several motifs in a single philosophy sometimes appears to be
vacillation between different approaches; in some parts of his books Cassirer seems to
tend to one side, and in other parts to the other. Thus, the impression is that his
thought fluctuated between neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, between a holistic,
impersonal worldview and a humanistic one. But the true reason for these apparent
fluctuations is Cassirers aim to resolve the oppositions between these worldviews.
I have shown that these oppositions are interconnected. The conflict between
construction and intuition was resolved by the symbol, in which construction is
organically integrated with intuition. The symbolic solution, in turn, comes into
conflict with the possibility of ethics. Ethical conflict, indeed, points to the dilemma
of many European philosophers of the previous centuries. Generally speaking, some
strove for a monistic explanation of being and hence lost responsibility and ethics,
which presuppose the separation between the wholeness of being and the subjective
domain. Others, who included individual responsibility, were obliged to accept
dualism. Cassirer did not follow any of these directions; instead he strove to resolve
the contradiction between them by integrating the practical side within his symbolic
philosophy. Although he did not complete this effort, his project is promising and
could be continued. Notwithstanding that Cassirer did not solve all the inner problems
of his philosophy, his philosophy revealed inner contradictions that had accompanied
philosophical development for centuries, and pointed to various ways to reconcile
these. Therefore, the elaboration of Cassirers philosophical methods and ideas could
be very useful for contemporary humanistic studies and for further cultural and
philosophical progress.

63

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