Gordon, Myth and Modernity

Myth and Modernity: Cassirer's Critique of Heidegger
Author(s): Peter Eli Gordon

Source: New German Critique, No. 94, Secularization and Disenchantment (Winter, 2005),
pp. 127-168
Published by: Duke University Press
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Myth and Modernity.
Cassirer Critique ofHeidegger
Peter Eli Gordon
"The philosopher is a mythologist."

- Plato
What is the relation between fascism and myth?l For the Frank
School, fascism was not a reversion to barbarism but a patholo
extremity of enlightenment itself. Following Weber's lead, Adorn
Horkheimer saw enlightenment as a transhistorical rather than a
cretely historical process, coordinating a host of distinct phenomen
disenchantment of the world, the secularization of human consci
ness, the "extirpation of animism," and the slow displacement of m
sis by symbolic and conceptual thought. While they acknowl
fascism's atavistic appearance - especially its calls for a return to
blood and soil - they denied it could be characterized in essenc
merely retrograde departure from civilization. Still bound, howe
weakly, to Marxian habits of thought, Adorno and Horkheimer sa
cism not as a lapse but as the crisis-stage in history's developmen
the apotheosis of bourgeois subjectivity and a dialectical conseque
"instrumental reason." Because myth is born from the desire to un
stand and thereby to achieve some mastery over one's environme
myth, in this sense at least, is "already" enlightenment. But in th
text of technological proficiency and social rationalization, enligh
ment devolves into a compulsive will to mastery without self-refl
1. For comments and criticism, I am grateful to Martin Jay, Warren Brec

Samuel Moyn, Jonathan Skolnik, Eugene Sheppard, John McCole, and Thomas Me
127
128 Myth and Modernity
or normative orientation. Enlightenment, then, is already, in its one-

sided and distorted form, at least, a new species of myth. And fascism,
they claimed, was the indisputable spawn of modernity, the culminating
phase of the laborious and collective effort by which humanity, having
originally sought release from its mythic fear of nature, ended in the
liquidation of the freedom it aimed to achieve. A political correlative of
modern advertising, fascism succeeded by means of the cynical manipu-
lation of desire: It was, in sum, "fake myth."2
This theory, which Adorno and Horkheimer put forth in the 1947
study, Dialectic of Enlightenment, is but one variant of the more com-
mon observation that fascism is not truly "irrational" but only a simu-
lacrum of mythic unreason. Similar, though less remembered today is
Ernst Cassirer's last great contribution to intellectual history, The Myth
of the State, a work composed in American exile and published, posthu-
mously, in 1946. Like Horkheimer and Adorno, Cassirer saw the pecu-
liarity of National Socialism in its effort to forge an entire tissue of
belief by artificial means: "The new political myths," Cassirer wrote,
"do not grow up freely; they are not wild fruits of an exuberant imagi-
nation. They are artificial things fabricated by very skilful and cunning
artisans." In contrast to those liberal-minded theorists who found conso-
lation in the view that Nazism was mere barbarism and primitive senti-
ment, Cassirer discerned its specific modernity: "It has been reserved
for the twentieth century, our own great technical age, to develop a new
technique of myth. Henceforth myths can be manufactured in the same
sense and according to the same methods as any other modern
weapon-as machine guns or airplanes."3
A promising feature of this theory lay in the claim that fascism, while
essentially modern, succeeds by manipulating the pre-modern or
"mythic" dimension of human experience. From this perspective, fasc-
ism is a species of secularism cloaked only for effect in the guise of
faith. This view has enduring merit not least because it promotes the
watchful attitude that we moderns must never consider ourselves fully
beyond the fascist danger. Indeed, there is no getting "beyond" hazards
inhering in modernity itself. But the theory is not without its disadvan-
tages. As Jiirgen Habermas has claimed, the thesis that fascism is the
2. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Philo-

sophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002) 9.
3. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale UP, 1946) 355, here-
after, MS.
Peter Eli Gordon 129
spawn of instrumental reason may place too little trust in the eman
potential of human rationality and can quickly devolve into a to
polemic against reason as such. Indeed, the ceaseless critique of
gone wrong can easily encourage a mood of fatalistic and stylis
mism that sabotages the liberatory work of enlightenment befor
even begun.4 From another perspective, however, one might c
theory places not too little confidence in reason but too much. B
acterizing fascism as an outcome of modernity, the theory seems
resent modernity as having truly surpassed myth. Only a f
disbelieving subject, it seems, is sufficiently demythologized t
myth as an instrument of cynical control. The theory of fasci
"technique of myth," in other words, may presuppose a human
who has actually achieved thoroughgoing disenchantment.
My claim in this essay is that there may be no such thing as a mod
and rational subject who is entirely "disenchanted," in the sense t
would entail the capacity to achieve rational mastery over one's c
tive meaning. Considered broadly, "myth" might indicate a stru
social meaning that seems both independent of the subject's agen
not fully transparent to human reason - the mythical notion, fo
ple, that one's life-course is determined by the Fates rather th
own rational choices. A "demythologized" subject, then, is capa
rational self-transparency, and thus capable of governing itself i
dance with nothing besides its own rules. The typical source for
ular model of the self is Kant's epistemology and moral philosop
in this respect, my argument is directed against the conspicuo
tianism that underwrites the "modernist" theory of fascism.
The guiding insight of this essay is as follows: The modernist
tends to regard any and all departures from liberal-enlightenme
tics as manipulated - hence its frequent recourse to terms
"fake," or "jargon," or "technique," - and it thereby presuppos
only the liberal view is "true." Thus, all other modes of politic
must be explained by imagining that a liberal-enlightenment s
somehow stands behind those politics as their disbelieving creato
one might object, this view rests upon an implausible theory o
meaning. An enlightenment ontology of the self has a peculiar
credentializing status in that it dismisses any alternative politica
as unreal. Yet the challenge - indeed, the true horror - of fasc
4. Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Twelve L

trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987) esp. 106-130.
that it represents a mode of political belief that cannot be categorized

and consequently dismissed as a mere departure from the normative
contents of modernity. Rather than offer some bold doctrine of my own,
this essay merely seeks to reconstruct a possible alternative to the Kan-
tian view by exploring the historical encounter between two philoso-
phers, Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger.5 As explained below, the
disagreement between them hinged upon two contrasting sets of ideas
concerning myth, subjectivity, and self-transparency.
The confrontation between Cassirer and Heidegger spanned more than
two decades, from 1923 to 1946, and was punctuated by the famous
encounter at Davos, Switzerland, in the spring of 1929. Witnesses to the
Davos debate have recalled an almost mythic contrast between Heideg-
ger's dark haired and youthful appearance, his abrupt, perhaps even
aggressive demeanor, and Cassirer's prematurely white hair, his professo-
rial eloquence, and his conciliatory, if perhaps less inspiring, style. While
Cassirer represented the older values of humanist reason, the uncanny
strains of Heidegger's so-called "existential" ontology bespoke a new
sense of urgency and pathos seizing the younger generation at the end of
the 1920s. Student memoirs of the event are almost unanimous in the
judgment that Heidegger "won," but for many critics, Heidegger's deci-
sion to embrace Nazism four years later expresses the already latent truth
of their debate: Pierre Bourdieu, for example, has organized the entire nar-
rative of his polemic, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, around
the assumption that the Heidegger-Cassirer debate was an encrypted bat-
tle between liberalism and conservative revolution.6 Politics aside, the
philosophical substance of their dispute remains definitive for Continental
thought today: Cassirer's allegiance to an enlightenment model of the
autonomous subject stands in stark contrast to Heidegger's view of the
self as "thrown," as bound by meanings it cannot harness fully to rational
command. The debate between them is thus a significant chapter in the
ongoing struggle to define the ontologico-political subject of modernity.
Cassirer's Philosophy of Form

Emrnst Cassirer (1874-1945) was one of the most accomplished philos-
ophers to emerge from Central Europe in the early decades of the
5. For important documentation and analysis, see John Michael Krois, "Cassirer's
Unpublished Critique of Heidegger," Philosophy and Rhetoric 16.3 (1983): 147-159.
6. Pierre Bourdieu, L 'Ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger (Paris: Editions de
minuit, 1988). The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, trans. Peter Collier (Stanford,
CA: Stanford UP, 1991).
twentieth century.7 In 1894, Cassirer attended Georg Simmel's lect

Kant, and beginning in 1896, he studied under Hermann Cohen
burg. Cassirer absorbed many of the characteristic assumptions of
Kantian movement, including an admiration for the scientific mod
losophy, an unflagging confidence in the rationality of culture, an
attachment to progressive politics.8 Although of Jewish descent, C
like many German Jews in the age of assimilation, maintained lim
to the Jewish faith.9 His real devotion was to scholarship. From
est study, Leibniz' System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen
his early four-volume investigation, The Problem of Knowledge in
phy and Science (1906-7) and his first contribution to the phil
science, Substance and Function (1910), he displayed an as
breadth of erudition and an uncompromising fidelity to the ration
ciples of the Enlightenment. He wrote a biography, Kant
Thought (1918), which was meant to accompany a new edition
collected works in the 1920s. Later, he authored the classic stud
teenth-century thought, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (193
Beginning in the 1920s, Cassirer invested a great deal of en
developing a philosophical account of mythological consciousn
monumental, three-volume work, The Philosophy of Symbol
(hereafter, PSF), explores the "formative" activity of conscio
the spheres of: "language" (Vol. I, 1923), "mythical thinking"
1925), and the "phenomenology of knowledge" (Vol. III,
fourth volume, on "the metaphysics of symbolic forms," rem
7. An excellent summary of Cassirer's thought can be found in John

Krois, Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987).
8. Simmel's lectures on Kant exerted a tremendous impact upon stude
sirer's generation, since the lectures were meant "to serve as an introduction to
ical thinking" as such. See Georg Simmel, Kant: Sechzehn Vorlesungen, geha
Berliner Universitdt, 3rd ed. (Munich and Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1
Simmel's influence on Cassirer, see David R. Lipton, Ernst Cassirer. The Dile
Liberal Intellectual in Germany, 1914-1933 (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1978) 3-5.
eral outline of neo-Kantianism, see Timothy Keck, "Kant and Socialism: T
School in Wilhelmian Germany," diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975
Kahnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus: Die deutsche Unive
sophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus (Frankfurt/Main, 1991), and
Aufstieg und Niedergang des Marburger Neukantianismus. Die Geschichte ei
phischen Schulgemeinschaft (Wiirzburg: K6nigshausen & Neumann, 1994).
9. On Cassirer's Judaism, see the thoughtful essay by Thomas Meyer, "E
sirer - Judentum aus dem Geist der universalistischen Vernunft," Aschkena
459-502; also Oswald Schwemmer, Ernst Cassirer Ein Philosoph der europd
erne (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997) and Steven S. Schwarzschild, "Judaism
and Work of Ernst Cassirer," il cannocchiale 1.1-2 (1991): 327-344.
manuscript form and has only recently been published. Cassirer also
wrote a shorter work, entitled Language and Myth (1925), which was
his first substantive contribution to the cultural history series published
by the Warburg Library, where he labored upon the PSF throughout the
1920s. In the midst of this work, Cassirer also wrote an historical
monograph, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy
(1927) that investigates renaissance theories of "ego and world" and
discerns the origins of the enlightenment ideal of spiritual creativity.
Nevertheless, vigorous attention to political or social thought remains
noticeably underdeveloped in Cassirer's scholarship, which, given his
adherence to enlightenment ideals, might appear surprising.l0 The vari-
ous essays collected in 1916 under the title, Freedom and Form, repre-
sent an exception to Cassirer's largely scientific and cultural but
unpolitical labors.1l Cassirer marshaled his intellectual resources only
once in defense of the precarious Weimar Republic.12 In 1928, he deliv-
ered a famous address on "The Idea of a Republican Constitution," in
which he attempted to prove an affinity between Kant's philosophy and
political democracy.13 His final work, The Myth of the State, represents
Cassirer's most sustained treatment of political matters, but it is also his
last statement on the broader, philosophical significance ofmyth.14
10. The absence of a pronounced ethical theory in Cassirer's work was first noted
by Leo Strauss, in a critical review of The Myth of the State, which is reprinted in Leo
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press,
1959) 292-96. For Strauss's earlier assessment, see Leo Strauss, "Religionsphilosophie:
Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der europiischen Wissenschaft," Der Jude VIII. 10 (1924):
613-617. Also see Birgit Recki, "Kultur ohne Moral? Warum Ernst Cassirer trotz der Ein-
sicht in dem Primat der praktischen Vemrnunft keine Ethik schreiben konnte," Ernst Cassir-
ers Werk und Wirkung, Kultur und Philosophie, eds. Dorothea Frede, Reinold Schmlicker
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997) 58-78.
11. Ernst Cassirer, Freiheit und Form: Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 2nd
ed. (1916; Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1918).
12. On Cassirer's political significance, see Lipton.
13. Cassirer, Die Idee der Republikanischen Verfassung, Rede zur Verfassungsfeier
am 11. August 1928 (Hamburg: Friedrichsen, de Gruyter & Co., 1929), hereafter, Die Idee.
14. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Volume I: Language, Volume
II: Mythical Thought, Volume III: The Phenomenology of Knowledge, trans. Ralph Man-
heim (New Haven: Yale UP, 1957), hereafter PSF, followed by volume number and page.
Sprache und Mythos was originally published in Studien der Bibliothek Warburg VI
(1925). The English edition is Language and Myth, trans. Susanne K. Langer (1946; New
York: Harper - Dover, 1953), hereafter, LM. Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in
der Philosophie der Renaissance (1927), in English as The Individual and the Cosmos in
Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). Ernst
Cassirer, Die Philosophie der Aufkliarung (Tiibingen: J.C.B. Mohr-Paul Siebeck, 1932),
in English, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C.A. Koelln and James P.
Pettegrove (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1951), hereafter, PE. Recently, John Michael
Krois has edited Cassirer's essay, "Spirit and Life," which contains an extensive response
to Heidegger, and was located in the previously unpublished manuscript for the projected
fourth volume of PSR, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms that was completed in 1929.
Before specifically engaging Cassirer's discussion of myth, it i

ful to examine his more general philosophical commitments. F
sirer, human consciousness is best conceived according to a
model, where the mind stands as "lawgiver unto nature," gr
objectivity and order to the world it represents. According
model, the subject relates to its world as its transcendental grou
encounter a world of "order and harmony" only because our rea
been structured in advance by the formative action of reason. W
enjoy immediate access to things; indeed, without the structurin
of our own mental apparatus the world in itself would be pres
without order or sense. Kant called this structuring action "the
neity of human understanding," and the doctrine exerted a stron
ence upon Cassirer in all of his philosophical and historical work
it is true that his philosophy of symbolic forms moved away fr
"spontaneity" thesis in significant respects, the essential view
mind as a formative agency remained unchanged.15
The immediate importance of "form" in Kantian philosophy i
dent in the idea that space and time are pure "forms" of intuition
gained a new prominence in Simmel's lectures on Kant. While s
his 20s, Cassirer absorbed Simmel's interpretation of transcenden
alism as a philosophy that concerned "the forms of experience"
jected by the mind. For Simmel, Kant had shown that
"determination of Being" is only possible through "the forms an
ductive powers of Spirit," a mental agency which was characteri
only of practical and theoretical reason, but also of aesthetic-exp
labor as well. In Simmel's view, the "unity" exhibited in a pe
work of art was itself a reflection of the "form of the soul it
15. An exemplary statement of Cassirer's method can be found in PSF: "It i

the first essential insights of critical philosophy that objects are not 'given' to
ness in a rigid, finished state, in their naked 'as suchness' [ihrem nackten An-
that the relation of representation to object presupposes an independent, spont
of consciousness. The object does not exist prior to and outside of synthetic un
constituted only by this synthetic unity; it is no fixed form that imprints itse
sciousness but is the product of a formative operation [Formung] effected by
instrumentality of consciousness, by intuition and pure thought. PSF takes up
critical idea, this fundamental principle of Kant's 'Copernican revolution,' and s
broaden it. It seeks the categories of the consciousness of objects in the theoret
lectual sphere, and starts from the assumption that such categories must be at wo
ever a cosmos, a characteristic and typical world view, takes form out of the
impressions." PSF II 29 (German 39).
16. Simmel, Kant 49.
While Simmel's interpretation emphasized the centrality of "form" in

Kantian philosophy, Simmel also noted that specifically regarding art,
Kant's concept of form remained "too narrow."l7 The combination - of
Simmel's elucidation of Kantian form, and Cohen's "critical idealist"
reading of Kant as a theorist of scientific discovery - no doubt exerted
a powerful influence upon Cassirer's own philosophy of form. But Sim-
mel's critical remarks on the limitations of Kant's original project espe-
cially helped move Cassirer toward a broader theory of culture.
Cassirer first introduced the idea of symbolic form in his 1921 study,
Einstein ' Theory of Relativity, where he claimed that the theory of rela-
tivity demanded a "new concept [. . .] of the object," as "grounded in
the form of physical thought." Einsteinian physics "strives to determine
and to express in pure objectivity merely the natural object, but thereby
necessarily expresses itself, its own law and its own principle." Now,
physics abandons the notion of "substance" and replaces it with a
notion of "function" anchored in nothing but the symbolizing capaci-
ties of human consciousness. This move, Cassirer noted, was essen-
tially a restatement of the Kantian idea of the Copernican revolution,
which claims that rather than conceiving of the mind as conforming to
objects, objects are best conceived in conformity to the mind. But, Cas-
sirer hastened to add that this transcendental principle was not only
applicable in science; it expressed the far older notion that all religion,
indeed all of human experience, rests upon anthropomorphic foundations.
Here is revealed again that "anthropomorphism" of all our concepts of

nature to which Goethe [...] loved to point. "All philosophy of nature
is still only anthropomorphism, i.e., man, at unity with himself,
imparts to everything that he is not, this unity, draws it into his unity,
makes it one with himself [. ..] We can observe, measure [.. .] weigh,
etc., nature as much as we will, it is still only our measure and weight,
as man is the measure of all things."'8
From the critique of religion to modern science, the principle of

"anthropomorphism" was "not to be understood in a limited way but in
a universal, critical and transcendental sense."19 Cassirer claimed that the
17. Simmel, Kant 180.

18. Zur Einstein schen Relitivitatstheorie, originally published in 1921; in English
as Substance and Function and Einstein " Theory of Relativity, trans. William Swabey and
Marie Swabey (Chicago: Open Court, 1923) 445, hereafter, ETR.
19. ETR 445.
Kantian principle could now be applied to the investigation of all of h

experience. His global ambitions are clear in the passage below, w
generally accepted as Cassirer's first use of the term "symbolic form."
It is the task of systematic philosophy, which extends far beyond th

theory of knowledge, [. . .] to grasp the whole system of symboli
forms, the application of which produces for us the concept of an
ordered reality, and by virtue of which subject and object, ego and
world are separated and opposed to each other in definite form, and it
must refer each individual in this totality to its fixed place. If we assum
this problem solved, then the rights would be assured, and the limit
fixed, of each of the particular [...] as of the general forms of the theo
retical, ethical, aesthetic, and religious understanding of the world.20
According to Cassirer, all of human culture, indeed the very se

there being a "world" as distinct from an "ego," is consequen
what Cassirer named the spontaneous "application" of form by
scendental subject. And it is this form that "produces for us" th
"concept of an ordered reality."
It is worth noting that this definition considerably expand
Kant's original model of mental spontaneity. Kant never suggeste
the formative function might extend further than the basic, a
application of space, time, and the categories. Cassirer closely f
Kant's idea that our world is the result of the transcendental conscious-
ness "producing" an "ordered reality." However, he broadened the princi-
ple by claiming that symbolic forms govern the entire landscape of human
expression. In his work throughout the 1920s, Cassirer set out to show
how a Kantian investigation of transcendental consciousness might be
applied to broad areas of "symbolizing" activity from language to myth.
He laid out the basic presuppositions for the project in a programmatic
essay from 1922, "The Concept of Symbolic Form in the Construction of
the Human Sciences" [Der Begriffder Symbolischen Form im Aufbau der
Geisteswissenschaften]. Cassirer offered it as his inaugural publication for
the Warburg Library, where he carried out research for much of the
decade. The essay contains an important redefinition of symbolic form:
By "symbolic form" [is meant] that energy of the spirit [Energie des
Geistes] through which a mental meaning-content is attached to a sen-
sual sign and inwardly dedicated to this sign [. . .] [L]anguage, the
20. ETR 447, my emphasis.
mythical-religious world, and the arts each present us with a particular

symbolic form. [I]n them all we see the mark of the basic phenome-
non, that our consciousness [BewufJ3tsein] is not satisfied to receive
impression [Eindruck] from outside, but rather [. . .] permeates each
impression with afree activity of expression [mit einerfreien Titigkeit
des Ausdrucks]. In what we call the objective reality of things we are
thus confronted with a world ofself-created signs and images."21
Here, Cassirer characterizes symbolic forms as products of "free" men-

tal energy and expression. Such forms are "self-created" and therefore
announce, against empiricism, that a spontaneity of the spirit pervades
all cultural life, most notably in science, but - and this proved just as
important - in language, art, and myth.
Cassirer on Language and Myth

The second volume of PSF focuses specifically on mythical thought.
Here the spontaneity thesis is put on bold display. Cassirer presupposed
that myth can only be understood as the most primitive stratum of sym-
bolic consciousness, and therefore that myth is grasped as an "expres-
sion" of spirit. He sharply differentiated this effort from any
investigation into myth's origins or instrumentality. "To seek a 'form' of
mythical consciousness," he wrote, "means to inquire neither after its
ultimate metaphysical causes nor after its psychological, historical or
social causes: it is solely to seek the unity of the spiritual principle by
which all its particular configurations, with all their vast empirical
diversity, appear to be governed."22 With a nod toward Husserlian phe-
nomenology, Cassirer insisted that his method is merely "critical phe-
nomenology" since it separated its phenomenological analysis from any
discussion about the genesis or use of mythological systems. It
addresses "neither from the godhead an original metaphysical fact nor
from mankind as an original empirical fact" but instead theorizes "the
subject of a cultural process" [das Subjekt des Kulturprozesses]. It pre-
sents a narrative of the "human spirit" in its "pure actuality and diverse
configurations," in order to apprehend its own "immanent norms."23
Cassirer's analysis of mythological consciousness follows the Kantian
principle that consciousness must obey its own, interior principles of
21. Ernst Cassirer, "Der Begriffder Symbolischen Form im Aufbau der Geisteswissen-
schaften," Bibliothek Warburg, Vortrage, 1921/22 (Leipzig: B.G Teubner, 1923) 11-39, 15.
22. PSF, II 12.
23. PSF, II 19; English 13.
expression: Culture is ideally the work of autonomous spirit. C

departed from Kant, however, in his portrait of consciousness as
ing a logic of immanent development. If one could demonstrat
myth is part of a "cultural process," then the Kantian principle
tal spontaneity must be fundamentally historicized. Here Cassir
ory adopts a Hegelian view of mythical "activities" as a primitiv
in the unfolding narrative of spirit:
It is only in these activities as a whole that humankind constitut

itself in accordance with its ideal concept and concrete historical exis
ence; it is only in these activities as a whole that is effected that pr
gressive differentiation of "subject" and "object," "I" and "world,
through which consciousness issues from its stupor, from its captivit
in mere existence [aus der Befangenheit im blofien Dasein], in sensory
impression and affectivity, and becomes a cultural consciousness
[Kulturbewufl3tsein].24
The developmental thesis, however, implies that myth can not b

stood as a perfect or complete expression of human consciousn
myth is merely a "stage" in the "objectification" [Objektivieru
spirit, it is difficult to avoid the judgment that myth is nothin
imperfect and occluded mode of representation. "With the first
scientific insight," Cassirer observed, "the mythical world of dr
enchantment seems to sink into nothingness" [die Traum- und Z
welt des Mythos [. . .] scheint sie wie ins Nichts hinabgesunken
But questions concerning the accuracy or truth of their represen
content of myth are not significant for Cassirer, since he is in
solely in their manner of objectification. Here Cassirer can affi
myth is indeed "objective" in so far as it discloses "an immane
and "a characteristic "necessity."25 Moreover, it is misleading
gest that myth yields entirely to scientific modes of represen
"[E]ven the world of our immediate experience - that world in
all of us constantly live and are when not engaged in conscious,
scientific reflection - contains any number of traits which, fo
standpoint of the same reflection, can only be designated as mythic
Cassirer was not alone in proposing such a "pan-mythic" theo
everyday belief. He drew inspiration from Wilhelm Wundt's mo
tal study, Volkerpsychologie, (published in ten volumes betwee
24. PSF, I1 19; English 13, translation modified.

25. PSI II 19; English 14, translation modified.
26. PSF II 20; English 14.
and 1920), which lays out a comprehensive set of "developmental laws"

guiding language, myth, and custom.27 But it is perhaps most instruc-
tive to compare Cassirer's work to contemporary theories in anthropol-
ogy, which were breaking from the older, linear-progressivist model of
myth as merely imaginative representation, and turning instead toward a
view of myth as the "constitutive" framework of culture as such.
Consider Bronislaw Malinowski's so-called "functionalism." Mali-
nowski follows Durkheim's claim in The Elementary Forms of Reli-
gious Life (1912) that "all religion is true," and Lucien L~vy-Bruhl's
holistic theory of myth in La Mentalitd primitive (1922), and he argues
in Myth in Primitive Psychology (1926) that myth is "not merely a story
told but a reality lived [. . .] As our sacred story lives in our ritual, in
our morality, as it governs our faith and controls our conduct, even so
does myth for the savage." Myth is not merely "primitive," but rather "a
vital ingredient in human civilization." Malinowski's great advance is
his suggestion that myth - like Durkheim's religion - provides the
basic framework for human action. It is a "narrative resurrection of a
primeval reality." Most importantly, myth lays down the conditions for
intelligibility in all human conduct, without which life succumbs to "the
most formidable and haunting idea" of mortality. Mythic structures
serve as a bulwark against meaninglessness. "They would screen, with
the vivid texture of their myths, stories, and beliefs about the spirit
world, the vast emotional void gaping beyond them." Myth is for Mali-
nowski not only the "backbone of primitive culture," but in fact "an
indispensable ingredient of all culture" (my emphasis).28
The functionalist and panmythic perspective in early sociological
and anthropological theory bears upon some of Cassirer's central
27. Wilhelm Wundt, Volkerpsychologie: eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungs-

gesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte, 10 volumes (Vols. 1-5, Leipzig: W. Engelmann,
1900-1920; Vols. 5-10, Leipzig: A. Kriner, 1920).
28. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912; Glencoe: Free
Press, 1963). Lucien L6vy-Bruhl, La Mentalitd primitive (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1922).
Bronislaw Malinowski, Myth in Primitive Psychology (New York: W.W. Norton, 1926);
republished in the collection, Malinowski and the Work ofMyth, ed. Ivan Strenski (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton UP, 1992) 77-116. On the theme of death, see esp. 108: "Death [...] is not
vague, or abstract, or difficult to grasp [ . .] [it] is fraught with horror, with a desire to remove
its threat, with the vague hope that it may be, not explained, but rather explained away, made
unreal, and actually denied." See also Malinowski as quoted in Cassirer, "Judaism and the
Modem Political Myths," Contemporary Jewish Record 7 (1944): 115-126, reprinted in Cas-
sirer, Symbol, Myth, and Culture. Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935-1945, ed.
Donald Phillip Verene (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1979) 233-241, 237. All quotes in this
paragraph are from Malinowski 77-106, inter alia.
philosophical themes. On the one hand, their generous view

anticipated and inspired the later, universalist structuralist view o
especially that articulated in Levi-Strauss's 1962 La Pensde sa
the same time, the generalized theory of myth threatened to
the objectivist relation between theorist and myth. If myth, l
matist's framework, was "good for thinking," as Levi-Strauss
this raised the question of how the explanatory methods of ant
cal science differentiate themselves from the mythical objects
If myth were truly universal, then the diachronic model of se
consciousness - from "myth" to "science" - must itself fall v
anthropological description, a conclusion that prompted Levi-S
announce, against Sartre, that historical progressivism is itself a m
Cassirer went as far as possible to endorse the generalized pr
theory of myth, but he could not surrender the diachronic theor
gressive enlightenment that justified his own stance as a ph
On the one hand, he took great pains to demonstrate that m
objectification of spirit and therefore anchored in human rati
the neo-Kantian critic Kurt Sternberg observed in a brief re
sirer's method expands upon Marburg methods to embrace no
logic of theoretical reason but also the "logic of the unlogical.
ever, mythical consciousness, unlike "truly religious" conscio
incapable of distinguishing between its own symbolism and th
symbolizes. "Every beginning of myth," Cassirer observed, "
ated by this belief in the objective character and objective for
sign." Language begins on the same plane, as a symbolic orde
ated by a mythical belief in the identity between word and th
language develops, the primal bond gives way to a new an
"stage of detachment." Finally, with the modern understandin
"spirit" achieves a "truly free" relation with its surrounding
sured by empirical, realistic criteria, the aesthetic world
world of appearance; but in severing its bond with immediat
with the material existence and efficacy which constitute the
magic and myth, [art] embodies a new step toward the truth
his generous view of myth as an "objectification" of spirit,
29. Claude L6vi-Strauss, La Pensde Sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962). For an

summation of L6vi-Strauss's views, see his Myth and Meaning: Cracking the
ture (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1978).
30. Kurt Sternberg, "Cassirer, Ernst. Prof. an der Universittit Hamburg.
sform im mythischen Denken," Kantstudien, Band 20 (1925): 194-195, 194, m
nonetheless retained an unmistakably evolutionist bias:
Thus, although myth, language, and art interpenetrate one another in

their concrete historical manifestations, the relation between them
reveals a definite systematic gradation, an ideal progression toward a
point where the spirit not only is and lives in its own creations, its self-
created symbols, but also knows them for what they are. Or, as Hegel
set out to show in his Phenomenology of Spirit: the aim of spiritual
development is that cultural reality be apprehended and expressed not
merely as substance but "equally as subject."
For Cassirer this difference remained decisive. While granting that myth
is a spontaneous expression of human consciousness, he still insisted
that myth differs crucially from the disenchanted modes of expression
- from both science and art. Whereas the mythical mind cannot recog-
nize the world as its own thoroughly human creation, the secular mind
"knows that the symbols it employs are symbols and comprehends them
as such."31 This teleological premise, that assumes enlightened self-
transparency as the natural endpoint of human development, remained a
fundamental commitment in Cassirer's philosophy throughout his
career. It is crucial for Cassirer's diagnosis of fascism, as I will explain.
Before examining that diagnosis, Cassirer's investigations of mythic
consciousness must be considered more closely. In the same year as the
publication of PSF II: Mythical Thought, Cassirer also published a
shorter essay on Language and Myth (1925). As a sort of transitional
study in PSF - between the first volume on language and the second
volume on myth - it focuses on the original bond between these two
modes of symbolization. Indeed, Cassirer takes pains to show that lin-
guistic-theoretical expression is itself born from mythical conscious-
ness. "Theoretical, practical, and aesthetic consciousness, the world of
language and of morality, the basic forms of community and the state,"
all of these, he claims, are "originally tied up with mythico-religious
conceptions." The mythic world is, in Cassirer's view, a sort of primal
unity, which only broke apart into discrete spheres of expressive con-
sciousness over the course of the advancement civilization. Certainly,
Cassirer remained wedded to the view that spontaneity is an intrinsic
feature of human consciousness whatever its developmental stage. But,
he hastened to note, because mythical consciousness does not recognize
31. The same point is repeated forcefully in the closing passage of Cassirer's
shorter, transitional study from 1925, Language and Myth, esp. 98-99.
its role in the creation of mythic phenomena, it ascribes autono

and non-human authority to its own linguistic creations.
The single most dramatic piece of evidence for the mythical,
human conception of language in primitive cultures, Cassirer claim
the Melanesian category of "mana," which a variety of anthropo
had subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny during the pre
decades.32 Though its definition is much disputed among sc
mana seems to denote "supernatural power" which, in Cass
description, "permeates all things and events, and may be prese
in objects, now in persons, yet is never bound exclusively to any
and individual subject or object as its host." It is less an objectiv
ture of things than it is a medium to identify elements of the world
evoke mythic "wonder" and seem to "stand forth from the ord
background of familiar, mundane existence."33 Mana is further
that myth does not merely consist of a set of discrete agencies o
gods, but is, in fact, best understood as a primitive means for or
ing experience. "[T]he whole existence of things," Cassirer writes
the activity of mankind seem to be embedded, so to speak, in a m
cal 'field of force,' an atmosphere of potency which permeates
thing." Mana, like language, was to be catalogued among
"spiritual functions which do not take their departure from a wo
given objects, divided according to fixed and finished attributes
which actually first produce this organization of reality and ma
positing of attributes possible." As Cassirer notes approvingly, the Fr
anthropologists Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss go so far as to d
mana "a fundamental category of mythical thinking."34 And in hi
English-language summation, An Essay on Man, Cassirer therefor
mana "the first, or existential, dimension of the supernatural."35
The strongest evidence for this "mythic" understanding of lan
can be found in ancient cosmogony which once featured the "Wo
the privileged medium of creation. The native practice of word-
functions by identifying word and object. It is predicated on an
tial identity between the word and what it denotes." But if the th
its name are regarded as a primal unity, it suffices for somethin
32. For a short list of exemplary scholarship on mana, see Cassirer, PSE II 76
33. LM66.
34. Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, "Esquisse d'une thdorie g6n6r
Ann&e sociologique 7 (1902-03): 1-146, my emphasis.
35. EM99-100.
named in order for it to be brought forth magically into existence. More

specifically, word-magic conceives of the human subject itself as utterly
interwoven with the linguistic fabric of things. In mythic thinking, Cas-
sirer writes, "even a person's ego, his very self and personality, is indis-
solubly linked [. . .] with his name." The "unity and uniqueness" of the
name serves not only to designate the person, but actually "constitutes
it; the name is what first makes man an individual."36
The logical affinity between language and myth, however, is not
merely a feature of primitive thought. In a brief and uncharacteristic
moment, Cassirer admits that the modem subject depends upon the spe-
cial, constitutive function of language in the formation of everyday
experience. In science, of course, it is possible to supplant a great deal
of organic language with the more artificial language of mathematical
symbolization. But for everyday personal and interpersonal relations,
organic language remains indispensable, not only as a means of com-
munication but as the constitutive medium of meaning itself.
Indeed, it is the Word, it is language, that really reveals to man that

world which is closer to him than any world of natural objects and
touches [him] more directly than physical nature. For it is language
that makes his existence in a community possible; and only in society,
in relation to a "Thou," can his subjectivity assert itself as a "Me." But
here again the creative act while it is in progress, is not recognized as
such; all the energy of that spiritual achievement is projected into the
result of it, and seems bound up in that object from which it seems to
emanate as by reflection.37
From this comment, one might discern an element of hesitation in Cas-

sirer's thinking. The original bond between mythic and linguistic modes
of symbolization never vanished entirely. Language, "while it is in
progress," appears as a force independent of its user. To be sure, secu-
lar consciousness lost the illusion of non-human existence in mythic
imagery. Further, scientific explanation sought to dispense with all but
the most artificial systems of symbolization. But if myth is disen-
chanted and has consequently forfeited its power of social cohesion,
language still preserves something of the same quasi-mythic opacity.
Language, then, even "secular" language, might bear persistent traces of
mythic elements, in so far as language and myth constitute individual and
36. LM49-51.
37. LM61. Cassirer emphasizes "community," the other emphasis is m
social identity. Ordinary experience might preserve the sense of passiv

that originally belonged to the mythic conception of language. If, so, t
Cassirer would admit a non-spontaneous character in all meaning-s
tures, mythic and secular alike. But whether Cassirer really meant that
element of mythic receptivity remains in the secular conception of rea
might be disputed. In any event, the qualification poses no signif
problem for his theory more generally. Even without this prerequisite,
instructive to compare Cassirer's model of mythical consciousnes
Heidegger's analysis, since Heidegger admits no transformation wh
ever in the basic structures of meaning. Indeed, the passivity that belo
to Cassirer's chief characteristics of the mythic conception of lang
closely resembles the "thrownness" that Heidegger considers a basic
acteristic of all human meaning, as summarized in his statement that i
not man, but instead "it is language that speaks."38
It is important to emphasize that Cassirer's overall theory of sec
ization introduced a crucial distinction into the comparison of m
and modern consciousness. Whereas mythic thought remains con
to the illusion of receptivity, modem consciousness can, at any mom
free itself from the language-like texture of its surroundings to r
nize its own agency. Cassirer concluded that
we are faced with a characteristic of mythic thinking which divides it

sharply from the way of"discursive" or theoretical, reflection. The lat-
ter is characterized by the fact that even in apparently immediately
"given" data it recognizes an element of mental creation [...] Even in
matters of fact it reveals an aspect of mental formulation; even in
sheer sense data it traces the influence of a "spontaneity of thought"
that goes to their making. - But while logical reflection tends [ . .] to
resolve all receptivity into spontaneity, mythic conception shows
exactly the opposite tendency, namely, to regard all spontaneous
action as something receptive, and all human achievement as some-
thing merely bestowed.'9
For Cassirer, the difference between "mythical" and modern, "the

cal" thought remained decisive. Whereas myth regards meani
something "bestowed" and does not recognize the primitive eviden
its own mental activity in mythic forms, theoretical reflection em
38. Martin Heidegger, "...Poetically Man Dwells...," Poetry, Language, Thoug

trans. Albert Hofstadter (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1971) 211-229; 216.
39. LM60, my emphasis.
from the self-negating "dialectic of mythical consciousness," and passes

through the higher and more self-consciously symbolizing stage of reli-
gion, to reach at last the apogee of development where human con-
sciousness sees worldly experience - even experiences of mere fact -
as governed by its own mental principles. This essentially Kantian
insight into the "spontaneity of thought" is only possible for a subject
who has achieved the self-transparency and demythologized understand-
ing characteristic of secular modemrnity.40 In its final stages, the symbol-
izing function "leaves [. . .] behind" both myth and religion, and rises to
a mode of "aesthetic consciousness" in which the imagistic expressions
of mind relinquish any claim to non-subjective "reality." In art, the
fruits of symbolizing consciousness
confess themselves to be illusion as opposed to the empirical reality of

things; but this illusion has its own truth because it possesses its own
law. In the return to this law there arises a new freedom of conscious-
ness: the image no longer reacts upon the spirit as an independent
material thing but becomes for the spirit a pure expression of its own
creative power.41
In sum, Cassirer's philosophy rested upon a teleological premise that

takes the enlightenment subject as the necessary goal of human devel-
opment. Moreover, it provides an unapologetic defense of secularism as
the precondition for any truly philosophical account of myth: Because
only secular consciousness can recognize the "spiritual necessity" from
which myth is derived, it follows that only secular consciousness can
possibly possess the requisite instruments to subject mythological sys-
tems to genuinely philosophical understanding.42 It is worth noting that
Cassirer's commitment to the Kantian conception of a transcendental
self marks the decisive difference between his theory of myth and that
of Levi-Strauss, which Paul Ricoeur aptly summarizes, in a phrase cited
approvingly by the author, as "Kantism without a transcendental sub-
ject.'"43 The danger attendant with this view is that the anthropological
description is robbed of its non-mythic status, an implication which Levi-
Strauss embraced in the introductory remarks to The Raw and the Cooked
40. See esp. PSF II, Part IV, "The Dialectic of Mythical Consciousnes" 235-61.
41. PSF II 261, my emphasis.
42. PSE II, English 21.
43. Paul Ricoeur, "Symbole et temporaliti," Archivo di Filosofia 1-2 (1963): 24;
quoted in L6vi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, Introduction to a Science of Mythology,
trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: Octagon Books, 1979) 11, originally Le
Cru et le Cuit (Paris: Plon, 1964).
(1964) and he affirmed that his own reconstructions were them

species of myth. While this generalized and fully synchronic theory
collapsing the distinction between science and mythology, Cassir
toricized model of Kantian spontaneity wards off the specter of ant
logical relativism and in so doing, equips him with a pree
justification for his own analysis.44 It was precisely Cassirer's ass
of a "secular" or transcendental consciousness that Heidegger dispute
Cassirer and Heidegger on Myth and Subjectivity

For more than twenty years, Cassirer and Heidegger engaged
uneasy and often interrupted philosophical discussion that r
chiefly around the question of myth. The debate began in 1923
the two philosophers exchanged thoughts during a local "Kant
meeting in Hamburg. In Being and Time, Heidegger acknowledg
sirer for having "recently made the Dasein of myth a theme fo
sophical interpretation," and the following year he publis
extended review of Cassirer's myth-philosophy as presented
Volume II. Their most extensive discussion occurred in the spr
1929, when they met publicly at Davos, Switzerland for a drama
putation concerning the broader aims of Kantian philosoph
again, the conversation hinged on contrasting models of human
tivity, and Heidegger energetically disputed the Kantian premi
Cassirer's ideal of freedom. There is some evidence, albeit unce
that Heidegger might have behaved toward Cassirer with no
aggression.45 It is certain, however, that relations between them
shortly thereafter. Cassirer's 1932 review of Heidegger's boo
and the Problem of Metaphysics, in Kantstudien, expanded
sharpened the criticism of Heidegger's work he made public thr
44. This doctrine of secularization as a self-justifying description of phil

practice is repeated most forcefully in the introductory comments to volume thre
is devoted to the logic of scientific explanation. "For the concept of philosophy
full power and purity only where the world view expressed in linguistic and myth
cepts is abandoned, where it is in principle overcome. The logic of philosophy firs
tutes itself by this very act of transcendence. To achieve its own maturity, philos
above all come to grips with the linguistic and mythical worlds and place itself in
opposition to them. Only in this way can it define and assert is concepts of es
truth." PSF, III 16.
45. According to Hendrik J. Pos, Heidegger did not shake Cassirer's h
"Recollections of Ernst Cassirer," The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, ed. Pa
Schlipp, Vol. 6, The Library of the Living Philosophers (La Salle, IL: Open Cour
61-72, 69.
earlier. More recently, a little-known manuscript from 1929 entitled

"Spirit and Life" has come to light that Cassirer had meant to include in
a projected fourth volume of PSF. In it he accuses Heidegger of aban-
doning philosophical objectivity and falling into a religiously-tinged
solipsism. Even more dramatic are the closing pages of The Myth of the
State, where Cassirer condemns Heidegger for having endorsed "mod-
ern political myths."46
In order to understand the stakes of this dispute, one must consider
Heidegger's remarks on mythic consciousness in Being and Time. It is
also helpful to recall that the book's broader aim was to lay out a phe-
nomenological description of the basic structure of human understand-
ing. Moreover, he insists from the outset that human understanding only
shows itself in the unfolding process of existence itself. There is, in
other words, no core "essence" of human being besides that which takes
shape in the course of living one's life and interpretatively developing
one's identity along the way. "Dasein's 'essence,'" Heidegger claimed,
"just is and is nothing other than its existence." First and most trivially,
this means that understanding the world is something that occurs wholly
"in-the-world." Heidegger, like Kant and Cassirer following him,
showed little patience for extramundane speculation. More importantly,
this implies that the basic structures of human understanding are
grounded in everyday life. There is no special "spirit" or "transcenden-
tal self," Heidegger claimed, that lies somewhere beneath the worldly
self as its logical support. There is, however, a "logic" to existence
itself, in that one's interpretative activity in the world exhibits certain
modes of understanding that admit of formal description. In Being and
Time Heidegger strove to differentiate those modes through what he
called an "existential analytic."
This so-called existential analytic was clearly offered as a corrective
to what Kant had called the "transcendental" analytic in the Critique of
Pure Reason. An important difference is Heidegger's belief that human
understanding does not enjoy "transcendental" prestige, as it does not rest
upon a foundation other than its own temporal existence, or Dasein. This
belief sets Heidegger at odds with Cassirer, whose entire philosophy, as
shown above, rests upon the presupposition that human understanding
exhibits an unmistakable moment of "spontaneity." Heidegger rejected
any philosophy that sought to isolate principles of mental spontaneity
46. MS 355.
within the structure of human understanding. Rather than begi

with any so-called "transcendental" logic and analyzing reas
abstraction from practice, Heidegger claims that the basic ru
human meaning are best discerned by concentrating upon the wa
interpretative activity actually works in medias res. Thus he reject
attempt to isolate rules of meaning from existence, specifically,
method of epoch&, or "bracketing" that is the hallmark of Husse
"transcendental phenomenology." Instead, he concentrates his an
on that always-situated sort of interpretative practice which Hu
identifies with "the natural conception of the world."47 In Heideg
own terminology, the task is to explicate the meaning-struct
human existence in its "everydayness" [Alltaglichkeit].48
Heidegger's interest in myth and "primitive" consciousness
directly from his methodological focus on everydayness. In the f
section of the expository chapter of Being and Time, Heide
announces "the task of a preparatory analysis of Dasein," and wa
readers not to mistake the philosophical engagement of everyday
for a sophisticated rejection of modernity: "Everydayness does not
cide with primitiveness," he explains, and it must be considered
stant modality of Dasein's being, "even when that Dasein is activ
highly developed and differentiated culture.'"49 Heidegger is str
opposed to nostalgic attempts to locate the more "genuine" aspect
human life in what is merely "some primitive stage of Dasein
which we can become acquainted empirically through the medium
anthropology." With "everydayness" he wishes only to draw philo
cal attention to the fact that human interpretative activities are, f
most part, lived in the manner of absorbed and non-discursive con
Everydayness is a modality for all human understanding, and, am
other things, this implied that primitive Dasein exhibits everydayn
less and no more than does any sort of "developed" culture. Heid
was therefore wary of anthropological studies, which tended in his
to rely upon a naively empiricist technique for gathering inform
47. Indeed, Husserl suggested that working out a logic of the natural concepti
the world was a crucial task for phenomenology. See Ideas, I. General Introduction
Phenomenology, trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Macmillan, 1931), esp. 101-
48. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 11th ed. (Ttibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1
hereafter, SZ. Translations from Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John M
rie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), hereafter, BT. Qu
from SZ s 9, 67-71, esp. 70, translation modified.
49. SZ s 11, 76-77, 76, original emphasis.
about native systems of meaning. "Ethnology itself," he warned,

"already presupposes as its clue an inadequate analytic of Dasein."50
Despite this warning, Heidegger's existential analysis of myth closely
resembled that of Malinowski's functionalism, according to which myth
serves a universal human purpose: to render livable that sense of "over-
whelming foreboding, behind which, even for the native, there lurks the
idea of an inevitable and ruthless fatality."51 What Malinowski called
the "pragmatic charter of primitive belief," and the "backbone" of com-
munity, Heidegger now identified as the "background" to the lived-prag-
matic world.52 Like Durkheim and Malinowski, Heidegger sees that a
certain methodological advantage can be derived from fixing one's
attention on the "life of primitive peoples," because:
'primitive phenomena' are often less concealed and less complicated

by extensive self-interpretation on the part of the Dasein in question.
Primitive Dasein often speaks to us more directly in terms ofa primor-
dial absorption in 'phenomena' [. . .] A way of conceiving things
which seems, perhaps, rather clumsy and crude from our standpoint
[therefore], can be positively helpful in bringing out the ontological
structures of phenomena in a genuine way.53
Although Heidegger sees human culture as the ongoing work of self-

interpretation, he suggests that there might be an added benefit in
attending more specifically to primitive cultures, in which the basic out-
lines of "everydayness" remain most vivid.54 As evidence of how phi-
losophers can learn from the study of primitive culture, Heidegger
specifically cites Cassirer's PSF II: Mythical Thought, which contains
"clues of far-reaching importance." However, he already registers
50. SZ 5 1; BT 76.
51. Malinowski, "Myth in Primitive Psychology" 108.
52. Malinowski, "Myth in Primitive Psychology" 82.
53. SZ51;BT 76.
54. It is worth noting that Heidegger's attraction to primitive systems of meanin
that are "less concealed" in their ontological structure resembles Malinowski's argumen
and also those put forth by Emile Durkheim in his classic study, The Elementary Forms o
Religious Life (1912). For Durkheim, "all religion is true," and all cultures express som
variant of religion, just as Heidegger finds "everydayness" in all culture. More impor
tantly, both Heidegger and Durkheim believe that the focus on "primitive" belief is m
useful methodologically, that it discloses the structure of human meaning in "simpler" an
more vivid fashion. Primitive religion, he argues, is "crude and rudimentary," and not ye
"elaborated" to the point of obscuring their deeper structure. See Durkheim, The Elem
tary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen Fields (New York: The Free Press, 1995) 7.
doubts concerning Cassirer's transcendental presupposition

remains an open question," he writes, "whether the foundations
Interpretation are sufficiently transparent - whether [...] the ar
tonics and [. . .] systematic content of Kant's Critique of Pure R
can provide a possible design for such a task, or whether a n
more primordial approach may not here be needed."55
If Heidegger did not make sufficiently clear what he found uns
tory, the broader drift of his remarks is evident. Cassirer's stu
myth presupposes a Kantian model of subjectivity and it regards
through the distorting lens of transcendental consciousness
Heidegger argues, if mythological study is to have any bearing
philosophical analysis of everydayness, it must be anchored in a
different model of the subject. Heidegger's focus on the practic
situated quality of "everyday" meaning offers a superior m
human Dasein precisely because it avoids any reference to a "cons
ness" that is split off from its interpretative activity. But then a
and "more primordial" method is needed. For such a task, Heide
suggests, only phenomenology will do. To strengthen his case b
parison, he observes, rather disingenuously, that Cassirer himsel
cedes the usefulness of a phenomenological approach in
Moreover, he notes that, in his 1923 conversation with Cassirer in
burg, "we had agreed in demanding an existential analytic."56
Heidegger's doubts regarding the validity of transcendental sub
ity when applied to myth was most explicit in his lengthy critic
Cassirer's PSE II that he published in 1928.57 Now there was no
taking his criticism. "The neo-Kantian orientation to the proble
consciousness," wrote Heidegger, "is so disadvantageous, that it
hinders a firm footing in the center of the problem."58 The dif
was that Cassirer already assumed the "ontological constitution"
subject prior to his investigation, while "a radical ontology of Da
55. BT 290, n. xi.

56. SZ Div. I, Ch. 1, n. xi.
57. Martin Heidegger, "Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. 2.
Teil: Das mythische Denken. Berlin 1925" (Review). Originally, Deutsche Literaturzei-
tung, N.F. 5, Heft 21 (1928): 1000-1012. Reprinted as Appendix II in Kant und der Prob-
lem der Metaphysik, 5th ed. (Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1991) 255-270; in
English as "Review of Mythic Thought," The Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin Heideg-
ger, trans. James Hart and John Maraldo (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1976) 32-45,
hereafter, MH: Review ofPSFII.
58. MH: Review of PSFII 42.
the light of the problem of Being in general" was required. The analy-
sis of mana, for example, seemed to highlight the fact that mythic
human existence does not conceive of its meaning-systems as mere
"representations" that are simply "present" [vorhanden] to a conscious-
ness. Mana, in particular, was a powerful illustration of the fact that, for
"mythic Dasein," the meaningfulness of the world could not be por-
trayed as born from the sovereign capacities of an expressive subject.
Which is the mode of being of mythic "life" which enables the mana-
representation to function as the guiding [. . .] understanding of
Being? The possible answer to this question of course presupposes a
previous working out of the basic ontological constitution of Dasein.
If this basic constitution is to be found in "care," [.. .] then it becomes
clear that mythic Dasein is primarily determined by "thrownness"
[Geworfenheit].59
For Heidegger, mana indicates a mode of meaning not subject to human

control. Therefore, it is presumptuous for Cassirer to describe mana
from the point of view of a specifically "modern" and enlightenment
consciousness, as if it is obvious that mythic thinking expresses the dis-
engagement and "presence" characteristic of a Kantian subject. "In
'thrownness,'" Heidegger concludes, "mythic Dasein, in its manner of
being-in-the-world, is delivered up to the world in such a way that it is
overwhelmed by that to which it is delivered up."60
The difference is dramatic. For Heidegger, the analysis of mythic
meaning can only succeed if it presupposes a subject characterized by
"thrownness" and not "spontaneity" as its methodological point of
departure. This implies that one should not presume a subject that is
split from the "objects" it represents on the ontological level. The sense
of being "overwhelmed" by representations is not, as Cassirer supposed,
merely an illusion inflicted upon a primitive consciousness that lacks
rational insight into its own powers of creation. Instead, it is an experi-
ence of all human existence in its "everyday" mode. Cassirer assumes as
"a basic rule which governs all development" that "spirit achieves true
and complete inwardness only in expressing itself."61 But even this
model of expression points away from the Kantian model of subjectivity
as sovereign and toward a model of subjecthood as dependent. To
59. MH: Review ofPSFII 43.

60. MH: Review of PSFII 43.
61. MH: Review of PSFII44; citing German of PSFII 242; and English PSFII 196.
emphasize this point, Heidegger poses a purely rhetorical que

"What is the ontological constitution of human Dasein which ac
for the fact that it, as it were, comes to its proper self only by way
detour through the world?"62
As this abbreviated summary may suggest, the disagreement be
Cassirer and Heidegger concerning the appropriate subject-mode
the study of myth was not an isolated affair. It was rooted in m
basic, ontologicalassumptions regarding the constitution of lang
meaning, and the self. As noted above, Cassirer regarded the prim
understanding of myth as essentially a misunderstanding, since h
it as a given thatall myth and language are the projections of sov
human consciousness. Because only the modern subject could
nize culture as the effects of its own creative agency, the only
analysis of myth was that performed by the modemrn, secular m
Heidegger, by contrast, wished to address myth on its own terms,
meant that he saw the experience of dependency as something i
inable from phenomenological description. He also supposed that
promises a "more direct" or simplified illustration of how "ever
ness" functions more generally. He concluded that the mythical s
dependency - myth as thrownness - could afford philosophy a c
glimpse into the ontological constitution of human existence as such.6
62. MH: Review of PSFII 45. The Heideggerian perspective implies that my
structure without transcendental anchor, and without a "center" or point of naturali
tact with the real - a view that closely anticipates Jacques Derrida's criticism of
Ldvi-Strauss's views in his address, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of th
Sciences," first published in Derrida, L'dcriture et la dfference (Paris: Editions d
1967); in English as Writing andDifference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: U Chicago
63. Habermas eloquently summarizes Cassirer's view: "The position of human
in the world is defined by a form-giving power which transforms sense impress
meaningful structures. Human beings master the forces of nature which rush in up
through symbols which spring from the productive imagination. Thus they gain a d
from the immediate pressure of nature. Of course, they pay for this emancipation w
mental dependence on a semanticized nature, which returns in the spellbindingforce o
ical images. That first act of distantiation must therefore be repeated in the course of
development." Jiirgen Habermas, "The Liberating Power of Symbols: Ernst C
Humanistic Legacy and the Warburg Library," The Liberating Power of Symbols: Ph
ical Essays, trans. Peter Dews (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001) 1-29, 24, my em
64. This view of dependency is summarized in Heidegger's almost "mythica
nouncement that humanity does not possess language, since language is the "
Being." See Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," Pathmarks, ed. William McNei
bridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998) 254.
The Davos Encounter and the Myth-Debate

The contrast between thrown and spontaneous subjectivity was
brought to a head during Heidegger and Cassirer's famous meeting at
Davos in 1929. The proposed topic was Kant's philosophy, which
remained a major touchstone for any broader philosophical discussion.
Even in the Weimar era, Kant was, in Heinrich Rickert's phrase, the
"philosopher of modem culture."65 It seemed natural to organize the
public encounter between Cassirer and Heidegger as a debate over the
proper interpretation of Kantian doctrine.
It quickly became obvious that not only did Cassirer and Heidegger
disagree about how best to read Kant, but more profoundly, about the
status of philosophy as such. Indeed, Cassirer quickly discerned that
Heidegger deploys Kant as an opportunity to promote his own "existen-
tial" brand of phenomenology. After listening to Heidegger's attempt to
transform Kantian epistemology into what he called a "groundlaying for
metaphysics" for three weeks, Cassirer complained that
there is hardly a single concept which has been paraphrased with so

little clarity as that of neo-Kantianism. What does Heidegger have in
mind when he employs the phenomenological critique in place of the
neo-Kantian one? Neo-Kantianism is the scapegoat [Stindenbock] of
the newer philosophy.66
Heidegger's entire presentation of "existential" philosophy is, Cassirer

claimed, based upon a one-sided caricature of the Marburg neo-Kantian
legacy. Heidegger spoke as if Cohen's entire teaching could be reduced
to a mere theory of scientific discovery, whereas, in fact, Cassirer sug-
gested, the term "neo-Kantianism" was best understood not "substan-
tially" but "functionally." The Kantian view is not reducible to a "kind
of philosophy as dogmatic doctrinal system" [als dogmatisches Lehr-
system] but is instead "a direction for posing questions." [eine Richtung
der Fragestellung]67
65. Heinrich Rickert, Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur; ein geschichtsphil-
osophischer Versuch (Tilbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1924).
66. "Davos Disputation," cited in the original Davos transcript from Otto Friedrich
Bollnow and Joachim Ritter, Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,
GS, Band 3 (1973) 274-296, in English, in Heidegger, Kant and the Problem ofMetaphys-
ics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1990) 171-185; 171, translation
ammended. Hereafter cited as Davos. For documentation and interpretative esssays, see
most recently, Dominic Kaegi and Enno Rudolph, eds. Cassirer - Heidegger 70 Jahre
Davoser Debatte (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 2002).
67. Davos 171.
But if Cassirer is right, then the difference between his own

Kantian "direction" of philosophical inquiry and Heidegger's "ex
tial" orientation is even more dramatic than it appeared at first. K
ism is merely the "scapegoat" for a general disagreement concer
the status of the "modern" subject in philosophy. Cassirer insis
the theory of symbolic forms illustrates the validity of the Kantian-
scendental subject-model, since the theory shows how human ex
ence in diverse spheres is governed by the formative action of
spirit itself. It is the principle of form, Cassirer said, that allows the
ject to "transpose everything in him which is lived experience int
objective shape," in which he discovers nothing but his own
energy "objectified" as world-meaning. There is, Cassirer affirm
true spiritual realm," but it is nothing more or less than "the sp
world created from himself."68 Moreover, whatever one's doubt
cerning the origins of human culture, it is clear that ethics prov
illustration of the human capacity to live by forms one has ones
ated. Cassirer concludes that this is the essence of Kantian auton
and through the categorical imperative, the human being is capab
"breakthrough" [Durchbruch] to a plane "which is no longer relat
the finitude" of mere existence.69
Heidegger, not surprisingly, found such arguments unacceptabl
he noted that any inquiry into the "essence" of human being m
founded on an ontological basis quite different from the neo-K
premise of mental spontaneity. "How is the inner structure of
itself," he asked, "is it finite or infinite?" To answer this qu
Heidegger claimed, one must return to "philosophy's central pr
atic," which implies throwing man "into the totality of beings" in or
"reveal to him there, with all his freedom, the nothingness of his Da
Heidegger understood that from the neo-Kantian position, a ph
pher's fixation on themes of world-dependency or finitude appear
tle more than an "occasion for pessimism and melancholy." But it
fact an "occasion for understanding [...] that philosophy has the
throwing man back, so to speak, into the hardness of his fate fr
shallow aspect of a man who merely uses the work of the spirit."70
Cassirer's allusion to ethics does not prove the self's "infinite"
mative agency, since even the categorical imperative requires a
68. Davos 179.
69. Davos 291.
70. Davos 291.
being whose capacities for self-transparency are, Heidegger claims,

necessarily limited to mortal existence.
In the Categorical Imperative we have something which goes beyond

the finite creature. But precisely the concept of the Imperative as such
shows the inner reference to a finite creature. Also, this going-beyond
to something higher is always just a going-beyond to the finite creature,
to one which is created (angel). This transcendence too still remains
within the [sphere of] creatureliness [Geschapflichkeit] and finitude.71
For Heidegger, the transcendental capacities of the self are severely lim-
ited by the constitutive features of "creatureliness." What Cassirer cele-
brates as the human ability to "live" in obedience to one's own rules is,
from another perspective, further evidence of the fact that mental
agency cannot achieve, as Cassirer contends, any true "breakthrough" to
a sphere of absolute objectivity. Heidegger's startling reference to an
"angel" demonstrates that his philosophical rejection of an enlighten-
ment model of mental spontaneity draws upon religious resources.
The Davos disputation has remained a reference point in the history
of philosophy, not least because it has afforded many commentators
with a dramatic illustration of the cultural rift which threatened Ger-
man culture in 1929.72 There is some evidence that the public confron-
tation between the two philosophers was not entirely amicable. One of
Cassirer's students has written that when Cassirer offered his hand to
his interlocutor at the end of the discussion, Heidegger refused to take it.
71. Davos 279.

72. On the Davos disputation, see the excellent study by Michael Friedma
ing of the Ways (Chicago: Open Court, 2000); and also Pierre Aubenque, Luc F
Rudolph, Jean-Francois Courtine, and Fabien Capeillires, "Roundtable Di
'Philosophie und Politik: Die Davoser Disputation zwischen Ernst Cassirer
Heidegger in der Retrospektive'," Internationale Zeitschriftfiir Philosophie, H
290-312; Aubenque, "Le Ddbat de 1929 entre Cassirer et Heidegger" Ernst
Marbourg /i New York, L'intindraire philosophique, ed. Jean Seidengart (Pa
tions du Cerf, 1990) 81-96; Wayne Cristaudo, "Heidegger and Cassirer: Being
and Politics," Kantstudien 82 (1991): 469-483; Karlfried Griinder, "Cassirer un
in Davos, 1929" Ober Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der Symbolishen Formen
Jirg Braun, Helmut Holzhey, and Emrnst W. Orth (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp
Michael Krois, "Aufklrung und Metaphysik: Zur Philosophie Cassirers und d
Debatte mit Heidegger," Internationale Zeitschriftfiir Philosophie 2 (1992): 2
nis A. Lynch, "Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger: The Davos Debate," Kan
(1990): 360-370; Frank Schalow, "Thinking at Cross Purposes with Kant: R
tude, and Truth in the Cassirer-Heidegger Debate," Kantstudien 87 (1996): 1
Calvin O.Shrag, "Heidegger and Cassirer on Kant," Kantstudien 58 (1967): 87
Moreover, four years later, Heidegger assumed the position of R

Freiburg University under the aegis of the National Socialists, w
Cassirer and his wife fled Hamburg in 1933, first to Vienna, and
England and Sweden, before settling in the United States in 1941.
Many critics have been tempted to read Cassirer's confrontatio
Heidegger in a straightforwardly political fashion. For Pierre Bo
it appeared obvious that Heidegger's language is little more
barely encrypted "irrationalism," a "conservative revolution" d
against liberal-democracy and the cultural legacy of Kant.73 Eve
gen Habermas transforms Cassirer's arguments into presentist p
material when he notes that the "humanist legacy which C
bequeaths to us through his philosophy consists not least in sens
us to the fake primordiality of political myths." In what seems a
tional reference to Heidegger, Habermas hastens to add that "C
makes us wary of the intellectual celebration of archaic origins,
is widespread today as in the 1930s."74
It would be rash, however, to read the Heidegger-Cassirer dis
any directly "political" fashion.75 The Davos encounter was onl
moment in an ongoing philosophical discussion as to whether th
emrnist's faith in the autonomy of the subject is warranted. Cas
essentially Kantian view of spontaneous consciousness contrasts d
cally with Heidegger's theory of human being-in-the-world as
tially "thrown." Significantly, Cassirer's portrait of mythic consc
bears striking resemblance to Heidegger's portrait of Dasein, n
standing its historical status, primitive or modern. For exampl
73. Bourdieu's violent reduction of philosophy to little more than a field of

power seems remarkably inconsistent with any defense of rationalism. Of cour
not Bourdieu's point, since he reflexively admits the embeddedness of his own
tive. Still, he risks making a merely ad hominem allegory when he suggests tha
ger's hostility to the grand masters of Kantianism, especially Cassirer, was ro
profound incompatibility with their alien habitus," which included the tensio
"this dark, atheletic little man," and the "white-haired man, Olympian not only in
ance but in spirit." One should note that Bourdieu is quoting the memoir of an
member at Davos; the question remains what Heidegger's "dark" appearance is
to indicate in contrast to Cassirer's prematurely white hair. Needless to say, the
Olympian reference aside, calls upon a panoply of mythical oppositions. See Pie
dieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991)
74. Habermas, "The Liberating Power of Symbols" 26.
75. For a longer treatment of the problems involved in the political interpre
the Davos encounter, see my essay, "Continental Divide: Ernst Cassirer and
Heidegger at Davos, 1929 - an Allegory of Intellectual History," Modern In
History 1.2 (2004): 219-248.
Cassirer considered peculiar to the mythic conception of space - where

"zones and directions [Orte und Richtungen] of space stand out from one
another because a different accent of meaning is connected with them" -
anticipates the "existential" of space-as-environment that Heidegger con-
sidered a structural feature of being-in-the-world. "If Dasein, in its con-
cern, brings something close by, this does not signify that it fixes
something at a spatial position with a minimal distance from some points
of the body"; it signifies a "regional" and ready-to-hand involvement inso-
far as it is "something [. . .] we can come across [...] as having form and
direction [wird das Zuhandene nach Form und Richtung vorfindlich]."76
The apparent similarity between these two theories of space is even
more striking, because Cassirer emphasizes the merely provisional sta-
tus of the mythic conception. He claims that myth, by force of its own
dialectical logic, must eventually "go beyond" itself to the more
abstracted symbolism of religion, and eventually to the enlightened
frameworks of science.77 On Cassirer's view, myth necessarily outgrew
those very modes of understanding that Heidegger considered permanent
and structural "existentials" of human being.78 Moreover, in a footnote to
PSF, Cassirer hinted at a resemblance between the mythic conception of
language and certain characteristics of "psychopathology."79 This is a
profound, but politically indeterminate remark. Still, it contains a force-
ful anticipation of Cassirer's later claim that Heidegger's philosophy is
itself symptomatic of the modern reversion to myth. Almost twenty years
later, once Cassirer had begun teaching in America, he expanded on this
argument in his own, expressly political assessment of Heidegger's think-
ing in what was to be his final work, The Myth of the State.
Cassirer's Political Testament

Cassirer's The Myth of the State is one of the faded classics of mid-
twentieth-century intellectual history. A genealogy of National Socialism,
76. Cassirer, PSF II 96 (German 122); Heidegger, BT 144-45; SZ 110-111.

77. See esp. PSF, II, Part IV, "The Dialectic of Mythical Consciousness" 235-261.
78. For Cassirer's explicit remarks on surpassing Heideggerian pragmatic space, see
the remarks in PSF, Vol. III: "What distinguishes our own undertaking from that of
Heidegger is above all that it does not stop at this stage of the at-hand and its mode of spa-
tiality, but without challenging Heidegger's position goes beyond it; for we wish to follow
the road leading from spatiality as a factor in the at-hand to space as a form of existence,
and furthermore to show how this road leads right through the domain of symbolic forma-
tion." 149 n. 4, my emphasis.
79. See PSF II 41-42, n. 13.
it presents the history of political thought as an ongoing s

between "logos" and "mythos," between a "rational" theory of t
promoting freedom and autonomy, and a "mythic" theory presen
world as governed by forces beyond human control, condemni
unfreedom and ontological passivity. Within this broad scheme,
emphasizes those moments of struggle between logos and myt
anticipate the modern clash between the republican ideal of aut
the fascist myth of collective submission. He takes particular
prove how the contemporary encounter with mythic politics is r
ancient sources. Plato's "struggle against myth" and the consequ
ishment of the arts from the polis is only an expression of that
"rationalist" tendency in Platonic thought, which, Cassirer
teaches "how to classify and systematize our concepts," to impo
upon the world and bring "the chaos of our minds, of our des
passions, of our political and social life [.. .] into order and harmo
For Cassirer, a rational theory of politics cannot be defined i
tion from broader philosophical commitments. A politics o
gains its definitive character only insofar as it draws upon a tr
dental theory of mind, and as a rational epistemology implies sp
ity, it demands a model of the subject that is capable of actively
the rules that order its experience. Similarly, rational politics
"autarky" or self-rule: To be rational is to enjoy an active share
governance. But for Cassirer, there is more than an analogy betw
epistemological and political manifestations of reason. As d
above, Cassirer believes that "mythic" consciousness is essentia
pable of recognizing its own formative agency. It follows that a
cal vision of the world lacks the experience of self-transparen
autarky requires. Only a fully secular consciousness achieves th
measure of self-recognition and therefore self-governance.81
Cassirer illustrates this point by assessing some of the paramou
ures of Western political theory. Machiavelli's theory of statecr
example, can hardly be considered a perfect expression of autark
government is solely for the prince and not the people. Noneth
is an important step in the "secularization of the symbol of For
Although originally a mythic force beyond human appeal,
80. MS 93.
81. For a summary of this theme in German Idealism, see my review essay
Authorizing Modernity, Problems of Interpretation in the History of German I
History and Theory 44 (Feb. 2005): 121-137.
82. MS 199, emphasis in original.
becomes in Machiavelli's thinking a principle at least potentially

responsive to human agency. Cassirer notes that for Machiavelli the true
measure of princely skill is the ability to achieve some measure of ratio-
nal mastery. "Man is not subdued to Fortune; he is not at the mercy of
winds and waves. He must choose his course and steer his course." But,
Cassirer hastened to add, "if he fails to perform this duty Fortune scorns
and deserts him." Machiavelli is admittedly "the first philosophical
advocate of a resolute militarism," but as a theorist of political logos he
is most significant for his belief that statecraft must be achieved by "a
clear, cool, and logical mind."83
From Machiavelli to the seventeenth-century foundations of social
contract theory, Cassirer saw only a small step. Here, too, he celebrates
the freedom and rationality of the subject. What he calls the "rational
character" of the seventeenth-century's political philosophers is founded
on their revival of an originally Stoic principle concerning the "autarky"
of human reason. "Reason is autonomous and self-dependent. It is not
in need of any external help; it could not even accept this help if it were
offered. It has to find its own way and to believe in its own strength."
As in Machiavelli, social contract theory supplants the notion of sub-
mission to mythic forces with the doctrine of rational control; it is now
entirely purged of "mystery."
[F]or if we reduce the legal and social order to free individual acts, to
a voluntary contractual submission of the governed, all mystery is
gone. There is nothing less mysterious than a contract. A contract
must be made in full awareness of its meaning and consequences; it
presupposes the free consent of all the parties concerned.84
Vanquishing "mystery" requires stripping the political sphere of all

meaning in which one could not recognize one's own agency. Contrac-
tual politics presuppose demythologization: the mythical experience of
dispossession can be fully dissolved into the experience of self-reflec-
tive reason.
Today, much of Cassirer's political analysis may appear naive. The
contrast between reason and myth seems too stark to be serviceable in
identfying more specific doctrines in the history of political thought.
Indeed, the argument makes the choice of correct politics so obvious that
83. MS 200, 202-203.

84. MS 216.
the real divergence of opinion appears inexplicable. The entire na

seems bent toward unifying diverse political philosophies into th
eral drama of an ongoing battle, between the hypostasized and tr
torical forces of "mythos" and "logos," a schema, ironically,
seems to call upon the very style of mythic thought it wants to com
One explanation for this weakness is Cassirer's uncritical fidel
the Enlightenment. His public address, "The Idea of the Repu
Constitution," which was delivered on the constitutional anniver
August 11, 1928, presents an eloquent and moving defense of de
racy as rooted deep in Kantian thought. The principle of rep
government, Cassirer claims, drew upon Kant's enlightenment fa
the "intelligible" character of the human being in relation to its
surroundings, and its capacity to lift itself above the "causal ne
"empirical-historical events" as a "subject of freedom." The rhet
urgency of this claim is unmistakable: At a moment when a nati
prejudice was gathering force in the belief that Weimar democra
"un-German," Cassirer wished to prove that "the idea of a repu
constitution was hardly a 'foreigner' [Fremdling] to German int
tual history [deutschen Geistesgeschichte]," but had in fact "grow
its native ground" and had been "nourished upon its most unique
gies [. . .] of idealist philosophy."85 Cassirer's other widely read
of intellectual history, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1
also an encomium to the period which "discovered and passio
defended the autonomy of reason [. . .] in all fields of knowledg
Indeed, it is the essentially Kantian principle of mental agency,
Cassirer believed brought all of the diverse currents of eighteent
tury thought to perfection. This admiration, however, admits little q
fication. The prefatory remarks for the 1932 edition urged reade
"[m]ore than ever before" it was important to hold up to "the p
age" that "bright clear mirror fashioned by the Enlightenment," and
the "age which venerated reason and science as man's highest fa
cannot and must not be lost even for us."87
While Cassirer was perhaps right to think that the Weimar expe
was under assault due in part to the reemergence of "anti-Enlig
ment" sentiments, he lacked insight into the limits of the Enlightenm
itself. He was unmoved by the spirit of rueful paradox that allow
85. Die Idee 31.

86. PE, English xi, my emphasis.
87. PE, English xi, my emphasis.
Frankfurt School, among others, to discern in the dialectical relation

between myth and enlightenment the specifically modern sources of
fascism. Indeed, the entirety of Cassirer's scholarship seems immune
from any and all doubt concerning the ambivalent consequences of
secular modernity. But this raises the troublesome question as to
whether his commitment to the Enlightenment was itself a species of
rationalist mythology.
In the closing pages of The Myth of the State, Cassirer turns back to
reflect one last time upon the cultural and political ramifications of Heideg-
ger's philosophy. Its core idea, Cassirer observes, is that "existence has a
historical character" and "is bound up with the special conditions under
which the individual lives. To change these conditions is impossible."
In order to express his thought Heidegger had to coin a new term. He

spoke of the Geworfenheit of man (the being-thrown). To be thrown
into the stream of time is a fundamental and inalterable feature of our
human situation. We cannot emerge from this stream and we cannot
change its course. We have to accept the historical conditions of our
existence. We can try to understand and interpret them; but we cannot
change them.88
Although one might quarrel with this summary of Heideggerian

"thrownness," Cassirer makes it clear that he is not interested in
Heidegger's philosophy itself; he is concerned solely with its cultural
consequences: "I do not mean to say that these philosophical doctrines
had a direct bearing on the development of political ideas in Germany.
Most of these ideas arose from quite different sources." But Heideg-
ger's thinking, Cassirer observes, helped at the very least to "enfeeble
and slowly undermine the forces that could have resisted the modern
political myths." It was judged not on its merits as philosophy, but
instead as an "instrument" of Nazi propaganda:
[. . .] a theory that sees in the Geworfenheit of man one of his principal

characteristics has given up all hopes of an active share in the construc-
tion and reconstruction of man's cultural life. Such a 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.89
This is Cassirer's final judgment of Heidegger: "Thrownness" had become

88. MS 368-9.
89. MS 369. My emphasis.
a "pliable instrument" to be manipulated as a myth for the ben

National Socialism. Existentialism itself represented but one var
what Cassirer calls "the return of fatalism in our modern world."90
The peculiarity of this criticism is that it does not address He
ger's philosophy as such. It claims only that its philosophical th
were made serviceable as "political myth," as cultural belief
encouraged submission to the state. To be sure, Cassirer claims f
ism was already latent in Heidegger's philosophy. Moreover, by c
lating to Nazism, Cassirer observes, Heidegger betrayed the i
non-partisan philosophical inquiry. But Cassirer's charge noneth
ignores the possibility that thrownness and mythic dependency
fact constitutive features of the human subject - a possibility w
requires philosophical discussion quite apart from the disastrous c
quences of drafting such an insight for its political effects. Cas
however, seems to have believed his condemnation of Heidegger
complicity in mythic politics suffices as proof that the idea of th
ness is itself a myth. But the analogy is specious, since the popula
cacy of an idea has no self-evident bearing on whether that idea
Indeed, Cassirer's argument implies evaluating philosophica
solely in terms of their political application, which is to say, eva
them as political "myths." But this breaks down the distinction b
philosophy and politics to such a degree that the only concepts
praised are the ones which promote liberal-enlightenment effects
set loose in the broader circuit of political culture.
This argumentative shift - from conceptual truth to pragmatic
cacy - was most apparent in a 1944 lecture that Cassirer delivere
Connecticut College and closely followed the arguments of The M
the State. The lecture repeated almost verbatim the book's attem
indict Heideggerian "thrownness" along with Oswald Spengler's
ries of cultural decline as signals of Germany's atavistic return
"general mythical concept [. . .] of fate." But here, Cassirer inser
additional claim that philosophy must fulfill "its most important
tional task," which is to "teach man how to develop his active fa
in order to form his individual and social life." According to Ca
however, Heideggerian thinking could not fulfill this mission:
As soon as philosophy no longer trusts its own power, as soon as i
90. MS 369.
gives way to a merely passive attitude, [...] it cannot teach man how
to develop his active faculties in order to form his individual and
social life. A philosophy that indulges in somber predications about
the decline and inevitable destruction of human culture, a philosophy
whose whole attention is focused on the Geworfenheit, the Being-
thrown of man, can no longer do its duty.91
Here Cassirer conflates truth and pragmatic effect. He assumes that it is

the presiding duty of philosophy, its "educational task," to promote the
enlightenment of subjects for republican rule. To fulfill this task, how-
ever, Cassirer claims that a philosophy must endorse an ontology of
freedom rather than fatality, since only the widespread belief in free-
dom would "teach man" how to "develop his active faculties in order to
form his individual and social life." But this argument remains open to
the charge of political partisanship, since it is based chiefly upon an
empirical observation concerning the popular advantage of certain
beliefs rather than a philosophical vindication of their truth. Ironically,
by conflating what is true and what is merely an effective belief-frame-
work for action, Cassirer found himself in dangerous proximity to the
universal-pragmatist theory of myth he claimed to oppose.
How did Cassirer fall into this paradox? One explanation is that he
failed to appreciate the phenomenon of modernist technique. As an
unapologetic partisan of the Enlightenment, he embraced the view that
secularization means liberation from mythic dependency, and that politi-
cal liberty is therefore contingent upon achieving a fully demytholo-
gized subjectivity. At times his commitment to the Enlightenment seems
to verge on dogmatic and perhaps religious foundations. In an essay
published in 1944, Cassirer, following his teacher Hermann Cohen,
extols the Jewish people - the mythical "enemy" in Nazi propaganda
- for representing certain "ethical ideals," which, once "brought into
being by Judaism," have "found their way into general human culture,
into the life of all civilized nations." As the first religion to break from
myth, Judaism has contributed to the ethical ideals that are required "to
break the power of the modern political myths," and it has "done its
duty, having once more fulfilled its historical and religious mission."92
This paean to Judaism is suggestive, since Cassirer identified the
"duty" to break from myth not only with Judaism but also, as noted
91. "Philosophy and Politics," Symbol, Myth, and Culture 230.

92. Cassirer, "Judaism and the Modem Political Myths" 241. My emphasis.
above, with the liberatory impulse of secularizing philosophy its

the comparison only serves to show how Cassirer's philoso
project is committed - almost as an article of faith - to the po
ity of a wholly disenchanted subjectivity. This moment of dogm
Cassirer's thinking becomes obvious if one contrasts the earlier
ings on myth, which display a generously functionalist view of
and the judgments in The Myth of the State, where Cassirer se
deploy the term "myth" itself as a near-synonym for illusion. His an
thy for mythic unreason ran so deep that it blinded Cassirer to t
tion of modernity's independent share in spawning fascist think
criticized the status of "myth" (as if the problem were solely m
consciousness) but neglected the propagandistic "manipulation" of
Cassirer never adequately addressed the modernist-subjective as
tions underlying this so-called "technique." As noted at the start
essay, Cassirer recognized that the peculiarity of the "modern t
age" is that "myths can be manufactured [. . .] according to the
methods as any other modern weapon." Fascism, he claims, wor
means of a "technique of myth," which is not to be confused wit
itself. But if so, it made little sense for Cassirer to attack Heid
philosophy as supporting "mythic" consciousness. He shou
directly condemned the philosophical cast of mind that enables an in
mentalist relation to myth, since he finds this instrumentalism t
peculiar feature of National Socialist rule. In other words, if fasc
"technique of myth," which is more to blame, myth or technique?
It is easy to see why Cassirer avoided this question. Any scruti
the ontological sources of modern domination would have push
sirer toward the recognition that fascism would not have been p
were it not for the modern ideal of autonomy. Cassirer refuse
any continuity between autonomy and fascism because he co
admit that the enlightenment subject itself bore at least some r
bility for modern domination. Heidegger, by contrast, had argu
the ideal is an illusion, since on his view the human being is
thrown into historical and social meanings that cannot be made
available for subjective command. It is crucial to note that C
misses the point that Heidegger's philosophical claims are pr
about how we are constituted as human beings, and not how w
believe ourselves to be constituted. In Heidegger's own jargo
claims are ontological, not normative. But Cassirer did not take
distinguish between the conceptual understanding that we are thrown,

and the normative proposal that one should submit to this condition. Of
course, if normative claims on behalf of National Socialism appear to
follow from "ontological" inquiries into human constitution, Heidegger
himself is chiefly to blame. By lending an imprimatur of philosophical
dignity to the execrable vernacular of National Socialist propaganda
through his many speeches (which were replete, moreover, with his own
philosophical terminology), Heidegger succeeded far more than Cas-
sirer in opening an empirical route from ontology to politics.
Concluding Remarks
Whatever its limitations, The Myth of the State has made an impor-
tant contribution to a broader discussion concerning the relation
between secularization and reason in modern political life. Indeed, a
chief point of dissension in both the Anglo-American and continental
secularization debates is whether myth can be defined, with Cassirer, as
a mystified expression of human imagination that must yield to the
more "sophisticated" works of the self-transparent mind, or whether it is
salutary to admit myth, with Heidegger, as the constitutive background
of all human action and the name for a fundamental receptivity that
cannot be expunged. I have tried to reconstruct the debate between Cas-
sirer and Heidegger in order to illuminate some of their deeper assump-
tions. My aim is chiefly confined to exposition, but I also hope to
advance a certain measure of skepticism regarding Cassirer's basically
"Kantian" view that there can be such a thing as fully self-transparent
subjectivity, i.e., a human being which enjoys the capacity to direct its
action without reliance upon external meaning.
It is worth noting that this sort of skepticism is typically associated
with the conservative critique of liberal autonomy. It can be found, for
example, in such diverse works as Michael Oakeshott's 1947 essay,
"Rationalism in Politics," which is widely regarded as the paradigm of
conservative theory, as well as Alisdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981),
and even Charles Taylor's politically more progressive reflections in
Sources of the Self (1989). While divergent in many respects, these
works share an appeal to the necessity of inherited "frameworks,"
93. Michael Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics," Rationalism in Politics and other
essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991); Alasdair C. Maclntyre, After Virtue: A
Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: U Notre Dame P, 1981); Charles Taylor, Sources
of the Self The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989).
which are often understood in religious terms and are supposed t

human action, and a correlative emphasis upon the limits of post-enli
enment reason, which they assail as "Cartesian," or "managerial,"
Oakeschott's words, as "technique." On the Continent, such conce
at the heart of the so-called "secularization debate" of the 1960s,
pitted Hans Blumenberg's modernist defense of self-assertion i
Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966) against Karl L6with's indi
of "secular presumption" in Meaning in History (1949) as the tr
ured face of an originally eschatological Heilsgeschichte. Most re
Marcel Gauchet investigates the birth of political agency from r
otherness in his book, The Disenchantment of the World (1985)
offers liberal-democratic theory a deepened awareness of that "
dispossession" which characterizes the most primal forms of religion.
But it would be a mistake to assume that the critique of m
autonomy as illusory must result in conservative politics.95 Ther
obvious or axiomatic relation between politics and ontology. Cas
believed that "modern political myths" were both politically un
able as well as false. But what if autonomy is itself a "myth
sirer's error was to have presumed that there is necessarily
between "demythologized" subjectivity and political emancipatio
this linkage - between enlightenment and freedom - that perm
self-justifying thesis that only liberalism is "true." But the two are i
distinct. As Richard Rorty suggests, the beliefs that guide our ac
the political sphere are not bound to how we are constituted as
beings. One of the uncomfortable things about political action is
cannot claim authority based on some deeper, putatively ont
94. Karl L6with, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the

phy ofHistory (Chicago: U Chicago P, 1949); Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimitit d
zeit (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1966) in English, The Legitimacy of the Mode
trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1983); Marcel Gauchet, Le
chantement du monde: une histoire politique de la religion (Paris: Gallimard,
English, The Disenchantment of the World: a political history of religion, tran
Burge, foreword by Charles Taylor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997).
95. The recognition that modem autonomy is founded upon a false ontolo
not necessarily imply that it is dispensable. Ben Halpern has noted "the historic
whereby both 'myth' and 'ideology' acquired their derogatory connations and
mean a 'subjective' or 'interested' approach to reality. Etymologically, 'myth' me
ply a 'relating'; hence it was originally quite objective in meaning. It took on
connotations through the very ancient Greek criticism of myth [. . .] and through
sequent criticism of myth by monotheistic iconoclasm." See Halpern, "'Myth' a
ogy' in Modem Usage," History and Theory 1.2 (1961): 129-149, 131 n. 5.
knowledge about who we "really" are. Political judgments do not get

their credence from metaphysical insight, although political actors fre-
quently wish and behave as if this were the case. Liberalism is no more
"true" to the self than any of its political alternatives, and to believe so is
to subscribe to a faulty model of social meaning. Moreover, it is charac-
teristic of many liberal political theories that they mistrust precisely those
sorts of political movements that claim to embody the "truth" of human
existence, since political appeals to certitude quite often turn pernicious.96
Ironically, it was Cassirer, not Heidegger, who wished to found his
political philosophy upon the final and incorrigible knowledge of the
wholly "demythologized" subject. But it is not obvious that human
beings possess such knowledge, and it is even less obvious that such
knowledge would inform a palatable political order. Cassirer presup-
posed human spontaneity, which forced him, however unwillingly, to
regard myth merely as occluded spirit. Heidegger, on the other hand,
believed that the study of myth could provide insight into the existen-
tial structure of all human meaning; he was not merely making a plea
for "more" tradition. But it follows that there are always such myths
independent of one's choice of political program. The significance of
Marcel Gauchet's recent contribution to the secularization debate is,
among other things, to suggest that a truly "liberal" theory of politics
might best emerge from the post-Heideggerian recognition of human
finitude rather than the quasi-Kantian presumption of self-transparency
and ontological independence.
Here one can discern a difference between enlightenment and disen-
chantment: Whereas Cassirer described history as enlightenment through
reason, Heidegger described history as disenchantment with metaphys-
ics - especially, the metaphysics of rational control.97 Their philoso-
phies seem to embody the two, distinct paths by which the subject of
philosophy has moved from religion to modernity. For Heidegger, what
distinguished the post-metaphysical subject of modernity is not that it
has achieved a position of god-like sovereignty over its own constitu-
tive meaning. On the contrary, the modern subject for Heidegger was
96. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP,
1989).
97. This anti-foundationalist view may also underwrite a charistmatic, yet stoic
"strength" in the face of nothingness. It is a feature of Weber's theory that Terry Maley has
called the "politics of disenchantment." See Maley, "The Politics of Time: Subjectivity and
Modernity in Max Weber," The Barbarism of Reason: Max Weber and the Twilight of
Enlightenment, eds. Asher Horowitz and Terry Maley (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1994) 139-166.
one which had arrived at the "disenchanted" recognition of

existential constitution: it knows itself to be thrown and no longer
itself capable of wresting itself free of this condition. It is awa
there are always background conditions to its action, and it co
those conditions are without metaphysical ground. Heidegger's d
of myth thus implies the constitutive permanence of human fin
sustains the Christian doctrine of human fallenness, while recast
ism as the metaphysical theory of"nothingness."
According to Cassirer's philosophy, on the other hand, myth
manifestation of human "infinite" capacities. It models epistem
political action after the Hegelian image of a self-expressive spi
it regards the work of culture as a canvass upon which spirit le
traces of enlightenment freedom. One can rightly accuse Heid
anti-modernism, since his theory of the subject presumes the ir
bility of the fall. For Heidegger, history cannot be dissolved,
meanings are what lend subjectivity its grounding in the
Thrownness is constitutive, and therefore unmasterable. Ironica
sirer's model of spiritual development that is supposedly the sta
modernity illicitly relies on Christian-eschatological hope.98 If
autonomy is the political trace of a theologically-inspired plenit
dream of meaning without dispossession.
On this point, the Frankfurt School took a position equidistant
Heidegger and Cassirer. Whereas Heidegger turned "nothingnes
the last metaphysical dogma, the Frankfurt School upheld the
doctrine of self-regulating critique, without, however, indulgin
enlightenment view of freedom as an intelligible idea metaphys
odds with historicity. This "qualified" faith in the promises of
ism, however, placed them at odds with Cassirer, whose own fid
the Kantian ideal of autonomy prevented him from recognizing
nity's own inner demons. Certainly, Adorno and Horkheimer a
famously critical of Heidegger, since they claim the critique o
points toward an ideal of autonomy, which, though forever unr
must be sustained in thought if the unfinished project of enlighten
to provide normative guidance. Even in Adorno's late work, Ne
Dialectics, freedom retains its regulative function, but only at
98. This is a point made by Karl L6with. The modernist "self-assertion"

criticized was later defended by Blumenberg. For a discussion of the latter, see Ma
"Blumenberg and Modernism: A Reflection on The Legitimacy of the Modern
de Siccle Socialism and Other Essays (New York: Routledge, 1988).
Albrecht Wellmer has called the "vanishing point of demythologization."

Whether this meant the ideal was itself a "myth" remains unclear.99
What is certain is that the Frankfurt school locates fascist domination in
an uncritical moment of freedom itself, and one might therefore charac-
terize their position as a qualified modemrnism. They take up a position
at some distance from Cassirer and are critical of his attempt to resur-
rect the Enlightenment on its own terms, without, however, assuming
with Heidegger an attitude of mere "piety" external to subjectivist meta-
physics. But the Frankfurt "left" and the Heideggerian "right" critique
of technological domination nonetheless converge in the claim that ide-
alism's celebrated notion of spontaneity has spawned a specifically
modern will to mastery and decontextualized technique. Against Cas-
sirer, however, they locate the pathology of instrumental reason not in
its truth, as if full enlightenment were an actual condition, but instead in
the compulsive effort to proclaim as truth a species of unconditional
freedom that was, on their view, constitutively impossible. From their
perspective, then, autonomy might well figure as the most consequen-
tial myth of modernity.
99. Adorno's comment is particularly revealing, that, "beside the demand thus
placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly mat-
ters." From Theodor W. Adorno, "Finale," Minima Moralia, Reflections from a Damaged
Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978) 247. Wellmer, perhaps controversially,
finds in Adorno the residues of a "theological motif." But Wellmer is right that the stance
is aporetic, in alliance with metaphysics but only "at the moment of its fall." On the diffi-
culties of this self-collapsing ideal, see Albrecht Wellmer, "Reason, Utopia, and the Dia-
lectic of Enlightenment," ed. Richard J. Bernstein, Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1985) 35-66, and Wellmer, "Metaphysics at the Moment of its Fall," End-
games, trans. David Midgley (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 'theological motif'
from the latter, 193. On the Habermasian attempt to rescue conceptual form itself as a non-
repressive ideal, see Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, I: Reason and the
Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), and "Die Moderne-ein unvol-
lendetes Projekt," Die Moderne ein unvollendetes Projekt, Philosophisch-politische Auf
sitze (Leipzig: Reclam, 1994) 32-54.

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Myth and Modernity: Cassirer's Critique of Heidegger

Author(s): Peter Eli Gordon

Peter Eli Gordon

"The philosopher is a mythologist."

1. For comments and criticism, I am grateful to Martin Jay, Warren Brec

or normative orientation. Enlightenment, then, is already, in its one-

2. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Philo-

4. Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Twelve L

that it represents a mode of political belief that cannot be categorized

Cassirer's Philosophy of Form

twentieth century.7 In 1894, Cassirer attended Georg Simmel's lect

7. An excellent summary of Cassirer's thought can be found in John

Before specifically engaging Cassirer's discussion of myth, it i

15. An exemplary statement of Cassirer's method can be found in PSF: "It i

While Simmel's interpretation emphasized the centrality of "form" in

Here is revealed again that "anthropomorphism" of all our concepts of

From the critique of religion to modern science, the principle of

17. Simmel, Kant 180.

Kantian principle could now be applied to the investigation of all of h

It is the task of systematic philosophy, which extends far beyond th

According to Cassirer, all of human culture, indeed the very se

20. ETR 447, my emphasis.

mythical-religious world, and the arts each present us with a particular

Here, Cassirer characterizes symbolic forms as products of "free" men-

Cassirer on Language and Myth

expression: Culture is ideally the work of autonomous spirit. C

It is only in these activities as a whole that humankind constitut

The developmental thesis, however, implies that myth can not b

24. PSF, I1 19; English 13, translation modified.

and 1920), which lays out a comprehensive set of "developmental laws"

27. Wilhelm Wundt, Volkerpsychologie: eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungs-

philosophical themes. On the one hand, their generous view

29. Claude L6vi-Strauss, La Pensde Sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962). For an

nonetheless retained an unmistakably evolutionist bias:

Thus, although myth, language, and art interpenetrate one another in

its role in the creation of mythic phenomena, it ascribes autono

named in order for it to be brought forth magically into existence. More

Indeed, it is the Word, it is language, that really reveals to man that

From this comment, one might discern an element of hesitation in Cas-

social identity. Ordinary experience might preserve the sense of passiv

we are faced with a characteristic of mythic thinking which divides it

For Cassirer, the difference between "mythical" and modern, "the

38. Martin Heidegger, "...Poetically Man Dwells...," Poetry, Language, Thoug

from the self-negating "dialectic of mythical consciousness," and passes

confess themselves to be illusion as opposed to the empirical reality of

In sum, Cassirer's philosophy rested upon a teleological premise that

(1964) and he affirmed that his own reconstructions were them

Cassirer and Heidegger on Myth and Subjectivity

44. This doctrine of secularization as a self-justifying description of phil

earlier. More recently, a little-known manuscript from 1929 entitled

within the structure of human understanding. Rather than begi

about native systems of meaning. "Ethnology itself," he warned,

'primitive phenomena' are often less concealed and less complicated

Although Heidegger sees human culture as the ongoing work of self-

doubts concerning Cassirer's transcendental presupposition

55. BT 290, n. xi.

For Heidegger, mana indicates a mode of meaning not subject to human

59. MH: Review ofPSFII 43.

emphasize this point, Heidegger poses a purely rhetorical que

The Davos Encounter and the Myth-Debate

there is hardly a single concept which has been paraphrased with so

Heidegger's entire presentation of "existential" philosophy is, Cassirer

But if Cassirer is right, then the difference between his own

being whose capacities for self-transparency are, Heidegger claims,