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access to The Journal of Speculative Philosophy
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Cassirer’s Phenomenology of Culture
abstract: Ernst Cassirer claims in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms that the
transcendental analysis of science, ethical freedom, and aesthetic and organic natural
forms of Kant’s three Critiques is extended to other forms of culture, such as language,
myth, and art. In this way, Cassirer holds, the “critique of reason becomes the critique
of culture.” This claim tends to place Cassirer within the tradition of Neo-Kantianism.
But this view is offset by Cassirer’s further claim that his philosophy is based on a
phenomenology of knowledge “as established and systematically grounded by
Hegel.” He also subscribes to Hegel’s dictum that “the True is the whole.” In order
to achieve his philosophy of symbolic forms Cassirer joins Kantian transcendental
method with Hegelian phenomenology. In so doing Cassirer replaces the idea of
system with a conception of “systematic overview,” which he connects to a theory of
“basis phenomena,” especially the basis phenomenon of the work (das Werk). This
phenomenon allows him finally to conceive his philosophy of culture as a fulfillment
of the Socratic pursuit of self-knowledge. In this way Cassirer’s thought moves from an
epistemology to a philosophical anthropology.
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In An Essay on Man, Cassirer makes two striking assertions that are especially
relevant for the comprehension of his conception of a phenomenology
of culture. In the first sentence of this work, Cassirer claims: “That self-
knowledge is the highest aim of philosophical inquiry appears to be generally
acknowledged.” He says that even among conflicting philosophical schools
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notes
The original version of this article was prepared for the American Philosophical
Association, Pacific Division, symposium session “Cassirer and Neo-Kantianism,”
April 2012, Seattle.
1. See the remarks on Hegel in the essays of Felix Kaufmann, Robert Hartman,
M. F. Ashley Montagu, Wilbur Urban, Helmut Kuhn, and Fritz Kaufmann in
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The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston: Library of
Living Philosophers, 1949).
2. Ernst Cassirer, Gesammelte Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe, 26 vols., ed. Birgit
Recki (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998–2009); Ernst Cassirer, Nachgelassene Manuskripte
und Texte, 18 vols., ed. Klaus Christian Köhnke, John Michael Krois, and Oswald
Schwemmer (Hamburg: Meiner, 1995–2009). Recent American interpretations
include Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger
(Chicago: Open Court, 2000); Thora Ilin Bayer, Cassirer’s Metaphysics of Symbolic
Forms: A Philosophical Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001);
Edward Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2008); Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger,
Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Donald Phillip
Verene, The Origins of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Kant, Hegel, and Cassirer
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011).
3. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human
Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944).
4. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Hamburg: Meiner, 1967), 7n; my
translation.
5. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 3 vols., trans. Ralph
Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953–57), 1:80; hereafter cited as
PSF by volume (1, 2, or 3) and page number.
6. Cassirer gave this first definition of symbolic form in his Warburg
Library 1922 essay, “Der Begriff der symbolischen Form im Aufbau der
Geisteswissenschaften,” in Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs (Oxford: Bruno
Cassirer, 1956), 175; my translation. See also Cassirer’s phenomenological
demonstration of symbolic form in his thought experiment of the Linienzug
(PSF 3:200).
7. See the remarks on Lambert in Johannes Hoffmeister, “Einleitung des
Herausgebers,” in G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes
Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner, 1952), viii. Prior to Lambert, the Protestant
Pietist theologian Friedrich Christoph Oetinger used phenomenology to refer to
a way of grasping appearances. See the remarks on Oetinger and Hegel in Glenn
Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2001).
8. See Hoffmeister, “Einleitung,” xiii; my translation.
9. Ibid., xiv.
10. Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical
Introduction, 2 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960), 1:12. Kant’s Metaphysical Elements
of Natural Science (1786) contains a fourth part, titled Phänomenologie, in which
motion and rest are considered wholly in relation to how they appear to the senses.
11. See the reproduction of this manuscript page in the introduction to Ernst
Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 4: The Metaphysics of Symbolic
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Forms, ed. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene, trans. John Michael
Krois (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), xvi; hereafter cited as PSF 4 by
page number.
12. PSF 1:84.
13. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 57.
14. PSF 2:xvi.
15. PSF 3:xiv. For an analysis of Cassirer’s conception of phenomenology in
relation to phenomenology “in its modern sense,” see Ernst Wolfgang Orth, “Ernst
Cassirer,” in Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, ed. Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Kluwer,
1997), 95–99. See Cassirer’s criticism of Husserl in PSF 3:197–200. Also, Fritz
Kaufmann, “Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology,” in Schilpp, Philoso-
phy of Ernst Cassirer, 799–854.
16. PSF 3:xiv. Cassirer cites Hegel’s assertion as “Die Wahrheit ist das ‘Ganze’”
here and elsewhere. But Hegel uses Wahre, not Wahrheit—the “True,” not
the “Truth.” See Hegel, Phänomenologie, 21. Das Wahre carries a metaphysical
meaning; die Wahrheit has an epistemological connotation. Die Wahrheit fits more
closely with Cassirer’s purpose in PSF 3, of a phenomenology of Erkenntnis rather
than of Geist. See Verene, Origins of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, chap. 3.
17. PSF 3:xv.
18. PSF 4:193.
19. Ibid.
20. PSF 1:81.
21. PSF 2:61.
22. Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” trans. Norman Kemp Smith
(London: Macmillan, 1958), A235–36, B294–95.
23. René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, in The Philosophical Writings of
Descartes, vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 114.
24. PSF 4, pt. 1, chap. 1; and Ernst Cassirer, “‘Spirit’ and ‘Life’ in Contemporary
Philosophy,” in Schilpp, Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, 857–80.
25. PSF 4:56, 227. Ernst Cassirer also uses the term systematic review in The
Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History Since Hegel, trans. William H.
Woglom and Charles W. Hendel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 19.
26. PSF 4:226.
27. See Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function, auth. trans. William Curtis
Swabey and Marie Collins Swabey (Chicago: Open Court, 1923), chap. 1; and
PSF 3, pt. 3, chap. 1.
28. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 1.
29. Ibid., 52.
30. On Cassirer’s connection to Vico, see Donald Phillip Verene, “Vico’s
Influence on Cassirer,” New Vico Studies 3 (1985): 105–11.
31. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 26.
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