Ernst Cassirer 1874 – 1945
Ernst Cassirer was a German Jewish philosopher and the leading representative of the Marburg neo-Kantian tradition in the twentieth century. His three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms generalized Kant's critical project to argue that human consciousness gives shape to the world through a plurality of symbolic forms, including language, myth, religion, art, and science. After fleeing Nazi Germany, he taught at Oxford, Goteborg, and finally Yale, where he wrote An Essay on Man for an English-speaking audience. His Davos debate with Heidegger in 1929 has become emblematic of a crossroads in twentieth-century philosophy.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Ernst Cassirer:
“Man is a symbolic animal.”
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Attributed to Ernst Cassirer:
“Myth is not a passive reflection of nature, but an active form of symbolic thinking.”
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Attributed to Ernst Cassirer:
“Language is the great symbol-making activity of the human mind.”
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Attributed to Ernst Cassirer:
“Human culture taken as a whole may be described as the process of man's progressive self-liberation.”
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Attributed to Ernst Cassirer:
“We can only know ourselves through the works we create.”