Ernst Cassirer Quotes on Nature
Ernst Cassirer was a German Jewish philosopher and the leading representative of the Marburg neo-Kantian tradition in the twentieth century. This page collects quotes attributed to Ernst Cassirer on the topic of nature, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
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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“The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1927), trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963), p. 134”
Love and knowledge have one and the same goal, for both strive to overcome the separation in the elements of being and return to the point of their original unity.… To know an object means to negate the distance between it and consciousness; it means, in a certain sense, to become one with the object: cognitio nihil est aliud, quam Coitio quaedam cum suo cognobili. [Knowledge is nothing else than -
“Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.”
Ch. 1, p. 31