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THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
Volume VI 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
ERNST CASSIRER 
THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
PAUL ARTHUR SCHILPP, Editor 
Already Published: 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY (1939) 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GEORGE SANTAYANA (1940) 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1941) 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF G. E. MOORE (1942) 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERTRAND RUSSELL (1944) 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNST CASSIRER (1949) 
In Preparation: 
ALBERT EINSTEIN: P H IL O S O P H E R- S C I E N TI ST 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BENEDETTO CROCE 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SARVEPALLI R AD H AKRI S H N AN 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KARL JASPERS 
Other volumes to be announced later 
THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
Volume VI 
THE PHILOSOPHY 
OF 
ERNST CASSIRER 
EDITED BY 
PAUL ARTHUR SCHILPP 
1949 
THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS, INC. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNST CASSIRER 
Copyright, 1949, by The Library of Living Philosophers, Inc. 
Printed in the United States of America 
FIRST EDITION 
A-F 
GEORGE BANTA PUBLISHING COMPANY, MENASHA, WISCONSIN 
GENERAL INTRODUCTrt>& 
TO 
"THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS" 
A CCORDING to the late F. C. S. Schiller, the greatest ob- 
JTj\. stacle to fruitful discussion in philosophy is "the curious 
etiquette which apparently taboos the asking of questions about 
a philosopher's meaning while he is alive." The "interminable 
controversies which fill the histories of philosophy," he goes on 
to say, "could have been ended at once by asking the living phi- 
losophers a few searching questions." 
The confident optimism of this last remark undoubtedly goes 
too far. Living thinkers have often been asked "a few searching 
questions," but their answers have not stopped "interminable 
controversies" about their real meaning. It is none the less 
true that there would be far greater clarity of understanding 
than is now often the case, if more such searching questions had 
been directed to great thinkers while they were still alive. 
This, at any rate, is the basic thought behind the present un- 
dertaking. The volumes of The Library of Living Philosophers 
can in no sense take the place of the major writings of great 
and original thinkers. Students who would know the philoso- 
phies of such men as John Dewey, George Santayana, Alfred 
North Whitehead, Benedetto Croce, G. E. Moore, Bertrand 
Russell, Ernst Cassirer, Etienne Gilson, Karl Jaspers, et al., 
will still need to read the writings of these men. There 
is no substitute for first-hand contact with the original thought 
of the philosopher himself. Least of all does this Library pre- 
tend to be such a substitute. The Library in fact will spare 
neither effort nor expense in offering to the student the best 
* This General Introduction, setting forth the underlying conception of this 
Library, is purposely reprinted in each volume (with only very minor changes). 
vii 
viii THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
possible guide to the published writings of a given thinker. We 
shall attempt to meet this aim by providing at the end of each 
volume in our series a complete bibliography of the published 
work of the philosopher in question. Nor should one overlook 
the fact that the essays in each volume cannot but finally lead 
to this same goal. The interpretative and critical discussions of 
the various phases of a great thinker's work and, most of all, 
the reply of the thinker himself, are bound to lead the reader 
to the works of the philosopher himself. 
At the same time, there is no blinking the fact that different 
experts find different ideas in the writings of the same philoso- 
pher. This is as true of the appreciative interpreter and grateful 
disciple as it is of the critical opponent. Nor can it be denied 
that such differences of reading and of interpretation on the 
part of other experts often leave the neophyte aghast before 
the whole maze of widely varying and even opposing interpreta- 
tions. Who is right and whose interpretation shall he accept? 
When the doctors disagree among themselves, what is the poor 
student to do? If, finally, in desperation, he decides that all of 
the interpreters are probably wrong and that the only thing for 
him to do is to go back to the original writings of the philoso- 
pher himself and then make his own decision uninfluenced (as 
if this were possible!) by the interpretation of any one else 
the result is not that he has actually come to the meaning of the 
original philosopher himself, but rather that he has set up one 
more interpretation, which may differ to a greater or lesser de- 
gree from the interpretations already existing. It is clear that in 
this direction lies chaos, just the kind of chaos which Schiller 
has so graphically and inimitably described. 1 
It is strange that until now no way of escaping this difficulty 
has been seriously considered. It has not occurred to students of 
philosophy that one effective way of meeting the problem at 
least partially is to put these varying interpretations and critiques 
before the philosopher while he is still alive and to ask him to 
act at one and the same time as both defendant and judge. If 
the world's great living philosophers can be induced to coSper- 
*In his essay on "Must Philosophers Disagree?" in the volume by the same 
title (Macmillan, London, 1934), from which the above quotations were taken. 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION ix 
ate in an enterprise whereby their own work can, at least to some 
extent, be saved from becoming merely "desiccated lecture- 
fodder," which on the one hand "provides innocuous sustenance 
for ruminant professors," and, on the other hand, gives an op- 
portunity to such ruminants and their understudies to "specu- 
late safely, endlessly, and fruitlessly, about what a philosopher 
must have meant" (Schiller), they will have taken a long step 
toward making their intentions clearly comprehensible. 
With this in mind The Library of Living Philosophers ex- 
pects to publish at more or less regular intervals a volume on 
each of the greater among the world's living philosophers. In 
each case it will be the purpose of the editor of The Library 
to bring together in the volume the interpretations and criti- 
cisms of a wide range of that particular thinker's scholarly con- 
temporaries, each of whom will be given a free hand to discuss 
the specific phase of the thinker's work which has been assigned 
to him. All contributed essays will finally be submitted to the 
philosopher with whose work and thought they are concerned, 
for his careful perusal and reply. And, although it would be ex- 
pecting too much to imagine that the philosopher's reply will be 
able to stop all differences of interpretation and of critique, this 
should at least serve the purpose of stopping certain of the 
grosser and more general kinds of misinterpretations. If no fur- 
ther gain than this were to come from the present and projected 
volumes of this Library, it would seem to be fully justified. 
In carrying out this principal purpose of the Library, the 
editor announces that (in so far as humanly possible) each vol- 
ume will conform to the following pattern: 
First, a series of expository and critical articles written by the 
leading exponents and opponents of the philosopher's 
thought; 
Second, the reply to the critics and commentators by the phi- 
losopher himself; 
Third, an intellectual autobiography of the thinker whenever 
this can be secured; in any case an authoritative and author- 
ized biography; and 
Fourth, a bibliography of the writings of the philosopher to pro- 
x THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
vide a ready instrument to give access to his writings and 
thought. 
The editor has deemed it desirable to secure the services of 
an Advisory Board of philosophers to aid him in the selection 
of the subjects of future volumes. The names of the six promi- 
nent American philosophers who have consented to serve appear 
below. To each of them the editor expresses his deep-felt thanks. 
The first fruit of their consultation is the selection of Karl Jaspers 
as the subject of a subsequent study in this Library. 
Future volumes in this series will appear in as rapid succes- 
sion as is feasible in view of the scholarly nature of this Library. 
The next volume in this series will be that on Albert Einstein: 
Philosopher-Scientist, which is scheduled to come off the press 
during 1949, the year which will mark Professor Einstein's 
seventieth birthday. 
PAUL ARTHUR SCHILPP 
Editor 
1 01 -i 02 FAYERWEATHER HALL 
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS 
ADVISORY BOARD 
GEORGE P. ADAMS RICHARD P. McKEON 
University of California University of Chicago 
FRITZ KAUFMANN ARTHUR E. MURPHY 
University of Buffalo Cornell University 
CORNELIUS KRUSE HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER 
American Council of Learned Columbia University 
Societies 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL 
A. DIMITRY GAWRONSKY: "Ernst Cassirer: His Life and 
His Work." i 
B. Four Addresses, delivered at Memorial Services, held 
under the Auspices of the Department of Philosophy of 
Columbia University in the Brander Matthews Theater 
of Columbia University, New York City, on June I, 
1945 39 
1. EDWARD CASE: "In Memoriam: Ernst Cassirer" 
A poem 40 
2. HAJO HOLBORN: "Ernst Cassirer" 41 
3. F. SAXL: "Ernst Cassirer" 47 
4. EDWARD CASE: "A Student's Nachruf" . . . . 52 
5. CHARLES W. HENDEL: "Ernst Cassirer" ... 55 
C. HENDRIK J. Pos: "Recollections of Ernst Cassirer" . 61 
II. DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL ESSAYS on THE 
PHILOSOPHY OF ERNST CASSIRER 
1. HAMBURG, CARL H.: "Cassirer's Conception of Phi- 
losophy" 73 
2. SWABEY, WILLIAM CURTIS: "Cassirer and Meta- 
physics" 121 
3. STEPHENS, I. K.: "Cassirer's Doctrine of the A Prior?' 149 
4. KAUFMANN, FELIX: "Cassirer's Theory of Scientific 
Knowledge" 183 
5. GAWRONSKY, DIMITRY: "Cassirer's Contribution to the 
Epistemology of Physics" 215 
6. SMART, HAROLD R.: "Cassirer's Theory of Mathe- 
matical Concepts" 239 
7.) LEWIN, KURT: "Cassirer's Philosophy of Science and 
the Social Sciences" 269 
8. HARTMAN, ROBERT S.: "Cassirer's Philosophy of Sym- 
bolic Forms" 289 
xi 
xH TABLE OF CONTENTS 
9. LEANDER, FOLKE: "Further Problems Suggested by the 
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms" 335 
10. MONTAGU, M. F. ASHLEY: "Cassirer on Mythological 
Thinking" 359 
11. LANCER, SUSANNE K.: on Cassirer's Theory of Lan- 
guage and Myth" 379 
12. URBAN, WILBUR M.: "Cassirer's Philosophy of Lan- 
guage" 401 
13. GUTMANN, JAMES: "Cassirer's Humanism" . . . 443 
14. SIDNEY, DAVID: "The Philosophical Anthropology of 
Ernst Cassirer and Its Significance in Relation to 
the History of Anthropological Thought" . . 465 
15. KUHN, HELMUT: "Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of 
Culture" 545 
1 6. BAUMGARDT, DAVID: "Cassirer and the Chaos in Mod- 
ern Ethics" 575 
17. GILBERT, KATHARINE: "Cassirer's Placement of Art" 605 
1 8. SLOCHOWER, HARRY: "Ernst Cassirer's Functional Ap- 
proach to Art and Literature" 631 
1 9. REICHARDT, KONSTANTIN : "Ernst Cassirer's Contribu- 
tion to Literary Criticism" 66 1 
20. RANDALL, JOHN HERMAN, JR.: "Cassirer's Theory of 
History as Illustrated in His Treatment of Renais- 
sance Thought" 689 
21. SOLMITZ, WALTER M.: "Cassirer on Galileo: An 
Example of Cassirer's Way of Thought" . . . 729 
22. WERKMEISTER, WILLIAM H.: "Cassirer's Advance 
Beyond Neo-Kantianism" 757 
23. KAUFMANN, FRITZ: "Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism, and 
Phenomenology" 799 
III. THE PHILOSOPHER SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF 
ERNST CASSIRER: " 'Spirit' and 'Life' in Contemporary Phi- 
losophy" 855 
IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF ERNST 
CASSIRER (to 1946): Compiled by CARL H. 
HAMBURG and WALTER M. SOLMITZ) . . . .881 
Chronological List of Principal Works 910 
Index (Arranged by ROBERT S. HARTMAN) 911 
PREFACE 
AS SOON as it had become clear that there was a real place 
JTJIJL in philosophic literature for the type of book which it is 
the aim of this Library to present, it was also quite evident that 
such a series would not be complete without a volume on The 
Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. If there could ever have been any 
doubt, on this point, it existed merely among such provincial 
philosophical scholars as had not become personally acquainted, 
let alone familiar, with the writings and work of this prodigious 
and acute contemporary thinker. Anyone at all aware of Cas- 
sirer's philosophical contributions, and of the ever growing in- 
fluence of his thought upon younger thinkers, knew quite well 
that Cassirer's philosophy would have to be treated in this 
Library. It was not at all surprising, therefore, that the editor 
found a ready response among scholars everywhere to his invita- 
tion to contribute to a projected Cassirer volume. The present 
co-operative effort, accordingly, had been largely planned long 
before Professor Cassirer left the hospitable shores of Sweden 
to come to the United States in 1942. 
At the time, therefore, that the tragic news of Professor 
Cassirer's unexpected death, on April 13, 1945, reached the 
editor, many of the essays now appearing in this volume were 
already in the editor's hands and many others had been in the 
process of being written by their authors for some time past. 
Nevertheless, this tragic blow among its manifold unhappy 
consequences seemed to place a volume on the philosophy of 
Ernst Cassirer in the Library of Living Philosophers forever 
beyond the pale of possibility. For, with Cassirer dead, how 
could a volume on his philosophy appear in such a series? This, 
at any rate, was the first reaction of the editor to the unbe- 
lievable news of Cassirer's passing. And it was in this spirit, 
therefore, that letters went out almost immediately, notifying 
anil 
xiv THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
all contributors to the present book that, with the death of Cas- 
sirer, the original project of a volume on his philosophy if 
not actually completely abandoned would at least have to be 
changed so radically as no longer to fit into the framework of 
the Library. 
The storm of protest and the almost unanimity of objection 
which greeted this announcement forced, in the first place, a 
careful reconsideration of the hasty decision, and very quickly 
indeed, a complete reversal. Many of the contributors com- 
plained that the editor was conceiving of the word "living" in 
the title of the series far too literally or at least too narrowly. 
That, despite the fact that we would now never be able to pre- 
sent to the philosophical world either Cassirer's own auto- 
biography or his formal "Reply" to his critics, it was perhaps 
all the more necessary that the philosophical world should have 
an opportunity to see and view this great contemporary thinker's 
ideas from the varied points of view made possible precisely in 
the kind of book which the volumes in this series have been. 
Although it is true that the editor yielded to this almost uni- 
versal pressure and even more to the force and decisiveness of 
this argument, the yielding certainly did not take place in the 
least reluctantly. Of course it is true that he greatly regrets 
the anomaly of having a volume appear in a series dealing 
with "living" philosophers, when the philosopher with whose 
thought the volume is concerned is no longer among the physi- 
cally living. But, on the other hand, he would not be truthful, 
where he to claim that he feels that the present volume has 
for these reasons no legitimate place within the bounds of 
this particular series. After all, the volume on The Philosophy 
of Alfred North Whitehead (Vol. Ill of this Library} also had 
no formal "Reply" to the expository and critical articles in the 
book from the pen of Whitehead and yet seemed to fill a 
real philosophical need just the same. And, in the case of the 
Whitehead volume, this problem was in a sense at least even 
more serious than it would appear to be in the present instance. 
For, when the Whitehead volume appeared in print, Professor 
Whitehead himself was still very much alive even though he 
had just gone through a terrible siege of double pneumonia at 
PREFACE xv 
the age of eighty. If, in Whitehead's case, we were prevented 
from carrying out the fundamental idea of this series by the 
commanding imperative of very serious illness, in the case of 
Cassirer we found ourselves stopped at the point of "The 
Philosopher's Reply" by the finality of death itself. But, 
though death might prevent us from giving our readers the 
very careful and minute formal "Reply," which the editor 
knows Cassirer had planned to write for the present volume, 
even that tragic fatality was not able to stop the continued 
strong influence which Cassirer's thought is having upon serious 
reflection in the contemporary world. Nor should it be allowed 
to stop the present volume. For better or for worse, therefore, 
the volume now is done or, more accurately speaking, is done 
as much as it could be done once Cassirer himself was no longer 
with us. And, frankly, though the reviewers almost inevitably 
will pick on the anomaly of the appearance of this book under 
the title of this series, after reading the material which has gone 
into the making of this book, the editor himself does not at all 
feel apologetic for its publication. For this volume will best 
fulfill its real function in philosophical literature if like its 
predecessors in this series it will send the reader of The Phi- 
losophy of Ernst Cassirer to the books and other writings of 
Cassirer himself, where he may learn by experience why he 
would have been the loser, if he had never made the detailed 
acquaintance of this acute philosophical mind and of the great 
and profound contributions which that mind has made to the 
thinking and knowing of man. 
There is one temptation in the writing of this Preface to 
which the editor dare not yield. It is all too tempting to discuss 
Cassirer the philosopher; but this is done by twenty-three con- 
temporary philosophers who have contributed to this volume 
and most of whom are far better qualified for this task than is 
the editor. It is even more tempting to trespass upon the good 
taste of editorial prerogatives by discussing here Cassirer the 
man, the gentleman, the personal friend. But to this temptation 
also the editor must turn a deaf ear, since others, who have 
known him much longer and far more intimately, have dis- 
cussed this aspect within the covers of this book. I shall merely 
xvi THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
say that I consider the personal acquaintance and contacts with 
Ernst Cassirer to be among the greatest experiences and privi- 
leges of my life. In the judgment of this writer, it is not too 
much to say of Cassirer: Ecce Homo! It is profoundly sad to 
contemplate his leaving us in the midst of his great creative and 
productive career, with dozens of tasks which he had set him- 
self unfinished and others barely begun. 
The editor's debt of gratitude to each of the contributors to 
this volume is so self-evident that a mere mention of this fact 
should suffice. But, in view of the fact that many of them have 
had to wait four years, or even longer, to see the arduous work 
of their mind finally in print, the editor's debt, in this instance, 
is even greater than usual. The reasons which have delayed the 
appearance of this volume time and again are, however, far 
too numerous to bear repetition here. Suffice it to record the 
editor's sincere regrets and abject apologies for a situation which 
has caused him much agony and ever increasing embarrassment, 
but over much of which he had little (if any) control. 
Special words of gratitude and appreciation need, however, 
to be penned for the never failing helpfulness and encourage- 
ment through all these three and one-half years since her illus- 
trious husband's death given by the widow of Ernst Cassirer, 
Mrs. Toni Cassirer. When at times the obstacles seemed almost 
insurmountable, it was Mrs. Cassirer's everlasting faith which 
kept the project going. Here truly is a woman who knew 
and still knows her husband's greatness and who never failed 
to understand the significance of what he was trying to do with 
his life and thought. 
Death did not spare the contributors to this volume either. 
Two of these are no longer with us. First, Kurt Lewin, whose 
essay for the present volume had been mailed to the editor 
on January 3rd, 1947, passed away very suddenly only five 
weeks later, namely on February nth, 1947. Thirteen months 
later, in March 1948, the news of F. Saxl's death reached us. 
The latter's contribution to this volume were remarks he de- 
livered on the occasion of the Memorial Services held for Cas- 
sirer at Columbia University. Little did he realize that, by the 
time his remarks would appear in print, he himself would have 
PREFACE xvii 
joined those for whom it is altogether fitting to hold memorial 
services. Of Kurt Lewin, Alexander M. Dashkin, writing in 
Jewish Education (for Feb.-March issue, 1947), had the fol- 
lowing to say: "Kurt Lewin was one of the very few men in our 
midst who had the right to be called a genius. He was an inven- 
tive, comprehensive mind, a warm large personality, with an 
indefatigable capacity for resourceful work." The editor is proud 
to be able to present, in this volume, what was undoubtedly one 
of the last pieces of such creative work from the pen of Kurt 
Lewin. 
These lines are being written on the very eve of the editor's 
departure for five months' sojourn in Europe, including a se- 
mester's lecturing in one of Germany's newly re-opened univer- 
sities. This means that the burden of proofreading and seeing 
this volume through the press will largely have to fall upon 
other shoulders. In the editor's absence he counts himself ex- 
ceedingly fortunate in having been able to secure the able as- 
sistance of his present colleague, old friend and former student, 
Professor Robert W. Browning, of the department of philoso- 
phy at Northwestern University. Upon Dr. Browning and such 
additional aids as he is able to marshal, such, for example, as 
that of Dr. David Bidney of the Viking Fund, New York City, 
who has already kindly offered his good services because of his 
deep interest in this project and his knowledge of the editor's 
temporary absence , the detailed technical work of seeing this 
volume to final fruition will largely devolve. To them the edi- 
tor, as well as the contributors and readers, owe a deep and great 
debt of gratitude, especially in view of the fact that all such 
service on a project like this unsupported as it is by endow- 
ments or by any university press can only be a labor of love. 
The same goes for Professor Robert S. Hartman, of the De- 
partment of Philosophy of Ohio State University, another one 
of the editor's former students, who again was kind enough to 
undertake the laborious task of preparing the index and of see- 
ing it through the press. A brief look at the index will convince 
even the casual observer of the immensity of this task and of 
the consequent obligation under which the editor feels himself 
to Dr. Hartman. 
xviii THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS 
In conclusion the reader's attention must be called to the 
deplorable fact that the main works by Cassirer have been out 
of print for some time and are simply not to be had anywhere. 
This situation should certainly be remedied as soon as at all 
possible. New German editions of Cassirer's works are sorely 
needed. But, if Cassirer is ever truly to come into his own in 
the English speaking world, it is high time that some enterpris- 
ing university press in this country should soon supply the phil- 
osophical reading public with authorized translations into Eng- 
lish of at least most of Cassirer 's major works. Certainly some 
well-to-do reader of the present volume could do far worse 
than offer his financial aid to such an enterprising university 
press for the purpose of at least partial subsidies for such pub- 
lication. 
P. A. S. 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS 
August 3, 1948 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Yale University Press, to 
the Open Court Publishing Company, to Harper and Brothers, and 
to the Princeton University Press, for their kind permission to quote 
at length from the works of Ernst Cassirer, without requiring a de- 
tailed enumeration. Exact title, name of publisher, and place and date 
of publication of each of Cassirer's works are enumerated in the Bibli- 
ography to this volume, found on pages 885 to 909. 
We also wish to express our appreciation to the editors and publishers 
of the numerous philosophical and literary journals quoted, and to the 
publishers of all other books used by our contributors, for the privilege 
of utilizing source materials therein found relevant to the discussion of 
The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. 
A 
Dimitry Gawronsky 
ERNST CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 
A Biography 
ERNST CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 
ERNST CASSIRER was born in Breslau on July 28, 1874. 
He was the fourth child of a rich Jewish tradesman j a 
brother and two sisters preceded Ernst. His brother died in 
infancy, before Ernst was born, and his mother therefore be- 
stowed upon the second boy, the impassioned love she had felt 
for her lost son and in memory of this tragic loss and the ordeal 
she underwent she called her second son Ernst. To the last days 
of her life, Ernst was her most cherished child, although two 
other sons and three daughters came after him. 
As a boy, Ernst was exceptionally cheerful and buoyant, yet 
easy to handle. In his games he displayed an inexhaustible 
imagination j he was full of new tricks and pranks, and nothing 
in his nature seemed to reveal that his life would be devoted to 
quiet and concentrated contemplation. He was endowed with a 
great courage and, as a boy of ten, it was nothing to him to swim 
the broad Oder River across and back. The most outstanding 
feature of the boy was his keen sense of fair play and justice. 
Althought the most beloved child of the family, he never toler- 
ated the slightest discrimination against his brothers and sisters, 
never accepted any favors, refused anything which was not also 
given to the others. 
Ernst was an impassioned music lover and never missed an 
opportunity to attend a concert or an opera. In his early classes 
at the "Gymnasium" he was just an average pupil, much more 
likely to be at the bottom than at the head of his class. He kept 
so busy playing with his brothers and friends that there was 
little time left for study. 
But a change was not far off. Ernst's maternal grandfather, 
although a self-taught person, was an exceptionally cultured 
man of wide intellectual scope and truly philosophical mind. 
He lived not far from Breslau, and every summer Ernst paid a 
4 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
visit to his grandfather. There, in conversations with his grand- 
father, whom he dearly loved, and in the latter's vast library, 
awoke and grew Ernst's interest in the problems of the intel- 
lectual life. All his life Cassirer was convinced that he inherited 
his philosophical vein of thought from his grandfather. At the 
age of twelve he had already thoroughly read many literary 
and historical works. Shakespeare, whose work he found in his 
father's library, especially appealed to him and Ernst read and 
reread all of Shakespeare's plays several times; only Hamlet 
was missing from his father's library, and Ernst was quite un- 
aware of the existence of this play. Then, on his thirteenth birth- 
day, he received a book containing Shakespeare's complete 
works and he was most amazed and thrilled to "discover" Ham- 
let. 
At this early age and for the remainder of his life 
Cassirer acquired the capacity for concentrated and persistent 
work. His entire behavior began to change slowly. Now there 
was only little time left for play, and in his class he became 
admittedly the best pupil. In higher classes Cassirer's teachers 
were often amazed at the depth of his knowledge and maturity 
of his judgment, and when he completed his studies at the 
"Gymnasium" his graduation certificate contained the highest 
marks. 
Without losing any time, Cassirer entered the University of 
Berlin. He was then eighteen years of age and the major sub- 
ject he had selected for a study was jurisprudence. He made 
this choice more upon the insistence of his father, who was 
largely interested in the field of law, than of his own free will. 
Soon he gave up this line of study and began to concentrate 
upon German philosophy and literature. In addition he listened 
eagerly to lectures on history and art. And yet all these studies 
somehow did not give Cassirer complete satisfaction; something 
was lacking in them; he missed in them a certain degree of 
depth in understanding and failed to find any solution of funda- 
mental problems. It was undoubtedly this sense of dissatisfac- 
tion which caused Cassirer to change universities several times; 
he went from Berlin to Leipzig, from there to Heidelberg, and 
then back to Berlin. In the meantime he further enlarged the 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 5 
scope of his studies and found himself becoming more and more 
interested in philosophy. Thus it happened that in the summer 
of 1894 he decided to take a course on Kant's philosophy given 
by Georg Simmel, then a young and brilliant Privatdozent at 
the University of Berlin. 
This was a time when strong idealistic tendencies seemed to 
win a decisive victory over mysticism, which for many centuries 
had dominated German spiritual culture. Already in the first 
half of the thirteenth century Meister Eckhart, one of the 
greatest of the German mystics, had impressively revealed the 
very core of his creed in the following words: "Man, yes, I 
stood with God before time and the world were created; yes, 
I was included in the eternal Godhead even before it became 
God. Together with me God has created and is still and always 
creating. only through me He became God." This conception, 
born out of titanic pride, infinite egotistic power, and ecstasy of 
passion, for five long centuries and virtually unopposed had 
dominated German spiritual culture; it never remained a move- 
ment of intellectuals only, or of any other small group of peo- 
ple; in fact, all the great folk movements in Germany during 
those five centuries were movements of outspoken mysticism. 
In the eighteenth century, however, tendencies of a very 
different nature came to the fore within German culture. Leib- 
niz and Wolf, Lessing and Goethe, Schiller and Kant created 
in Germany a bright atmosphere of genuine humanism; ideal- 
istic tendencies, intermingled with radical rationalism, became 
most potent in Germany's intellectual life. Yet, this triumph of 
reason and of humanism was only shortlived; with the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century a huge wave of mysticism again 
arose in Germany, breaking through all ramparts of measure 
and reason and overflowing the spiritual culture of Germany. 
Then again, in the last third of the nineteenth century Otto 
Liebmann and Hermann Cohen initiated a philosophical move- 
ment which harked back to Kant and to the idealistic tendencies 
of the eighteenth century. Several philosophical "schools" soon 
arose in Germany, all quite similar in this basic tendency and 
diverging from each other in only more or less important 
details. When Ernst Cassirer began his academic studies, this 
6 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
neo-Kantianism dominated many of the German universities 
to an almost exclusive degree. Hans Vaihinger for a score of 
years kept in his desk the completed volume of his Philosophy 
of As lj y a fictional and pragmatistic conception of knowledge, 
and wrote his commentary on Kant in which he embarked upon 
an orthodox interpretation of Kant's texts, word by word and 
sentence by sentence. And Simmel, the future leading "philoso- 
pher of life," wrote and lectured on Kant's philosophy. 
For some weeks Cassirer regularly attended Simmel's lec- 
tures. once, when lecturing on Kant, Simmel dropped the fol- 
lowing remark: "Undoubtedly the best books on Kant are 
written by Hermann Cohen; but I must confess that I do not 
understand them." 
Immediately after the lecture, Cassirer went to his bookshop 
and ordered Cohen's books; and no sooner had he begun study- 
ing them than his decision was made to go to Marburg and 
there to study philosophy under Cohen's guidance. However, 
Cassirer did not want to go to Cohen at once. The young stu- 
dent studied Kant's and Cohen's works thoroughly, as well as 
those of several other philosophers essential for the understand- 
ing of Kant, such as Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz. In addition 
he devoted a large part of his time to the study of mathematics, 
mechanics, and biology sciences which were indispensable for 
an understanding of Cohen's interpretation of Kant. 
When, in the spring of 1896, Cassirer finally arrived in 
Marburg to hear Cohen for the first time, he knew a great deal 
about Kant's and Cohen's philosophies. There was something 
very peculiar about Cohen's appearance: he was stout and short, 
with an incredibly huge head towering over his broad shoulders. 
He had an almost abnormally high forehead. His eyes flashed, 
fascinated, and penetrated, despite the dark glasses which he 
always wore. In his lectures and seminars, and even in his pri- 
vate conversations, one could not help experiencing the presence 
of a great mind and the heart of a prophet, filled to overflowing 
with an ecstatic belief in the value of truth and the power of 
goodness. No matter what problem Cohen discussed a mathe- 
matical, epistemological or ethical one he always spoke with 
a deep, intense passion, which was usually controlled perfectly 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 7 
by the measured flow of his slow and powerful language until 
the passion broke through in a few words or short sentences. 
Then Cohen would shout with mighty voice at his listeners, 
emphasizing the importance of his words with an energetic 
movement of his hands. 
However interesting Cohen's lectures were, his seminars 
were even more stimulating. He was truly a spiritual "mid- 
wife" in the Socratic sense. Always using the method of the 
Socratic dialogue, he had a great pedagogical ability to let the 
students themselves find the answers to questions discussed. His 
patience and his personal interest in the intellectual develop- 
ment of every single one of the students was inexhaustible. At 
the same time he was keenly concerned with their general wel- 
fare, and whenever his help was needed, he always gave it to 
his utmost. 
In the first seminar hour which Cassirer attended he volun- 
teered to answer a rather difficult philosophical question asked 
by Cohen. A conversation arose between them, and within a few 
minutes Cohen was quite aware of the type of student that sat 
before him. Later on this first meeting with Cassirer belonged 
to Cohen's most pleasant reminiscences, and he enjoyed telling 
it frequently and in great detail} how a new student, whom he 
had never seen before, very youthful in appearance, a little shy 
but determined, raised his hand and in a firm voice gave a quite 
correct and complete answer to his question. "I felt at once," 
said Cohen, "that this man had nothing to learn from me." At 
that time Cohen was surrounded by quite a few disciples, and 
some of them already had studied philosophy with him for 
years; but from the first moment Cassirer towered above them 
all. He was quite at home in all the most intricate problems of 
Kantian and Cohenian ways of thinking. 
It was a firmly established custom in Marburg that after 
every seminar Cohen's disciples, often five or six at a time, 
accompanied him to the threshold of his house. But Cassirer, 
who in every seminar distinguished himself by the scope of his 
knowledge and by the brilliancy of his philosophical mind, at 
first did not approach Cohen or his students. For years already 
Cassirer had been entirely'absorbed in his studies and had little 
8 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
time to spare for social intercourse; he did not enjoy any type 
of discussion with his friends, probably because his own inten- 
sive thinking furthered his intellectual progress even more. He 
became almost unsociable. In this mood he came to Marburg; 
he was always most polite and friendly to everybody, but kept 
so obviously aloof that Cohen's disciples nicknamed him "the 
Olympian." Most amazed of all was Cohen himself; he took a 
great liking to Cassirer and keenly felt the latter's outstanding 
philosophical talent; but he wondered at his strange behavior. 
Finally Cohen developed a peculiar suspicion. There was one 
group of people whom Cohen could not tolerate: the converted 
Jews; he never even shook hands with them. Cohen evidently 
thought that Cassirer was also converted and was avoiding any 
personal contact with his teacher because he was aware of 
Cohen's attitude towards such people. When Cassirer finally 
heard of this surmise, he at once called on Cohen, and this was 
the beginning of an intimate friendship between them which 
lasted to the end of Cohen's days. 
Now Cassirer became the acknowledged leader in the circle 
of Cohen's disciples. He lived in a house which for decades 
was a sort of headquarters for Cohen's students, and with 
several of these students Cassirer came into close personal con- 
tact. It was, however, still quite impossible to entice Cassirer to 
go to a party or to spend an evening in a cafe, which was the 
almost obligatory pastime of the German students; but he took 
a fancy to studying with some of his new friends. Thus he read 
Dante and Galileo with an Italian disciple of Cohen; he studied 
intricate Greek texts with a classical philologist, and for hours 
he discussed difficult mathematical problems with a mathema- 
tician. And the most interesting part of it was that all these 
people, although they were experts in their respective fields, 
willingly acknowledged Cassirer's superiority and received 
from him a great deal more than they were able to give him in 
return. Soon all students of Cohen knew that, whenever they 
needed a helping hand, they could turn to Cassirer, and this 
very busy man who treasured every minute of his time was 
always ready to spend hours explaining difficult problems to 
anybody who approached him. 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 9 
By the end of Cassirer's first semester in Marburg not only 
all the University, but all the town as well, knew of the prodigy. 
Cassirer became quite popular, but he did not enjoy popularity 
at all} he sincerely hated any kind of notoriety in connection 
with his person. 
Undoubtedly the credit for Cassirer's stupendous knowledge 
must be attributed to a large degree to his exceptional memory. 
Cohen told us several times that as a young student Cassirer was 
able to quote by heart whole pages of almost all the classical 
poets and philosophers. And, in a sorrowful voice, Cohen never 
forgot to add: "Even all modern poets, like Nietzsche and 
Stefan George, he could quote you by heart for hours!" This 
prodigious memory served Cassirer faithfully to the end of his 
days and made him capable of finding with the greatest of ease 
any quotations he needed in all those countless books he had 
read during his life time. Yet Cassirer's memory was not just a 
passive capacity, a sort of storage for acquired knowledge it 
was rather an er-mnern in Goethe's sense, a process of repeated 
and creative mental absorption, combined with a keen ability 
to see all essential elements of a problem and its organic relation 
to other problems. Cassirer's sharp and most active intellect 
constantly used the rich material of his memory, incessantly 
reviewing and reshaping it under different aspects, thus keeping 
it vividly present in his mind. 
When Cassirer came to Cohen, the latter's philosophy was in 
a state of transition. Cohen worked at that time on his own 
system of philosophy, which he began publishing a few years 
later. Cohen's chief goal at that time was to free Kant's philoso- 
phy from inner contradiction and to emphasize more strongly 
its fundamental methods and ideas. In his "critique of reason" 
Kant tried to measure the real power of the human intellect 
and the part it played in the cognition of the external world. 
The result Kant reached was the following: the human intellect 
not only classifies and combines our sensations and perceptions, 
but does much more besides j it forms them from the outset and 
makes them possible, so that even the simplest sensation exists 
in the human mind owing to the analytical and synthetical 
power of the human intellect which carries in itself visible marks 
io DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
of this power. We are very much mistaken when we think that, 
for instance, a "white ceiling' ' or a "brown floor" are just simple 
sensations} quite the contrary is true: "white," "ceiling," 
"brown," "floor" presuppose already whole systems of concepts, 
continuous application of analytical and synthetical functions of 
our intellect. Any sensory intuition, Kant taught in the central 
chapter of his Critique of Pure Reason, in the "Transcendental 
Deduction of the Pure Concept of Reason," is only possible as a 
product of the creative activity of the fundamental functions of 
our intellect; yet in the chapters preceding and following this 
one Kant insisted upon the necessity of accepting the sensory 
intuition as the very source of the creative synthetic power of 
our intellect. Furthermore, having showed the indispensability 
of reason for the true understanding of nature, for the creation 
of natural science as a thoroughly consistent system of knowl- 
edge, Kant still did not part with his conception of the "thing- 
in-itself," according to which all our knowledge has nothing 
to do with the world of ultimate reality, but can only deal with 
the sphere of humanly (i-e. y sensorily) conditioned appearances. 
Thus Kant decisively broke with the naive and shallow belief 
of the German Enlightenment in the miraculous power of the 
intellect, with its tendency to solve with the help of trite and 
schematic reasonings all mysteries of the cosmos; he put the 
greatest stress upon the necessity of clear insight into the basic 
limitations which characterize the creative work of human 
reason. Yet all these limitations Kant accepted only for the 
realm of theoretical knowledge, not for the field of ethical 
activity; in this latter sphere Kant was convinced that the 
knowledge of good as well as its materialization depend ex- 
clusively on the human intellect, that all emotions and feelings 
such as friendship, sympathy, love insofar as they are in- 
strumental in the realization of good, only obscure and debase 
the purity of moral principles. 
Cohen tried to rectify these inconsistencies. To him "sensa- 
tion" was only a problem which could be consciously put and 
solved by the methods of the human intellect: this bright 
yellow stain in the skies is in reality the centre of a whole 
planetary system which reveals in its substance and movements 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 11 
a miraculous chain of natural laws. This knowledge is genuine 
and is directed towards the true object, behind which no "thing- 
in-itself" is hidden. Yet, our knowledge is deficient and is able 
to progress slowly and painfully 5 only as a result of the infinite 
progress of science can a true knowledge of the object be won. 
And only the completely exploded object, reached at the 
infinitely remote limit of our knowledge, is the real "thing-in- 
itself." 
Thus, Cohen's philosophy decisively preached the predomi- 
nant role of the intellect in the realm of knowledge and did 
away with some of the basic limitations of intellectual power 
which were accepted by Kant. Yet, it was quite different in the 
realm of volition; there Cohen was much less rationalistic than 
Kant and was convinced that it was the intensity of our emotions 
and feelings on which depended the energy of our volition; 
they supplied the "motor power" for our actions. 
Hence came Cohen's preference for mathematics and natural 
science; there the work of our intellect could be observed and 
studied in its unadulterated form. And, since the intellect was to 
Cohen the backbone of the human mind, he strongly insisted 
upon the necessity of starting philosophical studies with epis- 
temology. Cassirer knew this already from Cohen's books and 
eagerly studied mathematics and natural science before he went 
to Marburg. Now he devoted almost all of his time to these 
disciplines and to the problems of knowledge. 
During the first semester Cohen already began asking 
Cassirer which subject he would like to choose for his doctor's 
thesis. After some hesitation Cassirer decided to write on Leib- 
niz. Many reasons determined this choice. First of all there was 
the great versatility of Leibniz's prolific genius and his funda- 
mental achievement in the fields of logic, mathematics, and 
natural science, in which at that time Cassirer was primarily 
interested. Next, the exceptional difficulty of the task also chal- 
lenged Cassirer j Leibniz had set forth his philosophy not in 
book form mainly, but piecemeal, in his vast correspondence; 
and the system of his philosophy consequently had to be recon- 
structed out of these dispersed elements. In addition, the slowly 
developing recognition of Leibniz's great importance for the 
12 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
development of modern philosophy caused the Berlin Academy 
to make Leibniz the subject for a prize competition, and 
Cassirer decided to participate in this competition. 
In less than two years Cassirer had completed his sizable 
work on Leibniz. The first part of it, dealing with Descartes' 
theory of knowledge, was accepted by the Marburg philosophi- 
cal faculty as a doctor's dissertation and obtained the highest 
possible mark in form of the very seldom conferred "opus 
eximum." Cassirer was at once admitted to the oral examination, 
during which he once more kept his teachers breathless by the 
immensity of his knowledge and brilliancy of his understand- 
ing, and was awarded the doctor's degree "summa cum laude." 
The entire book on Leibniz Cassirer presented to the Berlin 
Academy. There he was not quite so fortunate: the Academy 
decided not to give the first prize to anyone j Cassirer's book 
obtained the second prize, followed by a long and most flatter- 
ing commendation, where his great erudition, philosophical 
talent and brilliancy of presentation were highly praised, but 
the prevalence of rational and systematic tendencies, along with 
the primary concentration upon the epistemological problems 
were given as reasons for the withholding of the first prize from 
him. Some 130 years before the Berlin Academy had made a 
similar grave mistake, which world opinion had to correct in 
subsequent years, by withholding the first prize from Immanuel 
Kant. Did not that famous Academy commit a similar error in 
Cassirer's case? 
Upon receiving his Doctorate from Marburg University, 
Cassirer went back to the home of his parents, who meanwhile 
had moved to Berlin. There he at once began working on a new 
problem, which grew out of his research on Leibniz he de- 
cided to give a comprehensive picture of the development of 
epistemology in the philosophy and science of modern times. 
He continued to live in seclusion, devoting all his time to his 
studies. Yet, his aloofness never was a matter of unsociability: 
it was his vivid awareness of the greatness of the task he had 
embarked upon, combined with the all-devouring interest in his 
work, which forced him to spare to the limit his time and 
energy. 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 13 
It was on the occasion of a close relative's wedding in Berlin, 
in 1901, that Cassirer met his first cousin from Vienna. He had 
previously seen her only once, eight years earlier, when she was 
a child of nine. All artistic traits of Cassirer's nature, his love 
and deep understanding of music, his fine feeling for genuine 
beauty had in no way suffered from his assiduous scientific re- 
searches and philosophical meditations; they always added a 
great deal to the irresistible charm of his personality and were 
immediately and deeply felt by the young girl. This first meet- 
ing determined their whole future. They fell in love with each 
other and married a year later in Vienna. 
This was indeed an exceptionally happy and harmonious 
union. Their mutual understanding was perfect, and Cassirer's 
wife always succeeded, thanks to her remarkable understanding 
and insight, in creating for her husband, even during the most 
stormy periods of their life, appropriate conditions for his con- 
tinuous work. 
Immediately after the wedding the young couple went to 
Munich, where they lived for more than a year. It was during 
this year that their first son, Heinz, was born (he is now mem- 
ber of the philosophical faculty at the University of Glasgow, 
Scotland). In 1903 Cassirer returned with his family to Berlin, 
where he began writing his history of epistemology. Cohen 
constantly pressed upon him and urged him to embark upon 
an academic career, yet Cassirer showed little desire to go to 
some small university town and live there for years in its at- 
mosphere of gossip and latent anti-Semitism. He much pre- 
ferred to stay in Berlin, where most of his and his wife's 
relatives lived and where the treasure of the State and Uni- 
versity libraries were at his disposal. His work developed 
rapidly, and as early as 1904 the two volumes of his 
Erkenntnisfroblem ("Problem of Knowledge") were finished. 
It was one of Cohen's most cherished stories how once, while 
visiting Cassirer in Berlin in 1904, he had asked Cassirer how 
his work was progressing. "Without saying a word," Cohen 
would relate, "Cassirer led me into his study, opened a drawer 
of his desk, and there it was, a voluminous, completely finished 
manuscript of his new work." 
14 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
In 1906 the first volume of the Erkenntnis-problem ("Prob- 
lem of Knowledge") was published, followed by the second 
one in 1908. The outstanding qualities of this work were 
rapidly recognized by students of philosophy all over the 
world} it appeared in several editions and slowly became one of 
the standard works on the history of human thought. Cassirer's 
original intention had been to give a broad picture of modern 
European thought as it led to, and culminated in, the philoso- 
phy of Kant. This he did in the first two volumes of his 
Erkenntnis'problem. Fifteen years later he added one more 
volume, in which he set forth the development of epistemology 
in post-Kantian philosophy; and shortly before he came to 
America (in the summer of 1941) he finished the as yet un- 
published fourth volume, where he has given a broad picture 
of the evolution of epistemology up to our own days.* 
The more one studies this work of Cassirer, the more one 
admires the intellectual scope of the man who was able to write 
it. Immense was the number of books Cassirer had to study and 
familiarize himself with in the interest of this work. And yet, 
this is the least spectacular part of it. Really amazing is 
Cassirer's ability to penetrate scores of individual systems of 
thought, reconstruct them in all their peculiarities, accentuate 
all that is original and fruitful in them, and reveal all their 
weaknesses and inconsistencies. Cassirer had an incredibly fine 
mind for the slightest nuances of thought, for the minutest 
differences and similarities, for all that was of fundamental or 
of secondary importance; with steady grasp he picked up the 
development through all its stages and ramifications; and, in 
showing how the same concept acquired a different meaning, 
according to the diverse philosophical systems in which it was 
applied as a constructive element, Cassirer laid the first founda- 
tion for the ideas which he later developed as his theory of 
"symbolic forms." Scores of Italian and German, French and 
English philosophers, almost or completely fallen into oblivion, 
came back in Cassirer's book to new life and historical impor- 
* EDITOR'S NOTE: This (fourth) volume of Cassirer's Erkennlnis'problem is 
now being translated into English under the direction of Professor Charles W. 
Hendel and will in due time be published by the Yale University Press. 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 15 
tance as organic links in the development of ideas or as con- 
nections between well known philosophical systems} thus mak- 
ing the continuity of philosophical thought more consistent and 
true. He was the first to introduce into the history of philosophy 
such names as Kepler, Galileo, Huygens, Newton, and Euler, 
by giving a detailed analysis of their philosophical conceptions, 
scientific methods and achievements, and by proving their 
fundamental importance for the theory of knowledge. Kant's 
own assertion that he tried to introduce Newton's method into 
philosophy now became quite clear in Cassirer's representation 
of Newton's and Kant's systems of thought. Yet Cassirer's 
greatest achievement in this work consisted in the creation of a 
broad general background by connecting the evolution of 
knowledge with the totality of spiritual culture: mythos and 
religion, psychology and metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics 
Cassirer drew all these problems into his deliberations as soon as 
he found some links missing in the development of their 
epistemology. 
Most noteworthy is also the style and the whole manner of 
presentation in this work. The most intricate philosophical prob- 
lems are treated in a quite clear and simple way; one gets the 
impression that the author deeply felt his responsibility to truth 
and to the reader; in every sentence he sincerely tried to help 
the reader to advance on the thorny path of truth. Cassirer's 
style makes any subject he discusses almost transparent, and 
his argumentation glides along like a broad and mighty stream, 
with great convincing power. 
The great success of his Erkenntnisproblem, which became 
obvious immediately after the appearance of the first volume, 
caused Cassirer to yield to Cohen's ardent desire and to embark 
finally upon an academic career. Yet, there was one condition 
attached to it he was ready to become Privatdozent only in the 
University of Berlin, since he still did not want to leave the 
city. He knew how difficult this undertaking was, first, because 
he was a Jew, and secondly, because he was Cohen's disciple and 
considered himself a member of the Marburg school, which 
at that time was one of the most renowned and hated 
"schools" in Germany. In his quiet manner Cassirer said to 
1 6 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
Cohen: "In this way I do not risk anything. I need not go any- 
where and waste my time. And if they do not want me it is all 
right with me." 
At that time philosophy was by no means brilliantly repre- 
sented at the University of Berlin. The famous Dilthey was 
already retired and only occasionally gave a few lectures for a 
selected group of students. Simmel was still there, but owing 
to his Jewish lineage and notwithstanding the importance of 
his books (especially his voluminous Soziologie, which became 
a standard work of pre-Hitlerite German science) and the 
brilliant success of his lectures, he was an assistant professor and 
virtually without any influence. The leading roles were played 
by Stumpf and Riehl, both quite serious scholars, but without 
any real importance (the following untranslatable pun was then 
very popular with the students at the University of Berlin: 
"Philosophic wird in Berlin mit Stumpf und Riehl aus- 
gerottet"). Stumpf was bitterly opposed to any form of idealis- 
tic philosophy ; Riehl tried to interpret Kant in a realistic sense 
and was an outspoken antagonist of the Marburg "school." Yet 
it was precisely these two men that Cassirer had to deal with 
when he decided to become Privatdozent of the University of 
Berlin. 
According to the regulations valid at that time in the Uni- 
versity of Berlin a candidate for "Privatdozentur" had to pre- 
sent a scientific study in the form of a book or manuscript 
and then, if his study had been accepted, he was invited to a so- 
called colloquium, where he had to give a trial lecture and to 
answer questions or critical comments on views expressed by 
him. Cassirer sent in his Erkenntnisproblem, which was at once 
accepted. A few weeks later he was invited to the colloquium, 
and as subject for his trial lecture he had chosen the "Ding an 
sichy" one of the most intricate concepts of Kant's philosophy. In 
his Erkenntmsfwoblem Cassirer had given a very interesting 
interpretation of this notion: he showed that the "Ding an 
sich y " being within Kant's philosophy always a limit of a 
maximum or minimum value, radically changed its meaning 
according to the particular group or system of concepts with 
reference to which in any given case it played the role of the 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 17 
limit. Thus, the "Ding an s\ch" has one meaning in the 
"Transcendentale Aesthetik" (Part I of Kritik der reinen 
Vernunft^y and an essentially different meaning in the "Deduc- 
tion der reinen Verstandesbegriffe" (Part II of the same work), 
and it is, therefore, fruitless to define this notion without taking 
into consideration the peculiar nature of the specific ideas with 
which it is connected in any special case. 
Here again we can vividly feel the future originator of the 
theory of "symbolic forms." Yet, Stumpf and Riehl were, of 
course, not satisfied at all, and they both, especially the latter, 
violently attacked Cassirer's theory. "You deny the existence of 
real things surrounding us," said Riehl. "Look at that oven 
there in the corner: to me it is a real thing, which gives us heat 
and can burn our skin; but to you it is just a mental image, a 
fiction!" Time and again Cassirer tried to explain the true 
meaning of the Kantian criticism, that human reason creates our 
knowledge of things, but not the things themselves; yet with- 
out avail. When the colloquium was over, both Stumpf and 
Riehl pleaded against admitting Cassirer as Privatdozent. But 
Dilthey, who was also present at the colloquium, decisively 
took Cassirer J s side and finished his plea with these words: "I 
would not like to be a man of whom posterity will say that he 
rejected Cassirer." This was sufficient to turn the tide: without 
further discussion the faculty gave Cassirer the venia legendi. 
In subsequent years the writer of this biography came to 
Berlin many times and frequently had the opportunity of at- 
tending Cassirer's lectures. Thus he was able to observe 
Cassirer's rapidly growing popularity; he saw how the original 
attendance of a few students grew to several dozens, then to 
many scores. This was an outstanding success; for at that time 
Cassirer's lectures were not obligatory for anyone, and his class- 
room was, therefore, crowded only because the students felt 
that what they got from him was true and substantial knowl- 
edge. Besides, his delivery was most attractive, his speech was 
very vivid and fluent, exact and eloquent at the same time. 
Especially popular were Cassirer J s seminars; there, in close 
personal contact with his students, he displayed all the charm 
and benevolence of his nature, he analyzed with endless patience 
1 8 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
and sympathetic understanding any expressed opinion and, if 
necessary, cautiously corrected it or interpreted it in the most 
fruitful possible way. He was a true paidagogos in the Platonic 
sense, deeply convinced that the teacher is largely to blame for 
the insufficiencies of his pupil. 
However, when circumstances demanded it, Cassirer could 
show that he was a real master of fencing. once it was in 
Berlin, in 1910 our common friend persuaded us to attend a 
lecture of a disciple of Avenarius. The lecture was quite con- 
fused and Cassirer was quite irritated by the lack of knowledge 
and understanding shown by the speaker. During the discussion, 
Cassirer took the floor and in the short space of less than half an 
hour he not merely revealed his amazingly deep and exact 
knowledge of Avenarius, but he uncovered so brilliantly all the 
inconsistencies of the main speaker that the entire lecture 
seemed literally to dissolve into thin air before our very eyes. 
When he finished, the audience cheered and laughed and went 
home without even listening to the lecturer's attempted stam- 
mering rejoinder. Much more important, however, was another 
occasion where Cassirer displayed his qualifications as a brilliant 
polemicist. It was when Leonard Nelson, the founder of the 
so-called New-Friesian "school," violently attacked Hermann 
Cohen. Here again it was the unfairness of the criticism, the 
lack of understanding or any desire for true understanding 
which induced Cassirer to answer Nelson. A polemic developed 
which could have become very interesting, if the opponents had 
been equal in intellectual stature. As things were, Cassirer 
towered above his antagonist to such a degree that all the time 
they fought on different levels: Nelson tried to ridicule single 
sentences, taken out of Cohen's books, especially of his Logik 
der reinen Erkenntnis, which is a profound and creative work 
but a hard nut to crack} whereas Cassirer was mainly interested 
in the very roots of the dissension and tried to show, by analyz- 
ing the original Kant-Fries relationship, the dangers of an ex- 
aggerated psychologism for epistemology. 
The first great systematic work of Cassirer appeared in 1910, 
his Stibstanzbegrif und Funktionsbegrif. Despite the origi- 
nality of the basic conception and whole structure of this work 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 19 
or, maybe just because of this , it was several years before 
the importance of this work was duly recognized by the scien- 
tific world and by the philosophically interested public. Then, 
however, it became the first work of Cassirer to be translated 
into several foreign languages, including English and Russian, 
As the title of the book indicates, it is devoted to the problem 
of concepts. (Although in the title of the authorized English 
translation, viz., Substance and Function, this fact is almost lost 
sight of.) For more than two thousand years the science of logic 
was based upon Aristotle's doctrine of concepts, which says 
that generalization is always the result of abstraction: from a 
group of similar things, for instance, round, oval, square, 
rectangular tables the attributes common to them all are ab- 
stracted and summarized in a general concept, "table." This 
theory, Cassirer argues, has one decisive weakness: whence and 
how do we get those groups of similar things that we allegedly 
use as the basis for our abstractions? How does it happen that 
from one perception, say that of a round table, we proceed to 
other perceptions which are similar to the first one and not to 
the perceptions of, for instance, "auto," "star," "water," in 
which case we would not obtain a group of similar things? Is it 
not obvious that we use the first perception as a kind of criterion 
with the help of which we are able to decide what belongs to 
our group of similar things and what not? Thus Aristotle's 
abstraction becomes only possible as the result of a selec- 
tion, of the coordinated activity of the human reason, which is 
the first and fundamental step toward general notions. "What 
lends the theory of abstraction support is merely the circum- 
stance that it does not presuppose the contents, out of which 
the concept is to develop, as disconnected particularities, but that 
it tacitly thinks them in the form of an ordered manifold from 
the first. The concept, however, is not deduced thereby, but 
presupposed; for, when we ascribe to a manifold an order and 
connection of elements, we have already presupposed the con- 
cept, if not in its complete form, yet in its fundamental func- 
tion." 1 
Thus Aristotle's theory of concept, based upon the abstraction 
1 Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function. Chicago London, 1923, p. 17. 
20 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
of common elements from a group of similar things, is nothing 
else than an obvious circulus viciosus. Yet this is not all. The 
theory of abstraction shows also another decisive weakness: in 
order to form a concept only such attributes are retained which 
are common to all elements of a given group, whereas all 
particularities are not included in a general concept they are 
just thrown aside and fade away. And the more general a con- 
cept is, the less attributes it contains, the more particularities 
disappear in the process of abstraction. Yet, "the genuine con- 
cept does not disregard the peculiarities and particularities which 
it holds under it, but seeks to show the necessity of the occurrence 
and connection of just these particularities. . . . Here the more 
universal concept shows itself also the more rich in content." 2 
Scientific concepts are all of this kind} they are general ideas, 
but their true function consists of expressing the rule from which 
a number of concrete particular forms can be derived. 
In his Substance and Function Cassirer also undertook the 
difficult task of showing what particular kinds of concepts 
underly the different realms of the exact and natural sciences, 
what is the logical essence of such categories as number, space, 
time, energy, and so forth. Cassirer was particularly interested 
in the problem of how the structure of concepts changes its 
character when we pass from one field of science to another j 
for instance, from mathematics to physics, or from physics to 
biology, etc. In carrying out this plan, he made, for the first 
time in the history of human thought, the very important and 
successful attempt to give a systematic analysis of concepts 
which underly the science of chemistry. The last part of the 
book is devoted to the theory of knowledge proper, to the con- 
cepts and methods by which human reason transforms sensory 
impressions into the systems of objective science. 
The members of the Marburg school were very proud of this 
new performance of Cassirer. Yet, the opposition came this time 
from a quarter from which it had been least expected from 
Hermann Cohen himself. Already while reading the proofs, 
Cohen obtained the impression, that as he expressed it later 
in a letter to Cassirer "our unity was jeopardized." Especially 
pp. 19-20. 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 21 

one long paragraph in Cassirer's book seemed to Cohen to be 
quite inconsistent with the teachings of the Marburg school, 
and, although all of Cohen's closest disciples were convinced 
that Cohen was mistaken, Cassirer, who invariably held Cohen 
in deepest respect, at once decided to reshape the whole page, 
despite the fact that he did not agree with Cohen and that his 
book was already in the final stages of printing. Upon reading 
the finished book, Cohen wrote to Cassirer: "I congratulate you 
and all members of our philosophical community on your new 
and great achievement. If I shall not be able to write the second 
part of my Logic, no harm will be done to our common cause, 
since my project is to a large degree fulfilled in your book." 3 
But the criticism comes after that: "Yet, after my first reading 
of your book I still cannot discard as wrong what I told you in 
Marburg: you put the center of gravity upon the concept of 
relation and you believe that you have accomplished with the 
help of this concept the idealization of all materiality. The ex- 
pression even escaped you, that the concept of relation is a 
category; yet it is a category only insofar as it is function, and 
function unavoidably demands the infinitesimal element in 
which alone the root of the ideal reality can be found." 
The controversy goes back to Cohen's daring attempt to 
establish the infinitesimal numbers as an absolute element, to 
put this absolute element before the whole number and to de- 
rive the latter from the former. There can be little doubt, 
logically as well as mathematically, that this is an impossible 
undertaking; the value of a number depends always on its 
relation to other numbers in which it may be contemplated: 
five is only fiye in relation to one, yet it is an infinite number in 
relation to an infinitesimal one, and an infinitesimal number in 
relation to an infinite one. Cassirer's "function," as contrasted 
with "substance," meant just that: it is impossible to ascribe an 
absolute value to a mathematical element, since this value is 
determined by different relations to which it may belong. 
Cassirer's theory of concept proved its great fruitfulness for 
the whole field of theoretical knowledge; it freed the principles 
and methods of human reason from the shadow of absoluteness 
3 From Cohen's letter to Cassirer of August 24, 1910. 
22 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
and disclosed their functional nature as flexible instruments of 
human knowledge. And just as the functional concept contains 
a direction, a certain point of view which serves as a basis of 
measurement for the similarity of single elements and arranges 
them in groups and series according to their affinity, so "the 
ideal connections spoken of by logic and mathematics are the 
permanent lines of direction, by which experience is orientated 
in its scientific shaping. The function of these connections is their 
permanent and indestructible value, and is verified as identical 
through all changes in the accidental material of experience." 4 
The publication of this important work brought about no 
change in Cassirer's academic career j he was still Privatdozent 
in Berlin, and not one single German university invited him, 
even as an assistant professor. Every time a chair in philosophy 
became free, Cassirer was invariably listed by the respective 
faculty as a candidate, but, oddly enough, his name was always 
put in the second place. Cassirer himself was quite content with 
his limited academic activities in the University of Berlin ; he 
not only never complained, but he did not even seem to feel the 
unfairness of the situation. He enjoyed his life and work in 
Berlin, his great success as teacher and scholar, even though 
officially it remained unrecognized. 
Harvard University was the first to invite him, in 1914, for 
two years as visiting professor. However, personal reasons pre- 
vented Cassirer at that time from accepting this invitation. The 
same year he was awarded the Kuno Fischer Gold Medal by the 
Heidelberg Academy. Upon Cassirer's special request he was 
given a bronze medal instead, and the difference in monetary 
value 3,000 R.M. was sent to the Red Cross. 
Although Cassirer was highly absorbed by his research work 
and academic activities, he still found time to organize and 
direct a new edition of Kant's works. For this edition he wrote 
an extensive biographical and philosophical introduction to 
Kant's system. In this introduction he gives a very clear both 
popular and truly scientific picture of the evolution of Kant's 
central ideas and makes several important contributions to the 
understanding of Kant's philosophy. Perhaps the most important 
4 Op. cit., p. 323. 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 23 
of these contributions is Cassirer's analysis of the fundamental 
ideas of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskrajt and his explanation of 
why Kant based his theory of judgment upon two seemingly 
so different roots as the philosophy of art, on the one hand, and 
biology, on the other. 
Thus far all of Cassirer's publications had been devoted to 
the problem of knowledge. Although he was vitally interested 
in all the problems of art, ethics, and religion, and assiduously 
worked on them, he somehow did not feel ready to write down 
the results of his research; and meanwhile he was busy with the 
preparations for the third volume of his Erkewntws'problem. 
The outbreak of the First World War changed his plans. He 
was drafted for Civil Service, and his work consisted of the 
reading of foreign newspapers. Thus he was able to contemplate 
the war from different points of view and to obtain a truer 
picture of events j he knew already in the early stages of the 
war that Germany was doomed. Besides, his whole nature was 
absolutely contrary to the imperialistic megalomania of Prus- 
sian militarism. Yet he was a philosopher, not a politician, and 
he found his own way of expressing his attitude toward the 
ultimate spiritual values around which the struggle raged: he 
published his book Freiheit und Form. 
All truly humanitarian and idealistic tendencies of German 
culture, everything which proclaimed the dignity and freedom 
of individuals and of nations Leasing and Schiller, Kant and 
Goethe was convincingly and eloquently expounded by Cas- 
sirer in this book, providing a magnificent picture of man's 
struggle for his spiritual liberation, showing Lessing's cosmo- 
politanism and sublime tolerance, Schiller's keen sensitiveness 
and passion for freedom, Kant's radical, conception of natural 
right, and Goethe's redemption of the individual as milestones 
of this eternal process. 
Cassirer showed in this book that his feeling for all forms of 
poetry was just as deep and incisive as his understanding of 
science. His interpretation of Goethe's lyrics, his analysis of 
Goethe's poetical work in the different stages of its develop- 
ment belong to the best that has ever been written on this sub- 
ject. Cassirer's strong artistic vein enabled him to grasp the 
24 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
inner core of Goethe's symbols, to provide those symbols with 
profound and most surprising interpretation. "Mahomed," 
"Pandora" to mention only two examples in Cassirer's 
masterly exposition appeared suddenly in a new light and their 
unfathomable wisdom and beauty became visible to anyone. No 
less penetrating was his analysis of Goethe's achievements in the 
fields of aesthetics, morals, and religion. Cassirer always felt 
keenly that great poets and belletrists were, in their innermost, 
endeavoring to find a solution to the eternal problems of being 
and life, akin to the search of the great philosophers} they only 
expressed their thoughts and beliefs in the form of concrete 
symbols and images, and not in the form of abstract reasoning. 
Goethe's titanic personality, the originality, depth and versa- 
tility of his creative power irresistibly attracted Cassirer all his 
life, and in a long series of special articles he followed up his 
study of Goethe. Brilliant was the way in which he revealed the 
deepest ideological roots of Goethe's polemic attitude towards 
Newton, or described Goethe's conception of history, or com- 
pared the spiritual worlds of Goethe and Plato. All who knew 
Cassirer personally admitted that his face reminded them of 
Goethe^ yet their mental similarity was even more striking it 
was the same wide scope of spiritual interests, the same tend- 
ency to regard every event in the light of endless historical 
perspectives, to transform every single fact into an element of 
an infinite system. It was undoubtedly this affinity of mental 
tendencies which accounted for Cassirer's unique understanding 
of Goethe 
War nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, 
Die Sonne Konnt' es nie erblicken. . . . 
World War I brought a deep spiritual crisis in Europe. one 
belief especially had been shattered to its very foundation: the 
idea that human reason was a decisive power in the social life 
of man. When, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 
Georges Sorel advanced his theory that not reason but social 
myth was the driving power of human history, that the actions 
of human societies were determined not by objective truth and 
cool deliberation but by peculiar images, mostly born out of 
hatred, revulsion, contempt, and filled with strong impulses and 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 25 
emotions, images, which have nothing to do with truth and 
often represent the greatest possible falsehood the scholars 
only laughed at him and paid no attention at all to his "queer" 
ideas. Yet, the progress of the war and the subsequent years 
which saw the birth of several totalitarian ideologies and their 
victorious march to power in the largest countries of Europe, 
ruined and disarrayed by the war, clearly showed the extent 
of truth contained in Sorel's social theories. The stormy pace of 
historical events demanded a new approach to the problems of 
reality, different ways and means for its understanding. This 
was the background for Cassirer's theory of symbolic forms 
his great contribution to the understanding of the most vital 
problems of our time and of history. 
When the author of this article again met Cassirer, shortly 
after the termination of World War I, Cassirer was already 
quite absorbed in his new work. Cassirer once told how in 1917, 
just as he entered a street car to ride home, the conception of the 
symbolic forms flashed upon him 5 a few minutes later, when he 
reached his home, the whole plan of his new voluminous work 
was ready in his mind, in essentially the form in which it was 
carried out in the course of the subsequent ten years. Suddenly 
the onesidedness of the Kant-Cohen theory of knowledge be- 
came quite clear to Cassirer. It is not true that only the human 
reason opens the door which leads to the understanding of 
reality, it is rather the whole of the human mind, with all its 
functions and impulses, all its potencies of imagination, feeling, 
volition, and logical thinking which builds the bridge between 
man's soul and reality, which determines and moulds our con- 
ception of reality. "The true concept of reality cannot be pressed 
into a plain and abstract form of being, it rather contains the 
whole manifold and wealth of spiritual life. ... In this sense 
any new 'symbolic form' not only the concept and system of 
knowledge, but also the intuitive world of art or myth or langu- 
age, represents according to a saying of Goethe's a revela- 
tion directed from the inside toward the outside, a 'synthesis of 
world and mind,' which alone makes certain for us the genuine 
unity of both." 5 The whole world of reality can be grasped 
5 Ernst Cassirer, Phttosofhie der symbolischen Formen. Vol. I, p. 46. 
26 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 

only with the help of certain mental images, symbolic forms, 
and the task of philosophy consists in the understanding of those 
mental and psychical functions which determine the structure 
of these symbolic forms. A queer image of primitive totemism 
may be vastly different from the modern conception of four- 
dimentional space, yet they both show a definite regularity of 
inward structure, they both can be reduced to some fundamental 
functions of the human mind. Even the spiritual world of 
lunatics reveals to an attentive analysis some definite regularities 
which find their ｅxpression in queer but still understandable 
symbolic forms and their study proved to be helpful for the 
diagnosis and treatment of certain mental diseases. 
The whole of human culture is reflected in our mind in an 
endless row of symbolic forms, and Cassirer now embarked 
upon the titanic task of first trying to analyze the structure of 
these forms in general, and, secondly, to show what special kind 
of symbolic forms underlie the different realms of human life 
religion, art, science, social activities. For many years the 
external conditions of his life were greatly favorable to this 
immense task: during World War I two new universities were 
founded in Germany, one in Hamburg and the other in Frank- 
furt, both quite progressive and democratic, and the first thing 
they both did was to offer Cassirer a full professorship in 
philosophy. Cassirer decided to accept the offer of the Uni- 
versity of Hamburg because it showed an exceptionally great 
eagerness for securing his services. He never regretted his 
choice in Hamburg he found everything he could desire: a 
large and most interested audience for his lectures, and the 
famous private "Warburg Library" with a rich collection of 
materials which Cassirer needed for his researches into symbolic 
forms. Many times Cassirer expressed his positive amazement 
at the fact that the selection of the materials and the whole in- 
ward structure of this library suggested the idea that its 
founder must have more or less anticipated his theory of 
symbolic forms as a system of fundamental functions of the 
human mind underlying all basic tendencies of human culture 
and explaining the particular nature of any one of them. 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 27 
In the years 1923-1929 the three volumes of his Philosophie 
der symbolischen Formen were composed and published. Based 
upon vast historical and systematical material, the work gives 
a penetrating analysis of Cassirer's general theory of symbolic 
forms and of its application to the problems of language, of 
myths, and of knowledge. Almost incredible is the wealth of 
concrete facts and original ideas by means of which Cassirer shows 
the fruitfulness of his theory. Almost the entire world's litera- 
ture on language and myths, almost all the realms of human 
science had been closely explored by him and the particular 
kinds of symbolic forms in those different realms shown in bold 
and broad relief. Yet, even this immense job did not take all of 
Cassirer's time and energy. During the same years, while work- 
ing out and writing down his Philoso'phie der symbolischen 
Formen y he finished the third volume of his Erkenntnityrob- 
lem y he wrote a book on Einstein's theory of relativity and pub- 
lished literally scores of philosophical and literary articles. Be- 
sides, he eagerly performed his duties as academic teacher, gave 
weekly several lectures and seminars, and was most accessible 
to any student who desired his help on philosophical problems. 
Despite this immense amount of intellectual work which 
Cassirer performed day after day, there was nothing of the 
ivory tower pedant in him; he spent almost every evening in the 
circle of his family and of his friends, and he showed a lively 
interest in all world-events. It was amazing to what a degree he 
was able to keep abreast of so many things which had no relation 
whatsoever to his scientific work he was a thorough connois- 
seur of classical music, and in the classical operas he knew not 
only every single melody, but also every word of the text, often 
even in several different languages. He knew a great deal about 
many fields of sport and was able to discuss some intricate prob- 
lems of passiance or skat. He was even interested in the most 
impersonal manner in stock exchange prices and tried to 
understand what was hidden behind their seemingly grotesque 
and unpredictable movements. Yet, there was only one game 
which he really cherished: chess. only on rare occasions did he 
have the time and opportunity to play a game of chess or to 
28 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
analyze the game of an outstanding master; but when he did 
take the time for such it absorbed him to such a degree that as 
long as he busied himself with chess he did not hear or see any- 
thing that was going on around him. 
This great versatility proved to be a real blessing to Cassirer 
when, in 1930, he was elected rector of the University of Ham- 
burg. Now he had to represent the University at the various 
academic functions and to make speeches on literally every type 
of subject one day he spoke on the development of modern 
traffic, another day on the breeding of hogs, then again on the 
importance of athletic sports. And the most amazing part of it 
was that the scope of his understanding and the wealth of his 
knowledge were so vast that whatever subject he touched upon 
he was able to illuminate its different aspects and to show its 
true place in the whole of cultural life. 
Fourteen most prolific years of his life Cassirer spent in 
Hamburg; into this period fell also two large research works 
on the history of philosophy, one concerning the time of the 
Reformation, the other dealing with the development of Plato- 
nism in England. This latter work, published in 1932, was the 
last one he ever published in Germany. Meanwhile heavy 
storm clouds darkened the skies over Germany, the Hitler 
movement was on the verge of its first decisive victory, ready 
to take over the Reich government. Already years before Cas- 
sirer had recognized the great danger of this movement; he 
never listened to the speeches of Hitler or his henchmen, he 
never read their books and pamphlets; yet he seemed to know 
with uncanny foresight what Nazism was about to do to 
Germany and to the rest of the world. When their notorious 
slogan: "Right is what serves our Fuehrer" first came up, and 
Cassirer heard of it, he said: "This is the end of Germany." 
Cassirer, therefore, did not wait to be dismissed by the Nazis 
he tendered his resignation immediately after Hitler became 
Chancellor of the German Reich. He knew that there would be 
nothing for him to do in the "new" Germany, and he decided 
to emigrate. Within a very few weeks he was offered three pro- 
fessorships in three different countries one in Sweden (Upsala 
University), one in England (Oxford University), and one in 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 29 
the U.S. A. (New School for Social Research in New York). Cas- 
sirer went first to Oxford, where he lectured for two years 
(1933-35). When he arrived in England, he was only able to 
read English, but he could not speak a word of it. Yet, three 
months later he was already lecturing in English. Meanwhile 
he had received another offer, this time from the University of 
Goeteborg (Sweden). He decided to accept it, but only on one 
condition: that he would be given a personal chair, in order that 
no Swedish professor would have to lose his job. This condition 
was readily accepted, and, in September, 1935, Cassirer went to 
Goeteborg. 
He stayed in Sweden for almost six years 5 and those years 
again were very fruitful years for him. In 1937 he published 
his book on Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der mod- 
ernen Physik. Cassirer himself regarded this book as one of his 
most important achievements. His capacity to penetrate into all 
the details of the most intricate problems of modern physics, 
as shown by this book, is truly amazing. Cassirer had been 
prompted to embark upon this difficult task by a prolonged and 
somewhat confused discussion which had arisen among several 
leading physicists and which had touched upon the funda- 
mental problems of epistemology, especially upon the principle 
of causality. The structure of the atom, the peculiar manner in 
which an electric particle jumps, as it were, from one pre- 
destined trajectory to another, the difficulties in recognizing 
and characterizing individual elements, and the necessity of 
applying statistical methods to the solution of quantum-theo- 
retical problems convinced many physicists not only of the im- 
possibility of going on exclusively with the methods of the 
so-called classical mechanics but even induced some of them to 
discard the principle of causality altogether and to introduce 
the concept of purpose into the interpretation of purely material 
phenomena. In order to analyze this problem, Cassirer gave 
a vast and detailed picture of the development of the basic 
concepts of mechanics and physics in modern times; he showed 
the historical continuity of thought, which led to the conception 
of the quantum theory, and convincingly demonstrated that it 
was not the principle of causality which was to blame for the 
30 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
difficulties with which this theory had to struggle, but the fact 
that the system of symbols used in it was too narrow: modern 
physics "is confronted with the necessity of applying different 
types of symbols, of schematic 'explanation/ to one and the 
same occurrence." 6 
This idea, in which Cassirer saw a consistent method of 
interpretation of the fundamental results of atomic physics, is 
one of the basic principles of his philosophy of symbolic forms. 
He once expressed it in a simple, yet truly classical, manner 
with the aid of the following concrete example: "We begin with 
a certain perceptual experience: with a drawing which we see 
before us. We may turn our attention, first of all, to the purely 
sensory 'impression' which we comprehend as a simple combina- 
tion of lines." Now we change our approach to this geometrical 
figure, we apply to it another set of symbolic forms, and "the 
spatial image becomes an aesthetic one: I comprehend in it the 
character of a certain ornament, with which there is connected 
in my mind a certain artistic sense and significance. . . . And once 
again the form of my contemplation may change, insofar as that 
which at first appeared to me as a pure ornament now reveals 
itself as the bearer of a mystic-religious significance." 7 Thus the 
same thing, in this particular case a geometrical figure, appears, 
when treated from different points of view, as the bearer of a 
very different significance, as a concept with different meanings. 
No sooner had Cassirer finished his epistemological interpre- 
tation of the quantum theory than he began working on the 
fourth volume of the Erkenntnisfroblem. In this volume, 
which is now awaiting publication, Cassirer is giving us an 
integral analysis of the development of epistemological and 
logical problems for the period of the last hundred years 
from the middle of the nineteenth century to practically our 
own day. This volume also contains a critical analysis of all 
important movements in the realm of contemporary philosophy. 
* Determinismus , p. 265. 
f From "Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophic" in 
the Zeitschrtft fur Aesthetik und Allgemeine KunstwitsenscJiaft, Vol. 21, pp. 194- 
195. Both of the above quotations come from this article j the translation is by 
the present writer. 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 31 
There were two more books Cassirer published during the 
six years he lived in Sweden, both of them very typical of his 
almost incredible versatility and mental adaptability. For, de- 
spite his advanced age, he mastered the Swedish language 
perfectly and so thoroughly imbued himself with Swedish art, 
philosophy, literature, and history that he was able to make a 
very important contribution to the development of Swedish 
philosophy with his book on Hagerstrom. Cassirer's second 
book is devoted to Descartes and his relation to the Swedish 
queen Christine} here he discusses one of the most difficult 
problems of Swedish history: why did Queen Christine resign 
her throne? Cassirer attempts his solution of this problem by 
spreading new light upon Descartes, on his influence upon 
Christine, and by giving a broad picture of the spiritual life of 
Europe in the seventeenth century. 
When Cassirer left Germany he arranged everything for the 
emigration of his daughter and two sons. one son and the 
daughter joined him almost immediately in England. But it 
took all of five years before his second son could join him in 
Goeteborg. This was a great sorrow of the emigration years 
he was never able to live together with all his children and 
grandchildren, whom he loved so dearly j there was always a 
separation from one or the other. 
In the summer of 1941 Cassirer accepted the invitation of 
Yale University and came to the United States as a visiting 
professor. His original intention was to remain here two years 
only and then to return to Sweden, where he had, in the mean- 
time, become a citizen. However, the outbreak of World War 
II upset his plans. At the end of two years he was unable to 
return to Sweden and willingly agreed, therefore, to prolong 
his contract with Yale University for another year. During this 
period Cassirer received an invitation to teach at Columbia 
University and in the summer of 1944, he left New Haven and 
went to New York. 
His arrival in America opened a new page in Cassirer's life. 
Here again one has to admire his great adaptability. This time 
it was not the English language, which he knew quite well by 
now, nor was it American philosophy the development of which 
32 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
he had studied closely for decades. In Substance and Function 
one already finds numerous references to American scholars 
and philosophers. But the methods of academic teaching in 
America are quite different from those of Europe. The co- 
operation between students and professors is much closer and 
more informal here than in Europe. Cassirer not only adapted 
himself willingly and easily to these different ways of teaching 
he sincerely liked and greatly appreciated them. He often 
said that to work together with a group of eager students who 
recognized no other authority than truth itself and kept ques- 
tioning their teachers until they were entirely and thoroughly 
satisfied was to him a new and most fruitful experience. 
During the last twelve years of his life Cassirer devoted in- 
creasingly more time to research in the fields of the social 
sciences. He felt that now the time had come for him to apply 
his philosophy of symbolic forms to this realm of human culture 
which had always strongly attracted him, but which he had never 
yet discussed systematically in his books. There had been good 
reasons for this delay. The social sciences cannot easily free 
themselves from the influence of deeply rooted subjective 
tendencies in the form of national and class ideologies, religious 
and racial prejudices, economic interests, etc. Cassirer undertook 
to explore in the first instance those aspects of human culture 
where the attitude of (at least relative) objectivity could more 
easily prevail. But the victorious advance of the totalitarian 
ideology in some of the largest countries of Europe finally 
urged him on to take a stand against these destructive forces 
which as was so obvious to him threatened to engulf the 
whole world. In 1941 he wrote, therefore, his first more 
comprehensive study in the field of the social sciences. Even 
this, however, dealt, in the main, with the epistemological side 
of the problem, with the characteristics of the particular 
methods and principles upon which this branch of human 
knowledge is based. 
His Essay on Man, published in 1944, and written by him 
in English, contains a comprehensive and integral exposition 
of his philosophy of symbolic forms and their application to 
different realms of human culture. In this book Cassirer not 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 33 

only summarizes his more than half-a-century long researches 
on languages and science, myth and religion, but he also shows, 
for the first time, at some length the decisive role the symbolic 
forms play in the realms of art and historical science. At the 
same time Cassirer also published several important articles on 
various subjects. In one of them he gave a quite original analysis 
of the Bible and showed why the Nazis had chosen the Jews 
as their ideological enemy Number one while the Nazis 
based their power upon historical and social myths, the Jews 
have always shown little inclination for mythical thought. 
Meanwhile he also persistently worked on what he now con- 
sidered to be his main task, namely, an undertaking of the 
driving forces of human history, especially those forces which 
made possible the appalling growth of totalitarianism in our 
time. In 1944 he finally put into finished form a voluminous 
manuscript which offers his solution to this problem. This book 
which was to be Cassirer's last is entitled The Myth of the 
State y and was written in English. Even if this were the only 
book ever written by him, it would still secure a considerable 
name for him as a scientist and philosopher for many genera- 
tions to come. This book begins with an exhaustive analysis of 
mythical thought, uncovering the intellectual, emotional, and 
volitional roots upon which the myth thrives in the social life of 
man. Then it gives a broad and general delineation, quite 
original in nature, of the development of political theory from 
the days of the early Greek philosophy to the very threshold of 
our own time, and uncovers, step by step, the technique not 
always clever, but always treacherous and persistent of the 
modern political myth which led human culture to the brink of 
complete destruction. The result of this penetrating and il- 
luminating investigation into the myth of the state is found, 
in concentrated form, in Cassirer's following words: 
"In the Babylonian mythology we find a legend that de- 
scribed the creation of the world. We are told that Marduk, the 
highest God, before he could begin his work, had to fight a 
dreadful combat. He had to vanquish and subjugate the serpent 
Tiamat and the other dragons of darkness. He slew Tiamat and 
bound the dragons. Out of the limbs of the monster Tiamat he 
34 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
formed the world and gave to it its shape and its order. . . . The 
world of human culture may be described in the words of this 
Babylonian legend. It could not arise before the darkness of 
myth was fought and overcome. But the mythical monsters 
were not entirely destroyed. They were used for the creation 
of a new universe and they still survive in this universe. The 
powers of myth were thus checked and subdued by superior 
forces. As long as these forces intellectual, ethical, artistic 
forces are in full strength, myth is tamed and subdued. But 
once they begin to lose their strength chaos arises again. Myth- 
ical thought then begins to rise anew and to pervade the whole 
of man's cultural and social life."* 
Despite his advancing age, Cassirer kept on working continu- 
ously, persistently, almost as much as he had worked in his 
youth, and, in fact, throughout his life. How often did he sit, 
writing at his desk, till late into the night, and the next morning 
the first rays of the rising sun found him again busy with his 
work. on April 13 (1945), the day of his death, Cassirer got 
up very early and spent the whole morning at his desk writing; 
then he went to Columbia University, never to return to his 
home. 
Ernst Cassirer belongs to the great tradition of classical phi- 
losophy. Goethe, trying to define the essence of classicism, once 
said: "Classicism is sanity, romanticism is illness," and Novalis, 
one of the greatest among the romanticists, unwittingly pro- 
vided the key to this judgment by his assertion that the essence 
of romanticism consists in the transformation of a single event 
or individual fact into an absolute and general principle of the 
whole. To Novalis and Schlegel everything was the emotion of 
love, even mathematics or a death sentence; to Fichte and 
Schopenhauer everything was volition, just as to Hegel every- 
thing was Objective Mind or to Schelling intellectual intuition: 
in each case one principle, one function, one special power 
dominates and determines the whole. Classicism, on the con- 
trary, always recognizes several principles as quite independent 
* EDITOR'S NOTE: Apparently Mr. Gawronsky, in making this quotation, had 
access to a manuscript version of the book} cf. pp. 297-98 of the published work, 
New Haven (1946). 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 35 
of each other, although closely connected and organically 
related and capable only in their organic interrelatedness of 
creating and forming the spiritual world of man. This was the 
very core of Cassirer's philosophical conviction. Throughout 
the multifarious realms of human culture he demonstrated the 
originality and independence of their respective symbolic forms 
and at the same time showed the closest connection to exist 
among all these forms, thus uniting them into one organic and 
harmonic whole. So great, moreover, was the scope of Cas- 
sirer's mental gifts, so inexhaustible his energy, so faithful his 
memory, so deep, swift, and versatile his power of comprehen- 
sion, his mind so original and imaginative, that he was able 
to undertake a unique voyage around the entire spiritual world 
of man and to discover, on his journey, innumerable treasures 
of human thought. 
Cassirer liked to tell the following story: once he met the 
great mathematician Hilbert, the "Euclid of our time," and 
asked him about one of the latter's disciples. Hilbert answered: 
"He is all right. You know, for a mathematician he did not have 
enough imagination. But he has become a poet and now he is 
doing fine." Cassirer always heartily laughed, when he told 
this story, and he had good reason for doing so, but a reason, of 
which he was never aware: he had enough imagination to be- 
come a true scholar and philosopher. His mental associations 
were amazingly rich, colorful, and always quite exact. He 
possessed in high degree the gift which Goethe called "im- 
agination for the truth of reality" or "exact sensory imagina- 
tion." However keen and daring his thinking was it always 
remained measured, objective, realistic. 
Truly original and prolific thinkers are usually very modest. 
Goethe wrote in the introduction to his absolutely new and 
revolutionary conception of botany that, in this work, he had not 
said anything which any man of common sense could not easily 
discover for himself. Kant frankly expressed his regret that he 
was not as gifted as Mendelssohn. And we all know how ab- 
solutely modest is Einstein. Thus, modesty was also one of 
Cassirer's most outstanding traits. He never claimed that this or 
that idea or conception had first been discovered or formulated 
36 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
by him. on the contrary, he was always in the habit of quoting 
numerous authorities both of the past and in the present who 
expressed similar ideas} and he always pointed out that really 
important ideas usually appear as the result of the close co- 
operation of many human minds. Goethe's assertion that only 
mankind as a whole is able to find the truth was part of Cas- 
sirer's very nature and made him largely oblivious to the 
uniqueness of many of his own deepest insights and significant 
contributions. 
It was this trait of Cassirer's mental attitude which made him 
so tolerant in all spiritual things and so appreciative of all earnest 
and sincere striving. His deep conviction that truth is im- 
mensely beyond the insight of any one individual mind never 
permitted him to discard any opinion without thorough investi- 
gation. And, just because he found so much truth in other 
thinkers, he never attempted to found a philosophical school of 
his own. And it was precisely his great love of truth which made 
deliberate falsehood and evil all the more loathsome to him. 
Throughout his life, therefore, he did not stop fighting against 
falsehood and evil in his own quiet but determined manner. 
Cassirer was a deeply religious man. He cared little for 
differing rites, rituals, confessions, or denominations} these 
only split mankind into so many groups and often turn them 
against each other. Yet the very core of any true religion, the 
cosmic feeling, a love as wide as the universe and as intense as 
the light of the sun, was always vivid in his heart. It was this 
feeling which urged Cassirer incessantly to explore all material 
and spiritual things, which filled his heart with deep sympathy 
for everything good'in the world, which strengthened his will 
to fight for this good. And it was this feeling which was the 
source of his charming humour the Infinite All was always 
present in his mind, it never permitted him to take either him- 
self or his surroundings too seriously, and he was, therefore, 
able to joke for hours in the most spirited and sympathetic 
manner. 
To the very end of his life Cassirer retained his youthful 
spirit, his vivid interest in all the aspects of life around him and 
his readiness to be helpful to other people. It is difficult to 
CASSIRER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK 37 
imagine a kinder and more sympathetic person, a man with such 
an absolute devotion to the good. Symbolic of his whole nature, 
therefore, was the way of his passing: on the street he was met 
by one of his students, who addressed a question to him. Cas- 
sirer turned to answer, smiled kindly at the young man, and 
suddenly fell dead into his arms. 
DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
NEW YORK CITY 
B 
FOUR ADDRESSES 
Delivered at Memorial Services, held under the Auspices 
of the 
Department of Philosophy 
of 
Columbia University 
Brander Matthews Theater, Columbia University 
June i, 1945 
IN MEMORIAM: ERNST CASSIRER 
This is the locust season of our days 
When the ripe meadows of the mind are bare, 
This is the month of the never-born maize 
Upon whose golden meats we shall not fare. 
This is the week of the stunted stalk 
And fruit that is dust on the bones of rock, 
This is the day of the hungry hawk 
And the songbirds dead by the fallen flock. 
This is the noon of our derelict plain, 
The sun-parched hour of most desolate pain. 
Yet there is a valley where sweet grain grows 
In strong-rooted stands, in tall splendid rows. 
Here toiled in the meadows a man wise and serene, 
And the meadows bore fruit and the meadows are green. 
EDWARD MURRAY CASE 
ERNST CASSIRER 
WITH the passing of Ernst Cassirer one of the great 
philosophical interpreters of human civilization has been 
taken from us. The last true scion of the classic tradition of 
German idealism has been laid to rest. While we are wondering 
whether the Germans will ever be able to produce a new moral 
and intellectual order by returning to the liberal humanism of 
their own past, which they renounced so violently in recent 
decades, this meeting is a demonstration of our confident faith 
in these ideas as a precious part of our own culture. 
Soon after the classic school of German philosophy had been 
deprived of its great creative leaders with the deaths of Hegel 
and Schelling, German philosophy lost its dominant position to 
the new natural and historical sciences. Simultaneously Ger- 
man philosophy began to retreat from an active participation in 
the discussion of the fundamental political issues of the age. The 
programs of the political parties were little affected by the 
humane philosophy of the early part of the century. 
In the last third of the century, however, a renascence of 
philosophical thought took place, which is usually called the 
rise of neo-Kantianism. But though a great deal of the new 
philosophical discussion centered around a fresh study and 
appreciation of Kant, the new philosophical movement did not 
aim at the enthronement of the Konigsberg philosopher as the 
patron saint of a new scholasticism but had much broader and 
deeper objectives. It sprang from the moral and intellectual 
dissatisfaction with the then fashionable ideas which seemed 
incapable of overcoming the growing materialism and natural- 
ism. Many went even so far as to consider these philosophies 
the logical outcome of modern scientific research. In contrast, 
.41 
42 HAJO HOLBORN 
the new generation of German philosophers asserted that the 
progress of the individual natural and historical sciences 
stemmed very largely from the discoveries of classic philosophy 
and that research would lose its direction and meaning without 
a critical awareness of its basic methods. However, philosophy 
was not only to act as a guide to the various academic depart- 
ments but was to gain fresh vigor from them. 
Ernst Cassirer began his studies when the new philosophical 
movement had already gained influence in German universities. 
Lotze was probably the chief bridge-builder between the classic 
idealism and the neo-idealism which then found its leaders 
in Dilthey and in the neo-Kantian schools of Marburg and 
the South- West, represented by Cohen and Natorp and by 
Windelband and Rickert. But it should not be forgotten that 
the sciences and arts took an active part in producing the new 
philosophy. German mathematics and physics from Helmholtz 
to Planck and Einstein were deeply conscious of their philo- 
sophical roots and not all the historians got lost in contemporary 
national politics. Harnack and his school of ecclesiastical his- 
tory, the school of the history of religion from which Troeltsch 
made his way into philosophy, and Meinecke's work in the 
history of ideas are only a few examples of the manner in 
which historians helped to buttress the new philosophical move- 
ment. 
Ernst Cassirer took his place among the best scholars of this 
group, and while he remained always grateful for being the 
member of a group of common spirit and purpose, he soon 
began to chart a course of his own in accordance with his 
personal gifts. In his early studies Cassirer concentrated on 
achieving a fuller understanding of the much-praised and little- 
known Leibniz, the real founder of the German philosophical 
tradition. Leibniz was the father of the theory of knowledge 
which, in contrast to almost the whole philosophy of the i8th 
century, Kant included, saw in the study of nature and of history 
two manifestations of the one human quest for knowledge. He 
did not consider the humanities a lower, or less mature, form of 
academic achievement. Both were branches of Wissenschaft, 
science, i.e., both were producing scientific truth though by dif- 
ERNST CASSIRER 43 
ferent methods. Throughout his life Cassirer remained a stu- 
dent of Leibniz by keeping abreast both of the progress of 
the natural sciences and of the liberal arts. 
However, Cassirer believed that his basic approach to phi- 
losophy was Kantian in origin, Kant had maintained that the 
way to a transcendental order could be gained only through 
an analysis of the forms and methods of human thought, and 
he had demonstrated the power of his new critical idealism in 
the philosophical study of the natural sciences, ethics, and 
finally aesthetics. The neo-Kantians and particularly Cassirer 
went farther. Their epistemology included the methodology 
of history and moreover of all forms of creative civilization, 
finally encompassing even the ｅxpressions of pre-scientific hu- 
man thought and imagination as revealed in language and 
mythology. 
This is the key to the truly universal scope of Cassirer's 
studies. In addition to Leibniz and Kant, it was the spirit of 
Goethe which gave life to Cassirer's thought, 
Wer nicht von 3000 Jahren 
Sich weiss Rechenschaft zu geben 
Bleibt im Grunde unerfahren 
Muss von Tag zu Tage leben. 1 
In Cassirer's personality and work Goethe's program of edu- 
cation became a living reality again. The totality of Western 
civilization was to be reconstructed and made a part of the 
consciousness of the modern individual and of present-day 
civilization. The study of the processes and creations of civiliza- 
tion would lift the individual to a position from which he could 
see farther than "from day to day" and could begin to grasp 
the ideal forms and categories of the human mind. 
In this version of idealistic philosophy philosophical studies 
became in large sections identical with historical research. In 
general, Cassirer confined his historical interest to the history 
of human thinking and avoided the discussion of the social and 
political forces. However, he was not satisfied with the old- 
l Tr.: He who cannot account for 3000 years is basically inexperienced and 
therefore can only exist from day to day. 
44 HAJO HOLBORN 
fashioned type of history of philosophy which dealt chiefly 
with the doctrines of the leading philosophers, and linked them 
together by a loose chain of abstract speculation. Thus, between 
a social and political interpretation of historical civilization on 
one side and a history of mere ideas on the other his history of 
human thought held its own place. His work ranged from the 
tedious editing of small texts and discoveries to his monu- 
mental edition of Kant. Beyond the editing it proceeded to the 
analytical and interpretative monographs and articles covering 
ancient science and the philosophy of practically all ages of 
Western civilization. Even those historians who care little about 
philosophy cannot by-pass the new historical vistas which he 
opened particularly on the Renaissance and the European 
Enlightenment. 
But as closely as his historical and philosophical studies were 
intertwined, the unity of his many interests is to be found in 
the philosophical conviction that man can participate in a 
higher order of life only through the realization of the peren- 
nial forms of human thought. He drew these philosophical con- 
clusions most clearly in his great Erkenntnistheorie and in his 
Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen. Cassirer's writings mir- 
ror far more than do those of most of his German colleagues 
his unusual gift as a teacher. He had a unique facility for clear 
and logical exposition, and all the products of his pen display 
his extraordinary sense of balance and aesthetic form. His ca- 
pacity to project himself into the psychological and mental 
environment of a past age or of an individual thinker of the 
past did not make him forget the individual needs of a present- 
day audience or student. His understanding of human nature 
made him take his listeners or pupils as seriously as the 
philosophical and historical subjects he tried to expound to 
them. These qualities explain his success as a teacher in Ger- 
many, in Sweden, and in America. 
Cassirer gave up his professorship in Hamburg when the 
Hitlerites came to power in Germany. This was natural, con- 
sidering that he was one of the chief exponents of that liberal 
tradition of German thought which the Nazis tried to destroy 
by all means. But, being at the same time a Jew, he had to 
ERNST CASSIRER 45 
take refuge in foreign countries. No German was as deeply 
steeped in the German cultural tradition and very few had 
contributed so much to its growth within his generation as 
Ernst Cassirer. Many other German scholars who found them- 
selves in a similar situation preferred to cut all their ties with 
their Jewish origin. Prior to Hitler not very many Germans 
would have criticized anyone for doing just that; on the con- 
trary, many would have applauded such an attitude. Actually, 
Cassirer's unwillingness to abandon his Jewish faith proved a 
handicap in his earlier academic career, but he was too honest 
to dissimulate his heritage. He was also conscious that a great 
deal of his moral integrity and intellectual strength had come 
to him through his Jewish culture. Nor did this make him feel 
suspicious or bitter. There was little of Heinrich Heine in him, 
but much more of Felix Mendelssohn, to whom he can be 
compared in many respects. As Mendelssohn helped to dis- 
cover for the Germans some of the greatest treasures of their 
cultural past, and at the same time contributed by his own 
creative work to the continuation of their classic tradition, so 
did Cassirer in the philosophic field. 
Yet Cassirer's life and work do not belong to Germany 
alone. The philosophical revival of the last third of the nine- 
teenth century was not merely a German event. It had its 
parallels and found its students in many lands, e.g., in the 
Italy of Benedetto Croce and to a lesser, though considerable, 
degree in modern French philosophy or in the Spain of Ortega 
y Gassett, from where it recently has spread far over Latin 
America. Among his German contemporaries, Cassirer was 
probably the one most conscious of the international significance 
of philosophy. Certainly he was the one German philosopher 
of distinction who had least indulged in construing the Kantian 
and post-Kantian German philosophy as a complete refutation 
of the philosophy of Western European Enlightenment. While 
German philosophers and historians were prone to describe 
the Kantian philosophy as a separation of the superior German 
from Western-European civilization, Cassirer was always mind- 
ful of the fact that Kant had his roots in the Western European 
Enlightenment, or for that matter, that it was impossible to 
4S HAJO HOLBORN 
think of Goethe without Shaftesbury and Spinoza. These were 
some of the reasons which made him approach Western- 
European thought with the same warmth of understanding 
which he showed in his German studies. He deserved the re- 
spect and affection of the philosophers of other countries which 
they showed him so often. Never did scholars of so many lands 
cooperate in expressing their admiration for a colleague of theirs 
as happened in the symposium on History and Philosophy, 
which the Oxford Press presented to him at his 6oth birthday. 
His knowledge of other civilizations, his truly cosmopolitan 
outlook, and the friendships which he acquired among his 
American colleagues and students, made the years of his exile 
not only bearable, but fruitful. Others of his age never again 
came into their own after being separated from the world in 
which they had spent the major part of their life. No doubt 
the events cast a tragic shadow over the last years of his career, 
but they did not change his fundamental beliefs, nor even his 
joy in research and teaching. The core of his personality was 
unaffected. He was unassuming and undemanding. His greatest 
satisfaction lay in giving others knowledge and wisdom. 
HAJO HOLBORN 
YALE UNIVERSITY 
3 
ERNST CASSIRER 
IT MUST have been in 1920 that I first met Ernst Cassirer. 
Although the war had been lost by Germany, the air was 
full of hope. The collapse of material power had produced a 
strong and favourable reaction in the intellectual field, and 
one of the symptoms of this was the foundation, in Hamburg 
now more anti-militaristic than ever of a new university. High 
hopes were entertained for the new institution, which was to 
be of good standing and to form an intellectual centre for the 
Hansa city. Of particular importance was the chair of philoso- 
phy, for which Cassirer had been chosen. The new university 
elected a man whose international reputation at that time was 
far greater than the recognition which the older seats of learn- 
ing had bestowed on him. He lent a peculiar dignity to the 
young arts faculty, and an ever-growing number of students 
came to his courses, eager for the truth and for learning, after 
the many deceptions of the war years. 

on a day memorable in the annals of the Warburg Institute, 
Cassirer came to see the library collected by Professor Warburg 
over a period of about thirty years. Warburg's nerves had 
broken down in 1920 under the strain of the post-war events, 
and he had been sent to Switzerland for recovery. Being in 
charge of the library, I showed Cassirer around. He was a 
gracious visitor, who listened attentively as I explained to him 
Warburg's intentions in placing books on philosophy next to 
books on astrology, magic, and folklore, and in linking the sec- 
tions on art with those on literature, religion, and philosophy. 
The study of philosophy was for Warburg inseparable from 
that of the so-called primitive mind: neither could be isolated 
from the study of imagery in religion, literature, and art. These 
47 
48 F. SAXL 
ideas had found ｅxpression in the unorthodox arrangement of 
the books on the shelves. 
Cassirer understood at once. Yet, when he was ready to 
leave, he said, in the kind and clear manner so typical of him: 
"This library is dangerous. I shall either have to avoid it alto- 
gether or imprison myself here for years. The philosophical 
problems involved are close to my own, but the concrete his- 
torical material which Warburg has collected is overwhelming." 
Thus he left me bewildered. In one hour this man had under- 
stood more of the essential ideas embodied in that library than 
anybody I had met before. Why, then, did he seem to hesitate? 
I expected that, if anyone, he would help me with the difficult 
task of continuing the library without its founder. But it seems 
that the workings of his mind would not allow him or, at 
least, not yet allow him to be drawn into the dangerous chan- 
nels of Warburg's creation. only much later did I understand 
that the reason was not narrowness, but self-restraint. Those 
who knew Cassirer will realize that the decision to keep aloof 
from certain problems at a certain moment was dictated by 
the austere logic of his own method. 
But, after an interval of waiting, the situation changed 
radically; and, from that moment on, for ten years, I never 
appealed in vain to Cassirer for collaboration. He had begun 
writing the first volume of his Philoso^hie der symbollschen 
Formen and, in developing his systematic ideas, he studied the 
voluminous concrete material prepared by ethnologists and 
historians. Warburg had collected the very material which 
Cassirer needed. More than that: looking back now it seems 
miraculous that Warburg had collected it for thirty years with 
a view to the very problems which Cassirer was then beginning 
to investigate. In the 1890*8 (inspired by Friedrich Theodor 
Vischer), Warburg had set out to study symbolic ｅxpression 
in art. His experience in studying the rites and arts of the 
New Mexico Zunis had taught him that the study of symbolic 
ｅxpression in art could not be isolated from that of religion, 
magic, language, and science. (In a number of still unpublished 
writings, Warburg had, on the one hand, tried to formulate 
a practical theory of the symbol in the history of civilization; 
ERNST CASSIRER 49 
while, on the other hand, he had built up a library containing the 
concrete materials for these studies, beginning with books and 
articles on the general problem of symbolic ｅxpression and 
arranging all the historical sections with a view to this problem.) 
At the time of Cassirer's first visit, Die Philosofhie der sym- 
bolischen Formen was just taking shape in Cassirer J s mind. It 
came as a shock to him, therefore, to see that a man whom he 
hardly knew had covered the same ground, not in writings, but 
in a complicated library system, which an attentive and specula- 
tive visitor could spontaneously grasp. That was the reason why, 
at our first meeting, Cassirer immediately felt that the alterna- 
tive confronting him was either to ignore the Institute or else 
to submit to its spell. 
When the time was ripe for him, Cassirer became our most 
assiduous reader. And the first book ever published by the Insti- 
tute was from Cassirer's pen. It dealt with the problem on which 
Warburg had started, namely to establish the categories of 
primitive thought in the primitive cultures proper, as well as in 
modern primitivism, as for example in astrology. 
Warburg was a man of a very imaginative and emotional 
type, in whom historical imagination, nourished by concrete 
historical experience, always struggled against an ardent de- 
sire for philosophical simplification. Yet he had created a tool 
which a master, whose greatest gifts were in the line of systema- 
tization, could use, and who, just at this moment, was eager 
to find the concrete material on which to build his system. 
Cassirer found it laid out in the library of a man who was still 
alive, but who was living in darkness behind doors which 
seemed never again to open for him. 
Years went by. The first volume of Cassirer's magnum opts 
appeared, while we published some corollaries to it and some 
lectures. one day Cassirer went to Switzerland to pay a visit 
to Warburg. It was a meeting of which both Cassirer and 
Warburg often spoke in later years. The patient had prepared 
himself for this day for weeks and months previously. Cassirer 
came, full of sympathy and with the apprehension and awe that 
mental illness inspires. In the years of anguish and isolation 
Warburg's thought, which had never been arrested by the ill- 
50 F. SAXL 
ness, had centred around Kepler. Warburg had come to the 
conclusion, although separated from all books, that modern 
thought was born when Kepler broke the traditional supremacy 
of the circle, as the ideal form in cosmological thought, and 
replaced it by the ellipse. Cassirer, who never took notes but 
possessed a memory of almost unlimited capacity, at once came 
to Warburg's aid, giving chapter and verse for this idea by 
quoting from Kepler. It was, probably, Warburg's first ray 
of light in those dark years. He learnt through Cassirer that 
he had not wandered in a pathless wilderness, but that his 
scientific thought at least was sane. Cassirer's memory was 
always miraculous} but it had never worked as miraculous a 
cure as it did on that day. 
In later years, when Warburg was back in Hamburg, a warm 
friendship sprang up between the two men. Warburg admired 
the clarity of thought and form in the philosopher; and Cassirer 
was impressed by the man who grasped life and history with 
such passion and who had gone through mental experiences 
which gave every utterance of his about art or religion, about 
philosophy and literature, a deep and wise ring. 
The character of Cassirer's scholarship, however, was such 
that, though enriched and extended, its intrinsic direction was 
never changed by his co-operation with Warburg. A reader 
familiar with Cassirer's work, but unfamiliar with these per- 
sonal details, would never divine the intimate relationship 
which existed between the two men, so much did all the writings 
of those years appear as the necessary continuation of Cassirer's 
earlier work. When Warburg died in 1929, it was Cassirer 
who spoke at his grave: a commemoration of the strange and 
fruitful meeting of two thinkers of almost diametrically op- 
posed character and tendency. Yet they had one great goal in 
common: to understand the nature and history of the symbolic 
ｅxpression of the human mind. 
If the Warburg Institute has grown into a stable institution, 
we owe much of its success to Cassirer's advice and help. If 
Warburg were alive, he would testify how greatly he admired 
Cassirer. But above all, he would express his deep gratitude to 
the man who, better than any psychiatrist, had helped him to 
ERNST CASSIRER 51 
find the way back into the world. Even those of you who knew 
Cassirer could hardly imagine the immense impression that his 
clear and calm personality made on a mind cut off from the 
world and striving hard to reach the port of health by exerting 
his powers of reason. Cassirer, Olympian and aloof, was yet 
the most humane and learned doctor of the soul. Higher praise 
could hardly be given to any man. 
F. SAXL 
THE WARBURG INSTITUTE 
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
LONDON, ENGLAND 
4 
A STUDENT'S NACHRUF 
FRIENDS OF ERNST CASSIRER: 
I SHOULD like you to know something of what the stu- 
dents in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia felt for 
Ernst Cassirer. By recounting to you the substance of my own 
experience and my own feelings I shall be summing up the 
experience and the feelings of all of us here who were the 
students of Ernst Cassirer. For, my relations with Ernst Cas- 
sirer were surely typical and most representative. 
As a mere apprentice to that trade in which Ernst Cassirer 
was a revered guild-master, I am aware that language is a 
fragile bridge to understanding, and one that is too easily col- 
lapsible. Thus, if someone were to ask me: "How well did 
you know Ernst Cassirer?," I should feel the need of beginning 
my answer by making a certain verbal distinction. In terms 
reminiscent of one of the great problems with which Professor 
Cassirer came boldly to grips, I should have to reply: "Just 
what do you mean by the word 'know'?" 
If by your question you mean to inquire whether I enjoyed 
a personal friendship with my teacher, whether our acquaint- 
ance was an intimate one, then regretfully I should have to 
answer that in this sense I did not "know" Ernst Cassirer. The 
time was too short, the days were too few for this. 
But if your meaning is: "Did I have an understanding of 
the kind of man that Ernst Cassirer was?," then I should 
answer, and every one of his students would answer with me: 
"I did, and I do." 
Ernst Cassirer was an exile, a Jew, who wrote: "In our life, 
in the life of a modern Jew, there is no room left for any joy 
or complacency. All this has gone forever. No Jew whatsoever 
52 
A STUDENT'S NACHRUF 53 
can and will ever overcome the terrible ordeal of these last 
years." And yet Ernst Cassirer was a man whose presence be- 
spoke serenity as surely as do the green leaves bespeak the 
springtime. This sereneness of countenance and mind was noted 
by all. But it was not the serenity which is unconscious of the 
storm j it was, rather, a kind of winged serenity which surveyed, 
which comprehended, and yet which nobly overrode the storm. 
And so, having seen this, we knew that Ernst Cassirer was a 
good man. For only the good are serene. 
We were impressed by the depth and variety of his knowl- 
edge. The depth we were prepared for, but the variety amazed 
us. I recall that, after I had seen An Essay on Man, I asked two 
members of the department whether Professor Cassirer were 
really at home in all the varied fields surveyed by this book. 
They assured me that, in truth, he was. And I am ashamed to 
confess that I was dismayed at this confirmation} for it seemed 
to me that I, a beginner in philosophy, could never hope my- 
self to be the master of such a manifold of learning. But this 
dismay was supplanted soon by a spirit of emulation; and the 
kind of scholarship which was Ernst Cassirer's became for me 
something to strive for, a goal which I might not attain, but a 
goal which was truly clear, for I had seen it defined in the 
being of a living man. 
In the lecture hall we were particularly impressed by the 
profound and appropriate allusions made to every field of 
knowledge. In the seminar room we learned to wait for the 
brilliant interjection, the almost casual sentence which put a 
philosopher or a problem in a new and more illuminating light. 
In short, we came to realize, all of us, in time, that as a man 
of learning and wisdom, as a scholar, Ernst Cassirer was 
unique. 
He was an ardent man. I understood this on the day of the 
last class he taught. I was on my way to class that day, when 
in the distance I was glad to see Professor Cassirer walking in 
the same direction. I quickened my pace in order to catch up 
with him. When I came closer I saw that, as he walked, he 
was reading a book, which absorption accounted for the slow- 
ness of his step. As I watched him, he paused to concentrate on 
54 EDWARD MURRAY CASE 
what he was reading, and, in that moment, I perceived that 
Ernst Cassirer, at the age of seventy, was more ardently in- 
terested in the contents of that book than most young men 
have ever been interested in the contents of any book. And so 
I did not disturb Professor Cassirer, and I am glad now that I 
did not, for the discreet man does not intrude upon a lover. 
Thus, being serene and good, being learned and wise and 
ardent, being all these things, Ernst Cassirer was a great man. 
And so we, the students of philosophy at Columbia esteem 
it to have been a great privilege and a great honor in our lives 
that, in this great university of the New World, we were the last 
students of the lineal descendant of Immanuel Kant, that we 
were the last students of the last flowering of German philoso- 
phy. And I do not speak from paper or from notes or in 
words formulated coldly and with deliberation, but I speak 
from the heart when I say: We loved Ernst Cassirer. 
EDWARD MURRAY CASE 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
5 
ERNST CASSIRER 
WE ARE gathered together in a memorial to Ernst Cas- 
sirer. We meet here to convey to each other, in some 
poor words, what he meant to us as man and philosopher. It 
will take more, of course, than we have to give in this meeting 
to reveal what significance his work has and will continue to 
have for many others besides ourselves} and, fortunately, there 
is to be a volume of studies of his philosophy, where this 
further and more adequate appraisal may have place. But we 
can, at this moment, do something good for ourselves and for 
the memory of our friend, if we simply speak of the things 
that promptly stand out in our consciousness now rather than 
strain at the impossible task of offering a comprehensive pic- 
ture of the whole man and his work. These first thoughts that 
come in the dawning realization of our loss have a very personal 
character. Each one of us has his own individual feelings and 
appreciations. We are sharing these together in this hour and 
making the man we have known even more real for each other 
as we here tell how we best remember him. 
Four years ago, almost to the day, Ernst Cassirer came to 
this country, accompanied by his wife, without whom we who 
have but known him these few years cannot think of him. 
They came here direct from Sweden, on the last ship permitted 
to go out, in May, 1941. They made themselves at home in 
America, where they already had some dear ones waiting for 
their arrival. I believe that we can say that Ernst Cassirer was 
happy here, both in New Haven, where he first came to live, 
and then in New York. 
Let me speak to you after his own fashion. It was always 
his way, when telling of some other thinker or philosopher, 
55 
56 CHARLES W. HENDEL 
first to quote something that was completely characteristic of 
the man. He often quoted at greater length, some people felt, 
than he needed to do. I recall a publisher saying this in criticism 
of one of his manuscripts. "We want more Cassirer," he com- 
plained, "and less of what other people have thought." But 
what other people had learned and thought was too important 
to Ernst Cassirer to be made so little of. He always knew that 
many artists of the mind had searched for and shaped the 
truths or the problems for inquiry with which he himself was 
concerned and he believed it a duty to give their "authority," 
in this fine and original sense of the term, before he ventured 
to present his own contribution to the matter. This was his 
style of life and thought. It expressed both his generous regard 
for other thinkers and his modest estimate of his own place 
alongside them in the halls of philosophy. 
I have in my hands a precious document and memento writ- 
ten in his own hand. Last year at this time he was saying fare- 
well to his friends at Yale. He spoke at the Philosophical Club 
meeting where all of us assembled to express to him our appre- 
ciation of the three good years we had been privileged to have 
together in our study of philosophy. This is what he said to 
us on that occasion: 
Looking back on my long academic life I must regard it as a long 
Odyssey. It was a sort of pilgrimage that led me from one university to 
the other, from one country to the other, and, at the end, from one 
hemisphere to the other. This Odyssey was rich in experiences in human 
and intellectual adventures. What was most delightful and gratifying in 
this long academic journey was the fact that it became also, more and 
more, a sentimental journey. For at any new place I was lucky enough 
to find new friends. I found colleagues who were ready to help me in 
my work, and I found students who were interested in my philosophical 
views. 
When I came to this country I cherished the hope that the same would 
happen here. And this hope was not disappointed. But, on the other hand, 
I found something more and something better something that passed 
all my expectations. I was not only supposed to give my own lectures 
and hold my own courses. I was invited to have a share in the work of my 
colleagues. During my first year I had the pleasure and the great privilege 
to be invited to a seminar on the philosophy of history . . . ; in my second 
ERNST CASSIRER 57 
year I could participate in a seminar on the philosophy of science . . .; 
in my third year we had a conjoint seminar on the theory of knowledge, 
. . . That was, indeed, a new experience to me and a very suggestive 
and stimulating one. I look back on these conjoint seminars with real 
pleasure and gratitude. I am sure I have learned very much from them. 
Of course, it was in a sense a rather bold enterprise, the bringing 
together of so many philosophers. As a rule philosophers seem not to be 
very fond of such a close cooperation. They are apt to disagree in their 
views, in their interests, in their very definition of what philosophy is and 
means. And the task that had to be solved here was so much the more 
doubtful and risky since three different generations were expected to 
have a share in a common work. To the struggle between philosophers 
there was added the struggle between the generations. In many of our 
modern systems of education we are told that it is hopeless to reconcile the 
views of men belonging to different generations. We are told that, there 
is a deep and insurmountable gap between the generations; that every 
new generation must feel in its own way, think its own thoughts and 
speak its own language. I regard this as a misleading and dangerous 
dogma and as a dogma that throughout my life I found constantly 
contradicted by my own personal experience. The older I grow, so much 
the more I become interested in the work and the thoughts of the 
younger men. And I always found that they readily answered to my 
interest. To my great satisfaction I had the same experience here. . . . 
Of course the younger people criticized me sometimes rather severely. 
They could not always agree with me; they thought perhaps that they 
had outgrown, a long time ago, some of the philosophic ideas and ideals 
that were still very dear to me. But, after all, they listened to me and 
they tolerated my very old-fashioned philosophy. They could see my 
point as well as I could see theirs. 
This ended his "brief report," as he then called it, on his 
life amongst us, though he had even other things to express, 
more personal, on that occasion. But what he said in these 
words just quoted belongs to no particular group of colleagues 
and students or university. It was as much his message to Co- 
lumbia this year as it was to Yale then. It was his report on his 
American sojourn. And while it reports our academic life as 
he really saw it, it has greater truth still as a revelation of him- 
self. 
That friendship of which he told, the eager interest in ideas, 
the tolerance of mind . . . "they could see my point as well as 
58 CHARLES W. HENDEL 
I could see theirs." All this happened because of him. It was 
his doing. "I was lucky enough to find new friends." Lucky? 
Oh no, he was himself the architect of these rewarding per- 
sonal and academic relations which we all so much enjoyed. He 
was the philosopher who brings to birth the philosophic spirit 
and way of life in those who lived and worked with him. 
"The older I grow," he had said, "the more I become in- 
terested in the thoughts of the younger men." Very few men 
of seventy will even think of saying that, and there are fewer 
still who, if they were to say it, would ever be believed. We 
know that he said this, however, in all sincerity and without the 
shadow of a boast. He spoke with transparent honesty when he 
acknowledged such an intellectual benefit for himself in his 
association with youth and with the younger scholars. It was a 
confession made in fine simplicity by one who was a genuine 
teacher of men. 
He rejoiced, as you saw, at the idea especially of keeping 
three generations in touch with each other in common work, the 
young, the middle-aged and the old. He was well aware of the 
risk involved in such an enterprise in education. We realize 
from his own words, too, that he felt the severity of the youth- 
ful criticism directed at his particular philosophic beliefs and 
ideasj but we saw him, too, meeting the criticism with reason 
and patience and generosity, and it was, in fact, by so doing that 
he brought several generations so happily together in adven- 
tures of learning. Here is another classic trait of the philosopher. 
We all remember Socrates at the same age and doing the same 
things. 
No man of his high caliber could live through these last 
twenty-five years without giving profound thought to the 
whole plight of humanity in all the nations of the world. He 
knew what adversity meant close at home. His knowledge of 
vast periods of history brought multitudes of other instances 
that could weigh down the spirit with a heavy burden. He was 
sensitive to the pain and the hopelessness that many have to 
suffer and must continue to suffer. Yet his vision kept in view 
the dignity and continuity of man's long struggle forward to a 
life that befits humanity. Thus he succeeded in attaining sere- 
ERNST CASSIRER 59 
nity himself. Yet he was never aloof and abstracted, for he 
gave thought and individual sympathy for the small personal 
trials of everyone whom he knew. It was good for one's soul 
to be with him. And no one who knew him at all could miss 
that cheerfulness which was a sort of spiritual radiance that 
warmed and brightened our fellowship. This is the thing, I 
believe, we should bear in mind now, as we go on to recall all 
the other things that Ernst Cassirer has meant to us. 
CHARLES W. HENDEL 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
YALE UNIVERSITY 
c 
Hendrik J. Pos 
RECOLLECTIONS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
RECOLLECTIONS OF ERNST CASSIRER* 
HONORED by the invitation to contribute to the Cassirer 
volume, I should like to carry out this assignment by 
saying something about Cassirer, the man, as well as about his 
philosophical significance. I had the privilege of studying Cas- 
sirer's works even before I first heard his lectures in Hamburg 
during the summer semester of 1928. I then met him in the 
Spring of 1929 at the Second University Congress in Davos; 
and since 1934 I have been in closer personal relationship with 
him, which led to my spending a month with him in Goteberg 
in the summer of 1936, for the purpose of co-operating on a task 
which, due to unforeseen circumstances, was never brought to 
completion. The last word I ever had from him was a postcard, 
dated May 1940, expressing his concern over how I had fared 
since the invasion. Shortly thereafter I was interned, and when 
the war was over the news of his death reached me. 
When I was a young student, Ernest Cassirer's works on the 
history of the theory of knowledge, Substance and Function, as 
well as on Einstein's theory, opened up to me the whole world 
of scientific thought, which was far removed from a student of 
classical philology. This study became determinative for my 
philosophical development, insofar as I learned from it the 
nature of natural science in contrast to cultural (social) science, 
and how the former has gradually created its own correct path 
for itself, a path which leads form Galileo through Newton to 
Einstein and the moderns. If, as a young admirer of the Greeks, 
one is inclined to take all of Plato's and Aristotle's speculative 
thought for immutable truth, then nothing is more instructive 
than to take cognizance of the inexorable course pursued by 
* Translated by Dr. Robert W. Bretall. 
63 
64 HENDRIK J. POS 
science since the Renaissance. To this end Cassirer's Erkenntnis- 
problem is an excellent guide. Endowed with a wonderfully 
flexible style, he knows how to transpose himself into every 
point of view, to present it con amore y and at the same time to 
trace the great lineage which leads from speculative ontology 
and abstract verbalism to the rational empiricism of modern 
natural science. It is most gratifying that the three volumes 
which carry the treatment up to Hegel, are very soon, through 
the interest of Professor Hendel of Yale, to be completed with 
the fourth volume, which Cassirer had left in manuscript. In 
this major work of its kind Cassirer exhibited an unexcelled 
mastery, command, and disposition of his material, and in 
addition, a luminous facility of presentation, which remains 
unique in German philosophy. It is a history of recent philoso- 
phy from the standpoint of the progress of the natural sciences. 
It may be that here and there in the quotations there is some 
room for improvement: the whole [work] is the ｅxpression of 
an idea, which emerges clearly from the development of the 
natural sciences in modern times, the idea, namely, of the transi- 
tion from metaphysical speculation to rational understanding. 
Here it is shown how, by a gradual process of trial and error, and 
under the decisive influence of scientific savants, the intellectual 
and technical mastery over nature has come about; and how, in 
this process, the basic viewpoints have altered. one cannot claim 
that any old philosophical position fits into this development 
equally well: ontologism sees itself compelled to separate the 
empirical development of science from the philosophical deter- 
mination of fundamental principles, in order thus to keep the 
changes of empirical science far away from the philosophical 
enterprise. Cassirer demonstrated at what cost the a prioristic 
and established results of philosophy are purchased by this 
method. He also showed how the historical development has 
shoved aside this dualism, which amounts to a doctrine of the 
twofold nature of truth, and how Kant's method of the analysis 
of basic principles an analysis which proceeds from the very 
fact of existing science does justice to the progress of science 
without robbing philosophy of her own task. Further, he showed 
how the application of Kant's analysis to natural science today 
RECOLLECTIONS OF ERNST CASSIRER 65 
makes it necessary to go beyond the content of Kant's doctrine. 
Of this the Relativity theory is the classical demonstration, inso- 
far as it modifies the intuition of space and time, which Kant 
still was able to lay down as the foundation of physics. This 
[theory] makes it clear that the advance of knowledge consists 
not only in the material of new experience being incorporated 
into the fixed categories, but also in the fact that the basic as- 
sumptions themselves must be revised from time to time, in 
order to bring new facts into non-contradictory connection with 
old. Philosophically considered, Cassirer taught how to extend 
the idea of the process under which the Marburg school sub- 
sumed "knowledge," to include the basic categories themselves 
and their determination thereby going beyond Kant and his 
orthodox adherents. This was the only way of safeguarding 
Kantianism against the reproach of dogmatism, and of prevent- 
ing it from being left behind by the advance of science, as had 
happened in the case of ontological speculation. Through his 
"scientism" Cassirer's philosophy has achieved an international 
reputation which puts him close beside the kindred figure of 
Leon Brunschvicg. At -Davos I was present at conversations 
during which the two thinkers made the discovery of their 
spiritual affinity. 
Cassirer was so many-sided, that his total work was far from 
exhausted by his writings in the field of epistemology. To others 
it may be left to come to closer terms with the abiding merit of 
his studies in the history of epistemology, in theory of relativity, 
and in the problem of causality in recent physics. I turn now to 
his philosophy of culture, set down in the first two volumes of 
the Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen. In 1923 appeared 
the volume on language, and in 1925 that on mythical thought. 
The first is a phenomenology of the formation of our world- 
view in terms of a philosophy of language; whereas the second 
volume lays bare the driving force which conditioned the crea- 
tion of a religion. Cassirer was the first to apply the basic ideas 
of neo-Kantianism concerning spirit and its creative energy to 
the pre-scientific world-view. Here, too, he was guided by that 
historical sense which distinguishes his treatment of the problem 
of knowledge. With the aid of an intensive study of the struc- 
66 HENDRIK J. POS 
tures of primitive languages for which the Warburg Institute 
in Hamburg provided him with the jviferials he sought to 
construct a line of development leadihg from the most ele- 
mentary categories of the world to the more objective ones, and 
finally to the cognitive results of the sciences. The primitive 
languages, taken as witnesses to a very remote stage of the hu- 
man grasp of the universe, offered him valuable supporting 
evidence for his notion of the gradually advancing "symbolical" 
formation of the world-picture, which in the interest of ob- 
jectivity and of comprehensive unification, gets farther and 
farther away from the original, primitive intuitions. He showed 
in a convincing manner how an originally strong, vital, and 
qualitatively conditioned world-view gives way gradually to an 
objective and more universal one, this transition attesting itself 
in the transformations of language as it proceeds from a sensory, 
qualitative stage to a symbolical-abstract mode of ｅxpression. 
Thus it becomes clear how the requirements of science make it 
necessary to introduce symbols which in precision and fruitful- 
ness surpass those of language. 

one may perhaps harbor some doubt as to whether the cur- 
rent linguistic structure of a society is, indeed, always so faithful 
an ｅxpression of its manner of thought and feeling whether 
now and then, let us say, the external structure may not be in- 
adequate to the thought-content. No damage is thereby done 
to the methodological principle of Cassirer 's theory of language, 
and it is to be gratefully acknowledged that through him the 
researches instigated by Wilhelm von Humboldt and by Wundt 
have been fruitfully continued and have received their philo- 
sophical foundation. The basic idea which sustains both the 
theory of language and the theory of knowledge is the fact 
that, by introducing symbols, the human consciousness succeeds 
in ordering and governing the welter of sensations. The cate- 
gories expressed in languages pave the way for that logical 
order for which the sciences are striving. 
Cassirer's philosophy of culture is a philosophy of the logos, 
not in the narrow sense of "ratio" or of the intellect in the purely 
theoretical sense, but rather in the sense of that spiritual, form- 
indudng energy which appears in science, society, and art. As a 
RECOLLECTIONS OF ERNST CASSIRER 67 
critic Cassirer was as ill disposed to metaphysics as toward that 
irration? 1 ' *n which stirred mightily in Germany between the 
two world wars. His Kantian rationalism was bound to come 
into conflict with the intuitionism of the waxing phenome- 
nology, and especially with the ontological and "philosophy of 
life" stamp which Heidegger imparted to it. The Kant inter- 
pretations presented by Cassirer and Heidegger, together with 
the ensuing discussions, constituted the focal point of the Inter- 
national Davos University course in 1929. 
The two standpoints could be mutually clarified, but they 
could not be brought any closer together. Cassirer [on his part] 
emphasized the spiritual law, the form, by means of which man 
liberates himselfs from his immediacy and his anxiety. This is 
the way in which the finite mind participates in the infinite. 
Whereas Heidegger expounded his book on Kant and the Prob- 
lem of Metaphysics, which had just been published. He ex- 
pressed the opinion that Kant's central problem was not at all 
that of scientific knowledge, but rather the problem of the 
metaphysical comprehension of being. Kant's philosophy he de- 
clared to be a philosophy of finite man, whose access to the In- 
finite is denied, but whose orientation toward the transcendent 
confirms his very finitude. The difference was clear. Heidegger 
persisted in the terminus a quo, in the situation at the point of 
departure, which for him is the dominating factor in all phi- 
losophizing, Cassirer [on the other hand] aimed at the 
terminus ad quern, at liberation through the spiritual form, in 
science, practical activity, and art. The contrast was not theoreti- 
cal, but human. Here stood, on the one side, the representative 
of the best in the universalistic traditions of German culture, a 
man for whom Idealism was the victorious power which is called 
to mold and spiritualize human life. This man, the heir of Kant, 
stood there tall, powerful, and serene. His effect upon his 
audience lay in his mastery of exposition, in the Apollonian ele- 
ment. From the beginning he had within him the liberal culture 
of Central Europe, the product of a long tradition. In both 
spiritual lineaments and external appearance, this man belonged 
to the epoch of Kant, of Goethe, and of Kleist, to each of whom 
he had dedicated some of his literary efforts. And over against 
68 HENDRIK J. POS 
him stood an altogether different type of man, who struggled 
with Cassirer over the deepest intentions of Kant's writings. This 
man too had a gigantic intellect. As a man, however, he was 
completely different. Of $etit bourgeois descent from southwest 
Germany, he had never lost his accent. In him this was readily 
forgiven, being taken as a mark of firm-rootedness and peasant 
genuineness. There was, however, much more that was of inter- 
est in this man. In his youth he was destined for the priesthood, 
and was to receive his seminary education at Constance. He ran 
away, however, and became a renegade. At home as almost no 
one else in Aristotle and the scholastics, in Kant and Hegel, he 
constructed for himself a philosophy which, on the side of 
method, came close to the phenomenology of his teacher, Hus- 
serl. In point of content, however, this philosophy was of course 
entirely his own: there lay feelings at the base of it which 
were concealed by the gigantic intellectual superstructure. But 
when one listened to his lectures, listened to this gloomy, some- 
what whining and apprehensive tone of voice, then there flowed 
forth the feelings which this man harbored or at least which he 
knew how to awaken. These were feelings of loneliness, of op- 
pression, and of frustration, such as one has in anxious dreams, 
but now present in a clear and wakeful state of mind. 
The bearer of this mood-philosophy had the ear of Germany's 
academic youth, not on account of his prodigious knowledge of 
the history of philosophy, but rather because he translated feel- 
ings which in that youth found a soil already prepared. This 
man came to be regarded as the great hope. His searching book 
on Kant had succeeded in showing those dark, melancholy feel- 
ings as determinative even for the philosophy of the famous 
sage of Konigsberg. Man is a finite being and cannot escape his 
finitude this, the book taught, was to have been the deepest 
meanings of Kant's thought. This carried conviction, from the 
very first, for the youth of a land where the feeling of frustra- 
tion had for ten years now been alive in a sense other than the 
merely metaphysical one. The little man with the sinister wilful 
speech, who was at home with these morose feelings, who loved 
to say that philosophy is no fun, the despiser of Goethe [this 
man] over against the representative of Enlightenment, basking 
RECOLLECTIONS OF ERNST CASSIRER 69 
in spiritual fortune, for whom the philosopher's life was joy and 
inspiration, and who in Goethe paid homage to the universal 
man. 
The whole discussion was the intuitive representation of this 
profound cleavage between the two men. The one abrupt, nega- 
tive, his attitude one of protest} the other kindly, gracious, ac- 
commodating, always concerned to give his partner more honor 
than he deserved. The two men reached an agreement on the 
meaning of Kant's Schematism, which represents the original 
intermingling of sense and understanding. This, however, left 
the main questions undecided: each one viewed Kant from the 
standpoint of his own humanity, with the difference, however, 
that the one admitted that metaphysical ｅxpressions are not 
lacking in the text, whereas the other would in no wise grant 
that the main concern of the Critique of Pure Reason was aimed 
at grounding the scientific knowledge of nature philosophically. 
Long went the discussions back and forth, until finally they 
terminated. The conclusion was not without human symbolism; 
the magnanimous man offered his hand to his opponent: but it 
was not accepted. 
The Davos conversations were symbolical of the tragic decline 
toward which German philosophy was hastening. Whoever 
at that time still did not grasp what was going on, could get a 
glimpse of it four years later, when fate divided the two Kant 
interpreters as irreconcilably as had their manners of thought: 
for Ernst Cassirer there no longer was any room in Germany. 
He emigrated to Oxford. In the same year his opponent in the 
Davos discussions was appointed rector of the University of 
Freiburg, and in his inaugural address professed himself un- 
reservedly for National Socialism. Germany's spiritual collapse 
had taken place, and Heidegger placed his philosophy at the 
service of the self-destruction of the German intelligentsia. 
When Ernst Cassirer was forced to leave the University of 
Hamburg in 1933, he stood at the peak of his international 
reputation. It was primarily because of him and Husserl that 
German philosophy, at that time, flourished before the world. 
For the regime, quite naturally, this was no reason whatsoever 
for making an exception in his case. on the contrary, interna- 
70 HENDRIK J. POS 
tional recognition was then taken as a proof of unreliability, 
especially if on top of this one was a non-Aryan. Cassirer loved 
the free-thinking Hamburg, whose newly founded university he 
had co-operatively helped to build ever since 1919. The leave- 
taking must have been painful, perhaps even more so than the 
cutting injustice perpetrated by his dismissal. So magnificent 
a person was he, however, that no word of bitterness was ever 
heard from him about the injustice done. With Olympian 
serenity he departed. A man who for many years had lived in 
Cassirer's shadow became his successor, and expressed his pleas- 
ure at the course of events. Cassirer rapidly made friends in 
Oxford. He learned English and delivered lectures. It was not 
easy to gain a genuine understanding for neo-Kantianism. It 
was during his stay in England that Cassirer celebrated his 
sixtieth birthday. The co-operative volume, Philosophy and 
History, which was presented to him on this occasion (Oxford, 
Clarendon Press, 1936) is a living testimonial to the diversity 
of influence and of inspiration which radiated from him upon 
philosophers and historians of culture in all countries. The 
twenty-two essays had been edited by Cassirer's student Kli- 
bansky and the Oxford Kantian scholar and historian of phi- 
losophy, H. J. Paton. The contributions came from England, 
France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and 
America. In the preface the editors wrote: "It is our hope that 
this book may bear witness to that enduring spiritual bond which 
unites scholars of different countries and different traditions." 
The name of Cassirer actually symbolized a universalism and 
internationalism which recognizes every member of mankind for 
its spiritual contribution to the whole culture pattern, on the 
presupposition that through such mutual recognition, the unity 
of mankind will be honored and promoted. 
The further course of Cassirer's life was to bear still further 
testimony to this universalism. In 1935 he emigrated to Sweden, 
where his former student Jacobson vacated for him the chair 
in philosophy at the University, while he himself accepted the 
appointment as Governor of the Province of Bohnslau. Here 
too Cassirer made devoted friends and enthusiastic students. 
And here in the summer of 1936 I had the privilege of being 
RECOLLECTIONS OF ERNST CASSIRER 71 
allowed to carry on a series of conversations with him in a sub- 
ject for which we had conceived the plan of a co-operative 
volume during his stay in Amsterdam: the influence of the 
Greek language on philosophy. Was Greek from the very first 
a language well adapted to philosophical thought? Or did the 
thinkers rather take the instrument at hand in its natural state 
and adapt it to their particular needs of ｅxpression? How far 
does the unconscious influence of the inner linguistic form of 
Greek extend to the construction of metaphysical concepts? 
These and similar questions we discussed intensively} during 
which process Cassirer unfolded his masterly gift of intellectual 
sympathy and dialectical skill. After these preparatory conversa- 
tions we promised each other to work them out during the next 
summer. It never got that far. Since 1936 I have remained in 
correspondence with Cassirer, but have never seen him again. 
A very promising participation in a Hegel conference at Amers- 
foort had to be declined by him for reasons of health. In Sweden 
too Cassirer did fruitful work. His stay in the North furnished 
him the occasion for taking up his Cartesian studies once more 
and for engaging in documentary research on Descartes' life in 
Stockholm. The fruits of these years were many an article in the 
philosophical journal Theoria, edited by Ake Petzall, a book 
on the development of the concept of causality, and the book on 
Descartes. 
In May, 1941, Cassirer came to America with the last ship 
which was permitted to make the crossing. Of his work at Yale, 
until 1944, and at Columbia until his death on April 13, 1945, 
Professor Charles Hendel has given a beautiful account in the 
Journal of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Sept., 
1945, 156-159). The quotation there reproduced really consti- 
tutes the autobiography of Ernst Cassirer. A great man looks 
back upon the Odyssey of his life, in the course of which he has 
had to wander from land to land and from continent to conti- 
nent. He did it modestly, cheerfully, and magnificently. Sub- 
jectively considered, this man's gratitude to others is perfectly 
sincere; whereas taken objectively, it is not without irony, since 
it was not he but the others who had cause to be grateful. But 
that is the way Ernst Cassirer was; he sought no glory, and yet 
72 HENDRIK J. POS 
he gained it; he esteemed others higher than himself, but 
actually was their superior. This was the secret of the inspiring 
and uplifting effect which emanated from his presence. There 
was nothing in him of professorial vainglory, and yet he was a 
teacher beyond compare. He did not hesitate to cite the writings 
of a man who had lived for many years in his shadow and who 
was openly jealous of him. And I can still hear him speaking, 
in Davos, to a very young instructor: "You and I have the same 
philosophical interests, and I am very glad of this." This was his 
self-giving virtue, the generosite of the Descartes he so greatly 
admired. one scarcely knows what to marvel at most, this man's 
gigantic intellect, his consummate form of ｅxpression, or his 
chivalrous humanity. 
His philosophy reveals his character through its capacity for 
transposing itself sympathetically into various and sundry phil- 
osophical viewpoints, without thereby losing the distinctive 
lines of his own thinking. To the editor of this book I have to 
express my gratitude for the opportunity of bearing witness, by 
a short and fleeting sketch, to my grateful admiration for a man 
to whom German philosophy owes more than to any other of 
its current representatives (viz.,) that in the time of its shame 
and its decline, it has been able to maintain its age-old renown 
in the eyes of the world. 
HENDRIK J. Pos 
PHILOSOPHICAL FACULTY 
UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM 
I 
Carl H. Hamburg 
CASSIRER'S CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 
CASSIRER'S CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 
IF IT IS the mark of a great thinker that death cannot 
interrupt the continuity of his intellectual influence, and 
if, furthermore, an ever growing demand for his published 
thought may be taken as one way of measuring his greatness, 
the late Ernst Cassirer must well be accorded this rare title. 
Within three years after an untimely death cut short his teach- 
ing career at Columbia University, there have rolled off the 
presses several printings of his Essay on Man (first published 
in 1944), Language and Myth (translated in 1946 and already 
out of print) and Myth of the State (fourth printing since 
1946), all of which have simultaneously been translated into 
Spanish and some of which will soon appear in French, Ger- 
man, and Dutch. In addition, we may expect in the not too 
distant future English editions of Determinism and Indeter- 
minism in Modern Physics? the fourth volume of his famous 
Erkenntnisproblem? the Philosophy of the Enlightenment? 
and possibly, the Logic of the Humanities? Spanish transla- 
tions of Kant's Life and Work? and the Philosophy of Sym- 
bolic Forms 6 as well as posthumous publication in German of 
1 Dcterminlsmus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik} Historische und 
systematische Studien zum Kausalproblem. (Goeteborgs Hoegskolas Arsskrift. Vol. 
XLIIj 1936) 5 ix, 265 pp. 
*To be published sometime in 1948, this volume will deal with physical, 
biological and historical methods. (Approx. 500 pp.) 
1 Die Philosophic der Aufklaerung. (Tuebingen, Mohr, 1932)$ 491 pp. 
* Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaftenj Fuenf Studien. (Der Gegenstand der 
Kulturwissenschaftj Ding- und Ausdruckswahrnehmung j Naturbegriffe und Kul- 
turbegriffej Formproblem und Kausalproblem j Die "Tragoedie der Kultur".) 
(Goeteborgs Hoegskolas Arsskrift $ Vol. XL VII $ 1942)$ 139 pp. 
* Kant's Leben und Lehre. Vol. XI of . Cassirer's edition of Kant's ScMften 
(Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1918) j viii, 448 pp. 
* Philosophic der symbolischen Formen (see Bibliography in this Vol.) 
75 
76 CARL H. HAMBURG 
his Kleinere Schriften 7 and the collection of essays into a 
Goethe-book. 
Now, if these publishing announcements may be taken to 
reflect a considerable preoccupation with the work of Cassirer, 
such interest is certainly not properly taken cognizance of in our 
teaching curricula. It is doubtful whether in any of the many 
courses, offered on the subject of "Contemporary Philosophy" 
in American colleges and universities, more than summary 
if any mention is made of the philosophy of Cassirer. In the 
case of this thinker, we seem to be facing the rather familiar 
paradox that a lively 'interest' in his philosophy goes hand in 
hand with just as lively an ignorance concerning what his 
philosophy is about. Although there is undoubtedly more than 
one reason for this circumstance, a decisive one, I believe, must 
be seen in the fact that, whereas Cassirer achieved early fame 
with his historical works, his philosophy proper was not de- 
veloped before the publication of his Philosophie der sym- 
bolischen Foremen, the latest volume of which appeared in 1929, 
at a time when in Germany phenomenology and the "lebens- 
philosophischen" precursors of existentialist philosophies had 
all but eclipsed the classicism of Cassirer's theme and style. 
Cassirer's philosophy proper has, accordingly, neither re- 
ceived the attention that a German intelligentsia gave to lesser 
intellectual events in the anxious pre-Hitler years nor has an 
English-speaking audience had the opportunity to satisfy by a 
closer study of a translated version of the Philosophie der 
symbolischen Formen the interest in his thought which such 
books as An Essay on Man and Language and Myth have al- 
ready provoked. Although it is to be hoped that arrangements 
for an English translation of Cassirer's magnum of us will soon 
be made, in the meantime there may be some value in sketching 
somewhat broadly what may be termed his 'conception of phi- 
losophy.' To this purpose we shall examine Cassirer's symbolic- 
form concept, upon the proper understanding of which hinges 
both his conception of what philosophy has been and what it 
must be, if it is to give full and impartial attention to the 
T Containing a number of previously published essays, most of which are out 
of print by now. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 77 
phenomena of the "natural" as well as of the "cultural" 
sciences, to both the Natur- und Kulturwissenschaften. 
THE SYMBOLIC FORM CONCEPT 
a. Terminological distinctions 
The term "symbolic form" is employed by Cassirer in at 
least three distinct, though related, senses: 
(1) It covers what is more frequently referred to as the 
"symbolic relation," the "symbol-concept," the "symbolic func- 
tion," or, simply, the "symbolic" (das Symbolische) . 
(2) It denotes the variety of cultural forms which as myth, 
art, religion, language, and science exemplify the realms of 
application for the symbol-concept. 
(3) It is applied to space, time, cause, number, etc. which 
as the most pervasive symbol-relations are said to constitute, 
with characteristic modifications, such domains of objectivity as 
listed under (2). 
In correspondence with this division, we shall in the sequel 
deal first with the "symbol-concept." Indication will be given 
of both the "cultural" import attributed to it by Cassirer and 
the essentially Kantian epistemological provisions within which 
it is developed. We shall attempt an adequate definition of this 
concept and consider both objections and a possible defense for 
its maintenance. We shall examine, secondly, how a philosophy 
thus oriented may be conceived as a transition from a critique of 
reason to a critique of culture. As such, it would suggest a 
widening of the scope of philosophic concern by putting the 
"transcendental question" beyond science to other types of 
institutionalized activities which, such as art, language, science, 
etc., actually define the meaning of the term "culture." And, 
thirdly, we shall view Cassirer's inquiry into symbolic forms as 
a study of the basic (intuitional and categorial) forms of syn- 
thesis (space, time, cause, number, etc.) and their characteristi- 
cally different functioning in a greater variety of contexts than 
was considered by Kant. If presented thus, one could clarify just 
what type of metaphysics would be both possible and profitable 
within Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms. 
78 CARL H. HAMBURG 
b. The Symbol-Concept. Efistemological considerations 
As the most universal concept to be formulated within Cas- 
sirer's philosophy, the symbol-concept is to cover "the totality 
of all phenomena which in whatever form exhibit 'sense in 
the senses' (Sinnerjuellung im Sinnlichen) and in which some- 
thing 'sensuous' (ein Sinnliches) is represented as a particular 
embodiment of a 'sense' (Bedeutung y meaning)." 8 Here a 
definition of the symbol-concept is given by way of the two 
terms of the "sensuous" on one hand and the "sense" (mean- 
ing) on the other, and a relation between the two, which is most 
frequently referred to as one representing the other." The 
extremely general character of this pronouncement must be 
noted. Cassirer's claim exceeds by far what has ordinarily been 
admitted about the "symbolical character" of knowledge. Al- 
though not all philosophers would subscribe to the idea that 
all knowledge is of a mediate type, it could perhaps be said that 
to the extent that knowledge is taken to be mediate, it may also 
be said to be "symbolical" by virtue of its dependence upon 
(sets or systems of) signs which determine the discursive 
(linguistic or mathematical) medium within which it is attained. 
Whereas the history of ideas discloses a varying emphasis put 
by different thinkers upon sometimes one, sometimes another 
of the (symbolic) media to be trusted for the grand tour to the 
"really real," it also appears to substantiate Cassirer's general 
formula, according to which all knowledge as mediate is 
defined as implying (besides an interpretant, mind, Geisi) 
both: the given-ness of perceptual signs (sensuous vehicles, ein 
Sinnliches) and something signified (meaning, Sinn). But, al- 
though Cassirer's above quoted symbol-definition would indeed 
be wide enough to cover such area of considerable agreement 
with respect to the symbolically mediate character of knowl- 
edge, note that it formulates no restrictions with respect to 
cognitive discourse. The "representative" relation which is 
asserted to hold between the senses and the sense (mean- 
ing) is, in other words, not taken to be exhaustively defined by 
*PMlosopMe der symbolischen Formen, Vol. Ill, 109. To be abbreviated 
henceforth as: PSF. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 79 
grammatical, logical, or mathematical syntax-types, which de- 
termine the conventional forms of discourse within which 
knowledge is held to be mediated. Instead, it is to cover "the 
whole range of all phenomena within which there is sense in 
the senses," i.e., in all contexts in which (e.g., on the expressive 
and intuitional levels) experience is had as of "characters" 
(persons) and "things" in space and time. The issue, therefore, 
of a confrontation by "signs" of "facts," which would be 
germane to all those views which consider essentially the dis- 
cursive dimension of symbol-situations, cannot even come up 
for a philosophy according to which "facts" cannot be evidence 
for (or against) "symbols," simply because their very "factu- 
ality" is not considered meaningful outside of some determinate 
symbolic context. The objection, therefore, raised by many 
philosophers against scholasticism, to the effect that the latter 
replaced the consideration of facts by that of symbols (names), 
need not invalidate Cassirer's position for which 
there is no f actuality ... as an absolute . . . immutable datum; but 
what we call a fact is always theoretically oriented in some way, seen 
in regard to some . . . context and implicitly determined thereby. Theo- 
retical elements do not somehow become added to a 'merely factual,' but 
they enter into the definition of the factual itself. 9 

once the "facts," the state of affairs, the objects, which are 
designated by conventional signs, are realized as themselves 
partaking of expressive (qualitative) and perceptive (intui- 
tional) "symbolisms" of their own, the question of the appli- 
cation of symbols to facts is replaced by the question concerning 
the "checking"of one symbol-context by another, considered 
more reliable or more easily institutable. 
In this connection, a brief consideration of the issue of con- 
firmation may be to the point. In Carnap's version 
the scientist describes his own observations concerning a certain planet 
in a report Oi. Further, he takes into consideration a theory T, con- 
cerning the movements of planets (also laws assumed for the justifiable 
application of his instruments. C.H.). From Oi and T the astronomer 
9 PSF, Vol. Ill, 475. See also: Substance and Function, 143. 
80 CARL H. HAMBURG 
deduces a prediction; he calculates the apparent position of the planet for 
the next night. At that time, he will make a new observation and formu- 
late it in a report Oz. Then he will compare the prediction P with Oa 
and thereby find it either confirmed or not. 10 
A theoretical symbolism, in other words, is confirmed when 
the phenomena, which the symbolism predicts, are observed. 
Concededly, however, there is a hypothetical reference to con- 
text not only in the theory to be confirmed but also in the ob- 
servations which do the confirming. "All observation involves 
more or less explicitly the element of hypothesis." 11 on the 
view proposed by Cassirer, to say that a theory (in combination 
with statements regarding initial conditions) is confirmed by 
"observation" would not require recognition of and recourse to 
any non-symbolic factuality, disclosed to the senses free from 
all elements of interpretation} but it would, instead, be equiva- 
lent to saying that hypothetically constructed contexts (theories 
regarding the orbit of a planet) would be confirmable if from 
it certain data can be deduced (its position at a certain time) 
such that, by appropriate co-ordination of a perceptual context, 
what are defined as light-rays in one context, will be interpreted 
as the determinate color and shape of a "thing" (planet) in 
another. Furthermore: we have an "interpretant" with his 
attendant "perspectives," a sign-signified relation on both the 
theoretical and the observational levels. To hold that the 
former stands in need of confirmation by the latter and not 
vice versa ,to maintain that "the scientific criterion of objec- 
tivity rests upon the possibility of occurrence of predicted per- 
ceptions to a society of observers" (ibid., 5), is fully intelligible 
within the provisions of Cassirer's view which cannot except ob- 
servation from a symbolic interpretation. Whether as observa- 
tion of pointer-readings or of "things," the "confirmatory" 
character of observation does not depend upon its confrontation 
by non-symbolic facts of symbolic theories, but rather upon the 
easily (almost immediately) institutable and shareable nature 
of the perceptual context in which we have "facts" and to 
10 Rudolf Carnap, Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, i. 
11 Victor Lenzen : Procedures of Empirical Science, 4. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 81 
which all other contexts can be co-ordinated in varying degrees 
of explicitness. 
We suggest, therefore, that whereas the import of symbolic 
media for the intelligibility of reality is certainly not a new 
discovery and has been realized by philosophers from Plato to 
Dewey, the thesis that a symbolic relation obtains for any 
possible (culturally encounterable) context in which we per- 
ceive or observe a "world," expresses what is most distinctive in 
Cassirer's conception of philosophy. 
A comparable extension of the philosophical concern beyond 
the cognitive to other types of signifying and modes of sign- 
usages has been advocated more recently by positivistic thinkers, 
who are intent upon establishing a more secure foundation for 
the discipline of semiotics. Unfortunately, Cassirer himself 
nowhere explicitly differentiates his own type of inquiry from 
the kind of sign-analyses carried on by, e.g., Carnap and 
Morris. 12 We shall, therefore, briefly consider both areas of 
agreement and points of divergence characteristic of the two 
schools of thought before proceeding to examine the epistemo- 
logical orientation within which Cassirer's own philosophy of 
symbolic forms is developed. 
Note that Cassirer could well agree with a view according 
to which "the most effective characterization of a sign is the 
following: S is a sign of D for I to the degree that I takes 
account of D by virtue of the presence of S," 18 where I stands 
for the interpretant of a sign, D for what is designated, and 
S for the vehicle (mark, sound, or gesture) by means of which 
D is designated to I. Yet, although the proposal to understand 
sign-processes as "mediated-taking-accounts of" is also implied 
in Cassirer's conception of the matter, there would be a charac- 
teristic shift of terms. Where Morris, e.g., has his "interpre- 
tant," Cassirer would speak in terms of "Bewusstsein" or 
"Geist:" "the meaning of spirit (Geist) can be disclosed only 
in its ｅxpression; the ideal form (what is designated) comes to 
"Rudolf Carnap j Foundations of Logic and Mathematics^ 1939. Charles W. 
Morris, Foundations of the Theory of Signs, 1938$ and Language , Signs and 
Behavior, 1946. 
M Charles W. Morris, foundations of the Theory of Signs, 4. 
82 CARL H. HAMBURG 
be known only in and with the system of sensible signs by 
means of which it is expressed." 14 Likewise, the distinction be- 
tween the sign-vehicle (S) and the designation of the sign (D) 
by Cassirer is put in terms of a correlation alternatively called 
"the sign and the signified," "the particular and the general," 
"the sensuous and its sense" (das Sinnliche imd sein Sinn). 
There is agreement, then, on this basic point: for anything to be 
a sign does not denote a property characterizing a special class 
of objects, but speaking in the material mode it indicates 
that it participates in the sign-process as a whole within which 
it "stands" to somebody for something, or in the formal mode 
that it can be defined only in terms of a three-term relation 
of the form "I-S-D," where "I" designates the "taking- 
account-of," "S" the mediators of the "taking-account-of," and 
"D" what is taken account of. In Cassirer J s language: "The act 
of the conceptual determination of what is designated (ernes 
Inhalts) goes hand in hand with the act of its fixation by some 
characteristic sign. Thus, all truly concise and exacting thought 
is secured in the 'SymboUk* and 'Semiotik* which support it." 15 
For a correct understanding of Cassirer's position all depends 
here upon the interpretation we put upon this metaphor of "the 
sign and the signified going hand in hand." For Morris, mani- 
festly, the relationship suggested is one interchangeably alluded 
to as one of signs "indicating," "announcing," or "suggesting" 
the presence of whatever they denote, designate, or signify. 
For Cassirer, on the other hand, HusserPs dictum in the matter 
holds: "Das Bedeuten ist nicht eine Art des Zeichen-Seins im 
Sinne der Anzeige" (To signify is not a way of being a sign in 
the sense of being an indication.) 18 The indicative function of 
signs, upon the broad basis of which Morris attempts to sketch 
the foundations of a semiotic, is accordingly of just the kind 
that Cassirer would have to consider as inadequate for an under- 
standing of the symbolic function properly speaking. In the 
formulation of this distinction by Susanne Langer: "The funda- 
mental difference between signs and symbols is this difference 
"PSF, Vol. I, 1 8. 
M PF,Vol. I, 1 8. 
16 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, 23. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 83 
of association, and consequently of their use by the third party to 
the meaning function, the subject: signs announce their objects 
to him, whereas symbols lead him to conceive their objects." 17 
Against this establishment of a "fundamental" difference, 
Morris has advanced the objection that too much is made of 
what essentially seems to amount to a mere difference of degree. 
A symbol is on the whole a less reliable sign than is a sign (that is a 
signal) . . . (the latter) being more closely connected with external 
relations in the environment is more quickly subject to correction by the 
environment. . , . But, since signals too have varying degrees of re- 
liability, the difference remains one of degree. 18 
Now, regardless of whether or not one agrees with Morris 
that environmental correction in the case of signals is in all 
contexts more reliable than purely symbolic procedures such as 
provided, e.g., by derivations or calculations, one need not argue 
that, once the behavioristic approach is taken with regard to both 
signs and symbols, they may indeed be considered as compara- 
ble and not fundamentally distinct means through which 
behavior may be informed in different degrees of reliability. To 
take signs as related to dispositions of behavior is to be primarily 
interested in the modes in which they come to inform, incite, 
appraise, or direct action. To emphasize signs in their symbolic 
use is to inquire not so much into what they "announce," "ap- 
praise," etc., but into their "meaning," the "domain of objec- 
tivity" they appear to condition. An inquiry into the symbolic 
function of signs, as Cassirer puts it, 
is not concerned with what we see in a certain perspective, but (with) 
the perspective itself ... [so that] the special symbolic forms are not 
imitations, but organs of reality, since it is solely by their agency that 
anything real becomes an object for intellectual apprehension and as 
such is made visible to us. The question as to what reality is apart from 
these forms, and what are its independent attributes, becomes irrelevant 
here. 19 
Cassirer insists, in other words, that the truly symbolic (the 
17 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 61. 
18 Charles W. Morris, Signs, Language and Behavior > 50. 
19 Language and Myth, translated by S. Langer, 8. 
84 CARL H. HAMBURG 
properly "significative") meaning of sign- functions cannot be 
looked for in the indicative office performed by them, but refers 
to their role as "organs of reality" as which they are said to 
"bring about" (condition) what is meant by an "object" in the 
various universes of discourse, intuition, and ｅxpression. 
In accordance with three senses in which the symbolic-form 
concept is used (see above), to say that "the symbolic forms 
are . . . organs of reality" would be equivalent to the following 
three ｅxpressions of the thesis: 
1 i ) No meaning can be assigned to any object outside the cul- 
tural (mythical, artistic, common-sensical, scientific) contexts 
in which it is apprehended, understood, or known. 
(2) No meaning can be assigned to any object except in refer- 
ence to the pervasive symbolic-relation types of space, time, 
cause and number which "constitute" objectivity in all domains, 
with the modifications characteristic of the media listed under 
<'> 
(3) No meaning can be assigned to any object without, in 
whatever form, assuming a representative relationship ex- 
pressed in the symbol-concept which, abstractable from any 
context, would be said to hold between given "sensuous" 
moments, on the one hand, and a (in principle) non-senuous 
"sense" moment, on the other. 
How, we must ask now, is both the pervasiveness and the 
objectifying office of the symbolic- form concept to be demon- 
strated? Keeping Cassirer's Kantian orientation in mind, it will 
follow that his inquiry into the objectifying pervasiveness of 
symbols cannot properly be expected to point to or to discover 
facts or activities hitherto unknown or inaccessible to either the 
sciences or such other culturally extant types of experience- 
accounting as religion, myths, the arts. Kant, it will be re- 
membered, set out to clarify his "misunderstood" Kritik by 
demonstrating in the Prolegomena that neither mathematics 
nor the physical sciences would be "possible" unless the pure 
forms of intuition and certain categorial determinations were 
presupposed as valid for all experience. Analogously, Cassirer 
maintains that the symbol-concept must be taken as just as 
pervasive as are, in fact, the sciences, arts, myths, and languages 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 85 
of common sense, all of which may be conceived as employing 
symbols in their respective experience-accountings. To say, 
furthermore, that symbols "objectify" would, on this interpre- 
tation, mean nothing else than that these various domains 
themselves, in their symbolic evaluation of the perceptive data 
to which they apply, furnish the only contexts within which 
one can meaningfully speak of any kind of "objectivity." There 
is, in other words, no point in producing examples to illustrate 
what exactly Cassirer means when he credits symbols with 
"bringing about" rather than merely "indicating" objects, 
simply because all sciences, arts, myths, etc. would have to be 
taken as illustrating this general contention. We must distin- 
guish here two aspects of this contention: (i) That all the 
above-listed "domains of objectivity" do indeed presuppose 
the employment of symbols, and (2) That there is no objec- 
tivity outside the contexts established by these various domains. 
As regards the latter aspect, its acceptance follows from 
Cassirer's endorsement of what he took to be Kant's trans- 
cendental method. Could Kant prove the adequacy of this 
method by the use he made of it with respect to "experience as 
science?" The answer may be in the affirmative, if one keeps in 
mind the state of the mathematical and physical disciplines with 
which he was familiar. As a contemporary writer has put it: "In 
relation to his information Kant's intuition of Euclid's axioms 
is unobjectionable. . . . Without the aid of Einstein's conception 
of a curved physical space, we should not conclude that Kant 
is altogether wrong." 20 The answer may be in the negative, if 
one considers that Kant presented his "forms" of intuition and 
understanding as immutable human faculties, and took them to 
be as final as Aristotelian logic, Euclidean geometry, and New- 
tonian physics were thought to be necessary. But, whatever be 
one's evaluation of Kant's position, this much of it is never 
questioned by Cassirer, namely that the determinateness with 
which we experience the "objective" world is never passively 
received ab extra, but that it is, in principle, analyzable as 
"conditioned" by acts of synthesizing the manifold given in per- 
20 Andrew P. Ushenko, Power and Events, xv. 
86 CARL H. HAMBURG 
ception. What Kant had maintained was that there can be no 
objectivity in the physical sense without assumption of the 
synthesizing forms laid down by the Transcendental Analytic. 
This point is generalized by Cassirer to include other than 
physical domains, to be accounted for by types of synthesis 
other than those listed in the first Kritik. That aspect of Cas- 
sirer's general contention, then, according to which there can 
be no objectivity outside the contexts established by the sciences, 
arts, myths, etc., instead of being explicitly demonstrated, 
constitutes his basic philosophical commitment to Kant's view- 
point. 
Regarding the other aspect of his thesis, viz., that all the 
contexts within which such objectivity is encountered, are to 
be taken as sign-systems, in so far as all of them imply specific 
evaluations of the "same" sensory data, on what evidence are 
we to accept it? Or better: what sort of evidence is possible for 
this contention within the commitment to Kant's position as 
indicated? With respect to Kant's inquiry it is maintained by 
Cassirer that he aimed to develop the epistemological conse- 
quences from the facts of the sciences with which he was fa- 
miliar. It was their actual employment of "judgments" both 
related to experience (synthetic) and yet necessary (a priori) 
which seemed to Kant to demand a revision of both the 
empiricist and the rationalist pronouncements with respect to 
the character of human knowledge. In the stage at which he 
analyzed it, it could be said that his analysis was adequate for 
science as he knew it. Kant, in other words, was not concerned 
with adducing evidence that there are synthetic judgments a 
priori the evidence for their actual employment being taken 
to issue from an impartial examination of the sciences them- 
selves. It was but their "possibility" that Kant felt had to be 
accounted for by making those necessary presuppositions about 
human cognition through mediation of which science as a re- 
sult of the activation of that cognition would become intelligi- 
ble. Consequently, these presuppositions, the forms of intuition 
and understanding, are not the evidence from which the syn- 
thetic a priori judgments of the scientist are thought to be 
derivable, but the sciences themselves are taken as the evidence 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 87 
that justifies and postulates the epistemological characterization 
of the "mind" with which the first Kritik is concerned. 
This brief reminder serves to explain Cassirer's analogous 
conviction that his theory of the symbolically-mediate character 
of reality, far from standing in need of ingenious philosophical 
demonstrations, merely formulates, on a level of highest gen- 
erality, a semiotic function which, in various modifications, is 
assumed as a matter of fact by all who, within the legitimate 
contexts of their respective branches of investigation, inquire 
into the nature of physical, artistic, religious, and perceptual 
"objects." A re-examination of this evidence in the light of 
more recent developments in the mathematical, physical, psy- 
chological, linguistic, religious and anthropological researches 
considered by Cassirer, would be both surpassing the compe- 
tency of one inquirer and not be to the immediate purpose. 
For the remainder of this section, it will be our chief concern 
to elucidate how the symbol-concept must be understood in 
order to warrant the universal use and significance which 
Cassirer attributes to it. Before proceeding to this task, however, 
note that rightfully or not Cassirer did take for granted its 
actual employment, not just in the analysis of the various 
disciplines, but in the very construction of the domains to which 
these analyses refer. In support of this contention, we point to 
the following: 
(i) Early in the first volume of the Philosofhie der sym- 
bolischen Formen y where Cassirer prepares for the introduction 
of the symbolic-form concept, he raises the question ". . . 
whether there is indeed for the manifold directions of the 
spirit ... a mediating function, and whether, if so, this function 
has any typical characteristics by means of which it can be 
known and described." 21 Yet, although it is a foregone con- 
clusion that such a "mediating function" must be ascribed to 
the symbol-concept, Cassirer, instead of presenting specific 
arguments for this core idea, immediately goes on to say: "We 
go back for an answer to this question to the symbol-concept as 
Heinrich Herz has postulated and characterized it from the 
point of view of physical knowledge." (ibid.) As soon as the 
11 PSF, Vol. 1, 1 6. 
88 CARL H. HAMBURG 
question is raised, in other words, whether there is a function 
both more general and flexible than, e.g., the concepts of 
"spirit" and "reason," elaborated by traditional philosophy, the 
answer, in the form of the proposed symbol-concept, is not 
argued for at all but is presented as being actually effective and 
recognized as such by Herz with respect to physical science, 
and such other thinkers as Hilbert (mathematical logic), Hum- 
boldt (comparative linguistics), Helmholtz (physiological 
optics), and Herder (religion and poetry). 
(2) In 1936, the Swedish philosopher Konrad Marc-Wogau 
had commented upon certain difficulties he found inherent in 
Cassirer's various versions of the symbol-concept. In a re- 
joinder to these objections, Cassirer makes this very character- 
istic statement: "In his criticism, Marc-Wogau seems to have 
overlooked this one point, namely that the reflections to which 
he objects, are in no way founded upon purely speculative con- 
siderations but that they are actually related to specific, concrete 
problems and to concrete matters of fact." 22 It is significant that, 
here again, where the "logic of the symbol-concept" has been 
challenged, Cassirer makes no attempt to take up his critic's 
suggestions on the same analytical level on which they were 
made, but, instead, goes on to cite a variety of instances (drawn 
from psychology, linguistics, mathematics, and physics) for 
which outstanding representatives have emphasized the sym- 
bolical character of their respective subject-matters. 
Strange as this attitude may appear to those who would ex- 
pect an original philosophy to develop and reason from its own 
axioms, it is only consistent in the light of the above-mentioned 
transcendental orientation in which Cassirer read and accepted 
Kant. The thesis, accordingly, that the mind (Bewusstsein, 
Geist) is symbolically active in the construction of all its uni- 
verses of perception and discourse is not suggested as a dis- 
covery to be made by or to be grounded upon specifically philo- 
sophical arguments. Instead of presupposing insights different 
from and requiring cognitive powers or techniques superior to 
those accessible to empirical science, the thesis is developed as 
iat (Tidskrift for Filosofi och Psykologi.) II, 158. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 89 
issuing from an impartial reading of the scientific evidence in all 
branches of investigation. 
Certain difficulties about such a position could perhaps be 
felt from the outset. It may be questioned, for instance, whether 
scientific situations could be encountered at any time which 
would give univocal testimony to the symbolically-mediate 
character of both their methods and their subject-matters. one 
may also wonder whether the scientific crown-witnesses (on 
whom Cassirer relies so heavily), when reflecting upon the 
symbolic nature of their domains, do so qua scientists, or 
whether, when so reflecting, they must be considered philo- 
sophical rather than scientific spokesmen for their disciplines. 
Finally, a philosophy resting its case squarely on the evidence of 
not just one (especially reliable) science, but of all the sciences 
including all religious and imaginative sense-making as 
within the province of what Cassirer calls "Kulturwissen- 
schajten" seems dangerously committed to generalize upon 
enterprises notorious for their proneness to scrap both their own 
theories and attendant philosophical explanations of their 
theories. 
Considerations of this type need not be fatal, however, to 
a philosophy thus far considered. A philosophical reading of 
the evidence of the sciences will indeed not face "univocal situa- 
tions." Nor will such situations be encountered within any 
other inquiry. The cognitive enterprise, whether in the form 
of large philosophical generalizations, or of the more readily 
controlled scientific generalizations, is admittedly guided by 
hypotheses and thus does imply decisions with respect to the data 
that are considered relevant for their respective generalizations. 
The further contention that the methodological testimony of 
the scientists cannot be credited with the same respectability as 
his methodological effectiveness also need not be damaging to a 
philosophy whose center of gravity is determined by the scien- 
tist's findings. Any philosophy, one could say, which is pro- 
posed as a critique and mediation of symbolisms, must obviously 
do justice to the most reliably constructed symbol-systems of 
the sciences and, in doing that, it can hardly afford to disregard 
the statements on method merely because they come from some- 
90 CARL H. HAMBURG 
body who employs them successfully. At any rate, an adequate 
interpretation of the scientific symbolisms always requires atten- 
tion to both the factual and the (methodo-) logical subject- 
matters, and there does not seem to be any Qrima -facie evidence 
why the method-conscious scientist is to be trusted less in this 
connection than the science-versed philosopher. The objection, 
finally, that any philosophy whose ambition it is to bring into 
conformity its account of "reality" with the latest results of 
the sciences is doomed to "eternalize" highly contingent 
validity-claims, need likewise not endanger the position taken 
by Cassirer. It would be the alternative to the self-corrective 
character of the evidence trusted by him that would be fatal to 
any philosophy. The ambition to make final pronouncements, 
to issue once-and-for-all "truths/' is certainly not germane to a 
thought-system which, by Kantian orientation, is not straining 
to lay hold upon a final reality-structure, but which is advanced 
frankly as an attempt to discharge the "culture-mission" of 
mediating the reality-accounts offered by the various cultural 
disciplines. 
We must conclude therefore: the thesis that all contexts (in 
which we objectively have a world, structure, domain of 
reality) may be analyzed as differently oriented symbolic evalu- 
ations of the perceptive data, is offered as evidenced by all the 
inquiries made of these contexts. As such, the thesis is sug- 
gested as a generalization upon the pervasive features of the 
artistic, religious, and scientific domains, guided by Kant's 
transcendental hypothesis that the pervasive features of all 
experience cannot be prior to and independent of the synthesiz- 
ing activities of a symbol-minded consciousness which has and 
reflects upon them. 
What Cassirer never tires of attributing to Kant is the latter's 
"Revolution der Denkart y " by which philosophers were freed 
from having to attain a reality more profound (or more im- 
mediate) than the only one given in experience, either as en- 
countered or as reflected upon by the only valid methods of 
scientific synthesizing. Instead of undertaking in the fashion 
of ontological metaphysics to determine fixed traits of being, 
the transcendental method would bid us to examine the types 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 91 
of judgments which logically condition whatever may validly 
be asserted as "objective." The "objectivity," however, with 
which the first Kritik furnishes us, actually turns out to be an 
exclusively "physical" one. The transcendental method, as used 
in the Kritik, has not provided us Cassirer thinks with the 
clue for "Objektivitat uberhauyt" but specifically with just 
one type of objectivity, viz., the one that may be formulated 
within the system of principles constitutive of Newtonian 
physics. 23 
In brief: what Cassirer accepts of Kant is the transcendental 
method which, instead of revealing immutable structures of 
Being, inquires into the culturally given "fact" of science and, 
"being concerned not with objects but with our mode of know- 
ing objects," 24 makes for a more flexible analysis of experience 
by allowing for different types of "objectivity," comprehended 
as corresponding to different "modes of knowing." In Cassirer's 
version: "The decisive question is always whether we attempt to 
understand function in terms of structure or vice versa. . , . The 
basic principle of all critical thinking the principle of the pri- 
macy of the function before the object assumes a new form in 
each discipline and requires a new foundation." 28 Cassirer's 
position implies both an acceptance of Kant's methodological 
strictures and a demand for a wider application of the "critical 
method." More specifically: Kant's method was to limit the 
philosopher's concern to an elucidation of the mode of knowing 
governing "reality" as scientifically accessible. It was, in conse- 
quence, to deny him the right of engaging in ontological pur- 
suits, i.e., to discover or construct "realities," offered as "meta- 
physical," apprehension of which would involve an employment 
of cognitive powers superior to those certified by the first 
Kritik as "constitutive" of (or regulative for) experience, i.e., 
of science as the only legitimate inquiry through which the 
permanent structure of this experience may be known. 
23 We are concerned here merely with Kant's attempt to formulate his "Grund- 
satze" in conformity with Newtonian physics, not with the success of this attempt. 
on this point, see A. Pap: The Afriori in Physical Theory, Pt. II. King's Crown 
Press, 1946. 
a< Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, "Einleitung," Par. VII. 
92 CARL H. HAMBURG 
If then the philosopher qua cognitor, not qua moralizer 
was to be restricted to an examination of the source, scope and 
validity of the "mode of knowing" that makes possible experi- 
ence as science, or if, in Cassirer's extended version, he is to be 
restricted to an examination of all the various modes of knowing 
and comprehending that make possible experience, however 
structured (as science, or myth, art, religion, or common sense), 
the issue of highest philosophical universality will logically arise 
as one of attempting to reduce the variety of such distinguish- 
able modes to so many comparable instances of one fundamental 
function. And such a function would at once have to be general 
enough to characterize all modes of knowing and comprehend- 
ing through which experience is realized as structured, and yet 
permit of all the differentiations that specifically modify the 
various cultural media for which it must account. Now, it is 
Cassirer's contention that, historically, philosophy both aimed 
and fell short of elaborating principles of such high generality 
that would, on the one hand, be valid for all domains and, on 
the other, be susceptible of modifications characteristic of the 
specific differences distinguishing these domains. Before turning 
to a closer examination of the symbol-concept which, Cassirer 
believes, satisfies the requirements of such a universal yet 
modifiable function, it is significant to note here that Cassirer 
conceives of his own efforts as within the general direction of 
what philosophers, with varying degrees of awareness and suc- 
cess, have always striven for. In this connection, Cassirer has 
spoken of both the "culture-mission" of philosophy and the 
"antinomies of the culture-concept." By the latter, reference is 
made to the characteristic conflicts that arise as the various 
cultural media of religion,, art, language, and science tend to set 
off their special domains by claiming superiority of insight for 
their respective perspectives. Thus, although the first cosmo- 
logical and physical scientists everywhere started out from the 
distinctions and discriminations made by common sense and 
reflected by language, they soon opposed to this basic fund of 
accumulated knowledge specifically new principles of division, 
a new "logos 33 from the vantage-point of which all non-scientific 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 93 
knowledge appeared as a mere distortion of "the truth. " Simil- 
arly, while both art and religion in their early stages developed 
closely together, if not at times in actual interpenetration, 
further development of these two cultural media resulted in 
either of them claiming superior vision and closer approxima- 
tion to the "really real" as over against the other. Instead of 
contenting themselves with the specific insights which they 
afford, the various cultural disciplines tend Cassirer points out 
to impose the characteristic form of their interpretation upon 
the totality of being, and it is from this tendency towards the 
"absolute," inherent in each one of them, that there issue the con- 
flicts that Cassirer considers "antinominal" within the culture- 
concept. Yet, although it is in intellectual conflicts of this type 
that one would expect philosophy, as a reflection on the highest 
level of universality, to mediate among the various claims, the 
different "dogmatic systems of metaphysics satisfy this expecta- 
tion and demand only imperfectly} they themselves are im- 
mersed in this struggle and do not stand above it." 26 Upon 
analysis, it is suggested, most philosophical systems turn out 
to be merely so many hypostatizations of a particular logical, 
ethical, esthetical, or religious orientation. 
We have briefly adduced these considerations because it is 
against their background that one can understand the impor- 
tance Cassirer attributes to his own "philosophy of symbolic 
forms," which is presented as having a chance of succeeding 
where all former "systems" could only failj not in the sense, 
to be sure, that it holds the key to all the problems that have or 
will come up, but in the sense, nevertheless, that with the 
symbol-concept it puts at the philosopher's disposal an intel- 
lectual instrument of greatest universality and modifiability. As 
such, it is commended as impartially comprehending all "do- 
mains of reality" as of a determinable, symbolically-mediate 
type for which philosophical analysis may indicate their specific 
modalities of sign-functioning, instead of super-imposing one 
privileged modality of meaning (logical, esthetic, ethical, etc.) 
with respect to which all other "visions" are reduced to mere 
*PSF,VoL I, 13. 
94 CARL H. HAMBURG 
approximations and appearances (at best), or illusions (at 
worst). 
c. Exposition of the Symbol-Concept 
We have considered so far the epistemological setting within 
which Cassirer's thesis is developed. We have listed what, we 
believe, represent three essentially distinct senses in which the 
symbolic-form concept is employed, and we have contrasted it 
from both the usually agreed upon view, according to which 
knowledge-as-mediate is indeed taken as "symbolical," and 
from the more current behavioristic position, according to which 
the pervasive character of sign-situations is interpretable as in- 
volving objects which as signs indicate the presence (or the 
conditions for the realization of the presence) of other objects- 
as-signified. We have then attempted to render meaningful 
Cassirer's contradistinction from this position by stressing that 
his concern is with symbols, taken not as "indications" but as 
"organs of reality." Interpreting "organs of reality" in a sense 
termed "transcendental" by Kant, we could say that Cassirer's 
type of inquiry constitutes a most erudite attempt to provide 
evidence for the thesis that no empirical "reality" (objectivity, 
structure) can be meaningfully referred to except under the 
implicit presupposition of the symbolic (constitutive) "forms" 
of space, time, cause, number, etc. and the symbolic (cultural) 
"forms" of myth, common sense (language), art, and science, 
which furnish the contexts (Sinnzusammenhange) within which 
alone "reality" is both encounterable and accountable. 
We must now examine more closely exactly what is asserted 
when it is said of the constitutive and cultural "forms" which 
condition "reality," however accounted, that they are "sym- 
bolical." For this purpose, let us go back to the already stated 
definition of the symbol-concept, according to which "it is to 
cover the totality of all those phenomena which exhibit in what- 
ever form 'sense in the senses' (Sinnerfiillung im Sinnlicheri) 
and all contexts in which something 'sensuous* by being what 
it is (in der Art seines Da-Seins und So-Seins} is represented 
as a particular embodiment as a manifestation and incarnation 
of a meaning." 27 According to this passage, the symbol-concept 
"PSF, Vol. Ill, 109. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 95 
would apply to all contexts in which a "sensuous" moment may 
be distinguished from a "sense" moment, with the proviso 
that a relation holds with respect to these two terms which is 
most frequently referred to as one representing the other." 
For Cassirer (as for most other philosophers) the term "senses" 
covers all perceptual cues which such as colors, sounds, etc. 
suffice to act as vehicles for any and all meaning, where "mean- 
ing" covers all the embodiments to which the senses are amen- 
able as related to an interpreter of these cues, i.e., to the full 
complexity of perspectives which the term "interpreter" (Gei$t y 
Bewusstsein) suggests. To realize yet more distinctly what both 
the "senses" and the "sense" (meaning) connote in this defini- 
tion, we must attempt further to clarify the relation that is sup- 
posed to hold between the two terms, if they are to function 
symbolically. This relation, we suggest, is taken by Cassirer 
both in a polar and a correlative sense. 
( i ) The polarity of "sense" and "senses." 
Stressing the polarity of this relation, Cassirer states suc- 
cinctly that "the symbolic function is composed of moments 
which are different in principle. No genuine meaning (Sinn) as 
such is simple, but it is one and double and this polarity, which 
is intrinsic to it, does not tear it asunder and destroy it, but 
instead represents its proper function." 28 
This function, we may say, establishes a relation between the 
"senses" as signs and the "sense" as signified by them in 
such a way that these two terms must be conceived as polar, 
opposite and (potentially, if not actually) distinguishable from 
each other. This polar distinction of the two symbol-moments, 
as maintained by Cassirer, can be read from a variety of pro- 
nouncements made by him apropos the three modal forms, 
termed respectively: the ｅxpression-function (Ausdrucksfank- 
tiori)\ the intuition-function (Anschauungsjunktion) and the 
and the conceptual-function (reine Bedeutungsjunktion). Space 
forbids even a selective reproduction of the illustrative material 
offered by Cassirer. The gist of the matter will be intelligible, 
however, if the following points are kept in mind. 
*PSF, Vol. Ill, 1 10. 
96 CARL H. HAMBURG 
a. If the representative relation between the senses and their 
sense is of an expressive type (of which myth, art, and the reali- 
zation of "persons" are taken as instances), "reality" is had as 
a universe of "characters," with all events in it having physiog- 
nomic traits and all manifestation of sense through the senses 
being restricted to what is expressible in terms of man's emotive, 
affective (evaluational) system. Where the "world," in other 
words, is taken in its primary ｅxpression-values, all of its phe- 
nomena manifest a specific character which belongs to them in an 
immediate and spontaneous fashion. Cassirer's description of 
these "ｅxpression-phenomena" as "being inherently sombre or 
cheerful, exciting or appeasing, frightening or reassuring" 29 
parallels Dewey's account, e.g., according to which "empiri- 
cally, things are poignant, tragic, settled, disturbed . . . are such 
immediately and in their own right and behalf . . . any quality 
is at once initial and terminal." 30 It would therefore be a mis- 
reading of what Cassirer terms the "reine Ausdrucksphaenom- 
ene" if they were taken to issue from secondary acts of inter- 
pretation, as products of an act of "empathy." The basic error 
of such an "explanation" would consist in the fact that it re- 
verses the order of what is phenomenally given. This interpre- 
tation "must kill the character of perception, it must reduce it 
to a mere complex of sensory data of impression in order to then 
revive the dead matter of impression by an act of empathy." 31 
What is overlooked in the empathy-theories is that, in order to 
get at the sensory data (the hot and cold, the hard and soft, the 
colors, sounds, etc.), we must already disregard and abstract 
from the expressive "Urfhaenomene?* in which a "world" is 
had prior to the working out of the various representative 
schemes and conceptual frameworks to which it subsequently 
submits. What typifies an ｅxpression-phenomenon, we conclude, 
is that, whereas it possesses specific (immediate, non-derivative) 
meanings not realized on the perceptual level as distinct 
from the sensuous vehicles with which they go "hand in hand," 
it must still be recognized as an instance of a symbolic function, 
, Vol. Ill, 85. 
30 Experience and Nature, 96. 
n PSF, Vol. Ill, 85. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 97 
in so far as subsequent analysis, on the level of reflection, will 
make what Cassirer considers a "polar distinction" between its 
two constitutive moments which, as the sign (senses) and the 
signified (sense) define that function. 
b. The polarity between these two moments is encountered 
in a more developed form in the intuitive mode of the symbolic 
function, for which a perception is not merely taken as a qualita- 
tive presence (Praesenz) but as a cue for the representation of 
something else. 
The construction of our perceptive world begins with such acts of divid- 
ing up the ever-flowing series of sensuous phenomena. In the midst of 
this steady flux of phenomena there are retained certain determinate 
(perceptive) units which, from now on, serve as fixed centers of orien- 
tation. The particular phenomenon could not have any characteristic 
meaning except if thus referred to those centers. All further progress of 
objective knowledge, all clarification and determination of our percep- 
tive world depends upon this ever progressing development. 32 
The passage from the ｅxpression-mode to the intuition-mode 
of "making sense in the senses" is described by Cassirer as a de- 
velopment in which progressively an organization of the sensory 
flux is brought about by singling out certain data, realized as 
comparatively constant, significant or relevant for action, by 
operating, in brief, a division of the perceptually given into 
"presentative" and "representative" moments. 83 Now, the 
selective and organizing office of sensory perception has been 
noted by both scientists and philosophers for some time. If a 
symbolic interpretation is put upon whatever evidence exists for 
this fact, it is because such "selectivity" entails a distinction of 
the constant from the variable, of the necessary from the con- 
tingent, of the general from the particular, distinctions, in 
brief, which, for Cassirer, "imply the very source of all objecti- 
fication." 34 And it is to language that we are referred as both 
the outstanding agency which establishes the basic objectifying 
distinctions and the medium which reflects the "foci of atten- 
"PSF,Vol. Ill, 165. 
88 This, of course, is a metaphorical, not a genetic account. A "flux" prior to 
any and all "organization" is a contrary-to-fact abstraction, 
"PSF, Vol. Ill, 1 80. 
98 CARL H. HAMBURG 
tion," the "perspectives" which condition whatever discrimina- 
tion is exercised when some (rather than other) perceptions are 
taken to "represent" the quasi-permanent units as which, on the 
intuition-mode, we have the world as organized in spatio- 
temporal "things-with-properties." Skipping at this point 
further consideration of the evidence adduced by Cassirer for 
this view, 85 what matters for the present purpose is that the 
intuition-mode of symbolic representation is conceived as in- 
volving, besides the sensory data, an "original mode of sight" 
(eine eigene Weise der Sicht) and that both these moments are 
said to stand in a polar relationship to each other in so far as the 
"sight," the "perspective," as something posited (em Seteungs- 
modus), is not reducible to or constructible from the sensory 
data which it "sees." Cassirer argues in this connection against 
both rationalist and empiricist epistemologies which, regardless 
how differently they provide answers to the question of the 
"relation of our perceptions to an object," take the same basic 
course in explaining this relation either in terms of "associa- 
tions" and "reproductions" or in terms of judgments and "un- 
conscious inferences." "What is overlooked in either approach 
is the circumstance that all psychological or logical processes to 
which one has recourse come rather too late. . . . No associative 
connection of them can explain that original Setzungsmodus, 
according to which an impression (taken representatively) 
stands for something 'objective'." 36 The intuition-mode of the 
symbol function is proposed therefore as both an original and 
ultimate mode of sight which, although inseparable from the 
sensory impressions which it sees y must be distinguished from 
them as sharply as the dimensions of "meaning" (sense) from 
the dimension of "signs" (senses). 
c. The polar relation between the sensuous- and the sense- 
moments is even more readily realized in Cassirer's discussion 
of the theoretical mode of the symbol function. Within this 
88 In his Die Sprache und der Aufbau der Gegenstandswelt, Jena, 1932 (sec 
Bibliography for translations) . Also in the Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, 
Language and Myth> and "The Concept of Group and the Theory of Perception," 
(Journal of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. V, 1944, 1-35.) 
86 PSF, Vol. Ill, 148. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 99 
dimension, also referred to as the "level of cognition," there 
obtains, as within the ｅxpression- and the intuition-modes, an 
organization and determination of sensory data, with this dif- 
ference, however, that now "the moments which condition the 
order and structure of the perceptual world are grasped as such 
and recognized in their specific significance. The relations which, 
on the former levels, were established implicitly (in der Form 
blosser Mitgegebenheit) are now explicated." 37 
This "explication," proceeding by way of an abstractive iso- 
lation of the relations which, while applicable to perception, 
are, in principle, of a non-perceptual character, is evidenced, 
"writ large" so to speak, in the constructive schemata, the con- 
ventional systems of conventional signs by mediation of which 
scientific knowledge is attained. A considerably detailed demon- 
stration of this thesis was given by Cassirer long before the 
development of his philosophy of symbolic forms. His con- 
tention that all scientific concept-formation is definable as an 
ever more precise application of relational thinking was first 
presented in his influential Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbe- 
griff (1910) and reasserted in the concluding sections of his 
"Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis" (PSF, Vol. III.) where 
recent developments (until 1929) of the mathematical and 
physical sciences are considered in confirmation of this thesis. 
What is established by the scientific concept is referred to vari- 
ously as a "function," a "principle," a "law of a series," a "rule" 
or "form," where all these terms are employed with the same 
connotation which his early work had given them, i.e., as ex- 
pressing relations between (terms designating) phenomena. 
"To 'comprehend conceptually' and to 'establish relations' turn 
out upon closer logical and epistemological analysis to be 
always correlative notions." 38 Instead of defining the concept 
as extensively determining a class, having members, it is main- 
tained that theoretical concepts 
always contain reference to an exact serial principle that enables us to 
connect the manifold of intuition in a definite way, and to run through it 
"PSF, Vol. Ill, 3 30. 
"PSF, Vol. Ill, 346. 
ioo CARL H. HAMBURG 
according to a prescribed law. . . . (Thus) no insuperable gap can arise 
between the 'universal' and the 'particular,' because the universal itself 
has no other meaning and purpose than to represent and to render 
possible the connection and order of the particular. If we regard the 
particular as a serial member and the universal as a serial principle, 
it is at once clear that the two moments, without going over into each 
other and in any way being confused, still refer throughout in their 
function to each other. 39 
The symbolic function, implied in the theoretical mode, becomes 
comparable to both the ｅxpression- and intuition-modes in that 
here too we are bidden to distinguish between the "principle of 
the series" and the "manifold" ordered into the members of the 
series. 
Let us put this polarity into the language of symbolic logic. 
If we are to define the meaning of a concept not extensionally 
(by specification of the members that are subsumed) but in 
terms of a prepositional function p(x), we are clearly desig- 
nating two distinguishable moments. 
The general form of the functions designated by the letter C 0' is to be 
sharply contrasted with the values of the variable V which may enter 
this function as c true' values. The function determines the relation of 
these values, but it is not itself one of them: the C 0' of C 0(x)' is not 
homogenous to the xi, X2, Xs, etc. [Both the function and the values of 
the variables belong to an entirely different conceptual type (Denk- 
And this formulation only throws into relief the distinctness of 
the two moments which, as the principle (form) of the series 
and its members (material) are held to define all theoretical 
(conceptual) symbolisms. The distinctive trait of theoretical 
concept-formation must, accordingly, be sought in the elabora- 
tion of distinctive "points of view" which, as "principles" or 
"forms" determine the selection of the perceptually given mani- 
fold into specifically ordered series. In this connection, Cassirer 
argues against certain empiricist doctrines which regard the 
"similarity" of the intuitively apprehended phenomena as a 
39 Substance and Function (Swabey tr.), 223^ 
*PSF 9 VoL III, 349-350. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 101 
self-evident psychological fact, fit to account for the serial re- 
lations established by concepts. But, as he points out, 
the similarity of certain elements can only be spoken of significantly when 
a certain point of view has been established from which the elements can 
be designated as like or unlike. The difference between these contents, 
on the one hand, and the conceptual species by which we unify them, 
on the other, is an irreducible ]act$ it is categorial and belongs to the 
form of consciousness. 41 
It designates, as we have seen, the polar contrast between the 
members of a series and the form of the series. 
(2) The correlativity of "sense" and "senses." 
Above, we have considered a number of passages indicative 
of Cassirer's conviction that on all levels on which we, symboli- 
cally, have a world, be it as organized in qualitative expres- 
sion-characters, be it as "broken" into spatio-temporally ordered 
"things-with-properties," be it in the relational order-systems 
of the sciences, we are always in a position to make a dis- 
tinctio rationis" between the "sight" (die Sicht; the form of a 
manifold) and the sensory data that are variously determinable 
within these different sights. We have treated of this conviction 
as implying an interpretation of polarity between the two mo- 
ments of the symbol function. We must now qualify this char- 
acterization by pointing out that, in another sense (to be 
specified), both moments are taken as correlative to a degree 
that makes it inconceivable to refer to or define either moment 
except under implicit presupposition of the other. If, in agree- 
ment with Cassirer's actual usage, we call the perceptive mani- 
fold the "matter" of the symbolic function and the sense- 
perspective (Sinn-Persfektive) its "form," we are bidden to 
think of these terms as correlative in such a way that it is not 
only impossible in any actual context to separate one from 
the other, but also to assign any meaning to either term without 
implication of the meaning of the other. 
Our problem here makes contact with the metaphysical con- 
troversy about universals. From what has been said so far about 
41 Substance and Function, 25. 
CARL H. HAMBURG 
the relation between the "form" and "matter" of a series, there 
can be no doubt that Cassirer could not, without qualifications, 
have subscribed to either the realist or the nominalist position. 
Partial agreement is indicated with St. Thomas, 42 whom he 
credits with having maintained a "strict correlation, a mutual 
relationship between the general and the particular." 43 What 
attracts him in this version is the fact that it is free from the 
various space- and time-metaphorical separations that have 
traditionally been assumed to characterize the universal as be- 
ing before or after, within or outside the particular. Cassirer's 
insistence that no meaning can be given to the universal "form" 
independently of a "matter" for which it is valid, is reasserted in 
a number of ways, such as, e.g., the "sight" determining the 
"how"-character of "what" is seen, or the "principle of a series" 
exhausting its meaning in the order it establishes among the mem- 
bers of the series, or the "p" of a prepositional function not be- 
ing definable independently of the variables for which it holds. 44 
Now, it has been suggested that Cassirer's thought here is not 
free from contradiction on the grounds that the two moments 
by which he aims to define the symbol-concept cannot both: 
(a) belong to two entirely different dimensions and (b) yet be 
tied together in such close correlation that the definition of one 
could not be given except in terms of the other. These objections 
were voiced by the Swedish philosopher Marc-Wogau. 45 It is 
to these objections that we must now give some attention, before 
considering Cassirer's defense in the sequel. 
d. The Symbol-Concept. Objections and Defense 
Marc-Wogau writes: 
A closer examination seems to me to lead to the result that the positive 
meaning of Cassirer's "symbolic relation" is of a dialectical character; 
the symbolic relation, as conceived by Cassirer, covers both the idea of 
an opposition between the sensuously given (the sign) on the one hand, 
48 "Universalia non sunt res subsistentes, sed habent esse solum in singularibus." 
Contra Gentiles , Lib. I, 165. 
48 /W, Vol. Ill, 351. 
44 on this point, see also B. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, 85. 
48 In: Theoria (Tidskrift for Filosofi och Psykologi, 1936), 279-332, 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 103 
and the " Sinner juettunff* (the signified) on the other, and also the idea 
of an identity between the two. The first idea is clearly asserted by 
Cassirer, the second issues as a consequence from certain of his definitions 
and assertions. 46 
Now, the second idea concerns the correlativity of the two 
symbol-moments which, according to Marc-Wogau, entails 
their identity as a consequence. Let us follow his reasoning: 
'Sign' and 'Signified' ... are to be mutually conditioned by each other 
in their determinate character. one moment has meaning only in re- 
lation to the other. But that implies that the thought about the one term 
involves the thought about the other. If the one term is being thought 
of, the other is thereby being thought of too. The two moments of the 
relation would, in consequence, coincide. If A and B are to be connected 
in such a way that A can be determined only with reference to B and 
B can be determined only in reference to A, it becomes impossible to 
distinguish A and B : they coincide (zusammen] alien) . 4T 
With respect to another characterizatioin of the symbol by Cas- 
sirer, according to which it is said to be "immanence" and 
"transcendence" in one: in so far as it expresses a meaning 
non-intuitive in principle in an intuitive form," 48 Marc-Wogau 
remarks: 
In this definition, two moments are distinguished which are related in 
a specific way. When Cassirer characterizes this relation by saying that 
"the symbol is not 'the one or the other,' but that it represents the 'one 
in the other' and 'the other in the one,' " the question seems to crop up 
how, under such circumstances, a possible distinction between the 'one' 
and the 'other' could even be made. By this definition is there not 
posited an identity between the two moments of the symbolic relation 
which would conflict with the insistence upon their polarity? 49 
In Cassirer's rejoinder to these objections, 50 at least two 
different lines of argumentation may be distinguished. For one, 
considerations are adduced, designed to render questionable 
441 Theoria, (1936), 291. 
47 Theoria, (1936), 292. 
48 PSF, Vol. Ill, 447- 
* w'**> v*yjw/, 33 1. 
60 In Theoria, (1938)1 '45-'75. 
104 CARL H. HAMBURG 
Marc-Wogau's belief that there are logical grounds on which 
the maintained correlativity of the two symbol-moments could 
be refuted. Furthermore, illustrations from empirical sciences 
are reproduced for the purpose of supporting his contention that 
the two symbol-moments (although correlative) cannot only 
still be distinguished, but purporting to show that and how such 
isolation of the two moments has been accomplished. In this 
connection, Cassirer quotes extensively from contemporary re- 
search into color and acoustical phenomena which are presented 
by him as documenting as a fact what Marc-Wogau had denied 
as a possibility. 
( i ) The logical issue. 
Marc-Wogau's objection that, if two terms of a relation are 
thought of as "mutually determined," they will, of necessity, 
also be identical, is countered by Cassirer's reference to the 
actual employment of "implicit definitions" in modern mathe- 
matical logic. Now, implicit definitions may be defined as "de- 
noting anything whatsoever provided that what they denote 
conforms to the stated relations between themselves," 51 where 
the stating of the relations is presumably to be given within the 
axiom-system selected. With the discovery of non-Euclidean 
geometries, Cassirer remarks, it became increasingly clear to 
those concerned with their logical foundation, that their ele- 
ments the points, lines, angles, etc. could not be defined 
anymore in the explicit way in which Euclid could take them as 
intuitively evident. "Neither the basic elements, nor the basic 
relations could have been defined, if by a definition one under- 
stands the indication of the 'genus *proximmn? and of the 'dif- 
ferentia specified."* 2 A way out, Cassirer suggests, was opened 
by Pasch's investigations 53 which were continued and brought to 
a systematic conclusion with Hilbert's Grundlagen der Geomet- 
rie.** Hilbert's analyses, of considerable influence upon the 
development of mathematical logic, may be summarized by 
saying that, for him, the geometrical elements and relations are 
51 Cohen and Nagel, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method, 135. 
K Theoria, 169. 
88 See Substance and Function, 101. 
"ibid., 93 . 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 105 
not to be taken as independent entities, intuitively grasped, for 
which ^xplicit definitions could be given, but as terms whose 
meaning is specified by the relations which are axiomatically 
prescribed for them. "The axioms which they satisfy determine 
and exhaust their essence." 55 Basic geometrical concepts are, 
accordingly, held to be only implicitly definable, i.e., within 
a logical system; and it is gratuitous to ask for a determination 
of their meaning independently of this system. It follows, 
of course, that, if in Hilbert's geometry the signification of 
points, lines, the relations of "between-ness," "outside," etc., 
cannot be formulated except in relation to a selected axiom- 
group, a variety of other elements and relations, if they satisfy 
the formal conditions of the same axioms, must be considered 
as equivalent to it. Against the very possibility of structural 
isomorphisms, of different (though logically justifiable) inter- 
pretations of the same basic calculus, the objection could perhaps 
be raised that they merely prove the impossibility of arriving 
at completely determined elements by means of implicit def- 
initions. This apparent limitation, however, also marks the 
very strength of mathematical, deductive thought, as was stated 
by Cassirer distinctly in his Substance and Function: 
Two different types of assertions, of which the one deals with straight 
lines and planes, the other with cycles and spheres . . . are regarded as 
equivalent to each other in so far as they provide for the same con- 
ceptual dependencies. . . . The points with which Euclidean geometry 
deals can be changed into spheres and circles, into inverse point-pairs 
of a hyperbolic or elliptical group of spheres . . . without any change 
being produced in the deductive relations of the individual propositions 
. . . evolved for these points. . . . Mathematics recognizes (in these 
points) no other 'being' than that belonging to them by participation in 
this form. For it is only this 'being' that enters into proof and into the 
processes of inference and is thus accessible to the full certainty that 
mathematics gives to its subject-matter. 56 
The relevance of these considerations for the problem at 
hand may perhaps be put thus: Marc-Wogau's contention that, 
if the terms of a relation are mutually determined, they there- 
w Theoria, 1 69. 
M Substance ana Function (Swabey tr.), 93. 
io6 CARL H. HAMBURG 
by must also be identical, is refutable, if we maintain the justi- 
fiability of implicit definitions, respectively of the different 
mathematical (logical) calculi which they make possible. And 
vice versa: Marc-Wogau's charge, if taken seriously, would 
not only refute the "logic" of the symbol-concept (with its 
two distinct, yet correlative moments, its "sensuous" represen- 
tation of the "non-sensuous"), but it would also have to refute 
the "logic" of all those disciplines that could not constitute their 
respective syntax-forms except by employment of implicit defi- 
nitions. In consequence, Cassirer is convinced that, if the scien- 
tist can proceed effectively with elements the meaning of which 
is indefinable outside the axiom-system within which they occur, 
the philosopher neither may (nor need) hope for more secure 
foundations regarding the symbol-concept. Marc-Wogau's 
charge of a contradiction inherent in this concept is thus 
countered by Cassirer's reference to scientific syntax whose 
elements are not considered identical merely because their 
definition implies mutual determination. 
(2) The empirical issue. 
Regardless, however, whether correlativity of the relational 
terms implies their "identity" or not, is there any other than 
just formal evidence for the "fact" that, notwithstanding such 
correlativity, a distinction between the symbol-moments is not 
only logically permissible but also actually achievable? Before 
examining the empirical evidence adduced in answer to this 
question, it will be worth while to consider the issue here raised 
in its full generality. 
The symbol-concept, we suggested above, was to result from 
Kant's epistemology, in so far as it was to cover all the "syn- 
thesizing acts" which variously condition the many expressive, 
perceptual, and conceptual forms in which we have the respec- 
tive worlds of myth, art, common sense, and science. Instead 
of departing from a taken-for-granted opposition between a 
statically conceived "self" and a just as statically conceived 
"world," the philosophy of symbolic forms was proposed 
to examine the presuppositions upon which that opposition depends and 
to state the conditions that are to be satisfied if it is to come about. It 
finds that these conditions are not uniform, that there are rather different 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 107 
dimensions of apprehending, comprehending and knowing the phenom- 
ena and that, relative to this difference, the relationship between 'self 
and 'world' is capable of characteristically different interpretations. . . . 
True, all these forms aim at objectification on the level of perception 
(zielen auj gegenstandliche Anschauung hin)^ but the perceived objects 
change with the type and direction of such objectification. The phi- 
losophy of symbolic forms, accordingly, does not intend to establish a 
special dogmatic theory regarding the essence and properties of these 
'objects,' but it aims, instead, to comprehend these types of objectifica- 
tion which characterize art as well as religion and science. 87 
It follows that, if no objectivity is held to be encounterable 
except within the symbolic forms of myth and religion, of art, 
common sense, and science, there also can be no chance to break 
out of the "charmed circle" of these forms. If it is only under 
the pervasive presupposition of these forms that we can appre- 
hend, comprehend and know all the objects, however struc- 
tured, how then will it be possible even to conceive of a polar 
concept which, such as the "sensuous manifold," is claimed to 
be distinguishable from the formal moment of the symbol- 
relation? What answer, in other words, can be given to Marc- 
Wogau's charge that, to be consistent, Cassirer cannot hope even 
to make a "distinctio rationis** between the perceptual "matter" 
and the significant "form" of the symbol-concept? As mentioned 
earlier, it is typical of Cassirer's procedure that the resolution 
of this problem is not left to logical or specifically "philo- 
sophical" considerations as have conventionally been devoted 
to the "form-matter" issue. The latter is to be evaluated, in- 
stead, in the light of empirical evidence. Let us be clear once 
more for just exactly what this empirical reference is to provide 
evidence. What is under discussion concerns the question 
whether the "material" moment of the symbol-concept (to 
which we have variously referred as the "sensuous manifold," 
the "sensory- or perceptual data") although indeterminable 
outside any given context ("perspective," "sight," "principle" 
or "form of a series") can nevertheless be distinguished, i.e., 
conceived as different in principle from the sense-perspectives 
within which it becomes manifest. 
For evidence of the fact that this problem has been realized 
87 Theoria (1938), 151. 
io8 CARL H. HAMBURG 
by scientists, Cassirer quotes these remarks from Karl Buehler: 
No theory of perception should forget that already the most simple 
qualities, such as 'red' and 'warm' usually do not function for them- 
selves but as signs for something else, i.e., as signs of properties of 
perceived things and events. The matter looks different only in the 
comparatively problematic borderline-case where one seeks to determine 
the 'Ansich* of these qualities in fercepion 
But it is, of course, exactly this "borderline-case," i.e., whether 
conditions for the isolation of the "Ansich" of perceptual data 
can be instituted or not (and how such isolation is to be inter- 
preted), that is at issue. The question, in other words, is whether 
perceptual data can be stripped of their various representative 
functions, and the relevance of having recourse to empirical 
investigations would concern the technical possibility of operat- 
ing such a reductive stripping of these data. For evidence of the 
empirical feasibility of that reduction, Cassirer mentions the 
German physiologists Helmholtz, Hering and Katz. Katz, 
e.g., 59 had initiated a procedure involving, a.o., the observation 
of colors through a punctured screen (ILochschirm) . "It turned 
out that hereby (the colors) change their phenomenal character 
and that there takes place a reduction of the color-impression 
to ... the dimension of plane- (Flaechen-) colors." 60 Hering 
performs similar reductions by means of a vision-tube (eine 
irgendwie fixierte Roehre)^ whereas Helmholtz, more ingeni- 
ously, gets along without any instruments and achieves com- 
parable effects by "looking from upside down, from under one's 
legs or under one's arms." Thus, Hering: 
Place yourself near the window, holding in your hands a piece of 
white and a piece of grey paper closely together. Now, turn the grey 
paper towards the window, the white one away from it, so that the 
retinal image of the grey paper will be more strongly illuminated than 
the white one 5 but even though one will notice the change in light- 
intensity, the now "lighter" but really grey paper will still appear as 
grey, while the now "darker" but really white paper will be seen as 
white. If now both papers are looked at through a tube, one will soon 
M Die Krise der Psychologic (1927), 97. 
59 In his Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, (ind edition 1930). 
90 Grundziige elner Lehre <vom Lichtsinn. Paragraph 4. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 109 
see both papers (if held so that one will not shade the other) on one 
and the same level, and now the grey paper will be seen as the lighter 
one, the white one as the darker one, corresponding to the difference in 
the two light-intensities. 60 
And Helmholtz: 
We know that green plains appear at a certain distance in somewhat 
different color-tones; we get used to abstract from this change and we 
learn to identify the different 'green' of distant lawns and trees with 
the corresponding 'green' of these objects, seen at close range. . . . But 
as soon as we put ourselves into unusual circumstances, when we look, 
e.g., from under our legs or arms, the landscape appears to us as a flat 
picture. . . . Colors thereby lose their connection to close or distant 
objects and now face us purely in their qualitative differences. 61 
Similar reductions with respect to other than color-phenomena 
are also referred to by Cassirer in this connection. 182 
Now it seems that, if examples of the above-mentioned type 
are taken as evidence for the fact that the severing of sensory 
data from representative contexts is not only possible but actu- 
ally (technically) achievable, Cassirer would both be proving 
too much (with respect to what can be maintained within his 
own strictures) and not enough (with respect to what he pre- 
sumes to prove). For one, to suggest that Helmholtz's, Her- 
ing's, and Katz's investigations succeeded in "de facto" isolating 
the "pure color-phenomena" from their representative office, 
would be to maintain more than Cassirer could allow for, after 
taking pains to point out that the sensuous moment can never 
actually be encountered independently of the sense (context-) 
moment. To maintain such "isolation" would certainly not be 
compatible with his contention that "there is nothing in con- 
sciousness without thereby also positing . . . something other and 
a series of such 'others.* For each singular content of conscious- 
ness obtains its very determination from consciousness as a whole 
which, in some form, is always simultaneously represented and 
co-posited by it." 83 Nor could, or need, the alluded empirical 
61 Hcmdbuch der Physiologischen Oftik, (1896), 607. 
62 For haftical phenomena: Katz, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt (1925), 255. For 
odor phenomena: Henning, Der Geruch (1924.), 275, 278. 
m PSF, Vol. I, 32. 
no CARL H. HAMBURG 
illustration prove that this is not the case. What they may be 
taken to support is not the view that color- values can be stripped 
of their representative function, but only that by an appropri- 
ate shift from a normal perception perspective to a controlled 
two-dimensional perspective different interpretations hold 
with respect to color-phenomena. The latter have, in effect, not 
"really" been stripped of their representative office, but they 
now "represent" plane instead of surface colors. 
That the above is a preferable way of stating the matter is 
suggested by an earlier pronouncement: 
(After) the complete reduction of the color-impressions, they do not 
represent ... a particular thing . . . (but) appear as members of a 
series of light-experiences (Ltchterlebnisse) . But even these 'Lichter- 
lebnisse* betray a certain structure in so far as they are sharply con- 
trasted with each other, and in that they are organized in that contrast. 
Not only do they have different degrees of coherence so that one color 
appears separated from the other by a larger or smaller distance (where- 
from issues a determinate principle of their serialization), but there 
are assumed in this series certain privileged points around which the 
various elements can be organized. Even when reduced to a mere 
light-impression, the individual color-nuance is not just 'present' as 
such but it also is representative. The individual 'red,' given here and 
now, is given as V red, as a member of a species which it represents. . . . 
Without this (co-ordination to a series), the impression would not even 
be determinable as 'this one, 1 as TO$S te in the Aristotelian sense. 64 
We must conclude, therefore, that it becomes impossible on 
Cassirer's own view to conceive of the sensory moment of the 
symbol-concept as isolable from any serial context. Thus, 
whereas, under specifically controlled conditions, color-, sound-, 
and other sensory data may cease to function representatively 
for esthetic qualities, thing-surfaces and shapes, or for con- 
ventional language-signs, their reduction will still not go be- 
yond the physical and physiological contexts within which they 
are identifiable as of a determinate wave-length, intensity, pitch, 
etc. Marc-Wogau's charge that the "material" moment of the 
symbol-concept is not distinguishable from its sense-moment 
would, accordingly, hold if and only if the symbol-concept 
, Vol. Ill, 157. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY in 
allowed of application in one and not more than one sense- 
context. To be sure, within any one perspective, the "whatness" 
of a phenomenon is never determinable in separation from its 
"how-ness," from the respective "sight" in which it is seen. With 
a variety of symbolic contexts, however, there is also given the 
possibility of their contrast and of distinguishing them as dif- 
ferently oriented "modes of sight," of which it can be said that 
they are "of" sensory data in the sense that a reduction to the 
physico-descriptive dimension can be performed for all of 
them. When Cassirer insists, therefore, that "there is always a 
world of optical, acoustical and haptical phenomena in which 
and by means of which all 'sense/ all apprehending, compre- 
hending, intuiting and conceiving alone is manifest," 65 then the 
conceivability of these sensory phenomena, as distinct from the 
"sense" they manifest, must be interpreted to mean that a phys- 
ical context (acoustics, optics, etc.) can be co-ordinated to all 
other contexts in which the senses represent different types of 
(expressive, intuitional, theoretical) sense. 
The "material" moment of the symbol-concept, we could 
say, as reference of and relevance for the sense-endowing 
"formal" moment, may not be separately encountered or isol- 
able within one context, but it is nevertheless distinguishable 
as one context. To speak of it as "material," would seem to be 
justified, if one considers the term to stand in the Aristotelian 
sense for what is taken as that of which manifold determina- 
tions are possible. What the term also suggests is that we are 
dealing here with what as matter in space and time, is ac- 
cessible to physical determination. In this sense, the material 
moment refers not just to one among other contexts, but to the 
most reliably controlled and pervasive one to which all other 
contexts may indeed be "reduced." 
In support of our belief that this interpretation of the "in- 
dependent variability" of the two symbol-moments is adequate 
with respect to what Cassirer aims to maintain, let us turn, in 
conclusion, to an illustration adduced by him on various oc- 
casions: 186 Cassirer bids us to think of a black line-drawing, a 
"Theoria (1939)) *S3- 
"E.g in: Zeitschrift fur Aesthetik, 1927, (Vol. XXI), 195. PSF, Vol. Ill, 
331. Theoria (1938), 154. 
ii2 CARL H. HAMBURG 
"Linienzug" distinguished as a simple "perception experience." 
Yet, while I still follow the various lines of the drawing in their visual 
relations, their light and dark, their contrast from the background, 
their up-and-down movements, the lines become, so to speak, alive. 
The spatial form (das GebUde) becomes an aesthetic form: I grasp in 
it the character of a certain ornament ... I can remain absorbed in the 
pure contemplation of this ornament, but I can also apprehend in and 
through it something else: it represents to me an expressive segment of 
an artistic language, in which I recognize the language of a certain 
time, the style of an historical period. Again the 'mode of sight' may 
change, in so far as, what was manifest as an ornament, is now dis- 
closed to me as a vehicle of a mythico-religious significance, as a magical 
. . . sign. By a further shift in perspective, the lines function as a 
sensuous vehicle for a purely conceptual structure-context. . . . To the 
mathematician, they become the intuitive representation of a specific 
functional connection. . . . Where, in the aesthetic sight, one may see 
them perhaps as Hogarth beauty-lines, they picture to the mathematician 
a certain trigonometric junction, viz., the picture of a sin-curve, 
whereas the mathematical physicist may perhaps see in this curve the 
law of some natural process, such as, e.g., the law for a periodic oscilla- 
tion. 
All depends here upon what is taken to remain "identical" in 
all these modes of sight. When we say that it is the "Linien- 
zug" which figures as the material moment in all contexts, in 
what sense can we say that it is the "same" one, since we know 
that it is seen as so many different things from context to con- 
text? Cassirer's rather metaphorical pronouncements in this 
connection can be clarified in the light of our interpretation. In 
the passage quoted above, he speaks of the simple (schlichte) 
"perception experience" in which the line-drawing is phenomen- 
ally given before it "comes to life," i.e., enters into the various 
perspectives mentioned. But clearly, if experienceable at all, 
this "simple perception experience" must itself be taken as a 
mode of sight and not as a moment prior and common to all 
other sights. This formulation is particularly unhappy in the 
light of other passages where Cassirer generalizes upon the il- 
lustration given above by remarking that 
the material moment is no psychological datum , but rather a liminal 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 113 
notion (Grenzbe griff). . . . What we call the 'matter' of perception 
is not a certain sum-total of impressions, a concrete substratum at the 
basis of artistic, mythical or theoretical representation. It is rather a 
line towards which the various formal modes converge. (Erne Linie 
. . . in der sich die verschiedenen Weisen der Formung schneiden.)* 7 
This space-metaphorical version of the issue would be amen- 
able to the interpretation suggested in so far as the "matter of 
perception" qua "convergence of the various formal modes" 
could well be taken as the "reductibility" of all contexts to the 
physico-physiological one from which Cassirer's actual evidence 
is concededly derived. (Helmholtz, Hering, Katz, Buehler, 
etc.) 
SYMBOL-CONCEPT AND PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 
We conclude from the preceding discussion that a consistent 
meaning may be assigned to Cassirer's theory of the symbol- 
concept. The extreme generality of this concept is manifest when 
expressed as a propositional function. We could say that the 
property (of a "sensuous" representing "sense") limits in no 
way whatsoever the scope of the particulars which may enter the 
argument as true values. A symbolic relation, in other words, 
must hold for all facts, because, as indicated above, no facts are 
held to be statable without reference to some context; and no 
context can fall outside the symbol formula, because, as a con- 
text (Sinnzusammenhang), it must establish some exemplifica- 
tion of a representative relationship. Now, this "representation 
of sense through the senses" can take three distinct modal forms: 
1 i ) If the referent of the senses is the affective-emotive system 
of man, the senses are said to make "expressive sense." 
(2) If the referent of the senses is the volitional-teleological 
system of man, the senses make "common"-(thing-perceptual) 
sense. 
(3 ) If the referent of the senses is a system of theoretical order- 
signs, the senses make conceptual, i.e., scientific sense. 
It is to each of these "modi" of the symbolic relation that 
there correspond the various cultural media. Thus: 
67 Theoria (1938), 155-156. ED. NOTE: Cf. infra 330 f. 
ii4 CARL H. HAMBURG 
( i ) The ｅxpression-modus is taken to be exemplified in the 
domains of myth, art, and (the substrata of) language, in all of 
which media we deal with what Cassirer terms "Ausdrucks- 
Charaktere" and what are variously referred to by other 
contemporary philosophers, in related connotations, as "terti- 
ary qualities," "essences," "prehensions," "significant forms," 
etc. 
(2) The common sense or empirical-intuitional- (empirische 
Anschaulichkeit)-modus is taken to be exemplified in the "nat- 
ural world-view" which is both constituted and reflected, 
Cassirer holds, by the "world of language." 
(3) The conceptual (theoretical) modus is taken to be exem- 
plified by the order-systems in which we have the "world of 
science." 
The philosophy of symbolic forms is, accordingly, a philos- 
ophy of the cultural forms from which alone we can read the 
various modalities within which symbolic functioning occurs and 
of which the symbol-concept furnishes the most general formu- 
lation. 
From these cultural exemplifications of the "modi" of the 
symbol-concept we must distinguish the "qualities" of the 
most pervasive symbol-relations which, such as space, time, 
cause, number, etc., are "constitutive" (in the Kantian sense) of 
any and all objectivity. "The form of the simultaneous consti- 
tutes a quality distinct from the form of succession." 68 But since 
each "quality" is never manifest but in one of the three specified 
modal forms, 
we may conceive certain spatial forms (e.g. certain lines) as an artistic 
ornament in one case, as a geometrical draft in another ... so that, in 
consequence, the quality of a relation can never adequately be given 
except in reference to the total system from which it is abstracted. If, 
e.g., we designate the temporal, spatial, casual, etc., relations as Ri, R2, 
Rs . . ., there belongs to each of these a special 'index of modality' 
|*i, 1*2, [*s . . . which indicates the context within which they are to 
be taken. 69 
It follows that Cassirer could not consider as adequate any 
, Vol. I, 29. 
* PSF, Vol. 1, 3 1. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 115 
philosophical analysis of space, time, cause, number, etc., unless, 
besides mathematical and physical spaces, it also attempted to 
account for the expressive and intuitional spaces of common 
sense, art, myth, and religion. 
In the light of the above, it will now be clear in which sense 
Cassirer's theory of symbolic forms could be presented both as 
a "philosophy of culture" and a "metaphysics of experience." 
There can be little doubt that Cassirer himself preferred to 
think of his work as providing "Prolegomena" for a philosophy 
of culture. In this form, the Philosophie der symbolischen For- 
men is actually developed, starting, as it does, from a philos- 
ophy of language (Volume I, 1923) and moving on to a 
philosophy of myth (Volume II, 1925) and to a philosophy of 
(perceptual and conceptual) knowledge (Volume III, 1929). 
All that would seem to be required, however, in order to 
formulate Cassirer's various analyses of language, myth, and 
the sciences as a "metaphysics of experience," would be to bring 
together the many penetrating examinations of "expressive 
space" (in the volumes on Language and Myth), of the "em- 
pirical space" of common sense (in the volumes on Language 
and Phenomenology of Knowledge), of mathematical and 
physical spaces (in the volumes on Phenomenology of Knowl- 
edge and Substance and Function), and to arrange them within 
a single scheme of exposition, doing the same for the other 
"categories." The result would be at least as universal a treat- 
ment of the pervasive (symbolic) traits of "Being" as is ex- 
pected of a metaphysical treatise. 
To develop Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms as a 
"metaphysics of experience" may appear bold, if not outright 
paradoxical, in view of both Cassirer's frequent polemics against 
"metaphysical speculations" in his early writings and in con- 
sideration of the pronounced anti-metaphysical tenor of the 
entire neo-Kantian movement of which Cassirer was one of 
the most brilliant exponents. A closer examination of some of the 
relevant passages, however, will back our contention that the 
issue is essentially a terminological one. It concerns not so much 
10 In accordance with the then ongoing Hegel-Renaissance, Cassirer preferred 
the title : "Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis." 
n6 CARL H. HAMBURG 
the possibility (or legitimacy) of metaphysics as a significant 
philosophical enterprise as rather the questionability of what 
the term "metaphysics" has connoted so far. Take, e.g., this 
passage from Substance and Function: 
When empirical science examines its own procedure, it has to recog- 
nize that there is in the (metaphysical) struggles a false and technical 
separation of ways of knowing that are both alike indispensable to its very 
existence. The motive peculiar to all metaphysics of knowledge is here 
revealed. What appears and acts in the process of knowledge as an 
inseparable unity of conditions is hypostatized on the metaphysical view 
into a conflict of things. 71 
Now compare this passage with another one, written almost 
thirty years later: 
The history of metaphysics is by no means a history of meaningless 
concepts or empty words ... it establishes a new basis of vision and from 
it gains a new perspective for knowing the real. 72 
What appears on the surface as a complete shift from a rejection 
to an acceptance of metaphysical thinking must be recognized, 
however, as a mere shift in emphasis with respect to an essen- 
tially identical point of view. To be sure, Cassirer's statements 
in Substance and Function are not as positive with regard to 
metaphysics as the point he makes in the study on Hagerstrom y 
where he asserts that "the genuine, the truly metaphysical 
thoughts have never been empty thoughts, have never been 
thoughts without concepts" (ibid.). Yet, in this same context 
he goes on to warn us exactly as he did in his earlier work 
that 
the difficulties, dangers and antinomies of metaphysics arise from the 
fact that its 'intuitions' themselves are not expressed in terms of their 
true methodological character. None (of the great metaphysical in- 
sights) is considered as giving insight into only a portion, but all are 
claimed to generally span the whole of reality. . . . The subsequent 
contest, resulting from such (partial) claims becomes at once a dialectical 
conflict. (Ibid.) 
M Substance and Function (Swabey tr.), 237. 
" Axel Hagerstromi Eine Studie zur Scfawedischen Philosofhie der Gegewwart, 
Ch.I. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 117 
Cassirer's position is thus a consistent one. He does not side 
with the positivistic contention that metaphysics is not only 
"false," but also "meaningless." Instead, he distinguishes the 
genuine character of the problems with which the great meta- 
physicians have dealt, from the still imperfect modes in which 
their findings have been presented. The metaphysical objective 
is taken to be legitimate, whereas the metaphysical results can- 
not be accepted without qualification, simply because meta- 
physicians have offered "partial truths" as "universal" ones and 
because, in focussing upon one aspect of symbolization (viz. 
the mathematical, religious, aesthetic, or moral one), they have 
lost sight of the equal validity of such other aspects as also must 
be accounted for as legitimate paths to what in any perspective 
may be referred to as the "real." 
Now, since this denial of a privileged status for any one form 
of representation is exactly what Cassirer has claimed for his 
philosophy of symbolic forms, there does not seem to be any 
reason why within his own pronouncements his work may 
not indeed be considered as a kind of metaphysics, oriented 
around the central notion of the symbol-concept, which charac- 
terizes all aspects (contexts; Sinnzusammenhange) of the 
"real," pervading as a common theme, the polyphony of all 
cultural forms in which reality is perceived, understood, and 
known. Now, if emphasis is put upon the mjost universal rela- 
tional forms (space, time, cause, number, etc.) which reappear 
in characteristic modifications in all of these forms, we would 
be offered a metaphysics of (cultural) experience. If, on the 
other hand, our exposition proceeds by way of separate analyses 
of language, myth, religion, the mathematical and physical 
sciences, the character of Cassirer's work would be more obvi- 
ously one of a philosophy of culture. Regardless, however, 
which form of presentation is chosen, each will center around 
the idea of the symbol-concept. 
Cassirer himself, when offered an opportunity to present 
(in abbreviated form) his thoughts to an English-speaking 
audience, subtitled his Essay on Man "An Introduction to a 
Philosophy of Human Culture" Here, the emphasis is on the 
cultural realities, the languages and rituals, the art-masterpieces 
n8 CARL H. HAMBURG 
and scientific procedures. To comprehend them philosophically 
requires to realize them as so many symbolic manifestations 
of different types of synthesizing activities. 
The content of the culture-concept cannot be separated from the basic 
forms and directions of significant (g^istigen) production; their 'being* 
is understandable only as a 'doing.* It is only because there is a specific 
direction of our aesthetic imagination and intuition that we have a 
realm of aesthetic objects and the same goes for all our other energies 
by virtue of which there is built up for us the structure of a specific 
domain of objectivity. 73 
An analysis of culture could, correspondingly, proceed along 
both "material" and "formal" lines. It could either undertake a 
descriptive classification of the products of the various cultural 
activities, or it could seek "behind" this great diversity of mani- 
festations the characteristic types of intuiting, imagining, and 
conceiving, i.e., the "doings," in terms of which the "works" 
become intelligible. It is only in focussing on the "doings" that, 
according to Cassirer, we may hope to find a common de- 
nominator. "We seek not a unity of effects, but a unity of 
action; not a unity of products, but a unity of the creative 
process." 74 But this "unity of the creative process" as is ob- 
vious by now can be nothing else than the unity and univer- 
sality of the symbolic function, expressed in the symbol- 
concept. 
The "culture-concept" must, accordingly, eclipse the "nature- 
concept" which, in Substance and Function, still stands for the 
regulative idea of "lawfulness" 'per se. It does so by reason of 
the circumstance that, whatever the "nature-concept" connotes 
at various historical periods, it is intelligible only as a function 
of what the cultural media of art, religion, and science take it 
to mean. Whereas "culture" creates, in an uninterrupted flow, 
ever new linguistic, artistic, religious, and scientific symbols, 
both "philosophy and science must break up these symbolic 
languages into their elements. . . . (We must learn) to inter- 
pret symbols in order to decipher the meaning-content they 
, Vol. 1, 1 1. 
74 Essay on Man, 70. 
CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 119 
enclose, to make visible again the life from which they orig- 
inally came forth." 75 
Measured against this considerable task, what we have in 
the three volumes of the Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen 
can hardly be expected to provide a full answer. Doubtless, a 
more detailed examination of the various cultural phenomena 
than offered so far would be required to make good the implied 
promise. Cassirer himself was aware of the tentative char- 
acter of his attempts in what he thought was the right direc- 
tion. 
The 'Philosophy of Symbolic Forms' cannot and does not try to be a 
philosophical system in the traditional sense of this word. All it attempted 
to furnish were the 'Prolegomena' to a future philosophy of culture. 
. . . only from a continued collaboration between philosophy and the 
special disciplines of the 'Humanities' (Geisteswissenschafteri) may one 
hope for a solution of this task. 76 
CARL H. HAMBURG 
TULANE UNIVERSITY 
78 Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 94.$ . 
2 
William Curtis Swabey 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 
E 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 
1 RNST CASSIRER is known to students of epistemology 
1 and metaphysics as a learned, lucid, and skillful repre- 
sentative of the neo-Kantian or "critical idealistic" point of 
viewj no one can deny the competence with which he reviews 
"the problem of knowledge in the science and philosophy of the 
modern age," expounding, quoting, and criticizing innumer- 
able authors, himself always firmly anchored in the critical 
idealism of the Marburg School. In what follows I undertake, 
with all becoming diffidence, to make explicit certain difficulties 
which I find, not so much in Cassirer's writings as such, but in 
the point of view of idealism itself. The learned material 
which Cassirer presents, the information concerning mathe- 
matics and physics from Galileo and Cusanus down to Einstein 
and the quantum theory, is after all susceptible of more than one 
interpretation 5 just as scripture supports various systems of 
theology, so science does not oblige a philosopher to embrace 
either idealism or realism. Cassirer's assemblage of historical 
material, which he so eloquently and persuasively interprets 
in the light of Kantianism, could be interpreted in the light of 
realism, were there a sufficiently learned and skillful realistic 
philosopher who was willing to undertake the task. Naturally, 
in such a wide-spread application of the historico-critical 
method, Cassirer has had to leave behind most of the scholastic 
architectonic, which Kant offered to the world as never to be 
changed 5 the modern disciple merely retains a "point of view," 
which is, as a matter of fact, extremely difficult to reduce to a 
few definite assertions. The Kantian "thing-in-itself" has dis- 
appeared and with it that vestige of realism, which was always 
123 
124 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
in the back of Kant's mind: the a priori has become fluid and 
indefinite. The old opposition to metaphysics, on the one 
hand, and to empiricism, on the other, remains. Emphasis is 
placed on relations, especially upon those involved in serial 
order. 
The comments which follow will be made in the name of 
metaphysics. By metaphysics I understand a theory of being 
in general, a science which would deal with the fundamental 
types of being and reality. It would take its stand on the in- 
escapable ontological claims of all our thought and speech. 
I do not, however, understand by metaphysics a discipline 
which would deal primarily with those problems which Kant 
dealt with under the caption Transcendental Dialectic; it may 
be true that a degree of agnosticism is indeed the proper attitude 
with regard to the dogmas of the metaphysics of religion; 
metaphysics, as I understand it, is not to be understood as 
primarily the science of the meta-empirical (and consequently 
the un verifiable), but rather as that science which clarifies the 
fundamental ontological claims of our thought. It is my opinion 
that metaphysics, in this sense, is led to a standpoint of dualistic 
realism, a standpoint which is perhaps not final, but which is 
at any rate the only natural way of thinking. The dualism of 
Descartes and Locke, although encumbered with many dubious 
assertions in each case, still seems to me the philosophy which 
is most clearly suggested by our common ways of talking; it is 
perhaps in the end the only intelligible system, or, if it too 
conceals some insoluble problems, it is the least unintelligible 
system. By dualistic realism I mean a system which posits a 
world of bodies and minds in continual interaction. Bodies are 
self-existent entities with spatial attributes; minds are non- 
spatial beings which continually interact with bodies and fur- 
thermore know them both by perception and in other more 
elaborate and indirect ways. Dualistic realism seems to the 
idealist utterly unworthy of philosophy; for him, it is common- 
place, if not downright vulgar; he would prefer to leave 
behind mere things and delve into the mysteries of symbolism 
and the super-sensuous regions. The realist, although sharing 
to some extent the aspirations of the idealist, nevertheless puts 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 125 
common sense clarity and intelligibility first, in his list of philo- 
sophic values, and views mathematics as a dubious guide with 
regard to problems of being and real existence. The idealist of 
the type of Cassirer does not regard natural science as con- 
cerned with a self-existent nature. on the contrary, nature is 
the product of a synthesis of sensations and the history of 
science is a process in which thought perpetually re-creates its 
object. 
The attitude of the criticist is one of reflection } he deals not 
with things, but with thought about things j he lives in a world 
of second intentions. Thus, such a philosopher as Cassirer does 
not offer us a theory of bodies and minds, or of universals, 
essences, relations and individuals in general j he speaks rather 
as a scholar writing in a well-stocked library } nature is for 
him something known only indirectly, primarily through the 
books of scientists} it is an object postulated and described 
by a series of authorities. Ultimately it exists only in their 
minds j it undergoes, in the advance of science, modifications 
making for greater extensiveness and unity. Cassirer, it is true, 
has come to recognize points of view other than that of 
science} namely, the standpoints of language and myth. Never- 
theless the world exists, for the critical idealist, primarily as 
an object of consciousness. In the end, I presume, it will be 
found to exist only in the minds of historians} they, in turn, 
will exist only in each other's minds. Being is everlastingly 
dependent upon being known. My thesis is that the attitude 
of critical idealism cannot consistently be maintained} thought 
always claims to know an independent reality (or at least be- 
ing)} and a consistent philosophy can only be reached by 
following out the ontological claims of our unsophisticated 
thinking. 
The sub-title of Cassirer's Substanzbegriff und Funktions- 
be griff is: Untersuchungen iiber die Grundfragen der Erkennt- 
niskritik. The phrase Erkenntniskritik, or "critique of knowl- 
edge," is worthy of our attention. How can knowledge be 
criticized? If knowledge is knowledge it knows its objects as 
they sre. The knowledge which can be destroyed by criticism 
is not true knowledge} it is mere seeming knowledge and 
126 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
nothing can replace such false knowledge save true knowledge. 
Critique of knowledge must mean a criticism of certain sciences 
as they actually exist, in which it is shown that they use con- 
venient fictions and are thus not literally true. Still this is a 
criticism of historically existing sciences and not of knowledge 
as such. How can one criticize the sciences without in some way 
knowing? one would, otherwise, have no way of being aware 
of the shortcomings of the disciplines he was attempting to 
criticize. 
It is characteristic of the critical standpoint which Cassirer 
consistently occupies that metaphysics is regarded as obsolete. 
As Cassirer uses the word, metaphysics is merely a name for 
certain bad habits of thought inherited from a crude and unen- 
lightened past. In this Cassirer is in agreement with the prag- 
matists and positivists. But philosophers are not to be left 
without any employment at all; they may study "critique of 
knowledge." They may pore over the treatises of mathema- 
ticians and physicists and note the methods used and the funda- 
mental trends. Yet it cannot be said that Cassirer, in the 
chapters he has devoted to mathematics, physics, and chemistry, 
writes merely as an historian of science. An account of these 
sciences, taken merely as offered in the works of scientists, 
would generally be in realistic terms; such an account, made 
into philosophy, would be what is called materialism or mech- 
anism. But Cassirer is an idealist; he thinks of the sciences as 
dealing with "experience." What a strange object is experience! 
It is neither a body nor a set of bodies, neither a mind nor a set 
of minds. From the standpoint of dualism experience is the 
result of the interaction of mind and body; our bodies are 
affected by external things in various ways and our brains, 
parts of our bodies, affect, according to certain laws of psycho- 
physical correspondence, our minds; the result is what we 
call experience. Experience is not as such the object of knowl- 
edge; it is better to say that we know material things and 
minds (including our own) by means of experience. To make 
"experience" the all-inclusive object is itself a form of meta- 
physics; it inescapably commits us to idealism. Or, if we sup- 
pose that the intention is merely to deny the ontological validity 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 127 
which science naturally claims for its assertions, still such 
denial implies that philosophy possesses, at least in general 
terms, a knowledge of what is, of being. The traditional name 
of the branch of philosophy which deals with the fundamental 
types of being is metaphysics. My contention is that every phi- 
losophy, even that sort which makes a point of repudiating meta- 
physics, involves some theory, however obscure, of the nature 
of being as such. The criticist himself deals with metaphysical 
problems, but in an indirect and inconsistent fashion. 
If we start from the world as given to us in daily life and 
common language, we easily distinguish between bodies and 
minds. We find a world of bodies characterized by size, shape, 
and state of motion or rest, having a continuous existence in 
contrast to the coming and going of our perception, and dis- 
playing regularity of behavior. But there are also minds which 
have sensations, thoughts, and feelings ; by means of these 
sensations and thoughts we somehow know bodies and are in 
continual interaction with them; now it is true that, if we 
regard knowledge as a matter of being affected from without, 
we are likely to conclude that we know only our own sensa- 
tions. But the causal theory of sensation itself presupposes 
.knowledge of an external world. This world, by acting upon 
our organisms, engenders an awareness of sense-qualities. The 
idealist abandons the external material world on the basis of 
facts drawn from that world itself; the realist feels that the 
path of true philosophy consists in following the fundamental 
ontological assumptions. As an historian, Cassirer postulates 
a common sense world in which such persons as Leibniz, New- 
ton and Kant really existed as psycho-physical beings. And yet, 
like Kant, Cassirer is an idealist. Locke had laid the foundations 
of a dualistic outlook; but, by thinking of the immediate object 
or idea as "in the mind," he prepared the way for Berkeley, 
Hume, and Kant. The world of bodies lost its absoluteness 
and substantiality. Physical nature came to be replaced by 
experience taken substantively. But what definite conception 
can we form of experience? We know that neither Kant nor his 
modern disciple would plead guilty to any simple form of 
Berkeleyanism (such as that recently outlined by Professor 
128 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
Stace), 1 which would reduce the world to spirits and their sense- 
data, following one another according to inexplicable laws. 
Cassirer's discussions of -logic, mathematics, physics, and 
chemistry, emphasize the importance of judgment in discover- 
ing relations. In general he is antagonistic to any purely em- 
pirical account of mathematical or scientific conceptions. The 
great object of science is relations, especially those giving rise 
to serial orders. Relations, he holds, are not given to the senses, 
but are evidence of the comparative and postulational activity 
of the mind. But it is precisely here that difficulties appear. 
Kant sharply distinguishes between what "comes in from 
without" and the mind's own contribution. From the stand- 
point of realism, however, it is obvious that the mind cannot 
produce relations between things which are not already related } 
thus, if two things are correctly judged to be similar or differ- 
ent, it must be because they are already similar or different, 
etc. Kant thought of the mind as "receiving" the "raw material 
of sense" from "outside}" but this is all built upon a dubious 
metaphor. Let me indicate how, as I suppose, the matter would 
stand from the standpoint of psycho-physical dualism. We 
postulate a brain as well as a mind} the latter is really merely a 
series of thoughts. When the brain is stimulated in certain ways 
sensa appear or occur} they occur, however, in relation to other 
sensa which are either actually present or belong to the recent 
or remote past} we experience sensa as simultaneous or succes- 
sive, similar or different. When the brain is stimulated probably 
a considerable area is affected} old "traces" and habits are re- 
activated and the mind finds itself perceiving a real thing in 
a world of material things. In all this there is no more occa- 
sion to think of relations as creatures of pure consciousness or 
of a transcendental mind than there is to think of the sensa 
themselves in such a way. What we know is merely that per- 
ception of things occurs; the categorial interpretation as well 
as the data are the psychic accompaniments of brain-processes. 
Thus the brain or the laws of psycho-physical correspondence 
may take the place of the transcendental ego and its super- 
natural spontaneity. But, at the same time, we must maintain 
1 Stace, W. T., The 'Nature of the World (Princeton University Press, 1940). 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 129 
also our essential doctrine that such perception, even though 
occurring under such psycho-physical laws, is still perception, 
a revelation of what is. 2 A psychological theory, whether it 
comes under such transcendental psychology as Kant gives us 
or such physiological psychology as has just been suggested, 
nevertheless merely tells us under what conditions we come 
to know a part of the real world. But the idealist thinks of 
"synthetic activity" as creating a second world within the mind, 
which in turn soon becomes the one real world. 
In the first chapter of Substance and Function Cassirer re- 
views the theories of ancient and modern logicians concerning 
the concept; the general trend of his discussion may be de- 
scribed by saying that he finds the traditional class-concept to 
be in process of being supplanted by a new form of concept, 
which is that of serial order. Modern mathematical science no 
longer views nature as made up of things or substances; it is 
primarily concerned with relations, and these relations give rise 
to series of points, numbers, instants, etc. Hence Cassirer holds 
that the form of the concept which is fruitful for modern 
mathematical science is no longer the generic concept which 
merely expresses what a number of pre-existent entities have 
in common, but rather the "principle of serial order," which, 
once assumed, "generates" the individuals which conform to it. 
Against this view, I would suggest the following objections. 
Cassirer is mistaken if he imagines that such "principles" can 
ever take the place of class-concepts. For a serial order pre- 
supposes a group of entities which are ordered, whether real or 
unreal, such as points, numbers, colors, temperatures, etc. We 
can only refer to these elements by means of concepts in the 
traditional sense. Furthermore, a principle of serial order is 
not a concept at all; it is a proposition. Thus, of a row of 
soldiers, I may be able to say that each man is taller than the 
one before him. This is a mere description of given individuals, 
but it is expressed in a proposition. In mathematics I may 
grandly postulate a series of unreal entities, such that each one 
is related to the preceding one in a certain way; still here too 
2 Cf. Sellars, R. W., The Philosophy of Physical Realism (New York, Mac- 
inillan, 1932), 70. 
130 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
the principle of serial order is not what is commonly called a 
concept. Or, consider such relations as similarity, equality, 
greater than, etc. How are relations in any sense rivals of 
class-concepts? Relations are relations, concepts are concepts, 
but of course there are concepts of relations and relations of 
concepts. Here I shall venture a definition. Concepts are uni- 
versals connected with words as their meanings} universals are 
potentially recurrent features of either real or unreal entities. 
They are capable of appearing more than once (cf. blue, square, 
etc.}) while individuals are unique beings which occur once and 
once only. Individual things may be unreal, e.g., points, in- 
stants, geometrically perfect bodies, etc.} but all such things 
have, with reference to concepts, what is called their essence, 
which consists of those properties which entitle them to belong to 
a given class. Thus an individual man may be considered merely 
as a man and must have those properties which warrant us in so 
considering him. These properties are said to constitute the 
essence of man. The concept of man has these properties as its 
connotation. When we take these points into account, it becomes 
highly doubtful whether there is any justification for replacing 
the class-concept by a "principle of serial order." 
Everything to which we can refer has its concept, points, 
instants, numbers, relations, as well as the types of plant and 
animal. Thus, if we speak of circles or triangles or of numbers, 
of variables, or of series, we do so by means of words, which 
have the traditional type of class-concept as their meanings. It is 
true that all members of a class are similar to each other in 
certain respects; nevertheless similarity alone does not define a 
class (since the members of all classes are similar to other mem- 
bers of their respective classes) unless we tell wherein the 
members are similar, and this can be done only by mentioning 
the feature that all the members of the class have in common. 
This common element may be either determinate or determi- 
nable. Thus color is a determinable feature and can occur in 
actuality only when rendered perfectly specific, namely, as 
this nuance of this particular color. When the common element 
is determinable it demands supplementation; nevertheless, we 
cannot deny that all the things named by a generic term have 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 131 
something in common} this is a universal and may belong to 
the essence of those individuals. This doctrine, however, im- 
plies nothing which would minimize the importance of rela- 
tions. Still, it is true that the relations of a thing do not make 
it what it is, that is, do not belong to its essence. Thus a lamp 
or a shoe is what it is by virtue of its definitive properties, 
without regard to when or where it is, by whom manufactured 
or to what use it is put. It should be remarked, however, that 
nothing has an essence save with reference to some defining 
concept. Thus, if a lamp is no longer regarded as a lamp but 
as a piece of metal it is said to have a different essence. 
Furthermore, nothing can lose its essence without being annihi- 
lated; if the lamp is thrown into a furnace and melted, it ceases 
to exist as a lamp. The properties of water as water do not 
change when water is frozen or vaporized or made to stand 
upright in a glass tumbler; its nature includes the facts that 
it will evaporate when heated, solidify when chilled, stand up- 
right when enclosed in a glass, etc. Thus the essence of a sub- 
stance is not affected by its relations to other things; if we con- 
sider water solely as a liquid, then we know from experience 
that it continues to exist as a liquid only as long as a certain 
range of temperatures persists; if these temperatures pass be- 
yond certain limits, liquid water is annihilated. Thus, whether 
a thing exists or not depends on its relations, but its essence 
is not so dependent. There is, therefore, a good meaning in 
the old doctrine that relations are all extra-essential, the only 
exceptions being found in those cases in which things are named 
by the relations in which they stand; husband, captain, servant, 
etc. The chief point which I wish to make is that the logic of 
the concept and essence applies to all things, including points, 
instants, numbers, propositions, and relations; it can by no 
means be replaced by "functional relations" or "principles of 
serial order." Thus, beings may stand in serial relations, but 
they must have their essence prior to and apart from their 
relations; this is because we are dealing, in our statements 
about essence, merely with entities as such. Numbers, points, 
instants and the rest must be entities before they can stand in 
relations to each other. 
132 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
Cassirer is in general an advocate of a "logical" theory of 
number; but he rejects the emphasis upon the correspondence 
of classes characteristic of Frege and Russell. His fundamental 
aim is to vindicate the priority of serial order as a basis for 
mathematical science. His theory is therefore the opposite of 
that which defines number in terms of equivalent classes. Two 
groups are said, according to Russell, "to belong to the same 
number" when there is a relation of possible co-ordination be- 
tween the members of the two groups. Cassirer's opinion that 
the definition of number as a class of classes by no means 
corresponds to the meanings of the names of numbers in daily 
life seems to be sound. "The 'how many' of the elements, in 
the ordinary sense, can be changed by no logical transformation 
into a bare assertion concerning 'just as many'." 3 Cassirer him- 
self advocates an ordinal theory of numbers according to which 
"the individual number never means anything by itself alone" 
and "a fixed value is only ascribed to it by its position in a total 
system." 4 According to the "cardinal" theory, to which Cassirer 
is opposed, "the members (of the number series) are deter- 
mined as the common properties of certain classes before any- 
thing whatever has been established as to their relation of 
sequence. Yet in truth it is precisely in the element here at 
first excluded that the peculiar numerical character is rooted." 5 
This is Cassirer's statement of his view. The philosophy of 
number is a matter concerning which a non-mathematician 
may well be cautious. Perhaps I shall not be wrong, if I call 
attention to a principle which is rather generally accepted, 
namely, that we gain insight into the meaning of even the most 
general propositions only by analysis of particular illustrative 
cases. In application to the problem of number it is difficult 
to see how mathematicians or anyone else can understand any- 
thing whatever save with reference to relations which are 
actually given in sensuous experience. I can well believe that 
1 Cassirer, Ernst, Substance and Function, (Swabey tr., Open Court Publishing- 
Company, Chicago, 1923), 48. Since most of my quotations from Cassirer's writ- 
ings will be from this particular volume, I shall hereafter abbreviate it : SF. 
4 1 bid. 
*lbid. 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 133 
in the case of ordinary calculation blind symbol-manipulation 
takes the place of "intuitive" understanding, and there is no 
reason why it should not; mathematics is, on the whole, a 
technique for dealing with relations far too complex for us 
to understand. Nevertheless, the basis of mathematics must be 
in the relation of small numbers which can easily be grasped. 
The relations of small numbers may be illustrated by sense- 
data and those of the larger numbers understood by analogy 
with the smaller ones. Taking its start from simple sensuous 
experiences the mind conceives and postulates an infinite system 
of numbers 5 number is given to sensuous experience as the 
form-quality of a group of entities. Three-ness is a quality of 
each and every group of three, etc. Now it is true that numbers 
form a series, a series stretching to infinity. My point, with 
regard to Cassirer's theory of number, is that the "principle" 
or "form" of the series cannot be understood save by reference 
to its individual members, which must be given before "the 
principle of the series" can be understood. If we say that a given 
number can only be understood in its relations to all other 
numbers, it follows that no number can be understood; for the 
series of numbers can never be given as a whole. If, therefore, 
to understand "3" it were necessary to understand all the num- 
bers, the task would be an impossible one. But knowing what 
i, 2, and 3, etc., are, as patterns or form-qualities, with refer- 
ence to small groups, we see that they are capable of being 
arranged in a series such that each number is equal to the 
preceding number plus one. But, if I did not know what num- 
bers were and had no notions of addition, equality, etc., I could 
form no idea of such a series or its principles. The elementary 
number-equations seem to be related to a fact of experience, 
namely, that the same group can always be taken in different 
ways. Thus six apples can be taken by the mind as one group, 
or, in various ways, as two or three groups: the fact that these 
transformations are always possible is so easily verified that 
it is natural to suppose that the laws of arithmetic are a priori. 
They may, however, be regarded as well-established generali- 
zations based on easy and oft-repeated mental experiments. 
134 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
It is quite true that such numbers as zero, fractions, and 
those which are labelled negative, irrational, and imaginary 
are not "funded qualities" of given groups; they require a 
more involved derivation. Fundamentally, however, the point 
must be insisted upon that these are not numbers in the original 
sense of the word; they are rather fictions or quasi-numbers, 
which could never be understood did we not have definite con- 
cepts of the small integers, y* represents a division which can- 
not be carried out; the symbol is meaningful only because we 
are ready to substitute for the abstract concept of pure unity 
the concept of distance or area or material object. In the same 
way, to understand -2 we go beyond the notion of number to 
that of a series having direction. According to Dedekind, irra- 
tional numbers are "cuts," or divisions in the number-series. 
"The 'cuts' may be said to be numbers," says Cassirer, "since 
they form among themselves a strictly ordered manifold in 
which the relative position of the elements is determined accord- 
ing to a conceptual rule." 6 But there is here a point which 
calls for comment. Words may change their meanings, but 
meanings themselves do not change. A new concept of number 
is only a new meaning attached to an old word. The point I 
would make is that, whereas irrational numbers may be in some 
sense as good as other numbers, i.e., they may conform to 
certain laws, still they are not numbers in the original sense 
of the word. Unless we start with what Frege scornfully re- 
ferred to as "pebbles and gingerbread nuts," i.e., with that con- 
ception of number, of "how many," which the child applies to 
his fingers and toes, we cannotjunderstand the new extended 
sense of the word in which V 2 ma y be said to be a number. 
The technical kinds of number are not numbers in the primary 
sense of the word, and they can only be defined in terms of 
experience in roundabout ways, as, for example, imaginary 
completions of processes, which cannot in fact be completed. 
A number is a quality of a finite group; an infinite number is, 
on the face of it, something inconceivable, or even self-contra- 
dictory. Cassirer would say that we grasp an infinite series 
when we know the law by which it is generated. I would say, 
9 SF, 61. 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 135 
however, that we know that law only in terms of the relations 
of small whole numbers; these relations seem to me to be 
simply given in the same elementary way in which the sense- 
qualities are given; there seems no point in speaking, as Kant 
did, of a dual origination of sense-qualities "coming in from 
the outside" and relations having the more noble characteristic 
of having been generated in the mind. From the standpoint of 
physiological psychology, both qualities and relations originate 
within the mind on the occasion of the activation of the brain; 
from the standpoint of realistic epistemology, relations hold 
between material things, whether or not these relations are 
known by any mind. 
A question of prime importance for the understanding of 
Cassirer's position is concerned with the meaning to be attached 
to the phrase a priori. I presume that the meaning which most 
philosophers would give to the term would be simply the 
intuitively certain. Thus the multiplication table and the axioms 
of Euclid are commonly regarded as at least legitimate examples 
of what was formerly regarded as a priori. The a priori in this 
sense cannot change; it is capable of becoming intuitively cer- 
tain to all who understand the meaning of the propositions. 
Man may be mistaken as to what is self-evident; but the rule 
holds that once self-evident, always self-evident." If a prin- 
ciple is at a later time discovered not to be self-evident, this 
implies that the earlier thinkers were mistaken in regarding the 
principle as self-evident. Thus, if the "axioms" of geometry 
are not, in the light of modern thought, self-evident, they were 
not so in the days of Kant, either, although he falsely thought 
that they were. The a priori then admits of no variation. Kant 
claimed this sort of truth not only for the axioms of Euclidean 
geometry but for his whole transcendental system as well. Mod- 
ern mathematical science, however, no longer recognizes the 
unique authority of Euclidean geometry; it recognizes other 
systems which it offers impartially to physics; this science 
chooses, for certain purposes, a non-Euclidean system; indeed, 
no one has given a more lucid account of this whole develop- 
ment than Cassirer himself in his essay, Einstein's Theory of 
Relativity. How, then, can one still defend the a priori? The 
136 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
answer is, only by changing the meaning of the term and 
ascribing this new meaning to Kant as his "deeper meaning." 
And if this is done it becomes a real question whether rational- 
ism differs significantly from empiricism. Cassirer emphasizes 
the "active," "synthetic," and "relating" functions of the mind 
as opposed to the passive receptivity of sense-perception. The 
mind exercises its intellectual functions and in this consists its 
a priori character. Yet it may be questioned whether this doc- 
trine has a clear meaning. The mind can only distinguish that 
which is already different } it can rightly regard as similar only 
that which is already similar, etc. If we assume, as dualistic 
realism does, a world of independently existent things, these 
things must have numerical, spatial, and causal relations. The 
mind cannot create these relations. Or, if we retreat to a 
Berkeleyan world of bodiless spirits, there will still be relations 
of one sort or another between these spirits. Our minds are 
active in shifting their attention from one object to another and, 
furthermore, in speaking and in writing} using words, we 
"create worlds," "weave relations," "split asunder," and "re- 
combine what we have separated," etc. In the use of words, 
therefore, we are no doubt creative} but it is difficult to see 
how our "judgmental activity" can actually either affect or 
create things or relations. 
However, let us return to the subject of space. Cassirer, in 
Substance and Functlon y quotes with approval the view of Well- 
stein that Kant's intuitive theory of mathematics was a "resid- 
uum of sensualism still attached to the Kantian idealism." 7 
The new mathematics, Cassirer believes, brings out the logical 
rather than the empirical character of pure mathematics. Now 
this opinion seems to be widespread if not universal among 
students of modern mathematics. We may sum up the matter 
by saying that, in so far as mathematics is a logically necessary 
system of deductions, it is certain but not true} in so far as it is 
true, it is not certain a priori. It was only Kant's extraordinary 
invention of an a priori sensibility which was compatible with the 
supposed character of Euclidean geometry, namely, that it was 
both a priori and true of real things. It is interesting to recall 
1 SF, 1 06. 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 137 
here the view of geometry which Hume propounds in his 
Treatise of Human Nature. He tells us that in geometry "we 
ought not to look for the utmost precision and exactness. None 
of its proofs extend so far. It takes the dimensions and propor- 
tions of figures justly; but roughly, and with some liberty." 8 
For Hume the only possible criteria of existential truth were 
sense-data, and sense-data are often compatible with several 
geometrical propositions. Modern geometry may well be, as 
Cassirer says, a purely logical system dealing with postulated 
relations in an abstract manifold; this, however, is not the ele- 
mentary geometry of the older thinkers; with regard to that 
(elementary) system events seem to have shown that Hume, 
who was no great admirer of mathematics, was more nearly 
correct than Kant, who earnestly sought to eternalize the 
mathematical science of his time by giving it a transcendental 
foundation. 
Metaphysics deals with problems of an entirely different 
order. It deals with the nature of being and of real existence, 
if the two are to be distinguished, with the difference between 
mind and matter, universal and individual, etc., but without 
taking anything from the special sciences. But for Cassirer 
metaphysics is merely a name for certain unfortunate intel- 
lectual tendencies, which disappear in the light of critical phi- 
losophy. Let us see what he has to say in the chapter entitled 
"The Problem of Reality" in Substance and Function. The 
fundamental vice of metaphysics is, in general, that it sets up, 
as an opposition of things (Widerstreit der Dinge) what in the 
process of knowledge is an inseparable unity of conditions. Thus 
persistence and change, unity and plurality, thought and being 
are falsely opposed to each other in the metaphysical approach. 9 
"If once things and the mind become conceptually separated 
they fall into separate spatial spheres, into an inner and an outer 
world, between which there is no intelligible causal connection." 
(271) But this is a very cavalier way of speaking. It refers to 
metaphysics in a broad condemnatory way without distinguish- 
8 Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part 2, Section 4. (Selby-Bigge 
ed., p. 45)- 
^,237. 
138 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
ing the actual doctrines held by metaphysicians. It is not clear 
that metaphysicians must fall into the fallacies named. Mind 
and body may be entirely distinct from each other in essence and 
yet in constant interaction. If mind is essentially non-spatial, it 
cannot be spatially separated from bodies, since only what is in 
space can be spatially remote from anything else. Furthermore, 
the essential distinction of mind and body does not imply that 
mind cannot know body. 
If we consult immediate experience, wHich is free from re- 
flection, says Cassirer, we find that it is wholly without the 
distinction between the objective and the subjective. (272) 
For such experience there is only one level of being which con- 
tains all content within itself. The intellectual experiment 
which Cassirer proposes is a difficult one; just what are we to 
subtract to reach "immediate experience?" Still, without chal- 
lenging the proposition laid down, we may point out that most 
of us are familiar with two distinctions, namely, that between 
the objective and the subjective and that between the mental 
and the physical. Thus, another person's mind is objective, in 
the sense of really existent, although wholly mental in charac- 
ter. The same is true of our own minds. on the other hand, an 
hallucinatory dragon may be physical in nature and yet unreal, 
which is, I suppose, what Cassirer means by subjective. Even 
if we grant that the supposed "immediate experience" does not 
contain the opposition between the subjective and the objective, 
it might contain the opposition between the mental and the 
physical. If we were conscious of any distinctions at all (and 
otherwise how could we be conscious or how could there be 
experience?) we might note the difference between sense-data 
and the thought which plays over them and calls, as Cassirer 
says, some of them subjective and others objective. In fact, if 
our words referring to the mind have a bona fide meaning, 
there must be an immediate experience by the mind of the mind 
itself, an original form of self-knowledge, an awareness of 
awareness. At a later stage, our primitive awareness of sense- 
data becomes a perception of things and our awareness of the 
activity of thought becomes an explicit knowledge of the mind 
by itself. 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 139 
But let us return to the contemplation of the one plane of 
immediate experience} at this stage all seems objective, and 
hence there is no occasion for the "false metaphysical problem" 
as to how we pass from the subjective to the objective. But, says 
Cassirer, at the first appearance of reflection a division sets in, 
according to which, data are not simply accepted but are dis- 
tinguished in their value. Unique and fleeting observations, he 
says, are forced into the background while typical experiences 
which recur under similar conditions are emphasized. Cassirer 
is here attempting a hypothetical reconstruction of the process 
by which our belief in an external world arises. The mind sorts 
out its impressions and there emerges a consciousness of ob- 
jective things. 
Along with the loose associative connections of perceptions united only 
under particular circumstances (as, for example, under definite physio- 
logical conditions) there are found fixed connections, which are valid for 
a whole field of objects and belong to this field independently of the 
differences given in the particular place and time of observation. We find 
connections which hold their ground through all further experimental 
testing and through apparently contrary instances and remain steadfast 
in the flux of experience while others dissolve and perish. It is the former 
that we call "objective" in a pregnant sense, while we designate the latter 
by the term "subjective." 10 
Now none can doubt that in the pursuit of empirical knowl- 
edge, it is important to separate trivial and accidental connec- 
tions from those which are universal and are said to be "essen- 
tial" and "necessary." But how is this connected with the 
distinction between the subjective and the objective? It is a fact, 
let us say, that on Friday the I3th I lost my purse, and it is also 
a fact that water is essential to life. The first is no more sub- 
jective than the second. If, however, I permitted myself to 
generalize from the former occurrence, I would propound a 
false superstitious law of bad luck. Such a generalization would 
indeed be false and would be founded on inadequate observa- 
tion. A law of this type might be called "subject! vej" but the 
occurrences which cause some men to accept it as true are as 
HO WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
objective as any other occurrences. It seems that Cassirer is seek- 
ing to reduce the distinction between the subjective and the ob- 
jective to that between particular events and universal laws. 
But the former are as objective as the latter. He says: 
We finally call objective, those elements of experience which persist 
through all change in the here and now and on which rests the un- 
changeable character of experience, while we ascribe to the sphere of 
subjectivity all that belongs to this change itself and that only expresses 
a determination of the particular unique here and now. 11 
But this sentence is obscure, particularly with reference to the 
phrase "elements of experience;" it might mean that colors, 
sounds, tactile qualities, and the like are objective, for they are 
recurrent elements in all experience; we gather from the con- 
text, however, that this would be far from what he means. He 
has in mind laws or connections, but laws or connections are 
merely propositions supposed to be true descriptions of the way 
in which events occur; and what occurs universally is no more 
objective (really existent) than what occurs once and once only. 
However, perhaps we can make clear what Cassirer means 
if we refer to the classic instance of the wine which was sweet to 
Socrates when well, but bitter to Socrates when ill. Should we 
say that the wine is objectively sweet because it is normally 
tasted as sweet by Socrates and others; while it is tasted as 
bitter only by Socrates when he is ill? This would be a way of 
permitting the feelings of the majority to function as the 
criterion of objectivity; although this is an attractive and popu- 
lar answer to the question, it seems scarcely well founded; un- 
less, perchance, we choose to define objectivity with reference 
to the majority. There is another way of dealing with this prob- 
lem which commences by asking us to define our terms. Let 
us say that those features of bodies are objective which belong 
to them without reference to observers. Sweetness is merely an 
effect produced by bodies acting on our psycho-physical organ- 
isms and belongs to the wine no more than does the bitterness, 
save in the sense that the wine has the power to produce a 
certain sensation in the minds of most people. It is merely con- 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 141 
venient to name the wine according to the more common re- 
sponse. But this convenience does not constitute objectivity in 
the sense of real existence, apart from all onlookers. 
Cassirer himself goes on to mention the Democritean distinc- 
tion between the primary and secondary qualities of bodies. For 
him it is an illustration of the "transformation of objectivity 
into subjectivity." "The seen color, the heard tone, remains 
something *realj j only this reality does not subsist in isolation 
and for itself, but results from the interaction of the physical 
stimulus and the appropriate organ of sensation." 12 Similar con- 
siderations apply to the illusions of the senses. The distinction 
between the subjective and the objective is thus, for Cassirer, 
not a fixed line of demarcation but a moving and relative 
barrier, such that the same content of experience can be called 
subjective and objective, according as it is conceived relative 
to different logical frames of reference. 
Sensuous perception, as opposed to the hallucination and the dream, 
signifies the real type of the objective; while measured by the schema 
of exact physics, sense perception can become a phenomenon that no 
longer expresses an independent property of things but only a subjective 
condition of the observer. 13 
Such a view commits us to a boundless relativism in which no 
definite distinction can be drawn between the mental and the 
physical. The mental is identified with the subjective and un- 
real. Erkenntniskritik thus seems to involve an attitude of 
intellectual nihilism, in which both mind and nature disappear 
in a bottomless abyss of relativity. 
The standpoint of dualistic realism, on the other hand, even 
if not capable of proof, is not self-refuting. At an early stage 
men, and probably animals too, become conscious of the thing- 
world of which they themselves are parts ; they find themselves 
continually interacting with these things. When we consider the 
way in which sensations originate it becomes probable that colors 
and tones belong to external things only in the sense that they 
are produced by them. The seen color may be considered either 
"W,2 7 4. 
"^,275. 
142 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
as a predicate of external things or in its own right 5 when taken 
in its own right, it becomes what some call a sense-datum and 
others as essence. In any case, the seen color is not mental in 
the sense of belonging to the inner essence of mind as con- 
sciousness or knower; on the other hand, it does not belong to 
nature as an interacting system of bodies. Taken merely as ob- 
jects by themselves colors, sounds, odors, and the like belong to 
the non-existent, to the realm of being, which is so much broader 
than the realm of existence. Thus the change which took place 
with regard to the secondary qualities need not be described as 
one in which what was previously thought to be physical comes 
to be thought of as mental 5 it may be described as a change in 
which what was previously thought to be an intrinsic property 
comes to be regarded as a mere relative predicate. 
Cassirer's approach to the problem of knowledge is that of 
a reflective historian of philosophy and science; he thus seems 
to avoid any definite metaphysical position of his own; never- 
theless, it seems fair to say that a definite ontological platform 
is involved in so far as we may speak of Cassirer as an idealist. 
This position is one of phenomenalism. The things which we 
postulate in daily life are posited to explain, as Hume put it, 
the constancy and coherence of our perceptions. The senses 
alone do not show us a world of nature, but our minds have a 
natural tendency to postulate as much uniformity as they can; 
sense-perception gives us a fragmentary, incomplete order 
which we make perfect by the assumption that things exist be- 
fore and after our actual perceptions. Science carries the process 
further. The "things" which it posits are "metaphorical expres- 
sions of permanent connections of phenomena according to law 
and thus ｅxpressions of the constancy and continuity of experi- 
ence itself." 14 In comment upon this position, which Cassirer 
maintains in agreement with the views of Hume and Kant, it 
may be remarked that an account of how we come by a belief 
need not involve the notion that that belief is itself false. To 
explain, as John Stuart Mill did, the origin of our belief in an 
external world does not imply that no external world exists. 
In fact, we may say that such an explanation starts with an 
assumption of the validity of that belief in so far as there is talk 
14 SF, 276. 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 143 
of "sensations" or "perceptions" which are intermittent, a 
notion which is significant only in contrast to continuously 
existent things. Does the mind "construct" things? Why should 
we not say that, on the occasion of the occurrence of sensations, 
the mind comes to know of things as continuously existent 
entities which interact with each other and with the mind it- 
self? 
But let us seek to discover the proper formulation of 
Cassirer's idealism. Metaphysical realism, he says, postulates an 
absolute gap between the immanent and the transcendent, and 
declares that there is no logical inference by which we can pass 
from the former to the latter. The realist, he says, finds it 
necessary to leap the gap by insisting on the transcendent refer- 
ence of knowledge, Cassirer denies, however, that such con- 
siderations invalidate his own form of critical idealism. 
Critical idealism, [he writes,] is distinguished from the realism here 
advocated, not by denying the intellectual postulate at the basis of these 
deductions of the concept of objective being, but, conversely, by the fact 
that it grasps this intellectual postulate more sharply and demands it for 
every phase of knowledge, even the most primitive. Without logical 
principles which go beyond the content of given impressions there is as 
little a consciousness of the ego as there is a consciousness of the object. 
. . . No content can be known and experienced as "subjective" without 
being contrasted with another content which appears as objective. 15 
The essential thought here is that the subjective and the ob- 
jective are correlative and that consciousness is not immediately 
given to itself as such. This doctrine is no doubt derived from 
the position taken by Kant in his "Refutation of Idealism" in 
the Critique of Pure Reason, namely, that knowledge of the 
subject is secondary and is dependent upon knowledge of the 
object "with regard to its determinations in time." But why 
cannot the realist welcome considerations of this sort? There is 
a directness of reference in the mind's knowledge of external 
things as well as in its knowledge of itself j no doubt the two 
forms of knowledge develop $ari passu and cannot exist apart 
from each other. Still, if there is knowledge of things, those 
things must exist apart from knowledge and prior to it. In a 
15 W, 295. 
144 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
word, being must antedate being known; we cannot suppose 
that things known exist only in our knowledge of them; for, 
"creative knowledge" is not knowledge at all in the human 
sense of the word. The thought that being depends on being 
known brings us to most surprising results. For then the knower 
would also derive his being from being known either to himself 
or to another. It is impossible, however, for a thing to depend 
on itself, and not plausible to suppose that one knower derives 
his being from being known by another and so on ad infinitum. 
Surely in the end we must reach a type of being which is self- 
existent. 
We have just seen that Cassirer holds that there is no con- 
sciousness of the ego nor of material things without "logical 
principles" which "go beyond the content of given impressions." 
However, this position seems open to question. A man may 
think of whatever he likes, gods, devils, angels, or atoms. There 
is, in such thinking, a certain directness; we contemplate our 
object, whatever it may be, without, however, necessarily af- 
firming its existence. A man may, therefore, consider his own 
mind, which he does whenever he speaks of it. Where are the 
"logical principles" said to be involved? No doubt it is true that 
the self, however it may be defined, is not among given im- 
pressions or sense-data. Still, I can mean myself just as I can 
mean the table. All objects of thought are given as objects; 
although we are not thereby entitled to regard them as real. 
The real existence of the self is postulated to explain certain 
facts just as that of the table is postulated to explain certain 
others; no doubt this "explanation" does presuppose certain 
logical principles. Nevertheless, has Cassirer shown that the 
assertions of the "metaphysical realist," namely, that there are 
minds and that these minds know things external to themselves, 
are false? 
"If we determine the object, not as an absolute substance 
beyond all knowledge, but as the object shaped in progressing 
experience, we find that there is no epistemological gap to be 
laboriously spanned by some authoritative decree of thought, 
by a 'trans-subjective command'." 16 Naturally the object is not 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 145 
"beyond all knowledge," since by definition it is the object of 
knowledge. How can an object be "shaped in progressing ex- 
perience?" Do scientists re-make the world? Does Cassirer 
mean to deny that the thing known is distinct from the knowing 
mind and existentially independent of that mind? Cassirer him- 
self goes on to say: 
This object may be called transcendent from the standpoint of a psycho- 
logical individual; from the standpoint of logic and its supreme principles, 
nevertheless, it is to be characterized as purely "immanent." It remains 
strictly within the sphere which those principles determine and limit, 
especially the universal principles of mathematical and scientific knowl- 
edge. This simple thought alone constitutes the kernel of "critical 
idealism." 17 
Here then we have a statement offered as the essence of critical 
idealism and well worthy of our attention. Cassirer grants that 
the object is transcendent from the standpoint of the psycho- 
logical individual. Does he mean that the object is not trans- 
cendent with reference to the "mind" taken in some other 
sense? Apparently he does, for he goes on to say that the object 
is immanent "from the standpoint of logic and its supreme 
principles." However, we may well ask whether there is any- 
thing to which logic does not apply. In asserting that the object 
is immanent in this sense, have we not a meaningless statement, 
since there is no transcendent realm with regard to which the 
immanent is a limited sphere? In a word, in so far as Cassirer's 
idealism merely asserts (if we may cite such laws as non- 
contradiction and excluded middle as "supreme principles of 
logic") that "what is" is self-consistent and determinate, we 
can hardly deny that the doctrine is not in conflict with dualistic 
realism. Such idealism would be merely a re-affirmation of logic 
and mathematics and not a recognizable epistemological asser- 
tion. If Cassirer's idealism contradicts realism at any point it 
must be because he regards the principles of logic and mathe- 
matics as inherent in the mind, just as Kant did. Cassirer goes 
on to assert "the objective validity of certain axioms and norms 
of scientific knowledge." "Die Wahrheit des Gegenstands dies 
17 Cf. SF, 297. 
146 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
allein ist die Meintmg hangt an der Wahrheit dieser Axiome 
tmd besifat keinen anderen und fester en Grund." 16 But how can 
an object be true? An object is real or unreal; only a proposition 
is capable of truth. The fact that certain logical laws are uni- 
versally presupposed in other propositions does not imply that 
being is dependent upon being known and is therefore not 
incompatible with dualistic realism. The assertion of the in- 
volvement of logical principles in more particular judgments 
implies a conflict with realism only if logical truths are supposed 
to represent the necessary thoughts of a universal consciousness; 
all things may then be said to be within this universal mind. But 
this universal mind seems to be merely a postulated correlative 
of universal truths. Cassirer says nothing about a universal 
mind, and thus seems to leave the conception of idealism indefi- 
nite. He does, however, conceive of the mind as perpetually en- 
gaged in a constructive activity. We are left with a protean 
"thought" which postulates, on the one hand, bodies, and on the 
other, selves. The thesis which we seek to defend in this criticism 
is that such "construction" is merely metaphorical. The mind 
may range through the realm of being, the world of thinkables, 
in an exploratory fashion, merely considering hypotheses; but, 
in all this it creates nothing; it merely discovers pre-existent 
possibilities. When it posits some one of these thinkable objects 
as really existent it likewise produces nothing; it merely makes 
an assertion which may be either true or false. But such idealism 
as that of Kant and Cassirer would lose much of its attractive- 
ness were it deprived of the picturesque and poetic notion of 
mind, the supreme magician, endlessly producing and destroy- 
ing worlds. 
The concept of thing, according to Cassirer, is merely a su- 
preme ordering concept of experience. At first we believe that 
we know things directly; but reflection destroys this naive con- 
fidence. The impression of the object comes to be separated 
from the object itself, which becomes an unknowable and 
elusive thing-5n-itself . But from the standpoint of critical ideal- 
ism, Cassirer says, the concept of an object or thing is merely 
18 Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (original German edition, 1910), 395. 
CASSIRER AND METAPHYSICS 147 
an instrument of knowledge; this amounts to saying that objects 
are merely fictions, useful in stating propositions regarded as 
true. Helmholtz took the position that "Each property or 
quality of a thing is in reality nothing but its capacity to produce 
certain effects on other things." on this Cassirer makes the 
following comment: 
We do not grasp the relations of absolute things from their interaction, 
but we concentrate our knowledge of empirical connections into judg- 
ments, to which we ascribe objective validity. Therefore the relative 
properties do not signify in a negative sense that residuum of things that 
we are able to grasp, but they are the first and positive ground of the 
concept of reality. 19 
We see then that, for Cassirer, the great objects of knowledge 
are relations. Thing-concepts are merely means for stating rela- 
tions. Now, undoubtedly this view is an attractive one; yet it 
contains certain difficulties. How can there be relations without 
relata? The weight of a body can perhaps be defined in terms 
of its power of influencing other bodies, and the sense-qualities 
are explained as mere powers, possessed by bodies, of producing 
sensations. Nevertheless, size, shape, and relative position 
cannot be taken from bodies without annihilating them. Rela- 
tivism of this extreme sort constitutes a species of nihilism which 
forces us to admit that we can form no conception of the real 
whatsoever. Or, if we are left with truths, what are these truths 
about? If realism is to be defended, it must be because not all 
the properties of bodies are relative. Thus the numerical expres- 
sion of size varies with the unit of measurement, but size is what 
is measured; it is not the result of measurement. So, too, 
although a body appears differently when viewed from differ- 
ent angles, we need not deny that bodies possess determinate 
shapes. The difficulty which I feel here is concerned with the 
question whether such a complete relativism can really be in- 
telligibly stated. At any rate, Cassirer and other idealists must 
continue to use language which implies the existence of the 
world of material things. Who are the knowers who "use the 
thing-concept to organize their experiences?" Are they men? 
19 SF, 306. 
148 WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
And what is experience? From the standpoint of dualism, ex- 
perience involves the interaction of minds and things; it is pri- 
marily a matter of minds being affected by things. Experience is 
itself not a thing made up of parts, and it is not the primary 
object of knowledge; "we" do not "deal with" experience, but 
rather we have experience of things and thus learn their ways. 
The making of an object out of experience is, of course, the 
irremovable mark of Kantian idealism. 
The realist believes that physical things are more than mere 
ordering concepts. It is true that physical things, whether those 
dealt with by common sense or those postulated by physical 
science, are not "given to sense," if we are to understand thereby 
a wholly passive process. We must distinguish between sensing 
and perceiving; the latter involves the use of "thing-concepts." 
In postulating public and continuously existent things we neces- 
sarily go beyond the sensations of the moment. The very con- 
cept of really existent things, in contrast to things which are 
merely thinkable, implies at least some degree of lawfulness of 
behavior, in other words, some sort of interaction and causality. 
Cassirer seems to say the same thing but with a different em- 
phasis; he seems to think that what we must postulate is a 
creation of our own minds, enjoying no absolute being. We 
may, however, appeal to the parallel case of the religious man 
who feels that he must postulate a God; he nevertheless postu- 
lates this God as an eternal and indestructible being. Must we 
not postulate nature as (very likely) an everlasting system of 
things in perpetual interaction: some of their interactions con- 
stitute the occasions for the occurrence of minds who know them 
and interact with them in various ways? But for Cassirer there is 
no self-existent nature of which we have real but imperfect 
knowledge; hypothesis replaces hypothesis, and "reality" is 
defined by the law of sequence, by which world-system over- 
comes world-system; for him, there is progress towards com- 
prehensiveness and consistency, but no progressive revelation 
of a reality which is there, whether known or not. 
WILLIAM CURTIS SWABEY 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 
3 
I. K. Stephens 
CASSIRER'S DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 
3 
CASSIRER'S DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 
WHEN Locke cleared the philosophical stage of its 
"props" in the form of innate ideas, he offered, as a sub- 
stitute for this particular traditional basis of certainty, our im- 
mediate perception of the agreement or disagreement of our 
ideas. Whatever ground this theory might have supplied as a 
basis for empirical certainty, however, was shattered by Hume 
when he called attention to the fact that "relations of ideas" dif- 
fer in principle from "relations of matters of fact." He admitted 
that there are necessary relations between our ideas, but denied 
that there are any such relations between "matters of fact." Since, 
for Hume, knowledge must be based upon ideas, and certainty 
must be based upon necessary connections, the only field in 
which the mind can possibly attain certainty is in the field of the 
"relations of ideas." Since relations of matters of fact lack this 
character of necessity, our knowledge pertaining to this field of 
experience is deprived of all logical grounds for a claim to 
certainty. 
The problem which Hume raises here is simply that concern- 
ing the objective validity of the conceptual order of 'the mind. If 
one desires to defend a claim to certainty in knowledge pertain- 
ing to "matters of fact," it is incumbent upon him to show how 
the mind can impose its concepts upon "matters of fact," upon 
the "given in experience," in such a manner as to guarantee 
that conceptual necessity will govern the given. He must show 
how the relation between the ideas of the mind and matters 
of fact can be so interpreted as to furnish a solid ground on the 
basis of which the necessity which admittedly holds for rela- 
tions of ideas can be guaranteed to hold in the mind's conceptual 
152 I. K. STEPHENS 
dealings with matters of fact. This is essentially the problem of 
the a priori; and every significant doctrine of the a priori which 
has been formulated in philosophy since Hume raised the prob- 
lem has been designed as a basis for its solution. 
Now this bit of skeptical infection, which Hume injected 
into the thought stream of modern science and philosophy, first 
took effective hold in the mind of Kant. After a long period of 
intellectual insomnia and after many mental contortions and 
gyrations, Kant finally came out of the attack with a new 
Copernican Revolution in philosophy and with a brand-new 
conception of the a priori, which he regarded as a sound basis for 
the defense of the citadel of empirical certainty against Hume's 
skepticism. Subsequent developments in the fields of science, 
mathematics, and logic have, however, shaken the Kantian 
foundation and torn gaping holes in his defenses. As these 
defenses have disintegrated, under the bombardment of the 
guns of recent developments in science, mathematics, and logic, 
however, a long line of "successors to Kant" have appeared on 
the scene to render valiant service in attempts to secure the 
foundations and to repair the breaches, through some sort of 
modification, or reformulation, or regrounding of the Kantian 
a priori. It should be pointed out, however, that in spite of all 
these gallant efforts, Hume's denial of certainty in the realm of 
empirical knowledge still stands. 
II 
In that long line of "critical philosophers" who claim a philo- 
sophical lineage from Kant, possibly no one is more worthy 
of the distinction than is Cassirer. His penetrating and thorough 
analysis of Kant's system of philosophy, his precise understand- 
ing of just what Kant was attempting to do, and his profound 
and extensive knowledge of the recent developments in science, 
mathematics and logic, revealed to him many of the funda- 
mental weaknesses in Kant's position; but, despite these facts, 
he still seems to me to find more of permanent value in Kant's 
system of philosophy than do most of those who claim to "stem 
from Kant." His doctrine of the a priori, however, is not simply 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 153 
Kant's doctrine reformulated with its elaborate architectonic 
omitted; nor is it Kant's doctrine revised and brought up-to- 
date in the light of recent developments in science, mathematics, 
and logic. Kant's doctrine of the a priori and the ingenuity with 
which Kant applied it in his attempt to solve Hume's problem 
seem to be to Cassirer as they have been to many other 
Kantians a source of inspiration and a useful guide in the 
formulation of his own doctrine of the a priori. As he himself 
puts it, he sees in Kant "not an end, but an ever new and fruit- 
ful beginning for the criticism of knowledge." 1 
With Kant, and with most Kantians, Cassirer is in funda- 
mental agreement on at least two points with respect to the 
a priori; (i) that the a priori is of the mind, and (ii) that all 
certainty is based on logical necessity and that logical necessity 
is grounded in the a priori. Also like Kant and most Kantians, 
Cassirer conceives the major task of philosophy to be the critical 
analysis of knowledge and the explication of the a priori; to the 
accomplishment of this task he devotes his entire ponderous sys- 
tem of philosophy. Nowhere in his voluminous writings, so 
far as I have been able to determine, has Cassirer set forth, in 
any sort of definite and summary statement, his doctrine of the 
a priori. It pervades every phase of his philosophy and appears 
on almost every page of his philosophical writings; but it is a 
difficult and hazardous task to analyze it out of his system and 
to pin it down in a definite statement which will do justice to 
its total meaning and value. This difficulty is further increased 
by two other factors, (i) His doctrine of the a priori seems to 
have gone through at least two phases of development, and the 
detailed results of these two different phases of its formulation 
are significantly different, (ii) In each of these two formula- 
tions his doctrine of the a priori is so inextricably bound up with 
some other special aspect of his philosophical theory that it is 
extremely difficult to isolate it and evaluate it, without going 
thoroughly into these intimately associated theories. 
The first phase of its development, set forth in his Sub- 
stanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910), is formulated on the 
1 Das Erkenntnisfroblem, Vol. I (1922), 14. 
154 I- K. STEPHENS 
basis of a very thorough critical analysis of the physical sciences 
and of mathematics, and is thoroughly dominated by what 
seems to me to be a tremendously exaggerated regard for the 
position and the value of mathematics and the mathematical 
concept in the theory of knowledge. Throughout this whole 
work, as Gerard Heymans remarks, "Cassirer looks steadfastly 
towards mathematics and insists that what is valid for this is 
valid also for all the other sciences." 2 Here his doctrine of the 
a priori is intricately bound up with his "mathematical theory of 
the concept" and reflects a powerful influence from the mathe- 
matical interest. Since another essay in this volume deals with 
Cassirer's "theory of the mathematical concept,"* I shall omit 
its discussion here and shall confine my discussion to those more 
basic aspects of this earlier formulation which seem to carry over 
into the later formulation. 
This second formulation, which is contained primarily in 
Cassirer's Philosophie der symbolischen Formen y is based on a 
critical analysis of the whole of culture and is, in a definite 
sense, a modification and extension of the earlier formulation 
to constitute a basis for a "general theory of meaning." Here 
Cassirer has relinquished, to some extent, his former emphasis 
upon the place and value of mathematics and the mathematical 
concept. And, though he still insists that "for such a theory of 
meaning, mathematics and mathematical natural science will 
always constitute a weighty and indispensable paradigm," he 
admits that "it in no wise exhausts its content." 3 In this second 
formulation, however, his doctrine of the a priori has found a 
new "love" in the form of his elaborate doctrine of "signs." 
Since any attempt to extricate it from its many "entangling 
alliances" with this theory would lead far beyond the intended 
scope of this paper, I shall feel justified here in avoiding also 
any discussion of this aspect of his doctrine, except in so far as 
it seems necessary in order to do justice to his doctrine of the 
a priori. 
Cassirer agrees with Kant that the correct approach to the 
8 "Zur Cassirerschen Reform der Begriffslehre," Kant-Studien, Vol. 33 (1928), 
109-128. 
* EDITOR'S NOTE : Cf. Professor Harold R. Smart's essay infra on this subject. 
3 "Zur Theorie des Begriffs," Kant-Studien. Vol. 33 (1928), 130. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 155 
discovery of the a priori is through the method of a critical 
analysis of knowledge. He emphasizes, over and over, the 
futility of the attempts on the part of previous "metaphysical 
philosophers" to deduce the "fundamental forms of the mind" 
from some "original fundamental principle." The original diffi- 
culty in such an attempt always consists in the fact that such 
philosophers can determine neither the correct "beginning 
point" nor the correct "end point." If they were granted these 
two points, "they might succeed in connecting them through 
the constant application of one and the same methodological 
principle in a synthetic-deductive process." But since they have 
neither "point," they are much in the same position as Kant's 
speculative "dove," which succeeded in generating a tre- 
mendous amount of action, but was unable to produce any for- 
ward motion. As Cassirer correctly asserts, such philosophers 
have always started out from "some definite metaphysically 
hypostatized logical, or aesthetic, or religious principle," and 
the results obtained from the process have never been worth 
the efforts spent. 
Granted, however, that the critical analysis of knowledge is 
the only method that will lead to the discovery of the genu- 
inely a priori elements of knowledge, the question naturally 
arises, How is one to recognize it, when he comes upon it in 
the analysis? Unless one has some distinguishing criterion in 
terms of which to recognize the a priori when he finds it, he 
would still be in the same position as the "metaphysical philoso- 
pher" who had no "end point." Cassirer's answer to this ques- 
tion, in the first formulation of his doctrine of the a priori, 
would seem to run as follows: Since the a priori is an "element 
of form," which is necessarily involved in every creative act of 
mind, and since all knowledge is the product of such creative 
activity, a critical analysis of knowledge will reveal the a priori 
as that "element of form" which is always present in every 
creative act of mind and which remains invariant through all the 
changing and shifting contents of experience. It is to the end of 
discovering just such a set of "invariant elements of form" that 
he devotes that searching and exhaustive critical analysis of 
science and mathematics set forth in his Substanzbegriff und 
Funktionsbegriff. 
156 I. K. STEPHENS 

one of the most obvious aspects of science, says Cassirer, is 
that it is a going concern, "a historically self-developing fact." 
Kant's failure to recognize this fact becomes, according to 
Cassirer, one of the chief sources of weakness in Kant's system. 
Kant developed and formulated his doctrine of the a priori 
under an undue predilection for Newtonian Mechanics, which 
he seemed to regard as an example far exellence of pure 
Reason, and as definitely finished. Scientific knowledge, how- 
ever, is never static; it is in constant process of development; 
and the one definite end toward which it seems ever to be 
directed is the discovery of certain permanent elements in the 
flux of experience, "that can be used as constants of theoretical 
construction." Of such nature are the concepts of science: hy- 
potheses, laws of nature, scientific principles, and the like. In 
the history of this process, however, we are met with a constant 
changing and shifting of just such seemingly constant elements. 
What seems to be secure on one level of development is found 
inadequate on the next level. one particular system of concepts 
follows another in constant succession; hypotheses formulated 
on one level yield their place to other hypotheses on the higher 
level; scientific principles, which seem to be secure and firmly 
established on one level of development, are supplanted by 
other principles on the next level of development; and even 
"the categories under which we consider the historical process 
must themselves be regarded as mutable and susceptible to 
change." But no system of concepts, no single hypothesis or 
system of hypotheses, no scientific principle, and no category 
which gives way to a successor is ever entirely annihilated. In 
each case of substitution the earlier form is taken up into the 
new form which must contain the answers to all the questions 
raised under the previous form. This one feature, Cassirer 
claims, guarantees the logical continuity from stage to stage; 
establishes a logical connection between the earlier and the 
latter; and "points to a common forum of judgment to which 
both are subjected." 4 
This "common forum of judgment," at the bar of which 
4 Substance and. Function^ 268. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 157 
every concept, hypothesis, principle, and category must justify 
its relative claim to truth, consists in a set of logically prior 
"supreme principles of experience in general," which must 
always be present and effective as an "ultimate constant standard 
of measurement" in terms of which these relative claims may be 
measured and established. 
Since we never compare the system of hypotheses in itself with the naked 
facts in themselves, but always can only oppose one hypothetical system of 
principles to another more inclusive, more radical system, we need for 
this progressive comparison an ultimate constant standard of measure- 
ment of supreme principles of experience in general. Thought demands 
the identity of this logical standard of measurement amid all the changes 
of what is measured. 5 
Now, according to Cassirer, the critical analysis of knowledge 
ends in just such a set of ultimate logical principles, a set of 
"fundamental relations, upon which the content of all experi- 
ence rests," and beyond which thought can not go, for only in 
them is thought itself and an object of thought possible." 6 
They are the "universally valid formal functions (Fiwctions- 
form) of rational and empirical knowledge" and constitute 
a fixed system of conditions, and only relative to this system do all as- 
sertions concerning the object as well as those concerning the ego, con- 
cerning object and subject, gain an intelligible meaning. There is no 
objectivity outside the frame of number and magnitude, permanence 
and change, causality and reciprocal action ; all these determinations are 
only the ultimate invariants of experience itself and therefore of all 
reality which can be established in it and by it. 7 
These forms, then, constitute the genuine a priori elements 
of knowledge, for they are "those ultimate logical invariants 
which lie at the foundation of every determination of a con- 
nection in general according to natural law" and only such 
ultimate logical invariants can be called a priori."* To this list 
of ultimate invariants, Cassirer adds "the categories of space 
and time, magnitude, and the functional dependency of magni- 
8 ibid. 
8 Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff. (1910), 410. 
4 ii. 
357. 
158 I. K. STEPHENS 
tudes, etc.," since they, too, are "established as such elements 
of form, which cannot be lacking in any empirical judgment or 
system of judgments." 9 This group of "logical invariants" con- 
stitutes that system of "unchanging elements demanded by all 
scientific thought" and "fulfill a requirement clearly urged by 
inductive procedure itself." 10 They also seem to constitute the 
basic structural form of the mind, and the basic principles of 
that "transcendental logic" upon which alone a truly universal 
logic can be developed. For Cassirer insists that "a truly uni- 
versal logic can be constructed only upon a 'transcendental* 
logic, i.e., a logic of thought-objects." Such a logic, he insists, is 
in diametrical opposition to the formal logic, which, as Kant 
defined it, has as its chief excellence the fact that it "abstracts 
from all experience of objects and their differences." 11 In this 
traditional formal logic, the concept is a mere "form emptied 
of all its objective content and meaning}" whereas, in his "truly 
universal logic," concepts are "concrete universals" which not 
only "embrace" but "comprehend" the particular subordinated 
to them. 
Now when Cassirer defines the a priori as "those ultimate 
logical invariants which lie at the foundation of every determi- 
nation of a connection in general according to natural law," he 
designates this as "a strictly limited meaning of the a friori" 
It seems that a more comprehensive meaning of the term would 
include all those concepts, categories, and interpretive principles 
which are implicitly contained in this set of "ultimate forms," 
all arranged in a logical structure of superordination and sub- 
ordination. The task of science is to discover these concepts, 
categories, etc.; and the procedure by which it accomplishes 
this task is the constant comparison of these various concepts, 
hypotheses, etc., with this "constant standard of measurement 
of supreme principles of experience in general." And the 
method followed here, says Cassirer, "shows the same 'rational 7 
structure as was found in mathematics." 12 Induction and deduc- 
1 Substance and F unction > 269. 
"Ibid., 268. 
M "Zur Theorie des Begriffs," Kant-Studien. Vol. 33 (1928), 131. 
"Substance and Function y 269. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 159 
tion do not differ in their goal, but only in the means of reaching 
their goal. 
"The tendency to something unchanging, to something 
permanent in the coming and going of sensuous phenomena, is 
thus characteristic of inductive thought no less than of mathe- 
matical thought." 13 Genuine theoretically guided induction is 
never satisfied, says Cassirer, short of the establishment of a 
connection in the given "which can be ... clearly surveyed ac- 
cording to the principle of its construction." 14 All thought is a 
process of objectifying. Its function and purpose, both in induc- 
tion and in deduction, is to establish unity in the flux of sensory 
experience. This can be done only on the basis of those trans- 
cendental forms which constitute the structural unity of the 
mind. In so far, then, as induction, through its method of con- 
tinually testing its conceptual devices by constant reference to 
that body of "ultimate invariants" is able to develop concepts, 
hypotheses, etc., which stem logically from this system of in- 
variant principles, and to apply them in its conceptual dealings 
with "matters of fact," it can gain knowledge of empirical 
objects which possesses the same degree of necessity and cer- 
tainty as does knowledge of the objects of mathematics. For 
"we do not know 'objects' as if they were already independently 
determined and given as objects, but we know objectively, by 
producing certain limitations and by fixating certain permanent 
elements and connections within the uniform flow of experi- 
ence." 15 The superiority of the mathematical concept over the 
ordinary generic concept, its "greater value for knowledge," its 
"superior objective meaning and validity," seems to be due to 
its closer logical affinity for this set of "supreme principles." 
In the first formulation of his doctrine of the a priori, 
Cassirer's attempt to solve Hume's problem seems to have 
turned out to be much the same as the attempt made by Kant, 
namely, to show how, at least in the realm of mathematics and 
the exact sciences, synthetic propositions a priori are possible. 
He seems to have become conscious later, however, that he had 
18 Ibid., 249. 
14 ibid., 253. 
303. 
160 I. K. STEPHENS 
committed the same fallacy of which he accused Kant, i.e., he 
had confined his critical analysis within too narrow limits. For, 
if the a priori is the "necessary condition for all meaningful 
experience/' and its function is to guarantee the unity of all 
knowledge, then it must be present and effective wherever 
there is meaningful experience and a claim to knowledge. The 
world of mathematics and the exact sciences is not the beginning, 
but the end of this "objectifying process," and its roots reach 
down into earlier levels of "fashioning." Thus these a priori 
forms, which come to clearest ｅxpression on the level of scien- 
tific knowledge, must apply no less, mutatis mutandis, to all the 
fundamental functions of mind on all the lower levels of cul- 
ture and in all its special "phases." Thus, for Cassirer, in the 
second attempt to formulate his doctrine of the a priori, 
The Critique of Reason becomes, therefore, the Critique of Culture. 
It seeks to show how all the content of culture, in so far as it is more 
than a mere single content, in so far as it is grounded in a formal prin- 
ciple, presupposes an original act of the mind. Herein the fundamental 
thesis of Idealism finds its essential and complete verification. So long 
as philosophical consideration has reference simply to the analysis of 
purely formal knowledge and is limited to that task, just so long the force 
of the naive realistic world view cannot be broken. 1 * 
An initial clue to Cassirer's position here is revealed in his 
statement of the demand made upon critical philosophy. The 
demand is 
... to include the various methodological tendencies of knowledge, in 
all their recognized originality and independence, in a system in which 
the individual members, in exactly their necessary variety, are reciprocally 
conditioned and required. The postulate of a kind of pure functional 
unity now enters in the place of the postulate of the unity of the sub- 
strate and the unity of origin, by which the ancient concept of being 
was essentially governed. From this there arises a new task for the phil- 
osophical criticism of knowledge. It must follow as a whole and survey 
as a whole the course which the special sciences have traveled individually. 
It must put the question, whether the intellectual symbols under which 
the special disciplines consider and describe reality are to be thought as 
18 Philosofhie der symbotischen Former*. Vol. I (1923), n. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 161 
a simple juxtaposition or whether they can be understood as different 
ｅxpressions of one and the same basic mental junction. And if this latter 
presupposition should be verified, then there arises the further task of 
setting up the universal conditions of this function and of clarifying the 
principle by which it is governed. 17 
In the light of this statement, it would seem that Cassirer's 
first fundamental assumption is that knowledge, which philoso- 
phy is to subject to critical analysis, is necessarily a unity; and, 
furthermore, that this unity must be assured and explained in 
terms of certain "basic mental functions" and a "rule" which 
"governs the concrete multiplicity and variety of these knowl- 
edge functions," integrating the totality of their products into 
an organic whole. These "basic mental functions" for which all 
the varieties of intellectual symbols are to be regarded as differ- 
ent ｅxpressions, together with the "rule" which governs these 
functions, seem now to constitute, for Cassirer, the fundamental 
a priori elements of knowledge. The categories, which Kant 
considered as the "original concepts of the understanding," as 
its basic a priori forms and the necessary conditions for the possi- 
bility of experience, are here relegated to a subordinate level 
in the structure of the a priori. Kant's error, both as to the 
number and nature of these categories, says Cassirer, was due to 
the fact that he did not know at that time what the subsequent 
developments in "critical and idealistic logic" have made com- 
pletely clear on that point, namely, that 
the forms of judgment mean only unified and living motives of thought, 
which pervade all the diversity of its special forms and are constantly en- 
gaged in the creation and formulation of ever new categories. The richer 
and more plastic these variations prove to be, the more do they testify 
to the individuality and to the originality of the logical function out of 
which they arise. 18 
In the light of these considerations, critical analysis must, 
according to Cassirer, be extended to the whole of culture, to all 
its different "phases" or "provinces," Art, Language, Myth, 
17 Ibid., 8-9. Italics are mine. 
18 Das Erkenntnisfroblem. Vol. I (1922), 18. 
162 I. K. STEPHENS 
Religion, and Science, and to all the different levels of its de- 
velopment. For, 
It is proper not only for Science, but for Language, for Art, and for 
Religion, that they supply the building materials, from which is con- 
structed for us not only the world of the "real," but also the world of 
the "mental," the world of the "ego." We cannot insert them in the 
given world as simple creations, but must concewe them as functions, by 
means of which every specific fashioning of Being and every special 
division and differentiation of the same is carried out. 19 
Each of these special "provinces" is determined by a special 
"point of view" which the mind "freely takes" with respect 
to the given in experience. This special point of view determines 
a special function which governs the mind's dealings with the 
given, in that special province. It determines the formulation 
of the categories and the concepts by means of which the mind 
interprets and expresses the real from that specific "point of 
view." In each of these special provinces, therefore, we get a 
manifestation of one side of the real." And in all these prov- 
inces, taken together as a unity, we get a complete picture of 
the totality of the real. True, the pictures of the real presented 
from these different "points of view" are very dissimilar. But 
this is just what we should expect. For, 
Since the means utilized by these functions in the performance of these 
acts are different, and since the standards and the criteria which each 
separate one presupposes and applies are different, the result is different. 
The scientific conception of truth and of reality is different from that 
of Religion or of Art thus it is indeed a special and incomparable 
fundamental relation which is, not so much indicated, as rather estab- 
lished in them between the "inner" and the "outer," between the Being 
of the ego and of the world. 20 
The results obtained in each of these provinces must, there- 
fore, be measured and evaluated in terms of its own standards 
and not in terms of the standards and demands of any other. 
And only in such manner of dealing with them can the question 
10 Philosophic der symbolischen Formen. Vol. I (1923), 24. 
*lbit. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 163 
be raised "whether and how all these different forms of world- 
comprehension and I-comprehension can be unified if they do 
not indeed portray one and the same self-existing 'thing', they 
at least perfect (ergdnzen) a totality, a unified system of mental 
performance (Tuns)" 21 
Now if, under these conditions, the unity of knowledge, 
which it is the specific function of the a priori to guarantee, 
seems to fall apart into several separate provinces of knowledge, 
each with its own a priori forms, its special categories, standards 
and criteria, which apply only within its own special field of 
"construction," Cassirer informs us that it is just as much the 
function of the a priori to preserve this diversity as it is to 
guarantee the unity of knowledge. This "unity in diversity'" he 
says, is an essential demand of consciousness. In spite of this 
essential diversity, there is still a "unity of meaning" which 
binds all these provinces together into a "unity of systems" 
without destroying the separate and distinctive meaning and 
value of any system. This, he insists, is just what an analysis of 
culture reveals. 
For every one of these "connections of meaning" (Bedeutungszusam- 
menhange), Language as well as scientific knowledge, Art as well as 
Myth, possesses its own constitutive principle which impresses all the 
special fashionings in it as if with its seal. ... It belongs to the essence 
of consciousness itself, that no content can be posited in it without, posit- 
ing, at the same time, through this simple act of positing, a complex of 
other contents with it. 22 
Myth, Art, Language, and Science are, in this sense, impressions to 
Being (Pragungen zum Sein): They are not simple portrayals of a 
present reality, but they exhibit the great lines of direction of mental 
movement, of the ideal process, in which the real as one and many is 
constituted for us as a multiplicity of configurations, which are still, 
ultimately, held together through a unity of meaning. 23 

one ground on which Cassirer rejects the single system of 
the structure of the mind, which speculative philosophers of 
21 Ibid. 
22 ibid., 3 i. 
23 Ibid., 43. Italics mine. 
164 I. K. STEPHENS 
the past have attempted to deduce from a "single original 
principle" and to arrange in a unique progressive series, is the 
fact that such a system is inadequate for the explanation of this 
diversity. Explained in terms of such a system, the diversity 
gets swallowed up in the unity of the system. Instead of such a 
system, says Cassirer, critical philosophy demands, and the 
analysis of culture reveals, a complex system in which 
Every form is, so to speak, assigned a special plane within which it 
operates and in which it unfolds, with complete independence, its own 
specific individuality but just in the totality of these ideal modes of 
operation appear, at the same time, definite analogies, definite typical 
modes of relating, which can be singled out and described. 24 
Now as a means of explaining how all these various levels 
and phases of culture are integrated into a logically unified 
system of systems, Cassirer appeals to that set of "fundamental 
relations upon which the content of all experience rests." These 
logical invariants, he claims, permeate all the forms which 
determine all the fashionings of experience on all the different 
levels and in all the different phases of culture. From the 
lowest level of "ｅxpression" in terms of mythical concepts, 
through the level of "Representation" in terms of the concepts 
of language, to the highest level of "pure Meaning" compre- 
hended in terms of the "concepts of natural law," he traces the 
development of culture. In doing so, he offers an incredible 
array of evidence in support of his claim that the same "motive 
of construction" and the same basic "structural form of the 
mind" persist through all these different levels of develop- 
ment. Although he admits that, in the advancement from stage 
to stage in the process of development, certain changes and 
"transformations," certain "characteristic metamorphoses" 
occur, he still insists that these "supreme principles" remain 
fundamentally the same, though appearing, on each successive 
level, under a "new form and covering." With every transition 
from a lower to a higher level of culture, there occurs a "trans- 
formation" in the "point of view" which the mind takes. This 
29. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 165 
transformation gives rise to new demands and requires new 
"norms" in terms of which to meet them. As the development 
proceeds, there is a constant "shifting of mental meaning" and 
"out of every one of these shiftings there arises a new 'total 
meaning' of reality." 25 
Even on the mythical level of culture, says Cassirer, we find 
exhibited, in all its various "fashionings," a certain definite 
"mental tendency," a "fixed direction of thought," which the 
mind follows in all its ｅxpressions of experience on this level. 
This fixed direction of thought he attributes to the "form of 
the mythical consciousness," which is "nothing more than the 
unity of the mental principles by which all its constructions, in 
all their variety and in all their vast empirical richness, are 
ultimately governed." 26 Also on this level of "ｅxpression," 
there is a "unity of point of view" under the dominance of 
which man's "mytho-religious intuition" shapes all the con- 
ceptual devices by means of which he carries out the organiza- 
tion of society as well as the organization of the world. And 
although this "point of view" may be more definitely deter- 
mined in each particular society by the living conditions under 
which that society exists and develops, we can clearly detect, 
as a common element in all of them, certain "general and per- 
vading motives of construction." 27 
The mental principles which the mind employs in carrying 
out these constructions are, Cassirer claims, the general cate- 
gories which constitute the fundamental forms of the social 
consciousness on this level of cultural development. They re- 
veal, he says, "the lawfulness of consciousness," the unity of a 
"structural form of the mind," and are just as genuinely a priori 
as are the fundamental forms of "knowledge" exhibited on the 
various successive higher levels of cultural development. They 
are, in fact, the logical ancestors of those forms 5 for all those 
forms of culture, Art, Law, Science, and all the rest, had their 
genesis in this mythical consciousness. Not one of them had, in 
85 Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Vol. Ill (1929), 523. 
96 Philosophic der symbolischen Formen. Vol. II (1925), 16. 
*lbid., 220. 
1 66 I. K. STEPHENS 
the beginning, anything like a distinct and clearly defined form. 
They can all be traced back to a primitive stage in which they 
all existed together in the immediate and undifferentiated unity 
of mythical consciousness. And out of this undifferentiated 
state, all those fundamental forms of knowledge, space, time, 
number, continuity, property, and the rest, have been de- 
veloped. 
They are the most general forms of perception, which constitute the 
unity of consciousness as such, and, therefore, just as well that of mythi- 
cal consciousness as that of pure knowledge. In this respect it can be 
said that each of these forms must have run through a previous mythical 
stage before receiving its definite logical form and impress. 28 
It is obvious that the world picture presented on the level 
of Myth is quite different from that presented on the scientific 
level. This difference, Cassirer claims, is not to be explained on 
the assumption that these world-pictures are constructed on the 
basis of a difference in the "nature" or the "quality" of the 
categories used, but on the basis of a difference in the 
"modality" of the categories. Space, time, number, causality, 
and all the rest of the basic forms of consciousness are present 
and effective on the mythical level just as they are on all the 
higher levels of culture, but with a difference in "modality." 
By the "quality" of a relation he means "the special manner of 
connecting, by means of which it creates a series in the whole of 
consciousness," such as is exemplified in the form of "together" 
as compared with "successive," the "simultaneous" as con- 
trasted with "successive connection." By the "modality" of a 
relation, however, he means its "meaning for the whole" 
(Sinnganzen) . This character of a relation "possesses its own 
nature, its own self-contained formal law. Thus, for example, 
that universal relation which we call time represents equally an 
element of theoretical scientific knowledge, and also an essential 
moment for definite structures of aesthetic consciousness." 29 Al- 
though it may seem that these two senses in which the concept 
d., 78. 
P kilo sof hie der symbolischen Formen, Vol. I (19*3), 39. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 167 
time is used, namely, as the uniform measure of all change and 
as the rhythmical measure of music, have nothing in common 
except the name} nevertheless, says Cassirer, 
This unity of naming contains in itself a unity of meaning, at least 
in so far as there is posited in both that universal and abstract quality 
which we designate by the ｅxpression "succession." But it is obviously 
a special "manner," indeed a unique "mode" of succession which rules 
in the consciousness of natural law, as the law of the temporal form 
of events, and that which rules in the comprehension of the rhythmical 
measure of a tone structure. 80 
Now the transition from a lower to a higher level in the de- 
velopment of culture is always the result of a "transformation" 
or a "permutation" in the "modality" of those various funda- 
mental forms "within which alone thought and its world are 
possible." This "permutation" in the "meaning for the whole" 
seems to arise out of a new "point of view" with respect to ex- 
perience. And experience interpreted from this new point of 
view gives a new world-picture. In order to express the new 
relations and meanings which emerge with this transformation 
in the modality of those fundamental relational forms, the 
mind is under necessity of creating a new set of concepts. Even 
the old concepts that are retained on the new level take on an 
entirely different meaning from that which they express with 
respect to the lower level. For instance, the concept of "truth" 
and the concept of "reality" have a meaning for science which 
is entirely different from that which they express on the level 
of myth. It is the function of the concepts utilized on each level 
of culture, however, to express with objective validity the 
relations and meanings which are characteristic of that particular 
level, i.e., those relations and meanings logically determined 
by the specific formal modalities operative on that particular 
level. The function of thought on all the different levels of 
culture is to "objectify}" and this is done in each case by 
"producing certain limitations and fixating certain permanent 
elements and connections within the uniform flow of experi- 
90 ibid. 
168 I. K. STEPHENS 
ence." This task is performed by means of the concepts used. 
Thus the concepts used on any particular level of culture ex- 
press the meanings and fixate the relations peculiar to that 
particular level with a sufficient degree of logical necessity to 
guarantee their objective validity. But since the concepts uti- 
lized by the mind on the different levels are different, and 
express different meanings and relations, the world-picture 
presented on the different levels will be different. All these dif- 
ferent world-pictures, however, present different views of the 
one total reality. And all these different processes of objectifying 
contribute to one and the same ultimate end, namely, the re- 
duction of the world of mere impressions to a logically in- 
tegrated objective world. 
The different creations of mental culture, Language, Scientific 
Knowledge, Myth, Art, and Religion, in all their inner variety, become, 
therefore, members of one great problem of connection manifold tend- 
encies, all of which are related to the one goal of transforming the 
passive world of mere impressions . . . into a world of pure mental 
ｅxpression. 81 
The problem posed by Hume, however, was not the problem 
of developing in the mind a system of ideas with their necessary 
connections, but the problem of finding a logical basis on which 
to guarantee that these necessary connections of ideas must hold 
in the mind's dealings with matters of fact. In his first formula- 
tion of his doctrine of the a priori, Cassirer seems to attempt 
to solve this problem, at least in part, by an implicit denial that 
any such problem exists. He seems to think that the problem 
arose for Hume because he, like Kant in the first part of his 
Critique of Pure Reason, was assuming an untenable dualism 
between a "mundus sensibilis'* and a "mundus intelligibilis" 
In the second formulation, however, he seems to realize more 
fully that there is some necessity of explaining how and why 
there must be a necessary harmony between the conceptual order 
of the mind and the "uniform flow of experience." Here the 
"symbol" becomes the mediating device which seems to turn 
the trick. Symbols, he seems to think, are created by "a pure 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 169 
activity of the mind" and are specifically and peculiarly de- 
signed by the mind to perform this feat. "All those symbols 
appear from the beginning with a definite claim to objective 
value. They all transcend the circle of the mere phenomena of 
consciousness and claim, in opposition to them, to represent a 
universal validity." 32 In fact, their "structure" represents the 
"essential kernel of the objective, of the real." Every symbolic 
structure, furthermore, possesses a characteristic "double 
nature." on the one side, it is essentially bound to the sensuous; 
but "its subjection to the sensuous contains in itself at the same 
time a freedom from the sensuous," an essential connection with 
the mental, with the conceptual order of the mind. 
"In every linguistic 'sign', in every mythical or artistic 
'image' appears a mental content which, in and for itself, tran- 
scends the sensuous, permuted Into the form of the sensuous, 
the visible, the audible, the tastable." 33 
Cassirer attributes to Pierre Duhem the credit for being the 
first to show that only within the structure of a definite symbolic 
world is it possible to approach the world of physical reality. 
It was his claim that what first appears to us as a purely factual 
manifold, as a factual variety of sense impressions, gains phys- 
ical meaning and value only when it is portrayed in the 
province of numbers. This portrayal, however, is wrongly 
interpreted, says Cassirer, if we think it simply consists in "sub- 
stituting for the individual contents given in experience contents 
of another kind and coinage. To every special class of experi- 
ence, is co-ordinated a special substrate which is the complete 
ｅxpression of its genuine, its essential 'reality'." 34 
Now it is Cassirer's claim that the function of mind in all its 
objectifying processes is to establish harmony between opposites. 
This harmony, however, is essentially different from the mere 
matter of agreement, and requires a genuine synthetic act of the 
mind. It seems to be the function of the symbol to mediate this 
synthesis and the function of the concept to "fix" the connec- 
tions established in the synthesis. For the first work of the con- 
88 ibid., 4 i. 
34 Philosophic der symbolischen Formen. Vol. Ill (1929), 478. 
ijo I. K. STEPHENS 
cept, he asserts, is "to grasp, as such, the moments upon which 
rests the organization and order of perceptual reality and to 
recognize them in their specific meaning. The connections which 
are posited implicitly in perceptual existence in the form of mere 
'given-withness' (Mitgegebenheii) are developed from it. . . ," 35 
Furthermore, "The logical concept does nothing more than fix 
the lawful order which already lies in the phenomena them- 
selves y it follows consciously the rule set up, which experience 
follows unconsciously." 36 It is the mind itself, guided by the 
logical demands of its "supreme logical functions" which "sets 
up" the rule which the concept follows consciously and experi- 
ence follows unconsciously. Thus those functions seem to de- 
termine both the conceptual order of the mind and also the 
"uniform flow of experience," and do it in such a fashion that 
there must be complete harmony between these two "op- 
posites." The mind's task is to make a synthesis of the two and 
it accomplishes this feat by means of the concept. For, 
Such a "synthesis of opposites" lies concealed in every genuine physical 
concept and in every physical judgment. For we are always concerned 
with referring two different forms of the manifold to one another and, 
in a certain measure, penetrating them with one another. We always 
proceed from a mere empirical, a "given" plurality; but the goal of the 
theoretical construction of the concept is directed at changing it into a 
rationally surveyable, into a "constructive" plurality. 87 

on the lower levels of culture, these concepts and symbols 
are so completely immersed in the sensuous that it is difficult 
to detect in them any connection with those "fundamental func- 
tions" of the mind which they express. As the process of objecti- 
fying advances from the lower to the higher levels, however, 
the mind gradually succeeds in extricating them from their 
subjection to and their contamination with the sensuous and in 
creating concepts and symbols which reveal more and more the 
genuine nature of those functions. on the lower levels, we see 
those forms only "as if through a glass darkly," only in 
their distorted "modalities;" but when the highest level is 
85 Ibid.y 330. 
M I***., 333- 
87 Ibid., 480. 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 171 
reached, the level of pure mathematics and the pure math- 
ematical natural sciences, where they have "put off the cor- 
ruptible and put on incorruption," we shall "see them face to 
face" and recognize them for what they genuinely are, "pure 
meanings." This is the ultimate end towards which the whole 
creative process is directed, the one far-off divine event to 
which the whole creation moves." For this is the realm in which 
the bond between "concept" and "reality" is severed with complete 
consciousness. Above "reality," as the reality of phenomena, is raised 
a new realm: The realm of pure meaning; and in it henceforth is 
grounded all certainty and all constancy, all final truth of knowledge. 
on the other hand, the world of "ideas," of "meanings," although it 
renounces all "similarity" with the empirical sensuous world, it cannot 
dispense with its relation to it. 88 
Ill 
This is, admittedly, an inadequate and in some respects, no 
doubt, an erroneous exposition of Cassirer's doctrine of the 
a priori. It has omitted many aspects of his doctrine which, if 
taken into consideration, might effect a "transformation" in 
the "modality" of those aspects that are considered here. My 
first reaction to the whole delineation of his doctrine of the 
a priori is simply to regard it as an extremely thorough, meticu- 
lously painstaking attempt on the part of another brilliant 
philosopher to elaborate and defend a theory of the priori 
which is, from the beginning, palpably indefensible. A careful 
analysis of his doctrine, however, reveals many points which, 
if taken in isolation from the rest of his system or if given a 
slightly different interpretation from that which his whole 
system demands, would appear perfectly sound and thoroughly 
defensible. This slight difference in interpretation is, however, 
to use Whitehead's ｅxpression, "just that slight difference 
which makes all the difference in the world." 
To his claim that the a priori is of the mind and is the basis 
of all necessity and of all certainty in knowledge, I readily 
agree. But I contend that his conception of the essential nature 
of the a priori is untenable, both in the light of logic and from 
18 ibid., 527. 
172 I. K. STEPHENS 
the standpoint of what is revealed in a critical analysis of 
knowledge. Furthermore, such a conception of the a priori 
is inadequate as a basis for explaining and guaranteeing that 
type of necessity which grounds the only type of certainty which 
the mind can have with respect to matters of fact. An analysis 
of knowledge does not reveal any set of invariant principles 
which are necessarily common to all thinking minds and which, 
by some inherent logical power which they possess, are opera- 
tive in any of the mind's categories and concepts in such a 
fashion as to force their character of logical necessity upon the 
given in experience. The a priori character of any concept or 
category of the mind is not derived from any logical connection 
which it may have with any fundamental set of "basic func- 
tions ;" but from the definitive attitude of the mind which gives 
rise to this conceptual order and determines the characteristics 
which the given must exhibit, if it is to be classified under the 
category or the concept determined by that definitive attitude. 
The only certainty the mind can have with respect to any sensory 
datum yet to be given rests upon the mind's certainty with 
respect to the meaning of its own concepts and categories. This 
meaning is established and determined by the mind itself, by 
virtue of the definitive attitudes which it takes, and can be 
strictly and consistently adhered to regardless of what may be 
given in experience. This definitive attitude determines the 
criteria which any given datum must satisfy if it is to be in- 
terpreted under the concept or under the category which 
embodies and expresses these criteria. Failing to satisfy these 
criteria, the given datum is excluded from such classification 
and interpretation. For every classification which the mind 
makes is an implicit interpretation. But every interpretation is 
an implicit prediction with respect to some subsequent datum of 
experience. The interpretation of any set of sensory data under 
any definite concept or category implicitly asserts that such a 
set of data will be followed by certain other definitely specifiable 
data, namely, those which are implicitly demanded by the 
definitive criteria which constitute the essential meaning of the 
concept or the category under which the original data were 
classified. The only necessity which the mind can impose on the 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 173 
given, therefore, is the necessity which the given is under of 
conforming to certain definitive criteria of the mind or else 
being excluded from classification and interpretation under the 
specific concept or category which those definitive criteria es- 
tablish. The mind can know, then, prior to the experiencing of 
any particular datum of experience, the character which that 
particular datum must exhibit if it is to be classified under any 
definite concept or category. The mind knows this because the 
mind itself, by its own definitive attitudes, determines those 
criteria to which the datum must conform, or else y and can make 
them hold regardless of what the given datum may or may not 
do. Thus all the necessity which the mind is capable of imposing 
on the given, through the use of its "conceptual order," is 
derived (i) from the character of its own legislative acts which 
determine the essential meaning of its conceptual devices and, 
(ii) from the alternative which the mind has of excluding from 
classification under any concept or category any given element 
of experience which does not conform to the criteria which are 
established by those legislative acts for the concept or the cate- 
gory in question. Such necessity, therefore, does not rest upon 
some logical connection which these concepts and categories 
have with some "fixed system of conditions," relative to which 
alone any assertion concerning anything whatsoever can have 
any meaning. This contention of Cassirer reflects the powerful 
influence of his undue predilection for mathematics, and also his 
misconception of the genuine nature of mathematics itself. 
There is a definite sense in which the a 'priori principles of 
knowledge may be considered as the "formal structure of the 
mind," but not the sense in which Cassirer uses the ｅxpression. 
Those initial principles and criteria of interpretation which 
formulate the mind's definitive attitudes constitute the formal 
conceptual structure with which the mind meets and interprets 
the given in experience. It is in this way that the mind organizes 
and systematizes the chaotic flux of the given into a predictable 
and intelligible world. This conceptual "structure of the mind," 
however, is neither an inherent structure of all thinking minds } 
nor is it by any means invariant. Even those most fundamental 
categories of the mind, those which formulate the mind's de- 
174 I. K. STEPHENS 
finitive attitudes that determine the different types of the real, 
are not invariant, at least not in the sense that they must remain 
the same regardless of any change in the complexity of the 
given which the mind must encounter} or regardless of any 
possible change in the dominant interests and purposes of 
society. In fact, it seems to be carrying the defense of a claim 
to the point of absurdity to insist that those "rational functions" 
which Cassirer designates as "the ultimate invariants of ex- 
perience itself" have remained invariant throughout the history 
of culture. Furthermore, if the character of invariance be desig- 
nated as the criterion of the a priori, I doubt that any single 
"element of form," not even excepting such forms as Space, 
Time, Number and Magnitude, Permanence and Change, 
Causality and Reciprocal Interaction would qualify as a priori; 
for these fundamental forms have certainly undergone rather 
remarkable change in the process of man's cultural develop- 
ment from the primitive level to its present state. Cassirer does, 
of course, allow for certain "shiftings of intellectual accent" 
and certain "modal transformations" in the process j but I doubt 
whether the difference between the primitive man's vague sense 
of time and of space and the modern scientist's conception of a 
fused space-time can be explained in terms of such "shiftings" 
and "transformations ;" or whether man's hazy anthropo- 
morphic conception of a mythical causal agent could be recon- 
ciled in this way with the purely formal definition of cause as it 
is used today by the theoretical scientist. If the change be ex- 
plained in terms of a refinement in definition, it can be said in 
reply that a relation is what it is by definition, and any refine- 
ment in definition means a change in the nature of the relation. 
Even those forms are creations of the mind; and what the mind 
has created it can change when the demand arises. And the de- 
mand for such a change is, usually, not merely a logical demand, 
but a practical one, a demand created by the appearance of some 
new type of the "given" for the proper interpretation of which 
the previous forms have proven inadequate. 
The relative permanence of these forms and also their a 
priori character I would readily grant; but I would deny that 
they are invariant and also that invariance is the criterion for 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 175 
the determination of the a priori character of any form. It may 
be that, to paraphrase Wordsworth, "Each hath had elsewhere 
its origin and commeth from far" and that each does come 
"trailing clouds of glory." Such clouds of glory may be marks 
of their ancient origin j but neither the clouds of glory nor its 
ancient origin is a mark of its a priori character. In, the case of 
these forms, as in the case of all other forms and "functional re- 
lations of rational and empirical knowledge," whatever char- 
acter of the a priori they may possess is due to a definitive 
and legislative act of the mind itself. Whatever degree of 
permanence or invariance they may show is explicable, I think, 
on the grounds of their practical value as instruments for han- 
dling the given, and not on the grounds that they satisfy some 
"ideal logical demand." Furthermore, if invariance and an- 
tiquity of origin be sure marks of the a priori, then I see no 
grounds on which to exclude the category of substance, against 
which Cassirer so vigorously inveighs throughout his entire 
system j for certainly this category has as ancient and as honor- 
able a history as can be claimed for any of those "functional 
relations" to which he attributes the a priori character. 
It is true, as Cassirer claims, that Culture, in all its different 
forms and on all its different levels, is a creation of the mind. 
It includes all those devices, both mental and physical, which 
the mind has created for the purpose of handling the given in 
experience and of reducing that given to an ordered and in- 
telligible world. It seems to be the characteristic function of the 
mind to create just such conceptual tools and to use them to 
this definite end. The "original motive" which lies behind this 
"constructive activity," however, is not a "will to logic," but 
a "will to live," a will to satisfy certain vital and emotional 
interests of the organism. And it is the "will to live" rather 
than a "will to logic" which tends to determine those definitive 
attitudes of the mind and, thus, the nature and meaning of its 
categories and concepts. Cassirer, it seems, would insist that 
There's a Logic that shapes our concepts, 
Rough-hew them how we will. 
I would insist on substituting for "logic" certain vital and emo- 
176 I. K. STEPHENS 
tional interests of the organism. For the thinking organism, 
confronted with the chaotic welter of experience, is confronted 
likewise with a practical necessity of doing something about it. 
Otherwise I doubt that any tendency to think would ever have 
arisen. The ability to think is, I take it, an evolutionary product, 
and has developed in the human species as a result of its sur- 
vival value. The tendency to regard man as primarily a "think- 
ing being" rather than as an "acting being" has led to many 
misinterpretations of the function of mind. Mind's function 
is not that of "harmonizing thought and Being," but rather that 
of adjusting the organism to the chaotic flux of experience in 
ways that will preserve and promote certain vital and emotional 
interests which the organism has. This function it performs by 
taking certain definitive attitudes towards the given in experi- 
ence and in formulating these attitudes into definite categories 
and concepts which will serve as efficient guides to the organism 
in its processes of adjustment. Thinking is only one means 
of solving these problems of adjustment - y and most beings, who 
have the ability to think, generally use it only when more 
primitive means prove inadequate. The human mind itself is 
only man's ability to create and to use conceptual devices as a 
means to that end. Such conceptual devices are created by the 
mind, usually, just to serve that end. They may be changed or 
even discarded when they prove inadequate to serve this 
purpose or when the mind hits upon other devices which serve 
the purpose better. The standard against which the mind is 
constantly checking its categories, concepts, hypotheses, etc., is 
not a set of invariant logical functions, but usually the practical 
results derived from their application to the flux of experience 
and the consonance of those results with experience itself. 
Cassirer admits that "No number . . . 'is' anything other than 
it is made in certain conceptual definitions." This is true, of 
course j but the same can be truly said of all the concepts and 
categories which the mind uses. The superior value which 
number and all other mathematical concepts have for deductive 
purposes rests upon the exactness and precision with which they 
may be defined. Again, the relations in terms of which math- 
ematical concepts are defined are quantitative relations and, 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 177 
therefore, susceptible to more definite and precise ｅxpression 
and analysis than are those with which ordinary classificatory 
concepts are defined. The very essence of number is simply a 
definite position in a purely logical series. Number is not a 
"concrete universal," but a purely abstract universal, a purely 
logical entity, the quintessence of abstraction. The relata them- 
selves are creations of the mind and, for that reason, the mind 
is able to force them to conform to relations established by its 
concepts. The given sensory data of experience, however, are 
not created by the mind and cannot be forced to conform to 
those relations. They either do, or they do not. If they do not, 
the mind has the alternative of excluding them from classifica- 
tion under the concept which established those relations. Upon 
this ability of the mind to formulate concepts by definition, and 
to reject from classification and interpretation under those con- 
cepts any datum which does not conform to the criteria which 
their definitions establish rests the a priori character of all con- 
cepts, mathematical as well as the ordinary generic concepts. 
Mathematics is, in its entirety, a creation of the mind and is 
the most efficient tool for handling certain types of the given 
those types in which the quantitative aspects are more important 
than are the qualitative aspects that the mind has ever created. 
Mathematics, however, demands nothing more than that, if a 
certain relation holds among a certain set of entities, be they 
abstract or be they concrete entities, then certain other sets of 
relations must also hold among those same entities. But those 
certain other sets of relations which must hold are implications 
of the definition which established the meaning of the original 
relation. If three points in a plane are arranged in the form 
of a right triangle these are all pure abstractions , then the 
square on the hypotenuse must be equal to the sum of the 
squares on the other two sides. The certainty of the statement 
contained in the "then" clause of this theorem is assured by the 
implications of the definition of a right triangle. The relations 
stated in the "then" clause can be known to hold a priori, neces- 
sarily, only on the ground that the mind is in position to exclude 
from the class of right triangles all triangles which do not 
conform to the criteria specifically stated or implied in the 
178 I. K. STEPHENS 
definition of a right triangle. If we substitute for these abstract 
entities certain concrete entities, a triangular plot of ground for 
the plane and fence posts for the abstract points, we know that 
the same relations must hold among these entities also. If we 
measure accurately the distances between the posts along the 
shorter sides of the triangle and, upon these measurements, 
calculate accurately the length of the supposed hypotenuse and, 
then, upon these calculations, buy the wire to fence the piece 
of ground, we may come out several rods short. Such a disap- 
pointing and inconvenient result does not constitute an empirical 
demonstration of the falsity of the Euclidean theorem, but 
demonstrates the falsity of the original assumption that the 
posts were related in the form of a right triangle. It is just this 
character of mathematical concepts which makes them so useful 
as means of discovering relations among concrete entities which 
would likely never be discovered otherwise. But the certainty 
obtained in this way is of the same type, and rests upon the 
same basis, as that gained through the mind's application of any 
of its concepts to the concrete data of experience. For all cer- 
tainty in empirical knowledge rests upon the mind's ability to 
formulate definitions of concepts and to make those definitions 
hold with respect to the given by rejecting all cases which do 
not conform to the demands established in those definitions. 
The application of mathematical concepts in the interpretation 
of the given can, therefore, like the application of any other 
type of concepts, never be more than hypothetical. And the 
certainty derived from their application is of the same type as 
that derived from the application of other types of concepts. 
Also the a priori character of mathematical concepts is of the 
same nature as that of any other type of concepts. Whatever 
superiority they may have over the ordinary classifi.catory con- 
cept is due to properties which they possess other than their a 
priori character. 
The a priori is not some inherent character of logical necessity 
or "logical priority to the possibility of experience" possessed by 
any relation or group of relations. Those initial principles and 
definitive criteria which have the character of a priori necessity 
and certainty possess it by virtue of the definitive attitude which 
the mind takes toward them and the alternative which the mind 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 179 
has of excluding from classification under them any given case 
which fails to conform to the definitive attitude formulated in 
them. The chemist, for instance, may know with absolute 
certainty the truth of the chemical formula HC1 + NaOH -> 
NaCl + H 2 Oj but only on the grounds that in the case of any 
experiment in which these results fail to follow, the chemicals 
used were either not HC1 or not NaOH or were neither HC1 
nor NaOH. In such a case he may demand either a re-labeling 
or a re-filling of the containers from which the chemicals were 
obtained. on this same basis, one may assert with absolute 
certainty that all crows are black. This statement may be ac- 
cepted as a mere hypothetical principle, susceptible to verifica- 
tion or refutation by future experience, or it may be taken as a 
definitive principle and, in that case, it would not be susceptible 
to refutation at all. It would be an a priori principle. The dif- 
ference between the two cases is simply a difference in the 
attitude which the mind takes with respect to the principle. It 
is just such a definitive attitude of the mind that establishes the 
a priori character of any principle, not excepting space, time, 
number, magnitude, permanence, change, causality, reciprocal 
interaction, or any other relation. 
The assertion that this particular set of "universal functions," 
or any other particular set of relations or presuppositions "form 
a fixed system 5 and only relative to this system do assertions 
concerning the object, as well as concerning the subject, gain 
any intelligible meaning" is an assertion which is not only un- 
warranted but definitely untenable in the light of recent de- 
velopments in logic and mathematics. These developments have 
definitely shown that various sets of postulates may serve as a 
logical basis from which the same deductive system may be de- 
rived. They have also definitely shown that deductive systems 
are purely analytical and tautological and that there are no 
synthetic propositions a priori. As Reichenbach has correctly 
said, "The evolution of science in the last century may be re- 
garded as a continuous process of distintegration of the Kantian 
synthetic a priori" In the light of the combined results of the 
developments in science, mathematics, and logic during the last 
* Hans Reichenbach, "Logistic Empiricism in Germany," Journal of Philosophy ', 
vol. 33 (1936)1 H5- 
i8o I. K. STEPHENS 
century, it would be difficult, at least, to justify the claim that 
any one set of postulates is the only one relative to which ex- 
perience would be possible} or that any one set of presupposi- 
tions is the only one in terms of which valid judgments con- 
cerning the object or the subject of knowledge can have any 
meaning. It must be admitted that some set of logically prior 
principles is necessary for the possibility of any knowledge of 
anything at all. But this logical priority is not the inherent 
birthright of any particular set of principles. If there has ever 
been any justification for the Rationalist's claim that any certain 
set of "first principles" is logically indispensable for the ex- 
planation of the experienced world of particulars, and that such 
logical priority is a guarantee for the truth of those principles, 
the grounds for that justification have been definitely elimi- 
nated by the revelations of modern logic and mathematics rela- 
tive to the nature of deductive systems. 
It is true, of course, that all knowledge is purely relational 
and that man's whole categorial and conceptual scheme is a 
purely relational scheme. It is also true that such a relational 
scheme has meaning only within a more or less definitely fixed 
set of "reference objects" which constitute a general "frame of 
reference" somewhat analogous to a set of co-ordinate axes, 
the points of the compass, meridians of longitudes and parallels 
of latitude, etc. Those relations which Cassirer designates as the 
"fixed system" of "supreme principles" may be regarded, in the 
main, as just such a system of reference objects, and as consti- 
tuting such a "frame of reference." But such reference objects 
are neither true nor false, neither right nor wrong. They are 
only methodological devices which render possible the achieve- 
ment of some desired end. They may be convenient or incon- 
venient, adequate or inadequate, for the accomplishment of this 
end. And although some such set of "reference objects" is neces- 
sary for the accomplishment of this end, no particular set is 
necessarily invariant. Nor is any particular set of such relations 
indispensable. 
It is true, of course, that no given datum of experience ever 
comes with its meaning attached, so that it may be read off by 
the mind in some sort of mtellectuelle Anschauung or some 
DOCTRINE OF THE A PRIORI 181 
Wordsworthian state of "wise passiveness." Each given datum 
receives meaning only through some interpretive construction 
being put upon it. And interpretation always involves the ap- 
plication of some set of distinguishing and definitive criteria and 
interpretive principles, some set of "reference objects," in terms 
of which interpretation gives meaning to the given datum of 
experience. Some such set of "elements of form" must, there- 
fore, be logically prior to any knowledge at all. Such elements 
are creations of the mind and are a priori. Even the most primi- 
tive judgment involves the implicit application of such elements 
to the object of the judgment. This certainly does not imply, 
however, that any particular set of such a 'priori elements can be 
legitimately singled out and designated as the only set in terms 
of which even a meaningful experience is possible. 
If one desires, therefore, to seek for the a priori either in the 
intellectual creations of the childhood of the individual or in 
those of the childhood of the race, he will likely find it there. 
For the a priori always serves as a means for the conceptual 
handling of "matters of fact," and wherever man is engaged in 
this sort of enterprise he will be using it. It is also true that any 
adequate conception of the a priori must be one that is applicable 
anywhere, on any level and in any phase of human experience 
where the work of an interpretive mind is recognizable. on this 
ground, there is certainly justification for Cassirer's insistence 
that certain a priori "elements of f orm" may be found on every 
level and in every phase of human experience. But I see no 
justification for his extension of the Critique of Reason into a 
Critique of Culture for the purpose of discovering the nature of 
the a priori. If his purpose was to show that the a priori consists 
of a set of invariant principles, then it seems to me that his mon- 
umental efforts have turned out to be a case of "Love's Labor's 
Lost." 
I. K. STEPHENS 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY 
4 
Felix Kaufmann 
CASSIRER'S THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC 
KNOWLEDGE 
CASSIRER'S THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC 
KNOWLEDGE 
I 
FUTURE writers of textbooks on the history of philosophy 
will have little difficulty in assigning Ernst Cassirer a place 
within their neat schemes of philosophical doctrines. He will be 
classified as a neo-Kantian, and, more specifically, as an out- 
standing member of the Marburg school of neo-Kantians, 
alongside of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. Cassirer him- 
self frequently professed his close affiliation with this group of 
thinkers 1 and was profoundly influenced by Cohen's interpreta- 
tion of Kant's philosophy. 
It is one of Cohen's lasting accomplishments to have shown 
that Kant's intuitionistic theory of mathematics, as exhibited in 
some of the arguments in his Transcendental Aesthetics, repre- 
sents only a transitory, pre-critical, stage in his philosophical 
development, which led to the transcendental method in the 
strict sense. This can be seen from Kant's diary, as well as from 
a comparison of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, 
with the Prolegomena and with the second edition of the Crit- 
ique. Cohen submits that this trend in Kant's thought represents 
genuine philosophical progress, the full implications of which 
were grasped neither by Kant himself nor by the idealistic 
schools which emerged after him. Accordingly, he assigns the 
task to his own generation of philosophers of understanding 
Kant better than he understood himself, 2 just as Kant had de- 
manded that we understand Plato better than he understood 
*See e.g., Cassirer's Preface to Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der 
modemen Physik t viii. 
2 See Preface to the ist ed. of Hermann Cohen's Logik der Reinen Erkenntnis, 
xi, xii. 
185 
1 86 FELIX KAUFMANN 
himself. A substantial part of Cassirer's life-work is an execution 
of this program. It will, therefore, be appropriate to start our 
analysis of his theory of knowledge with a brief outline of his 
interpretation of Kant's epistemological doctrine. 
II 
In a famous passage of the preface to the second edition of the 
Critique of Pure Reason Kant has drawn an analogy between 
his work and the work of Copernicus. 
The experiment . . . ought to be made, whether we should not succeed 
better with the problems of metaphysic, by assuming that the objects 
must conform to our mode of cognition, for this would better agree with 
the demanded possibility of a priori knowledge of them, which is to 
settle something about objects, before they are given us. We have here 
the same case as with the first thought of Copernicus who, not being 
able to get on in the explanation of the movements of the heavenly 
bodies, as long as he assumed that all the stars turned round the spectator, 
tried, whether he could not succeed better, by assuming the spectator 
to be turning round, and the stars to be at rest. (F. Max Miiller trans- 
lation [1896:1922], 693.) 
This analogy suggested the facile interpretation of Kant's 
philosophy, of his "Copernican Revolution," as a subjectivistic, 
anthropocentric doctrine. But more penetrating students of 
Kant as were the members of the Marburg school realized 
that this interpretation is apt to conceal the core of Kant's trans- 
cendental method. They realized that his approach was far more 
"revolutionary." He did not try to offer a new solution to the 
time-honored problem of the origin of knowledge by proposing 
a transformation which makes the subject the initial system, the 
"center of the universe." Kant rather disposed of the whole 
problem in its traditional formulation by refuting all attempts 
toward explaining pre-scientific and scientific experience in 
terms of the dogmatic assumption of things-in-themselves. This 
point is emphasized by Cassirer time and again, perhaps most 
forcefully in his analysis of Kant's philosophy in the eighth 
book of the Erkenntnisproblem. 
Kantian philosophy is not primarily concerned with the ego, nor with 
its relations to external objects, but with the principles and the logical 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 187 
structure of experience. Neither "internal" nor "external" objects exist 
in- and for- themselves j they are given under the conditions of experi- 
ence. Accordingly, we have to develop the norms and rules of experi- 
ence before we make statements about the nature of things. Hitherto 
things and the ego had to be projected on a metaphysical background, 
to be derived from a common substantial origin in order to be grasped 
in their context; but now the question takes a new turn. What is now 
sought is the fundamental logical form of experience as such, which 
must apply to "internal" as well as "external" experience. Knowledge 
with respect to objects cannot be entirely different from knowledge 
with respect to our ego; both kinds of knowledge should be united by 
an all-embracing principle. In this principle we have the genuine, true 
unity of "origin," and we need only go back to this unity to dispose of 
the "absolute contrasts" presupposed by traditional ontology. These 
observations amount to a clear delineation of Kant's method; judgments 
about things rather than things are its theme. A problem of logic is 
posed, but this logical problem is exclusively related to and aimed at 
that peculiar and specific form of judgment by which we claim to know 
empirical objects. 8 
Kant's transcendental method starts from the fact of (scien- 
tific) experience and seeks to determine how this fact is possible. 
In other words, he clarifies the meaning of "objective experi- 
ence." In making explicit the elements of experience and the 
different types and levels of synthesis involved, we arrive at 
synthetic propositions a priori. These propositions are a priori 
for experience inasmuch as they contain constitutive principles 
of experience, but they are not independent of experience in the 
sense of being valid beyond the realm of (possible) experience. 
The time-honored ontological principles are found to be 
pseudo-principles and the related ontological problems to be 
pseudo-problems, as soon as it is recognized that the "transcend- 
ent use" of the categories implied in their formulations is ille- 
gitimate. Yet this "extermination" of ontological principles does 
not amount to their complete annihilation} they are re- 
interpreted as regulative principles of scientific inquiry. 
The unity of empirical knowledge is not "given" (gegeberi) 
but "set as a task" (auj 'gegeberi) ; in other words, it is not pre- 
established by things-in-themselves, but conceived as an ideal, 
* Erkenntnisfroblem, Vol. II, 662 f. Cf. also Vol. Ill, 3 ff. 
1 88 FELIX KAUFMANN 
a guiding principle, for scientific inquiry. Critical philosophy 
seeks to grasp the nature of this unity by analyzing it into its 
elements and determining the place of each element within the 
whole, in teleological terms, by determining its function in the 
constitution of the whole. 
Ill 
In referring to Ms meaning of the term "function" in Cas- 
sirer's philosophy, we are led to another strong influence in 
shaping his thought, the influence of Hegel. Broadly speaking 
and making allowance for the unavoidable inaccuracy of such 
a formula we may say that Cassirer used a somewhat modified 
Kantian method in promoting a goal set by HegeL Although he 
is well aware of the basic defects of HegePs metaphysical 
system, 4 he accepts as leitmotif of his own analysis HegePs 
principle that truth as the "whole" is not given all at once but 
must be progressively unfolded by thought in its movement. 
The unity of knowledge must be discovered in the progress of 
knowledge from its primary and primitive stages to "pure" 
knowledge; it reveals itself in the form of this process. None 
of the phases of this process must be disregarded if we are to 
grasp the form of the process. 5 
Accordingly, Cassirer sets himself the task of determining 
what particular type of unity is sought and (temporarily) found 
in the different domains and at the different stages of human 
thought, and he seeks to disclose how the transition from one 
stage to another is necessitated by the inner dialetic of the move- 
ment of thought. 
In his first systematic work, Substanzbegriff und Funktions- 
begn-jfy Cassirer was guided by the idea that the structure and 
basic principles of knowledge could be most clearly discerned in 
mathematics and mathematical physics, where knowledge had 
reached its highest level. His chief aim was to corroborate his 
thesis that the progressive emancipation of thought from the 
so-called data of immediate experience manifests itself in the 
development of these sciences. This process of emancipation, 
4 See Erkenntnis'problem, Vol. Ill, 362-377. 
9 See e.g., Preface to Vol. Ill of Philosophic der symbolischen Formen, vi fl. 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 189 
which can never be completed, is most conspicuous in the re- 
placement of the thing-concept by the concept of law. Even the 
thing-concept is an intellectual construct of a highly complex 
structure, yet it shows a close affinity to the (allegedly) pure 
data of immediate perceptual experience. As long as it is made 
not only the starting-point but also the pivot of philosophical 
analysis, a certain kind of interpretation of mental activity in 
general and of the formation of scientific concepts in particular 
is suggested, an interpretation which has, indeed, prevailed in 
philosophical thought from the very outset. According to this 
view the activity of the mind consists exclusively in determining 
and isolating common qualitative elements within the vast 
variety of existing things, uniting them into classes, and repeat- 
ing this procedure as long as possible. By comparing and dis- 
tinguishing actually present objects of thought mathematical 
objects as well as empirical objects we arrive at an ever more 
embracing hierarchy of beings. The proposed interpretation 
seems to be in harmony with common sense and to save us from 
a dualism between percept and concept. The universals are 
taken to be "in re" to be part of the perceptible world. 
However, this traditional view does not bear closer exami- 
nation. In the first place, it fails to account for the fact that 
scientific (and even pre-scientific) concepts are not random ag- 
gregates of qualities, but are established with a purpose. We do 
not as Lotze remarked form a class of reddish, juicy, edible 
things, under which cherries and meat might be subsumed 5 and 
the reason why we don't do it is that we consider such a notion 
quite irrelevant for theoretical as well as practical ends. Ref- 
erence to it is not supposed to be productive of any new results. 
Thus we are led to the conclusion that qualitative similarity is 
not the only basis in all instances for the formation of concepts. 
Realizing that this process involves judgments concerning the 
relevance of a concept for the promotion of given ends, we can 
no longer maintain that the mental activity involved is confined 
to the recognition of qualitative similarities or differences and to 
selections on this basis. 
But this is only half the story. It might still be suggested that 
such a similarity is a necessary condition for the formation of 
190 FELIX KAUFMANN 
concepts. But even this view is untenable. What is required is 
rather a relation in terms of which the variety of (actually or 
potentially) given objects may be ordered. Such a relation does 
not dispose of the qualities of the individual objects con- 
cerned if it did, it would not be of any aid in investigating 
specific objects ; but it replaces fixed qualities by general rules 
which enable us to grasp uno actu a total series of possible, 
qualitative determinations. This is of decisive theoretical and 
practical import. As inquiry proceeds, thing-concepts are gradu- 
ally replaced by relation-concepts, and a hierarchy of laws, 
stating invariant relations in terms of mathematical functions, 
occupies the place formerly held by a hierarchy of intrinsic 
qualities. The transition from Aristotle's physics to Galileo's 
and Newton's physics is marked by this change in the conceptual 
framework of science. 
Cassirer insists that there are guiding principles in arranging 
perceptual material, even on the pre-scientific level, principles 
which cannot be considered as inherent in the material j but this 
autonomy of form, this spontaneity of the mind, becomes ever 
more conspicuous and extensive as science advances. The totality 
of experience as it represents itself on any given stage of 
knowledge is not a mere aggregate of data of perception} it has 
a complex and intricate structure which constitutes its unity. 
But this coherence of the body of knowledge established at a 
given time does not exhaust what we mean by "unity of science." 
There is, moreover, a "dynamic unity" of scientific procedure. 
The dynamic unity becomes manifest in the very process of the 
reconstruction of scientific systems. Even if we change most 
general principles like those of Newton's mechanics , which 
we avoid as long as less incisive changes in the theory can 
restore its agreement with the results of observation, we do not 
alter the fundamental form of experience, nor break the con- 
tinuity of inquiry. This is seen when we consider that the new 
system is supposed to yield solutions of problems that emerged 
within the frame of the old system, but could not be solved 
there. It would indeed be impossible to demonstrate the ad- 
vantage of the new system, unless there were invariant stand- 
ards of comparability. These standards are the fundamental 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 191 
invariants of experience; to make them explicit is the main ob- 
jective of critical (transcendental) philosophy, which, accord- 
ingly, may be regarded as the general theory of the invariants of 
experience. 
If we say that knowledge of these "logical invariants" is 
knowledge a priori y this should not be taken to mean that it is 
prior (in time) to experience. It only means that these "logical 
invariants" are implicitly presupposed in any valid statement 
about facts. That is why the notion of space, but not that of 
color, is considered a priori in Kant's theory of knowledge; 
space is indeed an invariant for every physical construction; 
color is not. 
IV 
When Cassirer laid down these views in Substance and 
Function and supported them by a thorough analysis of mathe- 
matical and physical terms, as they emerged in the historical 
development of these sciences, Einstein's Special Theory of 
Relativity had only recently been developed and the General 
Theory had not yet been formulated. Cassirer's analysis of 
physical concepts in this work is therefore confined to classical 
physics in the strict sense. But soon after the General Theory of 
Relativity had been well established, Cassirer extended his 
analysis to both the Special and the General Theory. 6 
The geometry underlying Einstein's General Theory of 
Relativity is Riemannian geometry, which is a "Non-Euclid- 
ean" geometry. The Euclidean parallel postulate is replaced in 
it by the postulate that no "straight line" (geodesic) can be 
drawn through a given "point" which is "parallel" to a given 
"straight line." Still Euclidean geometry remains applicable 
in the "limiting case" of weak gravitational fields, like that of 
the earth, where the "curvature of space," determined by the 
strength of the gravitational field, comes close to zero. (Eu- 
clidean space is then interpreted as the space of zero-curvature.) 
The establishment of Einstein's theory had been considered 
by empiricist philosophers as a death-blow to Kant's doctrine. 
* Cf. Einstein's Theory of Relativity. (The authorized English translation of 
this work from the pen of Cassirer is printed as a "Supplement" pp. 347-45 6 
in the Swabeys' English rendition of Substance and Function; Open Court, 1923.) 
192 FELIX KAUFMANN 
They claimed that his whole system breaks down with the col- 
lapse of one of its chief pillars, the aprioricity of Euclidean 
geometry. Is this claim well founded? 
Even when Gauss, Lobachevski, Bolyai, and Riemann first 
constructed systems of non-Euclidean geometries without, how- 
ever, applying them to physical science, it had been maintained 
that such systems are in conflict with Kant's philosophy. Yet 
this view was certainly wrong. What had been demonstrated by 
the non-Euclidean geometries provided it could be shown 
that they were free from contradictions was only that the 
Euclidean postulate is not an analytical consequence of the 
other postulates; but Kant had never maintained that a system 
of geometry different from Euclidean geometry is self-contra- 
dictory. Rather he had, in distinguishing the synthetic a priori 
from the analytical a priori, precluded such a view. 
Kant did maintain that Euclidean geometry is a priori for 
physics; and this statement cannot be squared with Einstein's 
General Theory of Relativity. But it is another question 
whether this fact and the fact that space and time cannot be 
isolated in Einstein's theory so that they apparently lose their 
physical objectivity undermines the roots of Kant's doctrine. 
Cassirer submits that either of these facts leaves the funda- 
mentals of critical philosophy untouched. In support of this 
view he offers a penetrating analysis of the meaning of "physi- 
cal objectivity," which he prefaces by a declaration of the partial 
independence of the epistemologist from the scientist. The 
epistemologist is bound to accept scientifically established facts 
and laws, and these delimit indeed his universe of discourse; 
but he is not bound to accept the scientist's interpretation of 
these facts and laws in general philosophical terms, such as 
the term "objectivity." The main reason why the epistemologist 
is not bound to accept the scientist's interpretation is that analy- 
sis made by the former reaches beyond that of the scientist. 
Each answer, which physics imparts concerning the character and 
the peculiar nature of its fundamental concepts, assumes inevitably for 
epistemology the form of a question. When, for example, Einstein gives 
as the essential result of his theory that by it "the last remainder of 
physical objectivity" is taken from space and time . . ., this answer of the 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 193 
physicist contains for the epistemologist the precise formulation of his 
real problem. What are we to understand by the physical objectivity, 
which is here denied to the concepts of space and time? To the physicist 
physical objectivity may appear as a fixed and sure starting-point and as 
an entirely definite standard of comparison; epistemology must ask that 
its meaning ... be exactly defined/ 
We arrive at such a definition by clarifying the function of the 
notion of objectivity in physical inquiry. Similar considerations 
apply to Kant's doctrine that Euclidean geometry is the one 
a priori true geometry. 
We are no longer concerned with what space "is" and with whether 
any definite character, whether Euclidean, Lobatschefskian or Rieman- 
nian, is to be ascribed to it, but rather with what use is to be made of 
the different systems of geometrical presuppositions in the interpretation 
of the phenomena of nature and their dependencies according to law. 8 
We could say that Euclidean space was indeed a priori for 
Newtonian physics, since Euclidean geometry is presupposed 
in it, whereas, by this very token, Riemannian space is a priori 
for the General Theory of Relativity. This interpretation seems 
to be in harmony with Einstein's view, lucidly expressed in his 
lecture on Geometrie umd Erfahrung? 
Kant, on the other hand, held undoubtedly that Euclidean 
geometry would have to underly physical science at any stage 
of its development, and this view was mistaken. But to concede 
this is not to admit that Einstein's General Theory has refuted 
the fundamentals of Kant's transcendental method. This method 
can be upheld after it has been freed from some time-bound 
limitations. 
Commenting upon Cassirer's argument I would suggest that 
aprioricity in a more incisive sense could be claimed for some 
topological properties of space. Hermann Weyl has made the 
point (in his remarkable Philosophie der Mathematik und 
Naturwissenschajt [Munchen, 1927], 97) that the number 
four of the dimensions of the space-time continuum is a priori 
7 Einstein* 's Theory of Relativity, (Swabey tr.) 356. 
8 /^.,439. 
'Berlin, (1921.) 
194 FELIX KAUFMANN 
in Kant's sense. This would imply, it seems to me, that the 
four-dimensionality of space-time is implicitly presupposed in 
perceptual experience perceptual experiences being located in 
four-dimensional space-time so that it could never be refuted 
by perceptual experience. This interpretation is in harmony 
with Kant's general conception of synthetic a priori as per- 
taining to the form of experience; and it is, moreover, sup- 
ported by modern psychological analysis of the structure of 
perception. 
When Einstein's Special and General Theories had been 
firmly established, they were first regarded as a revolution in 
physics, rendering the fundamental notions and principles of 
classical physics obsolete. But Einstein himself has always 
stressed the continuity of the process of inquiry leading to this 
theory; and nowadays his theory is considered the perfection 
of classical physics rather than its destruction. But the second 
great event in twentieth century physics, the emergence of 
quantum physics, is taken to be more truly revolutionary, and 
to impose on us a revision not only of fundamental physical 
notions, but also of philosophical categories, particularly of the 
category of causality. Here, then, seems to exist an even deeper 
cleavage between the Kantian theory for which Newton's 
magnum of us represented the "fact of science" and a theory 
of knowledge which is in conformity with modern physics. 
But even in this case we are cautioned by Cassirer against 
assuming that the transcendental method has been rendered 
obsolete by recent developments in physics. He discusses quan- 
tum physics in his Determinisnws und Indeterminismus in der 
modernen Physik a work which offers perhaps the most 
accomplished elaboration of his theory of science. It is essential 
for the transcendental method, Cassirer points out, that it deals 
not directly with things but rather with our empirical knowl- 
edge of things, more precisely with the form of experience. 
Kant agrees with Hume's critique of the notion of causality 
10 Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik. (Sub-title: 
Historische und systematische Studien zum Kausalproblem.) Goteburg (1936). 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 195 
inasmuch as it established that there is no innate, self-evident 
idea of causality, no subjective necessity rooted in our mental 
organization which compels us to acknowledge a rigid causal 
nexus among phenomena. But Kant's epistemological analysis 
does not stop at this point, as did Hume's. Whereas he admits 
that the principle of causality does not enable us to state any 
specific physical law, he vindicates this principle as a "postulate," 
as a "regulative principle" of science. It is a statement of the 
resolution not to give up the search for causes and to strive to- 
ward an ever more comprehensive system of knowledge, a 
resolution which is basic for scientific inquiry. 
Cassirer is, of course, fully aware of the fact that Kant had 
not been quite consistent in the development of this idea, that 
he had, in the "Analogies of Experience," offered a "deduc- 
tion" of the principle of causality. But this, Cassirer declares, is 
one more point where we have to understand Kant better than 
he understood himself, if we are to be true Kantians. We have 
to follow him only so long as he does not part with his own 
professed principles, the principles of the transcendental 
method. 
The preceding remarks should not create the impression 
that Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics is pri- 
marily concerned with a defense of Kant's transcendental 
method. This is by no means the case. The object of this book 
is rather a reconsideration of the structure of physical science 
in the light of the development of quantum physics. one of 
Cassirer's most important points is the distinction between 
three types of statements in physics, viz., a) statements of the 
results of measurements (Massaussagen), b) laws, c) prin- 
ciples. This distinction was suggested by Russell's theory of 
types which had been established for the purpose of pre- 
cluding the emergence of antinomies in logic and Cantorian set 
theory. The theory of types is governed by the so-called Vicious 
Circle Principle: "Whatever includes all of a collection must 
not be one of the collection," which "enables us to avoid the 
vicious circles involved in the assumption of illegitimate totali- 
ties." 11 Cassirer's hierarchy of types of physical statements is 
u Whitehead-Russell, Prmcipia Mathematka, Vol. I, 40. 
196 FELIX KAUFMANN 
meant to preclude similar predicaments in the analysis of em- 
pirical science. 
Concerning (a): Statements of the results of measurement 
are attained by transposing reports of sensory experiences into 
determinations in terms of numerical relations. These "state- 
ments of the first order" are singular propositions. They relate 
to definite space-time points. 
Concerning (b) : Realization that physical laws are a distinct 
type of physical statements implies rejection of the sensation- 
alists' view most vigorously defended by J. S. Mill that a 
physical law is but an aggregate of particular truths, and that 
"all inference is from particulars to particulars." This view has 
always been one of the chief targets of Cassirer's criticism. Time 
and again he has pointed out that it is not in accordance with 
actual scientific procedure and that the great scientists of the 
modern age, from Galileo on, were fully aware of the hetero- 
geneity of fact-statements and laws. A law is a hypothetical 
judgment of the form: "If x then y;" it does not connect single 
magnitudes with definite space-time points; rather it refers 
to classes of magnitudes, classes which have an infinite number 
of elements and are thus inexhaustible by simple enumera- 
tion. 12 
Concerning (c) : The distinction between fact-statements and 
laws had been widely recognized before; but the difference be- 
tween laws and principles had remained almost unnoticed. 
Whereas facts are brought into a definite order by laws, the 
laws themselves are integrated into a higher unity by principles, 
such as the principle of the conservation of energy or the prin- 
ciple of least action (which is the most general of all physical 
principles). 
The three types of statements may be differentiated in a 
formal way by calling them, respectively, "individual," "gen- 
eral," and "universal." 
In defending the tripartition against the tendencies (repre- 
sented by Mill) toward levelling down these distinctions, Cas- 
sirer makes an interesting remark which indicates his attitude 
M Determinismus . . ., 5 iff. 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 197 
toward "dogmatic empiricism." "The defect of dogmatic em- 
piricism," he points out, 
does not consist in its attempt to link all knowledge to experience and 
to recognize nothing but experience as a criterion of truth, but rather in 
its failure to go far enough in the analysis of experience, in its stopping 
short of a clarified notion of it. It is not infrequently a vague assumption 
of continuity that leads to this attitude; empiricism refrains from strictly 
separating the various stages of knowledge in order to be able to develop 
them from each other. But this development is deceptive, if one seeks to 
understand it as a mere reproduction of similarity. Somewhere in the 
process of knowledge we must acknowledge a genuine "mutation" 
which leads to something new and independent. 13 
The failure of dogmatic empiricism to give a proper account 
of the practice of physical inquiry becomes most obvious in an 
analysis of statistical laws which latter have gained an ever 
higher significance since Gibbs' and Boltzmann's foundation 
of statistical mechanics. Boltzmann's kinetical theory of gases 
interprets the physical properties of a gas, such as its density, its 
pressure, its specific heat, as resultants of the movements of its 
molecules} but it does not attempt to determine the move- 
ments of each single molecule. Some hypothetical assumptions 
concerning statistical averages, for instance average velocity, are 
made, and the behavior of the gas is explained in terms of 
these hypotheses. It is clear that such a procedure cannot be 
interpreted as an inference from particulars to particulars, as 
Mill and his disciples would have it. 
There is one more methodological conclusion which we may 
draw from Boltzmann's theory, a conclusion which provides a 
cue to the philosophical interpretation of quantum physics, 
namely that physics does not attempt to answer every "Why- 
question" 14 which may possibly be asked, and that its success is 
largely due to this self-restraint, and to a selection of problems 
in accordance with certain regulative principles of inquiry. 
Having realized this, we shall no longer maintain that Hei- 
senberg's principle of indeterminacy, which occupies a central 
"Ibid., 132. 
198 FELIX KAUFMANN 
place in quantum physics, means a complete break with the 
fundamental ideas of classical physics. Heisenberg's principle 
states that the precision in determining simultaneously two 
"conjugate magnitudes," such as the position and the velocity of 
an electron, is limited by Planck's constant h. In the older (un- 
critical) view, which interpreted electrons as "material points," 
pre-established thing-like entities, this principle seemed to in- 
volve sceptical resignation, the acknowledgment that the finite 
human mind cannot trespass certain boundaries. Critical analysis, 
however, reveals that the traditional formulation of these 
"insoluble problems" is inadequate, and that the pertinent 
arguments of the sceptics lose their point as soon as we formu- 
late the problems adequately. We have to dispose of the idea 
that a material point is a pre-established entity, existing inde- 
pendently of the relations into which it may enter, and to 
realize that "material point" is defined in terms of the system 
of these relations. Cassirer points out that there is no basic 
difference in this respect between the notion of a "material" 
physical point and the notion of an "ideal" mathematical point. 
In the so-called axioms of geometry, a mathematical point is 
"implicitly defined" in terms of a system of formal relations. 
"Material point," on the other hand, is implicitly defined in 
terms of a system of relations which we call a physical theory. 
Hence "material" points are intellectual constructs, as are 
"ideal" geometrical points j and the demand that "absolute" 
locations should be assigned to them is as illegitimate as would 
be the corresponding demand for geometrical points. 
VI 
We have already mentioned that Cassirer's analysis of physi- 
cal theories is performed with the purpose of corroborating his 
thesis that the decisive stages in the advancement of science are 
marked by a progressive emancipation from "naive" realism, 
which starts from a conception of things-in-themselves and 
interprets knowledge as a conformity of our thoughts with those 
pre-established "objects." Each new stage in scientific progress 
is characterized by a specific type of "objectification," by the 
creation of new scientific objects, represented in the symbols 
of the language of science. All of Cassirer's elaborate and en- 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 199 
lightening interpretations of scientific theories are but so many 
variations of this central theme. The same is true of his analysis 
of mathematical concepts. 
A substantial part of Substance and Function is devoted to this 
analysis. Russell's Principles of Mathematics had, at the time, 
been published only a few years before, and Whitehead- 
RusselPs Principa Mathematica had not yet appeared. The 
number of mathematicians and philosophers engaged in work- 
ing on problems of the "foundations of mathematics" was still 
small. This situation changed rapidly during the following two 
decades. Principa Mathematica demonstrated what can be 
achieved in the way of a unification of logic and mathematics j 
Hilbert took the final step in the "formalization" of mathe- 
matics, and Brouwer advanced his criticism of the application 
of the principle of excluded middle, a criticism which seemed to 
affect not only Cantor's set theory, but large sections of classical 
mathematics. Spirited controversies between logicists (Russell), 
formalists (Hilbert), and intuitionists (Brouwer) ensued and 
attracted wide attention j and it was generally assumed that basic 
philosophical issues were at stake. However, there were only a 
small number of philosophers who were prepared to face the 
difficulties in studying the rather "technical" books and papers 
in the field. 
Cassirer was one of those few. In chapter IV of Part III of 
the third volume of his Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen 
(1929) he offers a well-considered interpretation of some of 
the major pertinent problems, an accomplishment which de- 
served more attention than it has actually received. Philosophers 
should be grateful to him for his placing these problems in 
their proper historical setting. And they should, moreover, find 
some of his critical remarks apt and incisive. I, for one, have 
no doubt that he is right in rejecting i) Russell's reduction of 
the number concept to the class concept, 2) Brouwer's (and 
Becker's) interpretation of the role of time in mathematics, 
and 3) Hilbert's philosophical interpretation of his formaliza- 
tion of mathematics, according to which the visible marks as 
such would be the object of mathematics. 15 Each of these points 
18 The present writer came to similar conclusions, in a book, Das Unendliche in 
200 FELIX KAUFMANN 
is of major philosophical significance. Russell's way of relating 
the class concept to the number concept is closely linked with 
his sensationalist and nominalist view concerning universals. 
Brouwer's emphasis on the time factor in mathematics (and his 
demand for actual construction in mathematics) raises the basic 
issue of the meaning of possibility (which is indeed the prob- 
lem of universals seen from another angle). And Hilbert's 
interpretation of his formalization involves the same problem. 
Cassirer never tires of stressing that we have to interpret 
"reality" and "experience" in terms of "possibility", though 
there is no "realm of possibilities" beyond experience. He 
analyzes mathematical systems, for instance those of different 
types of geometry, in order to make it clear that they do not 
contain any assertions about "real" things or facts, but deal with 
pure possibilities. These possibilities cannot be derived from 
sense perception. "Experience as such does not contain in itself 
a principle for the production of such possibilities, its role is 
confined to a selection among them in the application to given 
concrete cases. Its real accomplishment consists in determina- 
tion rather than in constitution." 16 one could say, using a 
metaphor taken from the language of chemistry, that sense 
experience has essentially a 'catalytic' function in the develop- 
ment of the theories of the natural sciences." 17 Sense experience 
is indispensable for the process of forming exact concepts, but it 
is no longer contained as an independent ingredient in the 
product emerging from this process, in the scientific concept. 
And the process of establishing scientific concepts, which is a 
process of objectification, has its own immanent principle of 
development. Each subsequent (higher) stage of development 
terminates the earlier stage, but it assimilates rather than ex- 
terminates that earlier stage. 18 A striking example is the prog- 
ress from Newton's system to Einstein's Special Theory and 
General Theory of Relativity. 
der Mathematik und seine Ausschaltung, which appeared shortly after the publica- 
tion of Cassirer's work. 
* Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, Vol. Ill, 487. 
"Ibid., 485. 
18 Hegel expresses this view by using the word "aufgehoben," which may mean 
cancelled (abrogated) or "preserved." 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 201 
VII 
Each stage of obj edification is represented by a specific sys- 
tem of linguistic symbols. But this fact must not be interpreted 
as a creation of concepts (meanings) by words, as radical nom- 
inalists would have it. The meaning is the nuclear point, the 
true wpd-rcpov <pucret. However we should not regard the word 
as a mere appendix to the concept, it is rather one of the most 
important means for the actualization of the concept, for its 
separation from the "immediately given." Hence linguistic 
signs are indispensable in the process of objectification,'and 
it is proper to approach the theory of knowledge from the angle 
of an analysis of scientific language. But in doing this we should 
bear in mind that the theory of knowledge is not the whole of 
philosophy, and that the activity of the scientist is not the 
only nor the first attempt of man to transform a chaos 
of immediate experiences into a cosmos. The symbolism of scien- 
tific language is therefore not the only symbolism a study of 
which is required for an understanding of the nature of man, 
who should be defined as an animal symboUcum rather than as 
an animal rationale 
It is the task of systematic philosophy ... to grasp the whole system of 
symbolic 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 assume 
this problem solved, then the rights would be assured, and the limits 
fixed, of each of the particular forms of the concept and of knowledge 
as well as of the general forms of the theoretical, ethical, aesthetic and 
religious understanding of the world. Each particular form would be 
"relativized" with regard to the others, but since this "relativization" 
is throughout reciprocal and since no single form but only the systematic 
totality can serve as the ｅxpression of "truth" and "reality," the limit 
that results appears as a thoroughly immanent limit, as one that is re- 
moved as soon as we again relate the individual to the system of the 
whole. 20 
The three volumes of Cassirer's Philosophic der symbolischen 
19 An Essay on Man (1944), 26. 
w Einstein's Theory of Relativity, (Swabey translation), 447. 
202 FELIX KAUFMANN 
Formen (summarized in his Essay on Man) represent a re- 
markable contribution towards this goal. The chief critical 
outcome of this approach is a refutation of sensationalism as 
well as of dogmatic realism. Cassirer realized that such a refuta- 
tion, in order to be fully convincing, must start at the level of 
sense-perception. 
We shall conclude our brief outline of Cassirer's epistemology 
by referring to his important study "The Concept of Group and 
the Theory of Perception," 21 which suggests a mathematical 
interpretation of some of the results of Gestalt psychology, and 
contains a devastating criticism of the traditional sensationalist 
theory of perception, according to which perception is merely 
a bundle of sense-impressions. 
This doctrine, Cassirer points out, has been definitely shat- 
tered by physiological and psychological research initiated by 
Helmholtz's and Hering's investigations. There is first of all 
the established fact of perceptual constancy involving both 
color constancy and constancy of spatial shape and size. A sheet 
of paper which appears white in ordinary daylight is recognized 
as white in very dim light as well ; a piece of velvet which looks 
black to us under a cloudy sky looks also black to us in full 
sunshine} a piece of paper which looks blue to us in daylight 
looks blue also in the reddish-yellow light of a gasflame. Con- 
sidering that every change of illumination is accompanied by 
a modification in the stimulation of the retina, we realize that 
these facts cannot be squared with the sensationalist's theory of 
perception, which claims that the stimuli are simply "copied" 
in perception. We have to admit, on the basis of this evidence, 
that the stimuli are transformed in a certain direction. 
Experiments concerning perceptions of shape and size lead 
to similar conclusions. 
When an object is moved away from our eyes, the images on the retinae 
become smaller and smaller. Nonetheless, within certain distances, the 
perceptual size of the object is constant. Variations of shape, which result 
from the fact that a figure is turned out of the frontal-parallel position, 
21 This article appeared first in French in the Journal de Psychologle (1938), 
368-414. It was recently translated into English by Dr. A. Gurwitch and 
published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. V (1944-45), 1-35. 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 203 
are also "counterbalanced" by the eye to a high degree, so that we 
perceive the figure in its "true" shape. What is meant by this "truth" 
a kind of truth which seems to contradict the objective facts, the real 
conditions of physical stimulation? In raising this question, psychological 
inquiry comes close to the fundamental epistemological problems of the 
theory of perception, even though it may try to confine itself strictly to 
empirical observation. 22 
The theory of knowledge has to take account of the fact that 
"we do not merely re-ac? to the stimulus, but in a certain 
sense act 'against' it," and thereby accomplish a "transforma- 
tion." This fact gives rise to the question whether the group 
concept, the nuclear concept in the mathematical theory of 
transformations, can offer a clue for an interpretation of the 
phenomena of perception. 
Group theory, which has developed in the last hundred years 
into one of the most important mathematical disciplines, has 
also substantially contributed to a deeper understanding of the 
nature of mathematics, and particularly of geometry. A group 
(as defined by Lie and Klein) is a system of unique operations 
A, B, C, . . . so that from the combination of any two operations 
A and B there results an operation C which also belongs to the 
totality: A B = C. The system must contain the Identity 
Element which, when combined with any other element, leaves 
this other element unchanged. Furthermore, there must be an 
inverse operation S" 1 established for any given operation S, 
such that S" 1 cancels out (reverses) Sj and finally, the associa- 
tive law A (BC) = (AB) C must hold. Now it has been defi- 
nitely established in F. Klein's famous "Erlanger Program of 
1872" that the geometrical properties of any figures are com- 
pletely describable in terms of group theory. Our familiar 
metrical Euclidean geometry is a member of a family of geom- 
etries, each of which investigates the invariant properties 
of a particular group. The groups may be classified in an order 
of increasing generality. We arrive from metrical geometry 
successively at affinitive geometry, projective geometry, and 
topology (analysis situs} by considering movements with re- 
204 FELIX KAUFMANN 
spect to ever wider "principal groups of transformations." With 
every extension of the "principal group" some distinctions 
which could be made in a geometry corresponding to the nar- 
rower principal group disappear. Thus the distinction between 
circles and ellipses disappears in affinitive geometry} all kinds 
of conic sections (circles, ellipses, hyperbolae, parabolae) be- 
come indistinguishable in projective geometry, and as we come 
to topology we can no longer differentiate between any figures 
that may be derived from each other by continuous reversibly 
unique distortions. 
Helmholtz was the first to attempt an application of group 
theory to an investigation of the phenomena of perception. 
But this approach could not stand up under experimental tests. 
Since that time the psychology of perception has made great 
strides, particularly through the work of the Gestalt psycholo- 
gists (Wertheimer, Kohler, Koffka, Katz, and many others) 
who followed a trend of thought suggested by Ehrenfels. 
Gestalt psychologists have performed systematic studies of in- 
variances of perceptual experiences with respect to certain kinds 
of variations in the stimuli. It is characteristic of phenomenal 
forms ($haenomenale Gestalten) that their specific properties 
remain unchanged when the absolute data upon which they 
rest undergo certain modifications. Thus a melody is not sub- 
stantially altered when all of its notes are subjected to the 
same relative displacement j an optical spatial figure remains 
approximately the same when it is presented in a different place 
or on a different scale, but in the same proportions. 23 
These phenomena, Cassirer submits, are closely related to 
group theory. 
What we find in both cases are invariances with respect to variations 
undergone by the primitive elements out of which a form is constructed. 
The peculiar kind of "identity" that is attributed to apparently altogether 
heterogeneous figures in virtue of their being transformable into one 
another by means of certain operations defining a group, is thus seen 
to exist also in the domain of perception. This identity permits us not only 
to single out elements, but also to grasp "structures" in perception. To 
28 W. Kohler, Die fhysischen Gestalten in Ruhe ttnd im stationary Zustand, 
(1920), 37, quoted by Cassirer in Ibid., 25. 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 205 
the mathematical concept of "transformability" there corresponds, in the 
domain of perception, the concept of "transposability." 24 
However, we must not interpret this correspondence as an 
identity. There is no complete invariance of phenomena of 
perception with respect to such variations as mentioned above. 
Gestalt psychologists have fully recognized that we should 
speak of more or less effective tendencies toward invariance, the 
degree of effectiveness depending on various factors of which 
we have to take account in describing a perceptual field. Wert- 
heimer has, accordingly, introduced the concept of "Gestalt 
dispositions," by which he understands tendencies toward "laws 
of organization" of the perceptual material. 
It could not escape Cassirer's attention that these results of 
modern psychology square well with Plato's conception of the 
relation between perception and thought. Moreover, he em- 
phasized that they vindicate some basic ideas of Kant's concern- 
ing the function of imagination which Kant had laid down in 
the Critique of Pure Reason (chapter on Schematism) and in 
the Critique of Judgment. But the most obvious philosophical 
conclusions to be drawn from these psychological results is 
the untenability of the sensationalist's interpretation of percep- 
tion as a process of mere reproduction. Considering that this 
interpretation is at the very heart of the sensationalist doctrine, 
it is difficult to understand how this doctrine should be able 
to continue to have any influence after its lifeline has been cut. 
VIII 
Brief and fragmentary as our presentation of Cassirer's con- 
tributions to the theory of knowledge had to be, it has, I hope, 
brought into sharp focus the guiding principles of his analysis 
of cognition. This should enable us to determine in a broad way 
the relation of his teachings to other contemporary philosophi- 
cal doctrines. 
Although he is inclined to stress points of agreement rather 
than points of disagreement, and generously acknowledges 
merits even where he disapproves, Cassirer makes it unmistak- 
ably clear that he is strongly opposed to uncritical realism and 
25. 
206 FELIX KAUFMANN 
sensationalism. Moreover, he rejects all varieties of transem- 
pirical metaphysics j philosophy is, to him, as it was to Kant, 
analysis of experience. He combats "atomism" wherever he 
finds it and endorses a coherence theory of truth which bears 
some resemblance to HegePs pertinent views ; but he would 
not accept the chief tenets of the doctrines of Bradley and 
other neo-Hegelians, who claim that the real subject of a 
judgment is the Absolute, and that our particular judgments 
are inconsistent. 
Can it then be said that Cassirer is a "positivist" who dis- 
poses of metaphysical sentences as meaningless pseudo-state- 
ments? We should hardly expect a historian of philosophy, who 
has taken so much pains in interpreting the teachings of the 
great "metaphysicians" of the past, to endorse this view without 
qualifications. Although he concedes that metaphysical sentences 
are not meaningful at face value, he insists that they can be 
transformed into meaningful sentences by interpreting onto- 
logical principles as regulative principles of cognition. "What 
metaphysics ascribes as a 'property to things in themselves now 
proves to be a necessary element in the process of obj edifica- 
tion." 25 This way of dealing with metaphysical doctrines had 
been established in Kant's "Transcendental Dialectics," and the 
philosophers of the Marburg school have consistently followed 
this clue. It would be a good thing for the more uncompromis- 
ing anti-metaphysicians to give this Kantian and neo-Kantian 
approach a second thought. Desirable as it is to get rid of 
pseudo-problems, we should, in disposing of them, be careful 
lest we pour out the baby with the bath. 
Cassirer took issue with this cavalier way of treating meta- 
physical doctrines in one of his later works. 26 There he quotes 
with approval a statement made half a century ago by the 
great physicist Heinrich Hertz, which was aimed at the anti- 
metaphysicians among his fellow-scientists. "No consideration 
which makes any impression on our mind can be disposed of by 
labeling it as 'metaphysical j' every thinking mind has needs 
88 Substance and Function. 303^ 
26 Axel Hagerstrom: Eine Studie zur schwedischen Philosofhie der Gegenwart 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 207 
which the natural scientist is wont to call 'metaphysical'." 
Heinrich Hertz was anything but a metaphysician j his great 
work, Die Prinzfyien der Mechanik, from which the sentence 
quoted above is taken, has indeed more definitely disposed of 
the "metaphysical" concept of force than any preceding treatise 
on physics. But he realized that the attempts of scientists to- 
wards making their fundamental notions clear frequently stop 
short of the level of clarity that can be reached if clarification 
of meaning is made the primary objective of inquiry. That's 
where the philosopher steps in, but in doing this he has to be 
constantly on his guard against hasty interpretations of scien- 
tific findings which seem to lend support to his specific doctrine. 
It is shown by the record that scientists who become philoso- 
phers in their leisure hours are hardly less exposed to this 
danger than professional philosophers, though in a slightly 
different form. Whereas their accounts of the work accomp- 
lished in their own field are usually accurate, they are prone 
to exaggerate the range of applicability of their methods to 
other domains of inquiry and, consequently, to underrate the 
significance of other methods. But we should gratefully ac- 
knowledge the fact that a number of prominent scientists like 
Helmholtz, Mach, and Poincare who discussed the "founda- 
tions" of their sciences, have offered most valuable aid to phi- 
losophers in their attempts to grasp thoroughly the methods of 
science. Ernst Cassirer used this help to the best advantage. 
There is one more point to be made in this context. The fact 
that the process of clarification is carried farther by philosophers 
than by scientists, qua scientists, may be stressed by saying that 
philosophical analysis penetrates deeper than scientific analysis. 
Understood in this sense, the statement is legitimate. But it 
should not be taken to imply that the "realm" of scientific 
knowledge is strictly separated from the "deeper realm" of 
philosophical knowledge, and that the scientist qua scientist and 
the philosopher qua philosopher have to refrain from crossing 
the borderlines. This view, which may be historically linked to 
the medieval doctrine of the twofold truth, has been defended 
more or less explicitly by prominent contemporary philoso- 
phers and scientists, such as Whitehead, Eddington, and Jeans, 
208 FELIX KAUFMANN 
but it is certainly not endorsed by Cassirer. He holds that the 
scientist can in principle never go too far in the process of 
clarification of his terms and methods, and that the philosophers 
can never come too close to the scientist's work. 
Cassirer's "scientific attitude" and his familiarity with mod- 
ern mathematics and physics represents no minor link between 
his teaching and the doctrine of logical positivism, which has 
so emphatically stressed this attitude and so thoroughly ana- 
lyzed the principles of mathematics and natural science. 27 This 
affinity became even greater as logical positivism gradually 
freed itself from vestiges of sensationalism, which were largely 
due to the influence of Mach and Russell. But there are im- 
portant doctrinal differences which should not be overlooked. 
The logical positivists are radical anti-metaphysicians in the 
sense described above. They regard ontological statements as 
altogether meaningless and seek to eliminate them by a logical 
analysis of language} whereas Cassirer transforms them into 
regulative principles of inquiry. Another point of difference is 
Cassirer's rejection of "physicalism," (radical behaviorism), 
which has for some time prevailed among logical positivists. 
But it should be noted that the leading philosopher of the 
group, Rudolf Carnap, has, in the last decade, modified his 
physicalistn to an extent which comes close to its complete 
abandonment. 28 
There is, moreover, the issue of the universals which divides 
the two doctrines. Cassirer is clearly opposed to nominalism, 
whereas the logical positivists are among the staunchest nomi- 
nalists in contemporary philosophy. Cassirer's "conceptualistic" 
view is well expressed in the following sentence: 29 
That the general birch-tree "exists" can only mean that what is to be 
27 Philipp Frank, one of the leading members of this group, is basically in 
agreement with Cassirer's interpretation of quantum physics and considers his 
philosophical work as a whole as a (highly welcome) symptom of a "disintegrating 
process inside of school philosophy." See his discussion of Cassirer's Determinismus 
und Indeterminismtts in der modernen Physik in his volume, Between Physics and 
Philosophy (Cambridge, 194.1), 191-210. 
88 1 have discussed this change in Carnap's view in Ch. XI of my Methodology 
of the Social Sciences, New York, (i 944) . 
* Axel Hagerstrb'm, 5 1 . 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 209 
stated by it is not a mere name, not simply a flatus vocis; the statement 
is meant to refer to relations of the real. We express by the notion 
"general birch-tree" merely the fact that there are judgments which do 
not refer to this or that here and now given birch-tree, but claim to 
apply to "all" birch-trees. I can uphold this logical participation, this 
[XTet of the particular in the general, without transforming it into an 
ontological statement in which two fundamental forms of reality are 
posited. 
In the paper mentioned above, Philipp Frank quotes Jacques 
Maritain as saying "that the aim of the Vienna circle and of the 
whole movement of logical empiricism was to 'disontologize 
science'." 30 We might say with equal right that one of the aims 
of Cassirer's theory of knowledge is to disontologize philosophy 
without destroying it. 
IX 
The relation of Cassirer's philosophy to pragmatism in gen- 
eral, and to Dewey's instrumentalism in particular, might, at 
first glance, seem to be more remote than its relation to logical 
positivism, and to imply a larger number of conflicting tenets. 
But this cannot be unreservedly maintained. The neo-Kantian- 
ism of the Marburg school is, indeed, in some important re- 
spects closer to pragmatism than to logical positivism. We 
shall confine ourselves to a brief comparison between Cassirer's 
and Dewey's theories of knowledge and make the point that 
some striking differences between their doctrines are less funda- 
mental than one might suppose them to be. Dewey's philosophy, 
it might be suggested, is through and through naturalistic; 
Cassirer's philosophy, on the other hand, is through and through 
idealistic. We are thus confronted with two diametrically op- 
posed philosophical approaches. 
But such an interpretation is all too facile, and cannot bear 
closer examination. We should be aided in a more thorough 
appraisal of the relation between the two philosophies by con- 
sidering their historical settings. Dewey, as well as Cassirer, was 
profoundly influenced (though in a different way) by Kantian 
and Hegelian teachings} and both were also under the impact 
90 Between Physics and Philosophy, 195. 
210 FELIX KAUFMANN 
of the naturalist-empiricist reaction to these teachings. Each 
of the two men was too penetrating a thinker to ignore the 
strong points in either of the conflicting philosophical trends. 
It is, of course, undeniable that Dewey broke determinedly 
away from the Hegelian tradition and rejected in unambiguous 
terms Kant's apriorism and dualism (as he saw them) j whereas 
Cassirer considers himself as a faithful, though not orthodox, 
follower of Kant, and to some extent, even of Hegel. Quite 
a number of doctrinal differences, which should by no means 
be minimized, can be historically interpreted in terms of this 
split. But we have to ask whether the split goes to the roots, 
whether it leads to opposite theoretical or practical conclusions. 
We might look for a clue to an answer to this question by 
considering the manner in which our two philosophers deal 
with the notions of "development" and "progress." When Cas- 
sirer uses these terms, we are reminded of Aristotle's entelechy 
and self-perfection, of Leibniz' monads, and of Hegel's dia- 
lectical movement of the objective mind. When Dewey uses 
these terms, one is under the spell of Darwin's Origin of 
Species. We know that the effect of this shift in meaning from 
spiritual development to biological evolution can be tremen- 
dous. It is apt to lend support to a transvaluation of traditional 
values and to the irrationalism of a Nietzsche, Pareto, Sorel. 
But we know as well that Dewey is most vigorously opposed to 
these irrationalist tendencies, and shall therefore not conclude 
that an irreconcilable conflict between the two doctrines is 
proved by a pragmatic test. Since we cannot thoroughly under- 
stand diversities unless we are able to grasp the underlying 
identities, we shall start by referring to the common features 
of the two doctrines. 
First of all, they are close to each other in the professed aim 
of their theories of knowledge, which is to clarify the basic 
principles of scientific inquiry. Consequently, they are opposed 
to any interpretation of philosophy, according to which philoso- 
phy could and should "legislate" to science. Moreover, they 
agree that one should rather define "(factual) truth" in terms 
of knowledge, as outcome of inquiry, than knowledge in terms 
of "truth." Both philosophers reject the correspondence theories 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 211 
of truth as proposed by realists and by sensationalists, e.g., 
Bertrand Russell. They endorse a coherence theory of truth, 
where "coherence" is not understood as mere consistency of the 
body of established knowledge, but interpreted in terms of the 
principles of empirical procedure. Linked with this point is 
the conception of inquiry as a process which is guided by a set 
of "postulates." Kant's regulative principles as interpreted by 
the Marburg school, are not very different in function from 
Peirce's and Dewey's leading principles though the latter are 
more flexible and the resemblance between Cassirer's and 
Dewey's reinterpretations of traditional epistemological contro- 
versies in terms of such methodological principles is sometimes 
striking. 
These considerations should suffice for a rejection of the 
view that Cassirer's decidedly idealistic approach is diametric- 
ally opposed to Dewey's decidedly naturalistic approach. As 
a matter of fact, we need not go very far in the study of Dewey's 
work to discover that his naturalism is heavens apart from those 
crude types of naturalism which would "reduce" human ac- 
tivity to behavior of inanimate bodies. I do not see why 
Cassirer should have had to take issue with a naturalism which 
is characterized as follows: 
The term "naturalistic" has many meanings. As it is here employed 
it means, on one side, that there is no breach of continuity between 
operations of inquiry and biological operations and physical operations. 
"Continuity," on the other side, means that rational operations grow 
out of organic activities, without being identical with that from which 
they emerge. 81 
Nor was he bound to have any substantial objections to Dewey's 
outline of the "cultural matrix of inquiry" in the third chapter 
of the Logic (and in earlier works), which might well have led 
to the definition of man as a symbol-making animal, as sug- 
gested by Cassirer. 
Yet there are indeed incisive differences between the two 
doctrines which have direct bearing upon methodological is- 
sues. We shall briefly examine two of them. The first relates 
"Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry^ i8f. 
212 FELIX KAUFMANN 
to the problem of the nature of meanings. While Dewey is not 
an extreme nominalist, he is much closer to nominalism than 
Cassirer, even though Cassirer is as little a conceptual realist 
as was Kant. 32 Dewey treats comprehension of meaning and 
sensation on an almost equal footing. Immediate experience 
of both types is taken to be preliminary} it indicates a problem, 
but it cannot by itself establish knowledge. only in its proper 
setting within the context of empirical inquiry is such experi- 
ence conducive to knowledge. Cassirer would endorse this view 
as far as sensation is concerned. This tenet is indeed as essential 
in his philosophy as it is in Dewey's. But he would not accept 
the view that comprehension of meaning is in a similar sense 
controlled by empirical inquiry as is sensation. He would, 
moreover, insist upon a sharp differentiation between verifies de 
raison and verites de fait, and, accordingly, upon the autonomy 
of pure logic and pure mathematics. 
Although I am in agreement with Cassirer on this issue, I 
think that in another respect Dewey's theory of inquiry is su- 
perior to Cassirer'sj namely, in its analysis of scientific testing. 
one might be tempted to emphasize this point by declaring 
that Cassirer's interpretation of science is static, whereas Dew- 
ey's approach is dynamic. These terms are indeed suggestive of 
an important difference between the two approaches, but they 
should not mislead us into conceiving of Cassirer as an orthodox 
disciple of Parmenides. He realizes as well as any pragmatist 
that scientific inquiry is a potentially endless self-correcting 
process 5 but (like the classical economist) he focuses his atten- 
tion upon states of equilibrium, where the material of avail- 
able perceptual experience is "absorbed" by theoretical systems. 
Dewey, on the other hand, concentrates upon the processes that 
emerge from (particular) states of disequilibrium indeter- 
minate situations and lead to the attainment of new equilib- 
ria (determinate situations). And he deals more thoroughly 
with the conditions of "warranted assertability," with the criteria 
for the distinction between warranted and unwarranted asser- 
tions. 
The analysis of warranted assertability is intimately con- 
18 See $ufra, i89f, 208 f. 
THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 213 
nected with the problem of determining the relation between 
propositional meaning and the criteria of verification of propo- 
sitions (the so-called truth-conditions). Cassirer's discussion, 
in his Erkenntnisproblem, of Kant's criticism of the ontological 
argument gives some hints as to where he stands on this issue; 
but I do not think that it suffices for a full understanding of 
his position. This problem is as actual in contemporary theory 
of knowledge as was the problem of the relation between essence 
and existence in Greek and medieval philosophy j and I would 
even submit that it is a "modern" version of this time-honored 
metaphysical issue. As such it is closely linked with the peren- 
nial problems of matter and form, which are a leitmotif 
throughout Cassirer's work. 
It would be a rewarding task to compare Cassirer's general 
treatment of these problems with their treatment in HusserPs 
phenomenology. But in making such an attempt I should have 
to overstep the boundaries of space allotted to me and the 
limits of my assignment, and I am too well aware of Heraclitus' 
warning to venture this. I shall therefore confine myself to the 
remark that HusserPs approach to the problems of matter and 
form 33 is rather different from Cassirer's approach, which is 
more in line with the classical interpretation of matter as both 
a challenge and an obstacle to the 'forming' activity of the 
mind. 
In the General Introduction to The Library of Living Phi- 
losophers y the editor resumes F. C. S. Schiller's question: "Must 
philosophers disagree?" When one studies Ernst Cassirer's 
work, which sheds a flood of light on different philosophical 
aspects with a view towards synthesizing them, one feels that 
disagreement among philosophers need not persist unabated. 
FELIX KAUFMANN 
GRADUATE FACULTY 
NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH 
88 In the sth and 6th of his Logische Untersuchungen, in the Ideen, in Formale 
und transcendental* Logik, and in Erfahrung und Urteil. 
5 
Dmitry Gawronsky 
CASSIRER'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 
CASSIRER'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 
MO OTHER epistemological problem has caused philoso- 
phers and scientists as great a headache as the application 
of mathematics to the cognition of real things. Mathematics 
and material things seem to belong to two quite different worlds 
mathematical concepts, relations, and laws reveal such an 
absolute precision and necessity, two qualities, these latter, 
which do not exist in the same form in the world of reality. The 
geometrical straight line, for instance, is physically a quite im- 
possible concept: first, because this line consists exclusively of 
one dimension and, not having any thickness, could not be 
represented by any really existing thing; and, secondly, it is 
conceived as a form which has absolutely no curbs or bends, 
and this, again, is a physical impossibility. one could argue 
that the concept of straight line is given us even if not in a 
perfect, then at least in an approximative form by real things, 
for instance by a straight slender stick. Yet, this argument is 
hardly sound; first of all, this slender stick is not just a gift 
of nature, but had been manufactured by man who was guided 
in this job by his idea of a straight line; and, secondly, even if 
by some miracle such a rod could be found in nature, even then 
it could be transformed into an exact mathematical concept only 
through an infinite process of attenuation and straightening, 
whereby the straight line itself, as the limit of this infinite proc- 
ess, would always be present in our mind as a directing and 
controlling prototype. 
The more obvious it becomes that mathematical concepts 
and real things belong to two different spheres, the more diffi- 
cult grows the question: how is it possible that even the subtlest 
and most complicated mathematical relations and laws find 
217 
218 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
their successful application to the world of reality? only two 
directly opposite philosophical tendencies naive empiricism 
and absolute idealism avoid with ease this epistemological 
difficulty; but they both do it at the cost of even greater diffi- 
culties. Empiricism locates the source of mathematical notions 
and conceptions in the sphere of real things, without being able 
to explain satisfactorily their absolute validity and necessity, 
the infinite character of their methods of construction and cal- 
culation. And absolute idealism does exactly the opposite: in 
its mystical belief in the infinite power of human reason, it 
regards all real things as derived in all their qualities and func- 
tions from this reason; it disregards the simple fact that reason 
may be largely instrumental in the understanding of the uni- 
verse. At the same time, the conception that reason "creates" 
the universe is overbearing and ridiculously false. 
Plato's idealism reveals its close connection with Orphism in 
its conception of the Idea as a prototype of which real things 
endeavor to partake; and it discloses the same exaggerated be- 
lief in the power of the human mind in its ethical teaching of 
virtue as the knowledge of good. Yet the revival of Platonism 
in modern times struck deep roots in the realm of exact knowl- 
edge and influenced decisively the founders of exact science: 
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. The problem of knowledge 
ceased to be the concern of pure philosophy only the great 
men of science felt keenly the desire to elucidate this problem 
and to understand the very nature the principles, the methods, 
the attainable goals of the creative work they were doing. 
Exact science, this rewriting of nature in mathematical letters, 
became now a crucial test of man's successful mental conquest of 
nature, and this fact induced Ernst Cassirer to devote a large 
part of his research to this field of human knowledge: only 
in exact science in its progress which, despite all vacillation, 
is continuous does the harmonious concept of knowledge ob- 
tain its true accomplishment and verification; everywhere else 
this concept still remains only a demand." 1 
To this problem the contribution of exact science to epis- 
1 Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosofhie und Wissenschaft 
der neueren Zeit. Vol. I., p. 1 1 . 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 219 
temology Cassirer devoted constant and assiduous study 
throughout his entire life. He first approached the problem 
from the historical point of view he showed how slowly and 
painfully the scientific notion of nature detached itself from 
purely mystical and metaphysical conceptions. Even Coperni- 
cus, who methodically controlled and reversed immediate sen- 
sory impressions by mathematical reasoning and proceeded upon 
the principle "Mathemata mathematicis scribuntur? introduced 
aesthetic motives into his demonstrations and regarded, for in- 
stance, our sun as the center of the entire universe, since no 
other place would be more suitable to its dignity and majestic 
brilliancy. 
It was Leonardo da Vinci who freed exact science from all 
arbitrary elements and waged a systematic battle against all 
attempts to introduce spiritual causes into the explanation of 
physical phenomena. (Only mathematics, every concept and 
law of which is permeated by the spirit of absolute necessity, is 
able to provide us with an adequate basis upon which to build 
our knowledge of nature.) Kepler already had gone so far as 
not only to recognize clearly both sense impressions and intel- 
lectual concepts as fundamental sources of our knowledge of 
nature, but also to emphasize their thorough and organic in- 
terrelation. According to him, perception incites and controls 
our reasoning and is a genuine and reliable beginning of our 
knowledge; but all this only because it contains though in a 
hidden and obscure form elements of intellectual concepts and 
mathematical relations. 
All these basic tendencies were decisively deepened and en- 
larged by Galileo. He, too, recognized sense impressions as a 
fundamental source of our knowledge; yet for him these im- 
pressions did not remain in the realm of individual perceptions 
rather they acquired the form of organically unified experi- 
ence, founded upon and formed by mathematical concepts and 
laws of absolute necessity. Truth is what is organically con- 
nected with the whole of experience, what belongs to this whole 
as a consistent part of it; and the knowledge of any single fact 
is only possible by way of studying its relations to the totality 
of known and established facts. 
220 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
The second generation of great scientists Huyghens, Boyle, 
and Newton showed much less interest in general episte- 
mological problems and tried primarily to purify and clarify 
their experimental methods. They tried to avoid all general 
concepts and theories and they went so far in this direction that 
as Goethe put it "they expressed the clear intention to 
observe natural phenomena as well as their own experiments 
separately, placing them side by side and without making any 
attempt to connect them somehow artificially with one another." 
Yet, continued Goethe, they put a firm trust in mathematics and 
stood in awe before the usefulness of its application to physics 
and thus, "while they tried to be on their guard with ideality, 
they admitted and kept the highest ideality." Those great 
scientists and especially the greatest of them, Newton de- 
veloped their mathematical methods to an amazing degree, 
methods which enabled them meticulously to control their 
experiments and to deduce from them exact and fundamental 
knowledge. Newton's purely mathematical and seemingly quite 
abstract concepts of "absolute" space and time, of force and 
movement, soon became the very foundation of all physical 
science. The basic epistemological problem the application of 
ideal concepts to reality attained, through Newton's pro- 
cedure, such a degree of precision that it soon became the focal 
point of an impassioned and prolonged controversy in which 
Clarke, Leibniz, and Euler played the leading part, and which 
so decisively influenced the young Kant that not only did New- 
ton's system become the very object of his theoretical philoso- 
phy, but Kant even tried to introduce Newton's methods into 
philosophy. 
In the first two volumes of his Erkenntnisproblem in der 
Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit Cassirer de- 
scribed and analyzed, step by step, the historical development 
of the struggle of human thought with this basic epistemologi- 
cal question} the same question lies at the core of his extended 
work, Substanzbegrif und Funktionsbegriff. In this book, how- 
ever, Cassirer's approach to the problem is different here he 
seeks the solution by a subtle analysis and systematic recon- 
struction of the whole complex of epistemological principles 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 221 
and methods. His first step is to show that a logical concept is 
never a simple summing up of qualities common to a certain 
group of similar things} before this summing up can take place 
the human mind must have the ability to establish in its con- 
sciousness such a grouping of similar things. This is done by a 
special mental process of identification which establishes a 
criterion. This process of identification, using any one particular 
as an instance which satisfi.es the conditions set forth by the 
criterion, collects a group of similar particulars, related to one 
another, and bound together by the criterion common to them 
all. The material of our perceptions can be formed and ordered 
in many different ways according to the criterion which is used 
in any single case; every given criterion forms a special series of 
perceptions in which a certain relation among the single ele- 
ments of this series prevails. This relation can be determined 
by the degree of similarity or difference among the successive 
terms of the given series, but it also can be determined by num- 
ber or size, by dimensions of space or time. 
This structure of concept as a succession of terms connected 
with one another by a certain criterion Cassirer named "func- 
tional" concept. Mathematical concepts are all of this kind 
what an integral number is can be understood only if this num- 
ber is regarded as a term within an infinite series where the 
relation of any two contiguous terms is that of n to n + 1 } 
negative, fractional, irrational and even transcendent numbers 
can be defined only as terms of infinite series whose structure is 
determined by certain rules, according to which all terms of 
these series are connected with one another and derived from 
one another. This holds true of all fields of mathematical science 
geometry and algebra, the infinitesimal calculus, quantum 
theory, and so forth. As Georg Cantor once said, mathematics is 
a free science, free in the sense that its concepts are neither de- 
rived from nor limited by the world of real things. Infinity 
is the very soul of mathematical concepts} and the law which 
determines the relation between single terms spreads endlessly 
in all directions and forms a perfectly harmonious system whose 
every term is bound by infinite relations to all other terms of the 
same system. 
222 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
The concepts of mechanics reveal the same nature, the same 
inward structure as the mathematical concepts. Take as ex- 
amples the concepts of velocity as uniform and rectilinear 
motion, of uniform acceleration, of continuous space and of 
mass reduced to a point they all represent ideal constructions 
and criteria determining an infinite succession of forms, which 
can be derived from one another according to a constant rule. 
Yet, all these sharply and exactly formed ideal concepts not 
only help and further our knowledge of real things, but they 
actually constitute the very foundation of this knowledge. In 
order to understand this paradox one must ask himself the 
following question: what exactly is it to which we apply these 
ideal notions? Is it sensations, perceptions, or objects of the 
external world? The philosophy of critical idealism, whose basic 
tendencies Cassirer faithfully espoused and strongly developed 
throughout his life, gives the following answer: the primary 
stuff of our consciousness consists of disconnected, fluctuating, 
chaotic sensations, into which the human mind slowly and 
steadily brings regularity and order by connecting (and bind- 
ing) dispersed sensations and forming them into objects. It 
would be quite wrong to think that there exist two sharply 
separated realms the realm of sensations and the realm of 
objects and that the true goal of our knowledge consists in 
an unequivocal connection of sensations with the corresponding 
objects. The truth is that in the given form these two separated 
realms do not exist at all and that the actual process of our 
knowledge consists in something quite different. Take the 
simplest sensation, and you will find present in it already a 
considerable amount of objective elements. Modern psychology 
teaches us that an infant of six months, not yet able to distin- 
guish separate sensations from one another, is, none the less, 
already able to comprehend the ｅxpressions of his mother's face 
correctly, and consequently feels whether his mother is pleased 
with him or not. on the other hand, take any object, even a 
highly complex and well known one, and you will always find 
that some subjective impressions doggedly stick to it. What 
really and truly is going on in our consciousness is not a grasp- 
ing at objects but a continuous process of objectification the 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 223 
raw material of our sensations is gradually and systematically 
being worked over by the concepts and methods of our mind, 
is being formed and objectified; what we name "objects" are 
in reality nothing else but more or less advanced stages of this 
infinite process of obj edification. A completely finished object, 
one freed of all elements of uncertainty and subjectivity, can 
be given only as the ultimate result of the development of 
science, it is the infinite and final goal of human knowledge. 
And, conversely, our sensations are always, to a greater or 
smaller degree, imbued with elements of objectivity an abso- 
lutely pure sensation is only thinkable as the ultimate result of 
an endless process of subjectification. 
These considerations open the way toward the solution of our 
epistemological problem: the profuse and fruitful application of 
the ideal concepts of mathematics and mechanics to the world 
of real things. Now we can see just what made this problem so 
difficult: the primary separation into two different and inde- 
pendent worlds the world of ideal concepts and the world 
of real things is nothing more than a wrong presumption. 
Take, for instance, sudh a "real thing" as matter which sur- 
rounds us everywhere in such impressive quantities. Greek 
science first thought that matter was continuous substance; then 
it surmised that matter was of atomic structure. And now we 
know that matter is nothing but condensed energy and that this 
energy has miraculously enough an atomic structure! Our 
knowledge of the atomic bomb no matter how real and potent 
its destructive power may be is still only one, and by no means 
the final, stage within the infinite process of objectification; and 
our ideal concepts of mathematics and mechanics are the driving 
forces, which mold and regulate this process, which transform 
our sensations into more and more advanced stages of objectifi- 
cation. The intellect and its ideal concepts from the outset 
perform an organic and absolutely necessary function within 
this process no knowledge of real things would be possible 
without them. 
Guided by this conviction, Cassirer, in his book, Substanz- 
begrif und Funktionsbegrifi, unfolded step by step the syste- 
matic work of objectification performed by natural science and 
224 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
showed the basic importance of some very complicated branches 
of mathematics, including the quantum theory. However, 
strangely enough, not once in this book did he mention the 
theory of relativity, although Einstein's first fundamental 
publication concerning this subject had appeared five years 
earlier and had aroused a truly sensational interest. In 1921, 
two years after Einstein's concept of the curvature of light 
(when it passes through a field of gravitation) was brilliantly 
proved by astronomical observations, Cassirer published a book- 
let on the theory of relativity. Yet even in 1910 Einstein's 
theory was already very much talked of, and that not merely 
in scientific circles, but everywhere and by everyone. Thus, 
there must have been some reasons for Cassirer's silence on 
relativity at that time, which should prove to be of great inter- 
est, if it could be discovered what "precisely" the reasons were. 
In his first publication on the theory of relativity, the famous 
"Elektrodynamik bewegter Systeme," (1905), Einstein, for the 
first time in the history of human thought, put the following 
question in so many words: We all know Newton's definition of 
"absolute, true, and mathematical time;" but in what way can 
this concept be applied to the world of real occurrences? Sup- 
pose, for some special purpose, we have to synchronize three 
watches one in New York, another in San Francisco, and the 
third halfway between them, say in Norfolk, Nebraska. The 
only correct way to do that would be to send, let us say at 12:00 
P.M. sharp, a light signal from Norfolk to the two other cities, 
and when this signal would arrive in each of the two cities, the 
time on their watches should be put at 12:00 P.M. plus one 
hundredth of a second, since it would take the light signal that 
much time to reach those cities. This procedure seems to be 
quite correct and even matter-of-course; yet Einstein proved 
that it was incorrect, since it did not allow for the rotation of 
the earth. In our example the light signal would reach New 
York earlier than San Francisco, since New York would, so 
to speak, move to meet this signal, whereas San Francisco 
would, as it were, run away from it. Thus, concluded Einstein, 
time, within a given system, depends on whether this system 
is moving or not and if it is on the velocity of its movement. 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 225 
In a second example Einstein showed that there is only one 
way to measure the length of a moving object, namely, to use 
light signals and synchronized watches; but, inasmuch as syn- 
chronization of watches depends upon the movement of a given 
system, the length of an object must also depend on this move- 
ment. 
These two examples given by Einstein were so surprisingly 
novel, so impressive, so convincingly true that the attention of 
the scientific world was immediately focused on him. However, 
this was only the beginning $ he also discovered other most in- 
genious and important physical laws, as, for instance, the exact 
correlation between electric and magnetic fields, and, in particu- 
lar, the relation between mass and energy: E = mc 2 ; this 
formula was made so popular by the atomic bomb that one can 
now find it even in newspaper advertisements. The great 
authority of Einstein as a true genius of natural science was, 
thus, firmly and indisputably established. 
And yet: an objective study of the whole complex of Ein- 
stein's theories shows clearly that there is also another side to 
them and that Einstein's case at certain points repeats a phe- 
nomenon which is sometimes met in the history of natural 
science, namely, that a well recognized authority advances a 
theory which is obviously inconsistent and later may even be 
proved wrong. Yet such a theory may nevertheless be immedi- 
ately accepted and, supported as it is by the weighty name of 
its famous originator, it is likely to become a part of accepted 
science. The most striking example of this kind is provided by 
the physics of Aristotle: as late as in the seventeenth century 
the official doctrine in physics accepted Aristotle's thesis that 
the velocity of a falling object is proportional to its weight; 
viz., ten bricks tied together fall ten times faster to the earth 
than a single brick; or that a stone dropped on a moving ship 
from the top of a mast falls not to the base of this mast but 
into the water, an experiment Aristotle allegedly performed 
many times. So great was Aristotle's authority that the physi- 
cians among his followers implicitly believed his assertion that 
the heart is the center of the nervous system. Galileo tells us 
that ^t one time a human body was dissected in the presence 
226 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
of a large group of Aristotelians and the dissection incontro- 
vertibly proved that it is the brain which is the center of the 
nervous system. Thereupon the spokesman of the Aristotelians 
declared: "You gave us such clear and evident proof, that, were 
it not asserted by Aristotle that the nerve-center lies in the 
heart, we would be forced to the admission that you are right." 
Yet, Aristotle is not the only great authority of whom this 
sort of thing is true. Other instances could easily be cited. But 
this is not the place for such however interesting stories. 
Something akin to it we find in some elements of Einstein's 
theory of relativity. Having proved that the necessity of using 
light signals for the measurement of time and space in moving 
systems is bound to influence the results of this measurement, 
Einstein, without reason or explanation, stops following up 
this absolutely correct and revolutionary idea and supersedes 
it by another explanation which is quite wrong: in a moving 
system the time and the length of objects change because the 
movement of a system influences the motion of watch mecha- 
nisms by slowing them down and influences the length of ma- 
terial objects by physically contracting them. This sounds so 
incredible that we must quote Einstein himself. "A balanced 
watch placed on the equator moves by a very small amount 
slower than an exactly identical watch would move under other- 
wise quite identical conditions except that it is placed at the 
pole." 2 In this quotation Einstein does not speak of the watch 
in general, but rather he stresses that it has to be a balanced 
watch. Why? Because, according to Einstein and his most 
famous followers, like, for instance, Max von Laue, only the 
balance wheel (this regulating gear of a watch), is slowed 
down by the velocity of the moving system to which this 
watch belongs. At once the question arises: And how about other 
kinds of timepieces which work without coiling spring and 
balance wheel, for instance, clepsydra or hourglass? Einstein 
did not think of them; yet he did think of the pendulum-clock, 
and therefore added the following words: a balance-watch "in 
* Einstein's "Elektrodynamik bewegter Systeme," reprinted in the Fortschritte der 
mathematmhen Wissenschaften, No. 2, p. 38. (Translation by the present writer.) 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 227 
opposition to a balance-clock which represents from the point 
of view of physics the same system as the terrestrial globe; 
this case has to be excluded," If what Einstein says here is true, 
then there is nothing easier than to avoid all complications by 
simply using pendulum-clocks exclusively, never the balance- 
watches j then the theory of relativity would not be a novel and 
revolutionary conception of time and space, but merely a ques- 
tion of using incorrect or correct technical instruments. Yet 
Einstein's attempt to make his theory dependent on the kind 
of timepieces used is just as strange and contains just as much 
truth as, for instance, the assertion that the validity of non- 
Euclidean geometry depends on the type of glasses a mathema- 
tician wears. 
Einstein's so-called special theory of relativity, the only one 
to which we are here referring, did not introduce any new 
mathematical formula; it was rather an attempt to give a new 
interpretation to the Lorentz-transformation, and the fallacy 
of Einstein's interpretation could not in any way invalidate 
the importance and fruitfulness of the Lorentz-transformation. 
Yet this fallacy of interpretation is the source of all the para- 
doxes and inconsistencies of Einstein's theory. Take, for 
instance, the so-called and very famous at that "paradox 
of the watch" which Einstein later expressed in the following 
drastic form: 
If we could put a living organism into a box and compel it to perform 
the same regular movements as a balance-watch does, then it would be 
possible to achieve that this organism would return to its starting place 
after as long a flight as you like and would not show any changes what- 
soever, whereas quite similar organisms which all this time stayed quietly 
in their place would be superseded by several consecutive generations. 
The long time which this journey lasted was for the moving organism 
not more than one single moment, provided only that it moved approxi- 
mately with the velocity of light. This is an inevitable consequence of 
our fundamental principles imposed upon us by experimental knowledge. 8 
In reading these words one involuntarily thinks of what 
'Einstein, "Die Relativitatstheorie." Vierteljahnschrift der naturforsckenden 
Gesellschaft, Zurich, Vol. 56, p. 12. (Translation by the present writer.) 
228 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
Aristotle said after asserting that a stone, dropped on a moving 
ship from the top of the mast, falls into the water: "This experi- 
ment I performed several times." First of all, Einstein's allega- 
tion completely contradicts Einstein's own "fundamental princi- 
ple" of relativity. According to this principle, movement is 
always relative to some other system, and there is no way of 
ascertaining which of these two systems really moves and which 
is in the state of immobility, or which part of this relative move- 
ment is performed by either of these systems. Yet Einstein's 
example of a moving organism brings back the idea of absolute 
movement: the surviving organism was really in a state of 
motion, whereas the extinct generations were in a state of im- 
mobility. Furthermore, the assertion that time slows down 
under the influence of movement is quite wrong. If one follows 
up Einstein's brilliant example of the synchronization of three 
watches in three different cities, one finds the following phe- 
nomenon: so long as a watch recedes from the observer, the time 
on this watch appears to him as retarded; but the moment this 
watch begins approaching the observer, the time on it appears 
as accelerated in the same degree, and as an ultimate result there 
is absolutely no loss or gain of time. 4 
Truth is always simple, understandable, impressive. This is 
the case with all elements of Einstein's theory which are veri- 
fiably correct. only those elements of Einstein's theory are 
difficult which are basically wrong. The famous originator of 
the quantum theory, Max Planck, once said of the theory of 
relativity: "It is hardly necessary to emphasize that this novel 
conception of time puts the highest demands upon the power 
of imagination of a physicist and upon his ability of abstraction. 
Its boldness surpasses everything which previously had been 
accomplished in the speculative philosophy of nature and even 
in philosophical epistemologyj compared to it, non-Euclidean 
geometry is mere child's play." 5 It certainly was not Einstein's 
intention to enrich the "speculative philosophy of nature" with 
4 See my booklet, "Der fkysikalische Gehalt der speziellen Relattvitatstheorie," 
Stuttgart, Engelhorns. 
8 Max Planck, Acht Vorlesungen iiber theoretische Phy$ik t 1910, p. 117. 
(Translation by the present writer.) 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 229 
his theory ; he is a great physicist, and some parts of his theory 
will probably live forever in the science of men; but the in- 
correct parts of his theory belong nowhere, not even to specula- 
tive philosophy. 
It is most interesting to observe in what manner Cassirer, in 
his booklet, 7,wr Einstein* schen Relativitatstheorie, deals with 
the theory of relativity, this amazing combination of profound 
truths and striking inconsistencies. Cassirer knew Einstein per- 
sonally and, as he tells in the preface to his booklet, showed the 
manuscript to Einstein before having it printed. In the whole 
booklet one does not find one single word of criticism or doubt; 
at the same time, only those elements of Einstein's theory are 
discussed which are undoubtedly fruitful and true. Cassirer 
regards the theory of relativity as one link in the long chain of 
scientific and philosophical development, as an important con- 
stituent in the whole structure of epistemology. He starts with 
the general problem of measuring and shows that it is the first 
step to the objectification of our sensations, their transformation 
into elements of scientific experience. Our methods of measuring 
are always based upon some principles and axioms. one of these 
axioms always was that units of time, length, mass, are quite 
independent of whether they are applied in a moving or a 
motionless system. Einstein showed the incorrectness of this 
axiom by proving that these units themselves depend on the 
velocity of a given system. Cassirer does not at all discuss the 
question: What is the cause of this change? He does not even 
mention Einstein's explanation according to which even uniform 
and rectilinear motion physically affects the mechanism of a 
watch, an explanation which, by the way, directly contradicts 
Galileo's and Newton's principle of inertia. 
In order to explain the crisis into which science was thrown 
by the negative result of Michelson's experiment, let me use 
the following imaginary example: an observer on a highway 
sees an automobile moving with the velocity of a hundred miles 
per hour; at the same time he sees a plane flying in the same 
direction with the velocity of three hundred miles per hour; 
the observer does not doubt for a moment that if the passen- 
gers of the car compared their velocity with the velocity of the 
230 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
plane they would find a difference of two hundred miles. 
How greatly amazed one would be, if he were told that in 
relation to him the plane still flies at the velocity of three 
hundred miles! Einstein's method of solving this difficulty was 
the following: he showed on the examples of synchronization 
of watches and measuring of length within a moving system 
that both operations could be performed only with the help 
of light signals; and then he said (not literally, to be sure): 
You see, our units of time and length are not at all as matter- 
of-course as we used to think of them; they are rather uncertain, 
they change along with the velocity of a given system, and, 
since this is the case, why should we not presuppose that the 
changes these units undergo are just big enough to explain the 
fact that our plane flies relatively both to the highway and to 
the speeding car with the same velocity of three hundred miles? 

one can hardly regard this as a solution to our problem, in- 
asmuch as the problem itself is simply transformed into a sup- 
position. At the same time Einstein's analysis of the problem of 
synchronization contains all the elements of the correct solu- 
tion. Yet, amazingly enough, he did not follow up the novel 
and most promising road he had himself discovered. But this 
method to transform the problem into a supposition Ein- 
stein used once more, when he replaced Newton's law of gravi- 
tation with a slightly different law of a very complicated mathe- 
matical structure. Newton derived his law of gravitation from 
Kepler's third law of planetary motion; this was a simple and 
most convincing demonstration of Newton's law. Einstein's 
procedure was different; he tried to construct a mathematical 
formula which had to satisfy the following conditions: to con- 
tain Newton's formula as first approximation and to produce the 
amount of the perihelion movement of the planet Mercury; it 
was an ad hoc formula, a transformation of a problem into a 
supposition. 
Cassirer does not criticize or reject this procedure; he gives 
a quite adequate description of it and introduces his own analysis 
with the following spirited words of Goethe: "The highest art 
in science and life consists in transforming a problem into a 
postulate; one gets through this way." But Cassirer does not 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 231 
dwell on this subject} whereas Einstein's conception of matter 
as condensed energy, this daring and practically most important 
of his theories, is discussed at great length. Cassirer shows that 
the entire history of physics had been dominated by a peculiar 
dualism in the apprehension of nature. Democritus introduced 
the concepts of the atom and of empty space as the only sources 
of physical reality. In the subsequent centuries this dualism 
transformed itself into the acceptance of pure form concepts 
(like space and time), on the one hand, and of substance con- 
cepts (like matter), on the other. Descartes was the first to 
attempt a unification of these two concept groups} by levelling 
any distinction between them he dissolved, as it were, the sub- 
stance of a physical object into a system of purely geometrical 
relations. Yet Cartesian physics proved to be ineffectual, and 
Newton refuted Descartes 1 physical theories and went back to 
the old dualism of space as a kind of a vessel and of matter as 
substance contained in it. Faraday was the first to bring about 
a new conception of matter, by advancing the theory that matter 
consists of lines of force, that it is nothing but a spot within a 
field of force. This theory stirred up a strong development of 
the so-called "field-physics," which did not accept the existence 
of matter and space as two separate factors, but regarded matter 
as an "offspring of field." Einstein's theory of relativity repre- 
sents the last link within this development} it does not accept 
space, time, matter, and force as independent factors, but re- 
gards the physical world as a four-dimensional multiplicity. 
Along with this new conception of the world another historical 
development has been brought to its conclusion. Leibniz already 
had completely dissolved matter into force, yet he retained a 
distinction between two kinds of forces, "active" and "passive" 
forces. Einstein's theory brings about the ultimate fusion be- 
tween the two fundamental principles of modern physics 
the principle of the conservation of mass and the principle of the 
conservation of energy. The qualitative difference between 
matter and energy disappears entirely. 
This method is typical of Cassirer's treatment of Einstein's 
theory the historical continuity of scientific thought appears 
clearly and convincingly in Cassirer's argumentation. The prin- 
232 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
ciples of physics introduced by Galileo and further developed 
by Newton are only confirmed and enlarged in the theory of 
relativity. And since Cassirer, with his keen sense of con- 
sistency and exactness of scientific truth, concentrated his atten- 
tion only on those elements of Einstein's theory which are 
correct and fruitful, Cassirer acquitted himself of this task most 
brilliantly. He does not mention with even one single word 
Einstein's assertion that uniform and rectilinear movement 
influences a watch mechanism and slows it down, or that this 
movement keeps a living organism indefinitely alive, or that 
there is a basic difference between a balance-watch and pendu- 
lum-clock. only one of Einstein's assertions is casually men- 
tioned by Cassirer, despite the fact that it definitely belongs 
to the group of erroneous elements within Einstein's theory. 
I am referring to Einstein's assertion (repeated several times 
by himself, and many thousands of times by his followers) that 
Euclidean geometry loses its validity within a system which is 
in a state of motion, even of uniform and rectilinear motion. 
Take, for instance, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to 
its diameter (pi); it changes its value within such a moving 
system, it becomes smaller, according to Einstein. Why? The 
reason, says Einstein, is quite simple. If you have a rotating 
disk, then, since all moving objects become shorter in the di- 
rection of their movement, the circumference of this disk will 
be smaller than the circumference of the same disk in the state 
of immobility, and the corresponding ratio will drop below pi. 
This whole argument is entirely wrong $ and the fact that so 
many earnest scientists willingly accepted it is very strange 
indeed. This is such a striking example of mass-suggestion (not 
to say gullibility) in the field of "exact" ( ! ) science that it is 
worth while to dwell a bit more upon this subject. 
In order to prove that moving objects become shorter in the 
direction of their movement, Einstein invented a very ingenious 
example which, when adapted to American geography, might 
take the following form: suppose that an immensely long air- 
ship of approximately 3000 miles in length is flying in west- 
east direction over American territory, with one end over San 
Francisco and the other end over New York, just at the moment 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 233 
when we are trying to find out the precise length of this air- 
ship. There is only one way to do that, namely, to notice, at 
precisely the same moment, both ends of the airship, one in 
San Francisco and the other in New York, and then figure out 
the distance between these markings. For this purpose we must 
have perfectly synchronized watches placed in both cities. Yet 
this is impossible, as we have already seen the watch in San 
Francisco will be slower than the watch in New York; there- 
fore we shall be marking the rear end of the airship later than 
the front end, and the airship will consequently appear to us 
to be shortened. Very well. But now suppose that two airships 
move simultaneously, but in opposite directions is it not abso- 
lutely clear that in this case the second ship will appear longer 
in exact proportion as the first ship will appear shorter? Thus, 
if you take a rotating disk, you will have to admit by the same 
reasoning that, since the two halves of its circumference always 
move in opposite direction, one half shortens in exactly the same 
proportion in which the other half lengthens 5 the effect of 
rotation is neutralized, pi remains absolutely unchanged, and 
there is no reason whatsoever to dethrone Euclidean geometry 
on this illusory ground. 
During the last years of his stay in Germany Cassirer devoted 
increasingly more time to the study of the quantum theory, and 
when, in the spring of 1933, he decided to leave Germany, he 
went to Switzerland and there he wrote the first draft of his 
Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Phystk. 
This book was his last major contribution to epistemology and 
to the philosophy of natural science. The subsequent years of 
his life, with their frequent peregrinations and changes of place 
of activity, deprived him to some degree of the steady tran- 
quillity which was so favorable to his assiduous work. Besides, 
the new social phenomenon which suddenly appeared on the 
stage of history and at once began threatening the future of 
mankind totalitarianism based upon and supported by the 
fanaticism of deceived masses moved Cassirer to transfer the 
center of gravity of his studies to the problems of social science. 
Quantum theory and the theory of relativity are the two 
outstanding: achievements of theoretical phvsics in the last half- 
234 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
century. Yet, how different was their ultimate fate! Max Planck 
was compelled to advance his incredible and almost incompre- 
hensible conception that energy has a discontinuous structure 
and consists of elementary quanta, of which all other amounts of 
energy are multiples, since otherwise it was impossible to ex- 
plain the peculiar and quite "unclassical" manner in which 
energy is radiated by a black body. From the outset it was 
obvious that here a perfectly new and truly revolutionary 
principle was being introduced into physics. Yet Planck tried 
by every means to retain the continuity of scientific thought and 
was only willing to admit the quite "inevitable deviation from 
the laws of electrodynamics in the smallest possible degree. 
Therefore, as far as it concerns the influence of a radiation field 
upon an oscillator, we go hand in hand with the classical 
theory." 6 Which means that Planck, although accepting energy 
quanta for the radiation, still retained the point of view of 
classical physics upon the absorption of energy by an oscillator. 
From the very beginning Planck based his theory strictly upon 
experience and experiment, and his hypothesis, despite its 
breath-taking character, advanced therefore from one great 
triumph to another, never meeting with any serious opposition. 
The road of the theory of relativity was quite different. Ein- 
stein made a great discovery by recognizing the decisive role 
the light signals play in the measuring of time and space ; this 
discovery was in perfect harmony with the Galileo-Newtonian 
mechanics} it was a correct and most important materialization 
of their general concepts of time and space. Yet, instead of con- 
tinuing this line of development, he made a quite inconsistent 
and "anti-classical" supposition to the effect that uniform and 
rectilinear motion influence the mechanism of a balance-watch. 
This was a violent and quite unwarranted break with classical 
mechanics. And the paradoxes involved in the suppositions of 
a living organism surviving in a fraction of a second several 
consecutive generations of its kind, or of a rotating disk invali- 
dating Euclidean geometry, helped to create such an unsound 
9 Max Planck, Vorlesungen iiber die Theorie der W armestrahlung y 3rd Ed. p. 
148. Quotation taken from Cassirer's book, p. 136 (Translation by the present 
writer) . 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 235 
sensation around this theory that it slowly became even a 
political issue the reactionaries were against it because of Ein- 
stein's Jewish lineage, and the communists were for it because 
of the "revolutionary spirit" of this theory. A line of cleavage 
in the field of science which is nothing short of scandalous. But 
now back to Cassirer's book, Determinismus und Indeter- 
minismus. 
Cassirer's first step consists in the analyzing of the factual 
procedure of physics, of the concrete way in which it achieves 
its knowledge of nature. He distinguishes three different forms 
of assertion within the physical sciences, three basically differ- 
ent stages on the way towards the obj edification of our "world 
of sense" into the "world of physics." The first form of physi- 
cal assertions Cassirer calls "judgments concerning measure- 
ment" the data of our perceptions are gradually transformed, 
with the aid of concepts of measurement and of number, into 
more and more objectified assertions. The sensibility of our 
organs of perception is superseded by the sensibility of our 
physical instruments. In this way the material of our knowl- 
edge has increased tremendously and the horizon of reality has 
been widened in all directions. This enriched material of our 
experience becomes the basis for the next step, for its unifica- 
tion and systematization with the help of natural laws; Cassirer 
called this stage of objectification "assertions about laws." These 
laws combine smaller or larger groups of facts into one single 
formula. Yet our science does not stop here} it is not satisfied 
with unification of innumerable facts through a limited system 
of lawsj it constantly explores the possibility of unifying these 
laws, of connecting them with one another and sometimes de- 
riving them from one another. This endeavor characterizes the 
third stage of objectification which Cassirer calls "assertions of 
principles." Thus, D'Alembert's "principle of virtual displace- 
ment" made possible the unification of statics and dynamics 
under one and the same system of mechanical laws; and the 
principle of conservation of energy builds bridges connecting all 
branches of physics. 
Yet human thought does not confine itself to these three 
stages of physical knowledge it belongs to the very essence of 
236 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
the human mind to continue the search for ever more and more 
general laws and principles, and it finds such in the systems of 
mathematical, logical, and epistemological concepts. The law of 
causation belongs to the system of epistemological concepts; it 
does not contain any assertion about this or that special occur- 
rence in nature; it only asserts the thorough and consistent uni- 
formity of all natural events and of nature as a whole. Every 
single law of nature may some day turn out to be incorrect, even 
the sunrise in the morning; yet, even if this event should occur, 
one thing will be absolutely certain: there will be some cause 
for that event. Without this law of causation no natural laws, 
and, therefore, no human knowledge is possible. 
The law of causation was always regarded as the main pillar 
of the classical physics. But when the development of the 
quantum theory convincingly revealed its fundamental differ- 
ence from the classical physics, there appeared a tendency within 
this theory to break even with causality and to replace the classi- 
cal determinism with a modernized form of indeterminism. 
This attack upon the law of causation has been launched by 
some physicists mainly from the following point of view: the 
first point of view is based upon a statistical interpretation of 
quantum theory it operates only with immense numbers of 
elementary particles of electricity and denies the possibility of a 
precise description of the conditions of single elements within 
a given system; only laws of probability can be applied to such 
systems, only statistical results can be obtained by these laws 
there remains, therefore, no place for causation within these 
systems. It is with ease that Cassirer uncovers the fallacy of this 
point of view. Statistical results, he points out, very often have 
the character of strict necessity; the only condition being that 
they must not be arbitrary or incoherent, but based upon laws. 
The kinetic theory of gases is the best example of how statistical 
methods and laws of probability lead to strict uniformity and, 
therefore, to a complete vindication of the law of causation. 
The second point of view which has led to the denial of 
causality is more radical, even if not so well founded. This 
attack is led by the well-known physicist and Nobel prize- 
winner Heisenberg and is based upon his principle of "uncer- 
EPISTEMOLOGY OF PHYSICS 237 
tainty" or "indeterminacy." All elements of physical observa- 
tion and experiment are given to us, says Heisenberg, not in the 
form of absolutely exact knowledge, not as Kantian trans- 
cendent "things-in-themselves" rather they are the results of 
our instruments of measurement and depend strictly on the 
delicacy of these instruments. But this quite matter-of-course 
fact leads us within the quantum theory to the following 'pe- 
culiar paradox: suppose that an observer has the task of deter- 
mining exactly the position and the velocity of an electron; in 
order to do that he must irradiate this electron and put it under 
a microscope 5 the experiment shows that the shorter the waves 
of light are which we use for this irradiation the more exactly 
can the position of this electron be determined ; but at the same 
time the electron, as a result of the "Compton-effect," changes 
its velocity, and this change is the greater the shorter are the 
waves of the irradiating light. Thus, concludes Heisenberg, it 
is quite impossible simultaneously to perform an exact measure- 
ment of both the position and the velocity of an electron, since 
the more exact one measurement is the more uncertain the other 
one becomes. Heisenberg's conclusion is: "Thus quantum me- 
chanics has definitely established the worthlessness of the law of 
causation." 
It is almost incredible how many serious scientists have been 
influenced by this conception of Heisenberg's. A new wave of 
mass-suggestion was on the verge of submerging a large num- 
ber of physicists people who by the very virtue of their pro- 
fession should be fairly rational. Cassirer's attempt to combat 
this contemporary aberration in science was quite timely, there- 
fore. His method of demonstrating the erroneousness of Hei- 
senberg's deduction was as simple as it was convincing. He 
showed that Heisenberg, in order to demonstrate his "principle 
of indeterminacy," at every step applied the very same law of 
causation which he tried to disprove with the help of these 
"uncertainty relations." Take, for example, the "Compton- 
effect," upon which Heisenberg's demonstration rests; the im- 
pact between light quanta and electrons makes an application 
of the law of causation and yields experimental results strictly 
in accordance with this law. 
238 DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
Cassirer died less than four months before the first explosion 
of the atomic bomb proved to the entire civilized world the 
great danger which lies in the mere development of exact 
science: it releases forces too powerful to be controlled j it makes 
man so powerful that the very existence of mankind appears to 
be endangered. This dark prospect reminds us of the philo- 
sophical thesis Cassirer defended and developed all his life 
that scientific progress is only beneficial for man in so far as it is 
supported and guided by equally as vigorous progress of man's 
ethical, spiritual, cultural, and social life. 
DIMITRY GAWRONSKY 
NEW YORK CITY 
6 
Harold R. Smart 
CASSIRER'S THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL 
CONCEPTS 
CASSIRER'S THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL 
CONCEPTS 
IN AN important article in Kantstudien (XII, 1907), en- 
titled "Kant und die moderne Mathematik," Cassirer 
makes an assertion which throws much light on his theory of 
mathematical concepts. He declares that "it cannot be denied 
that c Logistik' [i.e., symbolic or mathematical logic] has revivi- 
fied formal logic, and . . . nourished it anew with the life blood 
of science." And this development, he continues, is of great sig- 
nificance with respect to Kantian doctrines. Although it is cer- 
tainly true that symbolic logic "can never supplant or replace 
'transcendental' logic," it is equally certain that formal logic 
as thus rejuvenated "offers more pregnant suggestions and 
affords more trustworthy 'guiding threads' than Kant possessed 
in the traditional logic of his time." 
This statement clearly foreshadows one of the principal 
tasks Cassirer set himself early in his career, which he has 
attempted to carry through by means of his profound and criti- 
cal study of the history of mathematics in its relations both with 
philosophy and with the other sciences, from the earliest times 
down to the immediate present. That it is a truly formidable 
undertaking thus to seek to preserve and reinterpret the tran- 
scendental logic of Kant in such a way as finally to bring it into 
good and fruitful accord with recent tendencies in formal sym- 
bolic logic and mathematics, will readily be admitted. Indeed, 
it is not going too far to say that most authorities would at the 
very outset declare that purpose to be one which could not 
possibly be realized 5 so far apart are Kantian doctrines at 
least as usually presented and those of most contemporary 
logicians and mathematicians, that, like oil and water, they 
simply cannot be made to mix. 
241 
242 HAROLD R. SMART 
Did not Kant firmly declare that concepts without percepts 
are empty ; was it not his settled doctrine that mathematical 
judgments are synthetic a priori; did he not maintain, at least 
in the "transcendental aesthetic," that mathematics is possible 
as a science only because space and time are pure forms of intui- 
tion or pure intuitions} was it not in particular his thesis that 
mathematical inference proceeds by means of Constructions' 
which must be either directly intuitable in actual space, or 
clearly imaginable? Taking these and kindred doctrines into 
account, is it not the consensus of authoritative commentators 
that Kant deceived himself both in underestimating the revo- 
lutionary character of his contributions to logic, and in cherish- 
ing the belief that the validity of the main tenets of formal 
logic was unimpaired thereby? And finally, do not contempo- 
rary symbolic logicians and mathematicians, with one unani- 
mous voice, sharply oppose every one of those typical Kantian 
doctrines and assertions? 
Initially improbable though success in such a venture might 
seem, however, Cassirer does not shrink from facing coura- 
geously all of the tremendous difficulties it involves; and what- 
ever may be one's final judgment in the matter, all hands will 
readily agree that, quite apart from his success or failure in this 
particular regard, his own positive doctrines stand forth as of 
intrinsic worth on their own account. It soon becomes clear, 
indeed, to Cassirer's readers, that one has to do with no slavish 
disciple of any of the traditional lines of thought. The historical 
and critical studies so assiduously pursued are by no means 
ends in themselves, but serve rather as most carefully selected 
source material for constructive philosophical undertakings of 
the most significant and original sort. Such being the case, it is 
to be expected that the materials supplied in this way will be 
handled with the greatest freedom and boldness, and that, as 
finally presented, Cassirer's doctrines will frequently diverge 
more or less widely from their anterior sources of inspiration. 
Take, for example, the concept of number the concept 
which Cassirer significantly declares to be not merely basic to 
the special science of mathematics but "the first and truest 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 243 
ｅxpression of rational method in general." 1 Although critics 
frequently charge Kant with basing this concept upon the pure 
intuition of time, this is true, so Cassirer avers, only in so far as 
time appears as "the type of ordered sequence" as such. In 
Kant's own words, 
the pure image ... of all objects of the senses in general is time. But the 
pure schema of quantity, in so far as it is a concept of the understanding, 
is number, a representation which combines the successive addition of one 
to one (homogeneous). Thus number is nothing but the unity of the 
synthesis of the manifold of a homogeneous intuition in general a 
unity due to the fact that I generate time itself in the apprehension of 
the intuition. 2 
As Cassirer sees it, however, further development of this 
doctrine has followed two very different directions, the one 
emphasizing the active 'understanding' and the process of 
creative synthesis, the other stressing the passive 'sensibility' 
and irrational intuition. 
The latter alternative is that adopted, for example, by most 
varieties of empiricism, and by intuitionism, and it naturally 
conforms best to the traditional formal logic of the generic 
concept i.e., the logic which regards the concept as a common 
element abstracted from a class of particulars. 8 Against all three 
of these lines of thought empiricism, intuitionism, and the 
subject-predicate logic Cassirer brings to bear a devastating 
criticism, supported by profuse historical evidence. These his- 
torical and epistemological studies demonstrate convincingly 
that in terms of no one, nor of any combination of the three, 
can Kant's question as to the 'possibility' of the science of pure 
mathematics be answered at all satisfactorily. 
There remains, then, for further consideration, what Cassirer 
regards as the only other genuine alternative, namely the 
postulation of the creative synthesis of the pure understanding 
1 Substance and Function, Eng. transl., 26. 
8 Translation quoted from N. Kemp Smith's Commentary to Kant's Critique of 
Pure Reason^ 2nd ed., 129. Cassirer makes a similar gloss on Kant's notion of space 
with reference to geometry. 
3 Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Ch. Ill, 402!. 
244 HAROLD R. SMART 
as the absolutely essential epistemological and logical prius, 
upon which the possibility of number in particular and of 
mathematics in general must depend. In Kantian language, the 
synthetic activity of knowing is a process of generating relations 
i.e., to know is to relate} and to relate, so Cassirer continues, 
is to introduce order into a 'manifold' or series; and serial order, 
in this precise sense of the word, finds its first and fundamental 
ｅxpression in the series of ordinal numbers. Logical or critical 
idealism maintains, in short, that there is nothing more ultimate 
for thought than thinking itself, and thinking consists essen- 
tially in the positing of relations (das Beziehungssetzen). 
From this point of view, Cassirer declares, "number appears 
not merely as a production of pure thought, but actually as its 
prototype and origin ... as the primary and original act of 
thought, " which all further scientific and logical thinking 
presupposes. 4 In this pregnant sense of the word, number is, 
indeed, the "schema" of serial order in general, the "ideal 
axis," so to speak, about which thought organizes its world. 
Pythagoreanism erred only in its too enthusiastic identification 
of number with the whole truth, with the entire system of ideal 
relations constitutive of reality. only "after we have conceived 
the plan of this system in a general logical theory of rela- 
tions," whereby the members of a series may be variously 
ordered for example, "according to equality and inequality, 
number and magnitude, spatial and temporal relations, . . . 
causal dependence," and the like can we ascribe to the several 
sciences their true epistemological import as so many progres- 
sively successful applications of this logical theory to the data 
of experience. 5 
In further elucidation and development of this thesis 
which is perhaps more accurately and directly anticipated by 
the Cartesian-Leibnizian theory of a mathesls universalis than 
it is by the Kantian transcendental logic Cassirer refers, on 
the one hand, to the so-called calculus of relations as recently 
worked out by the symbolic logicians, and, on the other hand, 
to the relevant stages in the origination and subsequent history 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 245 
of such basic mathematical concepts as those of number and 
space. 
The main purpose of the critical study of the history of 
mathematics is to illustrate and confirm the special thesis that 
ordinal number is logically prior to cardinal number, and, more 
generally, that mathematics may be defined, in Leibnizian 
fashion, as the science of order, Cassirer's readers do not need 
to be told how impressive in both amount and quality is the 
historical evidence he adduces in support of these tenets, nor 
how great is the skill with which he marshalls his interpretative 
expositions to the same end. 
As Cassirer is no doubt well aware, however, other authori- 
ties, among them some as critical of mere empiricism as he him- 
self is, differ sharply with this interpretation of the same 
historical data, and at least two other plausible alternatives have 
been ably presented, namely the exactly opposite thesis that 
cardinal number is logically prior to ordinals, and the perhaps 
even more inviting thesis that cardinal and ordinal are strictly 
complementary aspects of number, neither of which can claim 
priority over the other. Thus it seems rather unwise to place 
too much confidence in any one interpretation, unless indeed 
weighty evidence of another sort can be marshalled in support 
of one of the three, which cannot be matched in favor of either 
or both of the others. 
And of what sort can such evidence be? Not of any epistemo- 
logical variety, it would seemj for to ground an historical 
interpretation on an epistemological theory, and then to claim 
that the interpretation confirms the theory, is hardly justifiable 
at the bar of logic. As for the logical evidence, Cassirer himself 
concedes that order "does not exhaust the whole content of the 
concept of number. )>tt A "new aspect," he declares, "appears as 
soon as number, which has hitherto been deduced as a purely 
logical sequence of intellectual constructs, is understood and 
applied as an ｅxpression of flwratity" 
But when the question almost asks itself is it not so 
understood and applied? Certainly many unbiassed witnesses 
are prepared to answer, in no uncertain voice, that it functions 
6 Substance and Function, 41. 
246 HAROLD R. SMART 
in this sense from the very beginning. Nay, testimony on this 
point is well-nigh universal to the effect that 'in the beginning' 
was simple counting, a process resting directly on the concept 
of cardinal number. And, as far as contemporary logic is con- 
cerned, an able expositor of the doctrines of Principa Mathe- 
matica explains, in terms exactly matching those used by 
Cassirer, but having a precisely opposite import, that "two 
important concepts" essential to the formation of the series of 
ordinal numbers, namely 'o 5 and 'successor,' "introduce a new 
idea not used in the definition of cardinal number, namely the 
idea that the cardinal numbers form a discrete series of next 
successors beginning with o." 7 
These comments are not offered, however, as by any means 
indicating a complete refutation of Cassirer's doctrines, but 
rather merely to reveal the diversity of views prevailing on 
this matter. Epistemological theories apart, it is tacitly admitted 
by all hands that cardinal and ordinal actually function, mathe- 
matically, as complementary to each other. In any event, 
Cassirer relies more heavily upon the aforementioned calculus 
of relations, than he does upon the historical evidence, in direct 
and positive support of his theory of the formation of mathe- 
matical concepts. For it is by means of this calculus, so he avers, 
that number can indeed be "deduced as a purely logical se- 
quence of intellectual constructs." More specifically, in the 
classification of relations into transitive, intransitive, symmetri- 
cal, asymmetrical, and so on, Cassirer sees, ready to hand as it 
were, the perfect instrumentality whereby "the more exact 
definition of what we are to understand as the order of a given 
whole" is to be attained. Prior to this development the basic 
thesis of critical idealism, namely that thinking consists in the 
positing or generating of relations, appeared as a bare epistemo- 
logical postulate, illustrated, and even, if you please, in a sense 
confirmed by the history of scientific thought, but all the while 
lacking its fundamental logical articulation, its systematic expo- 
sition and confirmation. In particular, to Bertrand Russell and 
his colleagues Cassirer gratefully attributes the epochal dis- 
T Eaton, General Logic, 468. 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 247 
covery "that it is always some transitive and asymmetrical rela- 
tion that is necessary to imprint on the members of a whole a 
determinate order." 8 
From this point of view, numbers ordinal numbers, that is 
stand forth as "a system of ideal objects whose whole content 
is exhausted in their mutual relations." In such a system, 
Cassirer maintains, the 'what' of the elements is disregarded, 
and merely the 'how' of a certain progressive connection is 
taken into account. Here, in short, is 
a general procedure which is of decisive significance for the whole for- 
mation of mathematical concepts. For whenever a system of conditions 
is given that can be realized in different contents, then we can hold to 
the form of the system itself as invariant, undisturbed by the difference 
of contents, and develop its laws deductively. 9 
This state of affairs is as clearly evident in geometry as it 
is in the science of number. Mathematical space may be defined, 
in Leibnizian terminology, as an "order of coexistence." Geo- 
metricians may still talk of points, straight lines, and planes 5 
but in the course of time these familiar objects have become 
divested of all intuitive content, and all connection between 
these elements is developed deductively from purely con- 
ceptual definitions. The relation expressed by the word 'be- 
tween,' for example, though seemingly possessing an irreducible 
sensuous connotation, has nevertheless been freed from this 
narrow restriction, and is now determined, mathematically, 
solely by means of definite logical prescriptions, which alone 
endow it with the meaning it possesses in the deductive pro- 
cedure of mathematics. In other words, according to Cassirer, 
it is always and everywhere "the relational structure as such," 
rather than any absolute properties of the elements entering 
into the structure, which constitutes the real 'object' of mathe- 
matical investigation. The particular elements entering into 
any deductive complex of relations, 
are not viewed according to what they are in and for themselves, but 
* Substance and Function, 38. 
9 
248 HAROLD R. SMART 
simply as examples of a certain universal form of order and connection; 
mathematics . . . recognizes in them no other 'being' than that belonging 
to them by participation in this form. For it is only this being that enters 
into proof, into the process of inference, and is thus accessible to the full 
certainty, that mathematics gives its objects. 10 
Thus the fundamental work of the science does not con- 
sist, for example, in comparing, dividing, and compounding 
specific given magnitudes, but rather "in isolating the generat- 
ing relations themselves, upon which all possible determination 
of magnitude rests, and in determining the mutual connection 
of these relations." Although it may be true, psychologically 
speaking, that the meaning of a relation can only be grasped 
by means of some given terms which thus serve as its material 
basis, still (Cassirer insists) the logical import of the relation 
is wholly independent of any such origin, and is the resultant 
of a purely rational and deductive procedure. To put the point 
in terminology long since familiar to British and American 
philosophers, Cassirer apparently concurs in the doctrine that 
relations are prior to, and independent of, or 'external* to 
their terms. 

on the logical plane, therefore, it seems that Cassirer simply 
appropriates for his own purposes and construes in his own 
fashion that special portion of formal symbolic logic having to 
do with relations, in abstraction from other branches of the 
subject, towards which, indeed, he manifests, on occasion, 
considerable opposition. With respect to this state of affairs the 
following points naturally suggest themselves for discussion. 
The first of these points, put in the form of a question, is: 
What becomes of Kant's doctrine of the categories, in the light 
of the significance Cassirer attaches to the calculus of relations? 
Partly by explicit statement, partly by plain implication, the 
answer is that that doctrine is completely nullified. For, as a 
little reflection will suffice to show, it is quite impossible to 
reconcile the basic thesis of Kant's transcendental logic that the 
categories are functional forms of relationship immanent in 
scientific knowledge as embodied in synthetic judgments, with 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 249 
the thesis advanced by Cassirer that the "generating relations" 
productive of "serial order" are logically prior to, and inde- 
pendent of their terms, and purely ideal in nature. This is, in 
short, entirely to abandon the Kantian conception of the a priori, 
and to revert, instead, to that of Leibniz. 
Now it would be a natural though a serious error to assume 
that this point concerns only students of Kant and Leibniz, and 
that it is without intrinsic importance for anyone who is simply 
trying to understand contemporary mathematics. For to follow 
Cassirer in this respect is definitely to play into the hands of 
those formalists who see in mathematics not a genuine science 
among others, but a mere extension and elaboration of formal 
logic is to rededicate oneself to that very abstract rationalism 
which Kant did so much to overthrow. In fact, it almost seems 
as if preoccupation with the sins and omissions of a one-sided 
empiricism had induced Cassirer, against his own better judg- 
ment, to adopt the opposite extreme, even in the face of Kant's 
convincing demonstration that such a one-sided rationalism is 
just as untenable. 
This interpretation of Cassirer's position gains further con- 
firmation by a closer examination of his attitude of acceptance 
towards the calculus of relations. In view of his just and pene- 
trating criticism of other parts and aspects of the doctrines of the 
symbolic logicians (to be touched upon later in this essay), his 
exemption of this particular calculus from the force of those 
criticisms can only be explained as due to certain inherently 
formalistic tendencies in his own thought. That is to say, it is 
not, in the last analysis, with abstract formalism in logic and 
mathematics as such, but rather merely with certain specific 
features and portions of that formalism, that Cassirer finds him- 
self in disagreement. Otherwise he would readily perceive, for 
example, that, since the calculus of relations is in many essential 
respects strictly analogous to the calculus of classes a fact to 
which attention is explicitly called by the highest authorities 
the charge of circularity which he so acutely brings against this 
latter calculus also applies, mutatis mutandis^ to the former. If 
the derivation of cardinal numbers from classes be condemned 
as circular reasoning, then, for strictly analogous reasons, the 
250 HAROLD R. SMART 
derivation of ordinal numbers from relations must be circular 
also; and if, on the contrary, the latter can be successfully de- 
fended against such a charge, then, again for strictly analogous 
reasons, so can the former. 11 Since, however, Cassirer simply 
contents himself with laying down the general thesis, and no- 
where undertakes such an explicit derivation on his own account, 
it is impossible to justify this contention further by a critical 
study of details. 
What still further complicates matters here, and beclouds 
the specific issue in question, is the fact that Cassirer envisages 
the issue as one ultimately involving a conflict between "the 
logic of the generic (or class) concept" and "the logic of the 
relational concept." As he sees it, "if the attempt to derive the 
concept of number from that of a class were successful, the 
traditional form of logic would gain a new source of confirma- 
tion. The ordering of individuals into the hierarchy of species 
would be, now as before, the true goal of all knowledge. . . ," 12 
But surely this antithesis between the two species of concepts 
is not as definitive as the preceding statement implies. As good 
a historian of science as Cassirer does not need to be told of the 
inherently important, if largely subsidiary, role which classifi- 
cation as a matter of fact does play, even in such an abstract 
science as mathematics. Granting that "the ordering of indi- 
viduals into the hierarchy of species" is not the "true goal" of 
any science, still it is quite impossible to deny that classification 
does represent a most useful and perfectly legitimate scientific 
procedure, or that it is explicitly recognized as such by scientists 
and logicians. If 'to relate/ in the widest possible sense of the 
word, be taken to mean what Kant meant by it, namely, not 
merely to establish order in a series, but, more generally, 'to 
organize into a system,' then may not a class be construed as a 
rudimentary kind of a system, and may not classification itself 
be looked upon as a kind of relating? For that matter, no small 
part of the business of the very calculus of relations itself con- 
sists in classifying relations into a hierarchy, and determining 
11 See, on this whole question, the illuminating discussion, in Ch. V, of Lewis 
and Langford's Symbolic Logic. 
12 Substance and Function^ 53. 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 251 
the differentiae of the various species and sub-species of re- 
lations. Thus little indeed would be left of the calculus, if the 
'logic of the generic concept' were to be rejected as entirely 
unsound. 
In view of such considerations, Cassirer will find many sup- 
porters for his strictures on the logic of the generic concept who 
will yet not feel inclined to follow him all the way in denying 
to it any epistemological value whatsoever and thus leaving the 
logic of the relational concept in sole possession of the field. 
But for students of Kant there is a still more fundamental con- 
sideration which may appropriately be emphasized here. 
From a strictly Kantian point of view, as Norman Kemp 
Smith well points out, 18 generic and relational concepts, as here 
defined, both refer to a distinction, not in the form, but in the 
specific content of knowledge. Just as a generic concept (or 
universal) expresses a common quality or qualities to be ascribed 
to each distinguishable element of a nexus of complex contents, 
so a relational concept (or universal) expresses relationships 
specified as holding amongst the elements severally. A category, 
on the other hand, is not a content of any sort, or any aspect of 
a content, but a general form of organization, a "function of 
unity," whereby contents are related in the judgment. No 
superficial verbal similarity turning upon the common use of the 
term 'relation' should be allowed to conceal the fact that Kant 
and the symbolic logicians are concerned with two vastly dif- 
ferent matters, nor that their basic logical doctrines are ftinda- 
mentally opposed in principle. The problems Kant wrestled 
with in his transcendental logic are in large part simply ignored 
by the symbolic logicians, or handed over to epistemology} 
whereas what the symbolic logicians regard as basic logical 
problems could scarcely have appeared in that light to Kant. 
Precisely in this connection, however, a fundamental episte- 
mological antithesis or antinomy appears between the doctrines 
of orthodox symbolic logicians and Cassirer's critical idealism. 
For precisely at this point certain other Kantian influences make 
themselves most strongly felt and give rise both to a criticism of 
epistemological theories of the Russellian type, as well as to the 
** Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 38, 178. 
252 HAROLD R. SMART 
application and development of an epistemology on Leibnizian 
and Kantian lines. Not only does Cassirer call attention to the 
circularity inevitably involved in the attempt to derive cardinal 
number from the concept of a class, 14 but he also stoutly insists 
quite in the spirit of Kant, and in complete opposition to more 
fashionable contemporary tenets on the synthetic character of 
mathematical propositions or judgments. In the article already 
drawn upon, "Kant und die moderne Mathematik," Cassirer 
explains that by synthetic he means, (a) not reducible to that 
species of subject-predicate propositions, in which the predicate 
merely explicates the meaning of the subject term; (b) not 
deducible from the mere formal laws of thought; and (c) the 
functional relationship in which mathematical propositions 
stand to empirical phenomena, and, lacking which, mathematical 
concepts would be nothing better than hollow fictions. 
Since points (a) and (b) are now conceded by everyone, their 
mere mention seems sufficient here; but point (c) is a different 
matter. After the most elaborate epistemological tour de force 
by which Russell and his collaborators seek to convince them- 
selves and others that, although their absolutely basic "atomic 
propositions" admittedly stem directly from sense experience, 
nevertheless the world of logic and mathematics, as such, in its 
unsullied purity, is a transcendent realm, they can only account 
it a "lucky accident," which might just as well have been other- 
wise, that the propositions of logic and mathematics apply to the 
realm of physical phenomena. In other words, the two realms 
having been severed so completely by those thinkers, Cassirer 
points out that it is actually an epistemological and logical im- 
possibility to establish any real connection between them. As 
Cassirer sees it, on the other hand, the objectivity of scientific 
knowledge of phenomena is guaranteed precisely by virtue of 
the "synthetic unity of the concept" to use an appropriate 
Kantian phrase whose sole function is to introduce order 
into the ideal 'manifolds' of mathematics, and, through them, 
in turn, into the experiential manifolds of the spatio-temporal 
world of physics. 
* Substance and Function, Ch. II, sec. iiij see also Smart, The Philosophical 
Presuppositions of Mathematical Logic, Ch. VI. 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 253 
Thus, to take a simple example, Cassirer maintains that 
thought follows a straight, undeviating path, in proceeding 
from the logical calculus of relations, to such a special type of 
generating relation as is compactly symbolized by the general 
algebraic equation of the second degree, from which, in turn, 
every species of conic section circle, ellipse, parabola, etc. 
may be deductively derived. And this same mathematical con- 
cept of the conic section it is which alone enables the natural 
scientist to introduce order or synthetic unity into the manifold 
of astronomical phenomena, thus making possible knowledge 
of those phenomena which is at once objective and systematic. 
only in this wise, so Cassirer declares in a pregnant passage, 

only when we clearly understand that the same basic syntheses upon 
which logic and mathematics depend, also control the formation of ex- 
periential knowledge, thereby for the first time making it possible to 
speak of the ordering of phenomena according to scientific laws and 
thus to ascribe objective meaning to these phenomena, is the true justifica- 
tion of those principles attained. 15 
Nor is this by any means the end of the matter. Not only are 
single concepts and judgments thus synthetic, but the whole 
process of deduction, characteristic of mathematical inference, 
is itself progressive, productive of new knowledge. In this re- 
spect also Cassirer opposes the essentially static ideal of logic 
and mathematics fostered by the symbolic logicians, in their 
thesis that the propositions of these sciences are analytic or 
tautological, and also in their complementary doctrine that 
deduction is a mere re-arranging of the elements of discourse in 
accordance with fixed rules of procedure. Epistemologically 
speaking, this doctrine becomes the thesis that thought merely 
'discovers' relationships eternally 'there,' subsisting in that 
transcendent realm which reveals itself to a critical inspection 
to be nothing but the naive hypostatization of certain logical and 
mathematical concepts, and their consequent deprivation of any 
objective meaning or truth. 
Now according to Cassirer this ideal of mathematical knowl- 
edge is not only self -contradictory j it directly conflicts with the 
15 "Kant und die moderne Mathematik," Kantstudien, vol. XII, 45 (1907). 
254 HAROLD R. SMART 
plainest possible evidence, namely, the progressive character 
which the long history of that science reveals as its most out- 
standing feature. Every important advance in mathematics, 
from the earliest times down to the immediate present, involves 
both an extension and a deepening or enrichment of funda- 
mental concepts, and their progressive liberation from what 
have conclusively shown themselves to be extraneous sensuous 
connotations. "Just as the field of rational numbers is broadened 
by gradual steps of thought into the continuous totality of real 
numbers, so, by a series of intellectual transformations, does the 
space of sense pass into the infinite, continuous, homogeneous 
and conceptual space of geometry . . ," 16 illustrative examples 
which could be repeated ad nauseam in confirmation of this 
view of the continuing 'creative advance' of mathematical 
thought. 
Hence arises for Cassirer a question which the symbolic logi- 
cians, in their blindness, blandly ignore, namely how is this 
creative advance possible j how, in epistemological terms, can 
it be justified to reason, and how, more precisely, is it to be 
described? 
In the case of the physical sciences answers to such questions 
are comparatively easy to come by, the only difficult logical 
problem being that of the closer determination of the nature of 
induction. But in common with many, perhaps most contempo- 
rary logicians, Cassirer denies a role to induction in the mathe- 
matical sciences. True, he apparently does not share the vulgar 
prejudice or presupposition dominating the thinking of so many 
authorities on this matter, namely, that there is some necessary 
connection between induction and specific experimental tech- 
niques confined to certain natural sciences, so that it is dog- 
matically and arbitrarily settled beforehand that where there is 
no experimentation of the sort in question, neither can there be 
any induction. Rather Cassirer excludes induction (and an- 
alogy!) from mathematical inference, on the ground that, 
whereas the former "proceeds from the particular to the uni- 
versal . . . [and] attempts to unite hypothetically into a whole 
a plurality of individual facts observed as particulars without 
" Substance and Function, p. 106. 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 255 
necessary connection," the latter proceeds always from "the 
law of connection," which serves as "the original basis by virtue 
of which the individual case can be determined in its meaning." 
In other words, "the conditions of the whole system are pre- 
determined, and all specialization can only be reached by adding 
a new factor as a limiting determination while maintaining these 
conditions." 17 In sum, mathematical inference always "proceeds 
from the properties of the connection to those of the objects 
connected, from the serial principle to the members of the 
series," and never in the reverse order. 

one minor but nevertheless interesting point included in the 
preceding general statement may appropriately be mentioned 
here before proceeding to a more detailed study of this concep- 
tion of mathematical inference. The symbolic logicians never 
tire of proclaiming it as an ideal of their procedure that "all of 
pure mathematics" can (or should) be shown to follow de- 
ductively from a certain set of primitives primitive or un- 
defined ideas, primitive propositions or postulates, and the like. 
Nothing not explicitly included or provided for in this founda- 
tional nexus is to be permitted entry into the subsequent un- 
foldment or 'development' of the series of logico-mathematical 
propositions. Otherwise the purely analytical or tautological 
nature of those propositions might easily become infected with 
a 'synthetic' impurity! Cassirer, on the other hand, realistically 
points to the actual practice of mathematicians, and shows con- 
clusively that their practice never conforms to any such extrane- 
ously imposed ideal. In fact, quite the contrary is the case. only 
by and in so far as modifications and specifications not explicitly 
provided for or foreseen in the formulation of the foundational 
nexus, but deliberately introduced at certain stages as new facts 
or limiting determinations, as the deduction proceeds, can the 
special cases or conclusions, in which the procedure character- 
istically issues, be derived. To employ the same simple example 
utilized earlier in this exposition: from the general equation of 
the second degree, the equations of such conies as the ellipse, 
the parabola, etc., could never be derived simply by the ana- 
lytical 'development' of that equation. on the contrary, such 
*lbid. 81, 82. 
256 HAROLD R. SMART 
special cases can be derived from the general equation only by 
introducing limitations not explicitly contemplated in the for- 
mulation of that equation, and not formally connected with it in 
any way. In this sense they are added from without, somewhat 
as the minor premise is added to the major premise in the tra- 
ditional syllogism; the only restrictions on this typical deductive 
procedure being such as are prescribed by the basic laws of 
thought themselves. 
This is not, however, the major factor in mathematical de- 
duction. It will be recalled that one main epistemological thesis 
of Cassirer's critical idealism is that the creative, synthetic ac- 
tivity of thought displays itself in the positing or generating 
of relations; and, as was indicated above, it is in terms of this 
thesis that he construes all scientific reasoning. Thus the prob- 
lem of the 'possibility' of mathematics, as one progressive 
science among others, may be more definitely characterized as 
the problem of determining the rationale, the logical 'go,' so to 
speak, of that process in the special field in question. 
At this point the Kantian doctrine that mathematical reason- 
ing proceeds by means of the 'construction' of its objects, either 
in intuition or imagination, reveals its positive significance for 
Cassirer. Not that he views the reference to intuition or imagi- 
nation as the important factor in that conception; for what 
mathematician does not realize that such limitations on his 
creative activity have long since been transcended; and does 
not Cassirer himself, on every appropriate occasion, proclaim 
the liberation of mathematics from reliance on sensuous or per- 
ceptual guides as one of the greatest intellectual triumphs of 
recent times? Rather what on this view is of permanent worth in 
the Kantian doctrine is the emphasis upon construction as a typi- 
cal mode of procedure; only the construction must be under- 
stood in a purely ideal sense, and as carried out by pure thought, 
independently of experience. And here again, as so frequently 
happens, Cassirer turns to Leibniz, rather than to Kant, for 
further insight, for more positive guidance, in developing his 
own ideas. To put it very briefly, it is by means of what Leibniz 
called real, causal, or genetic definitions, that, according to Cas- 
sirer, the ideal constructions characteristic of mathematical de- 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 257 
duction are carried through. Such definitions, which Cassirer 
regards as perhaps the most striking exemplification of the pro- 
ductivity of thought, serve in effect as rules or laws for the 
construction of specific mathematical objects, or complexes of 
such objects. For the traditional definition of a circle, for ex- 
ample, in terms of genus, species, and differentia, Leibniz would 
substitute a definition revealing its "mode of generation," and 
similarly for the definition of parallel lines and of all such 
mathematical constructs. 
No doubt these and the other specimens Leibniz offers of 
this type of definition are rather too elementary, too empirical, 
to be wholly convincing as samples of purely ideal construc- 
tions ; but Cassirer maintains that the principle involved can 
easily be generalized in such a way as to bring out its full sig- 
nificance. 18 At all events, in presenting his proposed new type of 
definition, Cassirer points out that Leibniz envisaged it as an 
instrumentality for combatting two erroneous tendencies preva- 
lent in the logical theories of his time, tendencies, which, as 
Cassirer maintains, still confuse fundamental issues in con- 
temporary logic. 
The first of these tendencies is nominalism the Hobbesian 
doctrine that all definitions are merely nominal. It needs no 
citing of names to confirm the fact that this doctrine is enthu- 
siastically fostered by many logicians of the present time. And 
nominalism in this respect inevitably leads on to the sweeping 
conclusion that mathematics in its entirety is nothing but a sym- 
bolic technique, a manipulation of conventional symbols, which 
as such is devoid of objective import, and in respect to which it is 
nonsense to talk of truth. The "freedom" of mathematics is 
hereby purchased at the heavy expense of its renunciation of all 
claims to yielding knowledge of the real world. Consistency in 
the formulation and application of conventional rules of an 
empty symbolism is all that remains. 
The second erroneous tendency is in a sense antithetical to the 
preceding, in that it hypostatizes ideas, endows them with a 
lf See the article, "Kant und die moderne Mathematik," and also Leibniz* System 
in semen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen y 108 ff., and Pkilosofhie der symbolischen 
Formen, Pt. HI, Ch. IV. 
258 HAROLD R. SMART 
quasi-ontological status, and attributes to them 'being' in a 
transcendent realm quite apart from human experience. on this 
view, the sole test of the reality of an idea is its abstract possi- 
bility of being thought in complete abstraction from any ques- 
tion as to its actual realization in experience, its epistemological 
functioning. Adoption of this doctrine commits one to the 'copy' 
theory of truth, reduces thought to the role of a passive spec- 
tator, and sets up an impassable barrier, a dualism, between the 
world of ideas and the factual world between truths of reason 
and truths of matter of fact. Finally it should be emphasized 
that neither of these tendencies has anything to do with the 
actual science of mathematics as such, but is instead the product, 
pure and simple, of abstract, gratuitously a priori theorizing. 
Thus, according to Leibniz's distinguished commentator and 
disciple, these two equally untenable lines of thought, far from 
providing a satisfactory foundation for the formation of mathe- 
matical concepts, succeed only in setting up an empty scaffolding 
of formal consistency and abstract possibility. Through the 
instrumentality of the causal or genetic definition, on the other 
hand, thought can produce out of its own creative, synthetic 
resources, all that is so conspicuously lacking in the rejected 
doctrines such at least is Cassirer's profound conviction. To 
define the circle to revert to this simple example as a plain 
curve, so constituted that it encloses a maximum area within a 
given perimeter, is merely a matter of words, which leaves it 
doubtful whether there actually be such a curve; and, even in 
case this question can be answered affirmatively, it still remains 
open to doubt whether the prescribed condition be fulfilled by 
just the one sort of curve. Such doubts can be stilled if and only 
if a fully determinate "mode of generation" can be specified, 
and if the desired characteristics can be shown to be actually 
produced by this mode of generation by a rigorous deductive 
proof. In this wise, according to Cassirer, the definition may 
truly be said to generate the object in question out of its con- 
stituent elements. And what is true in this simple case holds 
true (so Cassirer maintains) of mathematics generally. Always 
and everywhere the necessary and sufficient prerequisite to the 
formation of mathematical concepts, and to the ascription to 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 259 
them of definite contents, shows itself to be the same. What 
Cassirer calls a genetic definition may on occasion (he points 
out) find more detailed embodiment in a set of axioms or 
postulates, especially where not a specific object but a whole 
branch of mathematics multi-dimensional geometry, the 
theory of groups is in question. But in any case, the creative 
synthesis, involving one or more elementary structural ele- 
ments, and producing out of these elements, by means of the 
generating relations embodied in the definitional nexus, the 
whole contextual content of the field in question, is what char- 
acterizes the differentia of mathematical inference as such. 
Now it can hardly be denied that Cassirer's criticisms of 
fashionable tendencies in contemporary logic such as the nom- 
inalistic theory of definitions, the thesis that mathematical pro- 
positions are analytical or tautological, and the static concepion 
of deduction are well-founded and that his own contrasting 
views on these matters are much nearer the truth. His basic 
contention, moreover, that mathematics is a progressive science, 
sharing with the other sciences the common search for, and at- 
tainment of objective knowledge, is one of those truisms which 
too many contemporaries, in their over-zealous preoccupation 
with symbolic techniques as such, have seemingly lost from 
view. The question remains, however, whether, on the basis of 
Cassirer's own theory of the formation of mathematical con- 
cepts, the 'possibility' of mathematics, in the sense just de- 
scribed, can be fully accounted for. As already pointed out, in 
spite of his opposition to abstract formalism in certain important 
respects, Cassirer nevertheless concurs with such a line of 
thought in other equally decisive respects. He concurs, for ex- 
ample, in holding that mathematics is nothing but a prolonga- 
tion of formal logic, differing only in the somewhat more 
restricted range of its assertions $ and also in the widely preva- 
lent view that mathematical inference, unlike inference in other 
fields, is purely deductive in character. And these two doctrines 
imply the strictly a priori character of the propositions in both 
logic and mathematics, in the anti-Kantian, rationalistic sense of 
that word. 
Nevertheless a close study of such a work as Substance and 
260 HAROLD R. SMART 
Function will reveal highly significant evidence pointing in an- 
other direction. So sincere is the author's desire to let the 
historical record speak for itself, uncolored by his personal pre- 
dilections, that he actually succeeds, to a remarkable degree, in 
allowing that record to bear witness directly opposed to all of 
those formalistic tenets. Both arithmetic and geometry, he is at 
pains to emphasize, developed from humble beginnings in com- 
mon sense experience, and both numerical and spatial concepts 
were for long encumbered with all sorts of sensuous connota- 
tions. In mathematics, quite as in the other sciences, more 
general principles had to wait upon the acquisition and analysis 
of particular facts; and the more general principles, in turn, 
led to the discovery of other particular facts, which, again in 
turn, led to the formation of still more general principles such 
is the plain historical record, as faithfully presented by Cassirer 
himself, there for all who have eyes to read. Yet in every other 
science this doubly reciprocal relationship between particulars 
and universals is held to exemplify and to depend upon the co- 
operative procedures of induction and deduction; and no one 
more persuasively than Cassirer himself insists upon the in- 
separability of these two aspects of scientific inference in every 
other science except mathematics! 
Why the exception? Why refuse to designate by the same 
name a procedure so obviously the same in every significant 
respect; why refuse the name of induction to a procedure in 
mathematics which would undoubtedly be called by that name, 
if pursued in any other department of human knowledge? Or 
why, save for some extraordinarily compelling reason, adhere 
to or postulate a theory of mathematical inference which not 
only runs counter to the whole history of that special science, 
but renders impossible a consistent logical theory of scientific 
inference in general? This is surely a question definitely de- 
manding an answer; a question that only stares one the more 
fully in the face the more persistently it is ignored by the vast 
majority of logicians. Every logician construes reasoning by 
analogy as an essential and characteristic instrument of inductive 
generalization; histories of mathematics are full of examples 
of reasoning by analogy; yet the obvious conclusion is not 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 261 
drawn. New mathematical theories are evolved to embrace and 
systematize under a set of common principles various particular 
theorems and topics hitherto regarded as unrelated or inde- 
pendent so Cassirer, like every other historian, repeatedly 
points out. Precisely the same result attained in any other science 
would be held up as a typical product of inductive reasoning} 
yet in the special case of mathematics no one seems to be willing 
to conceive that it could possibly call for a modification of the 
hallowed doctrine that mathematical inference is purely deduc- 
tive. Could any more conspicuous example of Bacon's "Idols 
of the Tribe" easily be found? And observe well! it is, in the 
last analysis, precisely and solely because of the uncritical ac- 
ceptance of this doctrine that certain puzzling (not to say in- 
soluble) epistemological problems with regard to the nature 
and import of mathematical knowledge rise up to plague so 
many contemporary logicians. 
It would be grossly unfair, of course, to criticize Cassirer 
alone in this connection; the point is, rather, that by his clear 
presentation of the historical evidence he supplies all the requi- 
site material to overthrow that prevalent but one-sided theory 
of mathematical inference, which is actually merely the conse- 
quence of unjustified epistemological presuppositions, and 
which so blindly ignores such abundant and conclusive evidence 
to the contrary. 
What these presuppositions are, and that they are indeed un- 
justifiedj it will not, perhaps, be too difficult to discover, once 
attention is turned in their direction. At bottom, it will be found, 
there is little save verbal terminology, and sometimes scarcely 
even that, to distinguish Cassirer's critical idealism from lines 
of thought he vigorously opposes, so far as this important matter 
is concerned. 
Who, for example, is the author of the assertion that "the 
mathematician need not concern himself with the particular 
being or intrinsic nature of his points, lines, and planes, ... ;" 
on the contrary, a 'point' merely "has to be something that satis- 
fies our axioms?" Not Cassirer, though (as noted above) he says 
the same thing in other words, but Bertrand Russell. 19 And who 
19 Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy -, 59. 
262 HAROLD R. SMART 
declares that in mathematics "a field of free and universal 
activity is disclosed, in which thought transcends all limits of 
the 'given'," in that "the objects which we consider . . . have 
only an ideal being?" Not Bertrand Russell, but Cassirer. 20 
True, according to Russell thought merely discovers the sub- 
sisting essences of this ideal, trans-empirical realm $ whereas 
according to Cassirer thought actively creates those universals, 
thus generating its own world out of its own internal resources. 
Nevertheless both thinkers emphasize equally the complete 
"liberation" of thought from all experientially imposed limita- 
tions. 21 
The fact that Cassirer presents such a telling criticism of 
Russellian epistemology, in this regard, cannot be allowed to 
obscure the complementary fact that precisely analogous ob- 
jections may be urged against his own epistemology. Surely 
'discovery' is no more a pure metaphor, as applied to the role 
of thought in knowledge, than is 'creation.' 22 In plain language, 
the relation of mathematics to logic is equally close, and the 
separation of mathematical concepts from experience is equally 
complete, whichever metaphor may be used to characterize the 
actual functioning of thought. on no other grounds can it be 
explained why Cassirer explicitly recognizes that he as well as 
Russell has to show how mathematical concepts, originally con- 
strued as non-experiential and purely logical in origin, can yet 
be 'applied' so directly and effectively to the solution of em- 
pirical problems. To insist upon the inseparability of mathemat- 
ics and formal logic is ipso facto to cut mathematics off from 
all essential connection with experience} and to insist, with 
Cassirer, that nevertheless mathematical knowledge is as ob- 
jective as all other scientific knowledge, because, forsooth, all 
truth is literally created by thinking, is if so jacto to reduce 
scientific truth as such to formal consistency within a closed 
80 Substance and Function, 112. 
81 The hostile critic would be tempted to express the same idea in rather different 
terms, to the effect that the "liberation" in question actually amounts to a confine- 
ment of thought within the four walls of an a priori formalism. 
M Cf. the present writer's The Philosophical Presuppositions of Mathematical 
Logic Chs. Ill VI, on this point, and also for a remarkable similarity between 
the views of Josiah Royce and Cassirer on such matters. 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 263 
circle of ideas the whole world, in Schopenhauerian language, 
is my idea and objectivity (as Russell has somewhere justly 
observed) must be construed, in the last analysis, as merely a 
species of subjectivity. 
There is, however, here as in other contexts, another tend- 
ency, or another phase of Cassirer's thought, which sharply 
conflicts with such abstract rationalism. For above everything 
else he insists on the essential continuity of scientific thought 
in general, and of mathematical thought in particular. And, 
although carrying on a persistent warfare against all species of 
empiricism and positivism, he at the same time emphatically 
maintains that it is the prime function of scientific laws and 
general mathematical formulas alike to render the 'particulars' 
particular scientific facts, or specific mathematical truths 
intelligible, by incorporating them in a concrete systematic 
nexus. Apart from such a nexus, he insists, neither particulars 
nor universals have any meaning. Even in the case of mathe- 
matics, he seems to argue, the construction of concepts does not 
take place in complete abstraction from perceptually given and 
intuitively apprehended data, though it does of course involve, 
from the very beginning, an attempt to free those concepts more 
and more, not from their roots in experience as such, but rather 
simply from irrelevant, transitory, and merely sensuous con- 
notations. 23 The historical accuracy of this contention cannot be 
denied, and neither can its epistemological significance be over- 
emphasized. 
The point is that in mathematics, just as in all other sciences, 
new concepts and new theories are evolved in the process of 
seeking a solution to some hitherto recalcitrant problem in- 
herited from an earlier stage in the development of the science. 
These new concepts and theories usually represent the end 
product of a long and arduous labor of preparation, of trial 
and error; and their significance is measured, not merely by 
reference to the particular problem or problems they solve, but 
also in terms of the enrichment of meaning they bestow upon 
previously accepted concepts and theories. As Cassirer so well 
says, 
" Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen y III, 45 iff., esp. 468f. 
264 HAROLD R. SMART 
the unity and self-sufficiency of the mathematical method depends upon 
the fact that the creative, generative procedure to which the science 
owes its origin, never comes to an end at any given point, but displays 
itself in ever new forms, and in this wise maintains itself forever as one 
and the same, as an indestructible totality. 24 
What is of decisive significance here is that within the science 
of mathematics itself (quite as in every other science) there is, 
on such a view, what may be called an immanent logic, which 
carries the science forward on its own momentum. The history 
of mathematics in its entirety is nothing less than a standing 
repudiation of any and all attempts to 'deduce' its fundamental 
concepts and theories from any fixed and arbitrary set of formal 
postulates and definitions. For that matter logical principles, 
as such, differ absolutely, both in nature and function, from the 
premises or other foundations of any given science such at 
least is one lesson plainly taught by the transcendental logic of 
Kant. And on the other hand, the only logic mathematics (or 
any other science) needs or uses, in the course of its own pro- 
gressive development, resides in those logical principles accord- 
ing to which, but not from which, mathematical reasoning pro- 
ceeds. In the very nature of the case, the foundations of no 
science are properly to be described as logical} for the good and 
sufficient reason that it is their proper function to define or 
determine (and this means progressively to redefine), not the 
method, but the general nature of the content, the subject- 
matter, of the science in question. If it be true, as everyone 
acknowledges it to be, that the elementary content of mathe- 
matics was supplied by, or taken from crude experience, then it 
is equally true and undeniable that the whole history of the 
science must logically be regarded as an account of the precise 
way in which that first crude material has been (as Cassirer is 
fond of repeating) elaborated, refined, enriched in meaning, 
and increased in extent. It cannot be too strongly emphasized 
that an enormous burden of proof rests upon the shoulders of 
anyone trying to maintain any other thesis proof which would 
not only have to disregard all the historical evidence, but run 
directly counter to it. 
* Of. cit., 469. 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 265 
Thus it is only as an inevitable consequence of the quixotic 
endeavor to base mathematics on formal logic, that the self- 
stultifying thesis that the science has absolutely no content can 
be understood, and that the insoluble problem of the 'applica- 
tion' of mathematical concepts rises up to plague both scientists 
and philosophers. on the view clearly implicit in Cassirer's 
emphasis on the continuity and progressive character of mathe- 
matical knowledge, on the other hand, no such artificial prob- 
lems can arise, for the good and sufficient reason that on that 
view mathematics has never entirely lost contact with experi- 
ence. 
What, then, it may be asked, is the true import of the dictum 
proclaimed by Cassirer himself, along with so many other 
authorities, that no other meaning is to be ascribed to any 
mathematical concept (even to such as seem most empirical, 
such as the solids of geometry), than that contained in and pre- 
scribed by the basic postulates and definitions? Does not this 
fundamental methodological principle render any reference 
to experience logically inoperative and purely incidental? No 
matter what the whole previous history of mathematics says or 
implies, who can deny that such is the state of affairs at the 
present time? 
But surely the answers to these questions are not far to seek. 
The phrase 'no other meaning than that prescribed by the basic 
postulates' means just what it says; and it does not say that no 
meaning whatsoever is to be ascribed to such basic concepts and 
propositions. For that matter, precisely the same assertion, mu- 
tatis mutandis, may be made concerning the basic concepts and 
definitions of any science biology, for example 5 for pre- 
cisely herein lies the only justification for calling them 'basic.' 
That such an assertion lends itself to misinterpretation to the 
effect that 'no other meaning' means 'no meaning at all' has, 
however, unfortunately revealed itself to be the case. It is true, 
of course, that the only experience immediately and directly 
relevant to mathematics at any given stage is the highly ab- 
stract experience represented, in the main, by what the next 
preceding stage of the science has made of space, number, and 
the like; just as, in physics, the only directly relevant experience 
266 HAROLD R. SMART 
is what the next preceding stage of that science has made of 
space-time, the constitution of the atom, and the like. No de- 
veloped science ever falls back upon the crude experience of the 
c plain man/ for the purpose of verifying or testing its concepts 
and theories} comparatively rarely does it do so, indeed, even 
in the most elementary laboratory work of the undergraduate. 
In all cases the experience really in question is that which both 
insures the continuity of scientific knowledge and provides the 
material essential for further progress. It goes without saying 
that experience, in such contexts, is restricted to what is relevant 
to the science in question j and, just as the mathematician ab- 
stracts from all or most of the physical properties, attributes, 
and relations of things, so the physicist abstracts from all of the 
properties, attributes, and relations of things, other than such as 
logically come within his purview as a physicist. 25 But just as 
physics yields genuine knowledge of the real world only because 
it does not abstract from all properties, attributes, and relations, 
precisely the same is true, mutatis mutandis, of mathematics 
a fact which disposes of all those problems concerning the appli- 
cation of mathematics to experience, as neither the theories of 
Russell nor even those of Cassirer himself are able to do. More- 
over, it is only because, and to the extent that this is so, as Kant 
plainly intimated, that its 'possibility' as a science can be under- 
stood. What Cassirer says so well of mathematical symbols, 
namely that they are neither meaningless signs, as some would 
argue, no mundane instrumentalities for communication with a 
transcendent realm of hypostatized ideas, as others suggest, but 
are rather explicative of meanings immanent in mathematical 
thought, is directly to the point in this connection. And for this 
very reason, if for no others, a calculus of relations, conceived 
as a branch of formal symbolic logic, is just as impotent, and for 
strictly analogous reasons, as the so-called subject-predicate 
logic, with respect to the generation of the synthetic concepts 
and judgments of mathematics. 
In the light of the preceding discussion it would seem that 
much the same observation applies to Cassirer's theory of math- 
* See the present writer's article entitled "Cassirer versus Russell," in Philosophy 
of Science, Vol. X., no. 3 (July, 1943), 174. 
THEORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS 267 
ematical concepts, with respect to its relation to contemporary 
symbolic logic, that commentators apply to Kant's transcen- 
dental logic, with respect to its relation to traditional formal 
logic. That is to say, it is rather in spite of misleading associa- 
tions and entanglements with abstract formalism than because 
of any positive guidance accruing from such a source, that Cas- 
sirer, like Kant before him, has accomplished so much of solid 
and enduring worth. 
HAROLD R. SMART 
SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
7 
Kurt Lemn 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND 
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND 
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
following remarks 1 on the relation between Cassirer's 
JJL views on the development of science and the recent history 
of psychology are the ｅxpression of a person who has always 
felt the deep gratitude of a student to his teacher. 
During the period from 1910, when, as a graduate student, 
I listened to the lectures of the then "Privatdocent" Cassirer, 
to 1946, psychology has undergone a series of major changes 
related to basic issues of Behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, Psy- 
choanalysis, Field Theory and the present problem of an in- 
tegrated social science. The experiment has reached out from 
"psycho-physics" into any number of areas including motiva- 
tion, personality > and social psychology. The mathematical 
problems of representing psychological fields and treating data 
statistically have proceeded step by step to new levels. Tech- 
niques of interviewing, observation, and other forms of fact- 
finding have grown into a rich and well-established method- 
ology. The scientific infant of 1910, which had hardly cut his 
cord to mother philosophy and was looking with astonished eyes 
and an uneasy heart to the grown-up sciences, not knowing 
whether he should try to copy them or whether he ought to 
follow his own line this scientific infant has perhaps not yet 
fully developed into maturity, but has certainly reached a stage 
of strength and progress which makes the psychologies of 1910 
and 1946 rather different entities. Still, throughout this period, 
scarcely a year passed when I did not have specific reason to 
1 Some sections of this paper are also published in Lewin, Kurt, "Problems of 
Group Dynamics and the Integration of the Social Sciences: I. Social Equilibria." 
Human Relations (1947) Vol. I. 
271 
272 KURT LEWIN 
acknowledge the help which Cassirer's views on the nature of 
science and research offered. 
The value of Cassirer's philosophy for psychology lies, I feel, 
less in his treatment of specific problems of psychology al- 
though his contribution in this field and particularly his recent 
contributions are of great interest than in his analysis of the 
methodology and concept-formation of the natural sciences. 
To me these decades of rapid scientific growth of psychology 
and of the social sciences in general have provided test after 
test for the correctness of most of the ideas on science and scien- 
tific development expressed in his Substanzbegrif und Funk- 
tionsbegriff. Since the primitive discussions of the psychologists 
of 1910 about whether or not psychology ought to try to include 
not only qualitative but also quantitative data, and Cassirer's 
general discussions of the problem of quality and quantity up 
to the present problems of research in personality, such as the 
treatment of biographical data, and Cassirer's discussion of the 
interdependence of "historical" and "systematic" problems , 
I have felt with increasing strength the power and productivity 
of his basic approach to science. 
It is not easy to point in Cassirer's work to a specific concept 
or any specific statement which provides a striking new insight 
and solves a previously insoluble problem. Still, as "participant 
observer" of the recent history of psychology, I may be per- 
mitted to state that Cassirer's approach seems to me a most 
illuminating and constructive help for making those decisions 
about methods and about the direction of the next step, upon 
which it depends whether a concrete piece of research will be a 
substantial contribution to a living science or a well polished 
container of nothing. 
i. THEORY OF SCIENCE AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH 
The relation between logic and theory of science on the one 
hand and the progress of empirical science on the other is not 
a simple one and is not easily transformed into a mutually pro- 
ductive state of affairs. 
Since Kant philosophers have tried more or less successfully 
to avoid telling the empirical scientist what he "ought" to do or 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 273 
not to do. They have learned, with a few exceptions, to regard 
science as an object they should study rather than rule. This 
laudable and necessary removal of philosophy from the authori- 
tarian place of the boss or the judge over science has led to a 
tendency of eliminating all "practical" relations between phi- 
losophy and the empirical sciences, including the perhaps pos- 
sible and fruitful position of philosophy as a consultant to 
science. As the scientist tries to progress into the eternal frontier 
of the unknown, he faces highly complex and intricate problems 
of methods, concepts, and theory formation. It would seem 
natural that he should turn to the philosophical study of the 
nature of science for information and help on the method- 
ological and conceptual aspects of the pressing problems he is 
trying to solve. 
There are certain lines along which such help might be forth- 
coming and certain dangers involved in the all around co- 
operation of scientists and philosophers on the theory and prac- 
tice of such an "applied theory of science." To start with the 
latter: as a rule, the philosopher can hardly be expected to have 
the detailed knowledge of an active research worker in a specific 
branch of an empirical science. As a rule, therefore, he should 
not be expected to make direct contributions to empirical 
theories. The tragi-comic happening of half a decade ago, when 
a certain group of philosophers tried to revive good old classical 
behaviorism just after it had fulfilled its usefulness for psy- 
chology and was happily dying, should be a warning against 
such inappropriate overstepping of boundaries. on the other 
hand, such danger should not minimize the essential advantages 
which a closer cooperation between the philosopher and the 
scientist should offer to both. 
As far as I can see, there are two main lines along which 
valuable and more than accidental help for the empirical and 
particularly the social sciences may emerge from a closer rela- 
tion to philosophy. one has to do with mathematical logic, the 
other with comparative theory of science. 
The development of mathematical logic has proceeded con- 
siderably beyond what Cassirer had to offer. Mathematical logic 
seems to provide a fruitful possibility of assistance for specific 
274 KURT LEWIN 
problems of measurement for basic mathematical questions re- 
garding qualitative and quantitative data, for general mathema- 
tical problems of representing social and psychological fields, 
and so on. The insight provided by mathematical logic could 
probably have avoided some of the past headaches and should 
be of considerable potential assistance to the social scientist in the 
coming period of the quantitative measurement of social forces. 
Mathematical logic has, however, not been of much avail 
and, in my judgment, is not likely to be of much avail for 
guiding the psychologist or social scientist through certain other 
major methodological perplexities. 
The logician is accustomed to deal with problems of correct 
conclusions or other aspects of science and concepts which are 
"timeless," which hold as much for the physics of Copernicus as 
for modern physics. These problems are doubtless of great 
interest to the research-worker. They make up, however, only 
a small section of the problems of scientific strategy which are 
the concern of the daily struggle of progressing into the un- 
known. The main problems, which the scientist has to face and 
for which he has to find a solution, are inevitably bound to the 
particular state of development of his science, even if they are 
problems of method rather than content. 
It is unrealistic and unproductive for an empirical scientist to 
approach problems of scientific method and procedure in a way 
which does not take cognizance of the basic fact that, to be 
effective, scientific methods have to be adjusted to the specific 
state of affairs at a given time. This holds for the techniques 
of fact-finding, for the process of conceptualization and theoriz- 
ing, in short, for more or less all aspects of research. Research 
is the art of taking the next step. Methods and concepts, which 
may represent a revolutionary progress today, may be outmoded 
tomorrow. Can the philosopher gain insight into the develop- 
ment of science in a way useful for these vital time-bound 
aspects of scientific labor? 
The logician may be inclined to place these problems outside 
the realm of a theory of science. He may be inclined to view 
them not as philosophical problems but as questions which 
should be dealt with by historians. Doubtless the researcher is 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 275 
deeply influenced by the culture in which he lives and by its 
technical and economic facilities. Not these problems of cultural 
history, however, are in question when the social psychologist 
has to make up his mind whether or not "experiments with 
groups" are scientifically meaningful, or what procedure he may 
follow for developing better concepts of personality, of leader- 
ship, or of other aspects of group life. Not historical, but con- 
ceptual and methodological problems are to be answered, ques- 
tions about what is scientifically right or wrong, adequate or 
inadequate 5 although this correctness may be specific to a special 
developmental stage of a science and may not hold for a pre- 
vious or a later stage. In other words, the term "scientific de- 
velopment" refers to levels of scientific maturity, to levels of 
concepts and theories in the sense of philosophy rather than of 
human history or psychology. 
It is this approach to science as emerging systems of theorems 
and concepts to which Cassirer has contributed so much. When- 
ever Cassirer discusses science, he seems to perceive both the 
permanent characteristics of scientific systems and procedures 
and the specific conceptual form. 
Philosophy of science can come to an insight into the nature 
of science only by studying science. It is, therefore, in permanent 
danger of making the science of the past a prototype for all 
science and of making past methodology the standard by which 
to measure what scientific methods "ought" to be used or not 
to be used. Cassirer has in most cases successfully avoided this 
danger by looking at the scientific mehods of the past in the way 
in which the research-worker at that time would perceive them. 
He discloses the basic character of science as the eternal attempt 
to go beyond what is regarded scientifically accessible at any 
specific time. To proceed beyond the limitations of a given level 
of knowledge the researcher, as a rule, has to break down 
methodological taboos which condemn as "unscientific" or "il- 
logical" the very methods or concepts which later on prove to 
be basic for the next major progress. Cassirer has shown how 
this step by step revolution of what is "scientifically permis- 
sible" dominates the development of mathematics, physics, and 
chemistry throughout their history. 
276 KURT LEWIN 
A second reason why I feel Cassirer's approach is so valuable 
to the social scientist is his comparative procedure. Although 
Cassirer has not fully developed what might be called a system- 
atic comparative theory of the sciences, he took important steps 
in this direction. His treatment of mathematics, physics, and 
chemistry, of historical and systematic disciplines is essentially 
of a comparative nature. Cassirer shows an unusual ability to 
blend the analysis of general characteristics of scientific method- 
ology with the analysis of a specific branch of science. It is this 
ability to reveal the general rule in an example, without de- 
stroying the specific characteristics of a particular discipline at a 
given stage of development, which makes the comparative treat- 
ment of some branches of mathematics and of the natural 
sciences so illuminating for research in the social sciences. This 
comparative approach opens the way to a perception of similari- 
ties between different sciences and between apparently un- 
related questions within the same science. 
We shall discuss here only one type of problem as an example 
of the structural similarities between the conceptual problems 
of the present social sciences and problems of mathematics and 
the physical sciences at certain stages of development, namely 
that of "existence." 
2. THE PROBLEM OF "EXISTENCE" IN AN EMPIRICAL SCIENCE 
Arguments about "existence" may seem metaphysical in 
nature and may therefore not be expected to be raised in 
empirical sciences. Actually, however, opinions about existence 
or non-existence are quite common in the empirical sciences and 
have greatly influenced scientific development in both a positive 
and a negative way. Labelling something as "non-existing" is 
equivalent to declaring it "out of bounds" for the scientist. 
Attributing "existence" to an item automatically makes it a duty 
of the scientist to consider this item as an object of research; it 
includes the necessity of considering its properties as "facts," 
which cannot be neglected in the total system of theories j 
finally, it implies that the terms by which one refers to the item 
are accepted as scientific "concepts" (rather than regarded as 
"mere words"). 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 277 
The problem of "existence" is, therefore, one of the most 
illuminating examples for the way in which facts, concepts, and 
methods are closely interdependent aspects of an empirical 
science. To demonstrate the way in which this interdependence 
is functioning in every phase of science is the central theme of 
this aspect of Cassirer's philosophy. 
Cassirer follows the steps by which mathematics is gradually 
transformed. Geometry and the theory of numbers, for instance, 
changes from a study of separate forms or entities, which are to 
be described and analysed one by one with the objective of 
finding "permanent properties" into a discipline which deals 
with problems of interrelations and transformations. 2 
Geometry, as the theory of invariants, treats certain unchangeable rela- 
tions; but this unchangeableness cannot be defined unless we understand, 
as its conceptual background, certain fundamental changes relative to 
which they hold. The unchanging geometrical properties are not such 
in and for themselves, but only in relation to a system of possible trans- 
formations that we implicitly assume. Constancy and change thus appear 
as thoroughly correlative moments, definable only through each other. 3 
In physics an equivalent change occurs on the basis of an 
increasingly close interdependence of fact finding and theory. 
It has been shown, in opposition to the traditional logical doctrine, that 
the course of the mathematical construction of concepts is defined by the 
procedures of the construction of series. We have not been concerned 
with separating out the common element from a plurality of similar im- 
pressions but with establishing a principle by which their diversity should 
appear. The unity of the concept has not been found in a fixed group of 
properties, but in the rule, which represents the mere diversity as a 
sequence of elements according to law. 4 
In truth, no physicist experiments and measures with the particular 
instrument that he has sensibly before his eyes; but he substitutes for it 
an ideal instrument in thought, from which all accidental defects, such 
as necessarily belong to the particular instrument, are excluded. For 
example, if we measure the intensity of an electric current by a tangent- 
compass, then the observations, which we make first with a concrete 
a Substance and Function (Swabcy tr.) , 68. 
* Ibid., 90$ wording changed by K. Lewin, in line with German original. 
4 Ibid., 148. 
278 KURT LEWIN 
apparatus, must be related and carried over to a- general geometrical 
model, before they are physically applicable. We substitute for a coppei 
wire of a definite strength a strictly geometrical circle without breadth ; 
in place of the steel of the magnetic needle, which has a certain magni- 
tude and form, we substitute an infinitely small, horizontal magnetic 
axis, which can be moved without friction around a vertical axis; and 
it is the totality of these transformations, which permits us to carry the 
observed deflection of the magnetic needle into the general theoretical 
formula of the strength of the current, and thus to determine the value 
of the latter. The corrections, which we make and must necessarily make 
with the use of every physical instrument, are themselves a work of 
mathematical theory; to exclude these latter, is to deprive the observation 
itself of its meaning and value. 5 
Until relatively recently psychology, sociology, and anthro- 
pology were dominated by a methodology which regarded 
science as a process of "collecting facts." This methodology 
showed all the earmarks of early Greek mathematics and pre- 
Galilean physics. During the last ten years the hostility to 
theorizing has greatly diminished. It has been replaced by a 
relatively wide-spread recognition of the necessity for develop- 
ing better concepts and higher levels of theory. 
This change has its corollary in certain changes regarding 
what is considered "existing." Beliefs regarding "existence" in 
social science have changed in regard to the degree to which 
"full reality" is attributed to psychological and social phenom- 
ena, and in regard to the reality of their "deeper," dynamic 
properties. 
At the beginning of this century, for instance, the experi- 
mental psychology of "will and emotion" had to fight for rec- 
ognition against a prevalent attitude which placed volition, 
emotion, and sentiments in the "poetic realm" of beautiful 
words, a realm to which nothing corresponds which could be 
regarded as "existing" in the sense in which the scientist uses 
the term. Although every psychologist had to deal with these 
facts realistically in his private life, they were banned from the 
realm of "facts" in the scientific sense. Emotions were declared 
'/*., 144. 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 279 
to be something too "fluid" and "intangible" to be pinned down 
by scientific analysis or by experimental procedures. Such a 
methodological argument does not deny existence to the phe- 
nomenon, but it has the effect of keeping the topic outside the 
realm of empirical science. 
Like social taboos, a scientific taboo is kept up not so much by 
a rational argument as by a common attitude among scientists: 
any member of the scientific guild who does not strictly adhere 
to the taboo is looked upon as queer j he is suspected of not 
adhering to the scientific standards of critical thinking. 
3. THE REALITY OF SOCIAL PHENOMENA 
Before the invention of the atom bomb the average physical 
scientist was hardly ready to concede to social phenomena the 
same degree of "reality" as to a physical object. Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki seem to have caused many physical scientists to change 
their minds. This change was hardly based on philosophical con- 
siderations. The bomb has driven home with dramatic intensity 
the degree to which social happenings are both the result of 
and the conditions for the occurrence of physical events. The 
period during which the natural scientist thought of the social 
scientist as someone interested in dreams and words (rather 
than as an investigator of facts which are not less real than 
physical facts and which can be studied no less objectively) has 
gradually been coming to an end. 
The social scientists themselves, of course, have had a 
stronger belief in the "reality" of the entities they were study- 
ing. Still this belief was frequently limited to the specific narrow 
section with which they happened to be familiar. The economist, 
for instance, finds it a bit difficult to concede to psychological, 
to anthropological, or to legal data that degree of reality which 
he gives to prices and other economic data. Some psychologists 
still view with suspicion the reality of those cultural facts with 
which the anthropologist is concerned. They tend to regard only 
individuals as real and they are not inclined to consider a 
"group atmosphere" as something which is as real and measur- 
able as, let us say, a physical field of gravity. Concepts like that 
a8o KURT LEWIN 
of "leadership" retained a halo of mysticism even after it had 
been demonstrated that it is quite possible to measure and not 
only to "judge" leadership performance. 
The denial of existence of a group or of certain aspects of 
group life is based on arguments which grant existence only to 
units of certain size, or which concern methodologic-technical 
problems, or conceptual problems. 
4. REALITY AND SIZE 
Cassirer 6 discusses how, periodically throughout the history 
of physics, vivid discussions have occurred about the reality of 
the atom, the electron, or whatever else was considered at that 
time to be the smallest particle of physical material. In the social 
sciences it has usually been not the part but the whole whose 
existence has been doubted. 
Logically, there is no reason for distinguishing between the 
reality of a molecule, an atom, or an ion, or more generally 
between the reality of a whole or its parts. There is no more 
magic behind the fact that groups have properties of their own, 
which are different from the properties of their subgroups or 
their individuals members, than behind the fact that molecules 
have properties, which are different from the properties of the 
atoms or ions of which they are composed. 
In the social as in the physical field the structural properties 
of a dynamic whole are different from the structural properties 
of their subparts. Both sets of properties have to be investigated. 
When one and when the other is most important, depends upon 
the question to be answered. But there is no difference of reality 
between them. 
If this basic statement is accepted, the problem of existence 
of a group loses its metaphysical flavor. Instead we face a series 
of empirical problems. They are equivalent to the chemical 
question of whether a given aggregate is a mixture of different 
types of atoms, or whether these atoms have formed molecules 
of a certain type. The answer to such a question has to be 
given in chemistry, as in the social sciences, on the basis of an 
f Ibid., 151-170. 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 281 
empirical probing into certain testable properties of the case in 
hand. 
For instance, it may be wrong to state that the blond women 
living in a town "exist as a group" in the sense of being a dy- 
namic whole that is characterized by a close interdependence of 
their members. They are merely a number of individuals who 
are "classified under one concept" according to the similarity of 
one of their properties. If, however, the blond members of a 
workshop are made an "artificial minority" and are discrim- 
inated against by their colleagues, they may well become a 
group with specific structural properties. 
Structural properties are characterized by relations between 
parts rather than by the parts or elements themselves. Cassirer 
emphasizes that, throughout the history of mathematics and 
physics, from Anaxagoras and Aristotle to Bacon, Boscovich, 
Boltzman and the present day, problems of constancy of rela- 
tions rather than of constancy of elements have gained im- 
portance and have gradually changed the picture of what is 
considered essential. 
The meaning of the mathematical concept cannot be comprehended, 
as long as we seek any sort of presentational correlate for it in the given ; 
the meaning only appears when we recognize the concept as the expres- 
sion of a $ure relation, upon which rests the unity and continuous con- 
nection of the members of a manifold. The function of the physical 
concept also is first evident in this interpretation. The more it disclaims 
every independent perceptible content and everything pictorial, the 
more clearly its logical and systematic function is shown. . . . All that the 
"thing" of the popular view of the world loses in properties, it gains 
in relations; for it no longer remains isolated and dependent on itself 
alone, but is connected inseparably by logical threads with the totality 
of experience. Each particular concept is, as it were, one of these threads, 
on which we string real experiences and connect them with future possi- 
ble experiences. The objects of physics: matter and force, atom and 
ether, can no longer be misunderstood as so many new realities for in- 
vestigation, and realities whose inner essence is to be penetrated when 
once they are recognized as instruments produced by thought for the 
purpose of comprehending the confusion of phenomena as an ordered 
and measurable whole/ 
'Ibid., 1 66. 
282 KURT LEWIN 
5. REALITY, METHODS, AND EXPERIENCE 
If recognition o the existence of an entity depends upon 
this entity's showing properties or constancies of its own, the 
judgment about what is real or unreal should be affected by 
changes in the possibility of demonstrating social properties. 
The social sciences have considerably improved their tech- 
niques for reliably recording the structure of small or large 
groups and of registering the various aspects of group life. 
Sociometric techniques, group observation, interview techniques, 
and others are enabling the social scientist more and more to 
gather reliable data on the structural properties of groups, on 
the relations between groups or subgroups, and on the relation 
between a group and the life of its individual members. 
The taboo against believing in the existence of a social entity 
is probably most effectively broken by handling this entity 
experimentally. As long as the scientist merely describes a lead- 
ership form, he is open to the criticism that the categories used 
reflect merely his "subjective views" and do not correspond to 
the "real" properties of the phenomena under consideration. If 
the scientist experiments with leadership and varies its form, 
he relies on an "operational definition" which links the concept 
of a leadership form to concrete procedures of creating such a 
leadership form or to the procedures for testing its existence. 
The "reality" of that to which the concept refers is established 
by "doing with" rather than "looking at," and this reality is 
independent of certain "subjective" elements of classification. 
The progress of physics from Archimedes to Einstein shows 
consecutive steps, by v^hich the "practical" aspect of the ex- 
perimental procedure has modified and sometimes revolution- 
ized the scientific concepts regarding the physical world by 
changing the beliefs of the scientists about what is and what is 
not real. 
To vary a social phenomenon experimentally the experi- 
menter has to take hold of all essential factors, even if he is 
not yet able to analyze them satisfactorily. A major omission 
or misjudgment on this point makes the experiment fail. In 
social research the experimenter has to take into consideration 
such factors as the personality of individual members, the group 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 283 
structure, ideology and cultural values, and economic factors. 
Group experimentation is a form of social management. To be 
successful it, like social management, has to take into account 
all of the various factors that happen to be important for the 
case in hand. Experimentation with groups will therefore lead 
to a natural integration of the social sciences, and it will force 
the social scientist to recognize as reality the totality of factors 
which determine group life. 
6. SOCIAL REALITY AND CONCEPTS 
It seems that the social scientist has a better chance of accom- 
plishing such a realistic integration than the social practitioner. 
For thousands of years kings, priests, politicians, educators, pro- 
ducers, fathers and mothers in fact, all individuals have 
been trying day by day to influence smaller or larger groups. 
one might assume that this would have led to accumulated 
wisdom of a well integrated nature. Unfortunately nothing is 
farther from the truth. We know that our average diplomat 
thinks in very one-sided terms, perhaps those of law, or eco- 
nomics, or military strategy. We know that the average manu- 
facturer holds highly distorted views about what makes a 
work-team tick. We know that no one can answer today even 
such relatively simple questions as what determines the pro- 
ductivity of a committee meeting. 
Several factors have come together to prevent practical ex- 
perience from leading to clear insight. Certainly, the man of 
affairs is convinced of the reality of group life, but he is usually 
opposed to a conceptual analysis. He prefers to think in terms 
of "intuition" and "intangibles." The able practitioner fre- 
quently insists that it is impossible to formulate simple, clear 
rules about how to reach a social objective. He insists that 
different actions have to be taken according to the various situa- 
tions, that plans have to be highly flexible and sensitive to the 
changing scene. 
If one tries to transform these sentiments into scientific lan- 
guage, they amount to the following statements, a) Social 
events depend on the social field as a whole, rather than on a 
few selected items. This is the basic insight behind the field 
284 KURT LEWIN 
theoretical method which has been successful in physics, which 
has steadily grown in psychology and, in my opinion, is bound 
to be equally fundamental for the study of social fields, simply 
because it expresses certain basic general characteristics of inter- 
dependence, b) The denial of "simple rules" is partly identical 
with the following important principle of scientific analysis. 
Science tries to link certain observable (phenotypical) data with 
other observable data. It is crucial for all problems of inter- 
dependence, however, that for reasons which we do not need 
to discuss here it is, as a rule, impracticable to link one set of 
phenotypical data directly to other phenotypical data. Instead, 
it is necessary to insert "intervening variables." 8 To use a more 
common language: the practitioner as well as the scientist views 
the observable data as mere "symptoms." They are "surface" 
indications of some "deeper-lying" facts. He has learned to 
"read" the symptoms, like a physicist reads his instruments. 
The equations which express physical laws refer to such deeper- 
lying dynamic entities as pressure, energy, or temperature 
rather than to the directly observable symptoms such as the 
movements of the pointer of an instrument. 
The underlying methodological principle is but one expres- 
sion of the nature of the relation between concepts, scientific 
facts and scientific fact finding. In the words of Cassirer, 
Strictly speaking, the experiment never concerns the real case, as it lies 
before us here and now in all the wealth of its particular determinations, 
but the experiment rather concerns an ideal case, which we substitute 
for it. The real beginnings of scientific induction furnish the classical 
example of this. Galileo did not discover the law of falling bodies by 
collecting arbitrary observations of sensuously real bodies, but by de- 
fining hypothetically the concept of uniform acceleration and taking it as 
a conceptual measure of the facts. This concept provides for the given 
time-values a series of space-values, such as proceed according to a 
fixed rule, that can be grasped once for all. Henceforth we must at- 
tempt to advance to the actual process of reality by a progressive con- 
sideration of the complex determinations, that were originally excluded: 
as, for example, the variation of acceleration according to the distance 
from the centre of the earth, retardation by the resistance of the air, etc. 9 
'Tolman, E. C, "The Determiners of Behavior at a Choice Point," Psycho- 
logical Review, (1938), Vol. 45, 1-41. 
* Substance and Function fEnp-1. tr.V * CA 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 285 
If we consider the factors involved in the measurement of motion, . . . 
it is evident that the physical definition of motion cannot be established 
without substituting the geometrical body for the sensuous body, without 
substituting the "intelligible" continuous extension of the mathematician 
for sensuous extension. Before we can speak of motion and its exact 
measurement in the strict sense, we must go from the contents of per- 
ception to their conceptual limits. ... It is no less a pure conceptual con- 
struction, when we ascribe a determinate velocity to a non-uniformly 
moving body at each point of its path; such a construction presupposes 
for its explanation nothing less than the whole logical theory of in- 
finitesimal analysis. But even where we seem to stand closer to direct 
sensation, where we seem guided by no other interest than to arrange its 
differences as presented us, into a fixed scale, even here theoretical 
elements are requisite and clearly appear. It is a long way from the 
immediate sensation of heat to the exact concept of temperature. 10 
The dynamics of social events provides no exception to this 
general characteristic of dynamics. If it were possible to link a 
directly observable group behavior, B, with another behavior, 
B 1 , B = F (B 1 ) where F means a simple function then 
simple rules of procedure for the social practitioner would be 
possible. When the practitioner denies that such rules can be 
more than poor approximations he seems to imply that the 
function, F, is complicated. I am inclined to interpret his 
statement actually to mean that in group life, too, "appearance" 
should be distinguished from the "underlying facts," that simi- 
larity of appearance may go together with dissimilarity of the 
essential properties and vice versa, and that laws can be formu- 
lated only in regard to these underlying dynamic entities 
k = F (n,m) where k,n,m refer not to behavioral symptoms 
but to intervening variables. 11 
For the social scientist this means that he should give up 
thinking about such items as group structure, group tension, or 
social forces as nothing more than a popular metaphor or 
analogy, which should be eliminated from science as much as 
possible. Although there is no need for social science to copy 
the specific concepts of the physical sciences, the social scientist 
should be clear that he, too, needs intervening variables and 
142., 
11 Cf . Lewin, Kurt, A Dynamic Theory of Personality (tr. by D. Adams and 
K. Zener), New York: McGraw-Hill (1935). 
286 KURT LEWIN 
that these dynamic facts rather than the symptoms and appear- 
ances are the important points of reference for him and the 
social practitioner alike. 
7. MATHEMATIZATION AND INTEGRATION OF THE 
SOCIAL SCIENCES 
The relation between theory formation, fact finding and 
mathematization, which Cassirer has described in regard to 
the physical sciences, has come much to the fore in the psy- 
chology of the last decade. Different psychological trends have 
led from different sides and with partly different objectives 
to a strong emphasis on mathematization. This need springs 
partly from a desire of a more exact scientific representation 
of the results of tests or other fact findings and has led to an 
elaborate development of statistical procedures. In part the 
emphasis on mathematization springs from the desire of a 
deeper theoretical insight. 12 Both geometrical and algebraic 
concepts are employed to this end. 
Mathematical economics since Pareto (1909) is another ex- 
ample of the development of a social science which shows many 
of the characteristics discussed by Cassirer. 

one of the most striking illustrations of the function of 
theorems, concepts, and methods in the development of science 
is their role in the integration of the social sciences which is 
just beginning to take place. It may be appropriate to mention 
this problem and to refer briefly to considerations I have pre- 
sented elsewhere. 13 
Many aspects of social life can be viewed as quasi-stationary 
processes. They can be regarded as states of quasi-stationary 
equilibrium in the precise meaning of a constellation of forces 
the structure of which can be well defined. The scientific treat- 
18 Hull, C. L., Principles of Bettavior, New York: Appleton Century (1943)$ 
Kohler, W., The Place of Value in a World of Facts. New York: Liveright (1938) j 
Lewin, Kurt, "The Conceptual Representation and the Measurement of Psycho- 
logical Forces," Contributions to Psychological Theory, Vol. I, No. 4, Duke Uni- 
versity Press (1938)5 Lewin, Kurt, "Constructs in Psychology and Psychological 
Ecology," Studies in Tofological and Vector Psychology, III, University of Iowa. 
11 Lewin, Kurt, "Problems of Group Dynamics and the Integration of the Social 
Sciences: I. Social Equilibria," Human Relations (1947), Vol. I. 
SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 287 
ment of social forces presupposes analytic devices which are 
adequate to the nature of social processes and which are tech- 
nically fitted to serve as a bridge to a mathematical treatment. 
The basic means to this end is the representation of social 
situations as "social fields." 
This technical analysis makes it possible to formulate in a 
more exact way problems of planned social changes and of re- 
sistance to change. It permits general statements concerning 
some aspects of the problem of selecting specific objectives in 
bringing about change, concerning different methods of bring- 
ing about the same amount of change, and concerning differences 
in the secondary effects of these methods. The analytic tools 
used are equally applicable to cultural, economic, sociological, 
and psychological aspects of group life. They fit a great variety 
of processes, such as production levels of a factory, a work- 
team and an individual worker; changes of abilities of an indi- 
vidual and of capacities of a country; group standards with and 
without cultural value; activities of one group and the interac- 
tion between groups, between individuals, and between indi- 
viduals and groups. The analysis concedes equal reality to all 
aspects of group life and to social units of all sizes. The applica- 
tion depends upon the structural properties of the process and of 
the total situation in which it takes place. 
How is it possible, one may ask, to bring together under one 
heading and procedure such diversified data? Does that not 
necessarily mean losing in concreteness what one might gain 
in scientific generality? 
In the same way as the natural sciences, the social sciences 
have to face the problem of how to get hold conceptually of 
the disturbing qualitative richness of psychological and cul- 
tural events, how to find "general" laws without giving up 
reaching the individual case. Cassirer describes how the mathe- 
matical constructive procedure solves this problem by changing, 
as it were, the very meaning of equality and scientific abstrac- 
tion. Speaking of equalities of mathematical sets he says, "This 
similarity, however, means nothing more than that they are 
connected by a definite rule, such as permits us to proceed from 
one manifold to another by continued identical application of 
a88 KURT LEWIN 
the same fundamental relation}" 14 "The genuine concept does 
not disregard the peculiarities and particularities which it holds 
under it, but seeks to show the necessity of the occurrence and 
connection of just these particularities." 15 
The individual case is not excluded from consideration, but is fixed and 
retained as a perfectly determinate step in a general process of change. 
It is evident anew that the characteristic feature of the concept is not 
the "universality" of a presentation, but the universal validity of a 
principle of serial order. We do not isolate any abstract part whatever 
from the manifold before us, but we create for its members a definite 
relation by thinking of them as bound together by an inclusive law. And 
the further we proceed in this and the more firmly this connection ac- 
cording to laws is established, so much the clearer does the unambiguous 
determination of the particular stand forth. 16 
The consideration of quasi-stationary equilibria is based on 
analytic concepts which, within the realm of the social sciences, 
have emerged first in psychology. The concepts of a psycho- 
logical force, of tension, of conflicts as equilibria of forces, of 
force fields and of inducing fields, have slowly widened their 
range of application from the realm of individual psychology 
into the realm of processes and events which had been the 
domain of sociology and cultural anthropology. It seems that 
the treatment of economic equilibria by mathematical economics, 
although having a different origin, is fully compatible with this 
development. 
The fusion of the social sciences will make accessible to 
economics the vast advantages which the experimental pro- 
cedure offers for testing theories and for developing new in- 
sight. The combination of experimental and mathematical pro- 
cedures which Cassirer describes has been the main vehicle for 
the integration of the study of light, of electricity, and of the 
other branches of physical science. The same combination seems 
to be destined to make the integration of the social sciences a 
reality. 
KURT LEWIN 
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 
14 Substance and Function (Engl. tr.), 31. 
"/Ml., 19. 
"Ibid., 20. 
8 
Robert S. Hartman 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 
I DWELT on the birth of the ego out of the mythical 
collective. . . . [The] ego detaches itself from the collec- 
tive in the same way that certain figures of Rodin wrest them- 
selves out of the stone and awaken from it." Thus, in a speech 
at the Library of Congress, 1 Thomas Mann described his 
creation of the Joseph figures. In a similar way Cassirer could 
have described and did describe 2 the birth of modern self- 
consciousness from the matrix of pre-historic myth and medi- 
eval metaphysics, the creation of its symbolic forms out of the 
raw material of rites and gestures, the emergence of logical 
functions from natural material, their gradual liberation and 
therewith the self-liberation of consciousness from sensuous 
encumbrances. 
Symbolic forms are progressive states of the self-emergence 
of consciousness. That emergence may be followed in the grad- 
ual unfolding of metaphysical thought into modern science as 
Cassirer has shown in the first three volumes of the Erkenntnis- 
problem or it may be demonstrated in the gradual unfolding 
of the raw material and mirroring produce of the self -evolving 
consciousness as Cassirer has done in his Philosofhie der 
symbolischen Formen? 
Both forms of presentation demonstrate one and the same 
process of creative thought: in the first case with the emphasis 
on the creating mind, in the second with the emphasis on the 
created form. As the form, in its successive elaboration, mirrors 
1 The Atlantic Monthly, February 1943, 97 ff. 
* Cf. Erkenntnisfroblem I, 1 1 f. 
1 All references in this essay are to that work, and will be referred to by PSF, 
unless otherwise stated. The translations are my own. 
291 
292 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
the laboring mind, so the mind, in its successive effort, reflects 
the form wrought. In the Erkenntnisfroblem Cassirer has 
shown the work of the objective spirit in its course; in the 
Philosophic der symbolischen Formen he has shown, in the 
evolution of its work, the course of the objective spirit. In both 
cases he stands at the end of the development, surveying it and 
focusing it within his own mind, thus re-creating the energy of 
cultural development and sculpturing its forms before our own 
eyes, a philosophical seer, whose visual, "synoptic" 4 view of 
philosophy both in its historical and conceptual dimension 
has rendered to us in ontogeny what the objective spirit has 
wrought throughout generations in phylogenic labor. Thus 
he has created a new symbolic form, which points beyond itself 
toward still higher formations. His work for us, represents 
what he calls "a new Composition* of the world, which proceeds 
according to specific standards, valid only for itself." 5 Such a 
form "must be measured with its own measure. The points of 
view, according to which it is to be judged . . . must not be 
brought to it from outside, but must be deduced from the 
fundamental principle of its own formation." 8 No rigid meta- 
physical category must interfere with such "a purely immanent 
beginning." 
Let us then measure Cassirer with his own measure. We 
shall be unable, within the limits of this essay, to extend our 
measurements into all the ramifications of the philosophy of 
symbolic forms. But we shall be able to follow its formative 
principle. From it we shall deduce, and by it justify, our own 
procedure. Thus we may hope to catch the spirit of that great 
work the spirit of creation itself. 
The philosophy of symbolic forms is a philosophy of creation. 
The category of creativity is the one we shall apply to and 
deduce from his system. In order to do so we must first clear 
the way and determine his philosophy negatively against its 
two poles, the raw-material of creation and the source of the 
creating act. The symbolic form is neither the one nor the 
4 PSF, III, viii. 
/W,I,iaa. 
'I but. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 293 
other, but represents the process of creation itself. Confinement 
to the raw-material would lead to metaphysics, confinement to 
the source of the creative act to psychology. Cassirer's philoso- 
phy is neither metaphysics nor psychology} it is neither con- 
cerned with pure Being nor with pure Consciousness, but with 
the context and interaction of both. 
The characteristic and peculiar achievement of each symbolic form 
the form of language as well as that of myth or of theoretical cognition 
is not simply to receive 7 a given material of impressions possessing already 
a certain determination, quality and structure, in order to graft on it, 
from the outside, so to speak, another form out of the energy of con- 
sciousness itself. The characteristic action of the spirit begins much 
earlier. Also, the apparently "given" is seen, on closer analysis, to be 
already processed by certain acts of either the linguistic, the mythical, 
or the logico-theoretical "apperception." It "is" only that which it has 
been made into by those acts. Already in its apparently simple and im- 
mediate states it shows itself conditioned and determined by some 
primary function which gives it significance. In this primary formation, 
and not in the secondary one, lies the peculiar secret of each symbolic 
form. 8 
Thus there is no "primary datum" underlying the creative 
activity of consciousness. Every primary datum is already 
spiritually 9 imbued, even the simplest spatial perceptions, like 
left and right, high and low. 10 The same is true of the original 
sensuous perceptions of time, number, and causality. If these 
categories were substantial elements, they could point to an 
absolute Being} but such a Being, presupposed by dogmatic 
metaphysics, does not exist. Our consciousness cannot posit any 
content without, by that very act of positing, setting a whole 
complex of other contents. This fact cannot be explained by 
dogmatic metaphysics from the presupposition of an absolute 
Being j on the contrary, the existence of such a being is contra- 
dicted by that very activity of consciousness. 11 An "immediate 
T In the sense of the Platonic "receptacle." 
*PSF,ll 9 120. 
The adjective "spiritual" is used in the sense of the German "geistig." 
10 PSF, II, 120. 
" PSF 9 I, 31 f., with reference to Kant's Versuch die negatwen Grossen in die 
Weltweisheit rimuf&hren. 
294 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
datum" is already a material-spiritual context, it is a creatum: 
the germ of a symbolic form. 
It is obvious, on the other hand, that we cannot understand 
the form through insight into the natural causes of its origina- 
tion, by the method of psychology rather than that of meta- 
physics. What consciousness contributes to the form is as im- 
portant as are the contributions of the schemata of space, time, 
and number; but it is as little real by itself as are the latter. 
There is a third "formative determination," which explains the 
world of symbolic forms neither from the nature of the abso- 
lute nor from the play of empirico-psychological forces. Al- 
though that determination may agree with the method of psy- 
chology in acknowledging the fact that the subjectum agens of 
the symbolic forms is to be found nowhere else than in the 
human consciousness, it does not necessarily have to take 
consciousness in either its metaphysical or in its psychological 
determination but in a critical analysis which goes beyond 
both. "The modern critique of cognition, the analysis of the 
laws and principles of knowledge, has freed itself more and 
more determinedly from the presuppositions both of meta- 
physics and of psychologism." 12 
Neither from the side of an absolute being nor from that of 
consciousness alone can reality be comprehended. only in the 
combination of both, in the symbolic form as constituted by the 
creative activity of the spirit, in the produce, the autonomous 
creation of the spirit do we have reality and therewith truth ; 
for the highest truth which opens itself to the spirit is finally the form of 
its own activity. In the totality of its own accomplishments and the 
cognition of the specific rules by which each of them is being determined, 
as well as in the consciousness of the connection which combines all these 
rules into the unity of one task and one solution: in all this the spirit 
possesses the knowledge of itself and of reality. 13 
And that knowable reality alone is real. 
To the question what absolute reality should be outside of that totality 
of spiritual functions, what the "thing in itself" might be in this sense 
to this question there is no further answer. It must be understood more 
"PSF, II, I5 . 
11 WF, 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 295 
and more as a falsely put problem, a phantom of thought. The true 
concept of reality cannot be pressed into the abstract form of Being, but 
becomes merged in the variety and abundance of the forms of spiritual 
life a life on which is imprinted the stamp of inner necessity, and there- 
with the stamp of objectivity. In this sense each new "symbolic form," 
not only the conceptual world of cognition but also the plastic world of 
art, as well as that of myth and of language, signifies, in the words of 
Goethe, a revelation from the inner to the outer, a "synthesis of world 
and spirit," which alone truly assures us of the original unity of both. 14 
The world of symbolic forms is the world of life itself. 
Neither in the primitive intuition of the spirit 15 nor in the 
primitive perception of natural being can life be comprehended. 
Life has left both these states behind, it has transformed itself 
into the form of the spirit. 16 "The negation of the symbolic 
forms would therefore, instead of apprehending the fullness of 
life, on the contrary destroy the spiritual form, to which that 
fullness necessarily is bound." 17 
We must not passively contemplate these spiritual realities, 
but put ourselves right into the midst of their restless activity; 
only thus shall we comprehend these realities not as static con- 
templations of a metaphysical Being but as formative functions 
and energies. In doing so we shall discover in them, however 
different the "Gestalten" they produce, certain universal and 
typical principles, 18 the principles of creation itself. Recognizing 
creation we become creative ourselves: not as dogmatic meta- 
physicians but as artists vitalized by and vitalizing our ma- 
terial. 
Thus, in our interpretation, Cassirer's philosophy is meta- 
physics as little as Rodin's figures are stone: if no creative hand 
had ever touched the stone it might have remained stone. The 
creative touch proved that mere "stone" it never was. If no 
creative philosophy had ever liberated the spirit from the 
mould of the scholastic system into which it had been "melted 
down," 19 then metaphyiscs might have remained metaphysics. 
" PSF, 1, 4 8 f. 
M /W,I,5i. 
17 Ibid. 
"F,I, 5 i. 
a * Erkenntnisfroblem, I, 1 1 . 
296 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
only slowly the individual moments of thought, which in 
that system were held together as if by a dogmatic force, step 
forth in freer movement." 20 From the intellectual struggles of 
the Renaissance, to the liberating strike of Kant's Critique of 
Reason, to Cassirer's "Critique of Culture," 21 the life-giving 
touch works on and transforms metaphysics, until it culminates 
in the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. But being capable of such 
transformation it shows itself never to have been mere "meta- 
physics." Critical philosophers, and Cassirer in particular, could 
vitalize metaphysics as Rodin could the stone. It may be instruc- 
tive to compare the nature of Cassirer's material with that of 
Rodin's. 
Rodin's "stone" never was just stone. Rodin only knew 
living surfaces. These surfaces consisted of infinitely many 
movements. 
The play of light upon them made manifest that each of these move- 
ments was different and significant. At this point they seemed to flow 
into one another; at that to greet each other hesitatingly; at a third to 
pass by each other without recognition, like strangers. There were 
undulations without end. There was no point at which there was not 
life and movement. ... He saw only innumerable living surfaces, only 
life. 22 
Cassirer's philosophy never was just metaphysics. 23 Meta- 
physics, as ontology, is the discipline of pure Being, but there 
never was pure Being. In the interaction of the thinker's mind 
with the raw material of his thought arises a new reality: 
Reality proper. That reality appears in "symbolic forms" 
forms which rise under the dynamic movement of thought like 
Rodin's figures under the magic of his hands. Like on Rodin's 
surfaces, the light of reality plays on these forms, which refract 
it in a thousand manifestations. 
When one characterizes language, myth, art, as "symbolic forms," 
M Rilke, Rainer Maria, Rodin, New York: The Fine Editions Press, 1945, n f. 
9 Somewhat doubtful in this respect is W. C. Swabey in his book-report on 
the PMlosophie der symbolise/ten Formen, Philosophical Review, vol. XXXIII, 
No. 2, 1924, 195. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 297 
then there seems to lie in that ｅxpression the presupposition that all of 
them, as definite formative modes of the spirit, point back to a last 
primary layer of reality, 24 which is seen through them only, like through 
a strange medium. Reality seems to become comprehensible for us only 
in the particular state of those forms; in them it both conceals and re- 
veals itself. The same fundamental functions which give the world 
of the spirit its determination, its imprint and character, appear on the 
other hand as just so many refractions which Reality, uniform and 
unique in itself, experiences as soon as it is being apperceived and ap- 
propriated by the "subject." The philosophy of symbolic 'forms is, 
seen under this point of view, nothing but the attempt to indicate for 
each of them, as it were, the definite index of refraction. It wants to 
recognize the particular nature of the different refracting media. 25 
Those indices determine the activity of the spirit, defining 
it in terms of the "modalities" 26 which the spirit assumes in 
each particular medium. The life of the spirit thus is "multi- 
dimensional j" 27 there are undulations without end, movements, 
dynamic processes. Like Rodin's statues they grow out of the 
undifferentiated sensuous matrix into the determinacy of ob- 
jective thought indeed, like Rodin's own "Thought," a head 
growing out of the stone, or his "Thinker," shaped from him- 
self, pondering the abundance of forms crowding "The Gate 
of Hell," in deep symbolism. 
The process of differentiation is a process of objectivation. As 
Rodin followed religiously the laws of nature, the way he him- 
self successively discovered them, 28 so Cassirer follows the laws 
of the spirit as he uncovers them. There are two main laws, The 
Law of Continuity each phase is the fulfilment of the preced- 
ing one and The Law of New Emphasis each phase de- 
velops the preceding one. 29 These, of course, are nothing but the 
laws of growth itself. As the forms grow their "moments" 
change, their "accents" shift. The three stages or "dimensions" 
" Cf. II, 50. 
* PSF, III, 3. 
II, i6il, 9 ff,2 9 ff. 
38 Story, Sommerville, "Auguste Rodin and His Work," in Rodin, New York: 
Phaidon Edition, Oxford University Press, 1939, n. 
298 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
of shift are ｅxpression, Presentation, Meaning (Ausdruck, 
Darstellung, Bedeutung). These stages are not isolated from 
one another but contain "points" at which the forms flow into 
one another, greet each other hesitatingly or pass each other 
without recognition, like strangers. In the first stage, Expres- 
sion, the subject "possesses" the environment as a variety of 
physiognomic experiences. 30 Long before there are "things" 
there is such structurization of experience. "Existence," "re- 
ality," are at that stage physiognomically manifest. The ab- 
straction of "pure" perception, which is the starting point of 
dogmatic sensualism, is here already transcended. The datum 
which the subject experiences as being "opposite" to him is here 
transparent with inner life, not exterior or dumb. This is the 
stage at which myth and art originate, and where, with hesitat- 
ing greeting, they meet language, which, in the Sentence, takes 
up 31 and transcends that stage, setting the new dimension, 
Presentation. The sentence, however, only very gradually 
swings itself upward into the new dimension. It remains bound 
to the physiognomic realm, substituting logical determination 
for spatial demonstration. only gradually it expands from per- 
ceptual and emotional perspectives to full objectivation, in three 
steps again: the mimic, where it remains in the plastic world, 
in the spatial meanings of the copula, the demonstrative pro- 
nouns, the definite article, onomatopoetic formations, and the 
rendering of the physiognomic characters through voiced or 
voiceless consonants, higher or lower vowels j the analogic, 
where in the relation of sounds the relations of the objects are 
expressed , and, finally, the symbolic, where all similarity be- 
tween the world of language and that of objects has dis- 
appeared. only in this last form, in the distance from the lower 
stages, language comes entirely into its own. 32 The three stages 
of language are thus, as it were, steps by which the spirit passes 
from the physiognomic to the presentative dimension, and 
beyond it into that of meaning. 
Whereas language and mythos partly flow into, partly greet 
" PSF, III, 5245 71. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 299 
each other, mythos and logos pass by each other without recog- 
nition, like strangers. The scientific concept is past the physio- 
gnomic level. 83 "Cognition" implies distance from the world, 
a "cut" between "nature" and the world of feeling. The concept 
starts its career on the level of perception, where it meets 
language, to ascend in harmony with it, in order, finally, to 
transcend it through three stages again, corresponding to the 
three stages of language} the mimic, in the platonic *pwww 
from things to ideas, 34 with its correspondence between both; 
the analogic, in Kepler-Galileo-Newtonian science, where the 
correspondence between the world of objects and that of con- 
cepts has disappeared in detail but still persists in the corre- 
spondence of structures, especially in the model of a 
given space j and the symbolic, in the modern scientific concept 
with its purely symbolic "space" without any correspondence to 
the perceptual world. In this last stage the process of objectiva- 
tion is completed, the symbols stand freely and in full self- 
consistent significance above the raw material of the world. 
Yet, they point to it and give it its final and culminating mean- 
ing, fulfilling in their lofty sweep the grunt, the first gesture 
of the man of primal times. 
Rodin's "Man of Primal Times" 35 shows precisely this: the 
unlimited promise of that first gesture, the unfolding of thought 
from hand. 
It indicates in the work of Rodin the birth of gesture. That gesture 
which grew and developed to such greatness and power, here bursts 
forth like a spring that softly ripples over this body. It awakens in the 
darkness of primal times and in its growth seems to flow through the 
breadth of this work as though reaching out from bygone centuries to 
those that are to come. Hesitatingly it unfolds itself in the lifted arms. 
These arms are still so heavy that the hand of one rests upon the top of 
the head. But this hand is roused from its sleep, it concentrates itself 
quite high on the top of the brain where it lies solitary. It prepares for 
the work of centuries, a work that has no measure and no end. 8e 
"PSF,!!!, 526. 
M Alsowcalled "The Age of Bronze." 
* Rilke, op. cit tj 24. 
300 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
Gesture is the first awkward manifestation of the spontaneity 
of spirit which flowers forth in the full bloom of the symbolic 
forms. In its beginning even the primal forms of the synthetiz- 
ing function of consciousness, 87 space, time, and number, are 
nothing but corporeal motions "that softly ripple over the 
body." Space arises from the demonstrative gestures of Here 
and There, I and Thou, and expands in concentric circles around 
the speaker, whose body is the first system of spatial coordina- 
tion. 88 Thomas Mann's Joseph is still a mythical but also already 
an individual figure, as he describes his own and his Ishmaelite 
fellow travelers' universes: 
The world hath many centres, one for each created being, and about 
each one it lieth in its own circle. Thou standest but half an ell from 
me, yet about thee lieth a universe whose centre I am not but thou art. 
. . . And I, on the other hand, stand in the centre of mine. For our 
universes are not far from each other so that they do not touch; rather 
hath God pushed them and interwoven them deep into each other. 89 
That body-space finally becomes the pure-brain-space of mod- 
ern relativity theory. Time, originally woven into the spatial 
determination of Here and There as Now and Then, 40 becomes 
the purely mental symbol of our physical science. And number 
itself, "originally a hand concept, not a thought concept," 41 
develops out of its bodily encumbrance into the lofty realm it 
has so elaborately carved out today; now not only a content 
of thought but even a way of thinking, 42 a means of sharper and 
sharper determination of the indeterminate. 43 
Thus, like filigree work chiseled out from heavy walls, the 
final Gestalten of the symbolic forms stand out in relief against 
the background of metaphysics. The vertical "schemata" of the 
structure, reaching throughout the whole dis-cursus of con- 
sciousness, 44 are the formative principles: space, time, and 
"PSF,!!!, 1 6. 
M PSF,I, 156. 
89 Mann, Thomas, Joseph in Egyft, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1 939, Vol. 1, 4. 
*PF,I, i6 7 ff. 
41 /W, III, 397- 
*PSF, III, 468. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 301 
number. The horizontal "dimensions" are the forms of expres- 
sion, presentation, and meaning. These latter are principles of 
differentiation, carrying forward the relief into ever finer 
ramifications. Thus the creative activity of the spirit resembles 
that of sculpture even in the method, "the process of removal," 45 
to use the words of Michelangelo. The combination of both the 
horizontal and the vertical principles of formation are the sym- 
bolic forms, myth, language, art, religion, theoretical cognition: 
peculiar energies of the spirit, 46 with their own "modalities" 
and their own particular "planes of reality" (Seinsebenen)* 1 
their own position and Gestalt on the metaphysical background. 
Their ultimate refinement has lost all semblance to its meta- 
physical matrix, just as filigree on a wall, or a sculptured hand 
by Rodin, have lost all semblance to their own concrete ma- 
terial. It has lost almost even the texture of the background. 
It is pure symbol either script, as the filigree on the walls of 
the Alhambra of Granada, or something sui generis, as a mem- 
ber sculptured by Rodin. "A hand laid on another's shoulder 
or thigh does not any more belong to the body from which it 
came from this body and from the object which it touches 
or seizes something new originates, a new thing that has no 
name and belongs to no one." 48 It is a symbol. 
The symbol, though of sensuous material, yet transcends 
that materiality and points toward a content in the higher 
forms of Meaning. Its materiality is completely absorbed, in 
that function of meaning, 49 its "symbolic pragnanz." It is 
subjected under the sensuous; yet that subjection is at the same 
time freedom from the sensuous. 51 The capacity of the sen- 
suous material to point toward a world of meanings, to 
symbolize it without co-inciding with it this clothing of the 
sensuous with ideal meaning is indeed "das Mysterium des 
45 Cf. II, 2 89* Erkenntnisfroblem I, 5 f. 
,, 
*PSF,l, 28 f. 
48 Rilke, op. /., 30. 
"PSF, III, 234. The similarity of Cassirer's terminology with that of Gestalt 
psychology is a conscious one. Symbolic forms are "Gestaltcn." 
, 41. 
302 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
Wirkens schlechthin"** the mystery of creative activity far 
excellence. It cannot suddenly accrete to the sensitive faculty 
out of nothing, but must be part of the very nature of that 
faculty from its first beginnings. There is, in the sensuous 
itself, 
to use an ｅxpression of Goethe, an' "exact sensuous imagination," which 
appears active in the most diverse realms of spiritual and mental creativity. 
Each of these realms gives rise, as the true vehicle of its own immanent 
process, beside and above the world of perception, to a free world of 
images, a world which in its immediate quality still bears the hue of 
the sensuous, but that sensuousness is formed and therewith spiritually 
dominated. We do not encounter the sensuous as a simple datum, but as 
a system of sensuous varieties, which are being produced in all kinds of 
free creation. 53 
In other words, not only is there no absolute metaphysical Be- 
ing, there is, on the other hand, not even an absolutely given 
sensuous perception. The network of meanings is present in 
germ, in f>otentia y in the first ripples of ｅxpression. Already then 
there is not only the substance of the material, but also the 
function of meaning in it. "The fundamental function of mean- 
ing is there before the positing of the individual sign, so that 
in that positing that function is not created but only fixated, 
only applied to an individual case." 54 Substance and function, 
material and meaning, the sensuous and the "intelligible" are 
originally fused in the unity of primary symbols. As the 
process of objectivation, of spiritualization continues, the sub- 
stantial is gradually chiseled off, "in a process of removal," 
and the functional appears in greater and greater purity. But 
substance and function never lose their mutual interdependence 
the filigree of the Alhambra is still on the wall, and Rodin's 
sculptured hand is still of bronze. That primary fusion in the 
symbolic, this primacy of the symbolic junction, is the secret 
of all symbolic forms and all spiritual activity. There is no Out- 
side or Inside here, no Before or After, nothing Active or Pas- 
sive. Here we have a union of elements, which did not have 
11 POT, m, 119. 
"POT, I, 19 f. 
" POT, I, 41. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 303 
to be constructed, but was a primary meaningful whole which 
belongs only to itself and interprets itself alone. In the fusion 
of body and soul we have the paradigm and prototype of such 
a relation. 55 
The moments of succession, as we find them in space and 
time, the connections of conditions such that the one appears as 
"thing," the other as "quality," the connection of successive 
events such that the one appears as cause, the other as effect: 
all these are examples of how the original fusion is gradually 
loosened and ramified. At the end of the development stands 
modern man, his intellect almost disengaged from his sensuous 
and social 86 background. Not without reason Cassirer's last 
published work had to be An Essay on Man. 
The principles of formation, present in the gestures of the 
man of primal times, brought about the intellect of the man 
of modern times. The hand resting on the brain of Rodin's 
figure symbolizes the entire power of that primal gesture. 
That hand does not rest there any more it has emancipated 
itself in the actions of that brain, 87 from which proceeded both 
modern science and technology, more like Ares than Athene. 
In the Critical philosophy the threads had been laid bare by 
which intellect is knitted to perception. For Kant "the intellect 
is the simple transcendental ｅxpression for the fundamental 
phenomenon that all perception, as conscious, always and neces- 
sarily must be jormed perception." 58 In Cassirer's philosophy 
the threads are traced back to their very origin in the original 
skein of cultural life: the critique of reason is expanded and 
empirically substantiated in Cassirer's critique of culture. But, 
after showing the entire many-branched labyrinth of man's 
development to modernity, Cassirer focuses on the hero him- 
self, a modern Theseus, who has left the guiding hand of 
nature and, at the end of his course, encounters a monster, the 
master of the maze, the Minotaur of Machinery, ready to de- 
vour him. Will man slay it or will he be slain? 
55 PSF, in, 117. 
M Originally spatial. 
OT PSF, II, 266: Technology as "organ projection." 
" PSF, III, 2124. 
304 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
It all depends on whether the original power of symboliza- 
tion is still living in him. For symbolization is power. Rodin's 
sculptured limbs are creations of a powerful energy which has 
appropriated the material and bent it to its will. The power of 
symbolization is a power of concentration and condensation, a 
Kraft der Verdichtung active in all symbolic forms. "It is as if 
through the creation of the new symbol, a tremendous energy 
of thought is being transformed from a relatively diffuse into 
more concentrated form." 80 That energy is the spontaneity, the 
creative freedom of the spirit, a freedom not arbitrary, but 
producing within the modalities of the symbolic forms. 161 It is a 
power which contains within itself the entire force of cultural 
evolution the symbol concentrates in one intense moment the 
entire cultural energy, diffuse in its manifold forms from past 
to future: a "revelation in the material." 62 Man will slay the 
monster, if he has the power of the symbol: to find his way 
back to nature and at the same time to look forward into the 
future, if he is able to concentrate and symbolically to divine 
past and future in the present. He must become a prophet: 
a symbol himself of his own origin and destination. 63 
For us Cassirer was such a "symbolic man," and so was 
Rodin. Both knew the nature and power of the symbol. Rodin 
saw man himself as a symbol. "When I have a beautiful wom- 
an's body as a model, the drawings I make of it also give me 
pictures of insects, birds, and fishes. That seems incredible and 
I did not know it myself until I found out." 84 Cassirer found 
a similarly incredible content in the "symbolic forms" of the 
spirit. Each of them symbolizes the totality of cultural evolu- 
tion. Consciousness cannot posit anything without positing 
every thing j in the Goethean words, often quoted by Cassirer, 
Truly the mental fleece 
Resembles a weaver's masterpiece, 
**PSF, III, 466. 
60 Ibid. 
"PSF,e.g. I, 20. 
"PSF, I, 46. 
M Cf. Essay on Man y 55, 61. 
** Story, op. tit., 14 f. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 305 
Where a thousand threads one treadle throws, 
Where fly the shuttles hither and thither 
Unseen the threads are knit together, 
And an infinite combination grows. 
The symbol, the material content clothed with the ideal mean- 
ing of the whole infinite composition, is therefore the "natural" 
product of consciousness, the symbolic function its natural func- 
tion. A healthy consciousness must in every act, to the degree 
and extent of that act, shuttle back and forth throughout the 
aeons of cultural development and knit all of them into the 
act. To the degree that it achieves this it is free from its sensuous 
origins: it is human. The essence of humanity is a free con- 
sciousness, roaming widely over cultural space and time. "Hu- 
man culture taken as a whole may be described as the process 
of man's progressive self-liberation.'* 65 The more symbolic an 
act, therefore, the more it is a truly human act. The more it 
presents a cultural content, the more it must represent all 
culture. Ethically as well as epistemologically, the develop- 
ment of presentation is progressive representation. Man's self- 
liberation proceeds proportionately to his capacity for symbolic 
representation. Representation is the act of manifesting spiritual 
energy in sensuous material. It is the fundamental function of 
consciousness, exhibited in the primal gesture of the savage as 
well as in the mathematical analysis of the man of advanced 
studies. Between both activities is a difference of degree, but 
not of kind. In all intellectual activity this function is being 
applied, or rather, all intellectual activity is this function. only 
in human behavior it is not yet manifest} only man himself 
has not yet become a symbol unto himself. In the social sphere 
the relationship between symbol and reality has not yet been 
found. It must be found} social reality must be filled with 
symbolic meaning. Thus the tension between symbol and 
reality 66 would be consummated. The other alternative of con- 
summation would be the effacement of man, the flattening out 
of the spirited ripple that rose as form over the faceless deep. 
The differentiation of the formless, similar to the structuriza- 
85 Essay on Man, 228. 
306 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
tion of the Awpov by the 9<*S or the articulation of 5Xi) by \MW 
this is the function of Form in Cassirer's philosophy (even 
though limited to the field of human culture and on the level 
of transcendental correlation rather than that of metaphysical 
opposition, as it was in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle 
and later in that of Hegel). 67 Form is not a static thing, a shape, 
but a dynamic principle, the totality of characters that transform 
sensuous impressions into intellectual and spiritual ｅxpressions." 
In its totality alone the form finds truth} truth is the whole 
herein Cassirer agrees with Hegel, calling part of his own 
philosophy a "Phenomenology of Cognition." 09 
The end, the "telos" of the spirit cannot be comprehended or pro- 
nounced, if one takes it by itself, severed from its beginning and middle. 
Philosophical reflection does not in this way set off the end against 
middle and beginning, but takes all three as integral moments of one 
unique total movement. 70 
In this total context, then, every element of the form, every 
one of its "differentials" 71 is representative of the whole. As for 
Rodin the beauty of the woman is representative of all creation, 
so for Cassirer the characteristic of one cultural unit, whether 
a vowel in language, a ritual in religion or an algorithm in 
mathematics, mirrors monadlike 72 the whole universe of forms. 
As Rodin's model is an end product of evolution, but as such 
again a middle term between the universal premise of evolution 
and the conclusion drawn by Rodin's pencil, so the symbolic 
unit is an end of the formative development preceding it, but 
also a mediator between that development and Cassirer's con- 
ception of it. At the same time these units are mediators be- 
tween the preceding and successive stages, and focal points of 
the entire development. 
The form of sensuous reality is based on the fact that the individual 
moments of which it is built up do not stand by themselves, but that 
OT Cf. PSF, III, 13, 230, and infra 312 ff., 322. 
, 12. 
, I, 40} III, 235- 
, 102. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 307 
between them takes place a peculiar relation of "corn-positing" (Mit- 
setzung). Nowhere is here anything isolated and detached. Even that 
which seems to belong to a certain single spatial point or temporal 
moment, does not remain immersed in the mere Here and There. It 
reaches beyond itself into the totality of all empirical contents. 73 
The higher reality unfolds itself, the richer its pattern be- 
comes and the fuller of symbolic functions will be the contents 
that offer themselves to consciousness. 
The farther that process continues, the wider a circle consciousness is 
able to span in a single moment. Each of its elements is now saturated, 
as it were, with such functions. It stands in varied meaningful contexts, 
which again are connected and which, by virtue of that connection, 
constitute a whole, which we denote as the world of our "experience." 
Whatever contexts one may isolate from this totality of "experience" 
. . . always their orders will show a definite structure and a common 
fundamental character. They are of such a nature, that from everyone 
of their moments a transition is possible to the whole, just as the con- 
stitution of the whole is presentable and presented in every moment. 74 
Every phenomenon is now only a letter within the script of 
total reality. 75 
Thus it is possible to span the whole world in a moment. 
Physical science is doing that, comprehending the totality of 
events by representing each event through its four space-time 
coordinates and reducing the variation of these coordinates to 
(more or less) final invariant laws/ 8 It thus obtains what science 
calls the "truth" of the phenomena, which is nothing else but 
their totality, "taken not in their concrete state but in the form 
of an ideal coordination" That coordination is based both 
on logical connections and logical distinctions, on synthesis 
as well as analysis. The higher a symbol, that is to say the more 
numerous and the more complex the phenomena it refers to, 
the more different will be its own form, its shape, from that 
of the phenomena themselves, and the greater the "distance" 
l, 80. 
"Ibid. 
308 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
between the sensuous and the symbolic content of consciousness 
but the greater that "distance" the greater, because the more 
comprehensive, the more "universal," will be the "truth." Fi- 
nally the symbol contains nothing but the 'principle of the forms 
it represents, the constitutive law of their structure, the genetic 
essence of their formation. It thus refers not to the similarity of 
the forms, but to their inner connective law, which may or may 
not express itself in similarities of form. 78 Thus the common 
constructive principle of the conic sections is not betrayed in 
any similarity of shape. Again we are reminded of Rodin, who 
in all his work looked for the latent principles of natural move- 
ment. "Such was the basis of what is called my Symbolism. 
I do not mind being called a Symbolist, if that will define the 
essential principle of sculpture." 79 It was not enough for Rodin 
to study nature and follow it so closely that "The Man of 
Primal Times" was suspected to be cast from the living model. 
He tried to find the principle of movement by what he called 
a method of "logical exaggeration." "My aim was then, after 
the 'Burghers of Calais,' to find ways of exaggerating logi- 
cally." 80 Indeed, what could be sensuously as well as significantly 
more expressive than calling ellipse, parabola and hyperbola 
"logical exaggerations" of the circle! 
Logical exaggeration consists, among other things, in the 
"constant reduction of the face to a geometrical figure, and the 
resolve to sacrifice every part of the face to the synthesis of its 
aspect," 81 that is to say, the totality of its features. That totality 
is sometimes enhanced by subtraction. 
Take the Cathedral of Chartres as an example: one of its towers is 
massive and without ornamentation, having been neglected in order 
that the exquisite delicacy of the other could be better seen. In sculpture 
the projection of the sheaths of muscles must be accentuated, the shorten- 
ings heightened, the holes made deeper. Scultpure is the art of the hole 
and the lump. 82 
I, 88. 
70 Story, op. cit., 14. 
* 
J bid. 
"Ibid. 
"Ibid. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 309 
The "process of removal" thus is a succession of dialectic steps 
in the totality of the form's movement. 
Not in continuous quantitative accretion, but in the sharpest dialectic 
contradiction the various fundamental ideas oppose each other in the 
truly critical epochs of cognition. . . , 88 The myth [e.g.,] would not be 
a truly spiritual form, if its unity were nothing but oppositionless sim- 
plicity. . . , The individual stages of its development do not simply 
join themselves one to the other, but often oppose each other in sharp 
contrast. The process consists in the fact that certain fundamental traits, 
certain spiritual determinations of the preceding stages are not only 
elaborated and supplemented, but are also being negated, indeed an- 
nihilated. 84 
Whatever obstructs the law of process of the total form is being 
eliminated. The symbol itself cannot contain anything that is not 
part of the totality: it shows "hole and lump." It is not similar 
to the symbolized content, but somehow in its shape is found the 
principle of the totality of the represented forms, visible to the 
eye of the synoptic seer, whether he be of plastic imagination 
like Rodin or of philosophical imagination like Cassirer. Some 
day, perhaps, a logic of symbolic forms will be written, based 
on the combined insight of both philosopher and artist. 
That logic would have to be symbolic of the entire fullness of 
life, its symbolism saturated with live meanings and not "sick- 
lied o'er with the pale cast" of positivism. Cassirer's philosophy 
of symbolic forms is such a truly symbolic logic, culminating, 
as it does, in the symbols of mathematics, the "logic of inven- 
tion," as it was called both by Galileo and Leibniz. But Cas- 
sirer's "Ansatz" the method and tendency of his work, points 
further: to an expansion of his method into the very field of the 
arts, into a logical symbolism or symbolic logic of painting and 
sculpture as well as of music, thus, in due time, to a method 
which will make these forms of consciousness as definitely and 
determinedly symbolic of life's fullness maybe even in the 
form of communication 85 as now are the "rational" signs of 
88 Erkenntnisproblem, I, 5. 
M PF, II, 289. Cf. infra 879 f. 
85 Cf . Langer, Susanne K., Philosophy in a New Key, Cambridge, Mass. : Har- 
vard University Press, 1942, 2i8fL, and passim. 
3io ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
language and mathematics. Seen under this view, not of eternity 
but of long term development, Cassirer's "phenomenology of 
cognition" is as much a precursor of a new logic as was HegePs 
phenomenology only in a much wider sense, comparable, per- 
haps, to Leibniz' divined rather than elaborated scientia gener- 
alis as a precursor of modern mathematical science. 
Indeed, in its emphasis on the totality of the formative 
process Cassirer's philosophy agrees with HegePs phenome- 
nology; in its emphasis on the fullness of life it draws inspiration 
from Leibniz' scientia generalis. With Hegel he has only the 
"Ansatz" 9 * in common; HegePs phenomenology "finally, so to 
speak, sharpens itself into a highest logical point. . . . How rich 
and varied ever its content, its structure is subject to a single 
and in a way uniform law." 87 The logic to which Cassirer points 
is a logic of creation, a logic of invention in a sense much wider 
even than that divined by Galileo and Leibniz as wide and 
varied, in fact, as life itself. The structure of his work does 
not suffer from HegePs shortcomings, from compression into 
a too narrow scheme. on the contrary, if criticism is in order, 
Cassirer's work seems almost too little inhibited, too artfully 
rambling at times in the fascinating regions it discloses, the 
style too ornamental sometimes to be fully effectful. 88 It is a 
work of art, full of life, showing, as does Rodin's work, "life in 
movement." 89 For Rodin it is the life of natural forms, for 
Cassirer the life of cultural forms. Rodin had nude models 
moving about in his studio, 
to supply him constantly with the picture of nudity in various attitudes 
and with all the liberty of ordinary life. He was constantly looking at 
them, and thus was always familiar with the spectacle of muscles in 
88 In contrast, for example, to the condensed imagery of Bergson. HegePs often 
atrocious German cannot be compared to the elegance of Cassirer's style. Although 
Cassirer was not as electrifying a personality as was Bergson, he was an absorbingly 
interesting lecturer. His classrooms, as one of his students expressed it, "seemed 
to be the halls where there was no life but the life of thought. In his lectures the 
spirit itself seemed to speak to the brains of men." This is a far cry from the utter 
dryness of HegePs presentation, the effect of which seems to have been one of the 
riddles of his time (not only to Schopenhauer). 
w Story, of cit. t 9. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 311 
movement. Thus the nude, which today people rarely see, and which 
even sculptors only see during the short period of the pose, was for 
Rodin an ordinary spectacle. . . . The face is usually regarded as the 
only mirror of the soul, and mobility of features is supposed to be the 
only exteriorization of spiritual life. But in reality there is not a muscle 
of the body which does not reveal thoughts and feelings. 90 

only the highest functions of the human mind seem to express 
the creativity of the spirit} Kant, and in a way even Hegel, as 
well as most of the post-Kantian philosophers before Cassirer, 
were interested in them mainly. Even Cassirer demonstrated 
the creativeness of thought first in its highest functions, in the 
field of abstract science. 91 only gradually he worked down from 
the brain to the lower and lowlier parts of the body, finally to 
the gestures of the members, the movement of the muscles, 
until the entire body of man stood before his eyes vibrating 
with spiritual life. All the forms of that life were then con- 
stantly before his view; for over thirty years he constantly 
looked at them. He seemed, like Rodin, "obsessed by a sort of 
divine intoxication for form." 92 "The living motion of the spirit 
must be apprehended in its actuality, in the very energy of its 
movement." 93 "Procedere" is only apprehensible through proc- 
ess, in its Fortgang. only by constantly following the forms of 
the spirit and sculpturing them in their process can one appre- 
hend them. 
The true, the concrete totality of the spirit must not be denoted in a 
simple formula at the beginning and so to speak presented ready made, 
but it develops, it finds itself only in the constantly advancing process 94 
of critical analysis itself. 95 
Just as the eyes of the sculptor must follow his models' mo- 
tions constantly and apprehend them in motor empathy, so the 
spirit itself, as analysis, must follow the "stetig weiterschrei- 
90 Story, op. cit.y 13. 
91 In Substance and Function. 
"Story, of. cit. t 26. 
""Im stetig weiterschreitenden Fortgang." The translation cannot render the 
plastic expressiveness of Cassirer's style. 
"PSFJy 10. 
312 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
tenden Fortgang? "the steadily further striding onwalking," 
of the symbolic forms parading before the philosopher's eyes 
like models before the artist. "The perimeter of spiritual reality 
can be designated, defined and determined only by pacing it 
.off in the process." 96 The whole of the objective spirit thus 
reveals itself gradually as an organic unity, steadily growing 
and developing in a "definite systematic scale, an ideal progress, 
as the end of which may be stated that the spirit in its own 
formations and self-created symbols not only is and lives, but 
that it comprehends them as they are." 07 In this respect again 
the philosophy of symbolic forms connects with HegePs phe- 
nomenology: "the end of development consists in the com- 
prehension and ｅxpression of spiritual reality not only as sub- 
stance, but 'just as much as subject'." 98 But there is an important 
difference between HegePs and Cassirer's phenomenology, 
which can be illustrated by Cassirer's attitude toward HegePs 
historical theory. 
The concept of a history of science contains the idea of the conservation 
of a universal logical structure in the succession of particular conceptual 
systems. Indeed: if the earlier content of thought would not be con- 
nected with the succeeding one by some identity, there would be nothing 
to justify our comprising the scattered logical fragments then at hand, 
in a series of becoming events. Each historical series of evolution needs 
a "subject" as a substratum in which to present and exteriorize itself. 
The mistake of the metaphysical theory of history lies not in the fact 
that it demands such a subject, but in the fact that it reifies it, by speak- 
ing of the self-development of an "Idea," a progress of the "World 
Spirit," and so on. We must renounce such reified carrier standing 
behind the historical movement; the metaphysical formula must be 
changed into a methodological formula. Instead of a common sub- 
stratum we only demand an intellectual continuity in the individual 
phases of development." 
That is to say, just as the sculptor is not interested in the per- 
sonality of his models as such, but in their symbolic significance 
for the laws of nature, so the philosopher of symbolic forms 
"ibid. 
"Ibid. 
* Erkenntnisfroblem, I, 16. Italics mine. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 313 
is not interested in the subject matter of the forms as such, 
but only their significance for the whole context in which they 
appear. "It is the task of philosophy . . . again and again, from 
a concrete historical aggregate of certain scientific concepts and 
principles to set forth the universal logical functions of cogni- 
tion in general." 100 In this respect the histories of science and of 
philosophy are two aspects of one and the same intellectual 
process, for which Galileo and Kepler, Newton and Euler are 
just as valid witnesses as Descartes or Leibniz. 101 The process 
is an empirical logical, not a metaphysical logical process. It is 
the historical process by which the cultural realities have 
evolved. 
From the sphere of sensation to that of perception, from perception to 
conceptual thinking, and from that again to logical judgment there 
leads, for critical epistemology, one steady road. Each later moment 
comprises the earlier, each earlier prepares the later. All the elements 
constituting cognition refer both to themselves and the "object." Sen- 
sation, perception, are in germ already comprehension, judgment, con- 
clusion. 102 
Neither in the treatment of the philosophical systems nor 
in that of the cultural forms is Cassirer concerned with estab- 
lishing a metaphysical subjective idealism. He is not dogmatic 
in any way 5 the dogmatic systems of metaphysics are in most 
cases nothing but 
hypostases of certain logical, aesthetical, or religious principles. The more 
they seclude themselves into the abstract generality of principle, the 
more they preclude themselves from other sides of spiritual culture and 
the concrete totality of its forms. 103 
With that totality Cassirer is concerned, in it he finds intellec- 
tual creativity active. The existence of such creativeness thus 
becomes for him not a matter of principle even though orig- 
inally it was a postulate 104 but a question of fact. In the rich- 
ness of that concrete totality he finds, through the ingenious 
100 ibid. 
101 Erkenntnisproblem, I, i o. 
* Erkenntnisfroblem, 1, 1 8. 
314 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
interpretation of the symbolic function, a whole systematic of 
the spirit, where each particular form receives its meaning pure- 
ly by the position it has within the system, a kind of periodic 
system of cultural forms. only that system is never closed, but 
ever active, ever in process, 105 reality thus never being but 
ever becoming, the ideal goal of the process rather than the 
process itself. 
Being concerned with the universal meaning in concrete re- 
ality rather than in an abstract principle, which would only 
detract from that meaning, and in the sifting of that meaning 
from all the forms of reality itself, Cassirer is not interested only 
in completed philosophical systems, nor in fully grown cultural 
forms. Similar or even identical concepts might conceal differ- 
ent, even contrasting meanings, 106 and most significant features 
might be found in byroads hitherto overlooked. The manifold 
attempts and beginnings of research in all cultural forms are 
the trickles from which the formula of universal cultural prog- 
ress must be distilled. 107 In the frozen shapes of these forms the 
original dynamics of their movement must be detected. Cassirer 
inquired into all these forms, torsos, trunks of forms, with 
never resting zeal, presenting not only full grown treatises 
like the three great master works, but a host of monographs on 
particular questions. In all this his reasoning was profound; 
he aimed to crystallize the leading idea of cultural movement, 
its dynamic soul. Similarly Rodin in an unheard of procedure 
for a sculptor, exhibited 
human figures deprived of a head, legs or arms, which at first shock 
the beholder, but on examination are found to be so well balanced and 
so perfectly harmonized that one can only find beauty in them. His 
reason for this is artistically profound. ... In the development of a 
leading idea of thought, of meditation, of the action of walking, his 
desire was to eliminate all that might counteract or draw attention from 
this central thought. "As to polishing nails or ringlets of hair, that has 
no interest for me," he said; "it detracts attention from the leading 
line and the soul which I wish to interpret." 108 
1M Perhaps, in the light of the newest atomic achievements, this is also true for 
the periodic system of elements. 
108 Cf. Erkenntnlsfroblem^ I, 10. 
10T Cf. Erkenntnis'problem, I, 9. 
108 Story, op.cit., 13. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 315 
Just as little did Cassirer have time for the trimmings of the 
cultural process. His painstaking search for phenomena was the 
search for the essential, the symbolic in them. But, since the 
symbolic is never found in purity 109 but only fulfilled in the 
totality of the process, and the process is never finished but al- 
ways proceeding, the search for the symbol itself is never ending 
but always asymptotic. Just as for Rodin and for every great 
master it was never Cassirer's habit "to undertake a work, 
complete it and have done with it. He always had by him a 
number of ideas and thoughts on which he meditated patiently 
for years as they ripened in his mind." 110 By the time he wrote 
the Essay on Man Cassirer saw the problems of the Philosophy 
of the Symbolic Forms from a different angle and in a new 
light. 111 
Now it was no longer so much the totality of the process that 
interested him, but one moment of its concrete fullness: the 
reference to man. The asymptotic openness of the process, the 
lofty culmination in merely intellectual symbols now has given 
place to a fuller harmony: a human universe. Now the sym- 
bolic forms were to help man to slay the monster and continue 
the process of life itself. Now it is no longer science which is 
the great culmination, but art Cassirer has moved toward the 
new logic towards which we see his work tending. on the last 
page of the Essay we read the famous words of Kant, that we 
can learn all about Newton's principles of natural philosophy, 
however great a mind may have been required to discover them; 
but we cannot learn to write spirited poetry, however explicit 
may be the precepts of the art and however excellent its models. 
We learn that the highest of forms is not an abstract "logical 
function," but that it is genius himself, homo creator. Now the 
whole of science is a flat dimension as compared with the di- 
mension of man himself. Not only "ex analogia universi" but, 
even more, "ex analogia hominis" we must understand the 
world. And it is on a note of musical harmony that this last 
great work of Cassirer ends: 
All these functions complete and complement one another. Each one 
" PSF, III, 142. 
110 Story, op. cit., 13. 
** Essay on Man, vii. 
316 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
opens a new horizon and shows us a new aspect of humanity. The dis- 
sonant is in harmony with itself; the contraries are not mutually exclu- 
sive, but interdependent: "harmony in contrariety, as in the case of the 
bow and the lyre." 112 
The spirit of Leibniz, in the new form of warm human concern, 
has conquered the Hegelian aloofness in Cassirer's mind. Now 
spontaneity and productivity are no more prerogatives of "the 
objective spirit" or "the symbolic function," but are "the very 
center of all human activities." 113 The philosophy of symbolic 
forms has become the philosophy of man. Man himself now is 
the central symbolic form. The symbolic process is now no 
longer so much one of "dematerialization," 114 "a process of 
removal," but of spiritualization, a process of strengthening 
the differentiation of matter by a new energy: the spiritual 
energy of harmonization. That energy combines the human 
world into a symphony of meanings. It strengthens itself 
through its wedlock with matter. Has it been an original partner 
of matter from the beginning? Has the harmony between it and 
matter been pre-established from the beginning and is the whole 
development of the forms nothing but the elaboration of that 
pre-established harmony? And is the appearance of that har- 
mony in the logic of symbols nothing but that harmony's 
revelation in matter? Cassirer never answers these Leibnizian 
questions} although, with unconcerned assurance, he makes 
positive statements in all these respects covering up meta- 
physical concern with reference to "miracles" and "ultimate 
mysteria." But he seems to be in profound agreement with 
Leibniz. "Leibniz was the first great modern thinker to have 
a clear insight into the true character of mathematical sym- 
bolism," 115 and into the nature of symbolism in general. 
For him [Leibniz] the problem of the "logic of things" is insolubly 
connected with the problem of the "logic of signs." The "Sctentia gen- 
erdu" needs the "Characteristica general**" as its tool and vehicle. The 
112 Essay on Man, 228. 
118 Essay on Man, 220. 
114 PSF, III, 387. 
118 Essay on Man, 217 j cf. Erkenntnisfroblem, II, 1425. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 317 
latter does not refer to the things, but their representations: it does not 
deal with the res but the "notae rerum" But this does not prejudice their 
objective content. For that "pre-established harmony" which, in ac- 
cordance with the fundamental thought of Leibniz' philosophy, rules 
between the world of the ideal and the real: it also connects the world 
of signs with that of objective "meanings." The real is subject, without 
any limitation, to the ideal. 116 
There is no such division between ideal and real world in the 
philosophy of Cassirer. Critical philosophy welds the two 
worlds into transcendental unity. But the seam appears in the 
notion of the symbol. Cassirer cannot help using Leibnizian 
language. In that way he slides over the metaphysical problem 
which has been put and answered by Leibniz. With Leibniz 
the analysis of the real leads to the analysis of the ideas, the analysis of 
the ideas to that of the signs. With one stroke therewith the concept 
of the symbol has become the spiritual focus, the true center of the 
intellectual world. In it the principles of metaphysics and cognition run 
together. 117 
This very same characteristic can be given of Cassirer's philoso- 
phy of symbolic forms; only that the form's metaphysical in- 
gredients, by definition, are as metaphysical unknowable. 
His philosophy is thus in a way frustrating; one would like to 
say, it is so by definition. The quest for a metaphysics "behind" 
the symbolic form is invalid. But the question concerning the 
nature of that energy, which welds phenomena into structural 
totality and thus brings about symbols, is still valid. Its answer 
would lead into metaphysics a metaphysics of Leibnizian har- 
mony with humanistic emphasis: "the highest, indeed the only 
task of all these forms is to unite men!" 11 * 
What a new key is sounded here! How much has totality 
become harmony and harmony humanism! Human harmony 
all over the world presupposes universal symbols. Leibniz was 
right: without a Characteristica generalis we shall never find a 
Scientia generalis. Modern symbolic logic follows the same 
'"/ 
118 Essay on Man, 129. Italics mine. Whether these forms actually do unite men 
is another question. See below notes 132, 133. 
3i 8 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
tendency. 119 But therewith the problem of human harmony is 
not solved. "In an analysis of human culture we must accept 
the facts in their concrete shape, in all their diversity and 
divergence." 120 The diversity of produced languages divide 
menj the unity of linguistic functions may unite them. Even 
more, however, may they become united by a universal logic 
of artistic imagination, an aesthetic logic, which is not inferior 
to intellectual logic, as was the one constructed by Baum- 
garten, 121 but superior to it, extending not only over the whole 
surface of things but also sounding the depths of the under- 
standing consciousness. only then will it truly be possible to 
"comprehend the world in a moment," to make actual the 
brotherhood of man. Science, following the Leibnizian 
"Ansatz" has conquered the totality of things. Exact science is 
completely under Leibniz's spell. 122 But science has diluted the 
metaphysical richness of his method. "For Leibniz the concept 
of symbol was so to speak the 'vinculum substantiate? between 
his metaphysics and his logic. For modern science it is the 
'vmculum substantiate* between logic and mathematics and be- 
tween logic and exact natural science." 123 For the author of the 
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms this fact implied a distinct prog- 
ress and advantage. It was a fascinating discovery to find the 
intermediate function between the logical universal and the 
concrete individual, 124 the common denominator between ex- 
tension and intension, to discover the world of things as a world 
of symbols, as representations rather than as objects, 125 and to 
rise, in the process of dematerialization, to the pure "conceptual 
sign" without any Nebensinn that is to say without any 
material appendage, in spite of the necessity of meaning to find 
a sensuous substratum for its actualization. 127 But for the author 
" 1 ML 
lbid. 
181 Essay on Man, 136. 
, III, 55. 
'"PSF, I, tfif. 
m PSF, 111,373- 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 319 
of An Essay on Man it is different. The fascination of intellec- 
tual discovery now seems to have given way to an endeavor of 
moral persuasion a development similar to Kant's, although, 
in my opinion, less consciously planned for. In the Philosophy 
of Symbolic Forms it is the fascinating function of the concept 
to refer from the very beginning to the totality of thought, to 
the whole of all possible thought formations. 128 Precisely that 
which has not happened here or anywhere else is posited as 
norm 129 by the concept and is pre-formed in anticipation by the 
symbol. 130 The fascination of the Essay on Man is no more the 
all comprehensive potentiality of thought but that of man him- 
self. The kingdom of the possible must now be actualized by 
man. He must make true what has never been true before, his 
own total harmonic life. Now a new miracle has to happen: not 
the miracle of the concept, "that the simple sensuous material, 
by the way in which it is considered, gains a new and manifold 
spiritual life}" 131 but a miracle of social life: that the human 
material, by the way in which it is considered, gains a new and 
manifold spiritual life. Now the question arises, how man's 
spiritual creations can reactively ennoble their creator himself. 
This is only possible, obviously, if they do not remain merely 
intellectual achievements, but take hold of the whole of man's 
nature} if culture is integrated by the symbol not only, so to 
speak, horizontally, in the totality of its forms, but also in the 
person of its creator, vertically, so to speak, to the very founda- 
tions of his soul in a word, if man himself is integrated into his 
culture. For such an achievement the intellectual logic is not 
sufficient. The author of the Essay on Man does no longer 
seem to find it so important that the symbolic function is the 
vinculum substantiate between logic and mathematics and be- 
tween logic and exact natural science. For him it seems now to 
be all important that it be the vinculum substantiate between 
logic and morality. 
It is one of the peculiarities of creation that the works created 
128 PSF, m, 39 i. 
, 111,370. 
PSF, III, i 97 f., 21 if, 234- 
m PSF, 1, 27. 
320 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
appear as strangers to the creator. Since the essential act of 
creation is a subconscious one, the miracle of encompassing the 
spiritual in the material takes place in the very depths of the 
creating soulj the memory of it is faint, indeed, non-existing, 
and the re-cognition of the created as created almost impossible. 
Herein lies the fascination of the work for the creator 5 but 
herein also the danger of abstracting himself from his creations, 
of disintegration between man and culture instead of integra- 
tion. The very variety and differentiation of cultural forms, in 
which lies the progress of the spirit and in the totality of which 
lies its harmony, also makes for differences and separations. 
"Thus what was intended to secure the harmony of culture be- 
comes the source of the deepest discords and dissensions." 182 
This is the great antinomy, the dialectic, not only of the religious 
life 133 but of all cultural life. The "process of removal" some- 
times "iiberschlagt sich" gets out of hand, and degenerates into 
an urge of destruction. The great problem then is how to main- 
tain the continuity between the soul of man and his creations, 
how to weave him and the symbolic forms into one cultural 
pattern, a pattern of morality. When man is identified with his 
works, he is moral; for then he is identified with the works of 
all mankind. How can that integration be achieved? Again let 
us glance at the artist. 
Rodin and his works were one. 
It was impossible to separate him from his work. His statues were the 
states of his soul. Just as Rodin seemed to break the fragments around 
the statue away from the block in which it had been concealed, so he 
himself seemed to be a sort of rock hiding various forms and crystallized 
growths. 184 
The symbolic forms are the states of man's soul. "The contents 
of culture cannot be separated from the fundamental forms and 
directions of spiritual creation: their 'being' cannot be appre- 
hended otherwise but as 'doing'." 135 As the sculpture is "con- 
cealed" in the block, "pre-existent" in its shape, grain, texture, 
*** Essay on Man, 130. 
138 Ibid, and Chap. VII. 
** Story, op. cit.f n. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 321 
"like the chicken in the egg," 136 and the sculptor must "col- 
laborate" with the stone to free the figure concealed in it, so 
man must "collaborate" with himself to free the symbolic forms 
within him and create culture out of himself. Culture is indeed 
the process of man's progressive self-liberation. "Language, art, 
religion, science, are various phases in this process." 137 Man is 
his own "matter" and his own "form." Cassirer's philosophy 
here completes and substantiates empirically Kant's "Coperni- 
can revolution." Matter and form 
are now no more absolute powers of Eemg y but they serve the designa- 
tion of certain differences and structures of meaning. The "matter" of 
perception, as it was understood by Kant originally, could still appear 
as a kind of epistemological counterpart to Aristotle's WP<OTYJ uXiq. Like 
it, it is taken as the merely indeterminate before all determination, 
which must expect all determination from the form which accrues to 
it and imprints itself on it. The situation changes after Kant's own de- 
velopment of the "transcendental topic" and his designation, within that 
topic, of a definite position to the opposition of "matter" and "form." 
Now they are no more primal determinations of Being, ontic entities, 
but pure concepts of reflection, which in the section on the "Amphiboly 
of the Concepts of Reflection" are being treated on the same line with 
Agreement and Opposition, and Identity and Difference. They are 
no more two poles of Being in insoluble "real" opposition, 138 
but concepts of transcendental comparisons referring to states 
of consciousness. They are "states of man's soul." "From the 
point of view of phenomenology there is as little a 'matter in 
itselP as a 'form in itself there are only total experiences, 
which can be compared under the point of view of matter and 
form, and determined and articulated accordingly." 139 
In the Essay on Man the transcendental "relativization" 140 
of the contrast between matter and form has been applied to 
man 5 man is the sculptor of the symbolic forms forms of his 
own consciousness. But the relationship already appears clearly 
in the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Indeed, it is the differ- 
136 In words of the Spanish sculptor Jose* de Creeft. 
187 Essay on Man, 228. 
138 m 1 , III, 13. 
189 PSF, III, 230. 
322 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
entiation of man's "space" by which man actually carves out 
the symbolic forms, pre-existent in it. Space is the universal 
matrix of these forms and it is a state of man's own con- 
sciousness. Plato's rcp&Tov SeKTixdVj space as common matrix of 
all determinations, is actually being confirmed by the philoso- 
phy of symbolic forms, 141 even though its "space," like Kant's, 
is very different from Plato's metaphysical "receptacle." It is a 
formative, dynamic principle, indeed, the formative principle 
of consciousness itself in its relation to the world the form 
of our "outer experience." It is a living "material," living in 
and through the life of its shaper, just as is the "stone" of 
Rodin. All the symbolic forms have their particular "spati- 
ality," 142 their particular form of correlation 148 according to their 
particular modality. From empirical perceptual space develops 
conceptual space. 144 Perceptual space is already filled with sym- 
bolic forms and interpenetrated by them. Language forms the 
first space-words. In abstract geometry space is a system of 
topological determinations: proximity of points, distance, inter- 
section of lines, incidence of planes and spaces. From topologi- 
cal develops metric and projective space. The development of 
space is at the same time the development of relational thought, 
the gradual awakening of consciousness and its world-aware- 
ness. 145 
There is no power of the spirit which has not co-operated in this gigantic 
process of formation. Sensation, intuition, feeling, phantasy, creative 
imagination, 146 constructive [!] conceptual thought and the manner 
of their interpenetration create each time a new spatial Gestalt. 
At the same time there is a definitive direction of the process: 
"the ' Auseinanderseteung* between world and ^o" 148 the 
1 PSF, m, 49 i. 
148 ibid. 
144 PSF, m, 49*. 
148 Cassirer refers in this connection to Carnap, Rudolf, Der Raum, tin Beitrag 
zur Wissenschaftslehre, Berlin, 1922. 
14 *The German word "Einbildungskraft" '-"power of in-forming," gives the 
spatial implication. 
"PSF, III, 493. 
148 Italics mine. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 323 
progressive "ex-position" and "ex-secution" of the separateness 
of man and world, their gradual differentiation. Gradually man 
releases space and its forms from and out of himself, until 
finally it seems to be an independent Gestalt y standing opposed 
to and as counter-pole of him. The mythical consciousness of 
space is still entirely woven within the sphere of subjective feel- 
ing, but already there appears an opposition of cosmic powers, 
as in the Platonic Timaeus, the Chinese Yin and Yang, and the 
innumerable forms of "cosmic bisexuality." 149 Language con- 
tinues the separation and deepens it: the mythical physiog- 
nomic space becomes presentative space. Conceptual mathe- 
matical, geometrical, and physical thought complete the proc- 
ess: the anthropomorphic conditions are being pushed back in 
favor of "objective" determinations which result from the meth- 
ods of counting and measuring. Now we have the space of pure 
meaning or signification. 150 A similar process of differentiation 
takes place within the elemental units of the symbolic forms. 
The flux of perceptual impressions is being subdivided into 
centers around which the undifferentiated variety clusters, like 
the diffuse matter in space, which gradually clustered into nebu- 
lae, and continues to concentrate its diffuse matter into condensed 
energy "through millions and mountains of millions of cen- 
turies." 151 Similarly the process of symbolic formation continues 
to concentrate diffuse energies as long as there is man. The 
diffuse matter in space is being organized by being referred to a 
natural center. Ever new worlds are in formation and "gain a 
general relation to the center, the first formative point of crea- 
tion." 152 Similarly in the world of symbolic forms centers are 
formed as points of reference. Thus the name becomes name 
only through reference to such centers. The names "red" or 
"blue," for instance, 153 do not mean certain blue or red nuances, 
but express the specific manner, in which an undetermined 
variety of such nuances is seen as one and conceptually set as 
** Treated symbolically in Mann's Joseph novels. Cf. Slochower, Harry, No 
Voice is Wholly Lost, New York 1945, 350 n. 
PSF, III, 493 f. 
"* Kant, Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 2. Teil, 7tes Hauptstuck. 
PSF, 111,497- 
324 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 

one. 154 In physical-geometrical thought the given is not only 
being divided and assembled around fixed centers, but "cast 
into form," 155 the harmonious form of mathematical symbols, 
which is as opposed to the original diffusion of formative ener- 
gies as the well ordered system of planets is to the primal 
diffusion of matter. For Laplace Kant's theory of the heavens 
was the inspiration for a mathematical theory of the creation 
of the world. 156 For Cassirer Kant's theory of knowledge was 
the inspiration for a theory of the creation of the cultural world, 
one of whose culminations is mathematics. In both cases the 
world is modelled in space a work of plastic imagination. 157 
If all activity of thought expresses itself in spatial forms, then 
its creative activity must needs be a kind of plastic sculpturing. 
Cassirer himself has never, to my knowledge, drawn this con- 
clusion, but it deduces itself logically from his philosophy. 
In sculpturing the world of symbolic forms, man sculptures 
and forms his own soul. What he looks at in the variety of 
forms is his own inner life. Rodin "used to contemplate his 
creations lovingly, and sometimes even seemed to be astonished 
and contemplative at the idea of having created them, speaking 
as if they existed apart from himself." 158 Thus man stands 
wonderingly before his creations, astounded at the world, which 
he has created created so unconsciously that it took several 
thousand years of contemplative thought until, in the mind of 
Kant, he recognized in it himself. This same difficulty veiled 
the world of symbolic forms before man's mind in a world of 
metaphysics. Again and again man tried to lift the veil, but the 
attempt was doomed to pathetic failure. As for Schiller's 
"Young Man of Sai's," curiosity could only yield horror: the 
look into the abyss of nothing or the abyss of his own self. In 
184 "In-eins-gesefon und in-eins-gesetzt." "Einsicht" becomes "Eins-sicW "In- 
sight" becomes one-sight." 
** PSF, III, 498. 
lw Or might have been, if he knew Kant's treatise. Whether or not he actually 
did is unknown. 
m Cf . Rodin : "If we can imagine the thought of God in creating the world, 
we shall find that He first thought of the modelling, which is the unique principle 
in Nature and perhaps of the * planets." Story, of. cit.> 14. 
w Story, of, c*t. t n. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 325 
a very real sense we are all thinkers pondering "The Gate of 
Hell." Thinking is fraught with shocking surprises, shocks 
which are dialectic hiatuses in the process of the souPs self- 
discovery. That process leads to successive "crises" "separa- 
tions" of existence, in which the unconscious and uncontem- 
plated process of spiritual development becomes a problem to 
itself, in which "Ausserung* becomes "Ausserliches" self-ex- 
pression becomes the exterior world. 159 This estrangement of 
the symbolic forms from their creator arises from the very 
fundamental principle of their creation. 
The acts of ｅxpression, presentation, and meaning are not immediately 
present to themselves, but become apparent only in the totality of their 
accomplishment. They are only by confirming themselves, and giving 
notice of themselves through their action. They do not originally reflect 
on themselves, but they look at the work which they are to execute, to 
the reality the valid form of which they are to build up. 160 
Hence these forms can only be described within their works 
and in the language of these works. Language, myth, art: 
each of these exteriorizes its own individual world of creations, which 
latter cannot be understood otherwise than as ｅxpressions of the self- 
activity, the "spontaneity" of the spirit. But this self-activity does not 
proceed in the form of free reflection, and therefore remains hidden 
to itself. The spirit creates the series of linguistic, mythical and artistic 
Gestalten, without in them recognizing itself as creative principle. Thus 
each of these series becomes for it an "exterior" world. 161 
The free creations of the spirit are then regarded as "things" 
and the power and independence of the spirit compelled into 
systems of dogmatic concepts. 182 only the Critical philosophy 
succeeds in prying open this dogmatism. The thing, far from 
being a self-sufficient being, is for it only "an intellectual partial 
condition of being, a single conceptual moment, which only in 
the complete system of our knowledge comes to full effect." 168 
It is now nothing but the general principle of the series, so to 
160 PSF y III, 1 1 8. 
m PSF, II, 267. Cf. Erkenntnisfroblem I, 7. 
1W Erkenntnisfroblem I, vf. 
"/*. 
326 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
speak, its general term. 184 The whole of reality is process, and 
the things are condensations of that process, much as matter is 
in physical field theory. 165 There is now no more metaphysical 
absolute, but only becoming. "By regarding the conditions of 
science as 'become,' we recognize them precisely thereby as 
creations of thought." 166 In doing so we recognize the opposition 
of subject and object as a metaphysical artifice, "the charac- 
teristic procedure of metaphysics." 167 Thus metaphysics es- 
tranges man from his creations} it must be overcome if man 
is to become responsible for his culture. It is no wonder, there- 
fore, that the most metaphysical people has also fallen victim 
to the most tremendous "crisis," the most barbaric separation 
of man and culture: what the German scientists of extermina- 
tion strove to annihilate was the man-of-culture, 168 termed by 
them "the beast of intelligence" "die Intelligenzbestie" In 
their scientific one-sidedness they were both "metaphysical" 
and barbaric. 169 
To overcome this metaphysical crisis man must "collaborate" 
with himself as the sculptor does with his material. He must 
fuse his own form with his own matter. The metaphysical crisis 
must be transformed, through cultural critique, into harmonic 
responsibility of man for his world. This is only possible by 
man's recognizing in the cultural forms his own consciousness, 
by comprehending these forms as symbolic for the unity of 
, ill, 3 73 . 
165 That theory should, theoretically, be deducible from Kant's Critique of Pure 
Reason. 
ie * Erkenntnis'problem I, vi. 
Substance and Function, 271$ Cf. PSF, I, 24. 
""Cf. Kerenyi, Karl, Romandlchtung und Mythologle, Bin Briefwechsel mit 
Thomas Mann, Zurich: Rhein Verlag, 1945* 4 2 
169 Cf. Bluhm, Heinz, "Ernst Cassirer und die deutsche Philologie," Monats- 
hefte filr Dcutsdten Unterrlcht, Vol. XXXVII, No. 7, November 1945, 471. 
Ilya Ehrenburg, The Tempering of Russia, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, i944> 
276, on examining the diary of a dead German who at the front continued read- 
ing philosophy and whose notebook related the philosophy and practice of exter- 
mination interspersed with quotations from Plato, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, 
wrote: "In perusing the brown notebook one is amazed at the mental poverty 
of these scholarly cannibals. To torture people they need philosophical quotations. 
. . . one feels like killing Fritz-the-philosopher twice: one bullet because he tor- 
tured Russian children 5 another because after murdering a baby, he read Plato." 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 327 
man <md his world. Symbolism is to be the vehicle of man's 
morality. 
How else should man be able to sound the depths of his own 
consciousness and at the same time roam over the width of the 
world? The variety of forms would be too manifold for com- 
prehension, if there were not the principle of the symbolic 
function to organize them. The consciousness would be too 
fleetingly incomprehensible, if there were not the material em- 
bodiments of its energies. How else should we be able to 
penetrate to this purely inner world of consciousness as last concen- 
tration of the spiritual, if for its demonstration and description we have 
to renounce all the concepts and points of view, which have been created 
for the presentation of the concrete reality of things. Where would 
there be a means to comprehend the incomprehensible, to express in 
any way that which itself has not yet assumed any concrete form 
either of the perceptual space and time order, or of an intellectual, 
ethical or aesthetic order? If the consciousness is nothing but the pure 
potentiality of all the "objective" forms, so to speak the pure receptivity 
and preparedness for them, then it cannot be seen how precisely this 
potentiality itself can be treated as a fact, indeed, as the primary fact 
of all spirituality itself. ... It is obvious that this paradoxical demand 
can only be satisfied, if at all, mediately. We can never uncover the 
immediate being and life of consciousness purely as such, 170 but it is a 
meaningful task to understand the process of objectivation 171 
by treating it from a double perspective, shuttling back and 
forth between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem y 
thus truly following the method of that weaver's masterpiece 
or, even better, instead of treating the objectivity of the law 
rather find the Gestalt 172 of cognition, thus transforming the 
method of psychology into that of the symbolic forms. 
We start from the problems of the "objective spirit," the Gestalten of 
which it consists and in which it exists; but we do not rest there as a 
mere fact, but try, through a reconstructive analysis, to penetrate to their 
elementary conditions, the "conditions of their possibility." 173 
170 In this connection Cassirer's criticism of Berg-son's method is of importance, 
PSF, III, 4 2ff. 
m PSF, III, 6zf. 
m PSF, III, 66. 
111 /W, III, 67. 
328 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
In other words, we look for the "various forms and crystal- 
lized growths" within the rock that is man, and then proceed 
to carve them out, helped by our knowledge of the grain and 
texture, the geology and palaeontology of those forms. Thus 
we would find the correspondence between the manifold of 
objective formations and subjective states of consciousness, a 
"truly concrete view of the c full objectivity' of the spirit on the 
one hand and its 'full subjectivity' on the other." 174 To do so 
we must delve down deeply into the roots of consciousness: 
We must consider not only the three dimensions of the logical, the 
ethical and the aesthetic, but in particular the "form'' of language and 
the "form" of mythos, if we want to penetrate down to the primary be- 
havioral and formative conditions of consciousness. 175 
In this way, then, the vertical integration of man will be 
joined to the horizontal integration of his culture. Man must 
live on all the levels of his consciousness, on the deepest of 
myth as well as on the highest of mathematics, music, 178 and 
mysticism. This vertical task has only just begun, but the great 
minds of our age are preparing the synthesis. Bergson joins 
"mechanics and mysticism," 177 Thomas Mann joins mythos and 
language, 178 and asks for a chair in "mythology" to join mythos 
and logos. 179 Cassirer joins all spiritual forms in the synthesis 
of cultural symbolism. 
174 Ibid. 
17 ' 1 bid. 
178 See above note 85. 
177 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, New York: Henry Holt and 
Company, 1935, chapter IV. Bergson's philosophy is based on the form of our 
inner experience, time; Cassirer's is based on that of our outer experience, space. 
Therefore the latter is led to the central notion of the symbol, which the former 
rejects, the former to that of metaphysical intuition which the latter rejects. Cas- 
sirer's philosophy can be understood in terms of the plastic arts, Bergson's in terms 
of music. A synthesis of both philosophies would be the true philosophy of sym- 
bolism. 
""Kerenyi, of. '/., 50. According to Cassirer, PSF, I, 268, language as a form 
is between mythos and logos. 
179 Kerenyi, op. cit. t 84, 82. The separation of the myth from logos is the 
immediate cause of the latest world catastrophe. The combination of both, in 
particular of mythos with the science of psychology, is one of the guarantees of 
the future. "I have long been a passionate friend of this combination j for indeed, 
psychology is the means to take the myth out of the hands of the fascist obscurants 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 329 
In this way he has given us a tool, a "grammar of the sym- 
bolic function," 180 a key with which to open the treasure house 
of our own culture. But simply to open it and wander around 
in it as in a museum will not solve the crisis. We must appropri- 
ate all the symbolic forms as our own creations. The symbols 
must not remain mute and dumb signs for us, but be charged 
with all the meaning of life. We must enter into their own 
lives and live on their level. Our survival depends on our ca- 
pacity to handle symbols in communication, discussion, and 
agreement in settling conflicts by handling symbols rather 
than the powers they stand for. We must "do away with pres- 
ence in order to penetrate to representation. . . . The regress 
into the world of signs is the preparation for that decisive break- 
through in which the spirit will conquer its own world, the 
world of idea." 1 * 1 
We are standing before that decisive event. We must either 
live through symbols or die in the flesh. The symbols will be 
filled with life if they reach through our entire self, far above 
and below the merely intellectual level. We must recognize the 
states of our soul in them, as did Rodin in his creations j "he was 
the companion of these white mute creatures of his, he loved 
them and entered into their abstract lives." 182 So we must enter 
the life of human culture and lovingly develop it and us in it. 
In this sense the philosophy of symbolic forms may be said to 
be a comprehensive aesthetics, the work of an artist for artists: 
the vision of man as creator of all his works, the vision of culture 
as human creation. Indeed, it seems that Cassirer himself has 
had that vision very consciously 5 the volume on Aesthetics was 
to be the crowning volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic 
Forms It is the crisis itself that has separated Cassirer from 
and to 'transfunction* it into the humane. That combination actually represents 
to me the world of the future, a humanity, that is blessed from on high, through 
the spirit, and *f rom the depths that lie below'." Thomas Mann, Kerenyi j op. cit., 
82. Cf. Buxton, Charles Roden, Prophets of Heaven and Hell, Virgil, Dante, Mil- 
ton, Goethe, Cambridge: At the University Press, 1945, 2$L + 
** pg p T _ a 
181 PSF, III, 3*561 54- Cf. Ill, 330. 
182 Story, op. cit., n. 
183 Bluhm, op. cit., 468. PSF, I, 120. 
330 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
the symbolic forms of the arts 5 his book could not be written 
"due to the unfavorable political conditions." Otherwise he 
himself might have performed that vertical synthesis of man 
and cast man's inner life into the forms of the new logic. Maybe 
he would have called that new form the form of man's "sym- 
bolic Pr'dgnanz" man's existence as symbol of his own uni- 
versal thought: transcending his material confinement in uni- 
versal meaning. 
How Cassirer would have integrated man himself into his 
culture we can only guess. He has given us one lowly example 
for symbolic Pragnanz: he integrates the life of a wavy line in 
all fields of meaning. Let us quote that passage, not only as a 
symbolic review of the whole philosophy of symbolic forms, its 
artistic empathy and the sweep of its meaning, but also as a pre- 
view into realms to which Cassirer's philosophy points. 
In the purely spatial determination there is a peculiar "mood," the up 
and down of lines in space contains an inner motion, a dynamic rise 
and fall, a psychic being and life. It is not we who feel our own inner 
states in a subjective way in the spatial form: but that form presents 
itself to us as a spirited whole, an independent manifestation of life. 
Its steady and calm flow or its sudden break, its roundness and whole- 
ness or its brokenness, its hardness or softness : all this appears as character 
of its own being, its objective "nature." But all this recedes and seems 
as if it were annihilated and extinguished as soon as the line is taken in 
another meaning as a mathematical design, a geometrical figure. Now 
it becomes a mere scheme, the means of presenting a universal geometric 
law. Where before we had the up and down of a wavy line and in it 
the harmony of an inner mood there now we find the graphic pres- 
entation of a trigonometric function, a curve the whole content of which 
is absorbed in its analytic formula. The spatial Gestalt is nothing else 
now than the paradigm of that formula; it is only the hull into which 
a mathematical thought, imperceptible in itself, is clothed. And the latter 
does not stand by itself, but in it a universal law presents itself, the 
order of space in general. Every single geometric form is by virtue of 
that order connected with the totality of all other spatial forms. It 
belongs to a certain system an aggregate of "truths" and "theorems," 
of "reasons" and "consequences" and that system denotes the universal 
form by which each individual geometric figure is alone possible, that is 
to say, constructable and "understandable." And again the situation is 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 331 
different, when we consider the line as mythical sign or as aesthetic 
ornament. The mythical sign expresses the fundamental mythical con- 
trast between the "holy" and the "profane." It is established in order 
to separate these two realms from each other, to warn and to terrify and 
to bar the uninitiated from approaching or entering the holy. And 
thereby it does not function only as a mere sign, as a mark by which the 
holy is being recognized; but it possesses a magically compelling and re- 
pelling power, which resides in it objectively. Of such a compulsion the 
aesthetic world knows nothing. Contemplated as an ornament the line 
is removed both from the sphere of "meaning" in the logico-conceptual 
sense as that of magico-mythical significance and warning. It now 
possesses its import in itself, which uncovers itself only in the purely 
artistic contemplation, the aesthetic intuition as such. Here again the 
experience of the spatial form completes itself only through belonging to 
a total horizon and opening that horizon up for us, ... by standing in a 
certain atmosphere, in which it not only simply "is," but in which it 
so to speak lives and breathes. 184 
Imagine the hero of this tale to be man rather than a wavy 
line! How he would be seen in all realms of meaning, all forms 
of culture a symbol himself of his own striving and achieve- 
ment, the central system of co-ordination of all life activities. 
"The symbolic process is like a unique life and thought current 
which flows through consciousness and which in its flowing 
motion alone brings about the variety and continuity of con- 
sciousness in all its fullness." 185 In the unity of that flow man 
would become integrated, from the mythical depth of con- 
sciousness the well of the past from which Thomas Mann 
brought forth his Joseph figures 186 to the highest height of 
mathematics, music, and mysticism. 187 
181 PSF, III, 231 j Cf. Cassirer "Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im Sys- 
tem der Philosophic," Zeitschrift fur Asthettk und, allgemeine Kumtwissenschajt, 
Bd. XXI, 191 ff. Cf. supra 112 f. 
185 PSF, III, 234- 
188 Cf . Thomas Mann on the combination of psychology and myth in Kerenyi, 
op. cit., 82$ also "Freud and the Future," in Freud, Goethe, Wagner, New York: 
Alfred A. Knopf, 1942, 298. 
** For then the process of objectivation would not be completed in the mathe- 
matical symbols symbols for nature rather than for human nature. It may be 
that those symbols will also aid in the objectivation of man toward himself, the 
objectivation of his own psyche: his emotions and desires. Perhaps Spinoza was 
332 ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
So far the highest realms of the vertical synthesis have not 
been reached. Cassirer's work is unfinished and waits for com- 
pletion. The mysticism of the artist, the musicality of the mathe- 
matician, all these are symbolic forms and elaborations of lower 
forms as truly as mathematics is the elaboration of the lower 
symbolic forms of myth and language. Perhaps Cassirer had 
intended to show us these connections in his projected volume 
on the symbolic forms of Aesthetics. As it is, the work must 
be completed by us, the epigones. But we too shall only be 
precursors, preparers of the day "when the human intelligence, 
elevated to its perfect type, shall shine forth glorified in some 
future Mozart-Dirichlet or Beethoven-Gauss." 188 Cassirer's 
work points toward a future of symbolic forms so rich that 
man's present culture appears very primitive indeed. 
In 1910, at about the time when Cassirer's first great work 
appeared, another great mind was concerned with the future. 
Leo Tolstoy, shortly before his death, dictated to his daughter 
Anastasia a strange prophecy. He predicted the coming of 
world wars, the sway of a strange figure from the North, "a 
new Napoleon," and finally, a "federation of the United States 
of nations." After that 
I see a change in religious sentiment. . . . The ethical idea has almost 
vanished. Humanity is without the moral feeling. But then a great re- 
former arises. ... I see the peaceful beginning of an ethical era. . . . 
In the middle of this century I see a hero of literature and art rising . . . 
and purging the world of the tedious stuff of the obvious. It is the light 
of symbolism that shall outshine the torch of commercialism* 
Cassirer's life was dedicated to the self-liberation of man 
through symbolism. Everything for him, like for Rodin, 190 

on the right road with his geometric ethics. But the "grammar of emotions" may 
have to be written, ultimately in a more fitting scripｔ: that of musical and mysti- 
cal symbolism. To the latter point see Essay on Man, 102. Concerning the in- 
sufficiency of mathematical symbolism even for the comprehension of nature cf. 
Cassirer, "Goethe and Kantian Philosophy" in Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, 64.8., 8 if. 
388 James Joseph Sylvester in a paper on Newton's rule for the discovery of 
imaginery roots of algebraic equations, quoted from . T. Bell, Men of Mathe- 
matics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937, 4O4f. 
1S9 Forman, Henry James, The Story of Prophecy, New York: Tudor Publish- 
ing Company: 1939, 25 3 f. 
190 Story, of. cit., 17. 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 333 
was "idea and symbol j" like Rodin "he sought in the energy 
of the human body and its symbolism for the origins of all re- 
ligions, all philosophy and poetry." 191 The ethical era to come 
must be built to a large extent on his work. His morality was, 
like Rodin's, 192 the comprehensive love of life and of all its 
forms. Rodin "opened a vast window in the pale house of 
modern statuary, and made of sculpture, which had been a 
timid, compromised art, one that was audacious and full of 
life." 193 So Cassirer opened a large window in the pale house 
of modern critical philosophy and made of epistemology, which 
had been a timid, compromised discipline, one that was auda- 
cious and full of life. He prepared the horizontal-vertical 
integration of man's soul and culture a symbolic cross, to 
which man will not be fixed in agony, but in which he will live. 
ROBERT S. HARTMAN 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 
2 Story, op. cit., n. 
9 
Folke Leander 
FURTHER PROBLEMS SUGGESTED BY THE 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 
FURTHER PROBLEMS SUGGESTED BY THE 
PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 

onE should take everything for what it is, not criticize it 
for not being what it is not" such was the critical maxim 
of the Swedish poet-philosopher Thomas Thorild (1759-1806), 
on whom, incidentally, Cassirer has written an excellent book. 
It is, however, exceedingly difficult to criticize Cassirer for 
what he does say, and much easier to point to the unsolved 
problems which he never set out to solve. Cassirer's method in 
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is that of concentrating his 
attention on a very limited number of major problems, treating 
them exhaustively, adducing a great wealth of linguistic, mytho- 
logical, and psychological material to prove his point. The 
numerous and widespread errors he refutes are disproved very 
thoroughly. He rarely "sticks his neck out," as the Americans 
say. There is a certain finality about all this and little tempta- 
tion for the student to quote a passage and disagree with it. In 
fact, if you accept the view that all thought, in so far as it is 
really thought, must necessarily be true, all criticism must con- 
sist in drawing attention to omissions. only, in Cassirer's case 
you rarely find the omissions mixed up with and vitiating what 
he does say, which latter will generally be found to be unim- 
peachable, as far as it goes. These introductory remarks may 
serve to explain the nature of the following pages, which are 
intended primarily to point to further problems suggested by 
Cassirer's philosophy. The problems suggested are: i) the uni- 
fication of the pre-scientific symbolic forms; 2) a more careful 
distinction between form and material j 3) an analysis of the 
logic of history and the logic of philosophy. I will try to show 
how these desiderata grew out of Cassirer's own philosophy. 
337 
338 FOLKE LEANDER 
I 
The Unification of the Pre-Scientific Symbolic Forms 
As Theodor Litt 1 has remarked, the whole of Cassirer's 
philosophy of symbolic forms may be regarded as a synthesis 
of Kant and Herder, or as an adoption into the former's phi- 
losophy of the wider sphere of interest represented by the latter. 
Kant's epistemology, devised to explain the possibility of New- 
tonian physics, must be broadened so as to include aesthetics, 
the theory of language, and the philosophy of mythology. It 
is high time for epistemologists to rid themselves of the superior 
attitude often taken towards language, myth, and especially art, 
as if these things did not concern them. As Cassirer shows they 
are the basis of our knowing life, the basis upon which even 
science rests. Cassirer has admirably instructive studies of two of 
the pre-scientific symbolic forms, language and myth. There is, 
however, no volume on art, and this fact is seldom mentioned. 
So far so good. We have every reason to be grateful for 
these excellent books. Yet one should like to know more about 
the way these pre-scientific symbolic forms are related to one 
another. How does Cassirer know there are three of them? 
How does he arrive at them? He simply takes over the popu- 
lar delimitations without caring about the objections that 
myth may be a mixture of artistic imagination and practical emo- 
tion of a certain kind, and language a crudely delimited type of 
art or, alternatively, art a crudely delimited type of language. 
He projects the idea that aesthetics is the general science of 
pre-scientific symbolism ; but he rejected it without anything re- 
sembling real disproof. 2 
In Sfrache und Mythos (Leipzig 1925), pp. 65!?., he dis- 
cusses at length the relations of language, myth and art. He 
begins by pointing out that language and myth have "a com- 
mon root" and are the products of an ultimately identical 
mental function (eine lefote Gemeinsamkeit in der Fwnktion 
des Gestaltens). They are both the products of "metaphorical 
thinking." He quotes from Max Muller: "Whether he wanted 
1 Kant und Herder als Deuter der geistigen Welt, Leipzig (1930), 285 f. 
* Die Sfrache, Berlin (1923), 12 of. 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 339 
to or not, man had to speak in metaphors, not because he could 
not restrain his poetic imagination, but rather because he had 
to use it to the utmost in order to find ｅxpressions for the ever- 
growing needs of his mind." The growth of intuition, accord- 
ingly, is correlative to the growth of poetic symbolism. The 
common root of language and myth turns out also to be the 
root of poetryj in fact, we are told, they are originally one, 
and the distinctions between them were gradually introduced. 
"Myth, language and art begin as a concrete, undivided unity, 
which is only gradually resolved into a triad of independent 
modes of spiritual creativity." 3 
The critic will remark that there are distinctions and dis- 
tinctions they need not all be of the same kind. Some may be 
fundamental and "real," whereas others are "merely empirical," 
more or less arbitrary cuts in a flowing continuum. Cassirer's 
Kantianism will scarcely allow him to put the distinctions be- 
tween abstract and concrete, or theoretical and practical, moral 
good and sensuous satisfaction on a level with the arbitrary dis- 
tinction between, say, a chair and a sofa, where all sorts of 
intermediary forms are conceivable. It is a question of logic 
whether you accept "real" distinctions as ultimately different 
from "merely empirical" or "pragmatic" ones. But whatever 
your ultimate decision on this point of logic will be, you will 
certainly have to admit a difference of status. Now the critic 
may maintain that the distinctions gradually emerging between 
language, myth, and art are of the "merely empirical" variety 
and that pre-scientifi.c symbolism is "really" the same activity 
everywhere. 
Cassirer describes the creation of myth and language in the 
very terms in which others describe the process of artistic crea- 
tion. Myth arises from an emotional tension between man and 
his environment: 
then the spark jumps somehow across, the tension finds release, as the 
subjective excitement becomes objectified, and confronts the mind as a 
god or a daemon. . . . 4 As soon as the spark has jumped across, as soon 
as the tension and emotion of the moment has found its discharge in 
9 Language and Myth (S. Langer translation, 1945), 98. 
33- 
340 FOLKE LEANDER 
the word as the mythical image, a sort of turning point has occurred in 
human mentality: the inner excitement which was a mere subjective 
state has vanished, and has been resolved into the objective form of 
myth or of speech. 5 
If anything can be objected to in this statement, it is that the 
additional practical emotion characteristic of myth is here over- 
looked in favour of a complete identification with art. The 
subjective practical emotion is never completely expressed in 
the mythical image, as is the case in pure art, but remains as 
terror and awe; and to this is added the practical act of "belief." 
There is a profound difference between scientific symbolism 
on the one hand, and pre-scientific symbolism on the other. 
The function of the latter, according to Cassirer, is intuitive 
elaboration of experience (Intensivierung is his own term), 
whereas the former aims at discursive mastery, by means of 
rules and procedures, of a world already intuitively appre- 
hended. Science moves on the discursive level, the level of gen- 
eral concepts (Allgemeinbegriffe} and laws. But this level of 
rationality could not exist by itself and must everywhere attach 
itself to something more basic. The intuitive level of experience 
is experience elaborated by means of linguistic, mythical, and 
artistic symbolism. 6 
*., 3 6. 
8 In myth, says Cassirer, "thought does not dispose freely over the data of 
intuition, in order to relate and compare them to each other, but is captivated and 
enthralled by the intuition which suddenly confronts it. It comes to rest in the 
immediate experience j the sensible present is so great that everything else dwindles 
before it." (Ibid. y 32.) ". . . the immediate content, whatever it be, that commands 
his religious interest so completely fills his consciousness that nothing else can exist 
beside and apart from it. The ego is spending all its energy on this single object, 
lives in it, loses itself in it." (Ibid., 33.) This would also be an excellent description 
of the aesthetic attitude, the common element being intuitive elaboration, or 
"Intensivierung," of experience. 
"Language and myth stand in an original and indissoluble correlation with one 
another, from which they both emerge but gradually as independent elements. They 
are two diverse shoots from the same parent stem, the same impulse of symbolic 
formulation, springing from the same basic mental activity, a concentration and 
heightening of simple sensory experience. In the vocables of speech and in primitive 
mythic figurations, the same inner process finds its consummation: they are both 
resolutions of an inner tension, the representation of subjective impulses and 
excitations in definite objective forms and figures." (Ibid., 88.) Can anyone fail 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 341 
The sharp distinction between the two levels of experience 
discursive and intuitive does not imply, of course, that mean- 
ings belong merely to the discursive level. There are also mean- 
ings on the intuitive level, though of a different kind. They 
may be termed "felt identities/' "affinities," "qualia," "char- 
acters}" as caught and held in symbols, Cassirer terms them 
"Sfrachbegriffe," "mythische Begriffe," etc. 
It appears, then, that language, myth, and art have a common 
task in the theoretical life of man, namely, the intuitive mastery 
of experience. This would seem to make it imperative to dis- 
criminate between the theoretical and the practical-emotional 
aspects of myth, in which case the former could hardly fail to 
be identified with art. A similar failure to distinguish between 
the theoretical and the practical vitiates Cassirer's use of the 
term "ｅxpressional phenomenon," by which he means the emo- 
tional qualities of phenomena. In so far as emotion is subservient 
to intuition, it is aesthetic} but it may also obstruct the intuitive 
elaboration of experience and may then be called practical. 
Practical emotional qualities are stimuli to immediate practical 
reaction: we give up the attitude of contemplation, of intuitive 
elaboration. Thus sudden fear, if detrimental to intuition, is 
practical, whereas the grandiose, the sublime and even the ter- 
rible may be aesthetic qualities. The distinction is blurred by the 
use of the term "ｅxpressional qualities" no less than in the 
phrases current among English-speaking philosophers: "terti- 
ary qualities" and the like. 

one should also note that the function Cassirer ascribes to 
language is intuitive mastery of experience. For one of the 
things that have evidently puzzled him most, is the "logical" 
element of language. But, when raising this problem, he in- 
variably makes a metabasis eis allo genos and passes from pre- 
to see that this is a perfect description of the process of artistic creation? Could 
there be a better proof that myth and language are aesthetic products? 
If discursive thinking "tends toward expansion, implication, and systematic 
connection, the verbal and mythical conception tends toward concentration, tele- 
scoping, separate characterization." (Ibid., 56.) "Here thought does not confront 
its data in an attitude of free contemplation, seeking to understand their structure 
and their systematic connections, and analyzing them according to their parts and 
functions, but is simply captivated by a total impression." (Ibid., 57.) 
342 FOLKE LEANDER 
scientific to scientific symbolism, asserting that the same 
"Logos" that is operative in scientific symbolism, is also at work 
in pre-scientific symbolism. If we ask what is here meant by 
Logos, we find that several different meanings are crowded 
together into one term. "Logos" may mean spiritual synthesis 
in general: and in this case it is, of course, true that Logos is 
operative in pre-scientific symbolism. But Logos may also mean 
the thinking of scientific and general concepts: and in this case 
it can be shown, I think, that Logos is altogether outside of in- 
tuition and of pre-scientific symbolism, although it may leave 
results that may be absorbed in the latter. (I shall explain pres- 
ently what is meant by the last clause.) 
As we have seen, meanings, according to Cassirer, are found 
also on the intuitive level; as caught and held in linguistic 
symbols they are "Sfrachbegriffe" not to be confused with 
general or scientific concepts. When he asserts that the same 
Logos is operative in the creation of "S-prachbe griff eP which 
on a higher level is operative in the creation of scientific con- 
cepts, this assertion is only acceptable if Logos means Geist in 
general. But Cassirer also means that "Sprachbegriffe" are a 
confused and preliminary creation of Logos in the sense of 
scientific intellect. This latter assertion seems to me untenable. 
The confusion is made possible by the fact that general and 
scientific concepts may be "absorbed" into intuition. An electric 
charge is one thing for the engineer in his capacity of scientific 
specialist 5 it is a different thing for the layman and even for 
the engineer himself qua non-specialist. What was originally 
a mere formula, a rule of procedure, may through practice and 
experience of its effects be transformed into an intuitive affinity, 
a quale, a Gestalt, a characteristic physiognomy. As John Dewey 
puts it: 
In the situation which follows upon reflection, meanings are intrinsic; 
they have no instrumental or subservient office, because they have no 
office at all. They are as much qualities of the objects in the situation as 
are red and black, hard and soft, square and round. And every re- 
flective experience adds new shades of such intrinsic qualifications. 7 
1 Essays in Experimental Logic, (1916) 17. Cf. also How We Think, (1933), 
135 ff. ("Things and Meanings")* and Logic, (1938) ch. VIII ("Immediate 
Knowledge"). 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 343 
Perhaps Dewey's term "intrinsic qualifications" is better than 
any of those I have so far used (affinity, physiognomy, quale, 
etc.). Discursive procedures, then, may grow intuitive, ideas 
may lose their intellectual quality by habitual use. And, as a 
parallel process, general and scientific concepts may be trans- 
formed into "Sfrachbegriffe" Dewey distinguishes between 
two types of grasp of meaning: the strictly logical type and the 
"aesthetic" perception of intrinsic qualifications, which is some- 
times called acquaintance-knowledge. We apprehend chairs, 
tables, books, trees, horses, stars, rain, etc., promptly and di- 
rectly $ we need not think about these things in order to identify 
them; we cannot help seeing them as chairs, tables, etc. 
Certainly logical thought-processes leave results in intuition j 
the starry heavens, for instance, look different to us from what 
they did to a contemporary of Dante. But there is also a move- 
ment in the opposite direction. "Red" meant originally an in- 
tuitively felt affinity j but when definite procedures have been 
developed, e.g. y the colour-pyramid, it may mean a loom 
within the system. 
In spite of all this give and take, however, the intuitive and 
the discursive levels remain different. Since the aim and func- 
tion of "Sfrachbegriffe?* is altogether different from that of 
general and scientific concepts, the former cannot be viewed as 
an inferior and undeveloped variety of the latter. Yet the inter- 
play between the levels is certainly misleading. on the intuitive 
level, Cassirer says, meanings are "fused" (eingeschmolzen) 
with the concrete. 8 And he paints a picture of the poor Logos 
like a butterfly grovelling in the dust, until in science it dis- 
engages itself from the many-coloured intuition, rises into the 
air, and starts out on a proud flight in its own proper element. 9 
1 Phanomenologie der Erkenntiris, (1929), 327. 
9 Phanomenologie der Erkenntms, 395!. "It is true that an abyss appears to yawn 
between the scientific concept and the verbal concept however, looked at more 
closely this abyss is exactly the same gulf which thinking had to bridge earlier 
before it could become verbal thought. . . . Now thought has to tear loose not 
merely from the here and now, from the respective location and moment, but it 
has to reach beyond the totality of space and time, beyond the limits of perceptual 
description, and of description and describability in general. . . . The Vehicle* of 
word-language which served for so long a time, will now bear him no farther- 
but he feels himself strong and powerful enough to risk the flight which is to 
carry him to a new goal." 
344 FOLKE LEANDER 
But this metaphor is objectionable. The Logos flying discur- 
sively in the air is different from that working intuitively within 
experience. Both are needed $ but the intuitive Logos is no 
preliminary variety of the scientific Logos. 
This panlogistic tendency is incompatible with the main 
body of Cassirer's thought. For he teaches that language is in 
essence intuitive elaboration (Intensvolerung) of experience. 
And he also teaches that the "logical" element of language, in 
so far as "Sprachbegriffe" are concerned, should not be called 
logical at all, if we distinguish between an intuitive and a dis- 
cursive, logical level of experience. Language is correlative to 
intrinsic qualifications, characters, physiognomies, qualia, affini- 
ties, or whatever term may be used for the meanings belonging 
to the intuitive level. 
All this, the critic will add, proves that language is essentially 
an aesthetic activity. Of course, in reasoning language is the 
bearer of logical meanings; yet even pure mathematics has 
an aesthetic side, since it is an existential thought-process. The 
mathematical concepts are embodied in aesthetically meaningful 
concrete processes. Words, says Cassirer, are mere "signs" or 
"vehicles" of logical meanings. 10 The relation between intuitive 
meanings and language is that of vital incarnation. Words ex- 
press intuitive meanings but state y or are mere signs of, logical 
meanings. on the intuitive level, says Cassirer, "the word which 
denotes that thought content is not a mere conventional symbol, 
but is merged with its object in an indissoluble unity." 11 If the 
lightning is seen as a snake, it will also be called "the snake of 
"For it is precisely the 'Logos/ which was at work from the beginning in the 
creation of language, which, in the progress to scientific knowledge, frees itself 
from the limiting conditions which originally clung to it which proceeds from 
its implicit form into its explicit form." (Ibid. y 388) 
10 "For theoretical thinking, a word is essentially a vehicle serving the funda- 
mental aim of such ideation: the establishment of relationships between the given 
phenomenon and others which are "like" it or otherwise connected with it according 
to some co-ordinating law. . . . The word stands, so to speak, between actual 
particular impressions, as a phenomenon of a different order, a new intellectual 
dimension) and to this mediating position, this remoteness from the sphere of 
immediate data, it owes the freedom and ease with which it moves among specific 
objects and connects one with another." Language and Myth, (Langer tr.) 56f. 
11 Language and Myth, 58. 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 345 
the sky:" intuitive elaboration and linguistic naming is here one 
and the same activity. "The spiritual excitement caused by some 
object which presents itself in the outer world furnishes both 
the occasion and the means of its denomination. Sense impres- 
sions . . . naturally strive for vocal ｅxpression." 12 Language and 
intuition are correlative and develop together. Intuitive mean- 
ings are vitally fused with intuition, and so they are fused with 
language. Scientific and general concepts, on the other hand, 
are externally related to intuition and have a corresponding 
status in its correlative, language. Since this is Cassirer's own 
view, why does he reject the aesthetic theory of language? He 
not only rejects it but misrepresents it as wanting to reduce 
language to mere animal ｅxpression, to mere "naturliche Sym- 
bolik" mere "Laut der Emfindung." But surely nothing of 
the sort has been meant by those who have held the theory in 
question. 
A significant omission is Cassirer's failure to mention Baum- 
garten in his survey of the history of the philosophy of lan- 
guage. Certainly his view of oratio sensitive as correlative to 
cognitio sensitiva t or intuition, is worthy of close attention. The 
"distinct" concepts, Leibniz had said, are exemplified in our 
conceptual methods of recognizing objects as belonging to a 
class; but there is also an intuitive way of recognizing them. 
We immediately see chairs as chairs and feel no need of pro- 
ceeding by rule. This is the level of "clear but confused" cate- 
gories, i.e. y of everyday intuition and, as Baumgarten pointed 
out, in its most intense form the level of art. For art is perfectio 
cognition/is semitivae y qua talis. In the same way, ordinary 
speech is inherently aesthetic, oratio sensitiva, although the 
word poetry is reserved for its more intense form, oratio sensi- 
tiva ferfecta. What Baumgarten means by "sensitive" speech 
might be freely expressed as follows. The nature of speech is 
that of "painting a picture" of something, e.g., of something 
I want you to do, or of the field where the point is localized 
on which I want you to give me information. Of course, the 
analogy with painting must not be pressed: it only lays hold of 
18 Ibid.) 89. H. Usener, as quoted by Cassirer. 
18 Ibid., 3 of. Cf. also Zur Logik der Kulturwtsstnscfaften, 37^ ' 
346 FOLKE LEANDER 
the fact that the function of speech is that of conjuring up some- 
thing concrete, however "thin," schematic, and bare of details 
it may be. Even a newspaper headline is oratio sensitiva, al- 
though ordinarily very far from ferfecta. 
It is strange that Cassirer, the distinguished Leibnizian 
scholar, should have made no use of the philosophy of lan- 
guage proposed by Baumgarten, the founder of aesthetics. Here 
is a perfect distinction between the conceptual and the intuitive 
levels of experience. The "affinities" or general "characters" 
belonging to the latter level are accounted for as "confused 
concepts." And language is seen to be the correlative of intui- 
tion. All this returns in Cassirer's own philosophy, even the 
doubtful part of Leibniz-Baumgarten, namely, the view of 
intuitive reason as an imperfect and preliminary form of scien- 
tific reason. only Baumgarten's insight into the fundamentally 
aesthetic nature of intuition and language has fallen out of the 
picture. I believe it will have to be re-introduced. 
II 
A More Careful Distinction between Form and Material 

one may note in Cassirer a certain attachment to what Dewey 
has termed "the museum conception of art." Dewey holds the 
view that any experience to the extent to which it is an experi- 
ence, is aesthetic 14 an idea that goes back to Baumgarten, 
Herder, and the romantics. From this point of view a "tran- 
scendental aesthetics" would not be the doctrine of mathemati- 
cal time and space but simply aesthetics. The subjects dealt with 
by Kant at the end of his system, in the Critique of Judgment, 
would be placed at the very beginning of the system. Or rather, 
since all rationality is "absorbed" and all practical emotion is 
expressed in intuition, the doctrine of intuition would be at 
once at the end and at the beginning of the system, which would 
accordingly be as circular as experience itself: Theodor Litt 
says that if Kant had ever discovered real intuition as some- 
thing very different from mathematical tiipe and space, he 
would hardly have failed to place art on this level ; and further, 
14 Art at Experience, (x 934) . 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 347 
"he could not have been able to escape the insight which 
dominated a Herder, namely that aesthetic experiences stand 
by no means alone in this regard, but rather constitute the 
highest intensification of the spiritual situation which runs 
through all and every sensory world view." 16 In short, the true 
"transcendental aesthetics" is simply aesthetics; intuition and its 
correlative, the pre-scientific symbolism, may be divided and 
subdivided in many ways by means of "merely empirical" dis- 
tinctions, but "really" it is one identical activity everywhere 
an activity, which in its more intense form is recognized as 
aesthetic. A division of our intuitive acts into "more intense" 
and "less intense" would itself be merely empirical. "We all 
take some pleasure," says Dr. Barnes, "in seeing how things 
look, in observing their colour, their contour, their movement, 
whether they are moving in our direction or not. In so far as 
we are successful in finding what is characteristic, appealing, 
or significant in the world about us, we are, in a small im- 
promptu way, ourselves artists." 16 He adds that "the artist 
differs from the ordinary person partly by his ability to make 
what he sees a public object, but chiefly in the range and depth 
of his vision itself." 17 A novelist spending weeks and months on 
working out a "great" intuition, merely intensifies an activity 
in which we are all engaged. We all want clarity of vision and 
imaginative interpretation of experience. As Cassirer points out, 
the poet does not "know" what he wants to say, until he has 
said it; he obscurely feels something working within him, but 
he does not know what, until he has defined it in a work of 
art. 18 Similarly, it might be added, workmen had no "class- 
consciousness" until Marx and others created their "myths" (as 
Sorel would say) ; surely there were all sorts of obscure feelings 
among the workmen, but they were not articulated. In the 
same way, we are all dependent upon poets, prophets and 
artists for our imaginative interpretation of experience. There 
is no difference of kind between our everyday intuitive activities 
v Kant und Herder, 61 . 
M Albert C. Barnes: The Art in Painting, 3rd ed. (1937) 12. 
"Ibid., 13. 
* Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 1 30. 
348 FOLKE LEANDER 
and those of the great "seers," merely a difference of intensity 
and degree. Just as the science of biology deals with cells as 
well as elephants, so the science of intuition deals with everyday 
intuitive awareness, however insignificant, as well as with those 
greater intuitions recognized as aesthetic. 
Anyone who takes such a broad view of aesthetics will almost 
inevitably be led to look upon the division of Art into various 
arts and genres as "merely empirical" distinctions. Surely the 
distinction between art and science is "real" in a sense in which 
the distinctions between various arts are superficial and "prag- 
matic." Cassirer on the other hand, not having freed himself 
entirely from the "museum" idea of art, believes that the main 
arts and genres are a priori, inherent in the very idea, the "cate- 
gory" of art. I do not know whether or not Cassirer would 
nowadays accept the "panaesthetic" conception of experience. 
But, even if he does, he will certainly cling to his view of cer- 
tain major arts as a priori, categorically (not merely em- 
pirically) distinct. 
The objections to such a view seem to me very strong. After 
all, a human race may be conceived having neither eyes nor ears 
and yet endowed with a type of experience resembling our own 
in certain general traits. Their art would be very different from 
ours. Further, new arts constantly arise in the course of his- 
tory. Painting grew out of Byzantine mosaics j sculpture was 
originally an integral part of architecture both may be an 
integral part of town-planning; music had no existence apart 
from song, etc. Recent arts are the movies and the radio drama. 
Art is the activity of organizing a material so as to be pleasing 
in perception so as to give the perceiver an integral, rounded 
"experience." Since any material or combination of materials 
may be shaped into beauty, the number of artistic media is in 
principle unlimited. To what art belong good manners, a per- 
sonal style of dressing and talking, pleasant conversation the 
sort of aesthetic shaping that we all practice daily? Are they 
one art or several arts? It might seem as if all the means used 
to give a total unified impression ought to be considered one 
art. Song is not a combination of two arts, poetry plus music, 
like one cake put upon another. In dancing to music, the move- 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 349 
ments and the music are fused into one organic whole $ the 
division into two arts is "merely empirical," whereas the 
aesthetic reality is an integral whole. When the Greeks painted 
their statues, this was not a simple addition of two arts. A 
church service, in so far as it is an aesthetic experience, is a 
whole, although numerous media may be empirically distin- 
guished. Man, says Schiller, "soil alles Inner veraussern und 
alles Aussere formen" The emphasis should be put upon 
"alles Aussere" all materials can be shaped into beauty, the 
possible media are infinite in number. Historical traditions arise, 
certain media become traditional like colours on canvas or theat- 
rical representation. But there are always numerous media 
which do not fit into the classifications based upon the more 
important traditions. Dewey asks: 
What can such classifications make out of sculpture in relief, high and 
low, of marble figures on tombs, carved on wooden doors and cast in 
bronze doors? What about carvings on capitals, friezes, cornices, cano- 
pies, brackets? How do the minor arts fit in, workings in ivory, alabaster, 
plaster-paris, terra-cotta, silver and gold, ornamental iron work in brack, 
ets, signs, hinges, screens and grills? 19 
All classifications can here be made, since the materials are a 
continuum with all sorts of intermediary forms and endless 
overlappings and combinations. If we distinguish between aes- 
thetic "form" and the "material" formed, it seems evident 
that the differences between the various arts and genres belong 
altogether to the material side and leave aesthetic form un- 
affected. 
If one were to accept such a theory, Cassirer objects, 

one would, by so doing, be led to the strange conclusion that, by 
calling Beethoven a great musician, Rembrandt a great painter, Homer 
a great epic poet, Shakespeare a great dramatist, only inconsequential 
empirical marginal conditions were expressed by such assertions, con- 
ditions aesthetically quite unimportant and for their characteristics as 
artists entirely superfluous. 20 
In the same way, one might argue, it is no indifferent matter 
w Art as Experience, p. 223. 
20 Zw Logik der Kulturwissensckaften, p. 130. 
350 FOLKE LEANDER 
that Ariosto wrote a romance and Virgil an epic, or that 
D. G. Rossetti wrote sonnets and Wordsworth long poems as 
well as short. No such things are indifferent or rather, the 
one important thing, to which everything adds up, is that 
Wordsworth was Wordsworth and Rossetti was Rossetti. Of 
course, it is no matter of indifference that Shakespeare wrote 
for the stage, or, in brief, all such circumstances added together, 
that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. Yet aesthetically the essen- 
tial point is that the stage as a traditional medium belonged to 
the "material" side of his works of art, not to their "formal" 
side. And on the material side there are no barriers between 
media they may merge by insensible gradations. 
Cassirer is quite right in saying: "Beethoven's intuition is in 
the realm of music. Phidias' intuition is in that of sculpture, 
Milton's in epic poetry, and Goethe's in lyric poetry. All of this 
concerns not merely the external husk, but the core of their 
creative work." 21 But this only means that the imagination of 
an artist works within some medium. Perhaps it was a mere 
coincidence that originally presented this medium to his imagi- 
nation. Perhaps he has to change and develop the medium in 
order to make it a vehicle for what he wants to say. Perhaps, 
having had an initial experience of various media, he chooses 
the one which for some reason or other suits him best a deaf 
man, for instance, is not likely to choose music, nor a colour- 
blind man painting. one puts a false interpretation upon these 
facts, if one infers that the types of intuition enumerated by 
Cassirer are categorial and a priori divisions. 

one may very well, it may be added, recognize the non- 
categorial and merely empirical status of the arts and at the 
same time dislike the romantic confusions, rooted in a love of 
suggestion for its own sake. Irving Babbitt was thoroughly 
right in The New Laokoon, An Essay on the Confusion of the 
Arts (1910). These romantics want to put us in a state of 
sensuous, even voluptuous dreaming, they want to thrill us 
with strange and surprising effects. There is no contradiction 
between clear insight in the non-aesthetic character of such 
endeavours and recognition of the merely empirical status of 
the arts and genres. 
"ibid., 131. 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 351 
A similar tendency to apriorize merely empirical distinctions 
can be noticed in Cassirer's philosophy of language. When he 
speaks of "the form of a language," it is clear that the word 
"form" does not merely denote the nature of essence of lan- 
guage in general but also the fundamental and enduring lin- 
guistic habits of a particular people. Cassirer here uses the 
word "form" in the same way as Humboldt did when speaking 
of the innere Sprachform of a particular language. There is no 
objection to such a terminology, unless it leads to confusion 
between enduring linguistic habits (or even among these only 
the habits denominated grammatical) and linguistic form per 
se. For such a confusion would mean that "empirically" distin- 
guished, historically conditioned habit-systems are apriorized 
into eternal subdivisions of speech as a universal form of ac- 
tivity. 
Suppose we distinguish carefully between linguistic and ar- 
tistic "form," on the one hand, and habits and traditions on the 
other. Suppose further that we call the "merely empirical" 
distinctions made among the latter: Stilbegriffe. Then we would 
have adopted a term introduced by Cassirer in Zur Logik der 
Kulturwissenschajten y using it in approximately the same sense 
as he does. In order to write the history of language and of art 
thus Cassirer begins his exposition of what he means by 
Stilbegriffe we need a great variety of terms describing the 
structure of artistic and linguistic phenomena. Open any gram- 
mar or any history of art or literature, and you will be able 
to grab them with both hands. Thus Wolfflin distinguishes be- 
tween a "picturesque" and a "linear" style, and Humboldt in- 
troduces the notion of "polysynthetic" languages. These types 
of concepts, Cassirer goes on to say, differ both from those of 
natural science and from the concepts of value (Wertbegriffe). 
So far no objection can be raised. Certainly history and the 
enquiry into general terms must keep pacej a theory of language 
and a theory of art are indispensable in writing the history 
of these activities. 22 But are the basic concepts in these theories 
M on the one hand it is clear that the creation of a theory of language is not 
possible without constant reference to the results achieved in the history of language 
and in psychology of language. Such a theory can not be erected in the empty space 
of [mere] abstraction or speculation. But it is equally clear that empirical research 
in the realm of linguistics as in that of the psychology of language must constantly 
352 FOLKE LEANDER 
the concepts of "language" and "art" also Stilbegriffe? Cas- 
sirer says nothing about "art" in this context; but "language" 
evidently is included among the "concepts of style." 23 He says 
nothing about the relation of "concepts of style" to "concepts 
of value" and seems to have altogether forgotten that the latter 
have also a function in the theories of art and language. "Art" 
is obviously a value term, since a work of art is the better, the 
more it is art; on the other hand, no "picturesque" or "linear" 
work of art is the better, the more picturesque or linear it is. 
Similarly, "polysynthetic" is no value term, but "speech" is: 
only in so far as a person manages to express what he wants to 
express and this is a question of degrees has he achieved 
articulate speech. 
Thus Wertbegriffe are seen to denote the "form" or eternal 
nature of art and language, whereas Stilbegriffe denote em- 
pirically demarcated tendencies and habits. But no such sharp 
distinction is to be found in Cassirer's book. The student of his 
thought is left with the task of working it out for himself. 
Ill 
An Analysis of the Logic of History and the 
Logic of Philosophy 
As we have seen, "Logos" in its highest, purest and most 
intense form is supposed to be identical with mathematical 
science. In The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Cassirer always 
means mathematical science, when speaking of Wissenschaft. 
presuppose concepts which can only be taken from the linguistic 'theory of forms.' 
If investigations are to be initiated to ascertain in which order the various classes 
of words occur in the linguistic development of the child, or to ascertain in which 
phase the child moves from the use of the 'single word sentence* to the 'paratacticaP 
sentence, and from this latter to the 'hypotacticaP sentence, it must be clear that in 
such procedure [of investigation] the meaning of quite definite basic categories 
of the 'theory of forms,' of grammar and of syntax, are laid down as basic. Else- 
where also it is shown again and again that empirical research loses itself in 
'Schemfrobleme' and gets entangled in insoluble antinomies, if careful conceptual 
reflection concerning what precisely language 'is* does not come to the aid of such 
research and accompanies it constantly in the putting of its questions." Zur Logik 
der Kulturwissenschajten, 75. 
*Ibid., 75 f. 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 353 
History and philosophy are silently allowed to drop out of the 
picture. 
Modern philosophers since Descartes have been chiefly in- 
terested in the thought-processes of mathematicians and scien- 
tists. They have until recently evinced little interest in those 
of the historians. And very few have even today discovered 
that their own philosophical activities might be as interesting 
logically as those of scientists and mathematicians. The logic 
of philosophical thought is a field which has not been discovered 
at all by the majority of philosophers. Yet it is difficult to see 
why general statements should not be made about the activity 
of philosophizing. 
When exalting mathematical science to the highest place in 
our knowledge-getting life, Cassirer seems to have forgotten 
the claims of his own subject, philosophy. He has said excellent 
things on the activities of mathematicians and scientists, and 
also some good things on history. on the activity of philosophiz- 
ing there is little more than a chapter on "Subjective and 
Objective Analysis" in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. 
And this chapter does not take us very far. 
A brief criticism of other thinkers may be helpful. Dewey 
touches upon the logic of philosophy, or more specifically the 
logic of logical enquiry, in the Introduction to his Logic. 2 * He 
believes that the philosopher's thought-processes can be ac- 
counted for by a pragmatic logic 5 they present no special diffi- 
culties. Similarly, logical positivists, when occasionally con- 
fronted with the problem, affirm that their own philosophy is 
a hypothesis of the same sort as any other scientific hypothesis. 
Their own philosophy, in other words, is only probable and 
must be verified by experience. But anyone who says: "Our 
philosophy is only a hypothesis," is surely talking nonsense; for 
in this statement is implicitly contained another one: "The 
criterion of verification is the ultimate court of appeal deciding 
the fate of each and every philosophy." An absolute, unhypo- 
thetical statement has been made. To put it in other words: 
anyone who asserts that "'philosophies are hypotheses" thereby 
affirms hypothesis-verification as the ultimate truth about our 
* Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, by John Dewey (New York, 1938). 
354 FOLKE LEANDER 
knowledge-getting life. To put it in a third manner: when we 
are supposed to be choosing between various systems of philo- 
sophical axioms by testing their applicability to experience, we 
are also supposed already to have a philosophical system, of 
which the idea of "applicability to experience" forms a part. 
This shows that the logic of philosophy does present special 
difficulties and does not fit into pragmatic logic. 
What, then, is the logic of philosophical thinking? If phi- 
losophy is self-knowledge, the logic of philosophy is an account 
of what happens in self-knowledge. That self-knowledge does 
not fit into pragmatic logic can easily be shown. It is often 
affirmed that all a priori truth is analytic and all empirical state- 
ments merely probable. But if one can be sure of an analytic 
truth, one can certainly also be sure of the existence of the 
thought-process in which the analytic truth is being sought; and 
one can also affirm with certainty that the existential thought- 
process in question belongs to a certain kind of thought-processes, 
those which the theory calls analytic. Here is an element of 
self-knowledge which is at once a priori and empirical. Further, 
no verification of a hypothesis can take place, unless we can 
know with certainty that we are verifying a hypothesis; an 
infinite regress of verifying that we are verifying provides no 
escape from nihilism it is like lifting oneself by one's boot- 
straps. Without an assertion somewhere there can be no proba- 
bility, only a mass of hypothetical sentences; even an infinite 
amount of "if-then"-sentences does not provide us with a 
single probability. Self-knowledge that we are verifying is 
accordingly indispensable. Similarly, the philosophical method 
of analyzing linguistic statements presupposes the absolute 
knowledge (at once empirical and a priori) that "this is a lin- 
guistic statement" and this is a piece of self-knowledge, 
knowledge of our own activity of speaking and of reconstruct- 
ing other people's ｅxpressions. 
In short, knowledge of our own activities and attitudes 
verifying analytic thinking, expressing oneself (speaking), re- 
constructing ｅxpressions (listening, reading), imagining, ob- 
serving, philosophizing, etc., must in a sense be immediate 
and direct, for otherwise the whole structure of knowledge 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 355 
would break down. Self-knowledge is the basis of all other 
knowledge. Now self-knowledge is in one respect historical 
(knowledge of individual processes) and in another respect 
philosophical (knowledge of the general categories of activity, 
like those just mentioned). The history of philosophy is the 
history of a growing insight into the nature of our own ac- 
tivities. And the method of philosophy has been a sort of 
direct inspection of our activities, often called "reflection" 
upon them. 
Now what has just been advanced as a criticism of prag- 
matism and logical positivism indicates the way I believe mod- 
ern philosophy will develop. 25 And it also indicates a realm 
which Cassirer has left unexplored. The logical analysis of what 
philosophers are doing and how they do it the logic of think- 
ing the Idea, as Hegel would say has become a problem to 
modern neo-Hegelians like Emil Lask, Theodor Litt, Richard 
Kroner and Benedetto Croce. 26 But Cassirer remains a neo- 
Kantian and refuses to venture into these problems. Abstract 
mathematics and unreal scientific constructions are to him the 
true nature of Logos. We go beyond him by identifying Logos 
with the Idea and interpreting philosophy as the self-conscious- 
ness of Logos. 
The subject may also be approached from another angle, by 
a detour over the subject of "freedom and form." This was 
the theme of a volume of essays which Cassirer published dur- 
ing the first world war: Freiheit und Form (Berlin, 1916). 
The basic idea is that freely developing life finds its own law 
within itself, that "form" is no restriction on freedom, unless 
it be merely external, pseudo-classical, conventional, based upon 
* Those interested in a fuller development of this criticism may read my article, 
"Analyse des Wirklichkeitsbegriffs," in Theoria, vol. IX, (1943). 
*E. Lask: Die Logik der Philosofhie und die Kategorienlefare, Ges. Schr. II, 
Tubingen, 1923. 
Th.Litt: Einleitung in die Philosophic, 1933, p. 1-33$ Kant und Herder , 1930, 
ch. 3 j Das Allgemeine im Aufbau der geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis, Leipzig* 
1941 (a brief summary). 
R. Kroner: Von Kant bis Hegel, MI, Tubingen, 1921-1924, esp. vol. I, pp. 
103$, 2895. Croce anticipated the Germans by several years. See his Logica come 
scienza del concetto furo, Bar. 1908. 
356 FOLKE LEANDER 
outer pressure. In the volume mentioned Cassirer applied this 
idea to the fields of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. 
As Cassirer himself points out, the problem of The Philoso- 
phy of Symbolic Forms is also at bottom a question of freedom 
and form. It might seem as if myth and language cut us off from 
reality, covering it with a many-coloured veil of "subjective" il- 
lusions. The free expansion of individuality might seem detri- 
mental to our knowledge of reality. But Cassirer shows that this 
is not really the case. Pre-scientific symbolism is really a method 
of exploring reality, having its own type of objectivity, its own 
"form," in which the expansion of individuality issues. 
What, according to Cassirer, is the "objectivity" or truth 
of myth? His answer is that the truth of myth is what myth does 
in the intuitive elaboration of experience. This view may be 
elucidated by a quotation from an American writer on art: 
Science may seem dry and trivial or mechanical to those who have no 
desire to understand the world intellectually; and poetry seem tedious, 
futile, or trifling to those who care nothing for imaginative under- 
standing. Each is right in his own sphere, and wrong only in supposing 
that his sphere leaves room for no other. 27 
The artist, he adds, is primarily the discoverer, just as the 
scientist is; the scientist invents abstract laws which may be 
used for the purposes of calculation and prediction; the artist 
explores reality in a different way. We see only by utilizing the 
vision of others, and this vision is embodied in the traditions 
of art. Pre-scientific symbolism, according to Cassirer, serves 
the purpose of imaginative, intuitive understanding. The pas- 
sage just quoted corresponds to Cassirer's thought (and to the 
general trend of contemporary philosophy) also in another 
respect: in its tendency to leave out history and philosophy 
altogether. Failure to analyze the last-mentioned activities is 
indeed the weakness of contemporary thought. When this 
analysis has been performed, it will be clear, I believe, that 
individuality plays no less a role in history and philosophy 
than in art, myth, and language, and that here too the expansion 
of individuality is compatible with "form" and objectivity. 
* A. Barnes: The Art in Painting, 37. 
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF SYMBOLIC FORMS 357 

only science is in substance impersonal. Of course, it takes indi- 
viduals to create it, but individuality is no part of the results, 
which are strictly impersonal. "Freedom and form" as the 
Leitmotiv of Cassirer's philosophy cannot come into its own 
as long as mathematical science is taken to be the apex of our 
knowing life. As a system of practical procedures science is our 
way of controlling the forces of nature. Yet, if nature be some- 
thing of the kind pictured by Alfred N. Whitehead, practical 
control is surely something very different from real understand- 
ing in the sense of Verstehen. Maybe natural history can only 
be dead history to us, a mere chronicle; at all events real under- 
standing, where it is possible, i. e., in the human world, touches 
the rock-bottom of reality in a way that cannot be rivalled by 
the merely external approach of science. The apex of knowledge 
cannot therefore be sought in the latter; it is the self-knowledge 
of the mind. 
If there is any truth in what has just been said, the problem 
of "freedom and form" is the fundamental problem of logic 
and epistemology. The compatibility of individuality of vision 
with objective truth must be established not only on the level 
of artistic, mythical, and linguistic symbolism but also on the 
level of historical and philosophical knowledge. Every philoso- 
pher has his own truths to reveal, and these truths are not 
mutually incompatible; only by being intensely himself, by 
working out his own deepest inspiration, will he bring a unique 
contribution to the progress of thought. Even if Cassirer has 
not worked out the theory of freedom and form in philosophi- 
cal progress, he has, by his whole work, given us a brilliant 
illustration of it. 
FOLKE LEANDER 
HOGS KOLA 
GOTEBORC, SWEDEN 
10 
M. F. Ashley Montagu 
CASSIRER on MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 
IO 
CASSIRER on MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 
IN SUBSTANZBEGRIFF UND FUNKTIONSBE- 
GRIFF (1910) we learn that the study arose out of 
the attempt to comprehend the fundamental conceptions of 
mathematics from the point of view of logic. Cassirer found 
that it became necessary to analyze and trace back the funda- 
mental presuppositions of the nature of a concept itself. This led 
to a renewed analysis of the principles of concepts in general. 
In the course of his analysis of the special sciences it became 
evident that the systematic structure of the exact sciences 
assumes different forms according to the different logical per- 
spectives in which they are regarded. Hence the necessity of 
the analysis of the forms of conceptual construction and of the 
general function of concepts 5 for it is obvious that the con- 
ception which is formed of the fundamental nature of the 
concept is directly significant in judging the questions of fact in 
any criticism of knowledge or metaphysics. 
From such considerations with respect to the processes of 
knowing, and the conceptual formalization of that knowing 
as related to the pure sciences, Cassirer was led to a consideration 
of the more fundamental problem of the primitive origins of 
these processes and their development. The first fruits of his 
studies in this field he published in 1923, as the first instalment 
of a large work entitled Philosofhie der symboUschen Formen 
(Bruno Cassirer Verlag, Berlin) j this first volume was devoted 
to "Die Syrache" in which the nature and function of language 
was considered. A second volume devoted to "Das mythische 
Denizen" which is discussed in the present chapter was pub- 
lished in 19255 and the third and last volume, entitled "Pha- 
nomenologie der Erkenntnis" made its appearance in 1929. 
362 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
Of these volumes I think it is no exaggeration to say that they 
constitute perhaps the most important and certainly the most 
brilliant work in this field which has yet been published. 
Before entering upon a presentation of Cassirer's treatment 
of the nature of mythological thinking it is necessary to present 
something of his views with respect to the nature of language as 
propaedeutic to the former. 
Cassirer insists on the fact that in consciousness, whether 
theoretical, artistic, or linguistic, we see a kind of mirror, the 
image falling upon which reflects not only the nature of the 
object existing externally but also the nature of consciousness it- 
self. All forms brought into being by the mind are due to a 
creative force, to a spontaneous act in the Kantian sense, thanks 
to which that which is realized is something quite other than a 
simple reception or registration of facts exterior or foreign to 
the mind. We are now dealing not only with an entering into 
the possession of facts, but with the lending to them of a 
certain character, with an integration of them in a determinate 
physical order. Thus, the act of consciousness which gives birth 
to one or the other of these forms, to science, to art, and to 
language, does not simply discover and reproduce an ensemble 
of pre-existent objects. This act, the processes which give birth to 
it, lead rather to this objective universe, and contribute towards 
constituting its being and structure. The essential function of 
language is not arbitrarily to assign designations to objects al- 
ready formed and achieved j language is rather a means indis- 
pensable to that formation, even of objects. Similarly, in the 
plastic arts, the creative act consists in the construction of space, 
in conquering it, in opening a path of access to it, which each 
of these arts makes according to the manner that is specific 
to it. Similarly, in respect of language it is necessary to return 
to the theory of Wilhelm von Humboldt according to which 
the diversity of languages expresses the diversity of aspects from 
which the world is seen and conceived by the different linguistic 
groups, and which consequently contribute to the formation of 
the different representations of the world. But one cannot ob- 
serve the intimate operations of the mind which are at work in 
the formation of language. Psychology, even after having 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 363 
abandoned the concepts of apperception and of association con- 
cepts which during the nineteenth century stood in the way of 
the realization of Humboldt's ideas -does not provide a 
method which permits direct access to the specific process of 
the mind which ends by leading to the production of the ver- 
bal. What experimentation and introspection renders percepti- 
ble are the facts impregnated by language and by them, not the 
manner of formation, but the achieved state. 
If one wishes to go back to the origin of language and, in- 
stead of being content with the linguistic facts and findings, one 
seeks to discover the creative principle, one can be satisfied only 
with those regions in which the formation of the language is 
known, in all its particulars, and to attempt by an analysis of 
the structure of the languages of these regions, by a regressive 
method, to arrive at the genetic factors of language. 
Cassirer's study deals with the languages of a number of 
regions of this kind, inquiring into their mode of arriving at 
an objective representation of the world. According to Cassirer 
the lower animals are incapable of such objective representa- 
tions; they find themselves enclosed in an environment, in 
which they live, move, and have their being, but which they are 
unable to oppose, and which they are incapable of viewing 
objectively, since they cannot transcend it, consider or conceive 
it. The impressions they receive do not pass beyond the level of 
urges to action, and between these they fail to develop those 
specific relations which result in a true notion of that objectivity 
which is essentially defined by the constancy and identity of the 
object. This transition from a world of action and effectiveness 
to the world of objective representation only begins to manifest 
itself, in mankind, at a stage which coincides with a certain 
phase in the development of language; viz., at that stage which 
the child exhibits when it grows to understand that a whole 
thing corresponds to a particular value or denomination, and 
at which it is constantly demanding of those about it the names 
of things. But it does not occur to the child to attach these 
designations to the representation of things already stabilized 
and consolidated. The child's questions bear rather more on the 
things themselves. For in the eyes of the child, as in the eyes 
364 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
of primitive peoples, the name is not an extrinsic denomination 
of the thing which one arbitrarily attaches to it, but it is rather 
an essential quality of the object of which it forms an integral 
part. The principal value of this denominative phase is that it 
tends to stabilize and to consolidate the objective representation 
of things and permits the child to conquer the objective world 
in which it is henceforth to live. For this task he needs some 
name. If, for a multiplicity of impressions one sets apart the 
same name, these different impressions will no longer remain 
strange to one another 5 in this way they will come to represent 
simply aspects of the modes of appearance of the same thing. 
The loss of this conceptual and symbolic function of the word 
leads to such effects as one may observe in those suffering from 
aphasia. That which language renders possible on the plane of 
objects, viz., a separation or distinction between subjects and 
thingSy it permits equally in the domain of sentiment and voli- 
tion. In this domain also language is more than a simple means 
of ｅxpression and of communication} this it is only at the begin- 
ning of human life, when the infant gives ｅxpression without 
any reserve to the states of pleasure and of pain which it experi- 
ences y and it is language which provides the infant with a 
means of getting into contact with the outside world. Language 
prolongs these affective states, but it does not in any way alter 
them. Things, however, present another aspect as soon as the 
child acquires representational language. Henceforth, his vocal 
ｅxpressions will no longer be simple exclamations, nor of pure 
expansiveness apart from these emotional states. That which the 
child expresses is now informed by the fact that his ｅxpressions 
have taken the form of intelligible words, the child hears and 
understands what he himself says. He thus becomes capable of 
knowing his own states in a representative and objective man- 
ner, of apperceiving and looking at them as he does at external 
things. He thus becomes capable of reflecting upon his own 
affective life, and of adopting in relation to that life an attitude 
of contemplation. In this way his affective energies gradually 
lose that power of brutal constraint which it exercises, during 
early infancy, upon the "self." The fact that emotion attains 
to a consciousness of itself, renders man to some extent free of 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 365 
it. To the pure emotion are henceforth opposed those intellec- 
tual forces which support representational language. Emotion 
will now be held in constraint by these forces, it will no longer 
obtain an immediate and direct ｅxpression, but will have to 
justify itself before language, which now assumes the position 
of an instrument of the mind. In this connection we may recall 
the Greek idea that man must not abandon his passions, that 
these rather must be submitted to the judgment of the Logos, 
to that reason which is incorporated in language. 
Thanks to its regulative powers, language transforms senti- 
ments .and volitions, and organizes them into a conscious will, 
and thus contributes to the constitution of the moral self. There 
is still another domain into which one can gain entry only 
through the medium of language, it is the social world. Up to a 
certain point in the moral evolution of humanity, all moral and 
intellectual community is bound to the linguistic community, 
in much the same way as men speaking a foreign language are 
excluded from the protection and advantages which are alone 
enjoyed by members of the community considered as equals. 
And in the development of the individual, language constitutes 
for the child, who is beginning to learn, a more important and 
a more direct experience than that of the social and normative 
bond. But when for his characteristic infantile state he com- 
mences to substitute representational language, and experiences 
the need of being understood by his environment, he discovers 
the necessity of adapting his own efforts without reservation to 
the customs characteristic of the community to which he belongs. 
Without losing anything of his own individuality, he must 
adapt himself to those among whom he is destined to live. It 
is thus through the medium of a particular language that the 
child becomes aware of the bond which ties it to a particular 
community. This social bond becomes closer and more spiritual- 
ized during the course of its development. When the child 
commences to pose the questions What is it? and Why? not 
only is he going to penetrate into the world of knowledge, but 
also into a conquest of that world and a collective possession 
of it. Not only does the tendency to possess a thing begin to 
give way before the desire to acquire knowledge, but what is 
366 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
still more important, the relations which hold him to his en- 
vironment are going to be reorganized. The desire for physical 
assistance begins to transform itself into a desire for intellectual 
assistance} the contact of the child with the members of its 
environment is going to become a spiritual contact. Little by 
little, the constraint, the commands and prohibitions, the 
obediences and resistances, which up to now have characterized 
the relations between the child and the adult gives way to that 
reciprocity which exists between the one who asks and waits for 
a reply, and the one who takes an interest in the question 
asked and replies. Thus arise the bases of spiritual liberty and 
of that free collaboration which is the characteristic mark of 
society in so far as it is human. 
Finally, Cassirer assigns a capital importance to language 
in the construction of the world of pure imagination, above all 
to that state of conscious development wherein the decisive 
distinction between the real and the imagined is not made. The 
question that has so much occupied psychologists, whether the 
play of the child represents for it a veritable reality or merely 
a conscious occupation with fictions, this question, asserts Cas- 
sirer, is malposed, since the play of the child, like the Myth, 
belongs to a phase of consciousness which does not yet under- 
stand the distinction between that which is real and that which 
merely is simply imagined. In the eyes of the child the world 
is not composed of pure objects, of real forms, it is, on the 
contrary, peopled by beings who are his equals; and the charac- 
ter of the living and the animate is not limited for him, to that 
which is specifically human. The world, for him, has the form 
of Thou and not of That. This anthropomorphism of the child 
arises out of the fact that the child speaks to the things which 
surround him, and the things speak to him. It is no accident 
that there is no substitute for dumb playj when playing the 
child does not cease to speak of and to the things with which 
he is playing. It is not that this activity is an accessory com- 
mentary of play, but rather it is an indispensable element of it. 
The child views every object, all beings, as an interlocutor of 
whom he asks questions and who reply to him. His relation to 
the world is above all else a verbal relation, and Cassirer asserts 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 367 
that the child does not speak to things because he regards them 
as animate y but on the contrary y he regards them as animate be- 
cause he speaks with them. It is much later that the distinction is 
made between that which is pure thing and that which is ani- 
mate and living. The most developed of languages still retain 
traces of this original state. The lack of such distinctions is 
strikingly evident when we study the languages, the mental 
instruments, of the simpler peoples, a study which is obviously 
necessary for any true understanding of mythological thinking. 
Cassirer's approach to mythology is that of the neo-Kantian 
phenomenologist; he is not interested in mythology as such, 
but in the processes of consciousness which lead to the creation 
of myths. It will be recalled that he was originally concerned 
with inquiring into the bases of empirical knowledge, but since 
a knowledge of a world of empirical things or properties was 
preceded by a world characterized by mythical powers and 
forces, and since early philosophy drew its spiritual powers 
from and created its perspective upon the bases of these mythical 
factors, a consideration of them is clearly of importance. The 
relation between myth and philosophy is a close one; for if the 
myth is taken to be an indirect ｅxpression of reality, it can be 
understood only as an attempt to point the way, it is a prepara- 
tion for philosophy. The form and content of myth impede the 
realization of a rational content of knowledge, which reflection 
alone reveals, and of which it discovers the kernel. An illustra- 
tion of this effect of myth upon knowledge may be seen in the 
attempts of the sophists of the Fifth Century to work from 
myth to empirical knowledge, in their newly founded scientific 
wisdom. Myth was by them understood and explained, and 
translated into the language of popular philosophy, as an all 
embracing speculative science of nature or of ethical truth. 
It is no accident, remarks Cassirer, that just that Greek 
thinker in whom the characteristic power of creating the mythi- 
cal was so outstanding should reject the whole world of mythi- 
cal images, namely, Plato. For it was Plato who was opposed to 
the attempts at myth-analysis in the manner of the Sophists 
and rhetoricians; for him these attempts represented a play 
of wit in a difficult, though not very refined, subject (Phaedrus* 
368 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
229). Plato failed to see the significance of the mythical world, 
seeing it only as something opposed to pure knowledge. The 
myth must be separated from science, and appearance be dis- 
tinguished from reality. The myth however transcends all ma- 
terial meaning} and here it occupies a definite place and plays 
a necessary part for our understanding of the world, and accord- 
ing to the philosophy of the Platonic school it can work as a true 
creative and formative motive. The profounder view which 
has conquered here has, in the continuity of Greek thought, not 
always been carried through nor had quite the same meaning. 
The Stoics as well as the neo-Platonists returned to the Platonic 
view as did the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 
In the newer philosophy the myth becomes the problem of 
philosophy when it is recognized that there exists a primordial 
directive of the spirit, an intrinsic way of forming knowledge. 
The spirit (Geist) forges the conditions necessary to itself. In 
this connection Giambattista Vico may be regarded as the 
founder of the new philosophy of language and of mythology. 
The real and true knowledge of the unitary idea of the spirit is 
shown in the triad of Language, Art, and Myth. 
The critical problem of the origin of the aesthetic and ethical 
judgment, which Kant inquired into, was transferred by Schel- 
ling to the field of myth. For Kant the problem does not ask for 
psychological origins or beginnings but for pure existence and 
content. Myth does not make its appearance, like morality or 
art, as a self-contained world in itself, which may be measured 
by objective values and reality measurements, but it must be 
understood through its own immanent laws of structure and of 
being. Every attempt to make this world understandable by 
simple direct means only reveals the reflection of something 
else. 
In the empirical comparisons of myths a distinct trend was 
noticeable to measure not only the range of mythical thinking 
but also to describe the unitary forms of consciousness and its 
characteristics. Just as in physics the concept of the unit of the 
physical world led to a deepening of its principles, so in folklore 
the problem of a general mythology instead of special research 
gained for it a new lease on life. Out of the conflicting schools 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 369 
there appeared no other way than to think in terms of a 
single source of myth and of a distinct form of orientation. 
From this way of treating myth arose the conception of a funda- 
mental mythical view of the world. Fundamental and character- 
istic motives were found for the whole world, even where space 
and time relations could not be demonstrated. As soon as the 
attempt was made to separate these motives, to distinguish be- 
tween them, and to discover which were the truly primitive 
ones, conflicting views were again brought to the fore more 
sharply than ever. It was the task of folklore in association with 
folk psychology to determine the order of the appearances and 
to uncover the general laws and principles with respect to the 
formation of myths. But the unity of these principles disap- 
peared even before one had assured oneself of the existence of 
the necessary fullness and variety of myths. 
Besides the mythology of nature, there is the mythology 
of the soul. In the first there are involved a large variety of 
myths which have a definite object of nature for their kernel. 
one always asked of each single myth whether it bore a distinct 
relation to some natural thing or event. one had to approach 
the matter in this way because only in this way could phantasy 
be distinguished, and a strictly objective position arrived at. 
But the arbitrary power of building hypotheses, seen in a strictly 
objective way, showed that it was nearly as great as the creation 
of phantasy. The older form of the storm and thunder my- 
thology was the opposite of the astral mythology which itelf, 
again, took different forms, sun mythology, lunar mythology, 
and stellar mythology. 
Another approach to the ultimate unity of myth creation 
attempted to see it not as a natural but more as a spiritual unity, 
expressing this unity not in the field of the object but as in the 
historical field of culture. Were it possible to find such a field 
of culture for the general origin of the great fundamental 
mythical motives and themes, as a center from which they 
eventually spread over the whole world, it would be a simple 
matter to explain the inner relation and systematic consequences 
of these themes and motives. If any such relation in a known 
form is obscure, it must appear at once, if one but refers to the 
370 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
best historical source for it. When the older theorists, e.g., 
Benfey, looked to India for the most important motives, there 
seemed to be certain striking evidences for the historical unity 
and association of myth forming; this became even more so 
when Babylonian culture became better known. With the find- 
ing of this homeland of culture the answer was also found to the 
question as to the home of myth and its unitary structure. 
The answer to Pan-Babylonianism is that myth could never 
have developed a consistent world viewpoint if it had been 
constituted out of a primitive magic, idea, dream, emotion or 
superstition. The path to such a Weltanschauung was much 
more likely to be there where there was in existence a distinct 
proof of a conception of the world as an ordered whole a con- 
dition which was fulfilled in the beginning of Babylonian 
astronomy and cosmogony. From this spiritual and historical 
viewpoint the possibility is opened up that myth is not only a 
form of pure phantasy but is in itself a finished and compre- 
hensive system. What, remarks Cassirer, is so interesting about 
this theory in the methodological sense is that not only does 
it attempt the empirical proof of the real historical origin of 
myth, but it also attempts to give a sort of a priori substantia- 
tion to the proper direction and goal of mythological research. 
That all myths have an astral origin and should in the end 
prove to be calendric, is stated by the students of the Pan- 
Babylonian school to be the basic principle of the method. It is 
a sort of Ariadne's thread, which is alone able to lead through 
the labyrinth of mythology. By this means it was not very 
difficult to fill in the various lacunae which the empiric tradi- 
tion had somehow failed to make good, but this very means 
showed ever more clearly that the fundamental problem of the 
unit of the mythological consciousness could not really be 
explained in the manner of the historical objective empirical 
school. 
It becomes more and more certain that the simple statement 
of unity of the fundamental mythical ideas cannot really give 
any insight into the structure of the forms of mythical phantasy 
and of mythical thinking. To define the structure of this form, 
when one does not desert the basis of pure descriptive con- 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 371 
siderations, requires no more elaborate conception than Bastian's 
concept of "Volkergedanken" Bastian maintained that the varie- 
ties of the objective approach do not simply consider the con- 
tent and objects of mythology, but start off from the question 
as to the function of myth. The fundamental principle of this 
function should remain to be proved; in this way various 
resemblances are discovered and relations demonstrated. From 
the beginning the sought-for unity is both from the inside 
and the outside transferred from the phenomena of reality to 
those of the spirit. But this idealism, as long as it is received 
psychologically and determined through the categories of psy- 
chology, is not characterized by a single meaning. When we 
speak of mythology as the collective ｅxpression of mankind, 
this unity must finally be explained out of the unity of the 
human soul and out of the homogeneity of its behaviour. But 
the unity of the soul expresses itself in a great variety of 
potencies and forms. As soon as the question is asked which 
of these potencies play the respective roles in the building up 
of the mythical world, there immediately arise conflicting and 
contradictory controversial explanations. Is the myth ulti- 
mately derived from the play of subjective phantasy, or does 
it in some cases rest upon a real view of things, upon which 
it is based? Is it a primitive form of knowledge (Erkenntnls} 
and in this connection is it a form of intellection, or does it be- 
long rather to the sphere of affection and conation? To this 
question scientific myth-analysis has returned different an- 
swers. Just as formerly the theories differed with respect to 
the objects which were considered necessary to the creation 
of myths, in the same way they now differed in respect of the 
fundamental psychic processes to which these are considered to 
lead back. The conception of a pure intellectual mythology 
made its reappearance, the idea that the essence of the myth 
was to be sought in the intellectual analysis of experience. 
In opposition to Schelling's demand for a tautegorical (ex- 
pressing the same thing in different words, opposed to allegori- 
cal) analysis of myth an allegorical explanation was sought for 
(See Fritz Langer, Intellektualmythologle^ Leipzig, 1916). 
In all this is evident the danger to which the myth is ex- 
372 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
posed, the danger of becoming lost in the depths of a particular 
theory. In all these theories the sought-for unity is transferred 
in error to the particular elements instead of being looked for 
in that spiritual whole, the symbolic world of meaning, out 
of which these elements are created. We must, on the other 
hand, says Cassirer, look for the fundamental laws of the 
spirit to which the myth goes back. Just as in the process of 
arriving at knowledge The Rhapsody of Perceptions (Rha-p- 
sodie der W ahrnehmwngeri) is, by means of certain laws and 
forms of thinking, transmuted into knowledge, so we can and 
must ask for the creation of that form unity, the unending and 
manifold world of the myth, which is not a conglomerate of 
arbitrary ideas and meaningless notions, a characteristic spiritual 
genitor. We must look at the myth from a genetic-causal, teleo- 
logical standpoint j in this way we shall find that what is pre- 
sented to us is something which as a complete form possesses a 
self-sufficient being and an autochthonous sense. 
The myth represents in itself the first attempts at a knowl- 
edge of the world, and since it furthermore possibly represents 
the earliest form of aesthetic phantasy, we see in it that particu- 
lar unity of the spirit of which all separate forms are but a 
single manifestation. We see too, here, that instead of an 
original unity in which the opposites lose themselves, and seem 
to combine with one another, that the critical-transcendental 
idea-unit seeks the clear definition and delimitation of the 
separate forms in order to preserve them. The principle of this 
separation becomes clear when one compares here the problem 
of meaning with that of characterization that is, when one 
reflects upon the way in which the various spiritual forms of 
ｅxpression, such as "Object 71 with "Idea or Image," and "Con- 
tent" with "Sign," are related to one another. 
In this we see the fundamental element of the parallelism, 
namely, the creative power of the "sign" in myth as in lan- 
guage, and in art, as well as in the process of forming a 
theoretical idea in a word, and in relation to the world. What 
Humboldt said of language, that man places it between him- 
self and. the internal and external world that is acting upon 
him, that he surrounds himself with a world of sounds with 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 373 
which to take up and to work up the world of objects, holds 
true also for the myth and for the aesthetic fancy. They are 
not so much reactions to impressions, which are exercised from 
the outside upon the spirit, but they are much more real 
spiritual activities. At the outset, in the definite sense of the 
primitive ｅxpression of the myth it is clear that we do not 
have to deal with a mere reflection or mirage of Reality (Seiri), 
but with a characteristic treatment and presentation of it. Also 
here one can observe how in the beginning the tension between 
"Subject" and "Object," "Internal" and "External," grad- 
ually diminishes, a richer and multiform new middle state 
stepping in between both worlds. To the material world which 
it embraces and governs the spirit opposes its own independent 
world of images the power of Impression gradually becomes 
more distinct and more conscious than the active power of Ex- 
pression. But this creation does not yet in itself possess the 
character of an act of free will, but still bears the character 
of a natural necessity, the character of a certain psychic "mecha- 
nism." Since at this level there does not yet exist an inde- 
pendent and self-conscious free living "I," but because we here 
stand upon the threshold of the spiritual processes which are 
bound to react against each other, the "I" and the "World," 
the new world of the "Sign" must appear to the conciousness 
as a thoroughly objective reality. Every beginning of the 
myth, especially every magical conception of the world, is 
permeated by this belief in the existence of the objective power 
of the sign. Word magic, picture-magic, and script-magic pro- 
vide the fundaments of magical practices and the magical view 
of the world. When one examines the complete structure of the 
mythical consciousness one can detect in this a characteristic 
paradox. For if the generally prevailing conception, that the 
fundamental urge of the myth is to vivify, is true, that is that it 
tends to take a concrete view in the statement and representa- 
tion of all the elements of existence, how does it happen, then, 
that these urges point most intensely to the most unreal and 
non- vital; how is it that the shadow-empire of words, of 
images, and signs gains such a substantial ascendancy and power 
over the mythical consciousness? How is it that it possesses this 
374 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
belief in the abstract, in this cult of symbols in a world in which 
the general idea is nothing, the sensation (Empfindung), the 
direct urge, the (sensible) psychic perception and outlook seem 
to be everything? The answer to this question, says Cassirer, 
can be found only when one is aware of the fact that it is 
improperly stated. The mythical world is not so concrete that it 
deals only with psychically 'objective' contents, or simply 
'abstract' considerations, but both the thing and its meaning 
form one distinct and direct concrete unity, they are not differ- 
entiated from one another. The myth raises itself spiritually 
above the world of things, but it exchanges for the forms and 
images which it puts in their place only another form of restric- 
tive existence. What the spirit appears to rescue from the 
shackles now becomes but a new shackle, which is so much 
more unyielding because it is not only a psychical power but a 
spiritual one. Nevertheless, such a state already contains in it- 
self the immanent condition of its future release. It already 
contains the incipient possibility of a spiritual liberation which 
in the progress of the magical-mythical world-idea will even- 
tually arrive at a characteristic religious world-idea. During this 
transition it becomes necessary for the spirit to place itself in 
a new and free relation to the world of images and signs, but, 
at the same time, in a different way than formerly, sees through 
this relationship, and in this way raises itself above it, though 
living it still and needing it. 
And in still further measure and in greater distinctness 
stands for us the dialectic of these fundamental relations, their 
analysis and synthesis, which the spirit through its own self- 
made world of images experiences, when we here compare the 
myth with all other forms of symbolic ｅxpression. In the case 
of language also there is at first no sharp line of separation by 
means of which the word and its meaning, the thing content 
of "idea" and the simple content are distinguished from one 
another. The nominalist viewpoint, for which words are con- 
ventional signs, simply flatus vocis, is the result of later reflec- 
tion but not the direct ｅxpression of the direct natural language 
consciousness. For this the existence of things in words is not 
only indicated as indirect, but is contained and present in it any- 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 375 
way. In the language consciousness of the primitive and in that 
of the child one can demonstrate this concrescence of names and 
things in very pregnant examples one has only to think of 
the different varieties of the taboo names. But in the progression 
of the spiritual development of language there is also here 
achieved a sharper and ever more conscious separation between 
the Word and Being or Existence, between the Meaning and 
the Meant. Opposed to all other physical being and all physical 
activity the word appears as autonomous and characteristic, in 
its purely ideal and significative function. 
A new stage of the separation is next witnessed in art. Here, 
too, there is in the beginning no clear distinction between the 
"Ideal" and the "Real." The beginning of the formation and 
of the cultivation of art reaches back to a sphere in which the 
act of cultivation itself is strongly rooted in the magical idea, 
and is directed to a definite magical end, of which the picture 
(Bild) is yet in no way independent, and has no pure aesthetic 
meaning. Nevertheless already in the first impulse of char- 
acteristic artistic configurations, in the stages of spiritual forms of 
ｅxpression, quite a new principle is attained. The view of the 
world which the spirit opposes to the simple world of matter 
and of things subsequently attains here to a pure immanent 
value and truth. It does not attach itself or refer to another; 
but it simply /V, and consists in itself. Out of the sphere of 
activity (Wirksamkeit), in which the mythical consciousness, 
and out of the sphere of meaning, in which the marks of lan- 
guage remain, we are now transferred to a sphere, in which so to 
say, only the pure essence (Sein), only its own innermost nature 
(Wesenheii) of the image (Bildes) is seized as such. Thus, the 
world of images forms in itself a Kosmos which is complete in 
itself, and which rests within its own centre of gravity. And to 
it the spirit is now first able to find a free relation. The aesthetic 
world is measured according to the measure of things, the 
realistic outlook according to a world of appearance: but since 
in just this appearance the relation to direct reality, to the 
world of being and action (Wirken), in which also the magical- 
mythical outlook has its being, is now left behind, there is thus 
made a completely new step towards truth. Thus there present 
376 M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
themselves in relation to Myth, Language, and to Art, con- 
figurations which are linked directly together in a certain histori- 
cal series, by means of a certain systematic progression (Stujen- 
gang), and ideal progress (Fortschritt), as the object of which 
it can be said the spirit in its own creations, in its self-made 
symbols, not only exists and lives, but gains its significance. 
There is a certain pertinence, in this connection, in that dominant 
theme of HegePs Phenomenology of the Spirit, namely, that 
the object of development lies in the comprehension and ex- 
pression of the fact that the spiritual being is not only "Sub- 
stance" but just as much "Subject." In this respect the problems 
which grow out of a "Philosophy of Mythology" resolve 
themselves once more to such as arise from the philosophy of 
pure logic. Then also science separates itself from the other 
stages of spiritual life, not because it stands in need of any 
kind of mediation or intervention through signs and symbols, 
seeking naked truth, the truth of "things-in-themselves," but 
because it uses the symbols differently and more profoundly 
than the former is able to do, and recognizes and understands 
them as such, i.e., as symbols. Furthermore, this is not accom- 
plished at one stroke 5 rather there is here also repeated, at 
a new stage, the typical fundamental relation of the spirit to 
its own creation. Here also must the freedom of this creation 
be gained and secured in continuous critical work. The utiliza- 
tion of hypotheses, and its characteristic function to advance the 
foundations of knowledge, determines that, so long as this 
knowledge is not secured, the principles of science are unable 
to express themselves in other than dinglicher, i.e., material, 
or in half mythical form. 
Every student of primitive peoples and of mythology would 
recognize in Cassirer's views on mythological thinking, which 
have here been presented only partially, a valuable contribution 
towards the clarification of a difficult problem. In a brilliant 
chapter in which Cassirer discusses "the dialectic of the mythical 
consciousness," he shows how interrelated and interdependent 
the mythical and religious consciousness are, and that there can 
really be no distinction between themj there is a difference in 
form, but not in substance. An admirable discussion of the rela- 
MYTHOLOGICAL THINKING 377 
tion of "speech" to "language" and of "sound" to "meaning" 
(already dealt with at length in the first volume of the Sym- 
bolischen Formen) leads to a brief discussion of writing. 
Cassirer points out that all writing begins as picture-signs 
which do not in themselves embrace any meaning or communi- 
cative characters. The picture-sign takes the place rather of the 
object itself, replaces it, and stands for it. 
This statement is perfectly true of all forms of primitive 
writing. one of the most primitive forms of writing, for ex- 
ample, with which we are acquainted is that invented and 
practiced by certain Australian tribes. on the message sticks 
which they send from one tribe to another the signs which they 
make fulfill all the specifications stated by Cassirer. 
Cassirer also states that at first writing forms a part of the 
sphere of magic. The sign which is stamped on the object draws 
it into the circle of its own effect and keeps away strange in- 
fluences. 
The anthropological data lend full support to this idea. It 
may even be that the magicians were the first to invent writing, 
though it would at present be impossible to prove such a sug- 
gestion or even to prove that the magicians were among the 
first to use picture signs. The evidence does, however, suggest 
that this is highly probable. 
I can only have succeeded in giving a faint indication of the 
value and quality of Cassirer's contribution to our understanding 
of mythological thinking in general and that of pre-literate 
peoples in particular. To appreciate Cassirer's great work at 
its full value the reader is recommended to go to the original 
work. This essay must be regarded as but a footnote to it. 
M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU 
PHILADELPHIA, PENNA. 
II 
Susanne K. Langer 

on CASSIRER'S THEORY OF LANGUAGE 
AND MYTH 
II 

on CASSIRER'S THEORY OF LANGUAGE 
AND MYTH 
EVERY philosopher has his tradition. His thought has de- 
veloped amid certain problems, certain basic alternatives of 
opinion, that embody the key concepts which dominate his time 
and his environment and which will always be reflected, posi- 
tively or by negation, in his own work. They are the forms of 
thought he has inherited, wherein he naturally thinks, or from 
which his maturer conceptions depart. 
The continuity of culture lies in this handing down of usable 
forms. Any campaign to discard tradition for the sake of novelty 
as such, without specific reason in each case to break through a 
certain convention of thought, leads to dilettantism, whether it 
be in philosophy, in art, or in social and moral institutions. As 
every person has his mother tongue in terms of which he can- 
not help thinking his earliest thoughts, so every scholar has a 
philosophical mother tongue, which colors his natural Weltan- 
schauung. He may have been nurtured in a particular school 
of thought, or his heritage may be the less conscious one of 
"common sense," the popular metaphysic of his generation 5 but 
he speaks some intellectual language that has been bestowed 
on him, with its whole cargo of preconceptions, distinctions, 
and evaluations, by his official and unofficial teachers. 
A great philosopher, however, has something new and vital 
to present in whatever philosophical mold he may have been 
given. The tenor of his thought stems from the pastj but his 
specific problems take shape in the face of a living present, and 
his dealing with them reflects the entire, ever-nascent activity 
of his own day. In all the great periods of philosophy, the lead- 
ing minds of the time have carried their traditional learning 
382 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
lightly, and felt most deeply the challenge of things which were 
new in their age. It is the new that calls urgently for interpre- 
tation} and a true philosopher is a person to whom something in 
the weary old world always appears new and uncomprehended. 
There are certain "dead periods" in the history of philosophy, 
when the whole subject seems to shrink into a hard, small shell, 
treasured only by scholars in large universities. The common 
man knows little about it and cares less. What marks such a 
purely academic phase of philosophical thought is that its sub- 
stance as well as its form is furnished by a scholastic tradition; 
not only the categories, but the problems of debate are familiar. 
Precisely in the most eventful epochs, when intellectual activity 
in other fields is brilliant and exciting, there is quite apt to be 
a lapse in philosophy; the greatest minds are engaged else- 
where; reflection and interpretation are in abeyance when the 
tempo of life is at its highest. New ideas are too kaleidoscopic 
to be systematically construed or to suggest general proposi- 
tions. Professional philosophers, therefore, continue to argue 
matters which their predecessors have brought to no conclusion, 
and to argue them from the same standpoints that yielded no 
insight before. 
We have only recently passed through an "academic" phase 
of philosophy, a phase of stale problems and deadlocked "isms." 
But today we are on the threshold of a new creative period. 
The most telling sign of this is the tendency of great minds 
to see philosophical implications in facts and problems belong- 
ing to other fields of learning mathematics, anthropology, 
psychology, physics, history, and the arts. Familiar things like 
language or dream, or the mensurability of time, appear in new 
universal connections which involve highly interesting abstract 
issues. Even the layman lends his ear to "semantics" or to new 
excitements about "relativity." 
Cassirer had all the marks of a great thinker in a new philo- 
sophical period. His standpoint was a tradition which he in- 
herited the Kantian "critical" philosophy seen in the light of 
its later developments, which raised the doctrine of transcen- 
dental forms to the level of a transcendental theory of Being. 
His writings bear witness that he often reviewed and pondered 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 383 
the foundations of this position. There was nothing accidental 
or sentimental in his adherence to it; he maintained it through- 
out his life, because he found it fruitful, suggestive of new 
interpretations. In his greatest works this basic idealism is 
implicit rather than under direct discussion; and the turn it 
gives to his treatment of the most baffling questions removes it 
utterly from that treadmill of purely partisan reiteration and 
defense which is the fate of decadent metaphysical convictions. 
There is little of polemic or apologetic in Cassirer's writings; 
he was too enthusiastic about solving definite problems to spend 
his time vindicating his method or discussing what to him was 
only a starting-point. 

one of the venerable puzzles which he treated with entirely 
new insight from his peculiarly free and yet scholarly point 
of view is the relation of language and myth. Here we find 
at the outset the surprising, unorthodox working of his mind: 
for what originally led him to this problem was not the con- 
templation of poetry, but of science. For generations the advo- 
cates of scientific thinking bemoaned the difficulties which nature 
seems to plant in its path the misconceptions bred by "igno- 
rance" and even by language itself. It took Cassirer to see 
that those difficulties themselves were worth investigating. 
Ignorance is a negative condition; why should the mere absence 
of correct conceptions lead to w/Vconceptions? And why should 
language, supposedly a practical instrument for conveying 
thought, serve to resist and distort scientific thought? The 
misconceptions interested him. 
If the logical and factual type of thought which science de- 
i mands is hard to maintain, there must be some other mode of 
thinking which constantly interferes with it. Language, the 
ｅxpression of thought, could not possibly be a hindrance to 
thought as such; if it distorts scientific conception, it must do 
so merely by giving preference and support to such another 
mode. 
Now, all thinking is "realistic" in the sense that it deals 
with phenomena as they present themselves in immediate 
experience. There cannot be a way of thinking that is not true 
to the reports of sense. If there are two modes of thinking, 
384 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
there must be two different modes of perceiving things, of 
apprehending the very data of thought. To observe the wind, 
for instance, as a purely physical atmospheric disturbance, and 
Mnk of it as a divine power or an angry creature would be 
purely capricious, playful, irresponsible. But thinking is serious 
business, and probably always has been 5 and it is not likely that 
language, the physical image of thought, portrays a pattern of 
mere fancies and vagaries. In so far as language is incompatible 
with scientific reasoning, it must reflect a system of thought that 
is soberly true to a mode of experiencing^ of seeing and feeling, 
different from our accepted mode of experiencing "facts." 1 
This idea, first suggested by the difficulties of scientific 
conception, opened up a new realm of epistemological research 
to its authorj for it made the forms of misunderstanding take 
on a positive rather than a negative importance as archaic forms 
of understanding. The hypostatic and poetic tinge of language 
which makes it so often recalcitrant to scientific purposes is a 
record not only of a different way of thinking, but of seeing, 
feeling, conceiving experience a way that was probably para- 
mount in the ages when language itself came into being. 
The whole problem of mind and its relation to "reality" took 
a new turn with the hypothesis that former civilizations may 
actually have dealt with a "real world" differently constituted 
from our own world of things with their universal qualities 
and causal relationships. But how can that older "reality" be 
recaptured and demonstrated? And how can the change from 
one way of apprehending nature to another be accounted for? 
The answer to this methodological question came to him 
as a suggestion from metaphysics. "Es ist der Geist der sich 
den Korper baut y " said Goethe. And the post-Kantian idealists, 
from Fichte to Hermann Cohen, had gone even beyond that 
tenet; so they might well have said, "Es ist der Geist der sich 
das Weltall baut" To a romanticist that would have been little 
more than a figure of speech, expressing the relative importance 
of mind and matter. But in Cassirer's bold and uncomplacent 
mind such a belief which he held as a basic intellectual postu- 
late, not as a value- judgment immediately raised the ques- 
1 Cf . Language and Myth> i of. 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 385 
tion: How? By what process and what means does the human 
spirit construct its physical world? 
Kant had already proposed the answer: By supplying the 
transcendental constituent of form. Kant regarded this form 
as a fixed pattern, the same in all human experience; the cate- 
gories of thought which find their clearest ｅxpression in science, 
seemed to him to govern all empirical experience, and to be 
reflected in the structure of language. But the structure of 
language is just what modern scientific thought finds uncon- 
genial. It embodies a metaphysic of substance and attribute; 
whereas science operates more and more with the concept of 
junction, which is articulated in mathematics. 2 There is good 
reason why mathematicians have abandoned verbal propositions 
almost entirely and resorted to a symbolism which expresses 
different metaphysical assumptions, different categories of 
thought altogether. 
At this point Cassirer, reflecting on the shift from substantive 
to functional thinking, found the key to the methodological 
problem: two different symbolisms revealed two radically dif- 
ferent forms of thought; does not every form of Anschauung 
have its symbolic mode? Might not an exhaustive study of 
symbolic forms reveal just how the human mind, in its various 
stages, has variously construed the "reality" with which it dealt? 
To construe the equivocally "given" is to construct the phe- 
nomenon for experience. And so the Kantian principle, fructified 
by a wholly new problem of science, led beyond the Kantian 
doctrine to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. 
The very plan of this work departs from all previous ap- 
proaches to epistemology by not assuming either that the 
mind is concerned essentially with facts, or that its prime talent 
is discursive reason. A careful study of the scientific miscon- 
ceptions which language begets revealed the fact that its subject- 
predicate structure, which reflects a "natural" ontology of 
substance and attribute, is not its only metaphysical trait. Lan- 
guage is born of the need for emotional ｅxpression. Yet it is 
not exclamatory. It is essentially hypostatic, seeking to distin- 
guish, emphasize, and hold the object of feeling rather than 
* See Substance and Function, Ch. I. 
386 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
to communicate the feeling itself. To fix the object as a per- 
manent focus point in experience is the function of the name. 
Whatever evokes emotion may therefore receive a name; and, 
if this object is not a thing if it is an act, or a phenomenon 
like lightning, or a sound, or some other intangible item , 
the name nevertheless gives it the unity, permanence, and 
apparent substantiality of a "thing." 
This hypostasis, entailed by the primitive office of language, 
really lies deeper even than nomenclature, which merely reflects 
it: for it is a fundamental trait of all imagination. The very word 
"imagination" denotes a process of image-making. An image 
is only an aspect of the actual thing it represents. It may be 
not even a completely or carefully abstracted aspect. Its im- 
portance lies in the fact that it symbolizes the whole the thing, 
person, occasion, or what-not from which it is an abstract. 
A thing has a history, an event passes irrevocably away, actual 
experience is transient and would exhaust itself in a series of 
unique occasions, were it not for the permanence of the symbol 
whereby it may be recalled and possessed. Imagination is a 
free and continual production of images to "mean" experience 
past or present or even merely possible experience. 
Imagination is the primary talent of the human mind, the 
activity in whose service language was evolved. The imagina- 
tive mode of ideation is not "logical" after the manner of 
discursive reason. It has a logic of its own, a definite pattern of 
identifications and concentrations which bring a very deluge of 
ideas, all charged with intense and often widely diverse feelings, 
together in one symbol. 
Symbols are the indispensable instruments of conception. To 
undergo an experience, to react to immediate or conditional 
stimuli (as animals react to warning or guiding signs), is not to 
"have" experience in the characteristically human sense, which 
is to conceive it, hold it in the mind as a so-called "content of 
consciousness," and consequently be able to think about it. 3 To 
a human mind, every experience a sensation of light or color, 
a fright, a fall, a continuous noise like the roar of breakers 
Cf. Language and Myth, 38. 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 387 

on the beach exhibits, in retrospect, a unity and self-identity 
that make it almost as static and tangible as a solid object. By 
virtue of this hypostatization it may be referred to> much as an 
object may be fainted at; and therefore the mind can think 
about it without its actual recurrence. In its symbolic image the 
experience is conceived, instead of just physiologically remem- 
bered. 4 
Cassirer's greatest epistemological contribution is his approach 
to the problem of mind through a study of the primitive forms 
of conception. His reflections on science had taught him that 
all conception is intimately bound to ｅxpression; and the forms 
of ｅxpression, which determine those of conception, are symbolic 
forms. So he was led to his central problem, the diversity of 
symbolic forms and their interrelation in the edifice of human 
culture. 
He distinguished, as so many autonomous forms, language, 
myth, art, and science. 5 In examining their respective patterns he 
made his first startling discovery: myth and language appeared 
as genuine twin creatures, born of the same phase of human 
mentality, exhibiting analogous formal traits, despite their ob- 
vious diversities of content. Language, on the one hand, seems 
to have articulated and established mythological concepts, 
whereas, on the other hand, its own meanings are essentially 
images functioning mythically. The two modes of thought 
have grown up together, as conception and ｅxpression, respec- 
tively, of the primitive human world. 
The earliest products of mythic thinking are not permanent, 
self-identical, and clearly distinguished "gods;" neither are 
they immaterial spirits. They are like dream elements objects 
endowed with daemonic import, haunted places, accidental 
shapes in nature resembling something ominous all manner of 
shifting, fantastic images which speak of Good and Evil, of 
Life and Death, to the impressionable and creative mind of 
man. Their common trait is a quality that characterizes every- 
thing in the sphere of myth, magic, and religion, and also the 
4 See An Essay on Man, chapters 2 and 3, fassim. 
9 Language and' Myth^ 8, 
388 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
earliest ethical conceptions the quality of holiness* Holiness 
may appertain to almost anything; it is the mystery that appears 
as magic, as taboo, as daemonic power, as miracle, and as 
divinity. The first dichotomy in the emotive or mythic phase 
of mentality is not, as for discursive reason, the opposition of 
"yes" and "no," of "a" and "non-a," or truth and falsity; the 
basic dichotomy here is between the sacred and the profane. 
Human beings actually apprehend values and ｅxpressions of 
values be-fore they formulate and entertain jacts. 
All mythic constructions are symbols of value of life and 
power, or of violence, evil, and death. They are charged with 
feeling, and have a way of absorbing into themselves more 
and more intensive meanings, sometimes even logically conflict- 
ing imports. Therefore mythic symbols do not give rise to dis- 
cursive understanding; they do beget a kind of understanding, 
but not by sorting out concepts and relating them in a distinct 
pattern; they tend, on the contrary, merely to bring together 
great complexes of cognate ideas, in which all distinctive fea- 
tures are merged and swallowed. "Here we find in operation a 
law which might actually be called the law of the levelling and 
extinction of specific differences," says Cassirer, in Language and, 
Myth. "Every part of a whole is the whole itself, every speci- 
men is equivalent to the entire species." 7 The significance of 
mythic structures is not formally and arbitrarily assigned to 
them, as convention assigns one exact meaning to a recognized 
symbol; rather, their meaning seems to dwell in them as life 
dwells in a body; they are animated by it, it is of their essence, 
and the naive, awe-struck mind finds it, as the quality of "holi- 
ness." Therefore mythic symbols do not even appear to be 
symbols; they appear as holy objects or places or beings, and 
their import is felt as an inherent power. 
This really amounts to another "law" of imaginative con- 
ception. Just as specific differences of meaning are obliterated 
in nondiscursive symbolization, the very distinction between 
form and content, between the entity (thing, image, gesture, or 
6 See Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, II, 
f Pp. 91-92. 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 389 
natural event) which is the symbol, and the idea or feeling 
which is its meaning, is lost, or rather: is not yet found. This 
is a momentous fact, for it is the basis of all superstition and 
strange cosmogony, as well as of religious belief. To believe in 
the existence of improbable or quite fantastic things and beings 
would be inexplicable folly if beliefs were dictated essentially 
by practical experience. But the mythic interpretation of reality 
rests on the principle that the veneration appropriate to the 
meaning of a symbol is focussed on the symbol itself, which 
is simply identified with its import. This creates a world punctu- 
ated by pre-eminent objects, mystic centers of power and holi- 
ness, to which more and more emotive meanings accrue as 
"properties." An intuitive recognition of their import takes the 
form of ardent, apparently irrational belief in the physical 
reality and power of the significant forms. This is the hypostatic 
mechanism of the mind by which the world is filled with 
magical things fetishes and talismans, sacred trees, rocks, 
caves, and the vague, protean ghosts that inhabit them and 
finally the world is peopled with a pantheon of permanent, 
more or less anthropomorphic gods. In these presences "reality" 
is concentrated for the mythic imagination} this is not "make- 
believe," not a willful or playful distortion of a radically differ- 
ent "given fact," but is the way phenomena are given to naive 
apprehension. 
Certainly the pattern of that world is altogether different 
from the pattern of the "material" world which confronts our 
sober common sense, follows the laws of causality, and exhibits 
a logical order of classes and subclasses, with their defining 
properties and relations, wherfeby each individual object either 
does or does not belong to any given class. Cassirer has summed 
up the logical contrast between the mode of mythic intuition and 
that of "factual" or "scientific" apprehension in very telling 
phrase: 
In the realm of discursive conception there reigns a sort of diffuse 
light and the further logical analysis proceeds, the further does this 
even clarity and luminosity extend. But in the ideational realm of myth 
and language there are always, besides those locations from which the 
390 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
strongest light proceeds, others that appear wrapped in profoundest 
darkness. While certain contents of perception become verbal-mythical 
centers of force, centers of significance, there are others which remain, 
one might say, beneath the threshold of meaning. 8 
His coupling of myth and language in this passage brings us 
back to the intimate connection between these two great sym- 
bolic forms which he traces to a common origin. The dawn of 
language was the dawn of the truly human mind, which meets 
us first of all as a rather highly developed organ of practical 
response and of imagination, or symbolic rendering of impres- 
sions. The first "holy objects" seem to be born of momentary 
emotional experiences fright centering on a place or a thing, 
concentrated desire that manifests itself in a dreamlike image or 
a repeated gesture, triumph that issues naturally in festive dance 
and song, directed toward a symbol of power. Somewhere in 
the course of this high emotional life primitive man took to 
using his instinctive vocal talent as a source of such "holy ob- 
jects," sounds with imaginative import: such vocal symbols are 
names. 
In savage societies, names are treated not as conventional ap- 
pellations, but as though they were physical proxies for their 
bearers. To call an object by an inappropriate name is to con- 
found its very nature. In some cultures practically all language 
serves mystic purposes and is subject to the most impractical 
taboos and regulations. It is clearly of a piece with magic, 
religion and the whole pattern of intensive emotional symbolism 
which governs the pre-scientific mind. Names are the very es- 
sence of mythic symbols; nothing on earth is a more concen- 
trated point of sheer meaning than the little, transient, invisible 
breath that constitutes a spoken word. Physically it is almost 
nothing. Yet it carries more definite and momentous import 
than any permanent holy object. 9 It can be invoked at will, 
anywhere and at any time, by a mere act of speech; merely 
knowing a word gives a person the power of using it; thus it 
is invisibly "had," carried about by its possessors. 
8 Language and Myth, 9 1 . 
* "Often it is the name of the deity, rather than the god himself, that seems 
to be the real source of efficacy." (Language and Myth, 48) 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 391 
It is characteristic of mythic "powers" that they are com- 
pletely contained in every fragment of matter, every sound, and 
every gesture which partakes of them. 10 This fact betrays their 
real nature, which is not that of physical forces, but of meanings; 
a meaning is indeed completely given by every symbol to which 
it attaches. The greater the "power" in proportion to its bearer, 
the more awe-inspiring will the latter be. So, as long as mean- 
ing is felt as an indwelling potency of certain physical objects, 
words must certainly rank high in the order of holy things. 
But language has more than a purely denotative function. 
Its symbols are so manifold, so manageable, and so economical 
that a considerable number of them may be held in one "spe- 
cious present," though each one physically passes away before 
the next is given; each has left its meaning 'to be apprehended 
in the same span of attention that takes in the whole series. Of 
course, the length of the span varies greatly with different men- 
talities. But as soon as two or more words are thus taken together 
in the mind of an interpretant, language has acquired its 
second function: it has engendered discursive thought, fb" 
The discursive mode of thinking is what we usually call 
"reason." It is not as primitive as the imaginative mode, because 
it arises from the syntactical nature of language; mythic en- 
visagement and verbal ｅxpression are its forerunners. Yet it is 
a natural development from the earlier symbolic mode, which 
is pre-discursive, and thus in a strict and narrow sense "pre- 
rational." 
Henceforth, the history of thought consists chiefly in the 
gradual achievement of factual, literal, and logical conception 
and ｅxpression. Obviously the only means to this end is lan- 
guage. But this instrument, it must be remembered, has a double 
nature. Its syntactical tendencies bestow the laws of logic on 
us; yet the primacy of names in its make-up holds it to the 
hypostatic way of thinking which belongs to its twin-phe- 
nomenon, myth. Consequently it leads us beyond the sphere of 
mythic and emotive thought, yet always pulls us back into it 
again; it is both the diffuse and tempered light that shows us 
the external world of "fact," and the array of spiritual lamps, 
** Cf. Language and Myth, 92. 
392 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
light-centers of intensive meaning, that throw the gleams and 
shadows of the dream world wherein our earliest experiences lay. 
We have come so far along the difficult road of discursive 
thinking that the laws of logic seem to be the very frame of 
the mind, and rationality its essence. Kant regarded the cate- 
gories of pure understanding as universal transcendental forms, 
imposed by the most naive untutored mind on all its perceptions, 
so that self-identity, the dichotomy of "a" and "non-0/' the rela- 
tion of part and whole, and other axiomatic general concepts 
inhered in phenomena as their necessary conditions. Yet, from 
primitive apprehension to even the simplest rational construc- 
tion is probably a far cry. It is interesting to see how Cassirer, 
who followed Kant in his "Copernican revolution," i.e., in the 
transcendental analysis of phenomena which traces their form 
to a non-phenomenal, subjective element, broadened the Kan- 
tian concept of form to make it a variable and anthropologi- 
cally valid principle, without compromising the "critical" 
standpoint at all. Instead of accepting one categorial scheme 
that of discursive thought as the absolute way of experiencing 
reality, he finds it relative to a form of symbolic presentation; 
and as there are alternative symbolic forms, there are also al- 
ternative phenomenal "worlds." Mythic conception is categori- 
ally different from scientific conception; therefore it meets a dif- 
ferent world of perceptions. Its objects are not self-identical, 
consistent, universally related; they condense many characters in 
one, have conflicting attributes and intermittent existence, the 
whole is contained in its parts, and the parts in each other. The 
world they constitute is a world of values, things "holy" against a 
vague background of commonplaces, or "profane" events, in- 
stead of a world of neutral physical facts. By this departure, the 
Kantian doctrine that identified all conception with discursive 
reason, making reason appear as an aboriginal human gift, is 
saved from its most serious fallacy, an unhistorical view of mind. 
Cassirer called his Essay on Man, which briefly summarizes 
the Philosophic der symbolischen Formen y "An Introduction 
to a Philosophy of Human Culture." The subtitle is appropriate 
indeed; for the most striking thing about this philosophy viewed 
as a whole is the way the actual evolution of human customs, 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 393 
arts, ideas, and languages is not merely fitted into an idealistic 
interpretation of the world (as it may be fitted into almost any 
metaphysical picture), but is illumined and made accessible to 
serious study by working principles taken from Kantian episte- 
mology. His emphasis on the constitutive character of symbolic 
renderings in the making of "experience" is the masterstroke 
that turns the purely speculative "critical" theory into an 
anthropological hypothesis, a key to several linguistic problems, 
a source of psychological understanding, and a guidepost in the 
maze of Geistesgeschichte. 
It is, as I pointed out before, characteristic of Cassirer's 
thought that, although its basic principles stem from a philo- 
sophical tradition, its living material and immediate inspiration 
come from contemporary sources, from fields of research beyond 
his own. For many years the metaphysic of mind has been 
entirely divorced from the scientific study of mental phe- 
nomena} whether mind be an eternal essence or a transient 
epiphenomenon, a world substance or a biological instrument, 
makes little difference to our understanding of observed human 
or animal behavior. But Cassirer breaks this isolation of specula- 
tive thought} he uses the Kantian doctrine, that mind is con- 
stitutive of the "external world," to explain the way this world 
is experienced as well as the mere fact that it is experienced; and 
in so doing, of course, he makes his metaphysic meet the test 
of factual findings at every turn. His most interesting exhibits 
are psychological phenomena revealed in the psychiatric clinic 
and in ethnologists' reports. The baffling incapacities of im- 
paired brains, the language of childhood, the savage's peculiar 
practices, the prevalence of myth in early cultures and its per- 
sistence in religious thought these and other widely scattered 
facts receive new significance in the light of his philosophy. And 
that is the pragmatic measure of any speculative approach. A 
really cogent doctrine of mind cannot be irrelevant to psy- 
chology, any more than a good cosmological system can be 
meaningless for physics, or a theory of ethics inapplicable to 
jurisprudence and law. 
The psychiatric phenomena which illustrate the existence of a 
mythic mode of thought, and point to its ancient and primitive 
394 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
nature, are striking and persuasive, 11 Among these is the fact 
that in certain pathological conditions of the brain the power of 
abstraction is lost, and the patient falls back on picturesque 
metaphorical language. In more aggravated cases the imagina- 
tion, too, is impaired} and here we have a reversion almost to 
animal mentality. one symptom of this state which is significant 
for the philosophy of symbolism is that the sufferer is unable to 
tell a lie, feign any action, or do anything his actual situation 
does not dictate, though he may still find his way with immedi- 
ate realities. If he is thirtsy, he can recognize and take a glass 
of water, and drink j but he cannot pick up an empty glass and 
demonstrate the act of drinking as though there were water in 
it, or even lift a full glass to his lips, if he is not thirsty. Such 
incapacities have been classified as "apractic" disorders} but 
Cassirer pointed out that they are not so much practical failures, 
as loss of the basic symbolic function, engagement of things 
not given. This is borne out by a still more serious disturbance 
which occurs with the destruction of certain brain areas, inability 
to recognize "things," such as chairs and brooms and pieces of 
clothing, directly and instantly as objects denoted by their 
names. At this point, pathology furnishes a striking testimony 
of the real nature of language: for here, names lose their 
hypostatic office, the creation of permanent and particular items 
out of the flux of impressions. To a person thus afflicted, words 
have connotation, but experience does not readily correspond to 
the conceptual scheme of language, which makes names the pre- 
eminent points of rest, and requires things as the fundamental 
relata in reality. The connoted concepts are apt to be adjectival 
rather than substantive. Consequently the world confronting the 
patient is not composed of objects immediately "given" in ex- 
perience; it is composed of sense data, which he must "associate" 
to form "things," much as Hume supposed the normal mind to 
do. 
Most of the psychological phenomena that caught Cassirer's 
interest arose from the psychiatric work of Kurt Goldstein, who 
11 For a full treatment of this material see Philosophic der symbolischen For men ^ 
III, part 3, fassim. 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 395 
has dealt chiefly with cases of cerebral damage caused by physi- 
cal accident. But the range of psychological researches which bear 
out Cassirer's theory of mind is much wider; it includes the 
whole field of so-called "dynamic psychology," the somewhat 
chaotic store of new ideas and disconcerting facts with which 
Sigmund Freud alarmed his generation. Cassirer himself never 
explored this fund of corroborative evidence; he found himself 
in such fundamental disagreement with Freud on the nature of 
the dynamic motive which the psychologist regarded as not 
only derived from the sex impulse, but forever bound to it, and 
which the philosopher saw liberated in science, art, religion, 
and everything that constitutes the "self-realization of the 
spirit" that there seemed to be simply no point of contact be- 
tween their respective doctrines. Cassirer felt that to Freud all 
those cultural achievements were mere by-products of the un- 
changing animalian "libido," symptoms of its blind activity and 
continual frustration; whereas to him they were the consumma- 
tion of a spiritual process which merely took its rise from the 
blind excitement of the animal "libido," but received its im- 
portance and meanings from the phenomena of awareness and 
creativity, the envisagement, reason, and cognition it produced. 
This basic difference of evaluations of the life process made 
Cassirer hesitate to make any part of Freud's doctrine his own; 
at the end of his life he had, apparently, just begun to study the 
important relationship between "dynamic psychology" and the 
philosophy of symbolic forms. 
It is, indeed, only in regard to the forms of thought that a 
parallel obtains between these systems; but that parallel is 
close and vital, none the less. For, the "dream work" of 
Freud's "unconscious" mental mechanism is almost exactly 
the "mythic mode" which Cassirer describes as the primitive 
form of ideation, wherein an intense feeling is spontane- 
ously expressed in a symbol, an image seen in something or 
formed for the mind's eye by the excited imagination. Such ex- 
pression is effortless and therefore unexhausting; its products 
are images charged with meanings, but the meanings remain 
implicit, so that the emotions they command seem to be centered 
396 SUSANNE K. LANGER 

on the image rather than on anything it merely conveys; in the 
image, which may be a vision, a gesture, a sound- form (musical 
image) or a word as readily as an external object, many mean- 
ings may be concentrated, many ideas telescoped and interfused, 
and incompatible emotions simultaneously expressed. 
The mythic mind never perceives passively, never merely contemplates 
things; all its observations spring from some act of participation, some 
act of emotion and will. Even as mythic imagination materializes in 
permanent forms, and presents us with definite outlines of an 'objective' 
world of beings, the significance of this world becomes clear to us only 
if we can still detect, underneath it all, that dynamic sense of life from 
which it originally arose. only where this vital feeling is stirred from 
within, where it expresses itself as love or hate, fear or hope, joy or 
sorrow, mythic imagination is roused to the pitch of excitement at which 
it begets a definite world of representations. (Philosofhie der symboli- 
schen Formen y II, 90.) 
For a person whose apprehension is under the spell of this mythico- 
religious attitude, it is as though the whole world were simply annihilated; 
the immediate content, whatever it be, that commands his religious in- 
terest so completely fills his consciousness that nothing else can exist 
beside and apart from it. The ego is spending all its energy on this single 
object, lives in it, loses itself in it. Instead of a widening of intuitive 
experience, we find here its extreme limitation; instead of expansion 
. . . we have here an impulse toward concentration; instead of extensive 
distribution, intensive compression. This focussing of all forces on a 
single point is the prerequisite for all mythical thinking and mythical 
formulation. When, on the one hand, the entire self is given up to a 
single impression, is 'possessed' by it and, on the other hand, there is the 
utmost tension between the subject and its object, the outer world; when 
external reality is not merely viewed and contemplated, but overcomes 
a man in sheer immediacy, with emotions of fear or hope, terror or 
wish fulfillment: then the spark jumps somehow across, the tension finds 
release, as the subjective excitement becomes objectified and confronts 
the mind as a god or a daemon. (Language and Myth, 32-33.) 
. . . this peculiar genesis determines the type of intellectual content 
that is common to language and myth . . . present reality, as mythic or 
linguistic conception stresses and shapes it, fills the entire subjective 
realm. ... At this point, the word which denotes that thought content 
is not a mere conventional symbol, but is merged with its object in an 
indissoluble unity. . . . The potential between 'symbol' and 'meaning* is 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 397 
resolved; in place of a more or less adequate 'ｅxpression,' we find a 
relation of identity, of complete congruence between 'image 1 and 'object/ 
between the name and the thing. 
. . . the same sort of hypostatization or transubstantiation occurs in 
other realms of mental creativity; indeed, it seems to be the typical process 
in all unconscious ideation. (Ibid., 57-58.) 
Mythology presents us with a world which is not, indeed, devoid of 
structure and internal organization, but which, none the less, is not 
divided according to the categories of reality, into 'things' and 'properties.' 
Here all forms of Being exhibit, as yet, a peculiar 'fluidity;' they are 
distinct without being really separate. Every form is capable of changing, 
on the spur of the moment, even into its very opposite. . . . one and 
the same entity may not only undergo constant change into sucessive 
guises, but it combines within itself, at one and the same instant of its 
existence, a wealth of different and even incompatible natures. (Philoso- 
phic der symbolischen Formen y III, 71-72.) 
Above all, there is a complete lack of any clear division between 
mere 'imagining' and 'real' perception, between wish and fulfilment, 
between image and object. This is most clearly revealed by the decisive 
role which dream experiences play in the development of mythic con- 
sciousness. ... It is beyond doubt that certain mythic concepts can be 
understood, in all their peculiar complexity, only in so far as one realizes 
that for mythic thought and 'experience' there is but a continuous and 
fluid transition from the world of dream to objective 'reality.' (Ibid., II, 
48-49-) 
The world of myth is a dramatic world a world of actions, of 
forces, of conflicting powers. In every phenomenon of nature it [mythic 
consciousness] sees the collision of these powers. Mythical perception 
is always impregnated with these emotional qualities. Whatever is seen 
or felt is surrounded by a special atmosphere an atmosphere of joy 
or grief, of anguish, of excitement, of exultation or depression. . . . All 
objects are benignant or malignant, friendly or inimical, familiar or 
uncanny, alluring and fascinating or repellent and threatening. (An 
Essay on Man y 76-77.) 
The real substratum of myth is not a substratum of thought but of 
feeling. ... Its view of life is a synthetic, not an analytical one. . . . 
There is no specific difference between the various realms of life. . . . 
To mythical and religious feeling nature becomes one great society, 
the society of life. Man is not endowed with outstanding rank in this 
society. . . . Men and animals, animals and plants are all on the same 
level. (Ibid., 81-83.) 
398 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
To all these passages Freud could subscribe wholeheartedly j 
the morphology of the "mythic mode" is essentially that of 
dream, phantasy, infantile thinking, and "unconscious" ideation 
which he himself discovered and described. And it is the recog- 
nition of this non-discursive mode of thought, rather than his 
clinical hypothesis of an all-pervading disguised sexuality, that 
makes Freud's psychology important for philosophy. Not the 
theory of "libido," which is another theory of "animal drives," 
but the conception of the unconscious mechanism through which 
the "libido" operates, the dream work, the myth-making process 
that is the new generative idea which psychoanalysis con- 
tributed to psychological thinking, the notion that has put 
modern psychology so completely out of gear with traditional 
epistemology that the science of mind and the philosophy of 
mind threatened to lose contact altogether. So it is of the utmost 
significance for the unity of our advancing thought that pure 
speculative philosophy should recognize and understand the 
primary forms of conception which underlie the achievement of 
discursive reason. 
Cassirer's profound antipathy to Freud's teaching rests on 
another aspect of that psychological system, which springs from 
the fact that Freud's doctrine was determined by practical inter- 
ests: that is the tendency of the psychoanalyst to range all 
human aims, all ideals on the same ethical level. Since he deals 
entirely with the evils of social maladjustment, his measure of 
good is simply adjustment} religion and learning and social 
reform, art and discovery and philosophical reflection, to him 
are just so many avenues of personal gratification sublimation 
of passions, emotional self-ｅxpression. From his standpoint they 
cannot be viewed as objective values. Just as good poetry and 
bad poetry are of equal interest and importance to the psycho- 
analyst, so the various social systems are all equally good, all 
religions equally true (or rather, equally false, but salutary), 
and all abstract systems of thought, scientific or philosophical or 
mathematical, just self-dramatizations in disguise. To a phi- 
losopher who was also a historian of culture, such a point of view 
seemed simply devastating. It colored his vision of Freud's work 
so deeply that it really obscured for him the constructive aspect, 
THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND MYTH 399 
the analysis of non-discursive ideation, which this essentially 
clinical psychology contains. Yet the relationship between the 
new psychiatry and his own new epistemology is deep and close; 
"der Mythos als Denkform" is the theme that rounds out the 
modern philosophical picture of human mentality to embrace 
psychology and anthropology and linguistics, 13 which had 
broken the narrow limits of rationalist theory, in a more ade- 
quate conceptual frame. 
The broadening of the philosophical outlook achieved by 
Cassirer's theory of language and myth affects not only the 
philosophical sciences, the Geisteswissenschaften, but also the 
most crucial present difficulty in philosophy itself the ever in- 
creasing pendulum arc between theories of reason and theories 
of irrational motivation. The discovery that emotive, intuitive, 
"blind" forces govern human behavior more effectively than 
motives of pure reason naturally gave rise to an anti-rationalist 
movement in epistemology and ethics, typified by Nietzsche, 
William James, and Bergson, which finally made the truth- 
seeking attitude of science a pure phantasmagoria, a quixotic 
manifestation of the will. Ultimately the role of reason came to 
appear (as it does in Bergson's writings) as something entirely 
secondary and essentially unnatural. But at this point the exist- 
ence of reason becomes an enigma: for how could instinctive life 
ever give rise to such a product? How can sheer imagination and 
volition and passion beget the "artificial" picture of the world 
which seems natural to scientists? 
Cassirer found the answer in the structure of language; for 
language stems from the intuitive "drive" to symbolic expres- 
sion that also produces dream and myth and ritual, but it is a 
pre-eminent form in that it embodies not only self-contained, 
complex meanings, but a principle of concatenation whereby the 
complexes are unravelled and articulated. It is the discursive 
character of language, its inner tendency to grammatical de- 
" This is the title of the first section in Vol. II of Philosophic der symbolischen 
Formen. 
"The knowledge of linguistics on which he bases vol. I of his Philosophic 
der symbolischen Formen is almost staggering. His use of anthropological data 
may be found especially throughout vol. II of that work. 
400 SUSANNE K. LANGER 
velopment, which gives rise to logic in the strict sense, i.e., to the 
procedure we call "reasoning." Language is "of imagination all 
compact," yet it is the cradle of abstract thought; and the 
achievement of Vernunft, as Cassirer traces it from the dawn of 
human mentality through the evolution of speech forms, is just 
as natural as the complicated patterns of instinctive behavior and 
emotional abreaction. 
Here the most serious antinomy in the philosophical thought 
of our time is resolved. This is a sort of touchstone for 
the philosophy of symbolic forms, whereby we may judge its 
capacity to fulfill the great demand its author did not hesitate 
to make on it, when he wrote in his Essay on Man: 
In the boundless multiplicity and variety of mythical images, of reli- 
gious dogmas, of linguistic forms, of works of art, philosophic thought 
reveals the unity of a general function by which all these creations are 
held together. Myth, religion, art, language, even science, are now 
looked upon as so many variations on a common theme and it is the 
task of philosophy to make this theme audible and understandable. 
SUSANNE K. LANGER 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
12 
Witt* M. Urban 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 
12 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 
C^RNST CASSIRER is, in my opinion, the first of modern 
1 d philosophers to see the full significance of the relations 
of problems of language to problems of philosophy and, there- 
fore, the first also to develop a philosophy of language in the 
full sense of the word. Others, it is true, had made important 
contributions without which the more systematic treatment of 
Cassirer would have been impossible. In the field of linguistics 
itself contributions of a philosophical nature had become more 
and more frequent, and of these Cassirer has made full use, his 
erudition in this field being such as to command our admiration. 
In the field of the special sciences scientists had become increas- 
ingly aware of the problems of methodology which their lan- 
guages and symbolisms present, and with these Cassirer is 
equally familiar. For these reasons, no less than because of his 
own philosophical acumen, he has been enabled, not only to 
formulate the problems of a philosophy of language in a sys- 
tematic fashion but also, as I believe, in general to find the right 
solutions. 
It is because of the outstanding character of his work that 
his philosophy of language becomes of great importance, not 
only for the understanding of his own philosophy, but for the 
equally significant purpose of understanding the role which 
philosophies of language play in the life of modern philosophy 
as a whole. It is because of this outstanding character that the 
present writer has learned so much from this philosophy of 
language and is glad, therefore, to undertake the task of pre- 
senting it for this volume. Cassirer's treatment of language is so 
403 
404 WILBUR M. URBAN 
fundamental for his philosophy as a whole that it is impossible 
to present it without trenching, to some extent at least, upon 
topics assigned to other contributors. It is to be hoped that where 
this is inevitable, it will serve to clarify rather than to confuse 
the important issues in modern science and philosophy, to the 
solution of which this study of Cassirer's philosophy should con- 
stitute an important contribution. 
B 
The chief source of Cassirer's philosophy of language is his 
monumental work, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen? the 
first volume of which is devoted exclusively to the philosophical 
study of language, the second to the language of myth, and the 
third to the language of science. All three are, in Cassirer's 
terminology, "symbolic forms," and it is the interrelations of 
these three forms which constitute the central problem of the 
work as a whole. 
The relation of this work to his earlier investigations will 
perhaps best serve to indicate its standpoint. The investigations 
of Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, so he tells us, pro- 
ceeded from the assumption that the basal conception of knowl- 
edge (and its essential law) shows itself most clearly in the field 
of mathematics and mathematical natural science, where the 
highest stage of universality and necessity is achieved. The 
Philosophic der symbolischen Formen> however, goes beyond 
this earlier standpoint in both content and method. It seeks to 
show that "theoretical and form elements" are not confined to 
scientific construction, but are found also in the "natural world 
picture" and in the constructions of the imagination, mythical, 
aesthetic, etc. 2 This statement of the problem, formulated as it 
is in terms of the Kantian idiom, serves also to indicate the 
relation of the philosophy of symbolic forms to the critical 
idealism of Kant. Cassirer accepts, he tells us, the critical prin- 
ciples of Kant, but extends them to other spheres than the 
theoretical, widening the Kantian conception of "form" to the 
1 Die Philosophic der symbolischen Formen (Berlin, 1929) j hereafter abbreviated : 
PSF. 
*PSF., Ill, v. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 405 
more general notion of symbolic form. 8 Otherwise expressed, 
the Kritik der Vernunft, in its various forms, becomes a Kritik 
der Sfrache, in its various forms and symbolic ｅxpressions. Such 
a critique was, indeed, like many other developments in philoso- 
phy since Kant, already implicit in the Kantian philosophy; it 
has been Cassirer's task, as well as his good fortune, to have 
made this explicit. 
II 
The Theme of a Philosophy of Language, according 
to Cassirer 
A 
The chief reason why Cassirer is able to develop a philosophy 
of language of such significance is, I believe, because he formu- 
lates the theme of such a philosophy in the main with truth and 
adequacy. 4 
This theme, stated in Hegelian terms, which, as we shall 
see, are not foreign to Cassirer's way of thinking, may be said 
to be "language as the actuality of culture." "Language," he 
tells us, "stands in a focal point of spiritual being, in which rays 
of entirely differing origin unite and from which lines run into 
all the realms of the spirit." Of these various realms, these 
ways in which culture actualizes itself, the theoretical or sci- 
entific form is that in which knowledge chiefly manifests itself, 
and it is with this language that philosophy is, if not solely, yet 
chiefly concerned; but there are other ways and other languages, 
and the knowledge value of these becomes also part of the 
problem of a philosophy of language. Thus the critique of lan- 
guage becomes, so he holds, the basis of the critique of knowl- 
edge, the basal theme of a philosophy of language being the 
"Erkenntniswert der Sprache."* 
B 
The theme of these three volumes is not an arbitrary pro- 
9 1 but., I, 9 ff } also III, 7 ff. 
4 Ibid., I, Preface. 
5 Ibid., I, Einleitung und Problemstellung, 1-4.1. 
406 WILBUR M. URBAN 
nouncement, as is the case of so many current dicta on language, 
but is shown to have developed out of the history of philosophic 
thought itself. Chapter I of Vol. I is entitled "Das Sprachpro- 
blem in der Geschichte der Philosophic." 
Histories of philosophy have, in the main, either ignored or 
been unaware of the philosophies of language presupposed by 
the great philosophers. With his more than ordinary historical 
erudition, Cassirer has been enabled to rewrite the history of 
European philosophy from this standpoint. In making explicit 
the assumptions or presuppositions regarding language on the 
part of the philosophers, and in showing how they predeter- 
mined in various ways the results of their thinking, Cassirer has 
enabled us to see the central place of problems of language in 
the entire history of philosophy. 
From Plato on (he speaks of the famous Seventh Epistle as 
the first attempt made to determine the Erkenntniswert der 
Sprache in a purely methodological manner) the "value of the 
word" becomes, either explicitly or implicitly, an essential part 
of the problem of knowledge. The outstanding phenomenon 
from this point of view, is, of course, the opposition of nominal- 
ism and realism, each representing, so to speak, a fundamental 
evaluation of the word. 
The opposition of rationalism and empiricism in modern phi- 
losophy is, in a sense, the continuation of the same problem. The 
ideal of a lingua universalis y held by Descartes and Leibnitz, to 
say nothing of lesser rationalists, was an ｅxpression of the ideal 
of universal reason; logos, in the sense of language, and in the 
sense of reason, being, for all of this way of thinking, in prin- 
ciple inseparable. Empiricism, on the other hand, proceeds, as 
Cassirer tells us, from a completely opposite standpoint and 
reaches contrary results. Although recognizing, as did Locke, 
that problems of knowledge cannot be separated from language, 
it starts with the assumption that the primary form of knowl- 
edge is simple awarness of sense data, to which language is a 
mere addendum. The empirical philosophy of language be- 
comes the basis for a theory of knowledge which seeks to 
eliminate the universal} Berkeley even proposing "to confine 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 407 
his thought to his own ideas divested from words," believing 
that thus he "cannot then be mistaken." 
As the Kantian "critical" philosophy represents the media- 
tion between rationalism and empiricism in epistemology, so 
philosophies of language, influenced by the Kantian criticism, 
represent a crucial point in connection with the speech problem 
in the history of philosophy. In this respect von Humboldt 
played an outstanding part and has consequently had a deter- 
mining influence upon Cassirer himself; an entire section being 
given to the discussion of his main principles. For von Hum- 
boldt language is not a product (ergon) but an activity, 
(energeia). The Kantian principle of knowledge as synthesis is 
carried over into the sphere of language, "Sfrache als Schof- 
fung und Entwicklung" the title of a work of Karl Vossler to 
which Cassirer refers with approval, representing this "idealis- 
tic" tendency in the modern philosophy of language. 
Of the relation of this general problem to current tendencies 
in philosophy Cassirer is fully aware, and his own position is 
mainly determined by his reaction to these tendencies. Modern 
empiricism, in its positivistic form, and the Bergsonian philoso- 
phy of organism, both proceed from a purely naturalistic and 
nominalistic theory of language, and to the premises and con- 
clusions of both Cassirer is in complete opposition. There are, 
he tells us, in general only two ways of solving the problem of 
language and reality. The first of these assumes a reality known 
independently of language and its categories, a hypothetical 
pure experience to be discovered by stripping off language. 
The second way proposes an exactly opposite method and pro- 
ceeds upon opposite presuppositions. Instead of attempting to 
get back of the forms of thought and language to a hypothetical 
pure experience, it assumes that experience is never pure in this 
sense and that intuition and ｅxpression are inseparable. It there- 
fore proposes, not to deny, but to complete and perfect the 
principles of ｅxpression and symbolism. It proceeds upon the 
assumption that the more richly and energetically the human 
spirit builds its languages and symbolisms the nearer it comes, if 
not to some hypothetical original source of its being, certainly to 
408 WILBUR M. URBAN 
its ultimate meaning and reality. This is the idealistic minimum 
in Cassirer's philosophy of language, as indeed it must be, in 
the view of the present writer, in any adequate philosophy of 
language. 
Ill 
Cassirer y s "Idealistic" Theory of Language: Criticism of 
Naturalism in Linguistic Science 
A 

one thing which distinguishes Cassirer's philosophy of 
language from most contributions to this subject is his extensive 
use of the results of linguistic science, an advantage conspicu- 
ously absent in most discussions of the subject. Not only does he 
appeal to these studies in detail for the substantiation of his main 
theses, but he examines the postulates and method of modern 
linguistics. 
The assumption underlying the linguistic science of the nine- 
teenth century and most philosophies of language had ac- 
cepted this assumption is that language is but a part of nature. 
As such, it was made by nature for certain natural ends for 
the manipulation of physical objects or for adjustment to the 
physical environment. In other words, linguistic science has 
tended to study language, so to speak, within the bounds of 
naturalistic assumptions alone. Cassirer challenges this stand- 
point, not only from the point of view of "critical" philosophy, 
but from the standpoint of linguistic science itself. An important 
part of his entire approach to problems of language is his 
account of the stages in the development of modern linguistics, 
which not only constitutes one of the most complete pictures of 
that science, but also enables him to disprove many of the as- 
sumptions, regarding matter of fact, all too common in modern 
positivistic philosophy. 
Linguistics, so Cassirer tells us, hoping to attain the same 
certainty and exactness as the natural sciences, moulded itself, 
in the first instance, on their methods and conceptions. But 
gradually the notion of "laws," physical, physiological, and 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 409 
even psychological, showed itself untenable. The entire con- 
ception of nature and natural law upon which it was sought to 
build, turned out to be an illusion, a wholly fictitious unity 
including the most disparate elements. Thus, as the naturalistic 
and positivistic scheme of linguistic science has tended to break 
up, there has been also a marked tendency towards the return 
to earlier conceptions of the autonomy of language. The move- 
ment within linguistics as a whole, so it seems to Cassirer, has 
been, methodologically speaking, a movement in a circle. A 
revision of the naturalistic assumptions of the science has taken 
place to such an extent that it is again approaching the stand- 
point from which it started. As under the aegis of the physical 
and biological sciences, it took the step from Geist to Natur y 
so now in a very real sense it is turning again from nature to 
spirit. This is the significance of the opposition of idealism and 
positivism in modern linguistics. 6 
B 
With the return from nature to mind, the problem of mean- 
ing becomes central, and a corollary of the return movement is 
the methodological principle of the primacy of meaning d,er 
Primat des Sinnes, as Cassirer calls it. It may be stated in the 
following way. The sole entrance to the understanding of lan- 
guage is through meaning, for meaning is the sine qua non of 
linguistic fact. Language for modern linguistics is not sound, 
nor again the motor and tactual sensations which make up the 
word psychologically, nor yet the associations called up; it is 
the meaning itself which, although conditioned by these, is not 
identical with any of them. This being the fact, the methodology 
of linguistic study is not that of the natural sciences but rather, 
for language, as for all symbolic forms, the phenomenological. 
The nature of this method, as conceived by Cassirer, will be 
stated more definitely presently; the significant point here is 
that it is interpretation from within, not merely explanation 
from without. 
The significance of this principle of the primacy of meaning 
'PSF., I. 118 flF. 
410 WILBUR M. URBAN 
is far reaching. It means negatively, as we have seen, the denial 
of the adequacy of external approaches to language, whether 
physical, physiological, or even psychological; but it involves 
also, positively, significant changes in methodology. Earlier 
methods proceeded from the elements to the whole from the 
sounds to the words, from words to sentences, and finally to 
the meaning of discourse as a whole. The present tendency is 
the exact opposite. It proceeds from the whole of meaning, as 
Gestalty to the sentences and words as elements the parts be- 
ing understood through the whole. The spirit which lives in 
human discourse works as a totality constituting the sentence 
or proposition, the copula, the word, and the sound. 7 
Of the many important consequences of this methodological 
principle a discussion of the details of which would be neces- 
sary for an adequate account of Cassirer's linguistic studies 
we shall single out one which is important for all that follows, 
namely the nature and modes of linguistic meaning. 
Meaning, as understood by positivistic theories, is reference 
to sensuously observable entities. "Indication" is, therefore, 
the essence of meaning, "in the strict sense." All other mean- 
ings are emotive in character, and the words in this case refer 
to nothing and stand for nothing. For Cassirer indication is 
indeed a primary mode, but equally primary is representation 
or Darstellung.* Without this element there is no linguistic 
meaning. This element or function is an Urfhanomen, present 
in language from its simplest to its highest forms, and it is, as 
we shall see, the development of this mode of meaning from 
copy through analogy, to symbolic representation which con- 
stitutes the thread of Cassirer's treatment, not only of language 
but of the entire range of symbolic forms. 
Closely bound up with this question as to what language is are 
the genetic problems of language, more specifically the prob- 
lem of "animal language." Holding, as he does, that the 
Darstellungsfanktion is the sine qua non of linguistic meaning, 
he denies this function to the phonetic ｅxpressions of animals, 
11 ibid., i, n 9 . 
9 Ibid., I, i26ff } III, n6ff. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 411 
even those of the higher apes. His discussion of the results of 
Kohler's investigations are most enlightening, and he concludes 
that recent observations of animal psychology seem to widen 
rather than narrow the gulf between human and animal com- 
munication, and that what is called animal speech "seems to be 
permanently held fast in the pre-linguistic stage." 9 In any 
case, it is the growing conviction of linguistics that the hiatus 
between animal ｅxpressions and human speech is widening 
rather than narrowing as investigation proceeds all of which 
leads to the modern speech notion as "a human, non-instinctive 
function." The step to human language is made first when the 
pure meaningful sound achieves supremacy over the affective 
stimulus-born sounds and this achievement has in it the charac- 
ter of a unique level of being. The notion of speech as an 
Urphanomen, in short the autonomy of the speech notion, 
seems to be more and more confirmed by the study of animal 
psychology. 
Cassirer's philosophy of language has been called "idealistic," 
and in the sense that it is opposed to naturalism and positivism 
it is. Language is, indeed, to use an ｅxpression of Karl Vossler, 
"embedded in nature," and it is out of this fact that "the illusion 
of its being a piece of nature constantly arises." But Cassirer 
would agree with Vossler that this illusion must be just as 
constantly dispelled if an adequate philosophy of language is 
to be possible. Language is indeed a part of nature and as such 
it was "made" for certain natural ends. But in its development 
it subserves quite other ends. Granted that it was made by 
nature for a natural object, language like our intelligence, and 
all the forms of culture with which it is connected, has de- 
veloped along lines which are independent of natural ends, 
perhaps in opposition to them. Language is not limited to the 
"practical" functions for which it was primarily made, but in 
its development has achieved a freedom which makes it, in the 
words of von Humboldt, "a vehicle for traversing the manifold 
and the highest and deepest of the entire world." 
9 Ibtd.y I, 136 note} III, 127, 
412 WILBUR M. URBAN 
IV 
Language and Cognition: The Relation of Intuition 
to ｅxpression 
A 
As opposed to purely naturalistic and positivistic theories of 
language Cassirer's theory is idealistic. But it may be said to 
be idealistic in another sense, in the Kantian sense of "critical 
idealism." This general "critical" position is determinative 
throughout j it underlies his conception of language in Vol. I, 
his conception of language and myth in Vol. II, and his inter- 
pretation of science in Vol. III. It is, however, with the first, 
the general question of the relation of language to cognition, 
that we are now concerned. 
The problem of knowledge presents itself to Cassirer, as to 
all "critical" philosophers, under a double aspect, the psycho- 
logical and the epistemological. In the psychological or natural- 
istic treatment, as in the application of the "scientific" method 
everywhere, the only possible standpoint is to start with the 
"things" or objects, as already constructed, and then ask how 
they acquire meaning and are known. The petitio principii in 
this method is, for Cassirer, obvious. It assumes that the things 
or objects are given and are then known, when actually there 
is an element of construction, perhaps incalculable, in the things 
as given. The epistemological treatment of the subject starts 
from an entirely different, perhaps opposite, standpoint. It 
involves a radical shift from the realm of things to that of 
meaning and value. It must study perception and perceptual 
meaning, not causally, as determined from without, but from 
within, as a constitutive element in cognition. 10 If it is really 
"meaning that transforms sense data into things," it then be- 
comes a problem whether language and linguistic meaning are 
not present in the first processes of such transformation. Cassirer 
holds that language is thus present from the beginning, and 
that in this sense language first created the realm of meaning. 
Otherwise expressed, intuition and ｅxpression are, if not identi- 
cal, as according to Croce, at least inseparable. 
1 , in, 68ff. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 413 
In this connection we may note a term constantly used by 
Cassirer, the full significance of which will later become ap- 
parent, namely, the ｅxpression Ausdruckserlebnisse. The pri- 
mary experiences (Erlebnisse) are at the same time primary 
forms of ｅxpression and constitute the "natural" world picture, 
as well as the picture constructed by myth. These are the origi- 
nal forms of knowledge and in these, according to Cassirer's 
"critical" principles, there are already "theoretical and form 
elements" which contribute their elements to knowledge. 
Science, it is true, tends to transcend, and in a sense "break 
through," these forms of ｅxpression} but that very fact creates 
one of the fundamental problems of a philosophy of language 
and of symbolic forms, namely, the Erkenntniswert of these 
A usdruckserlebnisse. 
B 
Intuition is inseparable from ｅxpression, but in ｅxpression 
there is always an element of re-presentation j die Darstellungs- 
junktion is equally original das symbolische Grundverhaltnis> 
as he calls it. This is described as the bi-polar character of all 
knowledge and is, in Cassirer's terms, an Urphanomen. 
Empiricism, with its doctrine of presentational immediacy, pro- 
ceeds on the assumption that the primary and original form of 
knowledge is one in which we merely h<we y or possess, the sense 
data. Such an hypothetical form of knowledge is, for Cassirer, 
pure myth. Without the element of polarity, and therefore of 
the reference of the presentation to that which is presented, that 
is without some element of representation, the entire notion of 
knowledge collapses. It follows from this that problems of 
knowledge and problems of language are inseparable. 11 
In connection with this fundamental principle two specific 
points in the development of Cassirer's thesis require special 
attention. They are treated by him under the two captions, Z#r 
Pathologie des Symbolbewusstseins and the notion of Symbol- 
ischer Pragnanz^ both of which serve to illuminate the general 
principle. 
11 This thesis is the underlying" theme of the entire Philosophic der symbolischen 
Formen y but is especially developed in Vol. Ill, Part i. A statement of it is found 
on pp. 1436*. 
414 WILBUR M. URBAN 
Under the former, the pathology of the symbol-conscious- 
ness, he makes use of the phenomena of mental blindness, in its 
verbal form, as studied by both psychologists and linguists. 
When in certain forms of aphasia the word is not recognized or 
cannot be formed, the perceptual meaning of the object itself 
is absent also facts which go far towards confirming the princi- 
ple that language is part of the perceptual process itself. 12 The 
significance of speech for the construction (Aujbau) of the per- 
ceptual world, to employ Cassirer's terms, is obvious. 
The notion of Symbolischer Pragnanz is equally important 
for his general thesis, important not only for his philosophy of 
language, but for his theory of symbolism. By this term is to be 
understood, he tells us, the way in which perception, as sensu- 
ous experience, becomes at the same time the means of appre- 
hension (symbolically) of a non-intuitive meaning and brings 
this meaning to immediate and concrete ｅxpression. 13 Thus a 
color phenomenon is, as sense datum, a sensuous experience, but 
it is also a symbol which stands for references and meanings 
which themselves are not objects of sensuous experience. This 
symbolic character is, as we shall see, present, in Cassirer's view, 
on the lowest levels of experience as well as on the highest j it 
extends, in his words, through every level of the world picture. 
In sum, this symbolic function, like the DarsteHungsfanktion y 
of which it is an aspect, is an Urfhanomen. 
The function of language in the Aujbau of the perceptual 
world is further shown by the presence of the universal in the 
perceptual process itself. Everything denoted by language is 
already universalized. Apart from purely formless interjec- 
tions and emotive sounds, all linguistic ｅxpressions contain 
implicitly this "form of thought." The universal is not, as com- 
monly held, the product of abstraction and then embodied in 
language 5 it is present in this "first precipitate of language." 
PSF, III, chapter VI. 
11 Of. cit. y Vol. Ill, p. 234. In Cassirer's own words, "Unter 'symbolischer 
Pragnanz' soil also die Art verstanden werden, in der ein Wahrnehmungserlebniss, 
als 'sinnliches* Erlebniss, zugleich einen bestimmten nicht-anschaulichen 'Sinn* in 
sich fasst imd ihn zur unmittlebaren konkreten Darstellung bringt." 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 415 
The later processes of abstraction take place upon contents al- 
ready thus universalized. 
In developing this point Cassirer makes use of Lotze's term, 
"first" or primary universal, to distinguish it from the secondary 
or abstract universal. Nouns, verbs, adjectives are all in a 
sense names, and when anything is named this first universal is 
implicit. This first universal is intuitive, of a very different 
nature from the ordinary class concepts of logic, and is, indeed, 
presupposed by them. Perception contains this universal. It is 
true, of course, that it is always a particular color or tone that is 
perceived, always a particular quote and intensity. But this per- 
ception is always accompanied by the fact that every other color 
or tone has an equal right to function as an example of the uni- 
versal. This class concept is, as he further insists, not constructed 
by repressing or eliminating the individual color or tone, but 
rather by the recognition of a common element (in the indi- 
vidual phenomena themselves) already intuited. 14 
This doctrine of the "double universal," as Cassirer calls it, 
is important for his entire philosophy of language. It also fur- 
nishes the basis for his theory of language and logic. His logical 
theory will doubtless receive fuller treatment by other con- 
tributors to this volume, but some comment should be made 
upon it in this connection. 
The point at which logic and the philosophy of language, so 
he tells us, first touch each other is the problem of the forma- 
tion of concepts; the point, indeed, "at which they disclose 
their inseparable character." "All logical analysis of concepts," 
he adds, "seems to lead in the end to a point at which the 
examination of concepts passes into that of words and names. 
From this point of view logic might be defined as the science 
or doctrine of the concept and its meaning." 15 Predication is a 
problem at once linguistic and logical and the real secret of 
predication is found in the doctrine of the double universal. 
Predication, in the logical sense, is but the conceptual expres- 
sions of relations already intuited. These form the basis for the 
more complex syntheses of logical thought, logical concepts 
14 PSF, I, 249*F. Also III, i 35 ff. 
"Ibid., I, 2 44 ff. 
416 WILBUR M. URBAN 
having the function merely of fixing the relations already 
present in experience. The logical concept, so he tells us, does 
nothing else than fix the "gesetzliche Ordnung* already present 
in the phenomena themselves; it states consciously the rule 
which the perception follows unconsciously. 16 
Cassirer seems to maintain a relational, as opposed to a 
subject-predicate logic, and his general thesis of the develop- 
ment from substance to function in the sphere of scientific 
knowledge would seem to indicate this position. It would seem 
also, that with regard to the issue raised by the ｅxpression 
"logical analysis of language," he also maintains the right of 
such a relational logic to exercise its critique upon the subject- 
predicate logic, which is the constitutive element in the natural 
world picture as given us by perception. And yet I am not so 
sure. Certainly one of his main positions is that the mathemati- 
cal-logical world picture given us by science is not the only 
symbolic form which has knowledge value, but that such value 
must be accorded also to the natural and mythical pictures of 
the world. In any case, I cannot go into this issue here. It was 
one of my hopes that this ambiguity regarding logic would 
be cleared up in Cassirer's answers to the questions raised by the 
essays in this volume, before the suddenness and untimeliness 
of his death made this expectation futile. 
D 
As the Darstellungsfunktion is the sine qua non of linguistic 
meaning, so the nature of that function, of the relation of the 
"word" to the "thing" and the nature of the truth relation in 
general becomes a fundamental problem of a philosophy of 
language. "The function of language," according to Cassirer, 
"is not to copy reality but to symbolize it." 17 
In this connection his "law" of the development of language 
becomes of first importance. The development of language 
proceeds through three stages. They are (a) the mimetic or copy 
stage, (b) the analogical and (c) the symbolic. The characteris- 
T Ibid., I, i 3 2ff 2 33 ff. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 417 
tic of the first stage is that between the word, or verbal sign, 
and the thing to which it refers no real difference is made. The 
word is the thing. This initial stage is, however, broken up as 
soon as transfer of signs takes place. Here the relation is ana- 
logical. This relation in turn gives way to the symbolic. The 
characteristic of this last stage is that, whereas the element of 
representation (Darstellung), which is the sine qua non of 
linguistic meaning, still remains, the relation of similarity 
which conditions this representation becomes more and more 
partial and indefinite. 
As thus briefly stated, this "law" of development is, to be 
sure, a mere schematism; but when it is filled in with the rich 
content at Cassirer's disposal, it becomes one of the most illumi- 
nating conceptions of his entire work. It becomes not only an 
important principle for the understanding of the Aufbw der 
Sprache, but one which also enables him to connect the develop- 
ment of language with other "symbolic forms," such as art, 
science, and religion. ' 
As concerns language itself, Cassirer is enabled, as the result 
of extensive comparative studies, to show the presence of this 
tendency or "law" throughout linguistic phenomena. From this 
wealth of material I choose but one illustration to indicate the 
significance of the principle, namely, the phenomenon of re- 
duplication common in primitive languages. The reduplication 
of sound or syllable appears, at first view, to involve merely 
the copying of the object or happening. Actually, however, it 
marks the beginning of an analogical representation which is a 
step on the way to the symbolic. The representation is, in the 
first instance, imitative and serves to conjure up the thing itself. 
Gradually, however, the Gestalt is detached from the primary 
material and becomes the means of representation of plurality, 
repetition, and finally, in many cases, becomes the form of 
representation or ｅxpression of the fundamental intuitions, 
space, time, force, etc. Cassirer develops this theme with many 
illustrations which cannot, of course, be given here. The im- 
portant point is the presence of the representative, as well as 
the indicative function, from the beginning, and also the manner 
4i8 WILBUR M. URBAN 
in which this representative function develops from representa- 
tion in the sense of imitation to symbolic representation as its 
ultimate form. 18 
It is impossible even to indicate here the manifold applica- 
tions of this principle to the development of the various speech 
forms. More important for his philosophy as a whole is the 
way in which, as he points out, the development of language 
through the three stages makes it possible for speech to become 
the medium for the ｅxpression of conceptual thought and of 
pure relations. It is indeed the very Vieldeutigkeit of the verbal 
signs, which appears on the analogical stage of development, 
that constitutes the real virtue of that stage of development. 
It is precisely this that compels the mind to take the decisive step 
from the concrete function of indication (Eezeichnung)^ which 
characterizes the early stage of language, to the general and 
more significant function of "meaning" (Bedeutung). It is at 
this point that language at the same time emerges from the 
sensuous husk in which it first embodied itself. The imitative 
and analogical ｅxpressions give place to the purely symbolic, and 
language thus becomes the bearer of a newer and deeper 
spiritual content. 19 
Of special importance in this connection is the application 
of this principle to space-time language, not only for the entire 
philosophy of symbolic forms, but more especially for Cassirer's 
treatment of symbolism in science. All language goes through 
these three stages of development, and space-time words are 
no exception to the rule. Into the details of his exhaustive study 
we cannot, of course, enter. It must suffice to give the results 
as summed up in his own words: "Again it is clear," he tells us, 
that the concepts of space, time and number furnish the actual structural 
elements of objective experience as they build themselves up in language. 
But they can fulfil this task only because, according to their total struc- 
ture, they keep it an ideal medium, precisely because, while they keep 
to the form of sensuous experience, they progressively fill the sensuous 
with ideal content and make it the symbol of the spiritual. 20 
, I f i 43 . 
, 145. 
"7M&.L *oft. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 419 
Thus the space and time of the immediate Ausdruckserlebnisse 
become the ideal space-time of modern physical science which, 
as we shall see, although keeping the forms of sensuous experi- 
ence, become more and more the symbol for non-intuitable 
relations. 21 
The theme of a philosophy of language is, as we have seen, 
the Erkenntniswert der Sprache. To the question thus raised 
Cassirer's critical idealistic philosophy of language seems to me 
to be in the main, the right answer. As opposed to naively 
naturalistic and "realistic" views of language, this conception of 
language seems to me to be alone tenable. Nevertheless there 
also appear to me to be certain difficulties in Cassirer's formula- 
tion of this theory a fundamental ambiguity in his evaluation 
of language which becomes increasingly puzzling as he passes 
from the philosophy of language eo nomme to other aspects of 
the more general philosophy of symbolic forms. 
There seems to be little question of the inseparability of 
intuition and ｅxpression embodied in the notion of Ausdrucks- 
erlebnisse, that language is present from the beginning in the 
Aufbau of the perceptual world. There seems to be just as 
little question that language develops from copy to analogy 
and from analogy to symbol; that the function of language is 
not to copy reality but to symbolize it; and that, more and more, 
the symbolization of things gives place to the symbolization of 
relations. The problem then becomes whether, in this dialecti- 
cal movement, as Cassirer calls it, inherent in language, the 
goal of the movement is the abandonment of language with its 
natural "parts of speech" and its subject-predicate logic for a 
symbolism of pure relations and a purely relational logic. Is 
there within language itself an immanental dialectic which 
drives it ever onward beyond itself? Otherwise expressed, are 
the natural categories of language, although useful for practice, 
wholly erroneous when applied to the sphere of theory? 

on this fundamental issue Cassirer's answer seems to me to 
be ambiguous. In many places he appears to suggest that the 
* Ibid., 'Ill, Part III, Chap. V. 
420 WILBUR M. URBAN 
function of thought is to break through the husk of language, 
with its natural categories (of subject and predicate, of substance 
and attribute) to a "purer notation" and to a symbolism of pure 
relations, notably in science. In other places he seems to suggest 
that, although this is the ideal goal of knowledge, natural 
language can never be broken through completely and the cate- 
gories of this language can never be completely transcended. 
Doubtless Cassirer is clear on this point, and my own uncer- 
tainty arises from defects of understanding. In any case, the 
problem here presented is one which faces all modern philoso- 
phies of language, a problem to which, in the opinion of the 
present writer, few have given really satisfactory answers. 
The Philosophy of Language and The Philosophy of Symbolic 
Forms. Principles of Symbolism 
A 
For Cassirer, then, the philosophy of language leads directly 
to a philosophy of symbolism. If, as he maintains, the function 
of language is not to copy reality but to symbolize it, it becomes 
necessary, in order to understand that function, to understand 
also the nature and principles of symbolism. More than this, 
language is for him not the only symbolic form. In art, religion, 
and preeminently in "science" itself, non-linguistic symbols are 
employed and the relation of these symbols to language becomes 
one of the central problems of the philosophy of language, as 
viewed in its more general aspects. 
Cassirer's problem, as we have seen, insofar as it is concerned 
with language, is the study of the Aufbau der Sprache in connec- 
tion with the development of the varied forms of culture, more 
particularly science, art, and religion. The essence of culture is 
precisely this objectification of the "spirit" in various forms and 
structures. In all these, no less than in science in the strict sense 
of the word, theoretical and form elements are to be found. 
The methodology of such a study, even in the case of 
language itself, obviously can not be the scientific method in the 
sense of natural science, as we have already seen in his critique 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 421 
of the assumptions and methods of linguistics. It is, for Cassirer, 
the phenomenological method conceived in the broadest sense. 
The place in his studies where the character of this method is 
most clearly formulated is in the Preface to Vol. III. "When," 
he writes, "I speak of the phenomenology of knowledge, I refer 
not to the modern usage, but go back to the fundamental mean- 
ing of phenomenology as finally fixed and systematically de- 
veloped and justified by Hegel." For Hegel, he reminds us, 
phenomenology is "the fundamental presupposition of philo- 
sophical knowledge." In contrast to the scientific method, it 
seeks to understand the various "spiritual forms" from within, 
not from without. It seeks moreover "to embrace the totality 
of spiritual forms and to understand and evaluate them in their 
mutual relations," for "the fundamental presupposition of the 
phenomenological method is that the truth is the whole." With 
this conception of phenomenology, Cassirer tells us, the philoso- 
phy of symbolic forms is in accord, although in the application 
of these principles his procedure naturally varies significantly 
from that of Hegel. 22 
B 
The first requisite of a general theory of symbolism is an 
adequate notion of the symbol and the symbolizing function. 
This notion must, as Cassirer rightly points out, be a broad one, 
if it is to be adequate. "The philosophy of symbols and of sym- 
bolic forms is not, as some suppose, concerned primarily and 
exclusively with scientific and exact concepts, but with all direc- 
tions of the symbolizing function," in its attempt to grasp and 
understand the world. It is necessary to study this function, not 
M PSF., Ill, vi. Cassirer does not, to be sure, deny the valuable services rendered 
by Phenomenology in the narrower sense of Husserl. It has, he tells us, sharpened 
our sense anew for the variety of spiritual "Strukturformen" and shown us the 
way in which the method of their understanding- must differ from the psychological. 
As Husserl's studies have developed it becomes ever clearer that this method is not 
exhausted in the analysis of knowledge, but that its task includes the investigation 
of the different realms of objects, according to what they mean without reference 
to their psychical conditions or the existence of their objects. The extension of this 
general point of view and method from the sphere of logic to ethics and art has, 
he holds, been one of the most fruitful movements of modern thought. (PSF., II, 
1 6 note.) 
422 WILBUR M. URBAN 

only in the realm of scientific concepts but in the non-scientific 
realms of poetry, art, religion, etc., not only on the level of the 
conceptual but on the cognitive levels below the conceptual. 23 
We lose our grasp of the whole, if we confine the symbolizing function 
at the outset to the level of conceptual 'abstract' knowledge. Rather we 
shall have to recognize that this function belongs not only to a single level 
of the theoretical world picture, but that it conditions and carries this 
picture in its totality. 2 * 
How much this warning is needed is apparent when we realize 
that precisely the tendency to narrow the concept of the symbol 
to the logical and mathematical has been a conspicuous tendency 
of recent philosophic thought. 
The symbolic function belongs, then, not to a single level of 
the world picture but holds throughout. It is present on the 
level below conceptual knowledge, in perception itself that is 
the significance of the principle of symbolischer Pragnanz 
but it holds also for the realms of poetry, art, religion, and 
preeminently that of science. The philosophy of symbolic 
forms includes the study of the symbolizing function in all forms 
of the objectification of the human spirit. 

one level of the world picture on which the symbolic func- 
tion is most in evidence is that of myth. The second volume of 
the Philoso'phie der symbolischen Formen is entitled "Das 
mythische Denken," which is in reality a discussion of the prob- 
lem of Sprache und Mythos. In this without question the most 
significant modern study of the myth, the entire problem of the 
nature of myth, of its Erkenntmswert and of its relation to re- 
ligion as symbolic form, is involved. This problem is the subject 
of other papers in this volume, and we shall accordingly confine 
ourselves wholly to its significance in the context of the philoso- 
phy of language. 
The essence of Cassirer's philosophy of myth is that the 
language of the myth represents an original form of the intui- 
tion of reality. In consequence, the individual categories of 
mythical thinking have their own form and structure. Space, 
time, number, classes, all have different meanings in mythical 
*PSF, III, 1 6. 
Vtd., Ill, 57. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 423 
thought from those of science and constitute, in their totality 
and interrelations, a "symbolic form" with its own immanent 
form and significance. Into the details of this analysis we can- 
not, of course, go they are among the most admirable of 
Cassirer's comparative studies. It is sufficient to say that this 
fundamental way of intuiting the world expresses an "organic" 
aspect of reality which escapes the physico-mathematical cate- 
gories of science. Part of this "critical" philosophy, therefore, 
is also the thesis that the myth is to be evaluated, not by norms 
taken from alien spheres, but in terms of its own form 
and structure as an original and primary way of intuiting re- 
ality. 
The development of myth exhibits stages parallel to the 
stages of language from copy, through analogy, to symbol. 
Here, too, an immanent dialectic drives thought on from copy 
to symbol. 25 It is here that the question of the relation of myth 
to religion is raised by Cassirer and, in the last section, entitled 
"Die Dialectik des mythischen Bewusstseins," is given an 
answer which I believe, is, in principle at least, in the right 
direction. According to this view, originally myth and religion 
(and mythical and religious symbolism) were identical, or at 
least inseparable and interfused. It is clearly impossible, he tells 
us, to make any study of religious symbols without a study of 
their relation to myth. There is no positive religion without 
these elements. The further we follow the content of the re- 
ligious consciousness to its beginnings, the more it is found 
impossible to separate the belief content from mythical lan- 
guage y one has then no longer religion in its actual historical and 
cultural nature but merely a shadow picture and an empty 
abstraction. Nevertheless and this is the important point for 
the philosophy of religion despite this inseparable interweav- 
ing of the content of myth and religion, they are far from being 
identical. Neither the form nor the spirit of the two are the 
same. The peculiar character of the religious form of con- 
sciousness shows itself precisely in a changed attitude towards 
the mythical picture of the world. It cannot do without this 
world, for it is in the mythical consciousness that the immediate 
"PSF, II, 2 9 *ff. 
424 WILBUR M. URBAN 
intuition of the meaningfulness of the world is given. Yet in 
the religious consciousness the myth acquires a new meaning 5 it 
becomes symbolic. Religion completes the process of develop- 
ment which myth as such can not. It makes use of the sensuous 
pictures and signs, but at the same time knows them to be such. 
It always draws the distinction between mere existence and 
meaning. 26 
C 
This critical theory of myth and of its relation to religion 
seems to me the only tenable one, when all the relevant facts 
are taken into consideration. In contrast to positivistic theories 
which identify religion with myth, Cassirer's emphasis upon the 
fundamental difference between the two seems to me to be of 
great importance. Nor does it suffice, as in certain theories very 
common at the present time, to distinguish between pre-scientific 
myth, which is transitory, and permanent myth, which is the 
language of religion. There is all the difference in the world 
between saying that religion is myth, however permanent, and 
saying that the language of myth constitutes the indispensable 
source of religious symbolism 5 and Cassirer has grasped this 
fundamental difference. 

on the other hand, true as this conception in principle is, it 
seems to me that, as formulated by Cassirer, it presents essen- 
tially the same difficulties which are encountered in his philoso- 
phy of language. Indeed the same ambiguity which there 
appeared is present in another form in his philosophy of re- 
ligious symbolism. It concerns what he calls the dialectic of 
the mythical consciousness. Religion does indeed complete the 
process of development which myth as such can not. But what 
is this completion? He does tell us, to be sure, that religion 
makes use of the sensuous pictures and signs, but at the same 
time he seems also to tell us that the ideal completion of the 
process would be the mystical consciousness that negative 
mysticism in which the pictures and symbols are transcended 
and ultimately abandoned. Undoubtedly, as the illustrations he 
gives us of the dialectic, taken from the Hebrew, Persian, and 
Hindu religions, indicate, every positive religion reaches a crisis 
*ibid., n, 294. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 425 
in which it breaks with the mythical and on its higher levels 
seeks a direct approach to the absolute. Christianity also, as he 
tells us, reached this crisis and "has fought this fight." It too 
draws the distinction between existence and meaning. This is 
doubtless true, but it is very doubtful whether any form of 
religion certainly not the Christian religion and theology 
ever abandons existence for meaning. It is true, again, that the 
negative theology of the philosophical mystics, such as Eckhart 
and Tauler, might be said to have completed the dialectical proc- 
ess in this fashion, and Cassirer seems to quote them as repre- 
senting the essence of the dialectic of religion. 27 But it is in the 
positive rather than in the negative mystics that the essence of 
Christian mysticism is to be found 5 and this form of mysticism, 
as Von Hiigel has shown, includes both acceptance and tran- 
scendence of the symbol. In any case and this is really the 
only point I wish to raise here Cassirer's conception of the 
relation of myth to religion, however valuable it may be on the 
main issue, nevertheless is not wholly unambiguous, any more 
than is his philosophy of language as a whole. Is it, or is it not, 
the fate of religion to be dissolved into something else into a 
philosophy which is no longer religious or into a mysticism 
which is no longer theological? 
D 
Of this critical idealistic theory of the religious symbol Paul 
Tillich has said that it stands in the forefront of symbol-theory 
today, 28 and in this he is probably right. But this is but one phase 
of Cassirer's more general theory of symbolism. The symbolic 
function belongs, as we have seen, not to any single level of the 
world picture, but holds throughout. By thus identifying the 
symbolic with the entire range of knowledge, including the 
scientific, the concept of the syrilbol and of symbolic truth has 
been given a tremendous expansion and a new significance. It is, 
indeed, on his view, only in the mathematical-physical sciences 
that the full significance of the .philosophy of symbolic forms is 
seen; for, as he tells us, "no matter how high myth and art may 
" PSF, II, 3o6ff. 
28 For a critical discussion of this problem sec a discussion between Paul Tillich 
and myself in The Journal of Liberal Religion, Vol. II, No. i, (1940). 
426 WILBUR M. URBAN 
carry their constructions, they yet remain permanently rooted 
in the primitive world of Ausdruckserlebnisse." 29 It is only in 
the sphere of physical mathematical science that thought, so to 
speak, breaks through the husk of language, with its natural 
forms, and creates a world of concepts which, because of the 
conscious recognition of their nature as symbols, and of science 
itself as symbolic form, makes it possible to realize the ideal 
immanent in knowledge from the start, namely the correlation 
of phenomena in a systematic whole. It is here that the step from 
substance to function is finally taken. 
VI 
The Language of Science: Symbolism as a Scientific Principle 
A 
The third volume of the Philosofhie der symbolischen 
Formen is entitled Phanomenologie der Erkenntnis and the 
third part of this volume bears the title, "Die Bedeutungsfunk- 
tion und der Aufbau der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis." one 
chapter is entitled "Sprache und Wissenschaft, Dingzeichen 
und Ordnungszeichen" and the theme herein expressed is the 
main theme of this part of our study. 
"Language and science" has, indeed, become one of the cen- 
tral problems of modern philosophy of science, as the problem 
of symbolism has become a burning issue in scientific method- 
ology. All that the scientist contributes to the fact is, according 
to Poincare, the language in which it is enunciated. But, if the 
relation of perception to language is such as Cassirer conceives 
it, that "all" is a very great deal indeed; for there is no "fact," 
in the sense of "critical" philosophy, until it is expressed, and 
the primary, if not the only, form of ｅxpression is language. 
Science, so Cassirer maintains in the introduction to Das 
mythische Denken, differs from the other stages of spiritual 
life not in the fact that it gives us the truth itself without any 
mediation through signs and symbols, but rather that science 
recognizes that the symbols which it uses are symbols and 
realizes this fact in a way in which the others do not. 80 This 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 427 
"realization" constitutes the recognition of symbolism as a 
scientific principle and the statement of this principle involv- 
ing both the nature of the symbol and its relation to reality 
becomes the central problem of "science as symbolic form." 
It is in contrast with the copy or model theory of scientific 
concepts which characterized nineteenth century physics, that 
the symbolic character of these concepts is developed. If the 
function of language in general is not to copy but to symbolize 
reality, this is a fortiori true of scientific language. Cassirer cites 
a wealth of illustrations from modern physical science to sub- 
stantiate this thesis, but it is in connection with the theory of 
light that this fundamental change from copy to symbol is per- 
haps clearest, and Cassirer gives an excellent picture of this 
development. 
The corpuscular theory of Newton, according to which light 
consists in very small particles, proved untenable and gave way 
to the undulatory theory of Huygens, based upon an analogy 
taken from perceptible phenomena and giving rise to the con- 
struct of the ether as the substance which has these waves. 
Contradictions arose, however, in the predicates of this hypo- 
thetical ether which could not be eliminated. Physics was led 
even more deeply into paradoxes, and all ad hoc hypotheses 
invented to solve the difficulties served only to lead more deeply 
into the morass. Finally there came the electrodynamic theory 
of the field. The characteristic here is that the reality which is 
designated as the "field" is no longer a complex of physical 
"things" but an ｅxpression for a system of relations. But the 
important thing for us is that the notion of the intuitible is com- 
pletely abandoned and therefore the entire notion of the scien- 
tific concept is changed. 81 This change, which we may take as 
an outstanding illustration of the movement from "schematism" 
to symbol in physics, illustrates also a fundamental change in 
the modern symbolic consciousness of science. The symbol sym- 
bolizes not things (substances) but relations (functions). 
B 
This symbolic theory of scientific concepts is, according to 
Cassirer, "the accepted theory in physical science today" and 
* Ibid.. IIL 
428 WILBUR M. URBAN 
he is, doubtless, on the whole justified in calling it such. He is 
doubtless right also in saying that science recognizes the fact that 
the concepts which it uses are symbols in a way in which other 
symbolic forms do not. Certainly it represents in principle the 
standpoint of such physicists as Jeans and Eddington, to say 
nothing of the continental physicists he cites. For Jeans the pic- 
tures are the fables with which we deck our mathematical equa- 
tions j for Eddington they are dummies in our mathematical 
equations. Symbolism as a scientific principle means, then, in 
the words of Cassirer, that 
physics has finally abandoned the reality of description and representa- 
tion in order to enter upon a realm of greater abstraction. The schema- 
tism of pictures has given place to a symbolism of principles. Physics 
is concerned no longer with the actual itself, but with its structure and 
formal principles. The tendency to unification has conquered the tend- 
ency to intuitive representation. The synthesis which is possible through 
pure concepts of law and relation has shown itself more valuable than 
the apprehension in terms of objects or things. Order and relation have, 
then, become the basal concepts of physics. 32 
To say that physical science, in the later stages of its develop- 
ment, is no longer concerned with the actual, but solely with 
formal principles and structure, is seemingly to enunciate a 
paradox of the most astounding sort. This view, however, 
Cassirer is careful to point out, does not in the least signify 
that science has abandoned sense experience. Science, he tells us, 
"starts with observable objects and is not content until it de- 
duces from its concepts or theories objects and events which 
can also be observed. Without this connection with sense, how- 
ever indirect and remote, there is no verification. 
The meaning of the principle must be ultimately empirically and intui- 
tively fulfilled, but this fulfilment (Erjullung) is never possible directly, 
but only insofar as from the supposition of its validity other propositions 
are derived by means of an hypothetical deduction. None of these 
propositions, none of the individual stages in this logical process, need 
be capable of a direct sensory interpretation. only as a logical totality 
*, Ill, 545. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 429 
can the series of deductions be referred to observation and be proved 
and justified by it. 33 
only as logical totality" this is the significant point. Since 
none of the individual propositions requires reference to sensu- 
ous intuition, there is a gradual shift of the locus of verification 
from the intuitible to the meaningful. "Objectivity" in modern 
physics is not a problem of representation (Darstellung) but 
it is a problem of meaning alone ("ein reines Bedeutungsprob- 
In this last statement we have not only the heart of Cassirer's 
philosophy of science, but of the entire philosophy of symbolic 
forms, of which the scientific form is but a part. For the study 
of modern science shows us, what the philosophy of symbolic 
forms has continually emphasized, that all spiritual life and all 
spiritual development consist in nothing else than in such in- 
tellectual metamorphoses and in this passage from repre- 
sentation to the . creation of meaningful structures. Scientific 
knowledge repeats, in a different dimension to be sure, the 
same process which characterizes language and myth, a fact 
which, as we shall see, raises again, in an acute form, the funda- 
mental problem of the knowledge value of all the symbolic 
forms. 
In that in physical science the concept of substance has given 
place to that of function and the concepts of physics are found 
to symbolize not things but relations, mathematics, as the 
science of relations far excellence, becomes for Cassirer central 
in his entire treatment of science as symbolic form. His philoso- 
phy of mathematics, like his theory of logic, is a topic which 
belongs to other contributors, but some comment seems neces- 
sary in the present context. Here only one problem can be 
raised. It concerns the question of what we may call the "lan- 
guage of mathematics" and mathematics as symbolic form. 
The main problem, of course, is that of the function of mathe- 
matical symbols in modern physical science; but this involves 
"Ibid., Ill, 538. 
84 /Ml., in, 552. 
430 WILBUR M. URBAN 
also the problem of the philosophical basis of pure mathematics. 
Starting with the definition of mathematics as the science of 
numbers, and with the definition of numbers as symbols con- 
structed for the ordering activities of the understanding, there 
is created the problem of the truth value of these symbols 
themselves. 
Are they mere signs to which no objective meaning is to be assigned or 
have they a fandamentum in re? And if the latter is the case where 
are we to seek this basis? Is it given, ready-made, in the "intuition;" or 
must it, apart from and independently of the intuitively given, gain and 
secure its validity in the independent activities of the understanding, in 
pure spontaneity of thought? With these questions we find ourselves in 
the very center of the methodological struggle which is presently raging 
about the meaning and content of the fundamental mathematical con- 
cepts. , . . What does this question mean for our own fundamental prob- 
lem of symbolical thinking? 35 
The solution of this problem involves the entire dispute 
between the intuitive and the formal or symbolic theories in 
modern mathematics, and Cassirer's analysis of modern mathe- 
matical theory is one of the most important, as it is one of the 
most enlightening, phases of his work. So far as the basal prob- 
lem is concerned, his answer is that the above disjunction is 
neither unequivocal nor complete. Mathematics, he holds, has 
objective significance, but that significance does not lie in any 
immediate correlation with the intuited world of "nature," but 
rather in the fact that, by constructing this world according to 
its own formal principles, it is enabled thereby to understand its 
laws. I have neither the space nor the competence to develop his 
solution of this problem in detail it is but an application of the 
principle that the function of "language," in any form, is not to 
copy reality but to symbolize it rather shall I note his com- 
ment on the opposition of realistic and idealistic theory in 
mathematics. A true and valid conception of the symbolic in the 
mathematical field, as in other fields, does not, he tells us, 
consort well with the traditional dualism of idealism and 
realism, subject and object, but rather transcends them. "The 
symbolic belongs neither ... to the sphere of the immanent nor 
*lbid., ill, 414. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 431 
to that of the transcendent; its value consists precisely in the 
fact that it enables us to transcend these oppositions. It is not 
the one nor the other, but 'the one in the other' and c the other 
in the one'." 36 
It is, however, as we have seen, in the transition from the 
schematism of pictures to the symbolism of principles that the 
role of mathematics has become increasingly significant in 
modern science. Order has thereby become the "absoluter 
Grundbegrif" of modern physics. For modern physical science 
the world presents itself no longer as a collection of entities, 
but as an order of happenings or events. Cassirer quotes with 
apparent approval a statement of Weyl in this connection. 
Neither intuitive space nor intuitive time, but only a four-dimensional 
continuum in the abstract mathematical sense, may serve as the medium 
in which physics constructs the external world. If color consisted 
"actually" of ether- vibrations as for Huyghens, it appears now only as 
mathematical functional processes of a periodic character, whereby four 
independent variables occur in the functions as representatives of the 
spatio-temporal medium referring to co-ordinates. What remains, then, 
finally is a symbolic construction in precisely the sense in which Hilbert 
carried such construction through in the field of mathematics. 87 
Thus do the intuited space and time of the immediate Ausdrucks- 
erlebnisse become the ideal space-time which, as Cassirer said, 
while keeping the form of sensuous experience, progressively 
fills that form with non-sensuous ideal content and makes the 
sensuous form a symbol of the ideal. 
D 
In such fashion, then, does science, as symbolic form, find its 
place in Cassirer's. more general idealistic philosophy of lan- 
guage and of symbolic forms. This symbolic theory of scientific 
concepts is, I suppose, not only the "accepted theory today" but 
one to which, as I believe, we are forced by the developments of 
modern scientific methodology. Nevertheless, as formulated by 
98 ibid., m, 44 4 f. 
$T ?F, III, 546. The quotation from Weyl is taken from his Philosophic der 
Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft, found in Handbuch der Philosophic, 80. 
432 WILBUR M. URBAN 
Cassirer, it presents certain difficulties not wholly unrelated to 
those found in other parts of his general philosophy. 
The primary difficulty arises out of an ambiguity in Cassirer's 
conception of science. The basal science, on his view, is the 
mathematical-physical, for here the essential law of all knowl- 
edge manifests itself completely j and it is for this type of science 
that his theory of scientific symbolism is developed. But there 
are other sciences ("so-called," at least), biology, psychology, 
etc., to say nothing of the Geisteswissenschaften, which, so to 
speak, employ other languages and exhibit very different sym- 
bolic form. Are they science or are they not? It is possible to 
hold, with many scientists, that they are really not science 
that the universe is exhaustively analyzable into terms of pure 
mathematics, and only insofar as this analysis is carried out do 
we have science, properly speaking. This is a possible view, but 
it is very questionable whether the concepts of the mathematical 
sciences are most suitable for the biologist and psychologist, to 
say nothing of history and the other Geisteswissenschaften. 
Living organisms and conscious minds are, to be sure, a part of 
nature, but the concepts of nature developed in mathematical 
physics are scarcely such as to express adequately their nature 
as living and conscious. on the other hand, we may say that 
these are really science j and if that is the case the essential 
law of all knowledge does not manifest itself completely in the 
mathematical-physical sphere j nor is the concept of symbol 
developed in this sphere adequate to all forms of scientific sym- 
bolism. We are forced to a concept of "double symbolism" in 
science, such as I have developed in Language and Reality 
It may be said, of course, that the issue here is largely verbal 
and concerns merely the question of the "definition" of science. 
But I do not believe that this is all there is to this problem. It 
concerns the much more fundamental question of whether the 
ideal of knowledge is really realized in the mathematical-physi- 
cal form, whether, in short, there are not other aspects of reality 
the adequate ｅxpression of which requires a different kind of 
symbolism. Of the fact itself, of this "double symbolism," there 
is no doubt j the only question is whether we call this symbolic 
38 Language and Reality, 5235. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 433 
form, other than that in the mathematical sciences, science or not. 
It is not, of course, my intention to argue these points here I 
have done so in another context but merely to suggest an im- 
portant point at which Cassirer's philosophy of science leaves 
important questions unanswered. 
Closely connected with this problem is one no less funda- 
mental, and one which involves an ambiguity no less disturbing 
than the preceding. It concerns the relation of the scientific, 
more specifically the mathematical symbol, to ordinary lan- 
guage. 
The ideal of science seems to be to pass from a language of 
things to a language of pure relations, a language which by an 
immanental necessity tends to become the language of mathe- 
matics. Science breaks through the husk of ordinary language, 
with its connotations, into a world of "pure notation." It be- 
comes wholly ^pronomlnaly to use Karl Vossler's ｅxpression. The 
question, then, arises as to the relation of this mathematical 
symbolism to natural language. I am not sure as to Cassirer's 
position at this point 5 here also he seems to be ambiguous. 
According to him, the relation of mathematical symbols to 
"natural" language seems to parallel the relation of religion to 
myth. As the religious consciousness cannot abandon completely 
the mythical picture of the world, although it surpasses and 
transcends it, so the scientific and mathematical language never 
quite abandons the speech forms from which it developed. 
All "rigorous science," Cassirer tells us, demands that thought 
shall "free itself from the compulsion of the word;" 39 but this 
is never completely possible. The issue, as I see it, is not 
whether it is possible, but whether it is desirable. A mathe- 
matical equation, until it is interpreted, "says nothing," and I 
cannot see how it can be interpreted except in terms of "natural" 
language which involves inevitably those "pre-scientific" cate- 
gories, of substance and attribute, which, according to this 
theory of science, it is the ideal of science to transcend. 
I find, then, in Cassirer an ambiguity which I also find 
present in many modern physicists. on the one hand, we find 
them speaking of electrons, etc., as the symbols "with which 
*PSF, III, 382. 
434 WILBUR M. URBAN 
we deck our mathematical equations }" the assumption being 
that the equations, the mathematical relations, express the non- 
symbolic aspects of reality. on the other hand, these same 
mathematical signs, which make up the equations, are them- 
selves characterized as symbols with the result that we are 
left uncertain as to what is symbol and what reality. My own 
view which I do not, of course, wish to argue here is that 
mathematical symbols are merely "pronominal," they merely 
manipulate, and, until they are translated into non-mathemati- 
cal terms, "say nothing." I should be disposed to say with 
Brouwer that mathematics is "weit mehr ein Thun denn tine 
Lehre" Yet, whatever pure mathematics may be, mathematical 
physics is not a mere Thun> (activity or manipulation), but 
also a Lehre or theory a theory of the nature of reality, a 
theory which, as I believe, can be stated only in terms of natural 
language and of the categories which naturally belong to such 
language. In other words, physical theory must ultimately pre- 
suppose a metaphysics which cannot be merely a symbolism of 
relations but must be a symbolism of things. 
The questions here raised, important as they are, do not, 
however, affect, I think, the general critical-idealistic philoso- 
phy of science. The essence of that interpretation of science, 
as it is for all those who thus conceive it, is that science is one 
symbolic form among other symbolic forms. Science, Cassirer 
would say with Weyl, I think, concedes to idealism that its 
objective world is not given, but only propounded like a prob- 
lem to be solved, and that it can only be constructed by symbols. 
He would also say with Eddington, I think, that the explora- 
tion of the external world by science leads not to concrete 
reality, but to a world of symbols beneath which these methods 
are not adapted to penetrating. In saying these things, if he 
says them, he would also say, by implication, that there are other 
symbolic forms which are more adapted if not to penetrate 
into concrete reality (Cassirer would probably not wish to use 
this ｅxpression), certainly more adapted to expressing concrete 
reality. But there is a further implication of this theory of 
science which he could scarcely avoid, namely, that science, so 
understood, presupposes a metaphysics. Not only is art as 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 435 
symbolic form une metaphysique figuree, to use Bergson's 
terms, but science is also. The ideal of modern science, as con- 
ceived by Cassirer, is expressed in the postulate that nothing 
shall be admitted to science which is not resolvable into the 
sensible and the measurable. But this postulate presupposes 
that there is a metaphysical sphere not thus resolvable. If so, 
the question arises whether, corresponding to this sphere, there 
is not a language of metaphysics and a metaphysical symbolism. 
VII 
The Language of Metaphysics and The Nature of 
Philosophical Discourse 

one of the chief problems which face any one who realizes 
the issues raised by the problem of the relation of language to 
thought and knowledge is that of the language of philosophy. 
The philosophy of symbolic forms is philosophy and not 
science} although, of course, the results of scientific investiga- 
tion find their place in the phenomenology of these forms. 
What, then, is the character of philosophical language? 
That there is such a thing as philosophical discourse, as con- 
trasted with scientific, is recognized by Cassirer in his acceptance 
of the Hegelian principle that the phenomenological method 
is the presupposition of philosophy and in the application of 
this method to the philosophy of symbolic forms. It is recog- 
nized also that philosophical discourse involves a radical shift 
from the sphere of things (that of science) to the sphere of 
meanings (and values). The traditional view, of course, is that 
this discourse is identical with that of metaphysics that the 
language of philosophy and that of metaphysics are one. This 
view has, however, been challenged in the modern world, not 
only by positivism but by certain interpretations of the Kantian 
"critical" philosophy. Cassirer's position is one continuous 
critique of positivism in all spheres of the human spirit} it is 
not so clear what his position is regarding Kant and meta- 
physics. In any case, it seems obvious that a philosophy of 
436 WILBUR M. URBAN 
symbolic forms, to be in any sense complete, must include a 
study of the language and the form which we call metaphysical. 
B 
In the entire three volumes there is only one point at which 
the problem of metaphysics is presented at all the section in 
Vol. Ill, entitled "Intuitive and Symbolic Knowledge in Mod- 
ern Metaphysic." It is a critique of Bergson's position in which 
metaphysics is defined as the science which seeks to dispense 
with symbols "the most radical denial," as Cassirer rightly 
says, "of the right of all symbol formation which has ever 
appeared in the history of metaphysics." 40 
Cassirer's criticism of Bergson at this point is, I believe, fully 
justified. Quite rightly he points out that this sharp contrast, 
between the way of metaphysical intuition and the way of 
science and knowledge, shows Bergson to be the son of a 
naturalistic epoch in which all activity of the intellect is re- 
duced to the purely vital or biological. Quite rightly also he 
points out the impossibility of a purely intuitive metaphysics 5 
for it would not be any kind of knowledge, even metaphysical, 
unless it gave us some description of the "vital force," and 
this too requires theoretical or form elements 5 in other words, 
metaphysical knowledge must be symbolic form also. 
This criticism of a purely intuitive metaphysics seems to 
imply both the right to a metaphysical language and also to sym- 
bolic construction in metaphysics. We look, therefore, for a 
further development of the language of metaphysics and of 
symbolism as a metaphysical principle; but little light is thrown 
upon either the nature of metaphysics or the character of its 
language and symbolism. Just as we feel that we are about to 
put our hands on the key to the solution of the problem, Cas- 
sirer remarks, "Aber wir brechen an diesem Punkte ab." (Ill, 
4.8) All that can be asked, he continues, is a journey round the 
world, the globus intellectualis. It would seem, then, that the 
philosophy of symbolic forms is intended to be just such a 
journey neither penetration into the essence of "reality" nor 
an ultimate interpretation of its meaning. It is apparently 
40 PSF, III, 42ff, esp. 43 and 44. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 437 
merely a phenomenology, not a metaphysics that is offered us. 
Nevertheless, it seems doubtful whether a philosophy of lan- 
guage and of symbolic forms can stop at this point. Even in a 
journey around the globus intellectualis the traveller will in- 
evitably come upon a region in which men talk a language which 
is neither that of science, as understood by Cassirer, nor of myth 
and poetry a language and symbolic form which can only be 
called metaphysical. That there is such a language can, I think, 
scarcely be denied. If the various symbolic forms, art, religion, 
science, all, in their several ways, constitute une metcrphysique 
figuree, then there must be, it would seem, a language of meta- 
physics in which these symbolic forms are expanded and inter- 
preted. As metaphysical "postulation" is necessary to round 
out our world of experience, so metaphysical language is neces- 
sary to make these other languages intelligible. Elsewhere I 
have myself attempted a study of this unique language and of 
the nature of the symbolic structure called metaphysics. 41 I 
have, of course, no intention of going into that here, but desire 
merely to suggest that this is one of the gaps in Cassirer's 
thought which I am unable to fill, and that precisely here the 
fundamental ambiguity in his evaluation of language is in evi- 
dence. 
It would doubtless be an impertinence should I venture to 
indicate what, had Cassirer carried out this task, his conception 
of the language of metaphysics and of metaphysics as symbolic 
form would have been. It may be permitted, however, to sug- 
gest the point at which, in attempting to understand Cassirer, 
I have found myself thrown into confusion and uncertainty. If 
the ideal form and immanental law of all knowledge is, indeed, 
to be found in the mathematical-physical sciences, then it would 
seem that the symbolism of metaphysics must also be a sym- 
bolism of relations and that a philosophy of events, such as 
that of Whitehead for instance, would necessarily be the re- 
sultant metaphysics. on the other hand, if it is true, as we are 
told by Cassirer, that science as symbolic form has no exclusive 
value, but is only one way of constructing reality, and has value 
only from the standpoint of science, then it would appear that 
41 Language and Reality, Chap. XIII. 
438 WILBUR M. URBAN 
a metaphysics, to be adequate, must be a metaphysics of art 
and religion also and must have a language and symbolic form 
which includes these forms also in which case it could no 
longer be a symbolism of relations merely, but must be a 
symbolism of things also. 
But all this may be beside the point. It may be, after all, 
that it is merely a phenomenology and not a metaphysics with 
which Cassirer presents us. The question always remains, I 
suppose, whether, as in the case of Kant, the critical transcen- 
dental method is the denial of metaphysics or itself a meta- 
physics. This is, I believe, an ambiguity inherent in the Kantian 
position and one shared by the philosophy of symbolic forms 
itself. If so, this ambiguity must take its place beside the 
other forms of ambiguity which have presented themselves at 
various stages of the development of this philosophy. The key 
to the understanding of knowledge, Cassirer tells us, is the 
Kantian principle that we must have our eyes, not on the 
results, but on the processes of knowledge. 42 That may be an 
important key to understanding, but it is scarcely sufficient 
for evaluation; it may reveal to us the meaning of the process, 
but can scarcely determine the truth of its result. This brings 
us to the problem of meaning and truth in Cassirer's philosophy. 
VIII 
Language and Reality. The Problem of Meaning and Truth 
A 
How much the present writer has learned from his journey 
in Cassirer's company around the globus intellectualis, is, I 
hope, fully clear from the sympathetic presentation of the main 
points of his philosophy of symbolic forms. But that I have 
still much to learn is clear also from the fact that I have been 
forced to confess my perplexity at certain crucial points. What 
has puzzled me has already been suggested by the indication 
of certain ambiguities present in his philosophy of language eo 
nomine, and which have grown in significance as we have passed 
on to the wider implications of his philosophy. 
4 *PSF, III, 7ff, esp. 8. 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 
The critical position which Cassirer maintains throughoir 
plicitly denies exclusive value to any one of the fundair 
symbolic forms. Modern science has come to recognize, he 
that its concepts or symbols are constructions for a spe 
pose, namely, "to deduce, as from models, what will 
in the external world." As such "they correspond to tl 
point of science and have no ultimate meaning out 
standpoint." Art and religion are equally symbc 
equally ways of representing the world. "None of th 
Cassirer tells us, is a "direct reproduction of realist 
facts." All share in the common character of beit 
of ｅxpression of one spiritual principle. All have 
they all also have truth? 
To none of these forms, therefore, does Cass" 
ing or significance. The question is whether 
includes the truth- value of knowledge. I may 
this point also Cassirer seems to me to give ar 
It is true that he seems to conceive them aL 
edge and truth. Even to the mythical for 
value. From the standpoint of the proble 
maintains "relative truth" can be no lor 
significantly enough, he puts the wor 
marks. 43 As for all "critical" philosopi 
theory, the myth expresses aspects of 
matical-physical language cannot expr 
art and religion, which make use o* 
bolically, are a fortiori forms of trut 
aspect of his thought. It is in science 
law of knowledge finds its supra" 
higher symbolic form with a tr 
quotation marks. We cannot esc 
as symbolic form, is not only t 
that shall supersede all other 
further suspicion that, when " 
the other forms, it is with a 
the present writer at least, s* 
"ibid., n, 19. 
WILBUR M. URBAN 
splendid structure which Cassirer has erected in these three 
nes. 
"> tendencies strive for supremacy in Cassirer's thought, 
d they do in all forms of philosophy which draw their 
spiration from the ideals of knowledge of a scientific 
; deals upon which Kant himself seemed at least to set 
<natur. on the one hand, there is the narrow conception 
'hich it seems difficult to avoid in this age of science. 
xssages in Cassirer's works this seems to be the truth 
wcellence y as it was for Kant in one of his philo- 
-. on the assumption that the basal conception and 
knowledge are completely shown in the methods 
' seems inevitable. on the other hand, another 
strives for recognition in Cassirer's thought, as 
n the thought of any one who is as conversant 
readth and depth of human culture a concep- 
words of John Dewey, is "broader and more 
;n which Kant also put his imprimatur in 
>sophical moods. It is the dilemma under- 
Ulemmas into which the modern mind has 
that Cassirer had a solution for this 
>nly my own failure to bring the many 
gument into a significant whole which 
it. None the less, I fail to see it, and 
ask for more light. There is, indeed, 
at which, if I understand it aright, 
-er tells us, contains in itself an 
'drives it on unmercifully further 
any boundary hitherto reached." 
notion, adaequatio intellectus et 
merely with calling in question 
world picture, but seizes upon 
f ." The outcome of this inner 
e notion of truth to that of 
to a realm of pure meaning 
d new difficulties, it never- 
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 441 
theless results in the subordination of the notion of truth to that 
of meaning" 44 a subordination which, as we have seen, is as 
much a feature of the development of modern physical science 
as of any other symbolic form 5 for objectivity in modern physics 
is not a problem of representation (f>arstellung)^ but of mean- 
ing alone (ein reines Bedeutwngsproblem). 
This subordination of truth to meaning is obviously suscep- 
tible of two interpretations. on the one hand, it may be so 
interpreted as to express a widespread tendency in modern 
philosophy one shared by positivism and instrumentalism 
alike namely, to insist upon the existence of realms of mean- 
ing or significance (such as those of art and metaphysics) in 
which notions of truth and falsity are irrelevant and into which, 
as it has been said, "truth has no right to enter." on the other 
hand, it may be so interpreted as to express the notion that, 
in the development of thought which has resulted in the sub- 
ordination of truth to meaning, truth has a right to enter because 
the meaningful is already true, for truth and meaning ulti- 
mately coincide. The sum total of meaningful discourse is the 
truth. 
This is my own solution of the problem, as developed in 
Language and Reality. I hope it is Cassirer's also, for then it 
would not only be true that I have learned immensely from his 
philosophy of symbolic forms, but also that from this learning 
I have not drawn consequences which would be disavowed by 
Cassirer himself. I hope it is his solution also, for the reason 
that from this solution of the problem would follow, I think, 
the answers to the other problems which I have felt constrained 
to raise in the course of these discussions. 
WILBUR M. URBAN 
YALE UNIVERSITY 
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 
44 PSF, III, 6ff.j also 3*8ff. 
'3 
James Gutmann 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 
13 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 
ASSIRER'S Humanism is not a segment or portion o 
his philosophy j it is an aspect of all his writing and teach- 
ing. It permeates his thought in his historical studies and also 
in his theoretical and systematic works. As a student of the 
history of ideas, Cassirer concentrated his interest and attention 
on those great figures and ages of intellectual history in which 
the humanistic interest was especially prominent. His studies 
of Plato and Platonism in ancient thought and in later times, 
of the philosophy of the Renaissance in its ethical and cosmo- 
logical speculations, and of the age of the Enlightenment are 
some of the evidences of his interest in the traditions of human- 
ism. His work as an editor of Leibniz and Kant, his biography 
of Kant and his studies of Descartes, Kepler, Leibniz, and 
others, reflect a prevailing sense of philosophy's relation to other 
cultural interests. Even his most technical contributions to 
linguistics and to epistemological and mathematical theory re- 
veal his pervasive humanistic concern. The relation of these 
specialized studies to his great systematic work is signally illus- 
trated in his essay on Language and Myth, which was written 
at the very time when he was formulating the Philosofhie der 
symbolischen Formen. And the significance of Cassirer's human- 
ism in his conception of symbolic forms is definitively expressed 
in the synoptic version of his system, his Essay on Man. 
The philosophy of symbolic forms starts from the presupposition that, 
if there is any definition of the nature or "essence" of man, this defini- 
tion can only be understood as a functional one, not a substantial one. 
We cannot define man by any inherent principle which constitutes his 
metaphysical essence nor can we define him by any inborn faculty or 
instinct that may be ascertained by empirical observation. Man's out- 
445 
446 JAMES GUTMANN 
standing characteristic, his distinguishing mark, is not his metaphysical 
or physical nature but his work. It is this work, it is the system of 
human activities, which defines and determines the circle of "humanity." 
Language, myth, religion, art, science, history are the constituents, the 
various sectors of this circle. 1 
The present paper will not, of course, attempt to review 
Cassirer's achievements as a humanist in all the ranges of his 
work. However, while stressing his contribution to the humani- 
ties, it will consider his literary and artistic interests in relation 
to that "philosophical anthropology" which is, after all, the 
equivalent in Greek dress of wisdom-loving humanism. The 
designation of "philosophical anthropology" was chosen by 
Cassirer himself, following in Kant's footsteps, to describe the 
content of the seminar in which he was engaged at the time of 
his death. Cassirer's use of Kant's terms in this seminar as in 
his Essay on Man showed at one and the same time his reverence 
for Kant and the independence with which he unlike some of 
the neo-Kantians employed the Kantian legacy. 
Though Cassirer's modification of Kant raised difficulties 
both in his historical work and in his systematic writing, this 
paper, while considering some of them below, is particularly 
designed to show how other elements, borrowed and original, 
contributed to Cassirer's humanism. After considering some of 
these elements, notably the influence of German Romanticism, 
a brief review of Cassirer's own summary of the history of 
Western humanism will lead back naturally to certain aspects 
of his Kantianism, not only in its relevance to his position as 
a humanist historian, but also to the relation of his views on his- 
tory to his other humanistic interests. That his humanism is one 
of the constant factors in the wide range of his interests and in all 
his contributions to philosophy is the thesis of this paper. Cas- 
sirer is a follower of Kant, but is surely not to be interpreted as 
a neo-Kantian in any limited sense. He stands in many tradi- 
tions, among them, neither last nor least, in the great tradition 
of philosophic humanism. 
1 Essay on Man y 67-68. 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 447 
I 
It is significant that Cassirer came to philosophy as a student 
of literature and linguistics. Though his publications include 
numerous technical studies not only of mathematics but of 
physics and psychology, his initial interest in languages and 
literature remained a major preoccupation. His studies of 
German culture, Freiheit und Form> as well as some of the 
essays which compose his subsequent Idee und Gestalt anticipate 
in nuce doctrines concerning myth and language which he de- 
veloped in his later writings. Goethe and Schiller, Herder, 
Kleist and Holderlin, Lessing and Rousseau are figures to 
whom he returned again and again, not only to use them to 
illuminate the work of other more technical philosophers, but 
for their own sake. He wrote on Goethe and Plato or on Goethe 
and Kant y but he is as much interested in Goethe's Pandora 
and Faust as in Goethe's views on natural science or in Goethe 
and mathematical physics. He discussed Lessing and Mendels- 
sohn or Schiller and Shaftesbury with as much emphasis on 
the more literary as on the more technically philosophical 
writer. His study of Holderlin foreshadowed the exhaustive 
analysis of mythopoeic imagination in which he later developed 
the insights of modern romanticism and particularly of Schel- 
ling's philosophy of mythology and revelation. 
Though following Helmholtz, Otto Liebmann, and Cas- 
sirer's own teacher, Hermann Cohen, "back to Kant," and 
though adhering to Kantian principles, Cassirer repeatedly 
proved his indebtedness to some of the insights of certain post- 
Kantian writers, notably Humboldt and Schelling. Rejecting 
the metaphysical absolutism which prevailed in Fichte, in 
Schelling's emphasis on the Infinite, and especially in Hegel, 
and though critical of the psychological approach made by 
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, he found in Romanticism's aware- 
ness of the significance of myth, of poetic imagery and cultural 
continuity, elements worthy of being added to the stern and 
rigorous discipline of Kantianism. Never forgetting Kant's in- 
sistence that all philosophy must regard the dualism between 
448 JAMES GUTMANN 
being and becoming as a logical rather than a metaphysical 
dualism and that it must accept the findings of science as its 
data, he nevertheless concerned himself with the processes of 
change, of becoming, which Romanticism emphasizes. Differing 
from Kant and agreeing with Humboldt that speculation re- 
garding the genesis and essence of language is not the business 
of the philosopher, he carried forward the study of linguistics 
for which Jacob Grimm had laid the foundations. Conceiving 
man not as homo sapiens nor as homo jaber but as animal 
symbolicum, he concerned himself with symbolic forms in all 
aspects of man's experience. 
To what extent this fusion of neo-Kantianism with interests 
and problems largely foreign to Kant's thought generated diffi- 
culties for Cassirer need not be questioned now. But any under- 
standing of man as animal symbolicum requires at least a brief 
consideration of Cassirer's use of mythopoeic data. Cassirer 
traced the relation of myth to speculative thought from Plato 
and neo-Platonism to such modern writers as Giambattista Vico, 
Holderlin and Schelling. Though the attitudes of these and 
other related thinkers differ with regard to the precise signifi- 
cance of mythical elements in human nature and culture, they 
agree in conceiving mythic apprehension as more than meta- 
phorical or allegorical. None of them sees the symbolic func- 
tion of myth precisely as Cassirer himself came to view it; but 
Schelling approaches this view more closely than the others. 
Moreover, Cassirer construed Schelling's Philosophic der 
Mythologie as being, in part, an elaboration and development 
of an early intuition of Holderlin's. "Mythopoeic imagery," 
he wrote, "is no mere ornament which we incidentally add to 
our portrait of reality, but it is one of the necessary organs 
for the apprehension of reality itself. In it we find the world 
and life first truly revealed and made significant." 2 
As this statement, quoted from Cassirer's essay on "Holderlin 
and German Idealism," suggests, he acknowledged this early 
anticipation of his conception of mythopoeic imagination as a 
necessary organ of apprehension which he developed especially 
in the second volume of the Philosophie der symbolischen 
* Idee und Gestalt, 121. 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 449 
Formen. In spite of Cassirer's diagnosis of Holderlin's intel- 
lectual limitations, his appreciation of Holderlin's artistic in- 
sights reveals a fundamental sympathy. If he denies Holderlin 
a position of great importance in the history of philosophy, he 
credits him with a high degree of poetic inspiration. It is sig- 
nificant, moreover, that, though he bases his own estimate of 
Holderlin's artistic greatness on the poet's concern with mythic 
imagery, he also finds this the source of his chief philosophic 
deficiency. He seems to be convinced that Holderlin's absorption 
in mythology actually interfered with his attaining an adequate 
total conception of human nature and human history. Holder- 
lin happily reacted against those eighteenth century thinkers 
who treated myth only in a derogatory sense j but Cassirer 
finds his attainments in philosophy negligible despite Holder- 
lin's "lifelong earnest wrestling with philosophic problems, 
since he was never a systematic thinker." It remained for Schel- 
ling, who recognized myth as a product of man's collective 
imagination, not only to see myth as a great and indestructible 
force basic to all culture, but also to formulate the first sys- 
tematic philosophy of mythology. 
Whether or not this estimate of Holderlin be accepted is less 
important, at least in the present context, than the circumstance 
that Cassirer's judgment is based on his insistence concerning 
the lack of system in Holderlin's thought. It is not entirely clear 
whether he believes such a lack of system to be due to tempera- 
mental limitations or to the inadequacy of a humanism which 
fails to recognize the importance of non-literary and non- 
artistic elements as ｅxpressions of human nature. Be that as it 
may, it is evidence of the primary importance which Cassirer 
attached to systematic construction in philosophy. 
II 
However much Cassirer differed from Alexander Pope, the 
title of whose poem he used for his Essay on Man y he agreed 
with him that "the proper study of mankind is man." To be 
sure, Cassirer included in such a study many elements which 
would have seemed irrelevant not only to Pope but to the 
philosophers of his day who discussed human nature. Indeed, 
450 JAMES GUTMANN 
the history of the interpretation of human nature from the time 
when the Greeks inscribed "Know Thyself" on the Temple 
of Apollo would show striking contrasts not only with regard 
to the content and scope of such knowledge but also with 
respect to the methods of pursuing it. The anthropological phi- 
losophy which Kant fathered seems often to have been neglected 
by philosophers who claimed to be Kantians. It itself has under- 
gone significant changes. Yet every example of it which is 
worthy of its founder combines the ethical imperative char- 
acteristic of Kant with the scepticism that underlies his Critiques 
but which is, like all genuine scepticism, the "counterpart of 
resolute humanism.'* 
"The starting point of all anthropological philosophy," writes 
Bernard Groethuysen in his essay "Towards an Anthropological 
Philosophy," 
or all philosophy of man, is the ancient maxim, c Know Thyself.' But 
what is it that man wishes to know about himself? What are the 
questions which he puts to himself? 'Know Thyself* is the command. 
. . . [But this] means not simply try to define yourself by concepts, . . . 
but become conscious of yourself, live in the consciousness of yourself, 
understand yourself, come to experience yourself, be present to yourself, 
live in the awareness of your present, come to yourself. 4 
As Socrates interpreted the Delphic injunction, it meant not 
merely that the unexamined life was no life for man, but that 
self-knowledge by its very nature could not be achieved in 
isolation, that it involved a co-operative venture and that the 
individual, to be truly known, must be known not only in all 
his social relations but, indeed, required the assistance of others 
to achieve this very knowledge. In Socrates, "philosophy, 
which had hitherto been conceived as an intellectual monologue, 
is transformed into a dialogue. only by way of dialogical or 
dialectic thought can we approach the knowledge of human 
nature." 5 Socrates finds his teachers among those who dwell in 
the city and is content to interrogate an unschooled slave boy, 
if only the latter can add to his knowledge of the nature of 
8 Essay on Man, i . 
4 Philosophy and History ^ ed. by Klibansky and Paton, 77, 
5 Essay on Man, 5. 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 451 
man. It is surely in this sense that "his philosophy, if he pos- 
sesses a philosophy," is strictly anthropological. 
Doubtless one of the aspects of Renaissance culture which 
has drawn scholars like Cassirer again and again to study its art 
and thought is the reaffirmation, involved in its cultural rebirth, 
of the validity of natural human aspiration. Contrasted with 
the other-worldliness of mediaevalism, the recognition that 
human nature is indeed natural led to the conviction that human 
appetites and aspirations can yield all manner of excellence. 
The plasticity of man's endowments not only suggested the 
ideal of the uomo universale but an increased interest in variety 
and differentiation as such. Though this central awareness of the 
Renaissance has been remarked by many students, and though 
Cassirer himself gave attention to its manifestation by many 
contrasting types, his study of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 
expressed this aspect of Renaissance humanism with singular 
persuasiveness: What Pico 
sets up as the distinctive privilege of man is the almost unlimited 
fower of self -trans formation at his disposal. Man is that being to whom 
no particular form has been prescribed and assigned. He possesses the 
power of entering into any form whatever. What is novel in this idea 
lies not in its content, but rather in the value Pico places on this content. 
. . . With Pico this inner unrest of man, impelling him on from one 
goal to another, and forcing him to pass from one form to another, no 
longer appears as a mere stigma upon human nature, as a mere blot 
and weakness. Pico admires this multiplicity and multiformity, and 
he sees in it a mark of human greatness. 6 
Clearly, for man to know himself, in this sense, is to recognize 
the rich and varied potentialities of his nature. 
That there were limitations upon even the inclusive ideal 
of Renaissance humanism is evident in the comparatively small 
place which was allowed to natural science by humanists such 
as Erasmus and Vives. But in this respect, as in many others, 
Cassirer views the Renaissance as an age in which distinctive and 
original developments in the relation of science to other learning 
took place. 
*In the Jwrnal of th* History of WMS, III, no. 3, 331, 
45* JAMES GUTMANN 
III 
In his monograph, "Naturalistische und humanistische Be- 
griindung der Kulturphilosophie" (published in 1939) as well 
as in his Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften (1942), Cassirer 
traces in detail the complicated relationship of the naturalistic 
and humanistic factors in philosophy from the Renaissance to 
the twentieth century. In both of these essays Cassirer uses his 
humanism to clarify problems of the philosophy of culture. This 
field of study, he repeatedly points out, is perhaps the most 
problematic and disputed realm in the whole domain of phi- 
losophy. Not only are clear and recognized solutions lacking 
in this novel philosophic discipline, but there is even a lack 
of agreement as to the questions which may reasonably be 
asked. Unlike logic, physics, and ethics, which remained the 
three main branches of philosophy from antiquity down to the 
time of Kant, these newer questions lack a secure tradition and 
development. According to Cassirer's interpretation, Kant is 
here, as in so many other domains, the dividing line between 
fundamentally different views of the relation of nature and 
human nature, or, to change the metaphor, the bridge from 
classical humanism to distinctively modern conceptions of man 
and culture. 
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Cassirer 
notes, a new preoccupation became increasingly evident among 
philosophers, though it could find no definite place in the 
traditional systems. Cultivated by philosophical humanists, the 
discipline which was later to be called by Dilthey the "nattir- 
liche System der Geisteswissenschajten" could not be assimilated 
to traditional philosophy, because it appeared to conflict with 
the natural and mathematical sciences, to which the mightiest 
and most productive forces, over which the modern spirit 
reigned, were applied. To the new scientific philosophers there 
seemed to be no place for a genuinely respectable philosophy 
apart from mathematics and the mathematical sciences, which 
constituted the ideal of knowledge. If the realities of humanism 
were to become accessible to philosophic reason, this would 
have to be accomplished by making them accessible to the 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 453 
same mathematical apprehension which had grasped the physi- 
cal universe. The alternative was to leave the humanistic enter- 
prise in mystic darkness, subject to theological traditions. 
Spinoza's attempt to establish a systematic unity between ethics 
and geometry was based upon the conviction that human nature 
could no longer be regarded as an enclave in an all-inclusive 
natural order. Man and human achievements must henceforth 
be viewed and described as though they were a matter of lines, 
surfaces, or corporeal bodies. Spinoza's doctrine of a unified 
nature reached its climax in his demand for a monistic view not 
merely as a metaphysic but as a strict method of interpreting 
nature. A sound philosophy will dispense with teleology and 
banish the notion of purpose from nature} for, if we seek the 
genesis of this notion, it is evident that it is merely an anthropo- 
morphic misunderstanding and falsification, whereas only an 
application of mathematical law can yield the truth. 
Spinoza's monistic methodology conditioned subsequent 
thought, and precisely this demand for unity became the de- 
cisively important motive in the revival of Spinozism at the 
end of the eighteenth century. Schelling linked his thought to 
Spinoza's at this point and expressly declared that his "Phi- 
losophy of Identity" was designed to complete what Spinoza 
had posited in his first, daring outline. But in spite of this 
assurance of complete agreement and consonance with Spinoza, 
Schelling could not take up the problem at the same point 
where Spinoza had left it. For even if he teaches that there is 
an absolute identity between nature and spirit, the concept of 
nature, one of the supposedly identical factors in the equation, 
has changed fundamentally for him. When Schelling speaks of 
nature, he reiterates that he is not thinking of a being which 
merely has extension and motion. He does not apprehend it 
as a concept of geometric relationships and mechanical laws but 
as a Whole having living forms and powers. The system of 
nature of mathematical physics is for him a mere abstraction, 
a shadow world. From this initial stage of being, philosophic 
thought ascends to the actual world of spirit to the world of 
history and human culture. From theoretic knowledge of the 
laws of space and time, matter and force, the path of philosophy 
454 JAMES GUTMANN 
ascends through the realm of moral consciousness to the highest 
stage, the stage of aesthetic awareness. 
That which we call nature is a poem which lies concealed in a secret, 
wondrous form. Yet, if the riddle could be revealed, we would recog- 
nize in it the Odyssey of the spirit, which, wondrously deceived, seeks 
itself while fleeing from itself, for through the sensuous world meaning 
can be discerned only as if through words, just as the land of imagina- 
tion towards which we aim may be discerned as if through half-trans- 
parent mists. 7 
Cassirer quotes these lines of Schelling's in his "Naturalis- 
tische und humanistische Begrundung der Kulturphilosophie" in 
an historic summary which we are following in synoptic form. 
He goes on to point out how Romanticism developed this view 
of Schelling's. In so doing he also indicated his own relation- 
ship to the Romantic movement. For Cassirer holds that the 
strength as well as the weakness of Romanticism are to be found 
in its attempt to explain by a single principle and to view in a 
single focus all conscious phenomena from the first dreamlike 
dawn of mythical consciousness, through fable and poesy up to 
the loftiest pronouncements of thought in language, science, 
and philosophy. The land of imagination, of which Schelling 
speaks, and the realm of strict logical knowledge constantly 
interpenetrate in romantic theory j they are never separated, 
but interlock with one another. Romanticism's greatest achieve- 
ments, according to Cassirer, were derived from this imagina- 
tive power and intuition. Not only was nature seen in a new 
light, but, so viewed, it included all forms of the spirit. Here 
for the first time seemed to be revealed the most genuine and 
profoundest sources of myth and religion, of language and 
literature, of morality and law. For Romanticism the origin 
of all things of the spirit, which is clear and mysterious at one 
and the same time, is to be found in the Volksgeist. This is a 
kind of humanistic naturalism, even though it speaks the lan- 
guage of a spiritual metaphysics. 
The weakness and danger of this position for a humanistic 
philosophy become clearly apparent when the veil is lifted 
f Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus (Sdmmtliche Werke, III, 
628). 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 455 
which Romanticism had thrown over nature and history. This 
takes place whenever philosophy is no longer satisfied with 
delving by intuition into the ultimate depths of life but instead 
seeks to examine its view of life scientifically. This change of 
attitude, which occurred, for instance, in the second half of the 
nineteenth century, is, at least in part, responsible for the 
crisis in man's knowledge of himself which Cassirer pointed out 
in the first chapter of the Essay on Man. It was most clearly 
apparent in the circle of French thinkers who based their 
teaching on Comte's Cours de Philosophic positive. Comte's 
positivism not only gave them a method but also formulated 
the questions which they attempted to answer. But they were 
affected by the status of the science which they confronted 
even more than by the general philosophic presuppositions of 
positivism. For the teachings of classical physics provided them 
with their view of the world and, for them, seemed to possess 
finality. The principle of causality was axiomatic. Even criti- 
cally-minded thinkers trained in Kantian philosophy did not dare 
to disturb the form in which the principle of causality was 
accepted. For example, Otto Liebmann, in his essay on Die 
Klimax der Theorien, proceeds on the basis of a strict deter- 
minism, which is presumed to apply in the same way to the 
several realms of thought, investigation and knowledge, with- 
out distinction or the slightest difference between the moral and 
the physical worlds. 
As Cassirer points out, no cultural philosopher of science 
would dare, today, to introduce the principle of universal de- 
terminism in the form in which Liebmann used it. For if he 
did, he would be confronted at once by all the weighty ques- 
tions and doubts involved in the development of modern 
theoretical physics, even though as Cassirer adds he does 
not believe that these doubts imply that the concept of causal- 
ity, as such, is endangered. The French positivists, who first 
faced the problems which the assumption of an axiom of uni- 
versal determinism posed for the Kulturwissenschaften and for 
the foundation of the Geisteswissenschaften, were neither 
mathematicians nor physicists, even if they took physics as their 
model. It was not the world view of Newton and Laplace 
456 JAMES GUTMANN 
but of Darwin and Spencer which characterized their outlook. 
Here too, as for Schelling and the romanticist philosophy of 
nature, culture and nature are united, insofar as both are 
subject to a common law, the basic law of evolution. But the 
direction of this unification has altered; for the difference which 
seems to divide human culture and physical nature is, according 
to positivism, no longer to be bridged by a spiritualization of 
nature, as in the way of Romanticism, but by interpreting cul- 
ture materialistically. Not metaphysics nor theology, but physics 
and chemistry, zoology and botany, anatomy and physiology 
must, it is argued, take the lead, if a true science of culture is to 
be achieved. 
Sainte-Beuve and Taine, too, interpreted cultural phenomena 
in terms of forces 
not like the supra-personal unities and totalities of romantic theories, 
which belonged to a supersensuous world, but as the same ones which 
build and rule the material world. . . . Thus viewed, science is neither 
to justify nor to condemn but to investigate and explain. Cultural science 
must proceed like botany which studies the orange tree and the laurel, 
the pine and the birch with equal interest. 8 
If we designate one group of facts as physical and another as 
spiritual or moral, some sort of difference of content may then 
be exposed. But this circumstance is utterly irrelevant to our 
knowing them. For knowledge is never concerned with indi- 
vidual facts as such but with their inter-connections. 
Cassirer considers three divergent attempts to establish a 
principle for interpreting these inter-connections based upon 
three distinct systems of postulates. In addition to French pos- 
itivism he reviews the theories of Oswald Spengler and also 
the Hegelian philosophy of history. Spengler regarded his own 
views as a great advance on positivism, which he held to be 
narrowly naturalistic. According to him a culture is brought to 
birth in a way which natural science cannot comprehend, but 
which the philosopher should grasp by dramatizing (dichteri) 
history. Thus Spengler conceived the epic-drama of The De- 
8 "Naturalistische und humanistische Begriindung der Kulturphilosophie," 1 1 j 
cf. Bibliography of Cassirer's Writings: 1939:3; also Zur Logik der Kulturwissen- 
schaften, 8;ff. 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 457 
dine of the West y in which individual man, in his being and his 
activity, is mystically linked to the fate of civilizations whose rise 
and decline he can in no way control. This view Cassirer con- 
trasts with Hegel's claim that his philosophy of history is a 
philosophy of freedom. But he rejects these as well as posi- 
tivism. All three, he declares, are unsatisfactory as attempts to 
clarify history and culture, because they hold inadequate con- 
ceptions of human nature and man's activities. 
IV 
The preceding summary describes contrasting attitudes to- 
ward traditions of humanism before and after Kant. It indi- 
cates the extent to which his philosophical anthropology was the 
dividing line, in Cassirer's judgment, between the classical and 
Renaissance conceptions which retained their authority down 
to the eighteenth century, and more modern ones which have 
been associated especially with changes in natural science. Cas- 
sirer's historical account, which we have followed, serves also 
to define his own position, or, at least, to place him in the 
great tradition. In his humanism he has been a follower not 
only of Kant but of Herder and Holderlin, of Goethe and 
Humboldt. Diverging from the positions of other post-Kantians, 
he has found sustenance in Schelling's philosophy of mythology, 
although rejecting his transcendental idealism. 
By his distinctive interpretation of Kant, Cassirer long ago 
established the basis for his own doctrine of man. In so doing 
he illustrated not only Kant's but his own humanism. The post- 
humously published essay on "Kant and Rousseau" once again 
made clear how fundamentally Cassirer's humanism is based 
on Kant's view of human nature developed in his philosophical 
anthropology. The emphasis on this aspect of Kant's work was 
already evident in his Kants Leben und Lehre. "The man who 
introduced anthropology as a branch of study in German uni- 
versities and who lectured on it regularly for decades" 9 was 
himself, according to Cassirer, much more of a humanist than 
scholars have generally recognized. 
Herder, who during the 'sixties was Kant's pupil in Konigsberg, has 
* Kants Leben und Lehre, 25. 
458 JAMES GUTMANN 
drawn for us a living and characteristic picture of his philosophical teach- 
ing at that time. From it we see that this teaching was by no means 
restricted to abstract problems, to questions of logic and metaphysics. 
It extended just as much to the fundamental questions of natural science, 
to psychology and anthropology, and it made full use of contemporary 
literature. 10 To be sure, this interest was essentially restricted to Kant's 
pre-critical period. 11 
In just that period of his life in which he was most under 
the influence of Rousseau from whom he "learned to respect 
human nature" 12 Cassirer notes that Kant was "a stylist and a 
psychological essayist, and in this respect he established a new 
standard for the German philosophical literature of the 
eighteenth century." 13 And he remarks "that Rousseau not 
only influenced the content and systematic development of 
Kant's foundation of ethics, but that he also formed its lan- 
guage and style." 14 It may not be irrelevant in this connection 
to suggest that Cassirer's own "language and style" reflected 
his study of the great figures of German literature in somewhat 
the way that Kant was influenced by Rousseau. In any case 
there need be no question that Cassirer can claim a place 
among the relatively small group of philosophers who were 
also men of letters and the very small group of German 
philosophers who attained such distinction. 
Some passages from Kant's writings which Cassirer quotes 
in his essay on "Kant and Rousseau" suggest not only the 
centrality of the humanistic and anthropological interest in 
Kant's ethical doctrine but throw further light on Cassirer's 
own thought. Even the conviction that the proper study for 
mankind is man, is reenforced by the argument which Kant uses 
for placing Rousseau's work alongside Newton's: 
Newton was the first to discern order and regularity in combination 
with great simplicity, where before him men had encountered disorder 
10 See Herder's Brief e zur Beforderung der Humanitat, 79th letter. 
11 Rousseau Kant Goethe , 86. 
12 Kant's Fragment*, ed. Hartenstein y vol. VIII, 624. Quoted in Rousseau Kant 
Goethe ', i j cf. also Kants Leben und Lehre, 238$, and Zur Loglk der Kulturwis- 
senschaften y 1135. 
11 Rousseau Kant Goethe, 6. 
"Ibid., 32. 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 459 
and unrelated diversity. . . . Rousseau was the first to discover, beneath 
the varying forms human nature assumes, the deeply concealed essence 
of man. . . . After Newton and Rousseau, the ways of God are justified 
and Pope's thesis is henceforth true. 1 * 
Kant indicated the relation of his philosophical anthropology to 
ethics in announcing his lectures for 1765-1766: 
I shall set forth the method by which we must study man man not 
only in the varying forms in which his accidental circumstances have 
molded him, in the distorted form in which even philosophers have 
almost always misconstrued him, but what is enduring in human 
nature, and the proper place of man in creation. 18 
Or, again: 
If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how 
to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and 
how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man. . . . This 
teaching will lead him back again to the human level, and however 
small or deficient he may regard himself, he will suit his assigned sta- 
tion, because he will be just what he should be. 17 
If these quotations from Kant suggest the extent to which 
the influence of Rousseau led him to accept the thesis of Pope's 
Essay on Man y they also indicate how greatly Cassirer J s con- 
ception of man and his Essay derive from this Kantian back- 
ground. Cassirer writes: 
For Kant man's 'assigned station' is not located in nature alone; for 
he must raise himself above it, above all merely vegetative or animal 
life. But it is just as far from lying somewhere outside nature, in some- 
thing absolutely other-wordly or transcendent. Man should seek the real 
law of his being and his conduct neither below nor above himself; he 
should derive it from himself, and should fashion himself in accordance 
with the determination of his own free will. For this he requires life 
in society as well as an inner freedom from social standards and an 
independent judgment of conventional social values. 18 
* Kant's Fragwente, ed. Hartenstein, vol. VIII, 630, Quoted in Rousseau Kant 
Goethe , 18. 
hnmanuel Kants Werke, ed. Cassirer a.o., vol. II, 326. Quoted in Rousseau 
Kant Goethe, 21. 
" Kant's Fragment*, ed. Hartenstein, vol. VIII, 624. Quoted in Rousseau Kant 
Goethe, 23. 
M Rousseau Kant Goethe, 23. 
460 JAMES GUTMANN 
Kant's doctrine is, of course, based on a dualism between the 
world of nature and the realm of freedom, between the world 
of the senses and an intelligible order. Among those who learned 
much from Kant there were many who did not follow him 
along this path in the development of a more adequate concep- 
tion of human nature and of humanism. Herder and Goethe 
discerned what they considered essential in human culture 
not in a mode of being but rather in humanistic achievement. 
only man among all the creatures of nature is capable of such 
achievement. What man accomplishes according to this view is 
objectification, self-recognition based upon the development of theoretical, 
aesthetic and ethical forms. . . . But all form requires a definite measure 
and is bound to it in its pure embodiments. Life in itself, as mere 
experience flowing freely along, cannot bring forth significant forms; it 
must apprehend and, in a sense, comprehend itself in order to participate 
in such forms. 19 
The philosophical development of Herder's and Goethe's 
perceptions was not advanced by the metaphysical systems of 
the post-Kantians, though Fichte, Schelling and Hegel re- 
peatedly returned to these problems and sought to deal with 
them in their works. But it was, according to Cassirer, Wilhelm 
von Humboldt who made particularly significant contributions 
to a humanistic philosophy. 
Humboldt's work at first appears much less systematic than Fichte's, 
Schelling's and Hegel's. As he proceeds on his way he seems more and 
more to lose himself ... in questions of detail regarding his researches. 
But a genuinely philosophic spirit pervades all this, and he never loses 
sight of the inclusive purpose which his investigation is to serve. 20 
It has been conventional to treat the humanistic ideal set 
forth by Kant in terms of his ethics as though this constituted its 
entire importance. But Cassirer insists that this is a misreading 
of the history of ideas. According to his view the humanism of 
the eighteenth century which molded Kant's thought and con- 
tinued its influence in Herder and Goethe, in Schiller and 
Humboldt, has other significance too often neglected. To be 
sure, they are convinced that humanistic ideals yield a distinc- 
19 "Naturalistische und humanistische Begrundungr der Kulturphilosophie," 17. 
. 18-10. 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 461 
tive morality and a distinctive order of socio-political life. But 
their vision is not directed exclusively to this goal} it extends 
to all creative effort, no matter in what realm of life. 
It appears to be the fundamental fact about all truly human existence 
that man is not merely a creature that absorbs the plenitude of external 
impressions, but that he controls this plenitude by imposing definite 
forms upon it which, in the last analysis, derive from the thinking, feel- 
ing, willing subject himself. 21 
Cassirer's own theory of symbolic forms may well be viewed 
as a development of these insights and of the humanism on 
which they were based. This is particularly evident in his Essay 
on Man. For though the Essay, as he points out, is "more an 
explanation and illustration than a demonstration" of the 
theory of symbolic forms and though students will always turn 
to the Philoso'phie der symbolischen Formen for the systematic 
formulation of Cassirer's doctrine, the briefer work sets forth 
most clearly his thesis that myth and religion, language and art, 
science and history "are, after all, only one subject . . . different 
roads leading to a common center." 22 By concentrating upon 
Man as this common center and thus emphasizing philosophical 
anthropology as the keystone of his philosophy of symbolic 
forms, Cassirer brings religion, art, and history into even clearer 
perspective than in the Philoso'phie der symbolischen Formen, 
where language, myth, and science were the foci of the suc- 
cessive volumes. 
Viewing man as animal symbolicum, Cassirer seeks to under- 
stand human nature by exploring culture in terms of the specific 
character and structure of the various symbolic forms. Having 
denied that man can be defined by reference to an hypostatized 
metaphysical essence, he seeks to understand man in terms of 
his culture. But this understanding, in turn, is rooted in the 
rich soil of humanism: 
A philosophy of culture begins with the assumption that the world 
of human culture is not a mere aggregate of loose and detached facts. 
It seeks to understand these facts as a system, as an organic whole. For 
an empirical or historical view it would seem to be enough to collect 
the data of human culture. Here we are interested in the breadth of 
81 Ibid., 1 6. 
* Ibid.) Essay on Man, viii. 
462 JAMES GUTMANN 
human life. We are engrossed in a study of the particular phenomena in 
their richness and variety; we enjoy the polychromy and the polyphony 
of man's nature. But a philosophical analysis sets itself a different task. 
Its starting point and its working hypothesis are embodied in the 
conviction that the varied and seemingly dispersed rays may be gathered 
together and brought into a common focus. The facts here are reduced 
to forms, and these forms themselves are supposed to possess an inner 
unity. . . . Here we are under no obligation to prove the substantial 
unity of man. Man is no longer considered as a simple substance which 
exists in itself and is to be known by itself. His unity is conceived as a 
functional unity. 23 
The common focus of all cultural forms is man and man, 
in turn, must be conceived in terms of his functional unity in 
the development of these forms. 
It may at times appear that when Cassirer uses the concept 
of symbolic forms to explain man's nature in functional terms 
the forms lack content. Contrariwise the specific illustrations 
which he employs are often familiar and, indeed, conventional, 
though he presents them with great originality and artistry. 
The interconnections between human nature and culture are 
constantly stressed; but Cassirer time and again appears to 
assume a unity and to argue for a systematic formulation which 
does not accord with his own practice. Indeed, the Essay on Man 
lacks systematic unity and is notable, rather, for the rich variety 
of the content, for the revealing insights into the researches of 
contemporary psychology and empirical anthropology and es- 
pecially for the fruitful harvest of Cassirer's lifelong interest 
in literature and the arts. 
If Cassirer's Kantianism seems at times to obtrude, as we 
have indeed seen above, this is perhaps the inevitable outcome 
of the neo-Kantian method of combining systematic and histori- 
cal investigation which Dr. Edgar Wind pointed out in an 
admirable essay on Cassirer's thought, which he published in 
1925. "No matter how successful the interbreeding of historical 
and systematic methods may prove as a means of explaining 
the development of science," wrote Dr. Wind, 
* Ibtd., 222. 
CASSIRER'S HUMANISM 463 
... by defending this union in general, the philosopher, who is supposed 
to face all problems, would seem deliberately to disregard one of them 
the conflict between systematic and historical thinking as such. He 
must be prepared to hear the usual objections: If all standpoints are 
merely stages in an infinite development, how about your own stand- 
point? If you treat thinking as an historical matter, how about the 
historical limitations of your own thinking? 24 
It may well be that Cassirer had questions such as these in 
mind when he wrote certain passages concerning history in the 
Essay on Man. He continued to affirm the necessity of the 
historian writing in terms of his personal experience; indeed he 
finally made it the sine qua non of genuine historical writing. 
If the historian succeeded in effacing his personal life he would not 
thereby achieve a higher objectivity. He would on the contrary de- 
prive himself of the very instrument of all historical thought. If I 
put out the light of my own personal experience I cannot see and 
I cannot judge of the experience of others. 25 
It was indeed by emphasizing the humanistic significance of 
history and the anthropological elements in historical knowledge 
that Cassirer solved, to his own satisfaction, the problem of 
historical objectivity and answered the question of the relation- 
ship of his work as an historian to his work as a systematic 
philosopher. 
If we bear in mind this character of historical knowledge, it is 
easy to distinguish historical objectivity from that form of objectivity 
which is the aim of natural science. A great scientist, Max Planck, 
described the whole process of scientific thought as a constant effort 
to eliminate all "anthropological" elements. We must forget man in 
order to study nature and to discover and formulate the laws of nature. 
In the development of scientific thought the anthropomorphic element 
is progressively forced into the background until it entirely disappears 
in the ideal structure of physics. History proceeds in a quite different 
way. It can live and breathe only in the human world. Like language 
or art, history is fundamentally anthropomorphic. To efface its human 
aspects would be to destroy its specific character and nature. But the 
anthropomorphism of historical thought is no limitation of or impedi- 
ment to its objective truth. History is not knowledge of external facts 
"Journal of Philosophy, vol. XXII, no. 18, 4.7 yfi. 
* Essay on Man, 187. 
464 JAMES GUTMANN 
or events; it is a form of self-knowledge. In order to know myself I 
cannot endeavor to go beyond myself, to leap, as it were, over my own 
shadow. I must choose the opposite approach. In history man con- 
stantly returns to himself; he attempts to recollect and actualize the 
whole of his past experience. 28 
And yet the ideality of history is not the same as the ideality of 
art. Art gives us an ideal description of human life by a sort of 
alchemistic process; it turns our empirical life into the dynamic of pure 
forms. History does not proceed in this way. It does not go beyond 
the empirical reality of things and events but molds this reality into a 
new shape, giving it the ideality of recollection. Life in the light of 
history remains a great realistic drama, with all its tensions and con- 
flicts, its greatness and misery, its hopes and illusions, its display of 
energies and passions. This drama, however, is not only felt; it is intuited. 
Seeing this spectacle in the mirror of history while we are still living 
in our empirical world of emotions and passions, we become aware 
of an inner sense of clarity and calmness of the lucidity and serenity 
of pure contemplation. 27 
Thus as an historian and as a humanist Cassirer once again 
raised the standard of self-knowledge, reaffirmed the doctrine 
that the unexamined life is no life for man, that the proper study 
of mankind is man, and asserted that man is best known and 
studied in his creative life. That Ernst Cassirer himself thus 
achieved calmness and serenity, even during the crises of the 
last decade, is evidence that his philosophy was, in the most 
significant sense, a philosophy of life. We may well salute 
Cassirer, the humanist, by utilizing a tribute which he himself 
offered to the humanism of the Cambridge Platonists: It stands 
to his undisputed credit that he did not allow the torch which 
he held in his hand to be extinguished, that in spite of every 
obstacle and in opposition to all dogmatism he preserved the 
flame of a genuinely perennial philosophical tradition and 
passed it on in its purity to future ages. 28 
JAMES GUTMANN 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
28 Ibid., 191. 
27 Ibid., 205-206. 
1 Cf. Die Platonische Renaissance in England und die Schule von Cambridge, 
141. 
H 
David Sidney 

on THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF 
ERNST CASSIRER AND ITS RELATION TO THE 
HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 
SYNOPSIS 
1. The Crisis in Modern Philosophical Anthropology: 
The Metaphysical versus the Historical and Posi- 
tivistic Approaches 467 
2. Plato's Metaphysical Theory of Man and Culture. . 470 
3. Stoicism on the Rationality of Man and the Concept 
of Humanitas 478 
4. Kant and the Anthropocentric Critique of Human 
Culture 484 
5. Wilhelm Dilthey's Neo-Kantian Critique of His- 
torical Reason 488 
6. Jose Ortega y Gasset and Historical Vitalism 490 
7. Cassirer's Cultural Definition of Man: Man as Ani- 
mal Symbolicum 492 
8. Ernst Cassirer and the Concept of Cultural Reality 496 
9. Cassirer's Critique of Kant 498 
10. Cassirer on Symbolism, Language and Cultural 
Thought 502 
u. Cassirer on the Evolution of Cultural Symbolism. . 506 
12. Cassirer on the Unitary Psychological Functions of 
Symbolic Forms 512 
13. Cassirer and the Problem of the Unitary Function 
of Myth 515 
14. Cassirer, Levy-Bruhl and Malinowski on the Con- 
cept of Myth 517 
15. Cassirer on the Role of Myth in the History of 
Human Culture 527 
1 6. The Humanism and Rationalism of Cassirer 535 
17. Cassirer on the Problem of Cultural Unity 541 
14 

on THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF 
ERNST CASSIRER AND ITS RELATION TO THE 
HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 1 
The Crisis in Modern Philosophical Anthropology: The Meta- 
physical Versus the Historical and Positives tic Approaches 
T N HIS study of Wilhelm Dilthey, H. A. Hodges makes the 
** following statement: 
Modern philosophy is philosophy in crisis. Its history is one long tale 
of challenges, emergencies, and attempted fresh starts. As time goes on, 
it becomes increasingly evident that the crisis affects not this or that 
philosophical doctrine or principle, but philosophy itself, which is now 
challenged to show reason why it should continue to exist. Dilthey 
is one of those who have helped to bring the issue to a head, and of 
this he himself is fully aware. He speaks of himself as in search of a 
new way of philosophizing, and calls for a radical reassessment of 
the tradition. He draws his inspiration, as usual, from two sources: from 
Kant and from the Anglo-French empiricists, and his starting-point 
lies in what these have in common. They are united in an attack 
upon what had been the very heart of the philosophical tradition, upon 
metaphysics, the science of being and of first principles. 2 
Ernst Cassirer, whose philosophical position is essentially 
similar to that of Dilthey, is acutely aware of the critical position 
of modern philosophical thought and significantly begins his 
Essay on Man with a chapter entitled: "The Crisis in Man's 
Knowledge of Himself." There he writes: 
1 The research involved in the writing- of this paper is part of a larger 
project on theoretical anthropology, which is being conducted by the writer 
under the liberal auspices of the Viking Fund Inc. of New York City. 
*H. A. Hodges, Wilkelm Dilthey: An Introduction (New York, i944)> 88. 
467 
468 DAVID BIDNEY 
Owing to this development our modern theory of man lost its intellectual 
center. We acquired instead a complete anarchy of thought. Even in 
the former times to be sure there was a great discrepancy of opinions 
and theories relating to this problem. But there remained at least a 
general orientation, a frame of reference, to which all individual 
differences might be referred. Metaphysics, theology, mathematics, and 
biology successively assumed the guidance for thought on the problem 
of man and determined the line of investigation. The real crisis of 
this problem manifested itself when such a central power capable of 
directing all individual efforts ceased to exist. The paramount im- 
portance of the problem was still felt in all the different branches of 
knowledge and inquiry. But an established authority to which one 
might appeal no longer existed. Theologians, scientists, politicians, so- 
ciologists, biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, economists all approached 
the problem from their own viewpoints. To combine or unify all these 
particular aspects and perspectives was impossible. And even within 
the special fields there was no generally accepted scientific principle. The 
personal factor became more and more prevalent, and the temperament 
of the individual writer tended to play a decisive role. . . . That this 
antagonism of ideas is not merely a grave theoretical problem but an 
imminent threat to the whole extent of our ethical and cultural life 
admits of no doubt. 2 * 
According to Cassirer, it would appear, the intellectual crisis 
of our times is a direct consequence of the fact that we have no 
"central power" or "established authority" capable of integrat- 
ing all the sciences and the humanities in a single, unified, 
cultural perspective. He does not stop to consider the special 
characteristics of classical thought which rendered it a coherent or 
integrated whole. He indiscriminately lumps together "meta- 
physics, theology, mathematics and biology" as having at one 
time or another "assumed the guidance for thought on the 
problem of man." But what was it that made it possible for 
these disciplines to assume the guidance for thought, and why is 
this no longer possible in the present crisis? 
The answer, it seems, is the one that Hodges suggests, 
namely, that classical thought, whatever its divergencies, agreed 
upon metaphysics or ontology as the foundation for its episte- 
mology, morality, politics, and religion. By postulating a general 
* tt An Essay on Man, 2 if. Hereafter to be referred to as EM. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 469 
plan of reality they found it possible to conceive all natural 
and cultural phenomena in relation to this master plan. The 
various sciences, and especially the human studies, were referred 
back to this center of orientation which served both as a 
logical starting point and as a criterion of validity. Thus, al- 
though the theologian, the biologist, or the mathematician 
might conceive this basic reality in different forms, once a given 
pattern of thought was accepted, it could serve as a norm and 
principle of integration for the culture as a whole. Modern 
thought, on the other hand, following Locke, Hume, Kant, and 
Comte, has denied the possibility of universal, ontological 
knowledge and consequently provided a favorable environment 
for the growth of the chaotic pluralism and mutual unintelligi- 
bility of the natural and social sciences which all the responsible 
thinkers of our time deplore so greatly. Not the least significant 
factor in the breakdown of the classical, metaphysical tradition 
has been the historicism and relativism of the neo-Kantian ap- 
proach which swept away the last metaphysical presuppositions 
of the Kantian system by substituting the free or undetermined, 
creative, symbolic ｅxpressions of the life-process for the fixed 
structure of a comparatively abiding nature. 
It should be noted, however, that the basic conflict in modern 
thought is one between diverse metaphysical approaches on the 
one hand, and anti-metaphysical tendencies on the other. Classi- 
cal ontological thought attempted to view the phenomena of 
nature and life sub specie aeternitatis, whereas modern ontologi- 
cal thought tends to view cosmic reality sub specie temforis. It 
should not be an impossible task to reconcile these opposite 
points of view, provided there is agreement on the possibility 
and necessity of a comprehensive, ontological theory based on 
verifiable scientific knowledge, which takes account of the ele- 
ment of structure as well as of process in the explanation of 
natural and cultural phenomena. 3 But between the classical 
tradition of the possibility of "substantial" knowledge of reality 
and the "critical" idealistic position that ontological knowledge 
8 See W. H. Sheldon's Process and Polarity (New York, 1 944) and America's 
Progressive Philosophy (New Haven, 1942) for significant analyses of this 
problem. 
470 DAVID SIDNEY 
is impossible, there can be no logical reconciliation. We must 
choose decisively between these two contrary positions, if we 
are to resolve the philosophical crisis of our times. To deplore 
the intellectual crisis on the one hand, and yet to hold on to the 
very same anti-metaphysical approach which helped bring it 
about, as the neo-Kantians and positivists tend to do, is an ir- 
rational and hopeless procedure which only serves to make the 
confusion worse. 
By way of indicating more precisely the nature of the conflict 
between classical, ontological thought and modern positivism 
and neo-Kantian idealism, an attempt will be made in the fol- 
lowing analysis to present a brief survey of some aspects of the 
history of anthropological thought from the Greeks to modern 
times, referring in the process to Cassirer's interpretation of the 
history of the ideas involved. In relation to this background we 
shall be able to appreciate critically the significance of Cassirer's 
contribution towards a systematic philosophy of culture. Special 
consideration will be given to the problem of the relation of 
Cassirer's philosophical anthropology to that of modern and 
contemporary ethnology. 
Plato's Metaphysical Theory of Man and Culture 
Modern ethnology has shown that all historical societies have 
had cultures 4 or traditional ways of behavior and thought in 
conformity with which they have patterned their lives. And so 
valuable have these diverse ways of living appeared to the 
members of early human society that they have tended to ascribe 
a divine origin to their accepted traditions and have encouraged 
their children to conform to their folkways and mores as matters 
of faith which were above question. With the growth of ex- 
perience and the development of critical thought, first indi- 
viduals and then groups began to question some elements of 
the traditional thoughtways and practices and thereby provided 
a stimulus for cultural change and development. 
4 For a critical analysis of the ethnological literature dealing with the concept 
of culture, see D. Bidney, on the Concept of Culture and Some Cultural Fallacies" 
in American Anthropologist 46:30-44, (1944). 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 471 
The critical approach to traditional cultural ｅxpressions has 
varied in different societies and so has the tempo of cultural 
change. Frequently the reformers have claimed the authority 
of some new divine revelation and have then proceeded to 
institute reforms and establish new institutions to supplant the 
old. 
What is significant in the case of historical Greek society is 
that the appeal against tradition was made in the name of human 
reason and logic rather than in the name of the gods. It was, 
therefore, a revolutionary event in the history of human culture 
when men like the Sophists, Socrates, and Plato began to ques- 
tion the accepted traditions and to assert boldly that "an un- 
examined life is not worth living." From the point of view of 
the conventional good citizens of the Athenian state, Socrates 
was indeed an "atheistic" radical, who well merited the cup of 
hemlock which the civilized Greeks invited him to drink for 
their benefit. But the amazing thing in the case of Greek society 
was that this critical, questioning attitude of mind, which 
Socrates shared with the Sophists of his day, was not entirely 
suppressed and was even encouraged. Self-knowledge was 
recognized by the Greek oracles as the highest form of wisdom. 
However, self-knowledge, as Socrates and later Plato demon- 
strated, was not easy of attainment. It was not something to be 
acquired by mental introspection, since the kind of self-knowl- 
edge they were seeking was a reflective, rational analysis of the 
universal nature of man. To know onself in this objective sense, 
Plato showed, meant to have a rational knowledge of the rela- 
tion of man to the whole of nature. Plato's Republic is based 
upon the thesis that the prerequisite for a scientific knowledge 
of man is a knowledge of mathematics and of the unchanging 
mathematical forms manifested in nature as a whole. The Idea 
of the Good, he held, was the principle of integration in the 
cosmos as a whole and could therefore be known and intuited 
only through a prior knowledge of physics and astronomy. 5 
only metaphysical, theoretical, or dialectical knowledge of this 
B See F. S. C. Northrop's essay, "The Mathematical Background and Content 
of Greek Philosophy" in Philosophical Essays for Alfred North Whitehead (New 
York, 1936), 1-40. 
472 DAVID SIDNEY 
kind could provide a solid foundation upon which to build the 
organization of man's social and cultural life. In short, genuine 
self-knowledge involved an ontological and theoretical analysis 
of nature as a whole. 
The basic presupposition of Platonic (as well as of Aris- 
totelian) philosophical anthropology is that culture, understood 
both as a system of education (paedeia) and socio-political or- 
ganization (politeia), is to be based upon a scientific knowledge 
of nature. The Sophists had contrasted the uniformities of nature 
with the diversities of social culture and were inclined to re- 
gard the latter as a more or less arbitrary convention (nomos) 
superimposed by the rulers upon their people. Plato, by con- 
trast, attempted to harmonize nature and culture, and held that 
man attained his true good and proper measure of perfection 
through insight into the abiding forms of being revealed 
through a study of mathematical science and dialectical synthe- 
sis. 
Cassirer claims that "To the Sophists 'man' meant the indi- 
vidual man. The so-called 'universal' man the man of the 
philosophers was to them a mere fiction." 6 
Whether or not the sophists intended to apply the Protag- 
orean maxim that "man is the measure of all things" to indi- 
vidual men only and not to universal man, the fact remains 
that, as Plato interpreted it? the maxim led logically to indi- 
vidualistic relativism. The notion, he argued, that man is a 
measure of all things begs the very question it is supposed to 
answer, for the problem is whether it is possible to have a 
universal measure of human values. To say that man is the 
universal measure still leaves open the question how one is to 
determine the universal nature of man. This question according 
to Plato, could not be answered without a mathematical and 
dialectical knowledge of nature as a whole. The Platonic 
Socrates, in agreement with the Sophists, was certainly 
interested in "humanizing" philosophy in the sense of being 
concerned with a critical analysis of the conditions of civilized 
life. But he insisted, as against the sophists, that a genuine hu- 
* In The Myth of tJie State, 57. Hereafter to be referred to as MS. 
T See Plato's Theaetetus) cf. Brand Blanshard's "Current Strictures of Reason" 
in the Philosophical Review Iv '.67 0-7 3, (1946). 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 473 
manistic education must be one based upon a rational or scien- 
tific philosophy of nature. I find it difficult, therefore, to accept 
Cassirer's statement to the effect that 
From then on man was no longer regarded as a mere part of the 
universe; he became its center. Man, said Protagoras, is the measure of 
all things. This tenet holds, in a sense, both for the sophists and 
for Socrates. To "humanize" philosophy, to turn cosmogony and ontol- 
ogy into anthropology, was their common goal. . . . He [Socrates] is 
not primarily interested in the unity of Being nor in the systematic unity 
of thought. What he is asking for is the unity of the will. 8 
Although it is true that Socrates was primarily interested in 
the study of man, I find no basis for the statement that he meant 
to turn cosmogony and ontology into anthropology. Cassirer, it 
would seem, is reading a bit of Kant into the Platonic Socrates 
at this point. 
Plato's perspective was "Copernican" and "heliocentric" in 
the sense that he derived his knowledge of the good for man 
from an objective knowledge of nature as a whole. It is signifi- 
cant that in the Republic Plato conceived the relation of the 
Idea of the Good to the intelligible world of ideas as similar 
to that of the sun in the physical world. 9 Cassirer himself notes 
that Plato's "categorical imperative" was a "demand for order 
and measure" and that "the triad of Logos, Nomos, Taxis 
Reason, Lawfulness, Order is the first principle both of the 
physical and the ethical world." 10 
Plato would acquire a knowledge of man not only through a 
subjective analysis of the individual, but also and primarily 
through an objective investigation of the natural cosmos and 
the political cosmos. From the study of nature and of mathe- 
matical science, he held, one derived an objective, impersonal 
criterion of the true good and the just social order for man, so 
that man the microcosm might order his life in accordance with 
the principles of justice and proportion which prevail in the 
macrocosm. 11 Furthermore, from the study of the prevailing or 
'MS, 56, 57. 
9 Republic , vi 1508-1 o. 
10 MS., 65. 
11 See A. N. Whitehead's paper, "Mathematics and the Good" in The Philosophy 
/ Alfred North Whitehead, edited by P. A. Schilpp (The Library of Living 
474 DAVID SIDNEY 
historical political orders (Plato did not distinguish the state 
from society) one may infer the psychological forces which 
these institutions embody and the type of personality and char- 
acter which is objectively exemplified in any given society or 
state. Such a survey alone, however, will not tell us what is the 
true or ideal type of human nature or what type of personality 
ought to be realized. 
The significance of Plato's analysis in the Republic for 
modern anthropological thought lies in the fact that here we 
have presented for the first time the thesis that the social cul- 
ure of a given society is integrated about a given personality 
type, so that the individual who participates in a given cultural 
configuration and set of institutions takes on the social character 
which is exemplified in that society taken as a whole. Culturally, 
therefore, the individual is to be understood through the state 
or society of which he is a member, since the political order 
reflects the educational ideals. This, however, does not mean 
that the individual has no universal nature apart from the state. 
Man's ontological nature is not a socio-cultural product but 
rather provides the basis for any form of social order one 
chooses to institute. If, on the one hand, the culturally acquired 
personality of the individual is to be understood through the 
social conditioning which he has undergone from childhood on- 
wards, it must also be kept in mind that the ontological nature 
of the individual is logically prior to any given social order. 
Cassirer's interpretation of Plato on this point is rather am- 
biguous and gives one the impression that he is reading a little of 
Comtean sociology into Plato's thought. Thus he writes: 
We cannot find an adequate definition of man so long as we con- 
fine ourselves within the limits of man's individual life. Human nature 
does not reveal itself in this narrow compass. What is written in 
"small characters" in the individual soul, and is therefore almost 
illegible, becomes clear and understandable only if we read it in the 
larger letters of man's political and social life. This principle is the 
starting point of Plato's Republic. From now on the whole problem 
Philosophers, Evanston and Chicago, 1941)5 also F. H. Anderson's The Argu- 
ment of Plato (London, 1934), especially ch. 6 on "Microcosm and Social 
Macrocosm." 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 475 
of man was changed: politics was declared to be the clue to psychology. 12 
Again in the Essay on Man he writes: 
Man is to be studied not in his individual life but in his political and 
social life. Human nature, according to Plato, is like a difficult text, 
the meaning of which has to be deciphered by philosophy. But in our 
personal experiences this text is written in such small characters that 
it becomes illegible. The first labor of philosophy must be to enlarge 
these characters. Philosophy cannot give us a satisfactory theory of man 
until it has developed a theory of the state. The nature of man is 
written in capital letters in the nature of the state. Here the hidden 
meaning of the text suddenly emerges, and what seemed obscure and 
confused becomes clear and legible. . . . 
In modern philosophy Comte was one of the first to approach this 
problem and to formulate it in a clear and systematic way. It is some- 
thing of a paradox that in this respect we must regard the positivism of 
Comte as a modern parallel to the Platonic theory of man. Comte was of 
course never a Platonist. He could not accept the logical and metaphysical 
presuppositions upon which Plato's theory of ideas is based. Yet, on 
the other hand, he was strongly opposed to the views of the French 
ideologists. In his hierarchy of human knowledge two new sciences, the 
science of social ethics and that of social dynamics, occupy the highest 
rank. From this sociological viewpoint Comte attacks the psychologism of 
his age. one of the fundamental maxims of his philosophy is that our 
method of studying man must, indeed, be subjective, but that it can- 
not be individual. For the subject we wish to know is not the individual 
consciousness but the universal subject. If we refer to this subject by 
the term "humanity" then we must affirm that humanity is not to be 
explained by man, but man by humanity. 13 
Cassirer has here interpreted "the hidden meaning of the 
text" of Plato's Republic, as if the latter would define the nature 
of man through society and its culture. But Plato explicitly 
distinguishes the ontological nature of man and the psychologi- 
cal functions through which it is expressed from the temporal 
character of the political state through which it is exemplified 
and molded. The social order is the analogue of the individual 
soulj and there can be no justice in the state unless it is or- 
"MS. 6if. 
13 An Essay on Man, 6$l. 
476 DAVID SIDNEY 
ganized on principles of justice similar to those which obtain in 
the soul of the individual. As Cassirer has put it: 
Justice is not on the same level with other virtues of man. It is 
not, like courage and temperance, a special quality or property. It is 
a general principle of order, regularity, unity, and lawfulness. Within 
the individual life this lawfulness appears in the harmony of all the 
different powers of the human soul; within the state it appears in the 
"geometrical proportion" between the different classes, according to 
which each part of the social body receives its due and cooperates 
in maintaining the general order. With this conception Plato becomes 
the founder and the first defender of the Idea of the Legal State. 14 
And again Cassirer states: 
The Platonic state gives to everyone and to all the social classes their 
allotted work in the common work; but their rights and duties are 
widely different. That follows not only from the character of Plato's 
ethics, but, first and foremost, from the character of his psychology. 
Plato's metaphysical psychology is based upon his division of the human 
soul. The character of man is determined by the proportion between 
these three elements. . . . 
The different classes into which the Platonic state is divided have as 
many different souls they represent different types of human charac- 
ters. These types are fixed and unchangeable. Every attempt to change 
them, i.e., to efface or diminish the difference between the rulers, the 
guardians, and the ordinary men, would be disastrous. It would mean a 
revolt against the unchangeable laws of human nature to which 
the social order has to conform. 15 
Here we see that Cassirer explicitly admits that the social 
order of the Platonic state follows from the character of "Plato's 
metaphysical psychology" and from " the unchangeable laws 
of human nature." If this be the case, it is most difficult to ac- 
cept Cassirer's interpretation that for Plato "politics was de- 
clared to be the clue to psychology" and that "philosophy can- 
not give us a satisfactory theory of man until it has developed a 
theory of the state." on the contrary, Plato's theory of the 
state with its rigid class differences depends on his meta-psycho- 
logical theory of the natural divisions or functions of the soul. 
14 MS. 69. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 477 
Cassirer, it would seem, is confusing, as Plato himself never did, 
the cultural priority of the state or society to the individual on 
the one hand, and the ontological priority of the individual to 
his society on the other. 
According to Plato, an empirical, comparative survey of 
actual states or societies would not tell us anything of the nature 
of the ideal state. For the latter one would require a knowledge 
of "first principles" which are not derived from empirical ob- 
servation. For Plato, the ideal and the actual remained for- 
ever distinct and unidentical. That is why Plato, the Utopian 
idealist, was also theoretically a revolutionary reformer and 
never accepted the civitas terrena or status quo of his times. Cas- 
sirer has recognized the significance of this aspect of Plato's 
thought and points out: "It is one of the first principles of 
Plato's theory of knowledge to insist upon the radical distinction 
between empirical and ideal truth. . . . The difference between 
these two types, between doxa and episteme is ineffaceable. Facts 
are variable and accidental} truth is necessary and immutable." 16 
This Platonic distinction between the logical ideal and the fac- 
tual or positive social situation is the direct antithesis of the Com- 
tean approach which postulated that an empirical study of "social 
facts" would automatically reveal the nature of a scientific social 
order and the inevitable laws of social evolution. To say, there- 
fore, that "we must regard the positivism of Comte as a modern 
parallel to the Platonic theory of man," is essentially mislead- 
ing. 
Plato's metaphysical approach implies that it is possible to en- 
visage a universal and eternal order of nature as well as a ra- 
tional, social and cultural order which is to conform to it. Plato 
views culture sub specie aeternitatis as an ideal, rational order 
capable of transcending the temporal and local limitations of 
given historical institutions. In practice, however, this meta- 
physical and rational ideal is extraordinarily difficult to conceive 
let alone realize and the cultural historian has little diffi- 
culty in demonstrating the limitations of his theory and general 
mental perspective. His conception of science, which divorced 
the theoretical from the practical approach, as well as his rigid 
16 MS. 69. 
478 DAVID BIDNEY 
class differences reflect much of the socio-cultural conditions 
of his time and place. Similarly Aristotle's acceptance of slavery 
as something rooted in the nature of things, 17 and the general 
tendency of Greek intellectuals to divide the human race into 
Greeks and barbarians 18 demonstrate the all-too-human cultural 
limitations of even the most sincere philosophical idealists. This, 
however, does not invalidate the intellectual vision of a uni- 
versally valid cultural norm which may be progressively con- 
ceived and achieved in time. The cultural limitations of a great 
thinker may be detected by others of a later generation coming 
from diverse cultural backgrounds and to that extent eliminated 
from their own thinking. If there is danger in not taking time 
seriously enough, there is even more danger in taking it too 
seriously. 
Stoicism on the Rationality of Man and the Concept 
of Humanitas 
The Stoics, while building upon the general metaphysical 
views of Plato and Aristotle, added two new concepts which 
were destined to have great influence on the subsequent history 
of anthropological thought and political action, namely, the con- 
cept of the intrinsic, universal rationality of man and the concept 
of humanity (humanitas). 
In their psychology, the Stoics, unlike Plato, denied any 
irrational functions of the soul and regarded reason as the es- 
sential function of mind a position which was later to find ex- 
pression in the Cartesian notion of mind as res cogitans. They 
regarded the emotions or passions as diseases which disturbed 
17 Cf. Aristotle's Politics, 
18 Cf. Plato's Statesman, 262, Jowett translation. As Plato puts it: "The error 
was just as if some one who wanted to divide the human races, were to divide them, 
after the fashion which prevails in this part of the world} here they cut off the 
Hellenes as one species, and all the other species of mankind, which are innumer- 
able, and have no ties of common language they include under the single name 
of "barbarians" and because they have the one name they are supposed to be of 
one species also." 
19 For a comparative analysis of Stoic psychology see D. Bidney, The Psychology 
and Ethics of Spinoza (New Haven, 1940), especially ch. i. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 479 
the apathy or calm of the rational activity of the soul. Hence 
they counselled that a man should limit and restrain his desires 
to those things within his power and should give the consent 
of his will to the dictates of reason only. 
The significant feature of Stoic psychology in this connection 
is its adherence to the Platonic view of the essential dualism of 
body and soul. In social practice this meant that the freedom and 
autonomy of the rational soul could be maintained even while 
the body was in slavery to the state. The Stoics were concerned 
with the spiritual or moral freedom of the individual, his 
freedom from passions, but not especially with political free- 
dom. Like the early Christians, they were content to render 
unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's as a matter of social 
tradition as well as expediency; in fact, Caesar himself, in the 
person of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, was one of the chief 
apostles of this ethical creed. The spirit of Stoic political phi- 
losophy was one of acceptance of prevailing social conditions, 
since it was held that the wise man could maintain his intellec- 
tual freedom and moral integrity under any political conditions. 
If necessary, he could, like Seneca, commit suicide, in case he 
did not wish to compromise himself. Thus, although denying 
the Greek, aristocratic notion that some peoples were slaves 
by nature and insisting upon the intellectual and moral equality 
of all men, the Stoics did nevertheless tolerate physical slavery 
and political despotism. According to Seneca, 
It is a mistake to imagine that slavery pervades a man's whole being; 
the better part of him is exempt from it: the body indeed is subjected 
and in the power of a master, but the mind is independent, and indeed 
is so free and wild, that it cannot be restrained even by this prison of 
the body, wherein it is confined. 20 
In view of the alleged moral and political disparity of body 
and mind, I find it difficult to understand the ground for Cas- 
sirer's emphasis upon the "coalescence of political and phil- 
osophic thought" 21 as characteristic of the Stoics. Stoicism, like 
Christianity, was originally and essentially a spiritual and moral 
20 As quoted by Cassirer, MS. t 103. The reference is to Seneca's De 
in, 20, tr. A. Stewart (London, 1900) p. 69. 
"M.5., 102. 
480 DAVID SIDNEY 
doctrine and as such was historically compatible with any politi- 
cal form of organization whatsover. To say that men like Cicero, 
Seneca, or Marcus Aurelius "admitted no cleft between the 
individual and political sphere" 22 simply is not in agreement 
with the historical facts. It is true, as later history shows, that 
the concept of the intellectual and moral equality of all men 
was a principle which could be utilized for social and political 
reform - y but the fact remains that the Stoics themselves, in com- 
mon with other philosophical schools, suffered from the cultural 
limitations of the Roman Empire and did not so envisage their 
teaching at this time. The Stoic doctrine of living in harmony 
with nature, far from being a revolutionary summons or an in- 
centive to the formulation of Utopian theories of the state, 
merely served at the time as a rationalization for accepting the 
status quo. 
The concept of humanity (humanitai) in particular was 
original with the Stoics and represented an ideal alien to Greek 
philosophical thought which had not gone beyond the ideal 
of Greek unity. As Wilhelm Wundt has pointed out, the con- 
cept of humanity has a dual significance and refers to a purely 
logical concept as well as to a moral ideal. 23 Logically, hu- 
manitas refers to the unity of mankind as a whole. As a moral 
ideal, it is a value-attribute and refers "to the complete develop- 
ment of the ethical characteristics which differentiate man from 
the animal and to their ｅxpression in the intercourse of indi- 
viduals and of peoples." 24 The concept of humanity in this lat- 
ter, moral sense is not to be found among the virtues discussed 
in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. According to Cassirer, 
The ideal of humanitas was first formed in Rome; and it was 
especially the aristocratic circle of the younger Scipio that gave it its 
firm place in Roman culture. Humanitas was no vague concept. It had 
a definite meaning and it became a formative power in private and 
public life in Rome. It meant not only a moral but also an esthetic ideal; 
it was the demand for a certain type of life that had to prove its 
influence in the whole of man's life, in his moral conduct as well as in 
"Ibid. 
28 Wilhelm Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology (London and New York, 
1916), ch. iv on "The Development of Humanity," 470-523. 
"Ibid., 47*. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 481 
his language, his literary style, and his taste. Through later writers such 
as Cicero and Seneca this ideal of humanitas became firmly established 
in Roman philosophy and Latin literature. 25 
Humanitas y as a moral-aesthetic ideal or way of life, passed 
over into medieval and modern European culture and became 
firmly established in the educational system as the study of 
"the humanities." 
The concept of the moral and metaphysical equality of all 
men is logically connected with the Stoic notion of humanitas, 
since the idea of the community of reason in all men implies 
the notion of a community of mankind. The intellect is regarded 
as the universal bond of agreement between men which makes 
it possible for all men as rational beings to live in harmony 
with one another as well as with nature. Thus Marcus Aurelius 
writes in his Meditations: 
If our intellectual part is common, the reason also, in respect of 
which we are rational beings, is common; if this is so, common also is 
the reason which commands us what to do and what not to do; if this 
is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; 
if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, 
the world is in a manner a state. For of what other common political 
community will any one say that the whole human race are members? 26 
It is no exaggeration to say, therefore, that the ideal of 
humanitas, in combining individualism and universalism, pre- 
pared the way for the concept of a world culture, world history, 
and a world state. 27 As an ethical ideal it made the individual 
conscious of the personal as well as of the universal character of 
his rights and duties. In modern philosophical thought the ideal 
of humanitas has received its classic ｅxpression in Kant's categori- 
cal imperative as the injunction "So to act as to treat humanity, 
whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every 
case as an end withal, never as means only." 28 
w MS., 102. 
28 In The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, ed. by W. J. Gates (New York, 
1940), p. 509, bk. 4, section 4. 
* See Wundt, loc. cit. 
* Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics, tr. T. K. Abbott 
(London, 1923), 56. 
482 DAVID SIDNEY 
In terms of political theory, the concept of humanitas may be 
combined either with an organic notion of society and the state 
or with an atomistic, individualistic theory. In Marcus Aurelius 
we find the Aristotelian notion that man is by nature a social or 
political animal and that the individual cannot exercise his 
proper function apart from society. 29 on the other hand, the 
seventeenth and eighteenth century political thinkers, such as 
Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, utilized 
the Stoic ideal of humanitas in conjunction with an individual- 
istic theory, which regarded the state as an institution organized 
to serve the common interests of its component citizens. As 
Spinoza puts it: 
Nothing, therefore, can agree better with the nature of any individual 
than other individuals of the same kind, and so there is nothing more 
profitable to man for the preservation of his being and the enjoyment of 
a rational life than a man who is guided by reason. . . . Above all 
things it is profitable to men to unite in communities and to unite them- 
selves to one another by bonds which make all of them as one man 
(de omnibus unum efficiani) and absolutely it is profitable for them to 
do whatever may tend to strengthen their friendships. 80 
Thus in answer to the question raised by Cassirer as to "What 
gave to the old Stoic ideas their freshness and novelty, their 
unprecedented strength, their importance for the formation of 
the modern mind and the modern world?" 31 it may be said: 
The Stoic concept of humanitas was combined with the atomic 
individualism of Renaissance science, Platonic idealism and 
Protestant theology to produce a revolutionary social mentality 
capable of questioning established authorities and institutions. 
Cassirer seems to assume that Stoicism alone was the primary 
political influence in the rise of the modern world and therefore 
replies somewhat enigmatically that 
What matters here is not so much the content of the Stoic theory 
29 Meditations, bk. 8, section 34. 
80 Spinoza, Ethics, part iv, Appendix, sections ix, xii. The phrase "de omnibus 
unum" is reminiscent of the American motto "e pluribus unum." It is significant 
that we find humanitas listed among- the intellectual affects in Spinoza's Ethics 
(part 3, def. 43), where it is defined as "the desire of doing- those things which 
please men and omitting those which displease them." 
81 MS., j 68. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 483 
as the function that this theory had to fulfil in the ethical and political 
conflicts of the modern world. In order to understand this function we 
must go back to the new conditions created by the Renaissance and the 
Reformation. All the great and undeniable progress made by the 
Renaissance 'and the Reformation were counterbalanced by a severe and 
irreparable loss. The unity and the inner harmony of medieval culture 
had been dissolved. ... If there was to be a really universal system of 
ethics or religion, it had to be based upon such principles as could be 
admitted by every nation, every creed, and every sect. And Stoicism 
alone seemed to be equal to this task. It became the foundation of a 
"natural" religion and a system of natural laws. Stoic philosophy could 
not help man to solve the metaphysical riddles of the universe. But it 
contained a greater and more important promise: the promise to restore 
man to his ethical dignity. This dignity, it asserted, cannot be lost; for 
it does not depend on a dogmatic creed or on any outward revelation. 
1^ rests exclusively on the moral will on the worth that man attributes 
to himself. 32 
Cassirer, it appears, separates the transcendental "function" 
which Stoicism "had to fulfil" from its actual, scientific content. 
He points out that the Stoic principle of the "autarky" or 
autonomy of human reason was the source of modern rational- 
ism and "became the cornerstone of all systems of natural 
right." 33 Cassirer also attributes to the Stoics the Kantian thesis 
that man asserts his moral dignity by an act of moral will and 
that this dignity cannot be lost irrespective of the nature of one's 
beliefs. He omits entirely in his Myth of the State any reference 
to Galilean and Newtonian science or to the Utopian idealism 
which had its source in Plato. 84 The concept of natural rights is 
indeed related in part to the notion of natural law postulated by 
the Stoics, but it seems an exaggeration to base the modern 
theory of natural rights upon Stoic rationalism exclusively. A 
close analysis of the available literature of the period will 
demonstrate how the concept of natural rights was re-inter- 
*MS. i6 9 f. 
88 MS. 172. 
84 See F. S. C. Northrop's The Meeting of East and West (New York, 1946), 
especially ch. 3. Northrop provides a thorough analysis of the natural science 
background of eighteenth century American thought, but goes to the opposite 
extreme of Cassirer in neglecting Stoic influence. 
484 DAVID BIDNEY 
preted in terms of the individualism and mechanistic science de- 
rived from distinctively Renaissance sources. 35 
Kant and the Anthrofocentric Critique of Human Culture 
Cassirer, in a passage quoted earlier, has pointed out that, in 
regarding man as the measure of all things, the Sophists turned 
cosmogony and ontology into anthropology. This, it would ap- 
pear, is especially true of Kant. For Kant, above all, made man's 
transcendental ego the measure of all things. This reversal of 
the classic, objective metaphysical approach he himself regarded 
as parallel to the Copernican revolution in astronomy; in fact, 
however, he accomplished the exact contrary by his anthropo- 
centric approach. 86 
It is most significant, as Cassirer observes, that Kant was 
"the man who introduced anthropology as a branch of study in 
German universities and who lectured on it regularly for 
decades." 37 In the introduction to his Anthrofologie in prag- 
matischer Hinsicht Kant informs us: 
In my occupation with pure philosophy, which originally I had 
voluntarily taken upon myself, but which was later on officially en- 
trusted to me as an academic lectureship, I have, throughout some thirty 
years, given two lecture courses whose purpose it was to transmit a 
knowledge of this world, namely, (in the winter semesters) anthropology 
and (in the summer semesters) physical geography. 38 
It should be noted, however, that by anthropology Kant 
meant something different from the study of human culture or 
comparative anatomy of peoples. For him, the term comprised 
35 See D. Bidney, The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza for an example of this 
fusing of ideas. 
86 See E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (New York, 1940), 245. 
According to Gilson, "The sun that Kant set at the centre of the world was man 
himself, so that his revolution was the reverse of the Copernican and led to an 
anthropoccntrism a good deal more radical, though radical in another fashion, 
than any of which the Middle Age is accused." 
87 Rousseau Kant Goethe ', 25. 
88 Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Zweyte verbes- 
serte Auflage, Konigsberg, 1800), Vorrede, xiii-xiv. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 485 
empirical ethics (folkways), introspective psychology and 
"physiology." Empirical ethics, as distinct from rational ethics, 
was called "practical anthropology." 39 As Kant puts it: 
Eine Lehre von der Kenntnis des Menschen systematisch abgefasst 
(Anthropologie) kann es entweder in physiologischer oder in tyragma- 
tischer Hinsicht seyn. Die physiologische Menschenkenntnis geht auf die 
Erforschung dessen, was die Natur aus dem Menschen macht, die 
pragmatische auf das, was er, als freyhandelndes Wesen, aus sich selber 
macht, oder machen kann und soil. 40 
From this it appears that, for Kant, anthropology, as a Men- 
schenkenntnis or study of man, comprised two major ap- 
proaches, namely, the physiological and the pragmatic. Under 
physiology he included all those human phenomena which may 
be attributed directly to nature, such as anatomy, psychology, 
and the relation of man to his geographical environment 
(ecology). Under the pragmatic approach he included all hu- 
man phenomena which may be attributed to human culture, 
namely, those of empirical social ethics (the folkways and 
mores of Sumner), which he termed pratical anthropology, 
and rational, normative ethics, which prescribed the conditions 
of rational, civilized life. Kant's Critiques were in effect critical, 
anthropological treatises which investigated the a priori con- 
ditions of natural science and ethics as given cultural disciplines, 
although Kant himself did not clearly recognize this point as 
regards his Critique of Pure Reason. 
Kant, as is well known, accepted the validity of Newtonian 
science and sought for the conditions in the human understand- 
ing which made mathematics and natural science in general pos- 
sible and intelligible. His "answer" to Hume was that theo- 
retical or pure reason was limited by its a priori categorial 
structure to the cognition and organization of phenomena. Thus 
Kant, in fundamental agreement with Hume, denied the possi- 
bility of an ontological knowledge of nature and more than 
any one else was responsible for the antithesis of science and 
metaphysics. He did not, however, entirely exclude the notion 
99 Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics, ed. 
by T. K. Abbott (London, 1923), 2. 
* Anthropologie y iv. 
486 DAVID SIDNEY 
of a metaphysical or noumenal reality, but maintained that 
"things-in-themselves" were not the object of scientific knowl- 
edge. In effect this meant that the classic assumption of Greek, 
medieval, and Renaissance philosophy of an empirically vali- 
dated ontology was denied. Instead Kant affirmed that "The 
understanding does not derive its laws (a priori} from, but 
prescribes them to, nature." 41 This meant, in sum, that Kant 
reduced natural philosophy or theoretical science to anthro- 
pology. 
Just as Kant began his critique of scientific knowledge by 
accepting the fact of mathematical science, so he began his ethics 
and his Anthropologie by accepting the fact of civilization. Un- 
like Rousseau, Kant did not begin with "the natural man" in 
order to arrive at an evaluation of human culture, but, beginning 
with "civilized man" and accepting the reality and validity of 
historical cultural achievements, 42 he proceeded to outline the 
necessary postulates which would enable man to attain ideal 
moral perfection and a rational state of society. According to 
Cassirer, 
This beginning is indicated because in the concept of man civilization 
constitutes no secondary or accidental characteristic but marks man's 
essential nature, his specific character. He who would study animals 
must start with them in their wild state; but he who would know man 
must observe him in his creative power and his creative achievement, 
that is, in his civilization, 48 
Rousseau's type of approach involves a dualism or antithesis 
of nature and culture, and implies the possibility of a knowledge 
of man which is pre-cultural logically, if not historically. Kant, 
on the other hand, does not oppose nature to culture, but begin- 
ning with the phenomena of culture or civilization as historically 
given, investigates analytically the formal, logical conditions 
41 Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics, tr. and ed. by Paul Cams 
(Chicago, 1929), #36, p. 82. Metaphysics, in Kant's use of the term, refers 
to the a priori logical and epistemological conditions of experience, and hence 
to a priori synthetic propositions. This use of the term is to be differentiated 
from the ontological or substantial meaning as used originally by Aristotle. 
tt Kant, as quoted by Cassirer in Rousseau Kant Goethe, 22. 
48 Ibid., 22. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 487 
which would render human cultural experience intelligible as 
well as rational. This explains why, in the last analysis, Rous- 
seau was essentially a cultural revolutionary or reformer, 
whereas Kant remained a thinker who did not set out to change 
the human world but to understand it. 
There is, for Kant, a fundamental difference between the 
object or sphere of theoretical understanding and practical 
reason. Nature is the sphere of mathematical, scientific law. 
There is an isomorphic relation between the phenomena of na- 
ture and the human understanding, such that the universal laws 
of nature are identical with the synthetic a priori rules or laws 
of the understanding. Human practical reason, on the other 
hand, is not limited by any a priori categories which necessarily 
would determine the conditions of its experience and operation j 
it is completely free and undetermined. Hence practical reason 
can issue a categorical imperative on how man as a rational, 
moral being ought to act, and can postulate what man ought to 
believe concerning such noumenal entities as God and the human 
soul. So far as moral culture is concerned, the maxim "Thou 
canst because thou oughtest" holds good; whereas in the sphere 
of natural science man is confronted with a necessary order of 
phenomena which is not determined by human will. 
This explains why Kant did not postulate any a priori cate- 
gories of practical reason, since to have done so would have 
meant a denial of man's moral freedom and autonomy. Nature, 
for him, was the sphere of necessity and required the postulation 
of equally predetermined categories of the understanding, but 
moral and religious culture was the product of human freedom 
and creativity, and did not, therefore, require or necessitate 
any fixed categories. Man does not create the order of nature of 
which he is a part, although the human understanding through 
its categories does predetermine the general modes or per- 
spectives through which it is perceived. Man does, however, 
create his own moral laws and freely sets up universal moral 
standards for all mankind. In short, natural phenomena are 
given in experience; moral phenomena are not so given, but 
have to be willed into existence in accordance with the dictates 
of practical reason and the human conscience. This important 
488 DAVID BIDNEY 
point seems to have been overlooked by the neo-Kantian axiolo- 
gists who criticize Kant for having failed to provide categories of 
practical reason and who presume to rectify Kant's failure by 
providing such axiological categories. 44 These neo-Kantian axi- 
ologists, like the historical idealists, seem to confuse, as Kant 
himself never did, the sphere of logical and scientific necessity 
which is nature, and the sphere of moral freedom which is cul- 
ture. 
5 
Wilhelm Dilthey's Neo-Kantian Critique of Historical Reason 
In contrast to the seventeenth and eighteenth century meta- 
physical rationalism, the keynote of nineteenth century philo- 
sophical thought is history. Even those who accepted the "crit- 
ical," anthropological idealism of Kant felt that the Kantian 
approach had to be expanded so as to provide a logical and 
epistemological analysis of the conditions of historical, cultural 
thought. Wilhelm Dilthey gave classic ｅxpression to this point 
of view and attempted to synthesize the thought of Kant and 
Comte together with the historicism of the Romanticists and 
Evolutionists. He proposed a "Critique of Historical Reason" 
to take the place of Kant's Critiqu.es of Pure and Practical 
Reason in order to get to know the laws which govern social, 
intellectual, and moral phenomena while following "Kant's 
critical path." 
Dilthey differentiated sharply between the sphere of natural 
science and that of the Geisteswissenschaften or human studies. 
Thus he writes: 
Mankind, if apprehended only by perception and perceptual knowl- 
edge, would be for us a physical fact, and as such it would be accessible 
only to natural-scientific knowledge. It becomes an object for the 
human studies only in so far as human states are consciously lived, 
insofar as they find ｅxpression in living utterances, and insofar as 
these ｅxpressions are understood. ... In short, it is through the process 
of understanding (verstehen) that life in its depths is made clear to 
itself, and on the other hand we understand ourselves and others only 
"See, for example, W. M. Urban's The Intelligible World (London, 1929), 
344*. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 489 
when we transfer our own lived experience into every kind of expres- 
sion of our own and other people's life. Thus everywhere the relation- 
ship between lived experience, ｅxpression, and understanding is the 
proper procedure by which mankind as an object in the human studies 
exists for us. The human studies are thus founded on this relation be- 
tween lived experience, ｅxpression and understanding. 45 
In brief, according to Dilthey, the human studies have for 
their object life-forms which are to be adequately understood 
in their dynamic relationships through an inner, lived experi- 
ence of the concrete ｅxpressions and symbolic meanings which 
constitute these forms. By contrast, natural science is said to 
deal with abstract or value- free objects which are known directly 
through observation and explained causally. Natural science is 
said to be "nomothetic" whereas cultural studies are "idio- 
graphic." 46 
The practical significance of this dichotomy betweeen the 
natural sciences on the one hand, and the human studies on the 
other, lies in the fact that it divorced cultural values or ends as 
the ｅxpression of historical reason from the value-free facts and 
laws provided by the natural sciences. 47 This divorce, as in- 
dicated earlier, had its source in the Kantian distinction between 
the inherent freedom of the practical reason and the formally- 
determined pure reason. All Dilthey had really done was to 
convert Kant's Critique of Practical Reason into a critique of 
historical reason and of human cultural ｅxpression. 
Since cultural values, as the free ｅxpression and creation of 
historical reason were relative to one's time and society, there 
was on this basis no universal criterion by which they could be 
measured or evaluated in relation to one another. Dilthey him- 
self was aware of this implication of his thought and accepted 
it. He writes: 
The knife of historical relativism which has cut to pieces all meta- 
45 Quoted by Hodges, Dilthey, 142. 
49 Ibid., 69. In his Zur Logik der Kulturvnssenschaften Cassirer rejects this. 
41 See Howard Lee Nostrand's Introduction to Jose Ortega y Gasset's Mission 
of the University (Princeton, 1944) for an interesting analysis of the implica- 
tions of this separation} also D. Bidney's "Culture Theory and the Problem of 
Cultural Crises" in A Broaches to Group Understanding, Sixth Symposium of the 
Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, (New York, 1947). 
490 DAVID BIDNEY 
physics and religion, must also bring healing. We only need to be 
thorough. We must make philosophy itself an object of philosophical 
study. There is need of a science which shall apply evolutionary con- 
ceptions and comparative methods to the study of the systems them- 
selves. . . . Every solution of the philosophical problem belongs from a 
historical point of view to a particular date and a particular situation at 
that date; man, the creature of time, so long as he works in time, 
finds the security of his existence in the fact that he lifts his creations 
out of the stream of time as something lasting: this illusion gives to his 
creative work a greater joy and power. . . . Philosophy cannot compre- 
hend the world in its essence by means of a metaphysical system, and 
set forth this knowledge in a way that is universally valid. . . . Thus 
from all the enormous labour of the metaphysical mind there remains 
the historical consciousness, which repeats that labour in itself and so 
experiences in it the inscrutable depths of the world. The last word 
of the mind which has run through all the outlooks is not the relativity 
of them all, but the sovereignty of the mind in face of each one of 
them, and at the same time the positive consciousness of the way in 
which, in the various attitudes of the mind, the one reality of the world 
exists for us. 48 
Dilthey, although accepting the historical relativity of phil- 
osophical systems and denying the validity of metaphysics, 
found solace in the fact of the mind's sovereignty and freedom 
in creating its own cultural perspectives. Thus, contrary to the 
naturalistic approach, historical relativity was linked, not with 
determinism, but with human freedom of self-ｅxpression. The 
idea that man is free to envisage his own world of values and to 
reconstruct his human world in terms of his lived experiences, 
is ground for optimism and faith in human progress, notwith- 
standing the temporal character and historical relativity of 
human achievements. This thesis is one which, it will appear, 
Cassirer also shares with Dilthey. 
6 
Jose Ortega y Gasset and Historical Vitalism 
In his essay on "Wilhelm Dilthey and the Idea of Life," 49 
Ortega y Gasset has clarified and systematized the basic pre- 
48 Quoted by Hodges in his Dilthey ', 1546*. 
** Jose Ortega y Gasset, in Concord and Liberty (New York, 1946). 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 491 
suppositions of Dilthey's theory while re-interpreting it in his 
own ontological terms. If one accepts the standpoint of his- 
toricism, he points out, man may not be said to possess a nature 
in the sense of a fixed mode of being. "Man has no 'nature j' he 
has history. His being is not one but many and manifold, dif- 
rent in each time and each place." 50 Summarizing and comple- 
menting Dilthey's thought Ortega y Gasset writes: 
Man is historical in the sense that he has no actual and immutable 
constitution but assumes most varied and diverse forms. History, in the 
first instance, signifies the simple fact that the human being is variable. 
Man is historical in the sense that what he is at each moment includes 
a past. Remembrance of what happened to him and what he was before 
bears upon what he is now. History here means persistence of the past, 
to have a past, and to come out of it ... history is the more or less ade- 
quate reconstruction which human life produces of itself . . . history is 
the attempt to bring to its possible perfection the interpretation of human 
life by conceiving it from the viewpoint of all mankind in so far as 
mankind forms an actual and real unity, not an abstract ideal in 
short, history in the formal sense of universal history. 51 
Although appreciating Dilthey's contribution towards a gen- 
uine, historical perspective, Ortega y Gasset is critical of the the 
former's "spiritual anthropology." Since "consciousness cannot 
go behind itself," Dilthey's anthroplogy becomes a phenomen- 
ological analysis of the cognitive efforts of mankind. Although 
rejecting a metaphysics of fixed forms of being, he conceives of 
the life-process as a kind of Heraclitean flux similar to Berg- 
son's elan vital. Man in particular is conceived as a sort of finite 
causa sm y as "a being creating its own entity." In his essay on 
"History as a System" Ortega y Gasset states: 
Man in a word has no nature; what he has is ... history. Expressed 
differently: what nature is to things, history, res gestae> is to man. once 
again we become aware of the possible application of theological con- 
cepts to human reality. Deus, cut hoc nature quod Decent . . . says 
Augustine. Man likewise finds that he has no nature other than what 
he himself has done. 52 
80 1 bid., 148. 
K IHd., i66f. 
"in Philosophy and- History, Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, ed. by Kli- 
bansky and Paton (Oxford, 1936), 313. 
492 DAVID BIDNEY 
Thus Ortega y Gasset finds an ontological justification for 
Dilthey's phenomenological historicism. By regarding man in 
the perspective of history as literally making himself, un- 
hampered by any restraints other than those man himself has 
historically created for himself, Ortega y Gasset is able to com- 
bine ontological freedom with historical determinism and to at- 
tribute to man the attribute of self-creation which the classical 
philosophers reserved for God alone. 
It is of especial interest in this connection to compare Ortega 
y Gasset's historical vitalism, as it may be called, with the ex- 
istentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. 53 Both writers are committed 
to a radical humanism which postulates the self-creativity of 
human life and its constantly changing modes of ｅxpression. It 
would appear, therefore, that Sartre's existentialism and Ortega 
y Gasset's historical vitalism share a common ontological thesis 
in maintaining that life or existence determines its own essence. 
Contemporary existentialism, considered as an interpretation of 
man and his culture, is not quite as novel as it has been made to 
appear. 
7 
C 'assurer's Cultural Definition of Man: Man as 
Animal Symbolicum 
Cassirer also provides a historical interpretation of the con- 
cept of human nature and in this respect his view is close to the 
radical historicism of Dilthey and Ortega y Gasset. The latter, 
we have noted, maintains that "Man has no nature; he has 
history." To have a nature would imply having a fixed form of 
being, and as Ortega y Gasset, like Bergson, regards life as 
essentially a Heraclitean process of becoming, he denies that 
man has any fixed nature. Man is said to be always in the mak- 
ing, and without any fixed constitution. Cassirer, in agreement 
with Dilthey's phenomenological anthropology, arrives at a 
similar conclusion by the subjective route of symbolical or cul- 
tural idealism. As against Ortega y Gasset's ontological position, 
Cassirer argues that 
Since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason we conceive the dualism of 
ra Jean-Paul Sartre, UExirtentiaUsme est une Humanisme (Paris, 1 946) . 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 493 
being and becoming as a logical rather than a metaphysical dualism. . . . 
We do not regard substance and change as different realms of being but 
as categories as conditions and presuppositions of our empirical knowl- 
edge. These categories are universal principles; they are not confined 
to special objects of knowledge. 54 
Thus, according to Cassirer, an ontological or "substantial" 
knowledge of man is impossible, since the latter would imply 
that man can have an immediate knowledge of himself as an 
entity or thing-in-itself apart from his symbolical representa- 
tions. Man, he argues, cannot know himself except through an 
analysis of his symbolic cultural ｅxpressions or objectifications, 
since all human knowledge, including self-knowledge, is or- 
ganized by the a priori, symbolic categories of historical culture. 
Man is, therefore, said to be an "animal symbolicum"** rather 
than an "animal rationale?' as he has been defined since the 
time of Aristotle. As Cassirer goes out of his way to explain: 
The philosophy of symbolic forms starts from the presupposition 
that, if there is any definition of the nature or "essence" of man, this 
definition can only be understood as a functional one, not a substantial 
one. We cannot define man by any inherent principle which constitutes 
his metaphysical essence nor can we define him by any inborn faculty 
or instinct that may be ascertained by empirical observation. Man's 
outstanding characteristic, his distinguishing mark, is not his meta- 
physical or physical nature but his work. It is this work, it is the 
system of human activities, which defines and determines the circle 
of "humanity." Language, myth, religion, art, science, history are the 
constituents, the various sectors of this circle. A "philosophy of man" 
would therefore be a philosophy which would give us insight into the 
fundamental structure of each of these human activities, and which 
at the same time would enable us to understand them as an organic 
whole. Language, art, myth, religion are no isolated, random crea- 
tions. They are held together by a common bond. But this bond is 
not a vinculum substantiale, as it was conceived and described in 
scholastic thought; it is rather a vinculum functionate. It is the basic 
function of speech, of myth, of art, of religion, that we must seek far 
behind their innumerable shapes and utterances, and that in the last 
analysis we must attempt to trace back to a common origin. 56 
84 EM. y 172. 
Ibid., 6 7 f. 
494 DAVID SIDNEY 
Thus Cassirer, in agreement with Comte, maintains that to 
"know thyself" individually requires that one know humanity in 
terms of its historical, cultural achievements, and hence he ac- 
cepts Comte's proposition that "humanity is not to be explained 
through man but man by humanity." 57 
Cassirer, like Dilthey, would disagree with Comte's positiv- 
ism only insofar as Comte applies the objective methods of 
natural science to human studies, on the assumption that the 
latter were a kind of "social physics," subject to empirical ob- 
servation and explanation in terms of universal, natural laws. 
In opposition to this naturalistic approach, the neo-Kantians 
would maintain that the human studies or cultural sciences re- 
quire a subjective approach which would yield understanding 
and concrete, idiographic insight into the human processes and 
symbols involved a type of knowledge which no amount of 
external observation, causal explanation, or statistical correlation 
can possibly furnish. 
This point is significant in that it demonstrates how closely 
historical idealism and sociological positivism approximate one 
another, and how much essential agreement there is in their con- 
clusions, notwithstanding their professed differences in method- 
ology. The basic reason for this agreement between historical 
idealism and sociological positivism lies in their common anti- 
metaphysical perspective. In denying any ontological or sub- 
stantial knowledge of man or of human nature, the adherents of 
both these positions are led to affirm that only a knowledge of 
"social facts" and historical, social achievements can provide a 
scientific knowledge of man. Thus both the positivists and the 
neo-Kantian idealists tend to reduce the category of nature to 
that of culture, thereby turning ontology and epistemology into 
"culturology" or cultural anthropology. 
A careful analysis of contemporary ethnology would suggest, 
that both sociological positivism and cultural idealism represent 
extreme positions. 58 If one were to adopt a polaristic conception 
of culture and recognize that the idea of culture is unintelligible 
BT ibid., 64. 
58 See D. Sidney, "Human Nature and the Cultural Process" (American 
Anthropologist, 49, no. 3, 1947, 375'99-) 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 495 
apart from its reference to nature, then it would follow that 
human nature is logically and genetically prior to culture, since 
we must postulate human agents with determinate psycho- 
biological powers and impulses capable of initiating the cultural 
process. In other words, the determinate nature of man is mani- 
fested functionally through culture but is not reducible to cul- 
ture. There is no necessity in fact or in logic for choosing between 
nature and history. Man does have a substantial nature which 
may be investigated by the methods of natural science as well as 
a cultural history which may be studied by the methods of the 
social sciences and humanities. By assuming uncritically that all 
human phenomena pertain to the domain of cultural history, one 
sets up a false dichotomy or division between human studies on 
the one hand, and natural science on the other a division which 
tends to widen the gulf between them and thus renders any 
effective cultural integration impossible of achievement. As 
Eduardo Nicol has recently put it, 
Our epoch reproduces, in the anthropological field, the situation of 
thought represented by Heraclitus and Parmenides in the cosmological 
field; we have to investigate what the being who changes is. It is not 
enough to say that man changes, that man is historical ; it is not sufficient 
to say that man is. We must explain how he is in change; we must 
explain what constitutes the internal law of his change and how the 
organic structure of his being operates in history. 59 
If there were nothing relatively permanent or fixed, if there 
were no human nature or essence, there could be no science of 
man but only a sequence of descriptions for each period of 
history. on the other hand, if human nature were completely 
unmodifiable, if man were incapable of determining for himself 
the direction or particular form of his development in time, 
there could be no culture or history. The cultural process re- 
quires as its indispensable condition a determinate human nature 
and environment which is subject to transformation in time by 
man himself. 
w See Eduardo Nicol, "The Idea of Man," in The Social Sciences in Mexico^ 
vol. i, no. i, (May 1947) 62-69. 
496 DAVID BIDNEY 
8 
Ernst Cassirer and the Concept of Cultural Reality 
In agreement with the Kantian position, Cassirer also holds 
that human thought is no passive mirror of reality but rather a 
dynamic agent which creates a symbolical or intelligible world 
of its own. In his early work on Language and Myth Cassirer 
has formulated very clearly his basic indebtedness to the 
Kantian approach. He writes: 
Against this self-dissolution of the spirit there is only one remedy: 
to accept in all seriousness what Kant calls his "Copernican revolution." 
Instead of measuring the content, meaning, and truth of intellectual 
forms by something extraneous which is supposed to be reproduced 
in them, we must find in these forms themselves the measure and 
criterion for their truth and intrinsic meaning. Instead of taking them 
as mere copies of something else, we must see in each of these spiritual 
forms a spontaneous law of generation; an original way and tendency 
of ｅxpression which is more than a mere record of something initially 
given in fixed categories of real existence. From this point of view, 
myth, art, language and science appear as symbols; not in the sense 
of mere figures which refer to some given reality by means of suggestion 
and allegorical renderings, but in the sense of forces each of which 
produces and posits a world of its own. In these realms the spirit 
exhibits itself in that inwardly determined dialectic by virtue of which 
alone there is any reality, any organized and definite Being at all. 
Thus the special symbolic forms are not imitations, but organs of 
reality, since it is solely by their agency that anything real becomes an 
object for intellectual apprehension, and as such is made visible to us. 
The question as to what reality is apart from these forms, and what 
are its independent attributes, becomes irrelevant here. For the mind, 
only that can be visible which has some definite form; but every form 
of existence has its source in some peculiar way of seeing, some intel- 
lectual formulation and intuition of meaning. once language, myth, 
art and science are recognized as such ideational forms, the basic 
philosophical question is no longer that of their relation to an absolute 
reality which forms, so to speak, their solid and substantial substratum; the 
central problem now is that of their mutual limitation and supplementa- 
tion. Though they all function organically together in the construction 
of spiritual reality, yet each of these organs has its individual assignment. 60 
"Language and Myth, tr. by S. K. Langer (New York and London, 1946) 8f. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 497 
Thus Cassirer's Kantian thesis is that symbolic forms are not 
mere imitations but organs of reality and that there are a 
limited number of "archetypal" cultural phenomena which con- 
stitute the main categories of cultural reality. For man, all 
reality is ultimately cultural reality or symbolical reality which 
the human mind itself has created in the course of historical 
development, since that is the only kind of reality which it is 
possible for the human mind to apprehend and evaluate. 
This symbolical world of objective meanings constitutes, as it 
were, "a new dimension of reality" 61 available only to man. Man 
literally lives in a "symbolical universe" of his own creation 
and imagination. As Cassirer puts it in his Essay on Man: 
Man cannot escape from his own achievement. He cannot but adopt 
the conditions of his own life. No longer in a merely physical universe, 
man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art and religion 
are parts of this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the 
symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress 
in thought and experience refines upon and strengthens this net. No 
longer can man confront reality immediately j he cannot see, as it 
were, face to face. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as 
man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things 
themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He 
has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in 
mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything 
except by the interposition of this artificial medium. His situation is the 
same in the theoretical as in the practical sphere. Even here man does 
not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate needs 
and desires. He lives rather in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes 
and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in his fantasies and dreams. 62 
Thus, according to Cassirer, the various cultural disciplines 
are, as it were, the language of the spirit, the diverse modes of 
symbolical ｅxpression created by man in the process of inter- 
preting his life-experiences. one cannot go behind these sym- 
bolical ｅxpressions to intuit nature or things-in-themselves di- 
rectly, since experience is formally constituted by symbols which 
determine all our human perspectives. For Cassirer, it would 
498 DAVID SIDNEY 
appear, the symbol takes the place of Kant's forms of intuition 
and categories of the understanding. The symbol is thought to 
constitute the ultimate element of all human culture. 
Again it is interesting to note that the sociological positivists 
have come to a similar conclusion by a different route. In his 
Cultural Reality Florian Znaniecki argues that 
For a general view of the world the fundamental points are that the 
concrete empirical world is a world in evolution in which nothing 
absolutely permanent can be found, and that as a world in evolution 
it is first of all a world of culture, not of nature, a historical, not a 
physical reality. Idealism and naturalism both deal, not with the concrete 
empirical world, but with abstractly isolated aspects of it. 63 
From this it appears that Znaniecki's positivistic, historical 
cultural reality is identical with that of the neo-Kantian ideal- 
ists, although he himself thought that he was steering a middle 
course between naturalism and idealism (of the Hegelian 
variety). once more it may be seen how sociological positivism 
and historical idealism come to the same conclusion and posit a 
cultural reality as over against a metaphysical or ontological 
reality which is pre-cultural. 
Cassirer*s Critique of Kant 
As pointed out in our discussion of Dilthey (Section 5 above), 
the neo-Kantians of the nineteenth century felt that the Kantian 
approach had to be modified so as to take into consideration the 
facts of cultural evolution. Cassirer likewise shares this view, 
and, in common with Dilthey, takes objection to Kant's exces- 
sive intellectualism and lack of historical perspective. In agree- 
ment with Comte, Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl he maintains that 
primitive thought is pre-scientific and does not conform to our 
logical standards, but that it is nonetheless intelligible and 
orderly. Kant tended to assume that only the categories of 
modern science provided the necessary logical ground for order 
w Florian Znaniecki, Cultural Reality (Chicago, 1919), 21. ZnanieckPs formu- 
lation of the epistemological theory of cultural reality actually antedates that of 
Cassirer, and so there can be no question of his indebtedness to the latter. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 499 
and objectivity, whereas the facts of ethnology demonstrate 
the possibility of types of order and logic which are pre-scientific 
or non-scientific. Thus Cassirer comments: 
In our modern epistemology, both in the empiristic and rationalistic 
schools, we often meet with the conception that the first data of human 
experience are in an entirely chaotic state. Even Kant seems, in the 
first chapters of the Critique o] Pure Reason, to start from this pre- 
supposition. Experience, he says, is no doubt the first product of our 
understanding. But it is not a simple fact; it is a compound of two 
opposite factors, of matter and form. The material factor is given in our 
sense perceptions; the formal factor is represented by our scientific 
concepts. These concepts, the concepts of pure understanding, give to 
the phenomena their synthetic unity. What we call the unity of an 
object cannot be anything but the formal unity of our consciousness in 
the synthesis of the manifold in our representations. Then and then only 
we say that we know an object if we have produced synthetic unity 
in the manifold of intuition. For Kant, therefore, the whole question 
of the objectivity of human knowledge is indissolubly connected with 
the fact of science. His Transcendental Aesthetics is concerned with the 
problem of pure mathematics; his Transcendental Analytic attempts 
to explain the fact of a mathematical science of nature. 
But a philosophy of human culture has to track down the problem 
to a more remote source. Man lived in an objective world long before 
he lived in a scientific world. Even before he had found his approach 
to science, his experience was not a mere amorphous mass of sense expres- 
sions. It was an organized and articulated experience. It possessed a defi- 
nite structure. But the concepts that give to this world its synthetic unity 
are not of the same type nor are they on the same level as our scientific 
concepts. They are mythical or linguistic concepts. 64 
In brief, logical or scientific thought, which Kant assumed 
to be a native endowment of the human understanding is rather 
an historical achievement of man. 
Thus Cassirer would transform the Kantian Critique of Pure 
Reason into a "Critique of Culture." His monumental Phi- 
losofhie der symboUschen Formen is an attempt to demonstrate 
that the whole of human culture may be understood as an his- 
torical ｅxpression of the human spirit and that the diverse cul- 
2o 7 f. 
500 DAVID SIDNEY 
tural disciplines are functionally integrated and are all alike to 
be interpreted as symbolic creations of humanity. In the intro- 
duction to the aforementioned work, Cassirer states his thesis 
and main objective clearly: 
With this the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture. It 
tries to understand and to demonstrate how all the content of culture 
in so far as it is more than merely singular content, in so far as it is 
grounded in a universal formal principle presumes an original act 
of spirit (Geist). It is in this that the basic tenet of idealism finds its 
specific and complete validation. 65 
In sum, Cassirer J s critique of culture has for its main objec- 
tive "a phenomenology of human culture," 66 and provides a 
logical analysis of basic cultural disciplines in their historical and 
systematic development. He takes cultural reality as given in 
human experience and seeks to analyze its basic forms and the 
functional interrelations of these forms with one another. Cas- 
sirer's anthropological study, like that projected by Dilthey, is 
a "spiritual anthropology" and is concerned with the phe- 
nomenological analysis of cultural symbols taken as free expres- 
sions or obj edifications of the human spirit. Whereas in Kant 
we have an epistemological dualism of form versus content, Cas- 
sirer's cultural symbols are said to be concrete forms utilizing 
sense material in diverse ways. 87 The symbol is thought of as an 
"organ of thought" which permits of no separation of the sym- 
bol and its object. Symbols are regarded not merely as mental 
constructs but as dynamic functions or energies for the forming 
of reality and for the "synthesis of the ego and its world." In 
sum, Cassirer stresses the autonomous creativity of the spirit 
(Schopfung des Getstes) and envisages life or spirit as a "func- 
tion and energy of construction" which manifests a "unity of 
being amidst diversity of ｅxpression." 
It may be questioned, however, whether Cassirer has really 
overcome Kant's epistemological dualism. So far as one can 
gather, he has replaced the Kantian dualism of form and con- 
* Pkiloso'phie der symbolischen Formen, vol. I. 
W J?M., 52. Cassirer's phenomenology of culture may be contrasted with the 
ontology of culture of the pre-Kantian philosophical tradition. 
w Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, vol. i, Introduction. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 501 
tent by the duality of function and content, but function as he 
conceives it appears to be equally formal. Thus, as we have 
noted, he speaks of the "function" which Stoicism had to fulfil 
in seventeenth and eighteenth century thought, as if the func- 
tion of an idea were something distinct from its content. Simi- 
larly he speaks of the "functional bond" which binds together 
the various cultural disciplines irrespective of their "substance" 
or content. In like manner, he refers to "the true unity of Ian- 
gauge" as being a "functional one" rather than a "substantial 
one." 68 In all these instances, function and substance, end and 
means, are divorced as if one were quite intelligible apart from 
the other. In effect, function as so interpreted becomes com- 
pletely formalized, since one and the same function may be 
performed by the most diverse cultural means or ｅxpressions. 
Thus, although Cassirer wishes to assure us that there is no 
separation of the symbol and its object, his actual procedure in 
separating function from substance or content demonstrates the 
exact contrary. 
In general, it may be said that Cassirer, like the neo-Kantian 
axiologists referred to earlier (in conclusion of Section 4 above), 
reduces the sphere of nature to that of culture, but for a differ- 
ent reason. Whereas the neo-Kantian axiologists attempted to 
subordinate theoretical reason to practical reason and proceeded 
to endow practical reason with special value categories, the neo- 
Kantian culturologists, as they may be called, regarded both 
theoretical and practical reason as different modes of a common 
historical, cultural reason. 68 * In seeking to overcome the duality 
of Kant's Critiques by positing a unity either of the practical, 
axiological reason, or of historical cultural reason, the neo- 
Kantians tended to reduce, as Kant himself would never permit, 
the sphere of nature and natural science to that of culture and 
free, historical ｅxpression. 
130. 
681 In his monograph Zur Logik Der Kulturvrissenschaiten (Goteborg, 1942) 
Cassirer explicitly differentiates between his theory of symbolic forms or Kultur- 
be griff e and the Wertbegriffe of Rickert. Culture concepts are said to have a 
logical structure which differentiates them from historical as well as from value 
concepts (72). 
502 DAVID BIDNEY 
IO 
Cassirer on Symbolism, Language, and Cultural Thought 
Since the symbol, according to Cassirer, is to be regarded as 
the ultimate element or source of human culture, we must 
consider carefully his concept of symbolism and its relation to 
language in particular and to cultural thought in general. 
First of all, it is to be noted that Cassirer distinguishes be- 
tween signs or signals and symbols. A sign or signal is a sense- 
reference to some physical object or event. A symbol is an ex- 
pression which refers to an intuited, universal meaning. That 
is to say, the meaning of a symbol is intrinsic to it and is not to 
be understood by reference to some object other than itself. Signs 
or signals have a practical value for behavior and may be per- 
ceived by all animals; but symbols have a theoretical function 
which only humans are capable of experiencing. Thus Cassirer 
writes: 
Symbols in the proper sense of this term cannot be reduced to 
mere signals. Signals and symbols belong to different universes of dis- 
course: a signal is a part of the physical world of being; a symbol is a 
part of the human world of meaning. Signals are "operators," symbols 
are "designators." Signals, even when understood and used as such, 
have nevertheless a sort of physical or substantial being; symbols have 
only a functional value. ... In short, we may say that the animal 
possesses a practical imagination and intelligence whereas man alone 
has developed a new form: a symbolic imagination and intelligence?* 
Cassirer's idealistic theory of symbolism may be contrasted 
with the behavioristic, naturalistic theory of symbolic meaning 
held by contemporary linguists and anthropologists, such as, 
Leonard Bloomfield, 70 Edward Sapir, 71 and Charles Morris/ 2 
Thus Morris, whom Cassirer apparently had in mind, states 
that 
A symbol is a sign produced by its interpreter which acts as a substitute 
for some other sign with which it is synonymous; all signs not symbols 
3 2f. 
70 Leonard Bloomfield, Language , (New York, 1933). 
"Edward Sapir, Language y (New York, 1939)5 also article "Language" in 
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, vol. 9. 
78 Charles Morris, Signs, Language and Behavior, (New York, 1 94.6) . 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 503 
are signals. . . . Signals and symbols are alike signs in that they are 
preparatory stimuli controlling behavior with respect to other behavior; 
the symbol is a sign producible by the organism itself and a substitute 
for some other sign, but this difference, while distinguishing sign and 
symbol, is not regarded as a fundamental difference in their nature as 
signs. 78 
Morris explicitly contrasts his behavioristic position with that 
of the "mentalists" for whom symbols refer to concepts and not 
to objects or behavior. 
As against this type of behavioristic, naturalistic theory, Cas- 
sirer argues that the symbolic function marks a new stage of 
mental development, which cannot be explained in terms of 
"emotionally denuded" animal cries or as a by-product of be- 
havior. The difference, he claims, 
between 'prepositional language and emotional language is the real 
landmark between the human and animal world. All the theories and 
observations concerning animal behavior are wide of the mark if they 
fail to recognize this fundamental difference. In all the literature of the 
subject there does not seem to be a single conclusive proof of the fact 
that an animal ever made the decisive step from subjective to objective, 
from affective to prepositional language. 74 
According to Cassirer, therefore, man may be defined as the 
symbolizing or symbol-making animal. It is this symbolic func- 
tion which has enabled man to create language and culture and 
has opened up for him "a new dimension of reality" not access- 
ible to the animal species. The symbolic function of language is 
said to be an "Urfhanomen" which is not to be explained 
causally or genetically through some antecedent order of psycho- 
biological phenomena. This in turn presupposes a theory of 
evolution by "mutation" or emergence of new kinds, which 
may be contrasted with the Darwinian theory of gradual evolu- 
tion through chance variations. 75 
Cassirer illustrates his point by reference to the development 
of the child: 
" Loc. cit., 25, 49. 
74 M., 30. 
w Cf . Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschajten, especially part 4 on "Formproblem 
und Kausalproblem," 108-112. 
504 DAVID SIDNEY 
With the first understanding of the symbolism of speech a real revo- 
lution takes place in the life of the child. From this point on his whole 
personal and intellectual life assumes an entirely new shape. Roughly 
speaking, this change may be described by saying that the child passes 
from a more subjective to an objective state, from a merely emotional 
attitude to a theoretical attitude. . . . The child himself has a clear 
sense of the significance of the new instrument for his mental develop- 
ment. He is not satisfied with being taught in a purely receptive manner 
but takes an active share in the process of speech which is at the same 
time a process of progressive objectifi cation. By learning to name things 
a child does not simply add a list of artificial signs to his previous knowl- 
edge of ready-made empirical objects. He learns rather to form the 
concepts of these objects, to come to terms with the objective world. . . . 
To the adult the objective world already has a definite shape as a result 
of speech activity, which has in a sense molded all our other activities. 
Our perceptions, intuitions, and concepts have coalesced with the terms 
and speech forms of our mother tongue. Great efforts are required to 
release the bond between words and things. 76 
The understanding and utilization of genuine, human speech 
are achieved when the child first acquires insight into the fact 
that words symbolize universal concepts or meanings. This is a 
revolutionary, momentous step which enables him for the first 
time to join the human speech community and to form a clear 
understanding of the objective, common cultural world in which 
he lives. In this sense, language is basic to all other forms of 
cultural activity, since the words of language mold the way in 
which one experiences and reacts to the objective world. In the 
last analysis, it is the theoretical function of linguistic symbols, 
the fact that they are instruments which refer to universal con- 
cepts, which makes possible their practical utilization in social 
communication as well as in individual thought. 
It should be noted, however, that although linguistic symbols 
underlie all other cultural activities, they are in turn affected by 
the particular, cultural configuration in which they are utilized. 
As Franz Boas has put it: 
We should rather say that language is a reflection of the state of 
culture and follows in its development the demands of culture. In an- 
other way, however, language exerts an influence upon culture. Words 
"EM., i 3I ff. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 505 
and phrases are symbols of cultural attitudes and have the same kind 
of emotional appeal that is characteristic of other symbols. The name of 
a rite, of a deity, an honorific title, a term giving a succinct ｅxpression 
to political or church organization, may have the power to raise the 
passions of a people without much reference to the changing contents of 
the term. 77 
Cassirer was keenly aware of the "social task" of language 
and its relativity to specific cultural conditions. 78 All languages, 
whether of primitive societies or of civilized ones, are said to be 
in congruity with the conditions of their cultures. 
Finally, it should be noted, that the category of symbol as 
employed by Cassirer has a subjective as well as objective refer- 
ence. Thus words are said to be symbols in the sense that they 
refer to universal, objective meanings which the intellect and 
imagination intuit immediately. This "semantic function" of 
words makes phenomenological analysis possible, since the ideas 
or meanings referred to have a subsistence which is independent 
of the mind which conceives them. It is because of this capacity 
for symbolic intuition that man may be said to be a symbol- 
making or symbolizing animal. on the other hand, symbols 
have a subjective function in the sense that they are ｅxpressions 
of human life or spirit, and of basic psychological motivations. 
Every cultural form is said to be a symbolic form in virtue of the 
fact that it is an "organ of thought" or an obj edification of the 
spirit. Cultural symbols as objective manifestations of thought 
constitute a "symbolic universe" and man is described as "con- 
stantly conversing with himself. " In this sense man is said to be 
an "animal symboUcum" or a symbolized animal, since man 
does not know himself directly but only through the cultural 
symbols which humanity has created historically. 
Theoretically, however, it is quite possible to maintain the 
semantic thesis that man is a symbol-making or symbolizing 
animal without adhering also to the idealistic view that man is 
essentially a symbolized or symbolical animal. The former 
semantic point is quite compatible also with a realistic episte- 
mology and a dualistic metaphysics which allows for the reality 
"Franz Boas, in General Anthropology ', edited by himself (New York, 1938), 
ch. iv, 142. 
506 DAVID SIDNEY 
of minds as well as physical substances, whereas the latter thesis 
presupposes an idealistic epistemology which denies ontological 
knowledge. Cassirer himself utilizes both conceptions of the 
symbol, passing from the idealistic to the realistic view without 
explicitly recognizing the change in philosophical perspective. 
The disparity between the subjective and objective functions 
of symbolic forms may be illustrated by reference to the diverse 
conceptions of man to which they lead. If the symbol is defined 
objectively, then man may be said to have a nature as well as a 
culture, since symbols refer to a reality other than themselves. 
If, however, the symbol is defined subjectively, then all reality 
is culturally defined and man has no nature but only cultural 
functions. 
ii 
Cassirer on the Evolution of Cultural Symbolism 

one of the basic tasks which Cassirer set himself in his Phi- 
losophy of Symbolic Forms was to trace the evolution of cul- 
tural symbolism from primitive to modern times, with a view to 
indicating the critical stages of development. He was, moreover, 
concerned to demonstrate the "unity of function" of each 
archetypal form of symbolism by showing how it originated in, 
or was motivated by, some psychological impulse which sought 
creative ｅxpression through a given mode of symbolism. 
The act of symbolization is the initial presupposition of his 
philosophy of culture. In the beginning was the symbol. But 
originally the basic archetypal forms of symbolism were not 
clearly differentiated. From the start there were the elements 
of language, myth, and art which arose as ｅxpressions of sensa- 
tion, thought, feeling, and intuition; but primitive man was 
not conscious of his symbolic acts as having discrete functions 
and objects. As Cassirer puts it in his Language and Myth: 
Myth, language and art begin as a concrete, undivided unity, which 
is only gradually resolved into a triad of independent modes of spiritual 
creativity. Consequently, the same mythic animation and hypostatization 
which is bestowed upon the words of human speech is orginally accorded 
to images, to every kind of artistic representation. Especially in the 
magical realm, word magic is everywhere accompanied by picture magic. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 507 
The image, too, achieves its purely representative, specifically "aesthetic" 
function only as the magic circle with which mythical consciousness 
surrounds it is broken, and it is recognized not as a mythico-magic form, 
but as a particular sort of formulation. . . . Language and myth stand 
in an original and indissoluble correlation with one another, from which 
they both emerge but gradually as independent elements. They are 
two diverse shoots from the same parent stem, the same impulse of 
symbolic formulation, springing from the same basic mental activity, 
a concentration and heightening of simple sensory experience. In the 
vocables of speech and in primitive mythic figurations, the same inner 
process finds its consummation; they are both resolutions of an inner 
tension, the representation of subjective impulses and excitations in 
definite objects, forms and figures. 79 
As Cassirer interprets it, language and myth are originally 
so closely interconnected because genetically "Both are based on 
a very general and very early experience of mankind, an experi- 
ence of a social rather than of a physical nature." 80 Just as the 
child soon learns that words have "magic" powers in securing 
attention from its mother or nurse, so primitive man is said to 
transfer this first elementary experience to the totality of nature, 
since for the latter "Nature itself is nothing but a great society 
the society of life." 81 Thus for the primitive mind "the social 
power of the word, experienced in innumerable cases, becomes 
a natural and even supernatural force." In brief, myth arises 
originally as a magical interpretation of the power of words. 
Similarly image or picture magic gives rise to mythical belief. 
As against Max Muller's theory that myth arises as a disease of 
language and owing to the metaphorical use of words, Cassirer's 
point is that myth arises as a result of the normal functioning of 
language in early childhood and in the early experience of 
mankind? 2 
A crisis in the intellectual and moral life of mankind arose 
when primitive man first discovered that nature did not under- 
stand his language. From then on, "The magic function of the 
word was eclipsed and replaced by its semantic function." 88 Man 
79 LM., 98, 88. 
"EM., 1 10. 
81 Ibid. 
. y io 9 f. 
in. 
5o8 DAVID SIDNEY 
discovered that words have a purely logical, symbolic function in 
the communication of meanings and ideas. 
According to Cassirer, therefore, there is an evolutionary 
process of development from the mythical to the logical func- 
tion of linguistic symbols. This development is produced in 
human experience by the functioning or exercise of language 
alone. Linguistic symbols must not be regarded merely as repre- 
senting or referring to objective reality other than themselves j 
linguistic symbols create or determine the order of reality 
which the human mind recognizes and to which it adjusts itself 
accordingly. Myth, logic, metaphysics, and science are the result 
or product of linguistic symbolization at different stages of its 
development. As Cassirer puts it in his Language and Myth: 
Here one can trace directly how humanity really attains its insight 
into objective reality only through the medium of its own activity and 
the progressive differentiation of that activity; before man thinks in 
terms of logical concepts, he holds his experiences by means of clear, 
separate, mythical images. And here too, the development of language 
appears to be the counterpart of the development which mythical intuition 
and thought undergo; for one cannot grasp the true nature and function 
of linguistic concepts if one regards them as copies, as representations 
of a definite world of facts, whose components are given to the mind 
ab initio in stark and separate outlines. Again, the limits of things must 
first be posited, the outlines drawn, by the agency of language; and 
this is accomplished as man's activity becomes internally organized, and 
his conception of Being acquires a correspondingly clear and definite 
pattern. 84 
For Cassirer, it would appear, linguistic symbolism is primary 
to all other forms of cultural ｅxpression. In this sense his phi- 
losophy of culture may be said to depend upon his philosophy of 
language a fact which explains the tremendous importance 
attached to the philosophy of language by other neo-Kantian 
philosophers, such as W. M. Urban, 85 who have been influenced 
by Cassirer's work. 
In the last analysis, it would appear, Cassirer reduces 
ontology and epistemology to psychology and linguistics. We 
84 IM., 37. 
85 W. M. Urban, Language and Reality, (New York* 1939). 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 509 
have seen how myth is said to have originated from the normal 
functioning of language in the psychological history of the 
childhood of humanity and how gradually man discovered the 
logical or semantic function of words as a result of his frustrat- 
ing experience with unintelligent, dumb nature. From this it 
follows that the very notion of an objective reality was a logical 
inference from man's practical, psychological experience an 
argument which is reminiscent of the psychoanalytical treat- 
ment of metaphysics. 
It may be questioned, however, whether Cassirer's psycho- 
logical interpretation of myth and magic is not itself mythical. 
In the first place, Cassirer, in common with nineteenth century 
evolutionary psychologists, assumes a parallelism between the 
experiences of the child and the mental evolution of mankind 
a position which modern psychologists and ethnologists have 
rejected. Secondly, modern psychology provides no evidence 
that the child originally attaches a mythical or magical signifi- 
cance to words. It is true that the child does assume naively at 
first that all things are equally animate and that he can com- 
municate with them as with human beings. This, however, 
implies a naive type of animism, a kind of "natural," mythical 
metaphysics which children everywhere tend implicitly to 
adopt. It may be argued, therefore, that the ontological belief 
of the child determines his use of language on a scale which 
the rational adult finds amusing. It is not his social experience 
with words which determines his mythical perspective upon his 
environment, but rather, it is his animistic perspective which 
determines his attempt to communicate with all things. Gradu- 
ally, as his efforts at communication prove unsuccessful, the 
child learns to distinguish between animate and inanimate 
objects and to restrict his verbal communications to the former. 
Even then, the process is a slow one, since he has also to learn 
that not all animals speak his type of language and that even 
among humans not all speak his vocabulary. The notion that 
words themselves have magical supernatural powers is a rather 
complex and relatively sophisticated belief, which the child may 
acquire from folklore, but is one which he does not arrive at 
simply as a result of his own common experience. In other 
5io DAVID BIDNEY 
terms, the mythology and magic of words are special instances 
of cosmic mythology and magic, and the former cannot there- 
fore serve as a general explanation of the latter. In the last 
analysis, Cassirer assumes that the will to power through words 
of the child as well as of early man leads them both to believe 
in a methaphysics of the solidarity of life an idealistic, volun- 
taristic, anthropocentric assumption which does not take into 
consideration the empirical data of experience and the impact of 
man's cosmic environment upon human intelligence. 
It seems no exaggeration to say that Cassirer's approach to 
the problem of the evolution of cultural symbolism is essen- 
tially anthropocentric. Symbols are formed in response to 
psychological tensions and motivations, and hence symbolic 
meanings are said to have a practical bearing upon the satisfac- 
tion of human psychobiological interests. As Cassirer puts it in 
Language and Myth: 
Whatever appears important for our wishing and willing, our hope 
and anxiety, for acting and doing: that and that only receives the 
stamp of verbal "meaning." . . . For only what is related somehow 
to the focus point of willing and doing, only what proves to be essential 
to the whole scheme of life and activity, is selected from the uniform 
flux of sense impressions, and is "noticed" in the midst of them that 
is to say, receives a special linguistic accent, a name. . . . only symbolic 
ｅxpression can yield the possibility of prospect and retrospect, because 
it is only by symbols that distinctions are not merely made, but fixed 
in consciousness. What the mind has once created, what has been culled 
from the total sphere of consciousness, does not fade away again when 
the spoken word has set its seal upon it and given it definite form. . . . 
Here, too, the recognition of function precedes that of Being. The 
aspects of Being are distinguished and co-ordinated according to a 
measure supplied by action hence they are guided, not by any "objec- 
tive" similarity among things, but by their appearance through the 
medium of practice, which relates them with a purposive nexus. This 
teleological character of verbal concepts may be readily supported and 
clarified by means of examples from the history of language. 86 
Cassirer's anthropocentric, pragmatic interpretation of the 
origin of symbolic, verbal meanings is reminiscent of Bergson's 
evolutionary approach to intellectual concepts. But in his 
37 ff. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 511 
emphasis upon the primacy of symbolic function over form of 
being, Cassirer, it would appear, deserves the creMt for having 
first formulated systematically a functionalistic theory of culture 
which also comprises the data of ethnology. In the history of 
modern ethnology, Bronislaw Malinowski is usually credited 
with having first formulated such an approach, and the latter 
has written as if the functionalistic theory of culture were his 
special achievement. 87 Of course, Malinowski, as a field anthro- 
pologist, gathered his own data, especially among the Trobriand 
Islanders, and has undoubtedly provided the stimulus in 
modern ethnology for a holistic, dynamic approach to cultural 
phenomena. 88 Furthermore, the functionalism of Cassirer is 
historical and symbolic, whereas that of Malinowski is biological 
and sociological. It is all the more significant, therefore, that 
the philosophical anthropologist and the empirical ethnologist 
whose methods appear to differ so widely should converge 
upon a similar functionalistic conclusion. Cassirer himself, dur- 
ing his appointment at Yale University, had ample opportunity 
to make the personal acquaintance of Malinowski, and he soon 
recognized the affinity between their cultural approaches, as 
the many references and quotations in his Essay on Man and 
Myth of the State demonstrate. one may even affirm that 
Cassirer tended to underestimate their respective differences, 
especially as regards the problem of myth and the evolution 
of cultural mentality, thereby undermining the consistency of 
his own position. (See Section 14 infra.} 
This brings us back once more to the distinction between the 
subjective and objective functions of symbols which we discussed 
earlier. We have noted that for Cassirer a symbol is an expres- 
sion which refers to an intuited, universal meaning. Signs or 
signals may be discerned by all animals, but symbols have a 
87 Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific Tfoory of Culture and Other Essays, 
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944). Cf. R. H. Lowie, The History of Ethnological Theory, 
(New York, 1937), ch. xiii, "Functionalism, Pure and Tempered." See also "The 
Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages" in Ogden and Richards, The Mean- 
ing of Meaning (first edition, London, 1923) where Malinowski interprets the 
significance of meaning in primitive thought and language in terms almost 
identical with those of Cassirer. 
68 Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, (London, 1922)) Coral 
Gardens and their Magic, (New York, 1935). 
512 DAVID SIDNEY 
theoretical function which only human beings are capable of 
experiencing. In virtue of his intuition of the objective reference 
of linguistic symbols, man forms the notion of a common, ob- 
jective world and is able to communicate with others who share 
a common cultural perspective. It is the theoretical function of 
symbols which makes possible their practical utilization in 
human society. on the other hand, linguistic symbols are said 
to have an essentially subjective, teleological reference and 
to reflect, not the objective character of things, but our sub- 
jective, practical interests and impulses. Reality as constituted 
by human symbols is a human creation or invention and serves 
the interests of human action or practice. Human symbols are 
not primarily a guide to an understanding of nature, but a re- 
flection of human psycho-biological impulses and interests. As 
stated in these extreme forms, the two concepts of the nature of 
symbolic forms and meanings appear antithetical. Logically, it 
is quite possible to maintain a mentalistic theory of symbolism 
which would take into consideration the diversity of cultural 
interests and classifications. But Cassirer uses the evidence of 
the relativity of cultural conceptualization as an argument for 
his subjective, idealistic theory of cultural symbolism. That is to 
say, he employs a mentalistic theory of symbolism to demon- 
strate the concept of objective reality, and a behavioristic, prag- 
matic, anthropocentric theory of symbolism to demonstrate the 
idealistic, subjective reference of symbols. 
12 
Cassirer on the Unitary Psychological Functions of 
Symbolic Forms 
In commenting adversely upon nineteenth century linguistics 
Cassirer writes: "The nineteenth century was not only a his- 
torical but also a psychological century. It was, therefore, quite 
natural to assume, it even appeared self-evident, that the princi- 
ples of linguistic theory were to be sought in the field of psy- 
chology. These were the two cornerstones of linguistic stud- 
ies." 80 
119. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 513 
Cassirer's own philosophy of language and culture provides 
ample demonstration of the fact that he himself participated in 
this historical-psychological approach, notwithstanding his pro- 
fessed criticism of it and his attempt to distinguish genetic 
from systematic, functional problems. 90 We have seen that his 
interpretation of the relation of language and myth depended 
upon uncritical, psychological assumptions as to the mythical 
function of words. We have found, furthermore, that he pre- 
supposes a functionalistic, voluntaristic psychology in interpret- 
ing the origin of linguistic symbols and classifications. 
In general, it appears, Cassirer maintained that each arche- 
typal form of symbolism manifested a unity of function in the 
subjective sense, that it was an ｅxpression of a particular psy- 
chological faculty or activity. Thus in his Myth of the State he 
remarks: 
The subjects of myth and the ritual acts are of an infinite variety, 
they are incalculable and unfathomable. But the motives of mythical 
thought and mythical imagination are in a sense always the same. In 
all human activities and in all forms of human culture we find a "unity 
in the manifold." Art gives us a unity of intuition; science gives us a 
unity of thought; religion and myth give us a unity of feeling. Art opens 
up to us the universe of "living forms;" science shows us a universe 
of laws and principles; religion and myth begin with the awareness of 
the universality and fundamental identity of life. 91 
Here we are presented with a tripartite division of psycho- 
logical functions or motivations which neatly correlates intui- 
tion, thought, and feeling with art, science, and religion re- 
spectively. Each psychological function expresses itself through 
different symbolic forms j but the underlying principle of unity 
amidst the diversity of objects symbolized in any one cultural 
discipline is its psychological motivation in the human ego. 
In this manner, Cassirer correlates the subjective functions of 
the ego with the given objective, cultural categories or types of 
symbols, thereby linking together man and his symbolic world. 
Parallel to the cultural evolution of mankind there is a corre- 
sponding psychological evolution. Primitive man, we have seen, 
90 ibid., 1 1 8. 
n MS., 37. 
514 DAVID SIDNEY 
is said to be motivated primarily by feelings, by emotion and 
desire, and his psychological motivation is reflected in myth 
and ritual. only gradually, as the linguistic process develops 
in the course of experience, man acquires the faculty of thinking 
logically and rationally by distinguishing between the semantic 
function of words and the objective reality of objects. Similarly, 
art develops as an independent ｅxpression of intuition and 
imagination and severs its original connection with magic and 
myth. In each of the several cultural disciplines there is a 
gradual process of development from irrational and subjective 
to rational and objective modes of ｅxpression. In this sense the 
history of human culture is the record of man's progressive 
efforts at self-ｅxpression and self-liberation, since all culture is 
a manifestation of human freedom and creativity. 
Cassirer's psychological approach to cultural symbolism in 
general is especially significant in view of his assertion that man 
is to be defined through humanity and not through a given 
psychological or metaphysical nature. 92 Again, in practice, it 
would appear, Cassirer does not follow his professed historical 
and phenomenological procedure exclusively but proceeds 
rather to explain the cultural achievements of humanity through 
man's psychological nature. Instead of choosing between hu- 
manity and man, he finds it more practicable to utilize both 
concepts, thereby implying that culture has a unity of function 
because man has a nature as well as history. 
In terms of contemporary ethnological theory, the issue in- 
volved is whether culture is to be understood as essentially a 
"superorganic" phenomenon or whether it is to be conceived 
organically as a vital ｅxpression of the human organism whose 
individual and social needs it satisfies. 98 As a superorganic 
dimension of reality all cultural symbols are conceived through 
one another and require no further reference to the psychologi- 
cal nature of man. As an organic phenomenon culture cannot be 
understood apart from the psycho-biological nature of man. The 
02 Cf . Section 7 above. 
W C. D. Sidney, "The Concept of Culture and Some Cultural Fallacies}" and 
"Human Nature and the Cultural Process." 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 515 
superorganic theory of culture requires that man be conceived 
through humanity j the organic theory requires that humanity 
be conceived through man. Cassirer, it seems, professes the 
superorganic theory of Comte but in practice also leans heavily 
on the organic, functionalistic theory, especially in dealing with 
the origin and function of myth. 
13 
Cassirer and the Problem of the Unitary Function of Myth 
Cassirer objects to the procedure of those folklorists, phi- 
lologists, and psychoanalysts who attempt to ascribe a unity of 
object to myth, and posits instead a unity of psychological 
function. He assumes that the motive of myth-making is always 
the same and that feeling or emotion is the common functional 
bond, the unity in the manifold. "Biologically speaking," he 
claims, "feeling is a much more general fact and belongs to an 
earlier and more elementary stratum than all the cognitive 
states of mind." 94 He is opposed, therefore, to those who, like 
Tylor and Frazer, attempted to intellectualize myths and to 
interpret them as modes of logical thought and belief. Myths, 
he maintains, are primarily emotional in origin and their practi- 
cal social function is to promote a unity or harmony of feeling 
between individuals as well as a sense of harmony with the 
whole of nature and life. In agreement with Malinowski, 95 he 
holds that the function of myth is not the theoretical or intel- 
lectual one of explanation, but rather the practical one of pro- 
moting a consciousness of the solidarity of all life, especially 
in times of crisis, through a rationalization of the social rites 
which preceded them. 
This basic assumption of Cassirer as to the unity of psycho- 
logical motivation and sociological function (the subjective and 
objective aspects of function) is one that leading contemporary 
ethnologists do not accept, since they are more inclined towards 
a pluralistic theory of explanation of the function as well as of 
M MS., 27. 
96 Bronislaw Malinowski, Myth in Primitive Psychology , Psyche Monographs, 
no. 6, (London, 1916) j cf. also MS., 28. 
516 DAVID SIDNEY 
the object of myth. Franz Boas, for example, writes: 
The fact that we designate certain tales as myths, that we group 
certain activities together as rituals, or that we consider certain forms 
of industrial products from an esthetic point of view, does not prove 
that these phenomena, wherever they occur, have the same history or 
spring from the same mental activities. on the contrary, it is quite 
obvious that the selection of the material assembled for the purpose 
of comparison is wholly determined by the subjective point of view 
according to which we arrange diverse mental phenomena. . . . The 
phenomena themselves contain no indication whatever that would 
compel us to assume a common origin. on the contrary, wherever an 
analysis has been attempted we are led to the conclusion that we are 
dealing with heterogeneous material. Thus myths may be in part 
interpretations of nature that have originated as results of naively con- 
sidered impressions (Naturanschauung) ; they may be artistic productions 
in which the mythic element is rather a poetic than a religious concept; 
they may be the result of philosophic interpretation or they may have 
grown out of linguistic forms that have risen into consciousness. To 
explain all these forms as members of one series would be entirely 
unjustified. 96 
Here we see that Boas denies that any one psychological mo- 
tive is sufficient to explain the origin of myth. The error of the 
nineteenth century anthropologists, folklorists, and philologists 
is said to lie, not in their limited empirical evidence, but rather 
in their uncritical assumption that all myth is of the same type, 
and that we are dealing here with homogeneous material which 
originates in some one psychological motive. Myths, according 
to Boas, may be either theoretical and explanatory, or poetic and 
religious j they may have a practical function and serve to 
rationalize a given custom, as in the case of totemism, or they 
may be in part philological in origin as Max Muller suggested. 
No one psychological function and no one type of object is 
sufficient to account for the various forms of myth. 
Similarly Ruth Benedict, although agreeing with Boas' point 
that myths are not based on any one object of "fixed symbol- 
ism" and that they are not primarily explanatory, is inclined to 
stress the intimate connection between the play of imagination 
M Franz Boas, "The Origin of Totemism," in American Anthropologist, 18: 
319-26 (1916). 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 517 
and wish fulfilment in a given culture. 97 Thus she writes: 
Myth like secular folklore is an articulate vehicle of a people's wishful 
thinking. Secular heroes portray the ideal man of the culture and myth 
remodels the universe to its dominant desire. . . . The striking contrasts 
in different collections of myth are in a large measure due to the dif- 
ference in the types of wish fulfilment that are characteristic of the 
different cultures. 98 
According to Benedict, then, the play of imagination and 
wishful thinking are the primary psychological factors under- 
lying myth. The cultural function of myth is regarded as being 
poetic and artistic. 
Thus, it appears, that Cassirer's assumption as to the unity of 
function at the basis of myth is one which modern ethnologists, 
with the exception of functionalists such as Malinowski or 
Radcliffe-Brown, would be inclined to question. Although they 
would agree with Cassirer that myths have no unity of object, 
they would disagree with his uncritical assumption that myths 
have a unity of psychological motivation or social function. 
H 
Cassirer y Levy-Bruhl, and Malinowski on the Concept of Myth 
The full significance of Cassirer's theory of myth and the 
mythical mentality may be critically evaluated in relation to 
modern ethnology which he investigated and by which he was 
influenced considerably. Among the various logical possibilities 
as to the nature of mythical thought there are three which are 
significant in this connection. 
First, there is the rationalistic or intellectualistic theory, as- 
sociated with the names of E. B. Tylor and Sir James Frazer, 
that myths are essentially rational constructions based on errone- 
ous major premises. The native mind is said to be essentially 
logical and myths are regarded as the products of intellectual 
wonder, and logical inference. Thus animism, according to Tylor, 
is a logical theory which offers a plausible explanation of death 
on the analogy of sleep; it is a rational primitive philosophy. 
97 Ruth Benedict, article "Folklore" in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 
6:288-93) also article "Myth" in same work, n 1178-80. 
"In her article "Myth." 
5 i8 DAVID SIDNEY 
Second, there is the evolutionary, sociological theory of 
Levy-Bruhl that the native mind is essentially "prelogical," in 
the sense that it is indifferent to the rules of our logic but not 
necessarily contrary to it. The native mind, as may be gathered 
from a study of the "collective representations" manifested in 
typical, native social culture, has not reached the stage where it 
differentiates clearly between the natural and the supernatural, 
between natural and magical powers} and hence the native 
mental perspective or mode of thinking differs radically from 
the logical, scientific mentality of civilized man. This does not 
mean that the native, taken as an individual, does not have a 
psycho-biological nature similar to that of civilized man or that 
he would not react and think in a given situation much the same 
as we do, provided he was similarly conditioned. Levy-BruhPs 
thesis is that, culturally speaking, the typical native, insofar as 
he is a product of primitive, native culture, does not think logi- 
cally, that is, in accordance with the law of contradiction, and 
that his mind obeys instead the organic law of mutual "partici- 
pation," whereby all things are thought to participate in one 
another in a kind of "mystic symbiosis." 
As Levy-BruhPs theory of the prelogical character of the 
native mentality has been the target of much criticism on the 
part of modern anthropologists, and as Cassirer also takes issue 
with him, it will help this discussion, if we refer directly to 
Levy-BruhPs statements of his position. In his work, How 
Natives Think (Les Fonctions Mentales Dans Les Societes 
Injerieures) he writes: 
By prelogical we do not mean to assert that such a mentality con- 
stitutes a kind of antecedent state in point of time to the birth of 
logical thought. ... It is not antilogical; it is not alogical either. By 
designating it "prelogical" I merely wish to state that it does not bind 
itself down, as our thought does, to avoid contradiction. It obeys the 
law of participation first and foremost. 
Essentially mystic as it is, it finds no difficulty in imagining as well 
as feeling the identity of the one and the many, the individual and the 
species, of entities however unlike they be, by means of participation. 
In this lies its guiding principle; this it is which accounts for the kind 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 519 
of abstraction and generalization peculiar to such a mentality and to 
this again we must mainly refer the characteristic forms of activity we 
find in primitive peoples. 
As has been said, these characteristics apply only to the collective 
representations and their connections. Considered as an individual, the 
primitive in so far as he thinks and acts independently of these collective 
representations where possible, will usually feel, argue and act as we 
should expect him to do. The inferences he draws will be just those 
which would seem reasonable to us in like circumstances. . . . But 
though on occasions of this sort primitives may reason as we do, though 
they follow a course similar to the one we should take (which in the 
more simple cases, the most intelligent among the animals would also 
do) it does not follow that their mental activity is always subject to the 
same laws as ours. In fact, as far as it is collective, it has laws which 
are peculiar to itself, and the first and most universal of these is the 
law of participation." 
Thus, according to Levy-Bruhl, the mentality of native peo- 
ples is prelogical in the sense that its collective representations, 
the mode of thought which is culturally conditioned by a given 
society, is indifferent to the law of contradiction and is said to 
be regulated instead by the law of participation. This renders 
the native mentality essentially mystical to our usual way of 
thinking. This does not mean, however, that the mind of civil- 
ized man is entirely logical by comparison. on the contrary, 
for Levy-Bruhl "the rational unity of the thinking being . . . 
is a desideratum, not a fact." 100 Our mentality is said to be both 
rational and irrational: "The prelogical and the mystic are 
co-existent with the logical." In civilized society the logical, 
scientific aspect of thought may be dominant, but there always 
remain elements of prelogical mentality a fact which accounts 
for the antinomies of thought and the struggle of reason with 
itself. 
The prelogical, mystical character of native collective repre- 
sentations also renders intelligible the socio-cultural function 
of their myths. Myths are interpreted as "an ｅxpression of the 
M Lucien Le'vy-Bruhl, How Natives Think (Let Fonctions Mentales Dans Les 
Societts Inftrieures, Paris, 1910), London & New York, 1926$ ySf, 135^ 
386. 
520 DAVID SIDNEY 
solidarity of the social group with itself in its own epoch and in 
the past, and with the groups of being surrounding it, and a 
means of maintaining and reviving this feeling of solidarity." 101 
In opposition to Levy-BruhPs evolutionary conception of the 
prelogical, cultural mentality of the native, Bronislaw Mali- 
nowski has maintained that the native distinguishes clearly 
between the sphere of the natural and secular on the one hand, 
and the sphere of the supernatural and holy on the other. As 
opposed to the intellectualism and individualism of Tylor and 
Frazer, and in agreement with Levy-Bruhl, he maintains that 
myths originate in social, practical and emotional needs and 
serve to strengthen the feeling of solidarity between the indi- 
vidual and his community as well as between the community 
and the forces of the natural, cosmic environment. The socio- 
logical, functional significance of myths has been emphasized 
by Malinowski, especially in his monograph on Myth in Primi- 
tive Psychology. He writes: 
Studied alive, myth is not symbolic, but a direct ｅxpression of its 
subject-matter; it is not an explanation in satisfaction of a scientific 
interest, but a narrative resurrection of a primeval reality, told in 
satisfaction of deep religious wants, moral cravings, social submissions, 
assertions, even practical requirements. Myth fulfils in primitive culture 
an indispensable function; it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it 
safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual 
and contains practical rules for the guidance of man. Myth is thus a 
vital ingredient of human civilization ; it is not an idle tale but a hard- 
worked active force; it is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic 
imagery, but a pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom. 102 
According to Malinowski, the native resorts to myth and 
magic, not because he fails to distinguish the natural from the 
supernatural, or the scientific from the magical, but precisely 
because he does in fact make this distinction. Myths and magic 
are resorted to only when all common, rational techniques and 
processes fail, as in time of crisis or extreme danger. As Mali- 
nowski puts it: 
101 Ibid., 371. 
M Myth in Primitive Psychology, 23. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 521 
Primitive man has his science as well as his religion; a myth does 
not serve to explain phenomena but rather to regulate human actions. . . . 
It is rather the recognition of his practical and intellectual limitations 
and not the illusion of the omnipotence of thought which leads man 
into ritualism, which makes him re-enact miracles, the feasibility of 
which he has accepted from his mythology. ... In short, myth is not a 
pseudo-science of nature, it is a history of the supernatural. It invariably 
refers to a unique break in the history of the world and mankind. 103 
There is no need, therefore, for Malinowski to assume a 
mythical mentality which gradually evolved into the logical 
mentality of civilized man. Myths are ｅxpressions of acts of 
faith and as such are characteristic of man at practically all 
stages of human culture. Myths as beliefs in the supernatural 
thus complement scientific theory and practice; they are neither 
a substitute for science nor the antithesis of scientific thought. In 
Malinowski's words: 
Mythology, then, is definitely the complement of what might be 
called the ordinary knowledge or science of primitive man, but not 
its substitute. . . . The so-called primitives do distinguish between natural 
and supernatural. They explain, not by telling a fairy-tale, but by refer- 
ence to experience, logical and common sense, even as we do. Since 
they have their own science, mythology cannot be their system of 
explanation in the scientific sense of the word. Myth serves as a 
foundation for belief and establishes a precedent for the miracles of 
ritual and magic. 104 
Thus, it appears, myth is regarded as an essential element in 
the life of primitive as well as in that of civilized man. Myth 
begins where scientific knowledge ends and yet, it is pragmati- 
cally significant in providing assurance of, and faith in, the 
harmony of man and nature. In brief, for Malinowski, mythical 
thought is not prelogical but rather post-logical and post- 
scientific, in the sense that it involves an act of faith in the 
108 The Foundations of Faith and Morals: An anthropological analysis of 
primitive beliefs and conduct with special reference to the fundamental problems 
of religion and ethics. Delivered as Riddell Memorial Lectures, Seventh Series, 
1934-5 (London, 1936). 
104 Ibid. Cf, also his "Magic, Science and Religion," in Science, Religion and 
Reality, ed. by J. Needham, (New York, 1928). 
522 DAVID SIDNEY 
supernatural and miraculous which goes beyond logic and scien- 
tific evidence. It is of interest to note in this connection, that 
William James' Will to Believe provides a philosophical justi- 
fication for a similar faith on the part of civilized man. 
When we turn to Cassirer's own theory of mythical thought 
we find a rather curious state of affairs. To begin with, his 
description of mythical mentality is similar in all essentials to 
the evolutionary theory of Levy-Bruhl, and even goes beyond 
the latter in positing a radical disparity between the mythical 
and logical stages of development. It is significant to note that 
Susanne K. Langer, in her preface to the translation of Cas- 
sirer's Language and Myth, actually refers to his "theory of 
prelogical conception and ｅxpression." 105 When, however, we 
turn to Cassirer's Essay on Man, we find he takes issue with 
Levy-Bruhl over the latter's concept of the prelogical. Thus he 
states: 
The thesis of Durkheim has come to its full development in the 
work of Levy-Bruhl. But here we meet with a more general character- 
istic. Mystical thought is described as "prelogical thought" If it asks 
for causes, these are neither logical nor empirical; they are <c mystic 
causes." . . . According to Levy-Bruhl this mystic character of primitive 
religion follows from the very fact that its representations are "collective 
representations." To these we cannot apply the rules of our own logic 
that are intended for quite different purposes. If we approach this field, 
even the law of contradiction and all the other laws of rational thought, 
become invalid. To my mind the French sociological school has given 
full and conclusive proof of the first part of its thesis but not of the 
second part. The fundamental social character of myth is uncontroverted. 
But that all primitive mentality necessarily is prelogical or mystical seems 
to be in contradiction with our anthropological and ethnological evidence. 
We find many spheres of primitive life and culture that show the well- 
known features of our own cultural life. As long as we assume an 
absolute heterogeneity between our own logic and that of the primitive 
mind, as long as we think them specifically different from and radically 
opposed to each other, we can scarcely account for this fact. Even in 
primitive life we always find a secular or profane sphere outside the 
holy sphere. 106 
103 LM., x. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 523 
Similarly, in his Myth of the State Cassirer resumes his 
criticism: 
We find the very reverse of this conception in Levy-Bruhl's well- 
known description of "primitive mentality." According to Levy-Bruhl 
the task that former theories had set themselves was impossible a 
contradiction in terms. It is vain to seek for a common measure between 
primitive mentality and our own. They do not belong to the same 
genus; they are radically opposed the one to the other. The rules which to 
the civilized man seem to be unquestionable and inviolable are entirely 
unknown and constantly thwarted in primitive thought. The savage's 
mind is not capable of all those processes of arguing and reasoning that 
were ascribed to it in Frazer's and Tylor's theories. It is not a logical, 
but a "prelogical" or a mystic mind. Even the most elementary principles 
of our logic are openly defied by this mystic mind. The savage lives 
in a world of his own in a world which is impermeable to experience 
and unaccessible to our forms of thought. 107 
In view of the statements quoted from Levy-BruhPs work, 
one cannot regard Cassirer's criticism as valid. The latter, it 
would appear, has read Levy-Bruhl too much through Mali- 
nowski's eyes. Levy-Bruhl, we have seen, does not deny that the 
native is capable individually of psychological functions similar 
to those of civilized man. He affirms most explicitly that there 
is a common measure between primitive mentality and our own 
and that the difference between them is one of degree, not 
of kind. All that he claims is that a comparative analysis of the 
ethnological literature dealing with native thought and practice 
reveals a typical, collective, cultural mentality which is pre- 
dominantly prelogical in character. This does not mean to say 
that all of native culture reveals this prelogical character and 
that it does not manifest logical, rational traits as well, but only 
that prelogical thought is typical of native culture and serves as 
a means of differentiating it from the typical scientific thought 
of civilized man. The collective representations of the native 
are said to reveal a cultural mentality which is indifferent to 
the law of contradiction as exemplified in our contemporary 
cultural mentality; but this does not imply that the former may 
J., ii. 
524 DAVID BIDNEY 
not reveal, within limited areas, logical and empirical traits 
as well. 
Furthermore, it should be noted, native collective representa- 
tions are said to presuppose an organic metaphysics which postu- 
lates the intrinsic unity of all forms of life and the "affective 
category of the supernatural." 108 The collective or social charac- 
ter of these metaphysical representations does not, however, 
explain or account for their prelogical or mystical, epistemic 
character as Cassirer suggests it does. There is no evidence that 
Levy-Bruhl regarded the social function of native representa- 
tions as determining their prelogical or mystical form of ex- 
pression, and it would appear, therefore, as if Cassirer were 
reading his own functionalistic thesis into the former's thought 
at this point. Our civilized collective representations are logi- 
cal or scientific and the individual who participates in our form 
of civilization reflects the social character of our civilization, 
just as the native reflects the social or collective representations 
of pre-scientific native culture. one may indeed question, as 
modern ethnologists have done, the extent of the influence of 
social culture upon the individual in native society and whether 
the individual does not deviate, far more than the Durkheim 
school presupposed, from the social norms which are professed 
collectively. But Cassirer does not take into consideration this 
commonly accepted criticism j on the contrary, he accepts un- 
critically "the social character of myth," while taking objection 
to the theory of the prelogical. 
It should be noted, furthermore, that the prelogical mentality 
is not, according to Levy-Bruhl, meant to be either illogical or 
irrational 5 it simply involves a different type of logic which the 
scientific mind can reconstruct and infer. The issue, therefore, 
of the logical versus prelogical nature of native thought is 
largely verbal and originates from the tendency to identify our 
own Western, syllogistic logic with logic in general, and to 
regard any other form of thought with different ontological 
presuppositions as non-logical or prelogical. It may be granted, 
accordingly, that Levy-BruhPs use of the term prelogical was 
most unfortunate, since the real antithesis is between the pre- 
108 L6vy-Bruhl, Primitives and the Supernatural^ (London, 1936), 36. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 525 
scientific and scientific mentality and not at all between the 
logical and prelogical mentality. The issue, in other words, is 
ultimately ontological and cultural, and not psychological or 
logical. If we accept the basic ontological premise of native 
metaphysical thought, namely, the organic unity of all forms of 
life ajjgl the internality of all relations, then their mode of 
thought appears quite intelligible and logical, even though it is, 
in its extant forms, hardly scientific, since it may not be verified 
by objective, empirical tests. 109 
Levy-Bruhl would, therefore, be in complete agreement with 
Cassirer's statement that 
What we, from our own point of view, may call irrational, prelogical, 
mystical are the premises from which mythical or religious interpretation 
starts, but not the mode of interpretation. If we accept these premises 
and if we understand them aright if we see them in the same light 
that primitive man does the inferences drawn from them cease to 
appear illogical or antilogical. . . . Primitive man by no means lacks 
the ability to grasp the empirical differences of things. But in his concep- 
tion of nature and life all these differences are obliterated by a stronger 
feeling: the deep conviction of a fundamental and indelible solidarity 
of life that bridges over the multiplicity and variety of its single forms. 110 
This is precisely Levy-BruhPs thesis as any reading of the 
latter's works makes evident. The very argument that native 
thought is neither illogical nor antilogical, and that it pre- 
supposes "the solidarity of life" occur explicitly in Levy-BruhPs 
writings. It would appear, therefore, that for the most part 
Cassirer was really fighting a straw-man, a figment of his own 
imagination and of that of Malinowski, since he criticized Levy- 
Bruhl for views which the latter never held and then proceeded 
to submit as his own the very thesis which the subject of his 
criticism had maintained. In fact, it may be shown, that Cas- 
sirer's conception of mythical thought involved, as Susanne K. 
Langer has said, a prelogical interpretation according to which 
native, mythical thought is regarded as antecedent in point of 
109 It is significant to point out in this connection that modern philosophical 
and scientific thought is also tending towards an organic type of metaphysics a 
fact which explains, as in the work of A. N. Whitehead, the necessity for a radical 
change in our terminology and mode of thinking. 
110 EM., 8of. 
526 DAVID SIDNEY 
time to logical thought and hence as non-logical. Levy-Bruhl, 
on the other hand, claims that native thought is prelogical only 
in the sense that it is indifferent to a strict adherence to the law 
of contradiction, but not in the sense that the native is incapable 
of logical thought. In other words, the disparity between mythi- 
cal and logical thought is much greater in Cassirer* s own theory 
of mental and cultural development than it is in Levy-Bruhl y s 
work. Cassirer has, in effect, taken over Levy-BruhPs interpre- 
tation of the ontological presuppositions of native thought, 
while criticizing the latter's use of the term prelogical to de- 
scribe the native mode of thinking. But, in doing so, Cassirer 
has undermined his own theory of the development of human 
thought from a mythical or prelogical to a logical stage. 
Cassirer, it seems, gives his whole case against Levy-Bruhl 
away when he admits in his Myth of the State: 
Of course we must not understand the term "logic" in too narrow 
a sense. We cannot expect the Aristotelian categories of thought or the 
elements of our parts-of-speech system, the rules of Greek and Latin 
syntax, in languages of aboriginal American tribes. These expectations 
are bound to fail; but this does not prove that these languages are in 
any sense "illogical" or even less logical than ours. 111 

once it is admitted that the term logic is not to be used in 
"too narrow a sense," then Levy-BruhPs use of the term pre- 
logical may be regarded as an attempt to define the type of 
logic which is characteristic of native language and thought. 
Cassirer himself has employed the term "mythical thought" in- 
stead of the term "prelogical mentality}" but the meaning of 
the two terms is practically identical, as may be seen from the 
fact that the mythical mentality is said to have all the attributes 
ascribed by Levy-Bruhl to the prelogical mentality. Thus, 
according to Cassirer, mythical thought does not clearly dis- 
tinguish between reality and the symbol, accepts the principle of 
pars pro toto in magical practices, does not recognize the limits 
of individuality, and accepts totemistic beliefs. 112 All these 
modes of thought are to be found duplicated and attributed to 
111 MS., i 3 f. 
112 Cf. LM. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 527 
the prelogical mentality in Levy-BruhPs writings. 113 Both 
writers also presuppose that the native mentality, whether 
mythical or prelogical, differs radically from the logical or 
scientific mentality of modern man, and that rationality in the 
scientific sense is a state of mind which is achieved only gradu- 
ally in the process of cultural evolution. 
The real difficulty in Cassirer's conception of myth lies in the 
fact that he has attempted to combine the antithetical ethnologi- 
cal views of Levy-Bruhl and Malinowski. on the one hand, as 
said, he agrees substantially with the former's evolutionary con- 
ception of native mentality. on the other hand, he also professes 
agreement with Malinowski's thesis that the native mind clearly 
differentiates the category of the natural from the supernatural, 
the sphere of science from that of magic. According to this 
functionalistic theory of myth, myth and magic are not ante- 
cedent to logic and science, but rather post-logical and post- 
scientific mental inventions utilized in times of crisis, when 
scientific thought fails to achieve the desired ends of action and 
fails to satisfy the human longing for security. Thus whereas 
Levy-Bruhl maintains that prelogical thought is something to 
be struggled against, something to be superseded in the de- 
velopment of a logical, scientific mentality, Malinowski accepts 
mythical thought as a means universally employed to tide 
societies over difficult periods of transition. Cassirer, it would 
appear, would have it both ways at once, maintaining that 
mythical thought is antecedent to logical thought, and holding 
with Malinowski that the native mind differentiates clearly 
between the sphere of science and that of myth. 
15 
Cassirer on the Role of Myth in the History of Human Culture 
The practical import of Cassirer's utilization of these anti- 
thetical conceptions of mythical thought may be seen in his 
diagnosis of the crisis of our times as well as in his interpretation 
of the history of philosophical anthropology. 
In the final chapter of the Myth of the State, entitled "The 
118 Cf. Levy-BruhPs Primitive Mentality (New York, 1923)5 The Soul of the 
Primitive, (London, 1928). 
528 DAVID SIDNEY 
Technique of the Modern Political Myths," we find he again 
takes up Malinowski's thesis that myth-making and magic are 
elemental functions of the human mind, which make their 
appearance in times of crisis. Thus he writes: 
In all those tasks that need no particular and exceptional efforts, no 
special courage or endurance, we find no magic and no mythology. 
But a highly developed magic and connected with it a mythology always 
occurs if a pursuit is dangerous and its issues uncertain. This description 
of the role of magic and mythology in primitive society applies equally 
well to highly advanced stages of man's political life. In desperate 
situations man will always have recourse to desperate means and our 
present-day political myths have been such desperate means. If reason 
has failed us, there remains always the ultima ratio, the power of the 
miraculous and mysterious. 114 
Cassirer, it appears from this, regards myth as irrational and 
illogical (in agreement with, but going beyond Levy-BruhPs 
thesis), but at the same time agrees with Malinowski that myth 
fulfils a positive social function in times of social crisis. Never- 
theless, myth is something to be opposed and struggled against 
and not something to be welcomed as a complement to reason, 
as Malinowski's premises imply. The social function of myth 
in producing a feeling of solidarity with one's society and with 
nature in general is said to be evil, since it comes as a victory 
for the forces of irrationalism. In Cassirer J s words: 
In all critical moments of man's social life the rational forces that 
resist the rise of the old mythical conceptions are no longer sure of 
themselves. In these moments the time for myth has come again. For 
myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, 
lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity. This hour 
comes as soon as the other binding forces of man's social life, for one 
reason or another, lose their strength and are no longer able to combat 
the demonic mythical powers. 115 
This statement implies that in time of crisis, at least, even 
modern man is no longer sure of himself and fails to differ- 
entiate clearly between reason and myth. It is not that myth 
complements reason but rather overcomes it and subjugates or 
114 MS., 279. 
MS., 280. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 52$ 
represses it. Hence, according to this psychoanalytic interpre- 
tation, myth arises in modern times as a reversion to the primi- 
tive state of mind from which mankind slowly emerged. In 
other words, although Cassirer professes agreement with the 
functionalistic thesis that the native mind does differentiate 
clearly between scientific reason and emotional, mystical feeling, 
he justifies and explains the reversion from the rational to the 
mythical mentality as a failure to keep this radical disparity 
in mind thereby utilizing the presupposition of Levy-Bruhl. 
At the same time, following the psychoanalytical approach, he 
also recognizes the ideal motive in modern social myth a point 
Ruth Benedict had made by suggesting that social myths serve 
as ｅxpressions or objectifications of "collective wishes" which 
are personified in the political leader who is endowed for this 
purpose with powers of "social magic" to fulfil the collective 
wish. 116 

on the whole, it would appear, Cassirer's attitude toward 
magic and myth is ambivalent and reflects the conflict between 
romantic and rationalistic traditions which he sought to rec- 
oncile. From an ethnological standpoint, he shares the view of 
the romanticists that myth constitutes an essential element in 
the evolution of human culture and thought. As a critical ideal- 
ist, on the other hand, he is fundamentally a rationalist who 
participates in the struggle against the power of myth as an 
irrational, demonic force. In his Myth of the State Cassirer 
has himself well stated the antithesis between the rationalist and 
romantic approaches: 
That is the real difference, the deep gulf, between the period of the 
Enlightenment and German romanticism. . . . According to this 
metaphysical conception the value of myth is completely changed. To 
all the thinkers of the Enlightenment myth had been a barbarous thing, 
a strange and uncouth mass of confused ideas and gross superstitions, 
a mere monstrosity. Between myth and philosophy there could be no 
point of contact. Myth ends where philosophy begins as darkness gives 
way to the rising sun. This view undergoes a radical change as soon 
as we pass to the romantic philosophers. In the system of these philosophers 
myth becomes not only a subject of the highest intellectual interest but 
also a subject of awe and veneration. It is regarded as the mainspring 
., i8of. 
530 DAVID SIDNEY 
of human culture. Art, history, and poetry originate in myth. A phi- 
losophy which overlooks or neglects this origin is declared to be shallow 
and inadequate. It was one of the principal aims of Schelling's system 
to give myth its right and legitimate place in human civilization. In his 
works we find for the first time a philosophy of mythology side by side 
with his philosophy of nature, history, and art. Eventually all his interest 
seems to be concentrated upon this problem. Instead of being the opposite 
of philosophic thought myth has become its ally; and, in a sense, its 
consummation. ... In philosophy the influence of Schelling was counter- 
balanced and soon eclipsed by the appearance of the Hegelian system. 
His conception of the role of mythology remained only an episode. 
Nevertheless the way was paved that could lead later to the rehabilitation 
and glorification of myth that we find in modern politics. 117 

one may understand Cassirer's own philosophy of mythology 
as an attempt to reconcile the extremes of rationalism and 
romanticism. With the latter he shares the conviction that 
myths have a significant cultural value in revealing the origin 
and basic motivations of human language and historical thought. 
But Cassirer does not share the unqualified enthusiasm of the 
romanticists for mythology, since, as a philosopher and intel- 
lectual, he is conscious of the excesses to which mythology is in- 
clined, once its adherents leave the realm of poetry and extend 
their influence into the realm of politics. In the sphere of 
politics, therefore, he shares the rationalistic approach and 
accepts the rule of reason as over against the "reason" of rule, 
which is the myth of the state. 
It is of interest in this connection to examine Cassirer's inter- 
pretation of Plato's theory of myth. In the Republic (Bk. 10), 
Plato would expel the poets from his ideal, regimented state 
because, as mere "imitators," they were "thrice-removed from 
reality." According to Cassirer, Plato was justified in his expul- 
sion of the poets from the ideal republic on the ground that in 
politics myth is the most dangerous enemy. The fact that Plato 
himself invented some myths of his own is explained away on 
the ground that Plato did not mind a few suggestive myths in 
metaphysics, but considered myth much too dangerous in politi- 
cal theory. As Cassirer puts it: 
How is it to be accounted for that the same thinker who admitted 
117 Ibid., i8if. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 531 
mythical concepts and mythical language so readily into his metaphysics 
and his natural philosophy spoke in an entirely different vein when 
developing his political theories? For in this field Plato became the 
professed enemy of myth. If we tolerate myth in our political systems, 
he declared, all our hopes for a reconstruction and reformation of our 
political and social life are lost. There is only one alternative: we have 
to make our choice between an ethical and a mythical conception of 
the state. In the Legal State, the state of justice, there is no room left 
for the conceptions of mythology, for the gods of Homer and Hesiod. 118 
Cassirer then proceeds to quote from Plato's Re-public (37yf ) 
a passage which demonstrates that Plato wished to "supervise 
the making of fables and legends, rejecting all which are un- 
satisfactory." But this merely shows that Plato had no senti- 
mental attachment for tradition as such and was prepared to 
adopt a critical attitude towards it, even as Socrates had done, 
accepting what appeared to him to be rational and rejecting 
what he thought was irrational. The passage does not prove that 
Plato decided to expel the poets from his ideal republic for 
political reasons or that he considered the poets especially a 
great political menace. As a philosopher Plato sought to estab- 
lish a true theory of the state and in this sense he was opposed 
to mere myth or fiction in political theory. one must make a 
choice between a rational and a mythical conception of the state 
but not between philosophers and poets. 
According to Cassirer, 
What is combated and rejected by Plato is not poetry itself, but the 
myth-making function. To him and to every other Greek both things 
were inseparable. From time immemorial the poets had been the real myth 
makers. As Herodotus said, Homer and Hesiod had made the generations 
of the gods; they had portrayed their shapes and distinguished their 
offices and powers. Here was the real danger for the Platonic Republic. 
To admit poetry meant to admit myth, but myth could not be admitted 
without frustrating all philosophic efforts and undermining the very 
foundations of Plato's state. only by expelling the poets from the ideal 
state could the philosopher's state be protected against the intrusion 
of subversive hostile forces. Plato did not entirely forbid mythical tales; 
he even admitted that, in the education of a young child, they are 
indispensable. But they must be brought under a strict discipline. 119 
118 Ibid., 72. 
*., 67. 
532 DAVID BIDNEY 
Here, almost in the same breath, Cassirer maintains that 
Plato felt compelled to expel the poets from his Republic be- 
cause they were myth-makers, and yet admits that mythical 
tales, when properly censored, were considered indispensable 
in the education of the young. There is a decided difference 
between censoring the myth-makers and expelling them al- 
together. 
In sum, it would appear, that Cassirer is reading into Plato 
a political motive which was alien to his thought. Plato, as a 
scientist and philosopher, was indeed opposed to mythology, 
insofar as it tended to be accepted literally as religious truth. 
Yet, as educator, he reluctantly admitted that myths were in- 
dispensable in educating young people and in exemplifying a 
metaphysical, religious truth. Myths in other words, if properly 
constructed and selected, were compatible with a rationalistic 
philosophy. Nowhere in the Republic does Plato suggest that 
the poets as well as artists whom he criticized were a political 
threat to his ideal state. When, towards the end of his Republic, 
he finally does suggest that poets and painters are not to be ad- 
mitted into a well-ordered state, it is for epistemological and 
scientific reasons, and not at all for political reasons. It is be- 
cause the poets and artists are dealing with "imitations of imi- 
tations" and are thrice-removed from the ideal forms which 
may be intuited by reason that they are not to be allowed in 
his scientific society. 120 In an ideal philosophical state, where the 
pursuit of truth and reality was the most important task, the 
poets and artists as such would have no place. In the actual 
historical state, however, they were indispensable. The non- 
admission of the poets and artists was, therefore, for Plato an 
ideal, intellectual requirement motivated by theoretical con- 
siderations. It was not motivated by practical, political con- 
siderations in the sense that the poets and artists were con- 
sidered a political threat to the existence of the Republic. 
Perhaps the issue involved regarding Plato's attitude towards 
the poets may be pointed up by reference to the difference of 
opinion between Cassirer and Jaeger regarding the ultimate 
Republic, X, 601-607. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 533 
status of Plato's Republic. According to Jaeger, Plato re- 
garded the Republic as the "true home of the philosopher." 
To this Cassirer counters, that the home of the philosopher was 
the civitas divina, not the civitas terrena. Yet, according to 
Cassirer, "Plato did not allow this religious tendency to in- 
fluence his political judgment. He became a political thinker and 
a statesman not by inclination but from duty." The two points 
of view of Jaeger and Cassirer may be reconciled, if one holds 
that Plato's Republic was indeed an ideal state, a heaven on 
earth, for the philosopher to live in} and that it was also an 
attempt at a practical resolution of the social and political crises 
which afflicted the Greek city states of his day. The Republic 
may therefore be considered Plato's first attempt at formulating 
a theory of the ideal as well as of the best state. 122 As an ideal, 
the Republic was a scientific political theory which dealt with 
fundamental principles of social organization and culture. As 
the best state, the Republic was a practical social invention which 
took into consideration the current Greek culture and attempted 
to eliminate some of its objectionable features. It may be said, 
perhaps, that the idealistic philosopher and practical statesman 
in Plato were never quite reconciled and that the Republic 
reveals both tendencies. In this way, it would seem, one could 
account for the fact that Plato at first speaks of censoring the 
myth-makers and later, in the same dialogue, urges their non- 
admission. Cassirer, in attributing to Plato a political motive 
for the non-admission of the poets and artists, is not taking 
sufficiently into consideration the idealistic motive in Plato, 
which he himself has recognized in evaluating the Republic as a 
whole. 
In sum, we must distinguish between a mythical conception 
of the state and myth-making as a poetic function. As a ration- 
alistic philosopher, Plato rejected the former but accepted the 
latter. This, I take it, would be Cassirer's position as well. 
The full significance of Cassirer's antipathy to political myths 
becomes apparent in his treatment of modern and contemporary 
theories of man and the state. 
121 M.S., 635 cf. earlier discussion in Section 2 above. 
69. 
534 DAVID SIDNEY 
In discussing "The Myth of the Twentieth Century," Cas- 
sirer contrasts myth as "an unconscious activity and as a free 
product of imagination" 123 with the new political myths which 
are the product of a conscious, deliberate technique. As Cassirer 
puts it: 
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. That is 
a new thing and a thing of crucial importance. It has changed the 
whole form of our social life. . . . The real rearmament [of Germany] 
began with the origin and rise of the political myths. The later military 
rearmament was only an accessory after the fact. 124 
The new political myths are fabricated through a deliberate 
change in the function of language from the semantic to the 
magical use of words, 125 from a logical to a cynically pragmatic 
use of words "destined to produce certain effects and to stir up 
certain emotions." As in primitive societies, the modern totali- 
tarian societies supplement magic words with appropriate social 
rites, the neglect of which is regarded as a crime against the 
state. As a result, Cassirer notes, 
We have learned that modern man, in spite of his restlessness, and 
perhaps because of his restlessness, has not really surmounted the con- 
dition of savage life. When exposed to the same forces, he can easily 
be thrown back to a state of complete acquiescence. He no longer 
questions his environment; he accepts it as a matter of course. 126 
Cassirer, it appears, does not share the naive faith of some of 
the nineteenth century evolutionists in linear progress and in a 
steady, continuous growth in rational institutions. As in the 
sphere of biology, he recognizes that there may be reversions, in 
part, to a more primitive state, with the difference that the new 
primitives are far more deadly than the old, having added the 
techniques of modern science to the irrationalism of primitive 
mentality. 
188 Ibid., 282. 
184 Ibid., 282. 
286. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 535 
Since Cassirer must have had in mind Alfred Rosenberg's 
Myth of the Twentieth Century 121 in entitling the last section 
of his Myth of the State, it will prove illuminating to consider 
for a moment what this Nazi "philosopher," the influence of 
whose work was second only to Hitler's Mem Kampf, meant by 
the term my thus. Myth, as conceived by Rosenberg, became 
transformed from a term of disparagement in the sense of being 
the antithesis of science, to one of positive appreciation as some- 
thing which refers to a truth which transcends science. Myth 
became a racial or Volk ifltuition of nature and* life, which re- 
veals the special character and destiny of a given Volk. on this 
assumption, "truth" is relative to the needs and aspirations of 
the folk-soul} that which enhances the form and inner values 
of this organic life is true. Of course, only Nordic man, and in 
particular the late Fuehrer, was held to be qualified to deter- 
mine infallibly what is true for the Volk y since the notion of 
an objective, universal criterion of truth was rejected as a 
perversion of Jews, Catholics, and democrats. In brief, myth 
was understood as an ethnocentric, mystical truth which was 
validated pragmatically by its social consequences for a given, 
chosen community. 
Rosenberg's "philosophy" of mythology is a political myth 
in the sense that it provides a rationalization for a given pattern 
of political action on the part of the state and its leaders. It is 
a conscious attempt to undermine the presuppositions of an 
objective, universally normative truth in the supposed interests 
of a given state, thereby precluding any appeal to a common 
reason or to common civilized standards of value in inter- 
national relations. It is this new myth of the state of which 
Cassirer voices his disapproval so whole-heartedly. 
16 
The Humanism and Rationalism of Cassirer 
The outstanding characteristics of Cassirer's philosophy oi 
culture are its humanism and rationalism, both of which derive 
from his neo-Kantian orientation. 
1IT Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, (Munich, 1930), 
Cf. Rosenberg's Na&i Myth, by Albert R. Chandler, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1945). 
536 DAVID SIDNEY 
Cassirer's standpoint is essentially anthropocentric or homo- 
centric. In accepting the so-called Copernican revolution of 
Kant he committed himself to the view that the human mind is 
the creative source of symbolic forces which serve as organs or 
instruments for the understanding of man and nature. Man is 
said to be an animal symbolicum, living in a symbolical universe 
of his own creation. Historically, man is said to be known 
through the cultural achievements of humanity. But, unlike the 
positivistic sociologists, Cassirer does not regard culture as a 
reality sui generis, as if culture were to be explained as a phe- 
nomenon which is conceived through itself alone and is de- 
termined entirely by itself. He always reminds us that culture 
consists of cultural symbols and that the function of the latter 
is objectification of the experiences of the human ego. Thus 
language is said to symbolize sense perception 5 myth and re- 
ligion are symbolic ｅxpressions of emotion, art of intuition, 
science of understanding. In all instances of cultural symboliza- 
tion we are reminded of the creative role of the human ego in 
the conception and formation of its cultural symbols. Thus, 
unlike some modern "culturologists" 128 who stress man's pas- 
sivity and the predominant influence of cultural determinism, 
Cassirer stresses the role of human freedom in the development 
of culture. As Cassirer puts it: 
Human culture taken as a whole may be described as the process 
of man's progressive self-liberation. Language, art, religion, science are 
various phases in this process. In all of them man discovers and proves 
a new power the power to build up a world of his own, an "ideal" 
world. 129 
Cassirer, like Ortega y Gasset and Jean-Paul Sartre (see 
earlier, Section 6), emphasizes man's subjective freedom and 
power of creativity in literally making himself through the 
process of symbolic objectification. The so-called objective 
world of nature provides the stimulus or occasion for man's 
creative powers, but does not affect the nature and general 
development of this mental-cultural activity. 
128 Vide L. A. White, "Man's control over Civilization: An Anthropocentric 
Illusion," in The Scientific Monthly, Ixvi, March 194.8, 235-47. 
*" EM., 22 8 j cf. Cassirer's "Naturalistische und humanistische Begrundung 
der Kulturphilosophie," Goteborg-, 1939. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 537 
By contrast, those contemporary ethnologists or "culturolo- 
gists" who hold to the "superorganic" view of culture, draw 
attention to the fact that culture molds or determines human 
personality and its modes of ｅxpression, and claim that man is 
not at all the free agent which he erroneously believes himself 
to be. As one culturologist has recently stated: "From the 
cultural determinisms point of view, human beings are merely 
the instruments through which cultures express themselves. 
. . . Neither as groups nor as individuals do we have a choice 
of roles or of fates." 130 
Cassirer's thesis that human culture as a whole may be 
described as the process of man's self-liberation is thus seen 
to be the antithesis of the culturological view that culture is an 
autonomous process, subject to its own determinate laws of 
development, and that man is largely the instrument or vehicle 
of a cultural process whose direction and modes he neither con- 
trols nor determines. 
According to the position proposed in this analysis, both the 
above views represent extreme positions. Cultural man is neither 
quite so free nor quite so determined as the proponents of these 
extremes tend to assume he is. If one accepts the polaristic con- 
ception of culture suggested earlier (Section 7), then it may be 
said that there is a determinate human nature which is mani- 
fested functionally through culture but is not reducible to cul- 
ture. Hence man may be conceived as being in part determined 
by himself by his own nature and powers and in part by the 
natural forces to which he must adjust himself while utilizing 
them to further his own ends. Man's essence may be said to 
determine his functions and modes of existence in the sense of 
setting limits to human powers of effort and endurance in any 
given environment. on the other hand, human life or existence 
is free in the sense that man creates his own forms of cultural 
ｅxpression and symbolization, while adjusting himself to the 
conditions of his natural, cosmic environment. 
The notion of unpredictable cultural freedom of ｅxpression 
emphasized by the neo-Kantian idealists and the humanistic 
existentialists is based upon a common ontological presupposition 
110 L. A. White, "Man's Control over Civilization," 244, 246. (See fn. 128.) 
538 DAVID BIDNEY 
that life or existence is prior to its own essence, and that life 
creates itself progressively through its own ｅxpressions or ob- 
jectifications. on the other hand, the cultural determinists pre- 
suppose that cultural essences or forms determine human 
existence and its dynamic modes of ｅxpression; that the what 
or essence of culture determines the function or active nature 
of man. This explains why the cultural positivists and cultural 
idealists differ on the issue of human freedom, although agree- 
ing in positing a cultural reality as over against the notion of 
a meta-cultural or pre-cultural reality. Thus cultural existen- 
tialists and functionalists as well as cultural "essentialists" or 
culturologists end up by eliminating the category of nature and 
reducing nature to culture, the former in the name of human 
freedom, and the latter in the name of scientific determinism. 
When we turn to Cassirer's philosophy of history we find 
him similarly opposed to the view of the historical determinists, 
that human cultural and social development may be described in 
terms of a general formula of fixed stages, and to the prophetic 
notion that there is a "destiny" in human culture history. Thus 
he writes: 
But the reality of history is not a uniform sequence of events but 
the inner life of man. This life can be described and interpreted after 
it has been lived; it cannot be anticipated in an abstract general formula, 
and it cannot be reduced to a rigid scheme of three or five acts. 131 
The notion of fate or destiny in human cultural history 
seems to him to be a mythological idea incompatible with the 
rationality of man as a conscious, self-determining agent. Ac- 
cording to Cassirer, 
In almost all mythologies of the world we meet with the idea of an 
inevitable, inexorable, irrevocable destiny. Fatalism seems to be in- 
separable from mythical thought. . . . But in some of our modern phi- 
losophers this distinction [between mythical and philosophical thought] 
seems to be completely effaced. They give us a metaphysics of history 
that shows all the characteristic features of myth. 132 

on the other hand, Cassirer does not mean to say that man is 
m M., 201. 
m MS. 9 zgoL 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 539 
absolutely free under all circumstances. It is possible for man 
to surrender his freedom of self-determination under the 
paralyzing influence of some myth of the state, so that he be- 
comes a willing victim of his self-enslavement. Man's freedom, 
in other words, is manifested in his ability to surrender his free- 
dom as well as in his efforts to retain it. As Ortega y Gasset has 
remarked, our present actions determine the extent of our future 
freedom. 
Thus Cassirer reminds us that ethical freedom is not a natural 
fact that is given or inherited, but rather a potentiality which 
man himself must strive to realize and bring into practical 
operation. Acknowledging his indebtedness to Kant on this 
point, Cassirer observes that 
In the exposition of his own theory Kant always warns us against 
a fundamental misunderstanding. Ethical freedom, he declares, is not 
a fact but a postulate. It is not gegeben but aufgegeben; it is not a gift 
with which human nature is endowed; it is rather a task, and the 
most arduous task that man can set himself. It is no datum, but a 
demand ; an ethical imperative. To fulfil this demand becomes especially 
hard in times of a severe and dangerous social crisis when the breakdown 
of the whole public life seems to be imminent. At these times the indi- 
vidual begins to feel a deep mistrust in his own powers. Freedom is not 
a natural inheritance of man. In order to possess it we have to create 
it. 133 
But in order to create freedom one must first have the ca- 
pacity for free action by nature a basic presupposition to which 
Rousseau and the rationalists who followed him have repeatedly 
drawn attention. Here again Cassirer confronts us with a choice 
between natural and cultural freedom, as if the two notions 
were not logically compatible. Unless freedom were a fact of 
nature, in the sense of being an intrinsic capacity or power of 
self-determination, there would be no point in postulating it as 
an ethical imperative. 
As Cassirer conceives it, the task of the modern rationalistic 
philosopher is to combat the surrender of human reason and 
freedom to the forces of irrationalism and fatalism, by develop- 
ing afresh the humanistic insight of Plato and Kant that man, 
188 MS., 28 7 f. 
540 DAVID SIDNEY 
historically speaking, is master of his fate and can choose his 
demon in order to achieve eudaimonia or happiness. 134 In this 
sense the task of philosophy may be said to begin with itself, 
with the overcoming of the myth-provoking irrationalism of 
those philosophies (such as theological existentialism) in which 
reason is employed in order to accomplish its unconditional 
surrender in all the critical situations of human life. 135 
In the last analysis, Cassirer holds fast to his evolutionary, 
rationalistic faith in cultural progress and in the power of 
reason to keep in check the irrational powers of myth. As he 
expresses it: 
Yet when small groups do try to enforce their wishes and their 
fantastic ideas upon great nations and the whole body politic, they may 
succeed for a short time, and they may even achieve great triumphs, 
but these must remain ephemeral. For there is, after all, a logic of the 
social world just as there is a logic of the physical world. There are 
certain laws that cannot be violated with impunity. Even in this sphere 
we have to follow Bacon's advice. We must learn how to obey the 
laws of the social world before we can undertake to rule it. 136 
Here, obviously, the man of liberal faith and the prophet 
of rationalism is speaking and expressing his faith in the ulti- 
mate triumph of social logic in human affairs. He refers 
enigmatically to certain "laws" of the social world which "must" 
be obeyed but, like the destiny-philosophers whom he criti- 
cizes, fails to specify what these laws are or how they can 
be empirically established. If irrational social forces do come 
to the fore and do manage to gain the ascendancy, why "must" 
their triumph remain any more ephemeral than that of the 
opposing forces? There is more to be said for the "logic of 
power" than the idealistic advocates of the power of logic have 
yet been prepared to acknowledge. Cassirer, it would appear, 
was so much concerned with the power of cultural symbols that 
he failed to reckon realistically with the power of the objects 
to which the symbols referred. Furthermore, in view of Cas- 
sirer's admission that the irrational forces of myth tend to 
184 ibid., 7 6. 
Ibid., 2 9 2f. 
" Ibid., 295. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 541 
predominate in times of crisis and that "it is beyond the power of 
philosophy to destroy the political myths," 137 one cannot help 
wondering how substantial is the foundation for his faith in the 
ultimate victory of the rational functions of mind and of social 
logic. 
Cassirer on the Problem of Cultural Unity 
We return finally to the problem with which we began this 
analysis and ask again whether Cassirer has made any sig- 
nificant contribution towards the resolution of the intellectual, 
cultural crisis of our times. We have seen that, according to 
Cassirer, the crisis which confronts us is owing to the fact that 
modern culture lacks an intellectual center of integration. He 
has suggested, therefore, that what is vitally needed is a philo- 
sophical anthropology capable of comprehending man as a 
whole and providing a meaning and direction to all our human 
activities. His Essay on Man and The Myth of the State com- 
prise his final "testament of wisdom" and may therefore fairly 
be evaluated with reference to this ideal objective. 
In sum, it may be said, Cassirer has offered us a spiritual 
anthropology which reduces the category of nature to that of 
culture, thereby "humanizing philosophy and turning cos- 
mogony and ontology into anthropology." The key concept 
to this spiritual anthropology is the symbol, which is the 
source of reality as well as of intelligibility in human experi- 
ence. The whole of human culture is understood or interpreted 
as comprising the diverse modes of symbolism historically cre- 
ated and evolved by mankind in its efforts at self-ｅxpression 
and "progressive self-liberation." In the last analysis, the evo- 
lution of cultural thought is said to be dependent upon the 
evolution of language or linguistic symbolism, and culture as 
a whole is interpreted as the language of the human spirit. 
Within each category or mode of culture there is a "unity 
in the manifold," in the sense that each cultural perspective 
may ultimately be conceived through some one psychological 
MT MS., 2965 cf. the writer's review of Cassirer's Myth of the State in Ameri- 
can Anthropologist, 49, (July-September 1947), 481-83. 
542 DAVID SIDNEY 
motive or function. Thus all forms of art may be understood as 
diverse symbolic ｅxpressions of intuition; myth and religion 
symbolize emotions and provide a rationalization for the 
identity of all forms of lifej and science gives us a unity of 
thought by providing a symbolic universe of laws and principles 
(see Section 12 above). Cassirer thus correlates the subjective 
functions of the ego with the historically-evolved cultural cate- 
gories, thereby binding together man and the symbolic world of 
his creation. , 
Similarly one may discern a common function for the whole 
of human culture. Cassirer's ultimate presupposition appears to 
be that the whole of human culture has a common, evolutionary 
origin in human experience as well as a common end or function 
in making for progressive objectification of the human spirit 
and for self-liberation. Notwithstanding the diversity of cul- 
tural ｅxpressions there is said to be a "dynamic equilibrium" 
and a "hidden harmony" which reconciles apparently opposing 
forces. 138 As Cassirer concludes in his Essay on Man, 
But this multiplicity and disparateness does not denote discord or 
disharmony. All these functions complete and complement one another. 
Each one opens a new horizon and shows us a new aspect of humanity. 
The dissonant is in harmony with itself; the contraries are not mutually 
exclusive, but interdependent; "harmony in contrariety, as in the case 
of the bow and the lyre." 139 
There are then, for Cassirer, two sources of unity of function 
in human culture, namely, psychological or genetic unity of 
motive for each type of cultural discipline, and teleological 
unity of function in achieving a common harmony for any given 
historical culture as well as for the culture of humanity as a 
whole. 
As regards the genetic, psychological unity of function at- 
tributed to a mode of culture, we have seen, in the case of 
myth, that this is open to question. Cassirer has not demon- 
strated that each cultural discipline may be correlated with 
only one psychological function. Objectively, we find that 
188 EM., 223. 
189 ' L ' J 22*. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT 543 
leading contemporary ethnologists, with the exception of the 
Functionalistic School, would not subscribe to the thesis that 
myth, for example, has one primary social function and would 
hold instead that it may have a plurality of functions a criti- 
cism which may be applied to any other cultural discipline. 
Furthermore, with reference to the teleological unity of 
function which is said to characterize a given culture and the 
culture of humanity as a whole, the reply may be made that 
this a priori harmony is not substantiated by the empirical evi- 
dence. Political myth, for example, has, on Cassirer's own in- 
sistence, no place in a genuinely rational culture. Obviously, 
then, from a historical point of view, there can be no "pre- 
established harmony" between myth and the rational elements 
of culture. 
The most serious criticism, however, of the so-called func- 
tionalistic harmony of culture is that it is purely formal and 
provides no criterion for the evaluation of the content or "sub- 
stance" of any given cultural configuration. Any one historical 
culture is, on this assumption, in harmony with itself, no 
matter what its empirical content may be. This problem be- 
comes acute especially in the sphere of intercultural relations 
where we are confronted with international conflicts which may 
lead to world war. Obviously the assurance under such circum- 
stances that there is an ultimate "hidden harmony" between 
the East and the West is of little comfort or practical signifi- 
cance y since what is required is a MANIFEST harmony, which 
may enable the nations of the world to dwell together in 
peace. But since there is for Cassirer no reality other than 
cultural or symbolical reality, there can be no meta-cultural 
or pre-cultural, ontological reality by which to evaluate con- 
flicting standards of value. In the end, we are left with a 
plurality of empirical ethnocentric, symbolical worlds, each of 
which is formally in harmony with the idea of humanity but 
functionally and actually in conflict with the others. 
As the writer has noted elsewhere, 140 the neo-Kantians are 
tolerant in theory to the extreme point of accepting the validity 
of any empirical socio-cultural system whatsoever. Any actual 
140 Bidney, "Culture Theory and the Problem of Cultural Crises." 
544 DAVID SIDNEY 
perversion or "transvaluation" of concrete human values may 
be justified on earth, provided one acknowledges his faith in 
the purity and harmony of the categorial structure whose abode 
is Heaven. 
Thus, Cassirer was led by his faith in the higher rationality 
of humanity to overlook the serious practical problems of cul- 
tural conflict and disunity. In other words, the very rationality 
of his neo-Kantian outlook led him logically and paradoxically 
to a toleration in theory of the irrational and mythological 
mentality which he strove in practice to obliterate from the 
social and political life of man. As a moral philosopher he did 
not believe in "speculative idleness" and urged his fellow 
philosophers to emulate the great thinkers of the past who made 
it their task "to think beyond and against their times." 141 But 
he derived his intellectual and moral courage to do so, not from 
his neo-Kantian theory and his egocentric, spiritual anthro- 
pology, but from the classical metaphysical traditions, from 
Greek culture and the philosophia ferennis of the Hebrew- 
Christian tradition as well as from the humanism of the Renais- 
sance and the rationalism of the Enlightenment which he knew 
so intimately and loved so well. 
DAVID SIDNEY 
THE VIKING FUND 
NEW YORK CITY 
141 MS., 296. 
15 
Helmut Kuhn 
ERNST CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 
15 
ERNST CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 
title "Philosophy of Culture" seems to denote a 
JL branch or field of philosophy: philosophy applying itself 
to the exploration of that particular fact or set of facts which 
we describe as "culture." This special field would have to be 
mapped out in terms of the total area of which it is a part, and 
in terms of its relation to the adjacent fields of philosophical 
study, such as ethics or philosophy of history. 
In fact, culture is one of the themes of Cassirer's philosophy, 
and culture does constitute a field of study within the wider 
compass of his thought. But it does so only incidentally. This 
may seem a paradoxical assertion, flying in the face of Cassirer's 
own explicit statements. Does he not, in unambiguous words, 
distinguish between philosophy of culture and philosophy of 
nature as two separate, though related, domains? 
Nevertheless, we rejoin, by regarding culture as a special 
field or theme of Cassirer's thought we choose an unpromising 
approach and are almost certain to miss the intent of his phi- 
losophy. Although analyzing in great detail certain forms of 
culture, such as language or myth, Cassirer neglects others 
almost completely; and this uneven treatment, far from being 
fortuitous, betrays the guiding and selecting interest in the 
philosopher's mind. This interest is not in the exploration of 
culture for its own sake. 
Wondering what culture is and trying to describe its nature 
in terms as simple and straightforward as possible, the observer's 
mind may fasten upon certain salient features and cardinal ques- 
tions. Culture, as cultura animi y seems to indicate a deliberate 
cultivation, a tending or fashioning of the mind, some kind of 
education. What is the nature and goal of this education? 
Furthermore, culture or civilization is distinguished from both 
547 
548 HELMUT KUHN 
primitivism and barbarism, compared with which it claims to 
be a richer, more dignified, and more truly human mode of life. 
Wherein does its superiority consist and how was it achieved? 
Why is it as precarious a possession as the annals of mankind 
show? May we look forward to an as yet unattained perfection 
of culture in some near or distant future? 
If a reader approaches Cassirer's work with these observa- 
tions and questions in mind, he finds it unresponsive. The 
center of Cassirer's interest is elsewhere, and the student's 
query, which, in the opinion of the questioner, is central, is 
relegated to the periphery of the intellectual universe. We even 
begin to doubt whether the imaginary questioner correctly 
understands the meaning of the term "culture" as used by 
Cassirer. Where, then, is the center of gravity in Cassirer's 
world? 
"Primary philosophy" (TCP<OTY) ^tXodo^ia)^ according to Aris- 
totle, is a science which investigates being as being, or, in a 
more familiar terminology, Reality as such. 1 Cassirer's re- 
search, however radically it departs in some respects from the 
great current of philosophia perennis, is still animated through- 
out by the quest of "primary philosophy" as enunciated by 
Aristotle. Philosophy of culture is for him, first of all, phi- 
losophy, i.e., an investigation into the nature of Reality. But 
this investigation tends towards the study of culture as of a 
particularly revealing domain of reality. Culture appears the 
privileged document testifying with unparalleled eloquence to 
the adequacy of the underlying concept of "being as being." 
The affirmation of the ontological primacy of culture in 
Cassirer's thought is borne out by a glance at his literary career. 
The progressive articulation of his philosophy went hand in 
hand with a movement towards a greater emphasis on prob- 
lems of culture a development which culminated in the 
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (now conveniently summarized 
in the recent Essay on Man). This magnum opus, a boldly 
conceived and masterly executed philosophical interpretation of 
culture, completed the conquest of a domain which, though 
coveted before by other members of the Marburg School, had 
1 Metaphysics, 1003 a 21. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 549 
proved inaccessible to Cassirer's predecessors. It is true, Cas- 
sirer was encouraged and aided in his undertaking by a pre- 
vailing current of thought. At the turn from the nineteenth 
to the twentieth century, German philosophy sought to put a 
check on the hegemony of the natural sciences by working out 
a system of Geisteswissenschajt. But, if we view Cassirer's 
achievement against the background of the co-operative effort 
with which he found himself in harmony, the originality of the 
solution he propounded becomes only the more impressive. 
Following Hermann Cohen, the founder of the Marburg 
School, Cassirer derived his interpretation of Reality from 
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique so powerfully 
influenced Cassirer's thinking that it determined his interpreta- 
tion of culture throughout, from its principles down to the 
order of procedure, as shown by the tables of contents in the 
volumes of Die Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen. Mod- 
estly the author takes credit only for essaying a work that was 
rendered both possible and indispensable by Kant, but left 
undone, for some reason or other, by the master. Like Wilhelm 
Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert, he claims to complete the 
Kantian architecture by giving the philosophical foundation of 
the science of nature as furnished by Kant a companion-piece 
in the philosophical foundation of the science of culture. His- 
torically, the claim is void. The alleged supplementation re- 
quires a fresh ground-plan and, in fact, a different building. Yet 
the intended adherence to Kant's letter and spirit is nonetheless 
the salient trait of the new structure. 
"For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can 
be." 2 With this succinct assertion Parmenides put an end to 
naive reflection on the totality of real things, and philosophy 
as a disquisition on reality as such emerged into sight. It is made 
clear that "being" is related to "being thought" not as the 
florin is related to the purse, the cargo to the vessel, or in any 
other extrinsic fashion. The two terms are conjoined rather as 
"sight" is to "being seen" or "creature" to "being created." 
Despite their distinctness they form an integral unity. 
Kant found a fresh formula for the Eleatic insight. In pur- 
2 Hermann, Diels, Fragment* der Vorsokratiker, (5th ed.), I, 231, fr. 3. 
550 HELMUT KUHN 
suing knowledge we put ideas together: Knowledge, the result 
of this process, is a synthesis. But may we, by so uniting ideas 
into a composite whole, expect to reveal something which, by 
definition, lies outside the sphere of mental operations, viz., 
reality? We may, Kant answers, provided the principles which 
direct our constructing a synthesis are identical with the prin- 
ciples determining the structure of reality. It will be permitted 
to call the totality of knowledge as based upon sense perception 
"experience ;" to substitute for principles: "conditions of pos- 
sibility," and to dub statements relating to these fundamental 
conditions "a priori judgments." With these terminological ad- 
justments, Kant's "highest principle of all synthetic judg- 
ments" is arrived at: "We then assert that the conditions of the 
possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the 
possibility of the objects of experience, and that for this reason 
they have objective validity in a synthetic a priori judgment." 3 
Cassirer poses the problem in Parmenidean terms and then, 
for an answer, reaffirms Kant's solution. 
The first point of departure for speculation is denoted by the concept 
of Being. The instant this concept articulates itself and a consciousness 
awakes of the unity of Being, as set over against the multiplicity and 
variety of being things, the specifically philosophical mode of regarding 
the world arises. 4 
With this ontological conception of philosophy in mind, Cas- 
sirer proceeds to express the Parmenidean identification in 
terms of a Kantian "transcendental" logic: "The concept relates 
to the object because and as much as it [the concept] is the 
necessary and indispensable presupposition of objectivation; 
because it is the function for which alone there can be objects, 
i.e., permanent basic units, amidst the flux of experience." 5 
Shorter and simpler: "The logical concept is the necessary and 
sufficient condition for the knowledge of the nature of things." 6 
"Being," according to this transcendental logic, means "being 
3 Critique of Pure Reason (Norman K. Smith tr., London, 1929), 194. 
4 Die Philoso'phie der symbolischen Formen, I, 3. 
- *lbid., Ill, 368. 
' Zur Logik der Kulturwissenfchajten, typescript p. 37. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 551 
determined," and thinking is the process of determination. So 
there is no essence outside the sphere of thinking, and meta- 
physics as the supposed knowledge of essences is non-existent. 
Transcendental idealism has no room for a transcendent, i.e., 
super-sensible, reality, and discountenances Natural Theology 
and similar speculative flights. Along with metaphysics it dis- 
penses with the "copy theory of knowledge" (Abbildtheorie) . 
This theory naively interprets ideas "inside the mind" as copies 
of "things without," thus dissociating what belongs indelibly 
together and then reassembling the broken parts by resorting 
to a dubious analogy. 7 
Examining this "critical" or "transcendental" logic, we do 
well to remember that "naive," i.e., pre-Kantian, metaphysics 
was not so nai've as to subscribe to the unphilosophical notion 
of knowledge as a passive image mirroring a given reality. 
Naivete, of course, is undying. But it has been obsolescent in 
philosophy ever since Parmenides put forward his monumental 
identification 5 and traditional metaphysics as called into ex- 
istence by Plato and Aristotle did not entirely fail to heed 
"Father Parmenides' " teaching. However, his stupendous in- 
sistence on a seemingly absurd truth, expressed in words as 
rigidly erect and quaintly ornate as an archaic statue, underwent 
at the hands of his followers a differentiation which made it 
supple and alive. The chief purpose of this differentiation was 
to find a place for the finite human knower as an integral 
part of reality a part ignored by the disdainful Eleatic save, 
by way of compromise, in the second, pragmatic portion of his 
poem. 
In Aristotle, the identity of "thinking" and "being" is main- 
tained at the pinnacle of the pyramid of reality. The unmoved 
mover, form disengaged from matter, act free of potentiality, 
is described as v6i)i$ voqw<& thinking returning upon itself, 
reality as self-comprehending intellection, a thing that is by 
virtue of thinking itself. But in the sublunar world inhabited 
by man this primordial unity bifurcates. Man the knower is 
confronted by things to be known things which are y regard- 
less as to whether or not he takes cognizance of their existence. 
7 Cf . Philosophic der symbolischen Formen (hereafter abbreviated: PSF), I, 5. 
552 HELMUT KUHN 
Yet their "becoming known" is by no means incidental to their 
existence in the sense in which "being portrayed" is incidental 
to a person. First, the kind of existence which a thing has in- 
volves a degree of knowability, depending upon the share which 
form has in its constitution. So a star is more knowable than a 
lump of clay, or the soul than the body. For cognition detaches a 
thing's form from its matter: the intelligent mind is the locus 
of forms. Second, the identity which is complete at the summit, 
in the form of forms, is present also in the human act of cogni- 
tion, though only in a qualified way. "In the case of objects 
which involve no matter, what thinks and what is thought are 
identical" (*6 a ^6 eate TO vooov *ai T& vooujxevov). 8 The very word- 
ing is reminiscent of Parmenides. 
Man may rise to intuiting forms not contaminated with 
matter. But he is environed by a compound reality forms 
wedded to matter. Consequently the cognitive process in the 
human mind is, for Aristotle, an interplay and co-operation of 
activity and passivity. This duality corresponds to the duality 
of the human situation. Man, as finite, is one thing among the 
many things of the world, acted upon and reacting. At the same 
time, man, through reason, is somehow all things. 
Turning now to Kant, the source of Cassirer's epistemology, 
we find the interplay of activity and passivity supplanted with 
a novel emphasis on the constructive activity of the mind. 
The Eleatic identification is reborn in the spirit of the modern, 
post-Cartesian subject. However, the scope of this idealistic 
motif which reverses the natural order by making objects con- 
form to concepts 9 is strictly limited to the sensible world: to 
the world of phenomena as interpreted by "experience;" and 
this phenomenal world is not coextensive with reality. The 
Critique teaches that "the object is to be taken in a twofold 
sense, namely as appearance and thing in itself." 10 Beyond the 
pales of appearance all the essential features of the metaphysical 
world picture, though denied to speculative knowledge, are 
restored to enlightened faith. This restoration, far from being 
8 De Anima^ 43oa 3-4. 
9 Critique of Pure Reason (N. K. Smith tr.)> 22. 
28. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 553 
a mere compromise, springs from the ethos of Kant's under- 
taking. Rescinding the principle of happiness and dislodging 
contemplation from its sovereign place, he wrests man from 
his anchorage in nature while blocking his visionary ascent to 
God. But he believes he only takes away what man never right- 
fully possessed. 
It is true, Kant disabuses man and purges his mind from 
speculative conceit. Yet in so humbling him he does not deliver 
him into the despair of metaphysical homelessness. Instead he 
returns the paraphernalia of the transmundane homestead, 
God and the intelUgibilia, freedom and beatitude not to man's 
cognitive faculty, but to his "practical belief." Man, in a 
chastened mood now, since he has put away his intellectual pride, 
is expected reverently to submit to a law that defines his place 
in the order of things and to which the voice of duty in his 
own mind bears unequivocal testimony. By the same token, 
the interplay of spontaneity and passivity in the cognitive 
process is restored. Again, the theory of knowledge is but- 
tressed to the idea of the finitude of man. The very act of 
resignation by which we disown metaphysical vision is supposed 
to establish the right rapport between ourselves and the objects 
of the metaphysical world. By a tour de force we thus arrive at 
the notion of unintelligible intelligibilia (vooujxeva) unintel- 
ligible, we must add, to us, to man. 
Following the general line of neo-Kantian thought, Cassirer 
adopts Kant's "highest principle of all synthetic judgments" 
the identification of "the conditions of the possibility of experi- 
ence" with "the conditions of the possibility of the objects of 
experience." At the same time, again conforming to the Mar- 
burg pattern, he goes beyond Kant. Kant's "objects of experi- 
ence" are not objects as such, but "appearances" as set over 
against the "thing in itself." Hence, Kant's identification is 
a limited one. The neo-Kantian, discarding the "thing in itself," 
makes the identification total. He robs the object of all its sub- 
stantiality. To him the object is the result or the "function" 
of the logical process of objectivationj and the residuum which 
resists this "functionalization" becomes an "objective" (Auf- 
gabe] the infinitely distant goal for further acts of logical 
554 HELMUT KUHN 
determination. Kant's transcendental logic is made to outgrow 
the limited domain assigned to it by the master. 
If God held in one hand truth, in the other the search for it, 
inviting us to choose, we should, Lessing held, beg the heavenly 
Father to keep the truth for Himself and let us have the 
search. To this Hermann Cohen objects. What truth means 
to God is of no concern to us ; and as far as we are con- 
cerned the gifts of the two hands are actually one: truth is the 
quest for truth. 11 In the same vein, Cassirer quotes Faust's 
translation of the opening words of the Gospel according to 
St. John: "In the beginning was the deed." 12 Logos is creation, 
positing reality. All this goes beyond Kant in the sense that the 
transcendental synthesis is viewed as constituting not only "ob- 
jects of experience" but objects tout court. 
However, in so radicalizing the thesis of Kant's transcen- 
dental logic, Cassirer goes also back behind Kant not to 
pre-Kantian metaphysics, but to pre-metaphysical, i.e., pre- 
Platonic, ontology: to Parmenides. A modern dynamic com- 
panion-piece to the immobile, self-contained Eleatic Being is 
achieved. This, of course, is not the avowed intent of the neo- 
Kantian thinker who is innocent of any archaizing inclinations. 
But, constrained by the logic of his transcendental identifica- 
tion, he comes to embrace an archaically simplified concept of 
Being. Incidentally, this simplification was encouraged by the 
scientific ideal prevalent in an industrialized civilization. Or- 
ganized co-operation of vast groups, made effective by a division 
of labor into multiple functions, the master-device of modern 
industry was inapplicable to the intricate wholeness of meta- 
physics. Its "huge helplessness" (G. K. Chesterton) did not 
fit into the contemporary pattern. on the other hand, the neo- 
Kantian idea of knowledge as an infinite process of determina- 
tion, suggestive as it was of the cumulative collaboration of 
individuals and groups, seemed more agreeable to the Zeitgeist. 
Be that as it may (and admitting that this explanation of the 
pre-Socratic features so strikingly characteristic of various cur- 
rents of recent philosophy is far from exhaustive), the logic 
"Hermann Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens (1904), 93. 
12 Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 61. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 555 
of the neo-Kantian return to Parmenidian simplicity is both 
clear and cogent. As the transcendental synthesis, the act of 
objectification, wins unlimited scope, the receptivity (or pas- 
sivity) in the knower is cancelled out. Along with his receptivity 
the knower as a finite subject is likewise lost to view; and 
the anthropological undergirding of the theory of knowledge, 
reinterpreted but preserved by Kant, is gone. The "bifurcation" 
of the ontological identity, which, in Plato and Aristotle, 
showed man as being "of the world," and the world as existing 
for man this bifurcation is blotted out. We move in the self- 
contained sphere of a thinking that constitutes objects; and this 
sphere leaves as little room for man, the knower, as the Eleatic 
sphere of Being. The knower looks upon this sphere as it were 
"from outside." Never and under no circumstances is he en- 
compassed by it. 
We ask Parmenides about man and those obtrusive facts 
which loom large in man's life: the choice between good and 
evil, the cycle of birth and death, and the alternation of the 
seasons. In reply he puts us off with information on "the beliefs 
of mortals" and on the names they have decided to affix to 
things. 13 We ask the neo-Kantian about man, and he sends us 
to empirical psychology and empirical anthropology. But this, 
of course, is not his whole reply to our query. Man figures in 
his philosophy as a subject related to objects. The subject- 
object correlation is all-pervasive, omnipresent. However, Cas- 
sirer affirms, no hard and fast dividing line separates the two 
correlate spheres. Wherever a meaning is grasped, it carries 
with it both subject and object as polar "moments" involved 
in its structure; in other words, it is the result of a mediation 
between the two poles. "To be," in this view, means "to be a 
synthesis" of subject and object, or of the ego and the world. 
But with this definition the status of "being" or "reality" is 
denied to the world as well as to the ego. 
Using a simile dear to Plato we may liken the synthesis to 
a tissue. Let us suppose a student of the weaving process, though 
sharp-sighted in observing the expanding pattern of warp and 
woof, be completely blind to loom, shuttle, and raw-material. 
"Hermann Diels, of. '/., I, 239, fr. 8, 50-61. 
556 HELMUT KUHN 
So he is well equipped closely to follow the progress of the 
work, but unable to see the tools and the thread which between 
them carry on this work. The puzzled student will try to make 
up for the lacuna in his vision by imagining hypothetical agen- 
cies which would explain the mysterious growth of the texture. 
Ingenious as he is he might succeed in imagining the devices 
invisible to him. But, instead of letting him have his way, we 
deepen his perplexity by adding to the defect of eyesight a 
mental handicap. We incapacitate him for thinking or imagin- 
ing anything except in terms of a texture, and accordingly we 
endow him with a purely "textile" language. 
The doubly disabled student of textile manufacture in our 
parable is man trying to study "subject" and "reality" on the 
line of the neo-Kantian approach. These two polar concepts 
are of crucial importance to him: they denote the terminal points 
of the axis upon which his interpretation revolves. At the same 
time, he finds himself debarred from ever bringing them into 
the purview of his analysis. By definition, one of the two, 
the object pole, while directing the advance of cognitive syn- 
theses, never rises above the knower's horizon. Similarly, the 
ego, manifest though it is through its works, remains eternally 
in his back. This "evanescent nature" of both "ego" and 
"world," as it appears in neo-Kantian epistemology, points 
truly to the structure of the situation of the knower confronted 
with potential objects of knowledge. But the question is as to 
whether an analysis of the cognitive subject-object relation can 
provide the foundations upon which to erect a philosophical 
edifice. In other words, is a situation in which the world is "for 
man," the spectator, (while man's participation in the world as 
an agent is lost sight of) as prototypical for an interpretation 
of reality as neo-Kantianism assumes? To be sure, an under- 
standing of culture can be won only on the basis of an adequate 
conception of the human agent. Hence the attempt to develop 
the transcendental logic of neo-Kantianism into a philosophy 
of culture appears a singularly unpropitious enterprise. Nature 
without man is imaginable, fragmentary though she may seem. 
But culture is clearly a man-made thing, a datum for rtian's in- 
spection, too, but first of all existing through man and in man. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 557 
To find strength in weakness is the mark of a creative mind. 
In Cassirer's hands, transcendental logic becomes an effective 
tool for coping with problems of the human world. Within its 
limited reach, this clean-cutting tool harvests fruits which a 
more deeply searching instrument, or one of more sweeping 
grasp, would have been likely to have left ungleaned. 
An analysis of the transcendental synthesis may move in 
either of two directions, according to the prevailing interest. 
The interest may be directed either towards uncovering "founda- 
tions," i.e., ultimate positing acts which afford a basis for subse- 
quent syntheses and endow the whole process with the character 
of self-supporting "science" (wwrtfaiQ) ; or it may focus on the 
resulting structures. It was Hermann Cohen, the founder of the 
Marburg school, who took the "adventurous road" towards the 
discovery of origins. In his Logic we find him at pains to wrest 
Being as "aught" from a primordial "naught" a "logogony" 
which forces the thinking mind through the narrow strait of an 
"extreme perplexity" into progressive self-determination. 14 With 
Cassirer, temper and direction of the transcendental enterprise 
have changed. Gone is the heroic passion for moving the globus 
intellectualis by the "lever of the origin j " gone also the founder's 
provincialism which oddly clogged his vision. Instead, we find an 
analyst applying himself with an open mind and heightened sen- 
sitiveness to a study of those structural features which the cogni- 
tive synthesis in its manifold forms reveals forms abundantly 
exhibited by the numerous branches of actual science. This new 
tendency, akin in spirit to HusserPs phenomenology, bore 
its early fruits in the field of the logic of natural science. But 
gradually it gave rise to a broadening of perspective which 
rendered a philosophy of culture possible. 

once we have accepted the basic principle of a "critical 
philosophy," the primacy of the creative mind over a given 
reality, of "function" over "object," we need not, Cassirer 
argues, confine ourselves to examining the cognitive function 
and its objective correlate, the thing as knowable. There are 
other types of meaningful structures through which the mind 
manifests its creativity, distinct from knowledge, but no less 
"Hermann Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (3rd ed., 1922), 83 f. 
558 HELMUT KUHN 
coherent, each forming a realm of meaning of its own, each 
ordered and articulated in accordance with its own laws, its own 
"style." Mythic thought, language, art these are the chief 
instances of autonomous "structures of meaning" which Cas- 
sirer has in mind. only by comprising these non-cognitive 
structures within its field of vision does transcendental idealism 
come into its own. "Thus the critique of reason becomes critique 
of culture. It seeks to understand and to show how all content 
of culture, inasmuch as it is not a merely particular content but 
one based upon a universal principle of form, presupposes a 
creative act of the mind (eine ursfrilngliche Tat des Geistes)" 
The defeat of the naive-realistic view of the world is in- 
complete as long as the idealistic analysis is confined to knowl- 
edge. While admitting that certain structural traits of the 
object of knowledge result from a formative activity of the 
mind, the realist may still maintain that there must be an 
independent "something," a datum, subsisting outside the 
subject-object relation. His contention, Cassirer holds, becomes 
untenable as soon as we substitute "culture" for "world." 
Confronted with the array of cultural forms, he must see that 
clinging to the idea of a self-contained non-mental substratum, a 
"thing in itself," henceforth will serve no purpose. Here, at 
last, the mind stands revealed in works unmistakably its own. 
There is distinctness, structure, articulate meaning, but no sus- 
picion of an extra-mental givenness. Envisaging these structures 
and meaningful contexts is tantamount to discerning a variety of 
basic "directions" or "tendencies" of the mind, each of which 
issues in an object or a set of objects. And these objects are 
plainly products, shaped through and through by that creative 
"direction" from which they spring. "Being" is swallowed up 
in "doing." A work of art is. But the being we ascribe to it is 
derivative. It actually is nothing save what it is in relation to, 
and as a product of, artistic imagination. The world of aesthetic 
objects is a continuous and orderly manifestation of one of the 
mind's cosmogonic urges. And the same is true of the world of 
mythic thought and of language. 
With its recent development modern physics has lost its grip 
, ii. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 559 

on material reality. Models explanatory of sub-atomic struc- 
tures can no longer be regarded as faithful large scale replicas 
of microcosmic nature. Their value is to be assessed in terms of 
their usefulness in rendering prediction of future events pos- 
sible. These new physical concepts, instead of "picturing" facts, 
permit the physicist to orient himself in his dealings with nature 
by providing what Heinrich Hertz called "symbols." This 
term, signaling, so it seemed, the bankruptcy of naive realism 
in physics, was seized upon and given a new and ambitious 
career by Cassirer. He decided to call those structures which 
he set out to analyze in his philosophy of culture, "symbolic 
forms." 
The title seems appropriate. In ancient Greece old bonds of 
friendship and hospitality were acknowledged and renewed 
when the two fragments of a ring, tokens of recognition, fitted 
exactly together. The ring, or whatever object took its place, 
was called a symbol. Symbol, in the original Greek sense of 
the word, is a token. The cultural forms also betoken some- 
thing. They express a meaning. In the symbol literally so-called 
the sign is clearly distinct from that which it signifies. The 
sign is: two physical objects fitting together ; the thing signified: 
two minds fitting together. In Cassirer's "symbolic form" this 
distinction holds too. There is a perceived or imagined form: 
a sequel of articulate sounds, an arrangement of lines and colors, 
a "world picture;" and these sensible forms are designed to 
point to something non-sensible. They are utterances. Each one 
of the various "realms of forms" externalizes an inner world. 
Each is a language of its own. 
At this juncture the metaphor of the symbol breaks down 
and, at the same time, gains a fresh significance. The ring 
is one thing, the ancient alliance of two families or clans an- 
other thing; and we find no difficulty in not only distinguishing 
but also separating these two types of reality. Both may exist 
independently of each other. This separableness is not found in 
Cassirer's "symbolic forms." Distinct though sign and meaning 
are, they belong inextricably together. They fit as neatly to 
each other as the broken halves of a ring fit. Like these they 
form an integral whole. This intimacy of the relation between 
560 HELMUT KUHN 
"form" and "meaning" distinguishes the genuine symbolic form 
from conventional semantic systems such as the Morse Code or 
the signs used by symbolic logic. The latter provide vehicles for 
conveying a ready-made meaning j and they may, at any time, 
be supplanted with alternative, more convenient vehicles. Not 
so the "symbolic form." It is not exchangeable, not detachable, 
not arbitrarily constructed. It is not content in a form but con- 
tent as formj a medium informed and animated by meaning, 
meaning articulating itself into form. 
The mind weaves a seamless robe. A linguistic ｅxpression may 
be translated from one language into another, though even 
here the translation will never be a perfect equivalent of the 
original. But a content expressed in one type of symbolic form, 
say in language, cannot be ripped from its "connatural" mani- 
festation and sewn to a different symbolic vesture. The meaning 
of languages is not expressible in painting, nor the meaning of 
music in terms of mythic thinking. Every realm of symbolic 
forms, language, art, and mythic Weltanschauung, must be 
accepted on its own terms and deciphered in consonance with 
the creative direction or intent which determines the structure 
of that particular realm. To lay bare this unique structure, 
neither adding nor leaving out but faithfully following in the 
footprints of mens creatrix such is the business of a transcen- 
dental analysis of language, of mythology, of art. Philosophy 
appears in the role of a universal interpreter of the multiple 
"languages" through which the mind puts forth its inner wealth. 
It functions, in Cassirer's own terms, as "the conscience of 
culture." 1 * 
Transcendental analysis as employed by Cassirer has a special 
aptitude for performing precisely this task. It operates with a 
dynamic and highly flexible concept of "form" which is equally 
applicable in all spheres of symbolic ｅxpression. Kant, in the 
"transcendental logic," views the cognitive act as the synthesis 
of a diversity of sensory data. This idea of synoptic construction, 
stripped of the realistic ingredient which accrued to it from 
Kant's notion of "givenness," proves a perfect tool for an inter- 
pretation which is to range far beyond epistemology over the 
"Logik . . ., 33. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 561 
whole field of cultural achievements. Myths and language, re- 
ligious symbols and works of art all and each show the dom- 
inance of one point of view different in each particular field 
yet analogous in mode of operation to all the others j and this 
point of view unifies and organizes an indefinite multiplicity 
into an orderly Kingdom of Forms. To understand any one cul- 
tural phenomenon, be it a religious belief, an artistic motif, 
or a linguistic ｅxpression, means to locate it within the sphere 
of symbolic ｅxpression to which it belongs and from which 
it derives its significance. In other words, the phenomenon 
under analysis must be subjected to the dominant angle of 
vision as the principle of synthesis. 
Whence do the material elements hail which are put together 
by transcendental synthesis in the several provinces of its 
operation? "From nowhere," seems the correct reply. These 
material elements, although affording a particular content, 
have no existence apart from, or previous to, the framework of 
forms in which they are ensconced. They owe their particularity, 
and, in fact, their existence, to their relation to universal form; 
and this assertion is reversible. Form and matter, in this view, 
are strictly correlate, and synthesis is diversification as well as 
unification. We see here Cassirer taking the path along which 
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had once moved beyond Kant 
and away from Kant: away from the "thing in itself" in rela- 
tion to which the subject was supposed to be the suffering or 
receptive rather than the spontaneously active partner. 
Logic, which demands the dialectical interdependence of "the 
one" and "the many," seems to be with Cassirer and his prede- 
cessors in radical idealism. But his resolute departure from 
Kant's residual realism saves the idealist from an inconsistency 
only to entangle him in another no less grave difficulty. If 
the particular content does not stem from a material datum out- 
side the mind, it must be the mind that gives rise to it. How, then, 
is this infra-mental duality to be accounted for? How explain 
the concentration of analysis upon "form," if "form" and 
"matter" are of the same origin and, consequently, of the same 
ontological rank? Cassirer throughout uses a language which 
presupposes the common-sense notion of the mind exercising 
562 HELMUT KUHN 
itself in a world of "given" objects. This is the view which 
descriptive ｅxpressions such as articulation of meaning, unifica- 
tion, synoptic organization, etc., imply. But the rigorous dia- 
lectics of transcendental idealism gives the lie to these and 
similar terms and reduces them to the status of metaphors. No 
language is available directly to express what the idealist en- 
deavors to think. 
The linguistic difficulty indicates a deep-seated quandary. We 
are brought face to face with an ancient cosmogonic puzzle. 
The original one, so it seems, needs a counter-force to chal- 
lenge it into productivity. A metaphysical antagonist is re- 
quired, 
Der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schaffen* 7 
In Cassirer's philosophy, cultural productivity is partheno- 
genesis, parturition of the spirit that dwells in solitude. Sub- 
stance, he insists, must be transfigured into function, "being" 
into "doing." But function is discernible only if seen against 
the foil of substance, just as doing requires something "unto 
which" doing is done. The attempt to translate everything into 
doing obliterates doing. Exactly this occurs in Cassirer's phi- 
losophy of culture. Total dynamism is proclaimed, the bound- 
less liberty of the creative mind 5 yet the result obtained is 
meaning congealed into structures rigidly static, like Parmen- 
ides' Being "immovable in the bonds of mighty chains without 
beginning and without end." 18 
Parmenides was at great pains to ward off intrusions of the 
non-being about which, he stoutly maintained, no assertion 
can be made except that "it is not." Melissus and Zeno, armed 
with the two-edged sword of Parmenidean dialectic, continued 
to fight the losing battle j until in Gorgias, the prodigal son 
of the Eleatic house, non-being carried the day. Plato discovered 
the moral of this story. With apologies to Parmenides he laid 
unfilial hands on his thesis and re-admitted non-being to some 
sort of existence the existence of "images" (eidold). Thus he 
limited the scope of Parmenides' ontological identification" (of 
17 Goethe, Faust, "Prolog im Himmel." 
"Hermann Diels, loc. cit., 237, fr. 8, 26f. 
" Sophist, 2+1 d. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 563 
knowledge and being) and rendered a philosophy of the finite 
world and the finite knower possible. Similarly, the Atomists 
used the void (successor to Parmenides' non-being) as an auxil- 
iary cosmogonic principle. In our own time, while metaphysics 
tottered with decrepitude, neo-Kantianism reverted to the 
Eleatic identification j and again, at the periphery of the re- 
stored sphere of Being, the teasing presence of the unsuccess- 
fully exorcized non-being made itself felt. Its name, in Cassirer, 
is "the flux of experience," out of which the symbolic forms are 
said to crystallize. This matrix of Being, itself non-being, how- 
ever indispensable it seems, is inassimiliably alien within the tran- 
scendental scheme. It is supposed to be objectifiable. But it is 
not objectified. Hence it is not. 
As the "flux of experience" looms as that which, a passive 
substratum, is as yet to be objectified, so, at the opposite pole of 
the transcendental axis, the active partner becomes just dis- 
cernible: that which objectifies but has not yet passed into 
objectivity. And again, according to the rigid laws of tran- 
scendental logic, this still, so to speak, "fluid" creativity is kept 
lingering at the outer confines of the universe of philosophical 
discourse. To mingle with transcendentally respectable concepts 
it lacks the stamp of objectivity which can be imprinted upon 
it only by a synthesis. This but dimly perceived creativity re- 
sembles the Christian God rather than the Platonic demiurge 
who, with the Eternal Model before him, persuades the 
"errant cause" into submission to his formative will. There is, 
according to the "critical" view, no malleable stuff to be fash- 
ioned. Creation is creatio ex nihilo. But, of course, the creative 
mind which reveals itself in symbolic forms has vacated its 
transmundane heaven to take up quarters in the human sphere. 
It is alternately called "life," a name which denotes its present 
abode, and "spirit" which is reminiscent of its exalted origin. 
Life or spirit in Cassirer's philosophy is akin to HegePs Welt- 
geist. But, whereas the latter unfolds itself in history, baring 
the rhythm of its movements for our inspection, Cassirer's 
"life" is known by its fruits alone. At the same time, the ele- 
ment of transcendence, maintained in Hegel, is discarded. 
Cassirer's philosophy is plainly "immanentist." Its principle of 
564 HELMUT KUHN 
creativity is conceived in the spirit of an era whose implicit 
faith found a classic ｅxpression in Auguste Comte's "worship 
of humanity." 
We remember here that student of textile manufacture to 
whom we likened the follower of "critical" or "transcendental" 
idealism. This student, we agreed, was to be blind both to his 
tools and to his raw material. He has an eye only for the web 
itself. Loom and shuttle, in our simile, stand for "life" (or 
"spirit"), the thread as raw material for the "flux of experi- 
ence." We could not prevent our student from casting about un- 
easily for surmises concerning these to him invisible agents. 
In the same way, the ideas of "creative life" and the "flux 
of experience" intrude upon the attention of the critical analyst. 
But a further stipulation we agreed upon cannot, as we now see, 
be upheld. We tried to cast upon the victim of our experiment 
a spell which would force him to think everything (including 
tools and material) in terms of texture. This proves more than 
human blood and flesh can bear. In non-metaphorical language: 
metaphysics is not to be expelled by a vow of abstinence. Drive 
it out with the critical pitchfork: tamen usque recurret. Definite 
metaphysical tenets underlie Cassirer's philosophy of culture. 
His determination to refrain from metaphysics is itself dictated 
by his immanentist metaphysics a self-denying metaphysics, 
condemned to suffering atrophy. 
The common denominator of the divers symbolic forms is 
their character as principles of objectivation. They are non- 
cognitive variants of the Kantian "synthesis of transcendental 
apperception." But this is not the only bond between them. 
They bear, as it were, a family likeness to each other. Although 
they form different "languages," they show analogies of "syn- 
tax" and treat identical themes. This analogous structure of 
the various "realms" is reflected in the parallel order followed 
by the argument in the three volumes of the Philoso'phie der 
symbolischen Formen. The analysis of language (in volume I), 
the analysis of myth (in volume II), and the analysis of the 
cognitive process (in volume III) begin with a treatment of 
space and time. This, of course, is done in adherence to the 
pattern set by Kant's "transcendental aesthetics," the opening 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 565 
part of the Critique of Pure Reason. But Cassirer adds a dis- 
cussion of number which has no pendant in the Critique. 
For Kant self-consciousness and time are intimately related 
to each other. Time is "the form of the inner sense," So, in 
letting an examination of the ego follow on the heels of his 
"transcendental aesthetics," Cassirer still is guided by the 
spirit though not by the table of contents of Kant's work. The 
latter part, in all three volumes, corresponds roughly to the 
master's "transcendental logic," insofar as it rises above the 
outlines of the sensible world to more abstract relationships. 
The significance of these analogies is obvious. Language, 
myth, knowledge are different media, all three of them refract- 
ing rays emitted by one and the same luminary; or to use an- 
other more closely "transcendental" figure of speech: they 
are different idioms which express an identical conception. This 
pervasive conception or pattern is of triadic structure: the 
sensible world, the ego, the ego orienting itself in the world. 
The world, a temporal sequence of events, extended in space, 
exhibiting a prodigious wealth of qualities this world is re- 
flected in linguistic signs, intuited by mythic consciousness, 
interpreted by religion and art, known by science. In its passage 
from one medium to another, it is, and is not, the same, com- 
parable to a tune played on different instruments. And what 
is true of the first unit of the triad, the sensible world, holds 
likewise of the ego, and of the relations between self and 
world. 
Space, for instance, as a feature of mundane existence, is 
found in mythic thought as well as in a scientific interpretation 
of reality. There are not two different spaces: a mythic and a 
scientific space. Wherever space is apprehended, it shows cer- 
tain persistent traits: it has dimensions, and it is the locus in 
which things are placed as "here," or "there," as inside one 
thing, distant from another thing, etc. In another sense, how- 
ever, there are indeed different spaces or rather types of space. 
In mythic thought no clear distinction is made between the 
place and the thing that fills the place. The "here" and 
"there" are conceived of as properties of objects. Things have 
their "natural" place and displacement may destroy them. 
566 HELMUT KUHN 
Likewise spatial directions coalesce with features of reality: 
north is air, and it is also war and hunting; south is fire, and 
also medicine and agriculture, and so forth. The nature of this 
"mythic" space does not greatly differ from space as we all 
perceive it in everyday life. But only remotely does it resemble 
the strictly homogenous space of Euclidean geometry which is 
"the locus of loci," totally detached from localized objects. 
Time, number, relation, ego they all show a similar plas- 
ticity. Although retaining their nature, they suffer modifications 
in conformity with the realm of meaning in which they appear. 
They are "polyglot" in the sense that they express themselves in 
different "languages," such as religion, art, or science. 
The tripartite pattern which recurs in each of the symbolic 
forms mirrors a more basic triad. The triptych: world ego 
categorial relations, forms within the sphere of constituted 
structures the counterpart to a triune constituent structure 
"higher up," in the sphere of transcendental origins. "World" 
corresponds to "flux of experience," "ego" to "life," and the 
"categorical relations," which straddle over this dichotomy, to 
"transcendental synthesis." The former are to the latter as the 
non-lingual conditions which render language possible (voice, 
communicable meaning) to a universal grammar. 
The "universal grammar," which shows the uniformity of all 
types of symbolic ｅxpression, is diversified into a number of 
"languages" by principles of specifications; and the specific 
structure combines, in every particular field, with the all-perva- 
sive structure into a complex pattern. So there is one differentia 
specifics which modifies the "universal grammar" into what is 
literally called language, another specifying principle consti- 
tutes the type of ｅxpression called "religion," a third one con- 
stitutes art, and so forth. The principles of specification are not 
arrived at by deduction. Cassirer even refrains from enunciating 
them in abstracto. The analyst of culture, he holds, should not 
rival with natural science in the attempt to formulate universal 
laws which determine causally connected events. Instead he 
must seek to "make visible" a "totality of forms," held together 
by unity of "style." The concepts through which a style is com- 
prehended do not "determine" they "characterize." From the 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 567 
point of view of Cassirer's own methodology, the "structural 
analysis" which he brings to bear on culture holds a middle- 
ground between natural science, which aims at the discovery of 
universal laws, and historiography, which emphasizes the indi- 
viduality of facts. 20 With this logical topology Cassirer puts on 
record his own contribution to that prolonged and dust-raising 
battle of books for which Wilhelm Windelband, as long ago as in 
1894, sounded the opening flourish with a timely and successful 
platitude, the distinction between generalizing knowledge (Erk- 
Ureri) and individualizing knowledge (Verstehen)^ and whose 
prize was Geisteswissenschaft, philosophically justified. 
In order to make visible that unity of style which character- 
izes one type of ｅxpression as myth, another as art, a third as 
religion, and so on, the conceptual instruments traditionally 
used by neo-Kantian thinkers were of no avail. Neither Her- 
mann Cohen's rhapsodic construction nor Heinrich Rickert's 
painstaking diaeresis could have helped Cassirer solve the prob- 
lem at hand. Long enough Windelband's terms "idiographic" 
and "nomothetic" had been bandied about by argumentative 
methodologists. Cassirer came, through his affiliation with Mar- 
burg stamped as a man of vastest generalities, and possessed 
himself of that subtly individualizing art of understanding 
which had been evolved in the camp of his intellectual anti- 
podes: in the Historical School and by Wilhelm Dilthey. With 
Cassirer, neo-Kantianism, originally given to rigidly construc- 
tive methods, became sensitive to the finest shades of style and 
structure to a type of order which reveals its secret to the 
observant physiognomist rather than to the classifying logician. 
In Cassirer's work, transcendental construction and empirical 
interpretation come to a fruitful understanding. 
Mythic thought is dominated by what Cassirer describes as 
"the concrescence of related terms." 21 The wound suffered in 
combat is considered not merely an effect related to the foe as 
to its cause: somehow it is the foe, the presence of his malignant 
power in the stricken man's body. Similarly, the parts are seen 
not only as composing the whole, but each part stands for, and 
* Logik . . ., 89-93. 
n PSF, II, 83. 
5 68 HELMUT KUHN 
to some extent is, the whole. A man's footprints, or his nails, 
are in a way the man himself, carriers of the "real power" which 
centers in a person. This coalescence of related but distinct ele- 
ments runs through all strata of the mythic world picture. To- 
gether with other features it forms the "specific difference" 
that which defines myth as myth and sets it off against other 
types of symbolic ｅxpression such as religion or art. However, 
Cassirer does not deduce the nature of myth from "participa- 
tion" or "concrescence" as from a principle, but proceeds in a 
manner which might be described as "constructive empiricism." 
He first surveys his assemblage of data, an astonishingly rich 
harvest gleaned from a thorough study of anthropological lit- 
erature, then fastens upon some salient features which bring out 
the structure of the field under investigation. These features he 
follows into their finer ramifications until he finally succeeds in 
hammering out the rich relief of a coherent and balanced 
"totality of forms." 
Naturally this structural interpretation, with all its scrupulous 
attention to facts, is ultimately guided by the principles of tran- 
scendental philosophy. But to a large extent, this philosophical 
orientation, far from imposing ready-made concepts upon a re- 
calcitrant material, serves as a critical catalytic. We are prone to 
cast our experiences in a number of streotyped forms which are 
most handy to us because of their usefulness in practical life} 
and in so doing we readily overlook the unique character of 
these experiences. To this "pragmatic fallacy" the analysis of 
symbolic forms offers an effective antidote. 
In ancient Greece, language, as a system of phonetic signs, was 
made the object of a famous controversy. Those who regarded 
these signs as existing "by nature" (fww) joined issue with 
others who considered them conventional (>W>); and even 
today, as the emergence of Semantics in our midst shows, the 
hoary "conventionalism" is not yet extinct. Here is a test case for 
Cassirer's method of arbitration. The study of linguistic form, 
conducted under the auspices of transcendental philosophy, 
establishes language as a unique type of ｅxpression. This "sym- 
bolic form" of language qua language is adequately described 
neither by linguistic naturalism with its emphasis on onomato- 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 569 
poetic links between sign and signified objects, nor by conven- 
tionalism with its insistence on the arbitrary character of signs. 
Another illustration is furnished by the debate between imita- 
tion theory and ｅxpression theory in aesthetics. Again a unique 
creative direction, incarnate in works of art, is unduly assimilated 
to that type of objective existence with which we are most 
familiar in our workaday world. And again, the analyst of 
symbolic forms, with his eye upon the differentia sfecifica of 
the aesthetic form qua aesthetic, may arbitrate between the dis- 
putants by discarding their false disjunction. 
Up to this point, the symbolic forms have been treated 
by us as autonomous domains, of analogous structure, but other- 
wise insular, unrelated among themselves. Yet there are, over 
and above their generic features as "forms," certain specific 
ties and interrelations between them. As we now focus on the 
links connecting form with form we come across another factor, 
neglected hitherto. Eleatic immobility has seemed to character- 
ize the symbolic structures. Studying their interrelations we 
catch a glimpse of their subdued dynamism. 
Some of the symbolic forms as distinguished by Cassirer can, 
others can not, coexist in the same mind or in the same cultural 
environment. Language, e.g., lives together with religion peace- 
ably and in fruitful co-operation j whereas scientific knowledge 
is intolerant of myth. This observation furnishes a clue for 
uncovering the configuration of Forms in a field of mutual re- 
latedness. 
Significantly the philosophy of the symbolic forms opens 
with language. Language, in effect, occupies a unique place 
within the scheme of cultural structures. It is the one form that 
associates with all other forms. Be he a primitive, his mind be- 
clouded by magic and superstition, or a specimen of homo 
sapens, consumer and fabricator of books on philosophy, as 
human, man is, according to Aristotle's definition, "an animal 
endowed with speech." 22 
Cassirer distinguishes three linguistic phases, characterized 
severally by the prevalence of mimetic, analogical, and sym- 
bolic ｅxpression. At the stage of mimetic ｅxpression, the word is 
M Politics, i25$a 10. 
570 HELMUT KUHN 
an imitative gesture clinging closely to what it denotes. The 
primitive Ewe language, for example, has no less than 33 
"phonetic images" for various modes of "walking}" and we may 
believe that, beside the mimetic power and evocative vividness 
of each of them, even so picturesque English verbs as "stagger," 
"lumber," "strut," and the like, appear sicklied over with the 
pale cast of thought. In modern languages this primitive type of 
ｅxpression survives in those linguistic fossils which we call ono- 
matopoetic. 23 The analogical stage is reached, where the ar- 
rangement of phonetic signs corresponds to the arrangement of 
denoted events. The resemblance between event and phonetic 
signal is here superseded with the analogy between the order of 
things and the order of sounds. So a difference in pitch of voice 
may be used to signal a difference of distance} or reduplication 
(as in do y dedf) serves to express the past tense. With the attain- 
ment, finally, of the symbolic stage, the heterogeneity of sign and 
fact is understood and fully exploited. The phonetic symbol is 
made to "signify" (bedeuten) instead of merely to "denote" 
(bezeichnen), and the mind now moves with supreme freedom 
in the fully mastered medium of linguistic ｅxpression. 
The trend of the movement from stage to stage is, it appears, 
towards greater "spiritualization" or "etherialization" (Ver- 
geistigung). At the same time, it becomes clear why one, and 
only one, of the symbolic forms, language, "mingles" with all 
its peers. In its development from mimetic to symbolic expres- 
sion it covers the entire rising scale on which each of the other 
forms occupies a fixed point. Language evolves through all 
phases of the mind's progress towards freedom, whereas the 
other forms are located each within one phase; and this is 
why, to some extent, they are mutually exclusive. In addition to 
being autonomous provinces of ｅxpression, they mark "stages on 
life's road." 
With the mythic world picture, we find ourselves at the start- 
ing point of the road. Owing to the operation of the principle 
of "concrescence," meaning exists here only as materialized, 
fettered to a sensuous substratum. At a point farthest removed 
from myth, knowledge is located, the road's terminus. Here 
*PSF, I, 37 f. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 571 
spiritualization has reached its consummation j and the philoso- 
phy of symbolic forms, itself a type of knowledge, endeavors 
to give adequate ｅxpression to this crowning achievement. With 
its emphasis on the creative deed of the intellect in "positing" its 
objects, and with its fight against the "copy theory" of knowl- 
edge, it claims for the spirit its finally accomplished freedom. 
Recognizing itself in its works, the mind has won the prize of 
its longest journey. 
Two intermediate stages link beginning and end. They have 
not been given a full treatment by Cassirer. But the intima- 
tions of volume two, in the concluding section, entitled "The 
Dialectic of the Mythic Consciousness," are sufficiently reveal- 
ing to help us round off our "dynamic chart" of the forms of cul- 
ture. The life which animates the mythic consciousness tends to 
burst into a freedom beyond the world of myth. In religion this 
new freedom is attained. But, although shedding the material- 
ity which the principle of concrescence imposes upon mythic 
consciousness, religion still cleaves to a sensuous substratum. Its 
spirituality, insisted upon by a trend towards mysticism, is 
counterbalanced by an equally vital attachment to the world of 
sacred imagery. This tension between disembodied spirituality 
and imaginative concreteness is set at rest, though not fully 
resolved, in another type of symbolic ｅxpression, in art. 
Through the work of art, meaning builds itself an appearance, 
filling it with ｅxpression to the brim without overflow and mak- 
ing it wholly alive. But at the same time, this appearance offers 
itself as nothing but an image, as "semblance." It renounces the 
claim to objective reality in the context of practical life. 
Myth appears as a prelude followed by a triadic sequel: re- 
ligion, art, knowledge. Unmistakably - this is the rhythm of the 
"Absolute Spirit" according to Hegel. 24 At the same time, it 
becomes plain why the evolutionary impetus which sweeps 
through Hegel's philosophical vision must remain a subordi- 
nate and undeveloped feature with Cassirer a "subdued 
dynamism," as we have called it. Given full scope, this dynamic 
element, a corrosive power, would wash away the foundations 
from under the Symbolic Forms. 
*Cf. Hegel's Encydopadie, 553-577- 
572 HELMUT KUHN 
Cassirer's symbolic forms are primarily independent struc- 
tures, viewed in juxtaposition, each animated by an immanent, 
unique "direction of creativity." once we stress the dynamic 
feature, envisaging a succession of forms, this immanence, 
autonomy, and static self-sufficiency of the Form singly taken 
is called in question. Cassirer is well aware of this danger and 
warns us not to confuse his "three phases" with Auguste Comte's 
law of the trois Stats The latter schema, he writes, does not 
permit a purely immanent evaluation of the achievements of the 
mythic-religious consciousness. In fact, it is a perilous undertak- 
ing for Cassirer even to moot the problem of a dynamic self- 
transcendence of the Symbolic Forms. By doing so he himself 
encourages us to relinquish his principle of a "purely immanent 
evaluation" and thus brings down upon himself a host of dis- 
concerting questions. How can the co-ordination of Form as 
equals be upheld in the face of the fact that one of them, 
knowledge, encompasses all the others? What of the truth 
which religion, or rather every particular religion, claims for 
itself? Does not transcendental analysis, although attributing to 
religion a certain meaningful structure, tacitly nullify this 
claim? Furthermore, is not the passage from myth to religion, 
and perhaps also from religion to science, or from a primitive to 
a pure religion, a progress from the misery of error and super- 
stition to wisdom and to the felicity, precarious and yet real, 
of a civilized life? And would not progress, so understood, be 
a greater thing than what it appears in Cassirer? Not a tenuous 
dialectic which wafts the spirit from one insular Form to an- 
other, but man's Promethean deed which made him human 
culture in the full sense of the word? 
In these questions we readily recognize the voice of the 
importune questioner who, at the beginning of our analysis, 
came out with his naive query concerning culture only to find 
Cassirer's philosophy unresponsive. An explanation of this un- 
responsiveness is now at hand. 
The field within which the dynamic interrelatedness of the 
Symbolic Forms unfolds, the dimension, we might say, of their 
orderly combination into a comprehensive pattern of co-opera- 
II, 291. 
CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE 573 
tion this field is the mind of the concrete individual, living his 
own life and participating, at the same time, in the life of a 
civilization. on him, poor wretch, is incumbent the choice be- 
tween good and evil. For him, happy man, for his enjoy- 
ment, the works of civilization are produced. He will not be 
content with learning that the story of Faust, as a myth, exhibits 
certain features typical of "mythic thought." He is interested in 
knowing whether, perchance, it prefigures a truth. That religion 
wavers between mystic spirituality and imaginative concreteness 
will be, for him, only a preliminary statement leading up to 
more relevant problems such as: Is the idea of "original sin" as 
taught by one particular religion, Christianity, in conformity 
with what we know about human life? It is he, the concrete 
living individual, who asks all the importune questions. It is he, 
also, for whose enlightenment and betterment Socrates, Plato, 
and Aristotle labored, and following them, the philosophers of 
the Middle Ages and the Modern Era, including, of course, 
Kant. But never and under no circumstances is he admitted to 
the precincts of neo-Kantian thought. Where is, we wonder, a 
place for ethics and political philosophy in the frame-work of 
the Symbolic Forms? For Cassirer, life comes into view only 
as vita acta, "life that was lived," never as vita agenda, "life 
as it is to be lived." This accounts for the calm perfection of his 
thought, and also for its ineluctable limitations. He is not in 
the melee, forever breathing the cool air of contemplative de- 
tachment. But how such serenity is achieved his philosophy does 
not tell. 
For once, Cassirer sounds a sombre note. At the conclusion 
of his analysis of the logic of Geisteswissenschaft a thoughtful 
chapter is devoted to the "Tragedy of Culture." We are in- 
vited to survey the vast panorama as disclosed by "critical phi- 
losophy." With one glance we embrace the Symbolic Forms, a 
solemn array of structures which outline the timeless possibilities 
of the creative mind. Their rigid architecture rises above an ele- 
ment of infinite mobility, a whirl of incessant change: the 
temporal flux of life. At brief creative moments this flux is 
arrested. It crystallizes into shapes that temporarily fill the ves- 
sels of timeless possibility with the actuality of life: languages 
574 HELMUT KUHN 
become articulate, religions seek and find credence, works of art 
spread delight, philosophies express truth. But life is alternation 
of building up and breaking down. Man's creations, the works 
of culture, bask for awhile in the broad daylight of history only 
to return whence they came. Such is "the tragedy of culture," 
according to Cassirer. 
Is this transience truly tragic, the reader asks. Surely, it lies in 
the nature of things, and it leaves intact the grandiose perdur- 
ance of the Symbolic Forms. The philosophical complaint on 
mortality recalls a well-known earlier treatment of the theme: 
"Mark ye the leaves, for men are like thereto. 
When leaves by winds into the dust are whirled 
Soon the green forest buddeth millions new, 
And lo, the beauty of Spring is on the World. 
So come, so pass, all that are born of Man." 
\Iliady vi, 146-149 tr. Gilbert Murray) 
Again we ask why the transitoriness of man should be a sub- 
ject for mourning. The forest endures, and so does mankind, 
and both forest and mankind can live only through suffering 
numberless deaths. 
The answer to our query will be the same, or nearly the same, 
in both cases. For the Ionian poet, singing at the dawn of Hel- 
lenic culture, the passing of generations is tragic, because in him 
the self-conscious individual with his thirst for eternity just 
awakens. For the twentieth century scholar, the timeless validity 
of symbolic structures is not enough to forestall tragedy, be- 
cause the old imperious desire for "world without end" is not 
entirely put to sleep. The individual is not wholly banished. His 
ghostlike presence suffuses the great unconcern of the philoso- 
phy of Symbolic Forms with an elegiac mood. 
HELMUT KUHN 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
EMORY UNIVERSITY 
i6 
David Bautngardt 
CASSIRER AND THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 
i6 
CASSIRER AND THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 
is, in Ernst Cassirer's vast work, one example 
JJL above all of penetrating analysis, dealing with the chaos 
of contemporary ethical thought and indicating a way out of 
its Babel of confusion. It is a pregnant chapter in Cassirer's 
Axel Hagerstrom, 1939. This work, analyzing the philosophy 
of a Swedish thinker, seems hardly the place in which to find a 
masterpiece of contemporary ethical research. But the fact that 
Professor Cassirer chose just this inconspicuous place for his 
main contribution to ethics shows, I think, the degree of his 
affection for that nation which offered him a real home at the 
time of a gigantic homelessness of the spirit. In Axel Hager- 
strom, and in widely scattered reflections in his other writings, 
Cassirer's own ethical views evolve out of brief examinations 
of a considerable number of contemporary theories: ethical 
neo-intuitionism and the ethics of absolute values, as well as 
ethical relativism and utilitarianism. 
I. THE PLURALISTIC ETHICS OF ENGLISH NEO-DEONTOLOGISM 
Although Sir W. D. Ross is fond of appealing to the authority 
of Kant's concept of moral duty, Cassirer, who set out from 
Kant, has in his ethics very little, almost nothing in common 
with Sir David's neo-deontologism. Professor Prichard, Profes- 
sors Broad and Ross obviously think that their ethical teachings 
on $rima facie duties, on "imperatives . . . which are here and 
now categorical," 1 and on particular self-evident moral "obliga- 
tions" 2 are still somehow in line with the Kantian ethics of duty. 
All these moralists believe that they remain in far-reaching 
agreement with Kant despite their "pluralistic" tendencies, i.e., 
*C. D. Broad: Five Types of Ethical Theory y (1930), 123. 
2 See H. A. Prichard, "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?," Mind, 
January (1912), New Series, vol. XXI, 361". 
577 
DAVID BAUMGARDT 
despite their supposition of a multitude of genuine a priori 
duties. Professor Broad, in his defense of a definite pluralism 
of ethical principles, even went so far as to maintain that Kant 
himself presupposed "imperatives which are here and now 
categorical for certain persons;" and that, with this Kantian 
thesis, justice is done to "an important psychological fact which 
moralists like Spinoza and Hume tend to ignore." In contrast to 
this pseudo-Kantian pluralism, Professor Cassirer is doubtless 
correct when he emphasizes that, in Kant at least, "categorical" 
has the meaning of universal validity, and that for Kant the 
uniqueness and universal validity of his ethical axiom are at 
least as essential as, if not more essential than, its imperative 
character. 3 
Kant frequently expressed the meaning of his categorical im- 
perative in non-imperative terms, and without explicit reference 
to the concept of duty, but he never agreed to a plurality of cate- 
gorical imperatives. All the duties of which he speaks in his 
Metaphysik der Sitten are applications of one categorical im- 
perative. Any supposition of a multiplicity of ethical axioms 
would destroy the whole epistemological basis of Kant's ethics. 
Such a supposition is incompatible, not only with the letter of 
what Kant wrote, but also with the spirit of all that Kant's 
"Typik der pracktischen Vernunft" and his numerous discus- 
sions of moral casuistry stand for. Henry Sidgwick, Alexander 
Bain, and other English or German Kant interpreters of the 
1 9th century were certainly right when they denied that there 
is any pluralism in Kant's doctrine of duties. Kant's aim was "to 
show that they (the duties) may be all deduced from the single 
imperative." 4 His intention was "to deduce a complete code of 
duty from a purely formal principle." 5 
8 See e.g. E. Cassirer, Axel Hdgerstrom (Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift XLV), 
( I 939>> 79- 
4 Alexander Bain, Mental and Moral Science (1868), 731. 
5 See H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1884), 207. Note discussion 
in Thomas K. Abbott's Critique of Practical Reason and other Works on 
the Theory of Ethics, Memoir of Kant p. li. Cf. H. Sidgwick, The Methods 
of Ethics y (1901), 209. I have dealt with these questions in detail in my book, 
Der Kampf um den Lebenssinn unter den Vorlaufern der modemen Ethik y (1933), 
and shall, therefore, not repeat myself here. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 579 
But no matter whether contemporary English moralists do 
or do not have truly Kantian tendencies, the main question is: 
do their pluralistic theses deserve any preference to a one-prin- 
ciple ethics," the Kantian or any other? Out of the extreme 
complexities involved in this question, I should like to take up 
only a few points for summary discussion. 
Cassirer agrees with Kant that, in the theory of nature as well 
as in ethics, the "demand for greatest unity" must be placed 
constantly in the center of philosophical reflection. 8 Contempo- 
rary ethics, however, is generally pluralistic, and this for a num- 
ber of complex reasons. But there seems little doubt that one of 
the main reasons is the fear of oversimplification so frequently 
expressed by modern moralists and their disdain for the "sweet 
simplicity" of utilitarians who perhaps represent the most 
marked type of a one-principle ethics. In the eyes of the best 
known contemporary English ethicists, it obviously would be an 
oversimplification to presuppose the universal validity of a 
single ethical principle. To believe in the validity of several 
moral axioms or $rima -facie duties seems to be much more 
"gegenstandsnah*" it seems to do far more justice to concrete 
ethical situations. Is this implicit methodological consideration 
justifiable? 
I think not, for at least three reasons. First, it is by no means 
self-evident that in ethical reasoning, as in simple induction, the 
way leads from evident particularia to less evident generalia. 
If, on the contrary, as Professors Prichard and Ross assure us, 
we have immediate insight into the validity of concrete moral 
obligations comparable with the insight into mathematical truth, 
then we have every reason to assume that, as in mathematics, the 
general axiom is less complex and more immediately given than 
any concrete, particular mathematical relation. If ethical insight 
is, in fact, of the same structure as mathematical, then here too 
the principle applies that totum est ante Cartes. 
Secondly, even if the methodological procedure in ethics were 
not merely deductive, a mere analogy to mathematical reason- 
ing, even if it were, as in natural science, a complicated combina- 
8 E, Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrom, (1939), 79- 
58o DAVID BAUMGARDT 
tion of deduction and induction, even then as in meteorology 
the general principles may be well established and ascertained, 
although their application to concrete cases may be extremely 
complex and, in many circumstances, actually impossible. If this 
be the case, then again, as under the first mentioned supposition, 
it would be a gross oversimplification to begin with seemingly 
evident particulars instead of general principles or hypotheses. 
Although this may appear paradoxical to common sense, in a 
science of ethics, as well as in mathematics or physics, the valid- 
ity of general principles may be much more elementary and more 
easily ascertainable than the validity of particular concrete rules. 
Thirdly, the concrete duties which Sir David considers a 
priori obligatory, such as keeping a promise, telling the truth 
and giving aid to victims of accidents, are by no means obligatory 
as such, as concrete duties. Contrary to his presuppositions, the 
moral validity and obligatory character of these duties are 
highly controversial. In a consistent morality of power, the very 
same duties are not binding either as prima facie duties or in 
any other way. The moral validity of these particular obligations 
can be assured only after the general validity of a morality of 
altruism, a Jewish, Christian, Buddhist ethics, or something 
similar, has already been accepted; and this is by no means a 
matter of course in any critical ethics. 
Sir David thinks it essential to deal with the questions of the 
"good" and the "right" separately, and to avoid in this way a 
great amount of entanglement in ethics. For the same reason 
Professor Broad breaks up his analysis into even more elements 
when he discusses the intuitively given essence of the "useful" 
and the "fitting" of every phase of any act. only in this way, 
he states, can decision about the morally right act be composed, 
namely, through moral decisions on many more elementary 
points. "The rightness or wrongness of an action in a given . . . 
situation is a function of its fittingness in that situation and its 
utility in that situation;" we have to estimate "total rightness 
from total fittingness and total utility." 7 It probably did not 
occur to either of these subtle thinkers that, although abhorring 
7 C. D. Broad, op. cit., 22 if. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 581 
oversimplification at the end of the inquiry, one may neverthe- 
less fall into it at the very start. As I have tried to hint, I think 
that such seemingly simple questions as "is keeping a promise a 
p'ima jade duty?" or even "is this phase of this action morally 
fit?" contain highly complex ethical problems and by no means 
the most elementary ones. 

only in an early stage of the development of physics could it 
have been considered self-evident that the fall of a particular 
body in a definite time was a less complex phenomenon than the 
general laws of equally accelerated movement and of friction, or 
than the most general law of the verification of scientific state- 
ments by sense data. Why epistemological conditions in ethics 
should be the opposite of those in science has never been ex- 
plained or justified by contemporary English ethics and I do 
not think that it can ever be justified. 
Of course, it must be admitted that, psychologically speaking, 
the genius of Galileo was able to decipher the meaning of one 
particular observation in such a way that he intuitively read out 
of it the general law of the free fall of bodies, and even the 
univeral law of the necessity of verifying all hypothetical laws 
in physics by minute observation. Any modern physicist is now 
able to interpret any particular phenomenon of a free fall, so 
to speak, intuitively by immediate insight. In the same way the 
moral genius and, after a long period of conscious or unconscious 
training, the plain man may be able to make decisions on highly 
complex and particular moral rules instantly, by immediate 
ethical insight, without even being aware of underlying general 
principles. 
Epistemologically speaking, however, an insight into the es- 
sence of the universal law of verification, or even an insight into 
the law of free fall, can never be won by a merely inductive 
piling up of particular observations or particular rules. on the 
contrary, from the epistemological standpoint any adequate in- 
terpretation of particular cases of free fall must be preceded by 
the adoption of the universal law of verification of scientific 
statements, and by the hypothesis that the free fall of bodies is a 
case of equally accelerated movement. If the validity of such 
582 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
general laws is not acknowledged first, there would be no reason 
to prefer the Galilean analysis of free fall to Franz Baader's 
mythological interpretation, or to HegePs metaphysical, dialec- 
tical explanation. 
Seen from the psychological point of view, particular frima 
facie duties may appear to represent elementary moral issues, 
whereas general moral laws, or one universal law, may seem to 
involve far more complex and perhaps insoluble or unnecessary 
complex difficulties. But, if the problem is viewed epistemologi- 
cally, certain general laws or one universal principle must form 
the indispensable precondition of the validity of any particular 
moral rules or duties. To replace the epistemological point of 
view by the psychological would be what I should like to call 
a "psychologistic fallacy." It does not seem to me entirely im- 
possible that this kind of confusion or fallacy may have played 
some part in the foundations of Sir David's and Professor 
Broad's ethical reasoning, despite the admirable acuteness of 
the superstructure of their work. In any case, Cassirer's ethics 
has kept itself free from the psychologistic fallacy and free, 
also, from the other uncritical presuppositions just mentioned. 
II. THE ETHICS OF NON-NATURAL INTRINSIC GOODNESS AND 
OF ABSOLUTE VALUES 
Professor G. E. Moore's ethical analyses concentrate mainly 
on the concept of "good," though he grants, in his "Reply to 
my Critics" in 1942, that the following not very lucid relation 
exists between the concept of good and that of duty: 
To say of anything, A, that it is "intrinsically" good is equivalent to 
saying that, if any agent were a Creator before the existence of any 
world, whose power was so limited that the only alternatives in his 
power were those of ( i ) creating a world which consisted solely of A or 
(2) causing it to be the case that there should never be any world at all, 
then, if he knew for certain that this was the only choice open to him 
and knew exactly what A would be like, it would be his duty to choose 
alternative (i), provided only he was not convinced that it would be 
wrong for him to choose that alternative. 8 
'"The Library of Living Philosophers," vol. IV: The Philosophy of G. E. 
Moore, ed. by P. A. Schilpp (1942), 600. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 583 
From this statement one might infer first that it seems hardly 
possible to break through all the reservations enumerated in this 
one sentence. on second thought, however, from this and other 
statements of Professor Moore's one might draw at least the 
inference that his ethics more than that of English neo-deon- 
tologists is on the whole in favor of one unifying principle the 
principle of the good which does not seem to be in need of sup- 
plementary principles of the morally right or morally fit, of 
prima facie duties and of utility. In truth, however, he is in 
other respects probably no less of an ethical "pluralist" than 
the Provost of Oriel and Professor Broad. 
If I understand Professor Moore aright, his opinion is that 
there are a multitude of ethical goods, as there are a multitude 
of yellows or reds. But there is no universal principle which 
determines what is morally good; "good" is indefinable and 
ultimately independent of anything else existing or given by 
experience. The main thesis of this ethics is, obviously, that a 
large plurality of morally good things or motives or acts 
do exist, each case being isolated and independent of the others, 
good by itself. If this thesis were correct, then, as Professor 
Moore and the neo-deontologists imply, it would of course 
be superfluous to carry on the age-old attempts to determine 
what may be good by some general elementary criterion. More- 
over, these attempts would be not only useless but misleading 
and futile, as misleading and futile as are all efforts to deter- 
mine or to define the nature of a concrete sense-datum. one may 
be able to speak of relations existing between different data of 
the senses; and one is able, according to Professor Moore, to 
speak of a very complicated relation existing between "good" 
and duty. But in neither case can a general principle determine 
the nature of good or of a sense datum; and no critical justifica- 
tion of the validity of our propositions on "good" is thought to 
be possible or needed. For what "good" is, no less than what is a 
sense datum, is believed to be known already by an unfailing 
insight of common sense; and therefore, to Professor Moore, 
ethics does not seem to demand any general principle for a criti- 
cal distinction between morality and immorality. 
I wish to hint at least at a few reasons why, in my view, 
584 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
Professor Moore's analyses lead to such embarrassing problems 
that perhaps, as he says himself, he has "not gone about the 
business of trying to solve them in the right way." Moore him- 
self admits that "it is a just charge against me that I have been 
able to solve so few of the problems I wished to solve j" and 
I see no reason why one should take this statement as a mere 
flourish of modesty or irony in a thinker who often shows most 
definite self-assuredness. But, if Professor Moore's self-criticism 
is not without foundation, his failure to answer fundamental 
questions in ethics satisfactorily is certainly not due, as he adds, 
"partly [to a] sheer lack of ability. " 9 There is no doubt of the 
subtlety of Professor Moore's ethical analyses, i.e., of all the 
superstructures which he built up on his common-sense ethical 
beliefs; but the basis of these superstructures, which seems to 
him so undoubtedly firm, "realistic," and unassailable in its 
common-sense quality, seems to me amazingly weak. 
(a) Intrinsic Goodness and Values in Themselves 
In Professor Moore's ethics, and similarly in modern ethics 
of values in general, the following concepts are basic: intrinsic, 
non-natural goodness; intrinsic value; things good by them- 
selves and existing by themselves "in absolute isolation." 10 In 
about the same sense moral values are self-evident in Max 
Scheler's, Nicolai Hartmann's, 11 or Wilbur M, Urban's ethics 
of values. Everywhere in these ethical systems the morally good 
and all values are values, not in consequence of any "external" 
relations to other things or experiences or principles, but only 
on the ground of their "intrinsic nature." 
Professor H. J. Paton protested, in "The Library of Living 
9 The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. by Paul A. Schilpp (1942), 677. 
10 See G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903), 37, 6ff, 21, nofj Philosophical 
Studies (1922), chapters VIII, Xj Principia Ethica, 187, 184, 27ff, 955 chapter 
VI 5 Ethics (1912) chap. VII 5 cf. William K. Frankena in The Philosophy of 
G. E. Moore (1942), 931". 
11 For a more detailed criticism of Max Scheler's and Nicolai Hartmann's ethics 
of values see my essay on "Some Merits and Defects of Contemporary German 
Ethics" in Philosophy (The Journal of the British Institute of Philosophy), 
(1938), 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 585 
Philosophers/' against this alleged independence of goodness. 
He pointed out that, to say the least, "the goodness of a thing 
. . . must stand in some necessary relation to a rational will . . . 
and . . . may vary in different circumstances." 12 In his reply to 
this, Professor Moore admitted only "that the existence of some 
experience is a proposition which does follow from the hy- 
pothesis that there exists a state of affairs which is good;" but, 
as he adds, "I cannot see" that logically the hypothesis of the 
existence of a good state of affairs "entails any proposition to the 
effect that a mental disposition" such as rational will exists. 1 * 
Certainly this is absolutely correct according to the principles of 
formal logic. Unless it is granted first by explicit definition or 
implicitly by experience that scarlet is a particular shade of red, 
I cannot conclude from the concept of scarlet that it includes 
the concept of red. 
But the question at issue, the particular question which Pro- 
fessor Paton obviously has in mind, is not this problem of 
drawing a merely logical inference. It is the epistemological 
question of whether, in the world of reality, it is possible to 
think of goodness without any relation to rational will. This 
question has not been answered by Professor Moore. 
The question is not how to define moral goodness. The 
question is whether the meaning of moral goodness in reality 
can be clarified without taking into account the concept of 
rational will & concept which, it is true, from the merely 
logical point of view or from the standpoint of linguistics is not 
connected with the concept of goodness. That is, to approach this 
controversial point from a slightly different angle, can the 
meaning of moral goodness be clarified without taking into 
account more than particular, isolated states of affairs of good- 
ness? Are not some general principles, or is not one universal, 
unifying rational principle needed for determining rationally 
whether certain states of affairs can rightly be called good, or 
whether certain concepts, such as honor or love, really deserve to 
be called values? Has any isolated particular state of affairs 
14 The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, 113. 
13 Ibid., 6 1 8. 
586 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
"by itself" the "intrinsic nature" to be good without being re- 
lated to anything "outside" itself? 
Cassirer answers this question in the following way: It "is 
and remains ... in any case a questionable metaphor ... to 
speak of c values-in- themselves'}" every ethical "evaluation" 
includes "a form of retrospect, of preview, and of survey, which 
is lacking in feelings j since these [latter are] merely given phe- 
nomena." 14 As we may add, in the spirit of Cassirer's whole 
neo-Kantian outlook, this kind of preview, retrospect and survey 
is a necessary precondition of true statements in all knowledge 
of nature as well as in morals. That there is any truth or moral 
validity built up dogmatically on the perception or the analysis 
of a particular state of affairs, isolated from all others may be 
a seemingly plausible common-sense view; but it is by no means 
self-evident and is scientifically untenable. 
To Professor Moore this "method ... of isolation" is "the 
only safe" one. 15 Even his "organic unities" are unities separate 
from each other j and no conclusion has for him "any weight 
whatever failing a careful examination of the (separate) in- 
stances which have led" him "to form it." 16 But this method of 
generalization a generalization by mere induction of separate 
instances is certainly not the method of exact science, and, above 
all, it seems to me by no means "the only safe" method in 
ethics. 
Professor Moore is absolutely right in saying that "to search 
for 'unity' and 'system,' at the expense of truth, is not, I take it, 
the proper business of philosophy, however universally it may 
have been the practice of philosophers." 17 Certainly it is en- 
tirely unphilosophical, if unity and system are sought at the 
expense of truth. But does this statement exclude in any way 
the possibility that the concept of truth itself is closely tied 
up with the "right kind" of unity and system? Contrary to Pro- 
fessor Moore's and Ross' presuppositions, might it not be im- 
14 E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrom (1939), 65. 
M G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica. (1903), 94$ cf. 91. 
"/*, 223. 
17 Ibid., 222. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 587 
possible to arrive at any worth-while truth by analyzing only 
isolated phenomena, even if they are analyzed with the greatest 
acumen? 
A similar question has been raised by Professor Paton in the 
following piece of analysis: "When Sir Philip Sidney in dying 
resigned to a wounded soldier the cup of water which had been 
off ered him, I take it that his action was a good action and that 
its goodness depended partly on the circumstances}" if, how- 
ever, one would "evaluate in isolation, not the action in itself, 
but the action in the relevant circumstances together with its 
motive and intention," then "the main contention would . . . 
be reduced to the view that the goodness of an action is inde- 
pendent of the circumstances irrelevant to its goodness which 
is a mere tautology." 18 To this argument Professor Moore 
simply replies that "these c when-clauses j " in Professor Paton's 
example do not express external "circumstances under which the 
choice we admire was made: they form part of the description 
of the intrinsic nature of that choice," which is morally good} 
these so-called circumstances are "an essential part" 19 of Sid- 
ney's good action; they belong to its intrinsic nature. 
Again, this method of "solving" problems is certainly correct 
from the point of view of formal logic. But how similar is this 
manner of overcoming philosophical difficulties to that of 
Moliere's "Le malade imaginaire"! In Moliere, too, certain 
"external" relations are "explained" by elevating them to the 
rank of "intrinsic" ones. Here, too, the external causal con- 
nection between poppy and its making people sleep is explained 
by taking this causal relation as an "intrinsic" attribute, as a part 
of the "essence" of poppy, by bringing that causal relation into 
the "intrinsic nature" of poppy and calling it the "essential" 
dormitive power of the plant. 
Apart from this reminder, I should say that, even if all these 
circumstances mentioned by Professors Paton and Moore are 
interpreted as forming the intrinsic nature of Sidney's good 
action, I fail to see why a choice of exactly this intrinsic nature 
18 The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, 126. 
19 Ibid., 619. 
588 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
is morally good on the ground of self-evidence, as is evidently 
implied in Professor Moore's argument. 
My trouble and obviously the trouble of only too many 
contemporaries is that questions of just this type, questions 
of why Sidney's action is good, occupy my mind even more 
than the logical subtleties of Moore's ethics. And while I try 
to follow his minute, logical, step-by-step procedure, which 
often admittedly leads to nothing, I am afraid that I cannot 
follow him when he suddenly indulges in sweeping assertions 
which concern not merely logical problems but questions of 
obvious psychological and ethical importance, e.g., whether 
Sidney's choice is intrinsically good, and as such needs no further 
qualification or justification; or when Professor Moore states 
that "Americans are more generally and markedly friendly" 
than the English, 20 it seems to me that not only Lord Baldwin, 
who called the English the most friendly people on earth, but 
also many Americans may feel some hesitancy on this point; 
nor can one, I think, accept the similarly bold statement of 
Professor L. S. Stebbing, that "anyone who has been able to 
learn something of Moore's way of thinking . . . could not . . . 
succumb to the muddle-headed creed of Fascism or National- 
Socialism." 21 There is no doubt that it should be one of the 
primary aims of any ethical teaching to protect us from succumb- 
ing to any kind of Machiavellianism. But I fear that hardly any 
ethical doctrine developed so far has succeeded in reaching this 
high aim. 
To return to Sidney's action: in order to show why his 
choosing is morally good it seems to me indispensable to show, 
first, why the general principle of altruism or any kind of al- 
truism is moral, and to clear up numerous other preliminary 
questions which present the most fundamental ethical difficul- 
ties. If for the sake of argument one granted all the presup- 
positions of Professor Moore, the "when-clauses" which he 
thinks essential for the intrinsic goodness of Philip Sidney's 
choice would by no means be sufficient. Contrary to Professor 
"/*., 39- 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 589 
Moore's assumption, far more would be needed as an essential 
part of the good choice than that "the cup should be given to 
another man, when he (Sidney) himself was in pain and thirsty 
and knew that the other man was in pain and thirsty." 22 It 
would be essential, also, that the dying man who refused the 
cup of water was not, for example, an ancient Egyptian. For if 
he were, his refusal of the cup would have implied a lack of 
faith in the doctrine of immortality. He would have been guilty 
of an act of impiety. He would have shown by his choice that, 
contrary to the rules of Egyptian piety, he obviously thought he 
would be able to go on after death without food and drink. Or, 
if the wounded soldier to whom the cup of water was later 
offered had shared the not-uncommon superstition that to take 
away food and drink from a dying man brings misfortune upon 
you, or if the dying man himself had shared the same super- 
stition, would the choice of the dying man still have been mor- 
ally good, even if one grants additionally that altruism is always 
good? It seems to me that, if one adopts Professor Moore's 
teaching about assimilating "when-clauses" to the intrinsic 
nature of a moral choice, the "when-clauses" would have to be 
extended so far that the "isolation" of the intrinsic nature of any 
moral choice would grow utterly hopeless. 
(b) Is Moral Goodness a Non-Natural Property or Has It 
only an Emotive Meaning? 
The most outstanding and most influential contribution which 
Professor Moore has made to the development of modern 
ethics is in all probability this: he insisted, in his Principa 
Ethica, on denying that "morally good" is a natural intrinsic 
property or characteristic. To speak of good as if it were a 
natural property of things or acts or motives would be what 
Professor Moore termed, in 1903, a "naturalistic fallacy}" and 
it was certainly most illuminating when he unearthed this 
naturalistic fallacy in some well-known ethical theories. This 
was a vigorous, lucid application of an old truth in a new and 
striking formulation. 
619. 
590 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
The "idealistic" moralist, who does not share uncritically 
every "realistic" common-sense opinion, should not find it too 
difficult to adhere to a clear-cut distinction between natural and 
non-natural characteristics. Such moralists (including a really 
consistent utilitarian) can explain the difference in question in 
about the following way: natural properties are those which are 
given us immediately in our various experiences such as sweet- 
ness, hardness, redness, and even pleasantness. Non-natural 
properties such as "true" or "good" concern properties of 
judgments built up on the comparing and ordering of immedi- 
ately given data of experience. Professor Moore has never 
accepted any definition along these lines, probably because it 
would not conform to the principle of his "common-sense" 
reasoning. 
In his essay of 1932 "Is Goodness a Quality?" he states that 
ethical good means "an experience which is worth having for 
its own sake." 23 This is a view which obviously fits the "isola- 
tionist," "pluralistic," "common-sense" tendencies which he 
has always maintained, despite his principle of "organic wholes." 
It fits these trends far better than does any such "idealistic" 
explanation as that morally good is not an immediately given 
quality at all, but a quality bound up with judgments which, at 
least, try to "unify" experiences universally. 
In his "Reply to My Critics," however, in 1942, even his 
own view of 1932 is evidently no longer "realistic" enough for 
Professor Moore. He now explicitly rejects the explanation of 
good he had given in 1932 and suggests, instead of this, the 
following explanation of non-natural properties, such as good, in 
general: 
Properties which are intrinsic properties, but not natural ones, are 
distinguished from natural intrinsic properties, by the fact that, in 
ascribing a property of the former kind to a thing, you are not describing 
it at dl y whereas, in ascribing a property of the latter kind to a thing, 
you are always describing it to some extent?* 
* Proceeding* of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XI, (1932), 
. 
*lbid., 591. See also 555. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 591 
Concerning this account of the cardinal distinction between 
natural and non-natural properties Professor Moore himself 
says that it is "certainly" a "vague and not clear . . . account." 25 
This is, as Professor Moore states himself with regard to a 
similar thesis of his, "at least an honest statement." 28 
Yet it is certainly most discouraging to see that an ethics 
which set out only to "clarify" problems leads finally to expla- 
nations which are admittedly "vague and not clear." one may 
readily grant Professor Moore's main contention, that what 
we need first (and obviously, in his view, what is often our 
only need) is not to solve problems but to clarify their meaning. 
If, however, these strenuous efforts at clarification end in a 
definite lack of clearness even on a most fundamental point, 
one may perhaps be allowed to make use of Professor Moore's 
most radical prescript in philosophy. I.e., one may ask whether 
the question itself which he seeks to clarify is not a confused 
question, which stands in need neither of clarification nor of 
solution, but of dissolution. 
In other words, to ask how to distinguish natural from non- 
natural properties on the ground of a realistic common-sense 
philosophy is to ask a question which can be asked only on the 
ground of an illusion Moore's fundamental illusion that, 
despite all differences between non-natural and natural proper- 
ties, the non-natural properties "exist" on the same level and 
show the same character of "givenness" as the natural ones given 
by sense data. Without going into any critical analysis of Pro- 
fessor Moore's ethics, or of any other ethics of values, Pro- 
fessor Cassirer has briefly, and I think rightly, stated that non- 
natural ethical characteristics are not to be found on the same 
plane of "existence" or "givenness" as natural properties, and 
are, therefore, not comparable to each other on the same plane. 
"The question concerning the possibility of an 'objective' mor- 
ality can, consequently, not be whether in this field, qualities in 
themselves correspond to our judgments qualities which are 
comparable to physical qualities theoretically statable." 27 "The 
25 ibid., 591. 
*/**., 545- 
27 E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrom, 74. 
592 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
question ... is ... not . . . , whether there are any empirical things 
or thing-qualities, which correspond to our value- judgments." 28 
There is, however, one way left open by Professor Moore to 
avoid the fatal conclusions which can be drawn from his "vague 
and not clear" accounts of non-natural properties such as the 
morally good. It is, of course, possible to doubt that there are 
such properties at all. In another statement, which Professor 
Moore characterizes explicitly as "at least honest," he makes 
a definite concession to this effect. He asserts: 
I must say again that I am inclined to think that "right" in all ethical 
uses, and, of course, "wrong," "ought," "duty" also, are, in this more 
radical sense, not the names of characteristics at all, that they have 
merely "emotive meaning" and no "cognitive meaning" at all: and, 
if this is true of them, it must also be true of "good," in the sense I have 
been most concerned with. I am inclined to think that this is so, but 
I am also inclined to think that it is not so; and I^do not know which 
way I am inclined most strongly. If these words, in their ethical uses, 
have only emotive meaning, . . . then it would seem that all else I 
am going to say about them must be either nonsense or false (I don't 
know which). 29 
As we have seen, if right and good have cognitive and no 
merely emotive meaning, then they are, according to Pro- 
fessor Moore, of necessity non-natural properties. However, 
the best account which Professor Moore can give of these non- 
natural characteristics must, in his own words, remain vague 
and not clear. Therefore, it may seem preferable to consider 
morally good and morally right as being without cognitive 
meaning and as not being "the names of characteristics at 
all." 
But if we follow this second suggestion left open by Pro- 
fessor Moore, the consequences are in my view no less unattrac- 
tive. First, if this suggestion is accepted if morally good, 
morally right, morally wrong, and moral duties have no cogni- 
tive but merely emotive, meaning then again, in Professor 
Moore's own words, "all else I am going to say about them 
72. 
29 The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, 554, 545. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 593 
must be either nonsense or false (I don't know which)." In 
truth, then, the whole basis on which Professor Moore's past 
and present ethical reasoning rests is cut away from under his 
feet. Second, if one should nevertheless say in favor of Pro- 
fessor Moore's whole argument that it is, after all, instructive, 
close reasoning, though proceeding under the mistaken supposi- 
tion that good has a cognitive meaning, then in any case the 
titles of his main works are completely misleading. His first 
book Princi^pia Ethica, his Ethics and his essay on "Ethics" in 
1942 are, then, by no means treatises on ethics. They are not 
even preliminary remarks to prolegomena toward an introduc- 
tion to Principa EMca. They are complicated scholastic exer- 
cises in logic, built up on an untenable basis, and fail to repre- 
sent themselves clearly as such. 
As Moore reports in his autobiography, Henry Sidgwick once 
called McTaggart's dissertation, and probably also that of 
Professor Moore himself "nonsense of the right kind." 30 I am 
afraid that what Professor Moore wrote on ethics after his 
dissertation may perhaps be termed, not quite inaptly, "best 
common-sense of the wrong kind." To use once more one of 
Professor Moore's own witty remarks about a fellow moralist, 
throughout his ethical work he hits the nail on the head, but 
unfortunately not "the right nail." 31 We witness in his ethics 
the grandiose spectacle of a mighty air armada of arguments 
successfully destroying a few mosquitoes by blockbusters, but 
leaving untouched the real targets of the enemy. 
III. ETHICAL RELATIVISM AND ETHICAL RELATIVITY 
That morally good and right have merely emotive meaning 
is a thesis generally advanced by ethical relativism, by the 
anthropological school in ethics, or in our days by logical posi- 
tivism in so far as logical positivism takes any interest in morals. 
As do most of the representatives of the modern ethics of values, 
Professor Moore denied in his two main works, Principa EMca 
M The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, 21. 
546. 
594 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
and Ethics, that morally good has a merely emotive meaning. 
He insisted that "this choosing is morally good" does not mean 
that I or someone else emotionally approve of it. It means that 
this choosing is good, independent of anyone's emotive ap- 
proval. Later, in his "Reply to my Critics" in 1942, Professor 
Moore admitted that morally good may have merely emotive 
meaning; and I should prefer this later attitude to the almost 
complete ignoring by modern neo-deontologism of the mighty 
problems of ethical relativity. 
In 1939, on the eve of world war II, just after the spokes- 
man of the most powerful state of that time had declared the 
morality of Berlin and of London to have nothing in common, 
neo-deontologism comforted itself with the "time-honoured" 
belief that there is, in morals, a consensus omnium or at least 
an agreement between all those men whom neo-deontologism 
would call "wise." The "common knowledge," the "common 
opinions," about morality and the ethical judgment of wise 
men were believed to be in perfect harmony, and all the clash- 
ing differences in the moral outlook of hostile economic classes 
and political ideologies were calmly said to be only the result 
of "different perspectives" in facing the same truth. 32 Even in 
the eighteenth century it was somewhat out of date, among the 
leading moralists, to use that "time-honoured" belief as the 
basis of ethical inquiry. Even Kant, who shared that belief, did 
not regard its dogmatism as the proper basis of a critical ethics. 33 
But in the middle of the twentieth century it seems to me the 
height of wishful thinking to disregard the arguments of 
Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl as irrele- 
vant on the very first pages of a work" entitled Foundations of 
Ethics. 
Strangely enough, even the examples which these most skill- 
ful and experienced thinkers use to apply their teachings to life 
smack more of the atmosphere of the European and American 
classroom than of real life. They are, unfortunately, the mani- 
w See W. D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics (1939), iff. 
w See D. Baumgardt, Der Kamff urn den Lebenssinn unter den Vorlaufern 
der modernen Ethik (1933), I. Tell. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 595 
festation of a rather dubious and certainly unjustifiable pride in 
the "narrow" range of experience of a "don," 84 In contrast to 
the neo-deontologists, Professor G. E, Moore in some of his 
publications and Nicolai Hartmann in his ethics of 1935 tried 
to take into account the far-reaching relativity of moral valua- 
tions. But they do so only with much hesitation and reserve. 
Professor Cassirer, despite his neo-Kantian extraction, takes 
fully into consideration the "widely called upon relativity of 
moral ideas." 35 He takes even the radical moral scepticism 
of Axel Hagerstrom most seriously and admits that it is criti- 
cally superior to the naive dogmatic belief in an ethical agree- 
ment between all plain men or all wise men. In agreement with 
modern comparative ethnology, Cassirer holds that there is a 
lively and far-reaching contrast between the moral ideas, the 
particular ethical rules and customs of different groups of men. 
Following Hagerstrom, he cites Herodotus' story about the 
moral horror with which the ancient Greeks regarded an Indian 
tribe which considered it their duty to eat the corpses of their 
fathers and the moral horror with which those Indians regarded 
the Greeks, who burnt such corpses. 86 Unlike most of the 
ethicists of the last three decades, Cassirer invokes Kant's partial 
praise of scepticism, and applies it not only to the field of 
theoretical, but also to that of "practical," philosophy. He 
quotes from the Critique of Pure Reason the following daring 
passage: "All sceptical polemic should properly be directed only 
against the dogmatist, who, without any misgivings as to his 
fundamental objective principles, that is, without criticism, 
proceeds complacently upon his adopted path; it should be 
designed simply to put him out of countenance and thus to 
bring him to self-knowledge." 37 In the greatest possible contrast 
84 See C. D. Broad's self-characterization in his Five Types of Ethical Theory, 
xxiv. 
M See E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrdm, e.g. 69. 
"/*&., 6 7 f. 
87 Ibid., 63 $ the above given quotation is the Norman Kemp Smith translation 
of the passage, which, in the Original German of Kant's Kritik der reinen 
Vernunft, reads as follows: "Alles sceptische Polemisiren ist eigentlich nur wider 
den Dogmatiker gekehrt, der, ohne ein Misstrauen auf seine ursprunglichen objec- 
596 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
to contemporary neo-intuitionism, Cassirer emphasizes that the 
days have definitely gone when the evidence of moral insight 
could be compared with mathematical evidence in the way that, 
up to the nineteenth century, scientists believed in simple, un- 
problematic, and immediate mathematical intuition. In the 
seventeenth century the rationalist Leibniz, and even the em- 
piricist Locke, drew this parallel between ethical and mathe- 
matical science. 88 But, at least since the age of Hume and Kant, 
a critical ethics should not longer rely on such over-optimistic 
presuppositions. 
There is hardly anywhere a more flagrant dissension than in 
the case of the so-called *prima facie duties of men or of seem- 
ingly intrinsic values. This has led ethical relativism to the con- 
clusion that, as Axel H'agerstrom puts it, "the word Value' . . . 
is ... only an ｅxpression for a feeling or a desire, not an 
ｅxpression of a thought." 39 Logical positivism, in one of the 
statements of Rudolf Carnap, has arrived at a similar conclu- 
sion, asserting that it is meaningless to speak of any possible 
philosophical ethics. At best there can be, according to Carnap, 
the possibility of a "psychological ethics." 40 Yet such a psycho- 
logical ethics, of course, is no ethics at all. It would be nothing 
but psychology. For it would deal only with the psychological 
analysis of certain feelings which are wrongly thought to impart 
an alleged ethical insight. Of the logical positivists, it is probably 
Mr. Ayer who has formulated the ethical attitude of the group 
most bluntly: ethical concepts are, in his opinion, "mere pseudo- 
concepts." 41 "Sentences which simply express moral judgments 
tiven Principien zu setzen, d.i., ohne Kritik gravitatisch seinen Gang fortsetzt, bloss 
urn ihm das Concept zu verrucken und zur Selbsterkenntniss zu br ing-en." Kant, 
Kritik der reinen Vernunjt, 2nd ed., (1787), 7915 Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 
herausg. v.d. Koniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, I. Abtheilung, 
Bd. Ill (1904), 498$ N. Kemp Smith tr. (1919), 6o8f. 
88 E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrom, 63, 100. 
n Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, ed. by Raymund 
Schmidt, Band VII (1929), 44. 
40 R. Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax (1935), 25. 
41 A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936), 158$ cf. 168, 170. Cf. 
Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (1935), 24: "Since no way can be even 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 597 
do not say anything . . . they are unverifiable for the same 
reason as a cry of pain or a word of command is unverifiable 
because they do not express genuine propositions." 42 According 
to Mr. Ayer we may evince certain subjective feelings by mak- 
ing value judgments} but in doing so we do not say anything 
which can be subject to the criterion of objective truth. 
Cassirer describes H'agerstrom's moral scepticism thus: The 
object of ethics has 
no real but only a nominal existence. "Values," understood in an objec- 
tive sense, are nothing else and can be nothing more than words. With 
this assertion there seems to be denied to all objective value- judgments 
not merely their strict validation and demonstrability, but also every 
graspable sense [and meaning] . If we continue to prefer any practical 
conduct to some other and to characterize it as "better," such judgments, 
according to Hagerstrom, lack every foundation. 43 
However, although Professor Cassirer wishes to do full justice 
to this and other types of ethical scepticism, he does not agree 
with them. 
In his In Quest of Morals (1941), Henry Lanz has tried to 
show with special emphasis, why a moralist who fully acknowl- 
edges the relativity of factual moral valuations is by no means 
obliged to end in moral relativism or nihilism. There is no doubt 
that even the sense data experienced by different individuals 
may differ widely; but this fact in no way undermines the possi- 
bility of true judgments concerning the world "represented to 
us by our senses." Subjectivity and relativity of value experi- 
ences in no wise render impossible the objective validity of 
certain judgments concerning morality and immorality. on the 
contrary, "it is precisely relativity, defined as invariance in trans- 
formation, which renders moral standards objective." 44 Simi- 
larly, Cassirer stresses the point that "an ever so great difference 
of moral 'percepts, with which experience confronts us, ... does 
imagined for deciding a difference as to values, the conclusion is forced upon us 
that the difference is one of tastes, not one as to any objective truth." 
48 A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 161. 
48 E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrom, 64. 
44 H. Lanz, In Quest of Morals (1941), 159. 
598 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
not necessarily lead to a divergence of the underlying con- 
cepts." 45 "The liberation from metaphysics in ethics need by no 
means sacrifice ... the concept of 'objective mind' with that of 
'absolute mind'." 46 
Modern science insists that there can be no truth about nature, 
no objective judgment on nature, which is not in one way or 
another ultimately verifiable by data of the senses. Neverthe- 
less, science does not deny that "isolated" sense data are by no 
means "in themselves" of objective validity. They may differ 
radically and contradict each other with different individuals 
or with the same individual at different times ; and many of 
these data of the senses are stripped of all immediate objective 
value, although they remain related to the same object. But 
there remains, unshaken by contradictory sense data related to 
the same object, an objective criterion of truth as to the knowl- 
edge of nature. This criterion enables us to determine which 
data of the senses fit a coherent, i.e., true, interpretation of 
nature and which are unfit for this purpose, although all com- 
mon-sense evidence may speak in favor of the data unfit for 
immediate scientific use. In a similar way, the radical relativity 
of human valuations in no wise excludes the possibility of an 
objective criterion of morality. This criterion would enable us 
to determine what truly valuable, i.e., moral, conduct is, and 
would allow us to distinguish objectively between morally 
valueless and valuable behavior. 
IV. UTILITARIANISM 
Professor Cassirer has not so far outlined a positive theory of 
morals. He has limited his task to showing why it should not be 
impossible to build up an objective theory of ethics, even if the 
isolated moral ideas of different men seem to have only emotive 
meaning and are widely at variance. 
Obviously he does not approve of utilitarianism; but he 
grants that utilitarianism does not teach ethical relativism and 
scepticism. Utilitarianism aspired, at least, to erect an objective 
45 E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerttrom, 67. 
* See ibid., 62. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 599 
theory of morals which is meant to overcome the mere rela- 
tivism of moral judgment and the uncritical belief in the moral 
validity of particular values or duties. Consistent utilitarianism, 
such as that of Bentham, denies that we have any evidence of 
the intrinsic goodness of any particular isolated choice and any 
evidence of the obligatory character of particular duties. Never- 
theless, utilitarianism suggests at least the "hypothetical" 
validity of a universal and objective moral principle which 
would enable us to make particular judgments of objective 
validity. 
Utilitarianism affirms throughout the objectivity of moral ideas and 
judgments. It sets up a supreme goal: "the greatest possible happiness 
of the greatest possible number," and it utters its "yes" or "no" to the 
actions which advance or retard this goal. There reigns here, then, 
throughout a social teleology , which declares a certain condition of 
human society as valuable, whereas it rejects another. In a very acute 
fashion Hagerstrom proved, in his own research, that Marxism too, 
irrespective of its economic materialism and despite its loathing of all 
"ideology," contains such a teleology within itself and that, in this 
sense, Marxism contains a "morality" for which it claims objective 
validity. 47 
Professor Cassirer shares, with utilitarianism, the view that we 
are confronted with contradictory claims of particular moral 
views and can, nevertheless, maintain that universal objective 
validity of moral judgment is possible. 
Both sides of this fundamental issue are stressed by critical 
utilitarianism and by Cassirer with equal emphasis. 48 In agree- 
ment with Bentham's utilitarianism Professor Cassirer does not 
even reject fanaticism offhand. 
Fanaticism has not only at all times proved its power in the life of 
mankind, but it also has ever and again been represented and proclaimed 
as an ideal; and today it is actually being praised in many quarters as 
precisely "the" moral ideal as such. . . . For a purely descriptive 
47 E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrom, 73^ 
48 As to consistent utilitarianism, see especially Vol. II of my Jeremy Bentham 
and the Ethics of Today, which Princeton University Press will publish early 
in 1949. 
600 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
ethics . . ., which wants to be nothing else and nothing more than 
a science of the factual moral evaluations in their historical status and 
growth . . . there would obviously exist no reason 
for the rejection of fanaticism. 49 "If the . . . humanities and social 
sciences had to do only with feelings," with moral value feel- 
ings, with feelings of justice, with feelings of beauty, then "a 
logic of the humanities" would be ... "nonsense." 50 "Anthro- 
pocentricity is even much more difficult to overcome in ethics 
than in the knowledge of nature." 51 But, like utilitarianism, 
Professor Cassirer proclaims the possibility of securing objective 
truth in morals as well as in natural science, despite the rela- 
tivity of particular sense data and particular moral observations. 
Again and again he points out that "in morals and in juris- 
prudence as in language there . . . reigns ... a strange func- 
tion of obj edification." 52 "The copy-theory of concepts must 
be surrendered in favor of a purely functional theory." 53 "The 
direction towards something not given . . . cannot be described 
as a mere deception, as an empty fiction," 54 which is as impor- 
tant to note in morals as in science. "The principal emphasis of 
the concept of objectivity lies ... not on the ... given as such, 
but on its coherence and consistent order." 55 "Conceiving the 
idea of systematic jurisprudence, the Romans carried through a 
great new synthesis, which in a certain sense is of value and sig- 
nificance equal to the Greek view of 'natural law,' as this latter de- 
veloped from the time of Leucippus and Democritus on." 56 The 
task of "the psychology and sociology of law," of the psychology 
and sociology of morals, "could appear completed" when the 
factors are described which are operative in the formation 
of law and morals: "religious intuitions, the so-called 
'judicial consciousness,' class-interests, the general tendency to 
* E. Cassirer, Axel Hagerstrom, 8 1 . 
80 Ibid., 114. 
81 Ibid., 78. 
"/to*., io 5 f. 
M /W., 97*. 
84 Ibid., 108. 
"Ibid., 72. 
*Ibid. 9 102. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 601 
yield to existing circumstances, the fear of anarchy, . . . but for 
a real 'philosophy' of culture the question ... is not thus 
settled. " 6r In morals and "in the philosophy of culture . . . 
metaphysics . . . must ... in turn be succeeded by criticism . . .; 
but criticism need no more turn into scepticism, into doubt con- 
cerning the possibility of an objective foundation, in this area 
then it does in that of theoretical knowledge." 58 How this 
"objective foundation of ethics" is to be secured, Professor Cas- 
sirer has not as yet developed in detail. 
Moreover, he seems not at all satisfied with the result of 
any attempt yet made in this direction. He goes so far as to say: 
It is no secret that no other philosophical discipline is so far removed 
from the ideal of an honest-to-goodness scientific foundation as is [true 
of] ethics, and that superstition has as yet been no more extirpated 
from the philosophy of morals than from everyday morality. Com- 
ing centuries, when looking back upon many a moral doctrine which 
even today is being widely proclaimed as "wisdom's ultimate con- 
clusion," may perhaps pass the judgment that such doctrines have 
exactly the same relation to genuine ethical knowledge which alchemy 
has to chemistry or astrology to scientific astronomy. 59 
I cannot conceal a cordial agreement even with this far-reaching 
criticism of highly reputed contemporary ethics and have tried 
to give some reasons for my agreement. Strange to say, quite 
independently of this remark by Professor Cassirer, I drew the 
same analogy between contemporary "time-honoured" methods 
of ethics and alchemy in a book not yet published, and I further 
compared the ethics of the "plain man," developed in con- 
temporary neo-deontologism, not with astrology but with 
Ptolemaic astronomy as regards their methods. 

on this point, however, I should add a few remarks con- 
cerning which I am not at all sure that Professor Cassirer will 
agree. I should compare the status of modern ethics with that 
of alchemy and Ptolemaic astronomy in another respect as well. 
As, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, alchemy and 
87 Ibid., 95 f. 
m lbid., 83. 
63. 
602 DAVID BAUMGARDT 
even Ptolemaic astronomy did not die out with the develop- 
ment of scientific chemistry and Copernican astronomy, so old 
scholastic "time-honoured" methods of ethics still survive the 
beginning of a science of ethics which I see developed in hun- 
dreds of painstaking and almost unknown arguments in Jeremy 
Bentham's writings and unpublished papers. 
There is not the slightest doubt that we must reject the bulk 
of Bentham's psychological teaching, and any naive hope of a 
concurrence between self-interest and the maximization of 
happiness a hope which was J. S. Mill's far more than it was 
Bentham's. Bentham held extremely narrow views on meta- 
physics, religion, the arts, poetry, and the philosophy of history. 
All such narrow-mindedness definitely impairs, in my opinion, 
the importance of any ethicist. But, because of the critical sub- 
tlety of his ethical method, I think Bentham for many reasons 
superior to any modern moralist. 
Of course, it must be granted that Bentham changes inten- 
tionally (and not by a naturalistic fallacy) the common-sense 
meaning of "morally good" as much as the common-sense mean- 
ing of "truly existent" has been changed in science. Therefore, 
in so far as contemporary ethics wishes to maintain, at all costs, 
the common-sense meaning of the moral ought and of the 
morally good, Bentham 's concept of morals has to be rejected 
with as much reason as Copernican astronomy had to be rejected 
by astronomers who were not willing to sacrifice the common- 
sense meaning of sunrise and sunset. 
The price which Ptolemaic astronomers as well as contem- 
porary moralists must pay for the maintenance of their common- 
sense views is a more and more complicated and embarrassing 
arrangement in the superstructure of their theories. But, paying 
this price, they may go on for a long time, and neither con- 
temporary ethics nor Ptolemaic cosmology can as such be 
"refuted" by its opponents. In due time mankind knew how to 
grow out of the views of "time-honoured" astronomy and will, 
in all probability, learn to outgrow time-honoured ethics with- 
out endlessly deploring the loss of the common-sense meaning 
of fundamental astronomical or ethical concepts. 
THE CHAOS IN MODERN ETHICS 603 
Kant once said that the senses are to be acquitted from the 
charge of betrayal. 60 Kant himself carried out this acquittal in 
his Critique of Pure Reason by an equally reasoned opposition 
to uncritical rational metaphysics and uncritical sensationism 
and relativism. Bentham did the same in the field of ethics. 
Bentham acquitted all subjective, relative "feelings of posi- 
tive and negative tones" from the charge of betrayal; and, 
nevertheless, by reference to merely subjective emotions, of 
pleasure and pain, he tried to establish an objective theory of 
morals in a great number of most acute discussions of ethical 
method in general. I believe that no one should write on ethics 
without having become familiar with these discussions. 
I am well aware that even the most guarded defense of 
consistent hedonistic ethics sounds outrageously shallow to prac- 
tically all contemporary schools of ethics and to critics of the 
possibility of any scientific ethics. Therefore I do not wish to 
burden Cassirer with even these hints at my defense of 
Bentham's ethical method.* I wish to build up my type of "con- 
sistent hedonism" entirely at my own risk 5 it is, however, espe- 
cially gratifying to me that, in one of his letters, Cassirer ex- 
pressed his heartfelt approval of my principal ethical ideas. 61 
DAVID BAUMGARDT 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
WASHINGTON, B.C. 
*See Kant, Anthropology in fragmatischer Hinsicht, gffj Werke> ed. by 
E. Cassirer, Band VIII (1922), 28ff. 
* Editor's Note: As the reader will see from footnote 61, this essay was not 
merely written before Professor Cassirer's death, but had been submitted by its 
author to Cassirer in time to elicit a reply from the latter. 
61 In his letter of March i5th, 1944, Cassirer wrote me: "Fur Ihren Aufsatz 
fuhle ich mich Ihnen zu herzlichem Dank verpflichtet. Er hat mich besonders 
erfreut, weil ich aus ihm ersehen habe, wie nahe wir uns in unseren ethischen 
Grundanschauungen stehen. t)ber Ihre Kritik an G. E. Moore und anderen 
englischen Ethikern karm ich wenig sagen, da Sic diese Dinge sehr vie! genauer 
kennen als ich," 
I? 
Katharine Gilbert 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 
A RT is not one of the subjects to which Professor Cassirer 
JLjjL devoted an independent volume, as he did to language, 
myth, and to the scientific and philosophic categories of sub- 
stance and function. But this fact by no means proves a lack 
of important views on art present in the body of his writings. 
The precedent of many great names reminds us at once of 
the congruity of philosophical reflection on art, and its rela- 
tively incidental placement. Cassirer's latest book, An Essay on 
Man, contains a chapter on "Art;" the volumes on language 
and myth as symbolic forms carry a pervading consciousness of 
art as a parallel symbolic form} and the genius and work of 
certain great artists, especially Goethe, have undergone exten- 
sive analysis at his hands. Having edited Kant and Leibniz, he 
remains conscious, in all references to their philosophy, of the 
service they performed for aesthetic theory. In his Individuum 
imd Kosmos in der Philosophic der Renaissance implications 
concerning art stand in relief. Pregnant phrases and notions 
meet the reader again and again as he follows an historical argu- 
ment phrases and notions that contain in germ the lacking 
independent volume. For instance, Cassirer connects the origin 
of plastic art with a mutation in the idea of immortality. He 
relates how among the Egyptians the soul was first cherished 
toward its immortal destiny by preserving its mortal house, the 
bodyj how, then, a second way of ensuring human survival was 
discovered. Beside the mummy a statue was placed. Thus art 
was born. 1 Again he notes how hostile to art is a certain tendency 
in religion the tendency to introverted pietism. The food gone 
1 Philosofhie der symbolischen For men: Zweiter Tetl, 205. 
607 
608 KATHARINE GILBERT 

on which art lives contact with the outside world art can 
beget only monotonous songs of soul-ecstasy. It takes the gift of 
a Bach, he says, to restore art's vitality. Bach elaborated a new 
language of musical forms, and thus made the new intensity of 
feeling articulate. 2 Such compact insights on the relation of art 
to other elements of culture are scattered throughout Cassirer's 
volumes. 
Cassirer's method in respect to art is the philosopher's. He is 
neither critic, psychologist, nor an artist celebrating his own 
way of life. As a philosopher, Cassirer accepts the task of placing 
art among the realms of spirit (language, myth, religion, and 
science particularly) and of tracing within the history of culture 
the growth of appreciation of art's autonomy. He always keeps 
awareness of the wider cultural and cosmic context, though 
there is abundant reference to the concrete, particularly to 
Goethe, who is the star example. Learned historians of art 
could hardly have fitted, as they have done, their detailed re- 
searches to his intellectual frame, if he had not commanded 
wide expanses of fact. Nevertheless, his purpose remains philo- 
sophical, i.e., he defines the sphere of art among the forms of 
the spiritual life, and does not to any great extent sharpen and 
validate images the general function of the art-critic. As a 
philosopher, he emphasizes the truth that a language of relevant 
sensuous forms is indispensable for the larger part that art wills 
to play in social life.. But he is not an original investigator of 
these forms and their ultimate elements. 
Art is placed by Cassirer among the "symbolic forms." In a 
contribution to a symposium on the nature of symbol in 1927,* 
he developed the emphasis laid in 1887 on the idea of symbol 
by Friedrich Theodor Vischer. Vischer had asserted its cen- 
trality for all the philosophical disciplines, its protean character, 
and its tendency to assume new meanings at its core when ap- 
plied to a new field. Symbols are made when man learns to 
separate himself from nature and to use independent carriers 
* Freiheit und Form, 274. 
8 "Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophic," Zeit- 
schrift fur Jtsthctik und Allgemcine Kunstwissenschaft, XXI, 295-319. 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 609 
to hold his meanings. A symbolic form in general is an active 
interpreter, binding an intellectual content to a sensuous show. 
Its mediating power is the heart of it. Wherever a symbol is 
present, there is polarity operative and yet somehow overcome. 
The opposites that are reconciled by the offices of symbol are 
many: meaning and sensuous embodiment} the intelligible 
world and the world of time and change; contemplation and 
action; freedom and form; spirit and nature; divine essence 
and human need. In speculative aesthetics in particular, says 
Cassirer, from Plotinus to Hegel, the problem of symbol has 
always come up in connection with such reconciliation. The 
relation of painted shows to the intelligible world, of the 
semblance on the stage and in the singer's lay to the values of 
truth and goodness such problems are continually provoking 
inquiry. 
The beautiful is essentially and necessarily symbol because and in so 
far as it is split within itself, because it is always and everywhere both 
one and double. In this split, in this attachment to the sensuous, and 
in this rising above the sensuous, it not only expresses the tension which 
runs through the world of our consciousness, but it reveals by this 
means the original and basic polarity of Being itself; the dialectic which 
obtains between the finite and the infinite, between the absolute idea 
and its representation and incorporation inside the world of the indi- 
vidual, of the empirically existent. 4 
The aesthetic symbol is, then, for Cassirer; symbol at its height. 
It is bordered below by religious symbolism where the com- 
munication is still opaque, and above by the scientific sign where 
the sensuous sign is often arbitrary. 
We may briefly outline Cassirer's ideas concerning the sym- 
bolism of art. Art as symbol requires for the unfolding of its 
meaning a two-fold movement of thought: a purification of its 
conception from confusing adhesions and then a restoration of 
it to the family of human functions. ( i ) Art begins to be con- 
scious of itself in the process of its disentanglement from a pre- 
aesthetic existence where its mode is bodily and its charm magi- 
cal. Even after art begins to emerge from its religious, mythical, 
*., 296. 
6 io KATHARINE GILBERT 
and biological matrix, it still leads for centuries a servile life} 
first, as a servant of things, when it is interpreted as imitation} 
second, as a servant of reason, when interpreted as analogue. It 
is also less than its free self when it is still largely governed by 
instinct or emotion. Art only becomes a characteristic symbolic 
form when it stands forth as a free entity, declaring itself. 
(2) The second part of the defining movement reinstates 
liberated art once again within the circle of the activities of 
spirit, and sees it as part of man's total functioning in his world. 
Art, freed from patronage and models, from alien patterns of 
order and from dark urges of instinct, tends to become undisci- 
plined genius expressing itself lyrically out of and into a void. 
This tendency is a false excess. Though loosed from irrelevant 
adhesions and dominions, art has a work and place committed 
to it. As imaginative penetration into the nature of things, 
Cassirer teaches, art swings rhythmically between the realm of 
objects and of subjects, and bears witness to the ultimate 
solidarity of the two. Hence the "polarity" or "tension" in all 
art-symbols and the favorite definition of beauty as harmony. 
Besides being witness to the harmony of man and his world 
in polarity, art as symbol is a peculiar microcosm of the age. In 
it are reflected as in a mirror the concerns of time, place, and 
social habit. This is the essential historicity of the symbol. In its 
historical setting art is a free collaborator with science, phi- 
losophy, religion, the formulations of social and political values, 
and other cultural functions. 
We may now expand the accompanying outline which we 
have constructed to suggest the form of Cassirer's thought. Art 
begins its fight for self-subsistence by struggling free from 
substantial nature. 5 Although the student of culture sometimes 
thinks himself able to point to a moment when detachment 
occurred, on the whole art loosened its bonds gradually. Before 
man deposited his intention in a free-standing form, he mixed 
it obscurely with things, and myths and magic grew up hybrids. 
In these earlier forms of symbolism there was no sharp line 
"The paragraphs sketching pre-artistic symbols in space, time, and language 
are based on Philosophic der symbolischen Formen: Enter Teil: Die Sprache^ 
Teil: Das Mythische Denken. 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 611 
separating man's intentional act from the natural world which 
he molded to convey his will. Before the architect or sculptor 
submitted matter the element spread out in space to his 
euplastic engine, the hand, in order to make a god after his own 
image or build a god's house, he accepted as his medium the 
heavy earth as it stretched out beneath him, and made it bear 
in its raw state the distinctions that his feelings and desires 
sought to place. Right and left, high and low, near and far 
achieved moral sense as well as plain, physical sense. They all 
reflected the body's station, and the direction toward which he 
faced or reached or looked, or the forefeeling or memory in his 
limbs of an effort of movement. Man committed to the surface 
of the earth his pride or awe in the sacred field marked off from 
the indefinite stretch of common ground. Gradually he pro- 
jected into the given earth and heavens his main qualitative 
PLACEMENT OF ART 
Object Subject 
Substantial things Myth Soul's magical fusion 
with things 
ｅxpression Instinct} Affects 
A Imitation Perception; feeling 
Appearance r ' ** 
Analogue Obscure processes 
Symbolic Synthesis 
Religion Social 
Values Art Philosophy Science 
612 KATHARINE GILBERT 
genera: colors, animals, organs of the body, seasons of the year, 
totemic classes for marriage and inheritance purposes, his re- 
ligious attitude. The divisions of space were drafted as they 
lay to carry the order man had achieved for the conduct of his 
life. But man was not an original artificer of spatial form in all 
this. His feelings and sensuous perceptions accepted the shape 
and color of nature's regions and toned these givens into har- 
mony with affective attitudes. Spatial determinations at this 
level are the carriers of human propensities. Here we have the 
thing-like opaque symbol of mythology and religion. 
As space still inheres in things on the mythical level and 
has not become an inspired form or a constructed relation, so 
also with time. Time was not in primitive experience a relation 
of periods measured in terms of a system of referents, nor even 
the rhythm of poetry or music, but the very process of the 
torches of time: sun, moon, and stars. It was real passage in- 
carnate in the agents of passage. The same incompleteness of 
the human shaping act was present when speech symbols first 
appeared. A word is not in the first instance a coin minted by a 
creative spirit out of the indefinite flux of sound to express an 
intent. A word, though symbol, is also for primitive thought a 
thing the thing that is named with cryptic potency. The Word 
of God was a phase of the God-head and not his title merely. 
Or, in its half-brutish beginnings, language was interjection, 
cry of pain or joy, gesture of welcome or defiance, echo of some 
natural marvel. When language jets without pause for reflec- 
tion, then it is an aspect of primitive organic behavior as well 
as the forerunner of intelligible speech. Though it is the in- 
distinct mythical habit that thus confuses name with the named 
and the statement of meaning with organic response, even the 
art of poetry has to work its way free from the immediate lyrical 
impulse of nature. It is, for Cassirer, a proof of Goethe's con- 
stant mastery of his art that even in his youthful storm and 
stress period, when he liked to lie on the earth and court the sun 
and small creatures crawling through the grass, when the 
rhythms in his lyrics were the rhythms of waves and winds, he 
was not absorbed. He never confused his mind's ways with 
nature's ways. In just this assurance about the indispensable 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 613 
formative function of art does he stand apart from the poets 
who discharge natural impulses with primitive directness or 
make themselves sensitive plates of nature. 
In his most recent statement of the nature of art, Chapter IX 
in his Essay on Man, Cassirer has once more illustrated the 
distinction between the symbolic function in art, where a ma- 
terial is transformed by the spirit of man, and that pre-artistic 
relation of man to his world where the content is imposed 
largely from outside. This time he has the naive contemporary 
spectator of art in mind. He chooses the example of the enjoy- 
ment of landscape. For the simple awareness of the natural man, 
agreeable physical qualities operate on the passive organism: 
bright colors, fragrant, mild airs. The "meeting soul" takes in 
the pleasant scene as a whole and half suffuses it with a life 
and tone of its own; but what is present is things not forms. 
"But I may then," writes Cassirer, 
experience a sudden change in my frame of mind. Thereupon I see 
the landscape with an artist's eye I begin to form a picture of it. 
I have now entered a new realm the realm not of living things but of 
"living forms." No longer in the immediate reality of things, I live 
now in the rhythm of spatial forms, in the harmony and contrast of 
colors, in the balance of light and shadow. In such absorption in the 
dynamic aspect of form consists the aesthetic experience.* 
Art to be art must not only extricate man's concern from in- 
gredience in things, magical or sentimental; it must stop repro- 
ducing the shows of things. The conception of art as imitation 
has been historically so persistent that Cassirer was bound to 
take account of it, little as he agrees with it. The neo-Kantian 
idealist who denies any element of pure datum even in the 
perception of a patch of color could never admit an art that 
repeats a given. The simplest item of common sense experience 
points beyond itself for him, and thus involves an act of spirit, 
if and in so far as it has meaning. But the symbolizing acts of 
artists (and of all builders of culture) imply a higher and more 
complex human entrance. In art man builds a disentangling 
frame to hold and relieve the item. 7 
* Essay on Man, chapter IX on "Art," 1 5 1 f . 
der symbolischen Formen, I, 41. 
6 14 KATHARINE GILBERT 
Cassirer notes here and there in his historical surveys and 
analyses variants of the mimesis doctrine. Each of these altered 
without redeeming it. The concept of imitation is still dominant 
in that view of art which identifies it with the extraction for 
preservation of the beautiful elements of things. In noting the 
contribution of the Swiss literary critics, Bodmer and Breitinger, 
to the progress of aesthetic theory, Cassirer remarks that they 
could not draw out the implications of the notion of a heightened 
energy in individual vision, prepared by Leibniz's metaphysics. 
Rather they marked off a region of the actual as good poetical 
material. "How," they asked, "can a painting of a peasant and 
his beasts of burden charm us, if the original scene does not 
draw our gaze?" 8 The assumption here is the familiar one that 
art is imitation, though selective. It derives, as is always told, 
from the famous story of the painting of the maidens of 
Crotona by Zeuxis, and is but a feeble change in the ape doc- 
trine. It leaves the two factors in the situation standing over 
against each other. However, the selection is up to a point evi- 
dence of human valuation. 
The next refinement one developed by Shaftesbury and 
Lessing is simply an intensification of the first. Artists select 
for perpetuation the pregnant moment in a scene. The artist lets 
his spatial fancy grow in responding to the center of movement 
in the piece of nature he is contemplating. He and his object 
are both alive } they are both in labor with something new and 
important that is to be brought forth. Cassirer reminds us that 
this marks a progress in the artist's view from the content of the 
given to its form and relations. The pregnant moment reaches 
before and after itself and by a half-revealed energy extends its 
sphere of existence into what the spirit alone sees and knows. 9 
A third variant of the imitation doctrine Cassirer finds in the 
values of omission, and binds it with the second. "The artistic 
sketch becomes such, and distinguished from mechanical repro- 
duction, by virtue of what is dropped out of the immediately 
given impression." 10 In this imitation through negation there 
8 Freiheit und Form, 116-117. 
9 Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen^ I, 44. 
* Loc. cit. 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 615 
is restriction of the dominance of the particular model, but in- 
crease in its symbolic potency. 
A fourth variant is the recognition of the importance of indi- 
vidual style in imitation. Certain thinkers, e.g., Diderot, may 
conceive art as imitative, and yet have a most lively feeling for 
the special individualities of different languages. Diderot is 
endowed with a feeling for the finest nuances of words, for 
their tone and clang, for their untranslatable moments. 11 This 
marks the passage of any art, whether an art of words or an art 
of images, from the stage of social utility and rational gen- 
erality to an unquestioned aesthetic level. There was in the 
eighteenth century a whole strain, starting with Leibniz, which 
clarified more and more the importance for art and culture of 
individuality and eccentricity, sensuous detail, passionate aber- 
ration. Cassirer attaches this enrichment of theory to Hamann 
and Herder after Leibniz and sets it for purposes of contrast 
over against the new assertion of orderly classicism in Winckel- 
mann. 12 Indeed, Cassirer is always watching for the moment of 
individual variation in the essence of art. Emphasis on indi- 
viduality is, however, sometimes combined with the unaccepta- 
ble imitation doctrine. 
Besides being taken as a servant of things in its mode of 
imitation, art is servilely treated (though less so) as a de- 
pendent of reason in its phase as analogue. We owe the begin- 
nings of this interpretation to Leibniz. It came about in this 
way. 18 Leibniz entertained the logical ideal of submitting all 
the work of mind to the standard of clear and compelling order. 
The reduction worked without much difficulty so long as ra- 
tional truths and abstract categories, such as substance and cause, 
were in question. To all the ideas that fell within this circle 
Leibniz applied the strict law of consistency: of identity and 
difference. But both for completeness and system, and in con- 
formity with the law of continuity in which he believed, he was 
obliged to make the effort to handle in the light of the same 
goal the less clear notions furnished by perception, memory, and 
I, 82. 
12 Fretheh und Form, 170-221. 
19 Ibid., 99-218. 
616 KATHARINE GILBERT 
the aesthetic activities. He had to try to satisfy the demand for 
reason, law, and order in the inferior faculties and obscure 
regions of the soul. He accomplished this by postulating a 
progressive scale of clarity. In the scale the earlier confused 
stages implied but did not reveal the coming distinctness. Out 
of the I itself, from which he made all mental facts flow, he 
drew an anticipating and accumulating sequence, dim at first, 
but exhibiting even in the semi-darkness intimations of form 
and rule. Leibniz placed music and painting then among the 
analogues of reason. He interpreted them as big with their 
own rational explanation, though conceived on the sensuous 
plane of feeling and taste. one might perhaps say that they 
prophesy their own clarification and that they instinctively 
correspond with their own ratios and proportions. Art, then, 
for Leibniz no longer imitates, but presses toward, without 
attaining, its own logical fulfilment. 
In spite of the advance of the concept of analogue over the 
concept of imitation, there is still unfitness in the new notion. 
As in the phase of imitation art defers to a model, so in the 
role of analogue art is measured by the superior excellence of 
reason. Therefore art is not yet autonomous nor handled in 
terms of wholly relevant categories. 
In the building up of the artistic function of man, Cassirer 
says there is a general law of three stages: the mimetic, the 
analogical, and finally, the symbolic. 14 We have been noting 
in what way art falls short of self-determination in so far as it 
is copy or analogue. Cassirer also ties in the imperfection of these 
early stages with the fragmentary conative views. Language 
was interpreted by Vico as half rooted in interjection, 15 and art 
recurrently offers itself as the immediate utterance of nature. 
Cassirer passes in review the variants of this definition of art 
as ｅxpression of genius. For him they seem all to be either 
romantic theories which overemphasize feeling, emotion, or 
god-like creativity, or, on the other hand, play-theories which 
overemphasize primitivism and release. 16 As an idealist, Cas- 
14 Phtlosofhie der symbotischen Formcn, I, 136, 137. 
"Ibid., I, 91. 
16 Essay on Man, 140$, 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 617 
sirer never loses awareness of the spirit's being there. No field 
of reality nor region of culture exists for him which is not 
stamped by the energy of mind. However, the phrases em- 
ployed by the Schlegels and Schelling implying the unrestricted 
rights of genius Cassirer would temper and balance. Cassirer 
believes that the "genius" theory of art or the emphasis on 
soul-discharge does justice to only one pole of the artistic situa- 
tion. It is a pole that will always be highly charged when art 
has been subjected to rules or models, as by Boileau and the 
neo-classicists generally. The neglected jet of the human imagi- 
nation will spring up when it is suppressed. It was Kant the 
Kant who for Cassirer marked the culmination of the cultural 
passage from Leibniz in the eighteenth century who gave once 
for all the proportions to Genius and Nature in Art. "Art can 
be called beautiful only if we are conscious that it is Art although 
it looks like Nature." "Genius is the talent through which 
Nature gives the rule to Art." "Nature by the medium of 
Genius . . . prescribes rules to Art." 17 Therefore where a 
Rousseauist urges the rights of feeling, Cassirer counters with 
the claims of form and repose. And the various biological 
theories of the nineteenth century, which featured the play 
instinct, needed, according to Cassirer, to humanize the concept 
for art, so that play is seen as productive and structural. 18 Even 
the play theory of Schiller, though far closer to the balanced 
view of art as living-form, gives too much to the unordered 
sport of innocent childhood. 
In the group of theories which make art less than free and 
less than complete because of over-emphasis on the emotional 
thrust, Cassirer places those of Croce and Collingwood. 19 He 
complains that those thinkers limit the whole of art to the lyri- 
cal impulse and leave out the contribution made by medium and 
structure. Undoubtedly there are many passages in the writings 
of these two philosophers which support the adverse view of 
Cassirer. But with respect to medium one must remember the 
famous passage in Croce's Essence of Aesthetic, in which he cer- 
17 KanPs Kritique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard, 188-190. 
18 Essay on Man, 
"Ibid., 
618 KATHARINE GILBERT 
tainly demands the realization of intuitions: "A thought is not 
thought for us, unless it be possible to formulate it in words; 
a musical image exists for us, only when it becomes concrete in 
sounds; a pictorial image, only when it is coloured." 20 The 
apparent failure to provide a place in his system for sensuous 
medium is the result of a prohibiting metaphysic. As one might 
say that a modern physicist who denies the old concept of solid 
matter, substituting the current one of fields of force, left no 
room for cans and kidneys! As for form, one remembers the 
statement in Croce's most recent general article: "The problem 
for aesthetics today is the reassertion and defense of the classical 
as against romanticism: the synthetic, formal theoretical ele- 
ment which is the firofrmm of art, as against the affective ele- 
ment which it is the business of art to resolve into itself." 21 It 
seems definitely inappropriate to regard a theory which involves 
such a statement as instinctive. Both in the case of Croce and of 
Collingwood the importance of structure and medium is recog- 
nized in the long and intricate treatment of language. Colling- 
wood says that the experience of art involves the change from 
affect in the lower level of the psyche to the activity of con- 
scious awareness, from impression to imagination, from brute 
giveness to domination by thought. 22 These marks of art are 
hardly consistent with the sentimentalism and exhibitionism im- 
plicitly charged by Cassirer. 23 
Although Cassirer rejects the notions of art as imitation, 
lyricism, or analogue, he carries over elements from these into 
the one he accepts. Art for him is a symbolic form: a living 
shape worked out in a sensuous medium, expressing tension 
and release. The tension holds man over against the world; 
the release means reconciliation with it. In Cassirer's latest 
statement of what art is various ｅxpressions are used rather 
than "symbolic form" to convey both the autonomy and the 
richness of the idea as he holds it: "constructive eye," 24 "con- 
* Benedetto Croce, The Essence of Aesthetic, 42-43. 
21 Croce, article on "Aesthetics," Encyclopaedia Britannica ; i4th edition (1946). 
M R. G. Collingwood, Principles of Art, 234-235. 
28 Essay on Man, 142. 
* rLSj 151. 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 619 
templative creation," 25 "intuitive form," 28 "sympathetic vi- 
sion." 27 In each of these phrases it is obvious that the opposition 
between the subjective and objective contributions to the act 
and fact of art is meant to be resolved. Something is saved, to 
be sure, from the imitation doctrine, as the words "contempla- 
tive," "intuitive," and "vision" suggest. Cassirer points out 
that when Leonardo da Vinci said that the function of art was 
to teach men how to see (safer vedere) he uttered an inex- 
pugnable truth. 28 Art does not imitate the world of men and 
things, but it penetrates it with the faculty of imagination and 
restates its essential character in revealing and beautiful forms. 
A painter interprets the spectacle which it is contrary to his 
genius to retrace dumbly line for line. He discriminates and 
communicates delicate aspects of the nature whose gross ap- 
pearance bores him. Intensive and concentrated vision is a main 
attribute of an artist and this is what is left of the discarded 
doctrine of ars Simla naturae. 
There is value to be conserved also in the variants of expres- 
sionism. The force of genius, the lyrical thrust is the inception 
of art. But the value in emotional theories has to be balanced 
by values taken from the rationalistic school, the values of 
measure and order. In all contexts the Kantian Cassirer asserts 
the primacy of the spontaneity of consciousness. In the context 
of art this general idea becomes the interpretation of art as 
man's deed. Art, in fact any cultural symbol, he is never tired 
of saying, is energeia and not ergon. 29 Every symbolic form, 
art, myth, or speech is a revelation proceeding from within out- 
wards. one of the insights of Leibniz, important for aesthetic 
theory, was just this revaluation of reality in terms of force. 
In interpreting the aesthetic significance of Hogarth's line of 
beauty Cassirer traverses the lower levels on which it is a mere 
sensuous impression, and then an optical structure. As one 
looks at it, Cassirer writes, the thin perceptual experience be- 
**ibid., 162. 
99 Ibid., 167, 170. 
"Ibid., 150, 1 7 on. 
"Ibid., 144. 
M Phtlosofhie der symbolischen Formen, I, 104. 
620 KATHARINE GILBERT 
gins to move and become a self-shaping energy. It has then 
arrived at the stage of aesthetic form 5 it becomes definite 
ornament, with artistic intent and place. For, although as beauti- 
ful ornament it is timeless, even so it belongs to the history 
of style and can be placed in an epoch. "In the concrete experi- 
ence of the simple linear track, there comes now into being at 
a single blow, just a particular style, just the comprehensive 
characteristic 'art will' of the time pregnant and living be- 
fore me." 30 
But, though art begins as spontaneity, act of will, or expres- 
sion of emotion, it is great in proportion as it is the ｅxpression 
not of a feeling but of the gamut of human feelings, thereby 
attaining universality and subtlety. If various emotions in their 
responsiveness to multiplied occasions, and fortune's turns, are 
represented, the work of art rises to wholeness and sloughs vio- 
lence. Emotion converts to motion, i.e., to rhythm, measure, 
and design. Tension deepens to the center's stillness. Cassirer 
makes use of the idea of catharsis to prove how inadequate 
unshaped passion is for the purposes of art. Art must operate 
to convert the passive burden of pity and fear into an active 
state of soul. Cassirer answers the question: Of what is man 
freed by art? thus: So long as fear is a real dread of a real 
state of affairs man feels his dependence. But, if he remolds 
this fear into the art of tragedy whether he writes it or 
relives it as a fit spectator he is emancipated by the form of 
art from the material load of existing danger, be it a tyrant's 
menace or the approach of death, poverty, or disease. 81 In such 
ways Cassirer limits the idea of the absoluteness of genius. 
Having brought to a point the positive and negative elements 
in Cassirer's theory of art as symbol or intuitive awareness of 
living form, we turn to Goethe for concrete demonstration. 
"The life and the poetry of Goethe gives us the best and most 
typical example of the mutual penetration of all those elements 
that constitute a work of art." 32 Particularly we find there on a 
90 Zeitschrtft, XXI, op. cit., 299. 
" Essay on Man y 1481". 
12 Ibid., 10. The page-reference here is to Cassirer's original typescript pages $ 
I have been unable to locate the above sentence in the printed chapter on "Art" 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 621 
grand scale and in clear outlines the swing from originative 
lyrical thrust to compensating objective vision of beauty, both 
in nature and in the human form. We find this tension over- 
ruled by the mastery of Goethe's poetical power which holds 
all in seamless unity. We will avail ourselves of typical observa- 
tions made by Cassirer on this master illustration. 
The early lyrics and dramatic sketches of Goethe convey 
the Prometheus motive, the youthful accent of energy, gener- 
osity, and love of nature and thus express the first subjective 
stage of symbol clearly. They were written in the Sturm und 
Drang period of Goethe's life, when he felt the liberation 
wrought by Rousseau, when he was overwhelmed by the gi- 
gantic strength of a Gothic cathedral, and when his own mount- 
ing genius found dramatic counterparts in Gotz von Berlich- 
ingen, Mohammed, and Caesar. Like the early lyrics the 
Urfaust is an ｅxpression of the first thrust of a great spirit's 
power and dream. In the first scenes of the Faust poem, which 
conserve the early force, one remembers how the young world 
of the on-coming Renaissance, its experimentation and ferment, 
and the unbounded eagerness and ambition of a scientific ex- 
plorer show themselves in epithets, figures and scenes. Faust's 
ecstatic wonder in the awareness of his god-like powers, his 
thirst for contact with the very springs and breast of nature, 
his intoxicated yearning after the fire and loom and ocean 
of Being all reflect the onset of symbol as such. However 
important the swaying middle position of symbol and its re- 
conciling function, a work of art as symbol is born on the side 
of spiritual freedom and power 5 it is autonomous creation. 
In Faust the objective pole is represented by Helena, her 
beauty and implications. To the extent that subject and object 
can be perfectly balanced in a work of art the union of Faust 
and Helena stands for that total compensation. But this would 
be too static a name for the living, dynamic conception of 
symbol that Goethe employed and Cassirer expounds. Helena 
herself, though she represents the beauty of the ancient world 
and of nature, and most of all, of the fair human shape, is a 
in An Essay on Man. However, the main source for Cassirer*s use of Goethe is 
Freihett und Form, 271-421. 
622 KATHARINE GILBERT 
shifting, shimmering, many-visaged, and finally poignantly 
fading form. She shows in a mirror, she incarnates in Gretchen, 
she leaps ages and mountains. The too humbly Teutonic 
Gretchen gives place under the growing aesthetic ideal to the 
nobler form of Menelaus' wife. But in total conception the 
classic heroine answers to that firm objective beauty which 
Goethe found and celebrated on his Italian journey. He wrote 
from there that his early Titanic ideas were only airy shapes and 
that before the serene beauty of the human form in antique art 
he had first learned to see. 33 
The peace of the aesthetic sense, resting in its formed counter- 
part, is for this view, as we have said, only the limit and cross- 
section of a process. The admiration of Helena becomes a func- 
tion. For Faust it acts as a fluid standard in terms of which his 
many admirations may be measured. German shapelessness, 
though dear through kinship, becomes relatively unsympathetic. 
He returns to it indeed: Gretchen is envisioned again. But pain 
mixes with the pleasure of the experience of Helena throughout. 
In her phantom-quality she symbolizes the instability of all 
embodied loveliness. Hers and Faust's child, Euphorion, who 
shared with his father vaulting ambition, dies like Icarus. Thus 
the subjective moment, Faust's ambition, and the objective mo- 
ment, Helena's beautiful form, interweave and change. In their 
interaction and growth they compose the poetized image of 
Goethe's own life in the sense of the law of the form of his 
life, and beyond this, of the history and tragedy of humanity. 
While analyzing the symbolism of Faust Cassirer makes a 
cross-reference to the Pandora in which, he says, Goethe's 
symbolic meaning has received its purest poetical stamp. 34 He 
also devoted a separate study to the Pandora fragment. 85 
Though unfinished and more difficult to analyze, it is almost 
a symbol of the symbolic function itself. As it is the business 
of symbol to harmonize tensions, so with Pandora here. For 
Cassirer explains that the Pandora Goethe has in mind is the 
M Freiheit vnd Form, 409^ 
14 Ibid., 412. 
w "Goethe's Pandora," Zefackrijt fur Xsthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissen- 
$cha}t, XIII, (1919), 116. 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 623 
"all-gifted and all-giving one," the loving dispenser of goods 
to man, the kind and beautiful force that draws men into com- 
munion and fellowship. Like Love, the great ascending and 
descending Daimon of Plato's Symposium, Pandora is the arch- 
mediator, "destined to connect together poverty and plenty, 
finite and infinite, mortality and immortality, and by so doing 
to cement the universe into a whole." 36 
Cassirer watches the Pandora symbol grow, and by following 
the illustration we may get fresh light on this basic interpre- 
tation of art. The tensions that are stated and harmonized 
mount in intensity and depth of meaning. In most general 
terms the opposition running through the whole is that between 
deed and reflection, subjective force and objective seeing, the 
active and contemplative forces in life and being. At one point, 
where Cassirer himself almost turns poet, he suggests that 
we hear in our mind's ear the individual dramatic parts as 
voices brought together contrapuntally in a magnificent fugue. 
Early in the poem where the tension is at its most uncompro- 
mised stage the active pole, Prometheus, represents man's primi- 
tive self-reliant effort to work nature for his basic needs. Measur- 
ing all values in terms of tangible utilities, Prometheus has no 
sympathy for sabbath rest or aesthetic contemplation. The 
early reflective pole, Epimetheus, receives from Pandora a 
floating vision of beautiful natural forms, on water and land, 
in youth and woman. But because form, Gestalt, is at this point 
sheer gift and not achievement, the lovely shapes disintegrate 
and pass away with the passing of natural light. As the contra- 
puntal music thickens, the active moment becomes purposive 
and enlightened cultivation of the arts and sciences} the re- 
flective moment brings justice and the loving co-operation of 
communal life. Then another character, Elf ore thraseia, 
strengthens the reality of the good gifts of Pandora, by bringing 
confident hope. This optimism, however, Cassirer finds balanced 
near the end by the ｅxpression of an old man's serene renuncia- 
tion, renunciation of the belief in the possibility of steady 
maintenance of classic peace and harmony. But there is mastery 
by form even though classic harmony passes. Goethe realizes 
"Ibid., 1 1 6. 
624 KATHARINE GILBERT 
and expresses the realization that the forces that generate the 
changes in being spring within man as well. He accepts the fact 
of his own decline as linked with the larger rhythms in 
things and yields more place to the idea of passage and indi- 
viduality. 
The application to Goethe illuminates Cassirer's conception 
of true art as symbolic form. We understand more vividly after 
the projection on to the Goethean plane how a great poem 
figures forth the conciliating office of living form; how the 
impetus of Faustian, Promethean spirit needs for completeness 
the quieting influence of Helena's and Hellenic beauty and 
the scope and objectivity of Nature's inner rhythm; how the 
self-assertive tendency needs to be controlled by the contem- 
plation of beauty; how social bonds are insufficient without en- 
lightenment, confidence without resignation; how even beauti- 
ful irenic love and classic ideals are subject to time how 
beauty is one aspect of the total life of form. 
Cassirer's application of his concept of art remains on the 
whole within the field of the art of words. For the other arts he 
furnishes us only a general program and occasional allusions. 
We are not, however, without indication of the direction his 
applications might easily have taken in the field of the visual 
arts. In several places the art-historian, Dr. Erwin Panofsky, 
borrows Cassirer's usage of the term "symbolism," praising its 
aptness; and one may, I think, make so bold as to assume that 
this art-historian's rich iconographical studies in the main illus- 
strate what Cassirer would like to have understood as the appli- 
cation of his theory of art to painting and sculpture. The best 
locus for our desired application to the spatial arts is Die Per- 
spektive als "Symbolische Form"* 7 where the very wording of 
the title shows Cassirer's influence. In this learned study Panof- 
sky traces the handling of perspective in painting and drawing 
from classical times to the present and ties the spatial treatment 
throughout with the general Weltanschauung. He demon- 
strates how man's pictorial and plastic portrayals reflect through 
the ages his primary orientation to his environment his place 
in the world his set toward things his middle position be- 
91 Vortrage der Eibliothek Warburg, (1924-1925), 258-330. 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 625 
tween the heavens above and the pit at the center his physical 
consorting with nature what he fundamentally means by here 
and there, between, outside of, near, far all under the in- 
fluence of a changing ultimate sense of values. 
Examples from Panofsky's study should make this clear. For 
period after period he matches the artistic handling of spatial 
relations, the particular variant of perspective worked out by a 
period's artists, with wider tendencies in philosophy and science. 
Thus, while he is converting spatial symbols into historic monu- 
ments, he is at the same time relating these monuments to the 
other major contemporary activities. This is that reinstatement 
of autonomous art to its position among its human kindred 
which Cassirer believes in and which is illustrated in the ex- 
panding movement of our initial schematic outline. 
Panofsky begins with classical antiquity. The artists of this 
time saw their material world loosely held together. The ob- 
jective scene was made up of a plurality of bodies with shapes 
determined by function, and with 'tactile values.' Empty space 
was in this style a nothing simply a remainder. The whole 
field of vision was thus a sum of separate spaces. Now the 
world of the philosopher Democritus was just such an aggre- 
gate: atoms plus a void within which the atoms could move. 
If Democritus be thought not central enough in Greek philoso- 
phy to be taken as the significant background of Greek artistic 
symbolism, then Plato and Aristotle can be drafted. Plato with 
his triangles and receptacle, Aristotle with his nest of forms 
made the space of nature a sum of the places of bodies and 
forms. Neither for classical Greek thought nor for art was there 
an envisioned space that could master and fuse the contents 
of space. 
The quasi-impressionism of Hellenistic landscape and archi- 
tectural interiors cracked the atomistic independence of class- 
ical forms, but, being inconsistent and inconclusive, achieved 
no federating, spatial continuum. In the realm of art this was 
like the Pyrrhonic scepticism which shook the simple positive- 
ness of earlier philosophy, but achieved no system of its own. 
Passing on to the Middle Ages, we find there the gradual 
conquest of spatial unity in art corresponding to the many- 
626 KATHARINE GILBERT 
sided movement of Christian philosophy. In the manuscript 
illuminations and mosaics there was the rhythmic interplay of 
pure gold and colors correspondent to the metaphysics of light 
a metaphysics at first pagan, but then central in Christian 
theology. When St. Thomas made Christian thought Aris- 
totelian in outline, he added a divine outer body, spiritual in 
essence and infinite in power, to Aristotle's set of starry orbits. 
This may be claimed as the analogue of the rising dominance 
in architecture of arched roofings and canopies over lesser 
sculptured forms still a great body ruling lesser bodies, and 
to this degree pluralistic but a kind of unity for all that. 
With the great painters and architects of the Renaissance 
conscious unity arrived. A mathematical theory of perspective 
was constructed in terms of sectioned visual pyramids, and ex- 
pressed itself through chess-board tiled-floors, ground plans, 
etc. Thus a whole of space definitely replaced a space-aggregate. 
The philosophical rationalism of the seventeenth century, with 
all its subsidiary mathematical disciplines, stands in the wide 
world of theory for the perfected system of perspective in art. 
A natural continuum, dispensing with a supernatural over-lord, 
a homogeneous infinite extension of which all particular bodies 
are determinate modes, is contemplated and analyzed. Space 
at last signifies an unbroken web, not a sum of entities. 
Why was this apparent conclusion of the problem of space, 
for art and for philosophy, not a final resting-place? one knows 
that the naturalistic perspective style of the High Renaissance 
yielded to others} and that the Substantial Extension of Des- 
cartes was no last word in Nature-philosophy. We remember 
that symbols are polar, and always retain at their heart an am- 
biguity. The symbolism of naturalistic perspective painting car- 
ries within it the typical tension. The reason that Diirer's "St. 
Jerome" or De Hooch's interiors look like a slice of reality set 
on the canvas is because, paradoxically, the subjective point of 
sight has been so perfectly reckoned with. Where the phe- 
nomenon of art seems most real, there the subjective factor 
enters in most penetratingly. The perspective system of Albert! 
and Piero della Francesca is both a triumph for the reporter 
of fact and for the egotist whose will to power subdues the fact 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 627 
to the individual point of view. once the process of perspective 
representation was mastered, artists began to adapt the cross-cut 
of nature freely to their fancy. The Italian baroque painters 
played freely with the possibilities of an emphasized high-space} 
Altdorfer with oblique space; Rembrandt with near space. This 
variety of space-emphasis in art corresponds once more to 
modern subjectivism in thought. Coming still nearer to our 
own day, everyone knows how in the last few decades the model 
of naturalistic space has been fundamentally defied by Abstrac- 
tionists, Futurists, Surrealists, Dadaists, Suprematists. Such con- 
trol of the organization of the artist's space by an arbitrarily 
accented motive is in harmony with new psychological tenden- 
cies, and a late pervasive irrationalism. There have also been 
sympathetic symptoms from non-Euclidean pangeometry. 
The purpose of this brief summary has been not only to 
exemplify Cassirer's notion of the art-symbol in its characteristic 
form, but to indicate the way art can be both recognized as an 
autonomous activity of spirit and yet restored to the family of 
human functions. There is a typical organization of space in 
painting in the Renaissance j but this treatment of space has 
an underlying kinship with the naturalistic philosophy and 
mathematical sciences of the same centuries. Even so in ex- 
pounding Goethe's Pandora, Cassirer keeps the poem Goethe's 
own, yet points out the kinship with Schelling's metaphysics. 
What came out of genius in that day could hardly miss the 
flood-tide of romantic influence. There is in any case in any 
age a world-outlook characteristically coloring both art and 
philosophy. The most sensitive and profound spectator of a 
picture will, Panofsky thinks, penetrate to what he defines 
as its philosophical layer, where the total habits of the time 
bear subtle witness to themselves. His analysis of the layers of 
meaning in a work of art provides, first, for a superficial layer of 
recognizable and expressive objects and events; a secondary 
layer of literary types; and an ultimate basis of philosophical 
meaning. In his exposition of this last layer Panofsky cites 
Cassirer: ". . . the intrinsic meaning . . . may be defined as a 
unifying principle which underlies and explains both the visible 
event and its intelligible significance, and which determines 
628 KATHARINE GILBERT 
even the form in which the visible event takes shape." 38 "In 
this conceiving of pure forms, motifs, images, stories, and 
allegories as manifestations of underlying principles, we inter- 
pret all these elements as what Ernst Cassirer has called 'sym- 
bolical values'." 89 
The spectator of symbolical values, the third philosophical 
layer, being in his own person aware of the "essential tendencies 
of the human mind," 40 intuits their presence in what is before 
him. He senses the artist's half-conscious communication of a 
habit of spirit, a dominant attitude toward men and things, and 
responds to it, is articulate about it. This fine awareness of 
philosophical habit and spiritual sense, Panofsky, in agreement 
with Cassirer, makes complex. He who intuits it, intuits a many- 
in-one, and an atmosphere surrounding the one. Within the 
"symbolic form" are condensed "symptoms" of the political, 
scientific, religious, and economic tendencies of the age that 
produced the work. The philosophical interpreter reads the 
many symptoms compact in a single frame and knows their 
echoes and analogues. It is the whole life and tone of an age 
that pulses in the image. 
The art-historian will have to check what he thinks is the intrinsic 
meaning of the work . . . against what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning 
of as many other documents of civilizations historically related to that 
work ... as he can master; of documents bearing witness to the 
political, poetical, religious, philosophical, and social tendencies of the 
personality, period, or country under investigation. ... It is in the search 
for intrinsic meanings or content that the various humanistic disciplines 
meet on a common plane instead of serving as hand-maidens to each 
other. 41 
The work of art as symbolic form is in the middle position of 
a spiritual circuit which runs from personal creator to the 
whole cultural scope of the age, back and forth, and round 
and round. It is the chief home of the busy messenger Eros 
Eros here himself a symbol. 
88 Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 5. 
"Ibid., 8. 
*/, 15. 
41 Ibid., 1 6. 
CASSIRER'S PLACEMENT OF ART 629 
We have now completed the account of that two-fold move- 
ment of thought in the course of which Cassirer frees art from 
alien domination, defines it as an autonomous symbol, and then 
recharges its connection with the principal human activities. 
Such a theory of art as Cassirer's, instructed as it is by the 
movement of culture, the history of aesthetic theory, and the 
phenomena of art, is bound to be largely satisfactory. It pro- 
vides for the two main classical factors of clear control and 
sensuous richness. It stands by art's autonomy. In adding to 
the notions struck out by the thought of the great German 
classical period later ideas of historical style and tragic tran- 
sience, Cassirer leaves in the main little to be desired by the 
traditional lovers and students of art. But the question does 
arise whether the philosophy of overcome polarity, of subject 
and object, their tensions and syntheses, furnishes not a pos- 
sible frame of art-critical reference for recent developments in 
art, for this it obviously does but at present the most appro- 
priate and illuminating one. I am not clear whether Cassirer 
would say: "My view is elastic enough to receive recent experi- 
ments," or would say: "My view cannot and ought not so to do. 
For the recent achievement is wandering rather than a genuine 
advance." At any rate the polar pattern of Cassirer's symbol 
seems a little too balanced and full of grace when approached 
from immersion in Eliot, Auden, Picasso and Stravinsky. The 
very meaning of polarity derives from common-sense percep- 
tion and the ordinary interplay of organism and environment. 
Sapient seeing itself and reconstructed interplay leave normal 
vision and normal practice as axes of reference. However, one 
guesses that Cassirer's own thought feels the impact of the less 
contemplative and more electrically and experimentally gen- 
erated symbolism of recent years, as he writes his latest chapter 
on the subject of art. He speaks of the "new force" as well as 
of the "new form" of artj 42 he quotes Leibniz's definition of 
perfection as "enhancement of being" and is at pains to note the 
contribution of Leibniz's functionalism to the newer aesthetics. 
"It is," he says, "the intensification of our dynamic energies that 
we seek and find in art." This last phrase certainly marks the 
49 Essay on Man, 154. 
630 KATHARINE GILBERT 
direction in which recent art has moved. The art of the genera- 
tion between the wars yielded more intensity and force than 
harmony and centralized form. Its experiments in denser pack- 
ing of tones and metaphors and its series of cubistic experi- 
ments, have excited interest, but the results have oftener main- 
tained suspense and deepened art's resources than resolved 
tensions. A deeply boring curiosity and demonic wit have finely 
fractioned and strangely fused the old vocabulary and grammar. 
one feels that Cassirer increasingly savors the qualities of the 
new aesthetic ways and would recognize the place of today's 
art beside the new physics and psychology in the social picture 
and humanistic circle. Would he find wanting the completion of 
its own peculiar task: the achievement or promise of a symbol, 
after war and exploration, of peace and a valid humanism? 
KATHARINE GILBERT 
DEPARTMENT OF AESTHETICS, ART AND Music 
DUKE UNIVERSITY 
i8 
Harry Slochower 
ERNST CASSIRER'S FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO 
ART AND LITERATURE 
i8 
ERNST CASSIRER'S FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO 
ART AND LITERATURE 
A RT and literature occupy a more pervasive location in the 
JTJJL writings of Ernst Cassirer than they do in any other 
modern philosopher since Nietzsche. Four of his books are 
largely devoted to theories of aesthetics and to studies of 
Holderlin, Lessing, Schiller, Kleist and Goethe. Furthermore, 
questions involving the nature and process of art-forms are 
also raised in his other more general works. 
A study of Cassirer's view on art and literature requires 
an examination of its context in his system as a whole. Even 
as Cassirer writes that the various cultural functions "cannot 
be reduced to a common denominator," he insists that they 
"complete and complement one another." 1 Indeed, a striking 
feature of Cassirer's philosophy, as developed in Philosophie 
der symboUschen Formen and in An Essay on M.an y is its 
strategy of showing that science, language, myth, religion, his- 
tory and art form an organic unity located in a common struc- 
tural framework. Although, following Kant, Cassirer ascribes 
to art a degree of autonomy, he views it as a phase in the 
process of human culture and bound up with its basic directives. 
Thus, he would show the principle connecting Greek drama 
with Greek philosophy, classical and romantic literature and 
aesthetics with the systems of Leibniz, Newton, Shaftesbury, 
Kant, Fichte, Rousseau, and Hegel. 2 
However, art-problems are not simply an integral part of 
1 An Essay on Man, (New Haven, 1944), 228. 
* Logos Dike Kosmos in der Entwicklung der griechischen Philosofhie, 
Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift XL VII, (Goteborg, 194.1), 4, i5ff. Die Philosophie 
der Aufklarung, (Tubingen, 1932). Freiheit und Form. Studien zur deutschen 
Geistesgeschichte, (Berlin, 1922). Idee und Gestalt. Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, 
Kleist (Berlin, 1924). Rousseau Kant Goethe, (Princeton, 1945). 
633 
634 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
Cassirer's philosophy, but offer the most characteristic amplifica- 
tion of his method and system. This essay will attempt to dem- 
onstrate that an understanding of Cassirer's view on art and 
literature is indispensable for gaining the full import of his 
basic category, "function," in which a dialectic method is ap- 
plied to and verified by concrete, material forms leading to a 
free social act. The point will be developed by an analysis of 
1. Cassirer's strategy and leading principles. 
2. Their objectification in his approach to 
a. Art and aesthetic theory 
b. Literary personalities, particularly Goethe. 
Finally, we shall indicate the limitation and the fruitfulness of 
Cassirer's approach with reference to contemporary problems 
of art and literary criticism. 
METHOD 
The initial impression gained from some of Cassirer's works 
is that they are learned treatises on the history of philosophy, 
science, culture, and art. Indeed, Cassirer has been criticized 
for showing greater interest in citing other men's theories than 
in stating a position of his own. It is true that his writings 
contain extensive quotations from a great number of sources, 
and that his studies on aesthetic theory, on Goethe, etc., trace 
their historical development. However, this documentation is 
not merely a matter of scholarly learning. Cassirer's specific 
employment of the historical method, as we shall see, is a char- 
acteristic function of his philosophic method. 
Cassirer's primary concern in all of his investigations is 
method. "All unity of the intellectual form which comprises 
a system," he writes, "is finally grounded in (method)." 
Method is "the most objective and the most personal element 
in every philosophy." Cassirer is persuaded that a difference in 
method makes a difference in the direction taken by content. 
This is the point he would establish in discussing Lamprecht's 
philosophy of history, Schiller's and Kleist's manipulation of 
Kantian concepts, etc. In these analyses, Cassirer is less con- 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE 635 
cerned with content and conclusion than with the method 
through which they are reached and in which they are 
grounded. 8 
Stated generally, Cassirer's method consists in examining the 
interplay of the particular and the universal in a dialectic dy- 
namic process. He investigates the individual perspective in 
its interaction with the over-all view reached, and its merging 
with a philosophic tradition. The essay on Holderlin, for 
example, would demonstrate that the poet shares many of the 
tenets held by German idealism, but that they take on a differ- 
ent significance and color for him, because in his case they are 
rooted in other intellectual presuppositions. For the same 
reason, Holderlin's own contributions vary from the tenets 
which he took over from the founders of idealism. Throughout, 
it is this "dual process of taking and giving" which Cassirer 
traces, as in discussing the relations of Goethe to Plato, Spinoza, 
Newton, of Rousseau and Kleist to Kant, etc. 4 Everywhere, he 
moves in a dialectic rhythm to establish what separates and 
what unites different personalities and movements. 
This centering on method is, however, not in the interests 
of denying basic assumptions and principles. To be sure, Cas- 
sirer keeps himself aloof from the traditional metaphysical 
substance. In the manner of the Marburg School, to which he 
belongs, he converts Kant's thing-in-itself into a dynamic un- 
ending process. Yet, Cassirer also rejects the traditional brands 
of positivism, empiricism, and rationalism. Enumeration of em- 
pirical data, he notes, can establish no law, and the rationalistic 
law gained by abstracting from particular manifestations is to 
him an "impoverishment of reality." Nor may Cassirer's focus 
on method be linked to Dewey's instrumentalism; for he is 
opposed to the pragmatic denial of substance and certainty. In 
so far as pragmatism identifies truth and utility, it is but "a 
philosophic catch-word." Progress in knowledge is not deter- 
mined by variations in need, "but by the universal intellectual 
9 Idee und Gestalt, 83, 97^., xySff. Essay on Man, 201 f. 
*ldee and Gestalt, 118, 338., 1788., Rousseau Kant Goethe, loc. cit., Goethe 
und die geschichtlkhe Welt, (Berlin, 1932). 
636 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
postulate of unity and continuity." All forms of human activity 
must be traced back "to a common origin," must be imbedded 
in their "general structural principles." A philosophy of cul- 
ture involves viewing facts "as a system, as an organic whole." 
Philosophy must hold to the idea of invariance. 5 
The idea of a leading principle requires that, in some sense, 
the part represents the whole. The specific nature of Cassirer's 
problem, however, is to find a methodology through which the 
part would represent the whole and by which it would in turn 
be represented in the whole. Stated summarily, his method 
aims at discovering principles manifested in their function and 
form. 
SERIAL ORDER AS FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE 
Cassirer's term for this principle is "serial order" ("Reihen- 
ordnung"). The question posed is not what characteristics are 
common to various elements, but what are the conditions 
according to which one element is arranged and connected with 
another and follows from it. As formulated in Die Philoso^hie 
der symbolischen Formen: 
A series of terms a, b, c, d, . . . are to be perceived as "belonging" 
together, are to be connected by a rule on the basis of which the 
"issuance" of the one from the other can be determined and pre- 
dicted. . . . The elements a, b, c, d, . . . are arranged in a manner 
that they can be ... regarded as terms in a series xi, X2, xs, X4 . . . 
which is characterized by a definite "general member." 6 
The most elementary sensory plane presents structural ele- 
ments, such as congruence or opposition, similarity or dis- 
similarity. The point is also illustrated by the phenomenon 
of memory. More is required for memory than mere repetition 
of former events and impressions. These must be ordered and 
8 Substance and Function, (Chicago-London, 1923), 317, 3195 Essay on Man, 
68, 69, 172, 222. Article on "Substance," Encyclopaedia Britannica, i4th ed., 
(1928), vol. XXVI. 
*The principle "stellt ein Neben- und Nach-Einander auf, das fortschreitend 
in ein In-Einander umgesetzt werden soil." Philosophic der symbolischen Formen, 
Dritter Teil, (Berlin, 1929), 482. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE 637 
located in time. "Such a location is not possible without con- 
ceiving time as a general scheme as a serial order which com- 
prises all the individual events." What is sought are analogous 
correspondences within empirical variations. Both Substance and 
Function and Philosophic der symbolischen Formen emphasize 
that the whole must not be conceived as an absolute outside of 
all possible experience. "It is nothing else than the ordered 
totality of these possible experiences themselves." 7 Serial order 
makes for a philosophic system "in which each separate form 
gains its meaning purely by the position which it occupies, 
where its content and import are marked by the wealth and the 
individuality of relations and implications through which it is 
connected with other human forces, and finally with their 
totality." The analogous "inner form" of culture lies in "the 
conditioning principle of its structure," in which the individual 
relation does not lose its uniqueness by its interrelation with 
other human energies. This produces an abiding unity of basic 
patterns (Grundgestalteri) . The very relational network in 
which separate contents of consciousness are interwoven contains 
a reference to other contents. These references mean that there 
are certain forms (Gebilde) of consciousness. The form- 
principle which finally emerges lies above but not beyond 
the material forms from which they originally stem. 
The unity thus achieved is "a functional unity." It involves 
change which is "directed toward constancy, while constancy 
reaches consciousness in change" Objectivity is determined 
functionally, that is in "the manner and form of its objectifica- 
tion." The "thing in itself" apart from its function is a false 
problem. The life of Reality is constituted by the manifold 
fullness of human forms which has the stamp of functional ob- 
jectivity. The problem of Reality issues into a phenomenology 
of human culture. 8 
Cassirer's functional unity is not one of specific materials > of 
products or effects. It involves a concept of causality which, in 
T Ibid. 9 494 > Essay on Man, 51 j Substance and Function, 292. 
* Philosofhie der syntbolischen Formen, Erster Teil, (Berlin, 1923), 14, 12, 
4 iff., 47-8. Dritter Teil, 19. Essay on Man, 52 
638 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
contrast to the mechanistic and teleologic, probes "the creative 
process" itself. From this approach, the "distinguishing mark" 
of man "is not his metaphysical or physical nature but his 
work. ... It is the system of human activities which defines and 
determines the circle of 'humanity'." Cassirer's philosophy 
transforms substance into function and essence into relation. 
The creative value in the method of functional structure 
lies in that it permits us not only to maintain order in the rela- 
tionship of the "real" with the "real," but to pass from the 
"real" to the "possible." It enables us, for example, to foresee 
what color-nuance belongs to a given series of colors, even if 
we never experienced it before. Cassirer cites the scheme of 
Heinrich Wolfflin as a structural view in the history of art. 
From his study of different art-modes, Wolfflin derived the 
categories of "Classic" and "Baroque." These terms do not 
simply describe, nor are they exhausted by particular historical 
periods, but designate general structural patterns. Wolfflin 
naturally refers to the works of Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt 
and Velasquez j yet, what he analyzes is "the schema" which 
their works embody. It follows from Cassirer's stress on the 
creative process of man's work that reality can never be ex- 
hausted. In the spirit of Hermann Cohen's notion of an 
"unendliche Aujgabe? it is a question of "an ever progressive 
process of determination." 9 It is here that the historical method 
emerges as an integral aspect of Cassirer's functional approach. 
HISTORICAL PROCESS AND FREEDOM 
Cassirer's historical procedure is based on an idealistic orienta- 
tion translated into the constructive act. Basing himself on neo- 
Kantian epistemology, Cassirer holds that forms of culture, 
from language to art, do not refer to physical objects, but are 
ｅxpressions of human feelings and concepts. The latter have a 
* Essay on Man, 71, 70, 68, 69. Philosophic der symbolischen Formen, Dritter 
Tell, 496. Here, Cassirer opposes Hume on the basis of a relational and Gestalt- 
psychology. In a similar way, he analyzes the Theory of Relativity as functional 
objectivity. Ibid, 55 iff. Philosophic der symbolischen Formen,, Erster Teil, 22. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE 639 
productive and constructive function, and must be studied, not 
simply in their final products, but in their process. Instead of 
viewing concepts in their static completed form, "we want to, 
so to speak, grasp them in statu nascendi." Historical process is 
the vehicle through which the creative-dynamic and functional- 
dialectic nature of man's world becomes concretized in time. It is 
not simply a review, but a construction or a "prophecy of the 
past." Symbolic reality itself requires "symbolic reconstruc- 
tion." Because its subject matter is human life and culture, 
history is not an exact science, and its "last and decisive act is 
always an act of the imagination." 10 Genuine historical time is 
not biological, as Bergson thought, but involves an act of will 
as well as a contemplative moment. Cassirer also opposes 
Nietzsche's argument that the study of history enfeebles our 
activistic powers. Rightly employed, history "strengthens! our 
responsibility with regard to the future." We study the past, 
not in order to escape into a lost paradise. on the contrary, only 
to the extent the human mind . . . develops in a futuristic 
direction can it find itself in the framework of the past." As 
Goethe puts it, genuine longing must here too be 'productive:' 
It should seek out the past "in order to grasp and view it as 
a symbol of the lasting and enduring." 11 The. study of history 
is determined by our futuristic perspective. Cassirer's own 
analysis of the historical connection between Logos, Dike and 
Kosmos in Greek philosophy is motivated by "anxiety over our 
human freedom. We know that (our) future is most heavily 
endangered unless we succeed to link truth and justice, Logos 
and Dike in the same way as the Greeks linked them in the 
history of man." Historical form involves the element of 
freedom. 
This element prevents history from being an exact science. 
Yet, it is not therefore subjective idiosyncrasy. It is not ego- 
10 Essay on Man, 131, 178, 177, 191, 69, 204. Logos Dike Kosmos, 4. 
11 Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, Dritter Teil, 21 of., 218. Freiheit 
und Form, 5755 Essay on Man, 179. See also Wissenschaft, Bildung, Weltans- 
chauung, (1928), 30, quoted in Philosophy and History, Essays presented to 
Ernst Cassirer, (Oxford, 1936), 141-42. 
640 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
centric, but anthropomorphic. The rules which bind the scien- 
tist hold for the historian as well. History too has "a general 
structural scheme" by means of which it can classify, order, and 
organize disconnected facts. What history aims at is an "objec- 
tive anthropomorphism." 
The historical method which Cassirer uses in his analysis of 
art and other cultural activities follows from his general func- 
tional approach. History is the form in which the laws of 
human behaviour are enacted by way of symbolic construction 
and reinterpretation. To know the whole, we must present it in 
its functional acts. Conversely, the parts represent the whole. 
This is the character assumed by the "natural" symbolism of 
consciousness. 12 
THE DIALECTIC OF FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE 
Cassirer's historical procedure contains the dialectic notion 
that all creative effort contributes towards the dynamic process 
of reality by its very dramatic location in that process. Cassirer 
agrees with Whitehead in opposing the method of "simple loca- 
tion." Older methods are not to be eliminated, but referred 
to "a new intellectual center." He sees no either-or between 
the descriptive and the exact procedures, but would relate both 
to two different aspects of a general problem. Nor would he 
choose among the psychological, sociologic and historic meth- 
ods, between the proponents of Van pour I* art and the opposing 
method of I. A. Richards. Likewise, he rejects the theory of 
Windelband and Rickert that history is a logic of individuals, 
whereas natural science is a logic of universals. Cassirer points 
out that "thought is always universal," and that a judgment 
also contains an element of particularity. Where others see 
irresolvable antinomies, Cassirer seeks the plane from which 
they may be viewed as partial aspects of a more inclusive whole. 
"It is characteristic of the nature of man that he is not limited to 
one specific and single approach to reality but can choose his 
point of view and so pass from one aspect to another." Thereby, 
** Logos Dike Kosmos, 235 Essay on Man, 69, 191. PMlosophie der $ym- 
bolischen Formen, Erster Tcil, 43. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE 641 
the general and the particular, content and form, element and 
relation become reciprocal correlates. Such union of the typical 
with the specific provides "a kind of grammar of the symbolic 
function as such." 13 The point is bound up with Cassirer's 
concept of "theory." 
In Substance and Function, the form of knowledge was seen 
as identical with that of the exact sciences. Philoso'phie der 
symbolischen Formen enlarges the concept of "theory" to 
show that genuine theoretical forms and motivations also ob- 
tain for the world of perception. Yet, even the earlier work 
draws a distinction between the universality obtained in mathe- 
matics and mathematical physics and that gained in fields 
where perception enters. The former uses an abstractive pro- 
cedure, "selecting from a plurality of objects only the similar 
properties and neglecting the rest." Herein lies its limitation. 
"Through this sort of reduction, what is merely a $art has 
taken the place of the original sensuous whole. This part, 
however, claims to characterize and explain the whole." Selec- 
tion, on the basis of the similarity-principle, is one-sided, for 
it disregards "things and their properties." Thus, in passing 
from the particular to the universal, we reach "the paradoxical 
result . . . that all the logical labor which we apply to a given 
sensuous intuition serves only to separate us more and more 
from it." For this reason, modern logic opposes abstract uni- 
versality by concrete universality as in the logic of the mathe- 
matical concept of function. And, even though this form of 
logic is not confined to mathematics, but is applicable to other 
fields, a distinction remains between the space of sense-percep- 
tion and the space of geometry. In the former, space-differentia- 
tion is connected with the content of sensation. This is not the 
case in geometrical space. Here, "the principle of absolute 
homogeneity of spatial points denies all differences, like the 
difference of above and below, which concern only the relation 
of outer things to bodies, and thus belong to a particular em- 
pirically given object." The logic of mathematics and of 
mathematical physics "forbids any . . . identification of the 
18 Essay on Man, 50, 68, 50, i66f., i86f., 170. Substance and Function, 
314. Phttosofhie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil, 18-19, 32. 
642 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
exact and the descriptive methods." Here lies the contrast be- 
tween science and art. Even as the work of the great natural 
scientists has an element of "spontaneity and productivity," 
their particular type of abstraction impoverishes reality. Science 
is concerned with the uniformity of laws, rather than with the 
diversity of intuition, with conceptual depth, tracing phenomena 
back to their first causes, rather than with visual, audible, and 
tactile forms. 14 
ART AS THE DIALECTIC OF CONCRETE TOTALITY 
Cassirer regards the Platonic dialogue as the basic intellectual 
form of all dialectics. And he pays tribute to Hegel as the 
organizer of this method. But he sees HegePs limitation in that 
the resolution in his dialectic issues from the pure movement of 
thought, and in that it pretends to be final. Hegel, to be sure, 
did speak of the "concrete universal," and in the second part 
of his Phenomenology, his Philosophy of History, and else-t 
where, attempted to show the location of physical and individual 
existence in the dialectic scheme. Yet, Cassirer regards HegePs 
dialectic as moving mainly in the realm of the speculative idea. 
Furthermore, in its pretense at exhaustive "syntheses," it vio- 
lates the process of human acts and feelings. 
Cassirer's insistence is on the concreteness and materiality of 
cultural forms. Traditional metaphysical dualisms are bridged 
insofar as it can be shown that "the pure function of the spiritual 
must seek its concrete fulfillment in the physical," And, it is 
because art is in the most favorable position to fulfill this task 
that Cassirer finds in it the richest function of reality. Cassirer's 
philosophy itself reaches its own most eloquent ｅxpression in 
his discussion of art and literature. Here his writing is at its 
most engaging and animated, metaphor, style, and imagery 
moving in rhythm with the subject discussed. 
Art gives us "a richer, more vivid and more colorful image 
of reality" than science. 15 This is so because artists and writers 
14 Philosofhle der symbolischen Formen, Dritter Teil, V. Substance and Func- 
tion, 6, 1 6, i8f., 21, 105. Essay on Man, 220, 169. 
15 Idee und Gestalt, io8f., Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, Erster Teil, 
19. Essay on Man, 170, 207. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE 643 
replace an abstract-conceptual dialectic by the material-content- 
ual dialectic. Furthermore, they are nearer to reality in that they 
do not pretend to offer a final resolution of conflict, but present 
this conflict practically in its entire depth. on this account, 
Cassirer pays tribute to Holderlin's "dialectic of feeling," 
Kleist's "dramatic dialectic" which issues from forms and char- 
acters, rather than from tendencies and ideas. Whereas other 
forms of symbolic activity combine the universal with the par- 
ticular, art comes nearest to this goal because it communicates 
through an immanent symbolism. Its immanence appears two- 
fold: every work of art has specific individuality, and it has 
sensuous form. This holds not alone for the arts which manipu- 
late materials (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), but also 
for poetry and music which work in a sensuous medium, in 
images, sounds, rhythms. For Cassirer, the mode and design 
are "necessary moments of the productive process itself." An 
artist does not merely "feel"j he must externalize what he 
feels and imagines in visible, audible, or tangible embodiment. 
He works not simply "in a particular medium in clay, bronze, 
or marble but in sensuous forms, in rhythms, in color pat- 
terns, in lines and design, in plastic shapes. . . . Free from all 
mystery, they are patent and unconcealed." Shakespeare illus- 
trated this aspect of poetic imagination in Midsummer Night's 
Dream: 
And, as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. 
In that the realists of the nineteenth century concentrated on 
"the material aspect of things," they had a "keener insight into 
the art process than their romantic adversaries." Likewise, 
Croce errs in minimizing the material factor as having only 
technical, not aesthetic importance. 16 
The concept of "form" is central to Cassirer's scheme. And, 
in character with the nature of his philosophy, the term itself 
und Gestalt, 155, aot. Essay on Man, 207, 170, 141!., 154, 157, 153. 
644 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
appears in varying functional imports. We can distinguish four 
different and overlapping meanings: 
1. Form as material embodiment. 
2. Form as organized construction. 
3. Form as imaginative reconstruction and transcendence. 
4. Form as Law, or as the unifying functional principle 
among different phenomena. 
Cassirer's high evaluation of art is due to the fact that it 
combines these various aspects of form. We have already spoken 
of the art-form as material embodiment. But art is more than 
material form: it organizes and shapes this material. It is not 
simply an "imitation" of reality, as the naturalists claim, and 
it is more than emotional "ｅxpression," as Croce and Romantic 
theorists argue. It expresses emotion in a disciplined way and 
through an act of construction. Yet, this act of construction 
does not render art subjective. Great works of art "reveal a 
deep unity and continuity" which reside in their structural unity 
by which they organize and reconstruct experience. The process 
of selection is also a process of objectification. 
Law in art-form does not preclude but contains the element 
of transcendence or freedom. As the most anthropomorphic of 
cultural pursuits, art possesses a teleologic structure, and ex- 
presses "an activity of the mind." This activity does not re- 
ceive sense impressions passively, but gives them a dynamic 
life of forms. The symbolic nature of art moves it beyond 
mere ｅxpression and mere representation towards "an intensifi- 
cation of reality." Whereas art conforms to the same funda- 
mental task as other forms of culture, unlike science, it does not 
eliminate but intensifies the personal and the individual ele- 
ment. Art-forms are specific, but not static. Their concretion is 
a continuous process revealing a mobile order which is the 
dynamic process of life itself. "Pregnant with infinite possi- 
bilities which remain unrealized in ordinary sense experience," 
they transform our passions into "a free and active state." 
Freedom is once more Cassirer's final value, freedom to shape 
and construct human life in accordance with the limits im- 
posed by the structural forms of our world. 17 
* Essay on Man, 151, 143, i44f., 149. A stimulating view of art along 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE 645 
The functional and dialectic aspect of art also appears in 
genuine aesthetic experience. Here too a dialectic relationship 
must obtain where we would understand a work of art, involv- 
ing an element of empathy and a ready attitude to enter into 
the artist's perspective. It is not simply a question of extracting 
"pleasure" from art, as the hedonistic theory claims, but to 
gain a sense of freedom through absorption in dynamic forms, 
and in turn by reconstructing them towards new emerging func- 
tions. 
AESTHETIC THEORY 
Cassirer's category of function appears in his own analysis 
and demonstration of particular materials. That is, it becomes 
more completely meaningful in its own concrete functioning. In 
the field of art and literature, his studies comprise analyses of 
aesthetic theories, examination of individual critics and artists, 
and consideration of specific art-works. Throughout, Cassirer's 
principle of functional objectivity makes itself felt through the 
manner in which the general thesis appears in its particular form, 
and the central argument is ever felt amidst the rich multi- 
plicity of detailed historical data. 
The problem set in Cassirer's historical account of aesthetic 
(as well as philosophic and moral) theories is to show their 
gradual development to the point where the ideas of freedom 
and form appear as reciprocal functions. 18 Before Kant, Cassirer 
points out, German aesthetics (Gottsched, Bodmer, Breitinger) 
was dominated by rationalistic categories. Alexander Baum- 
garten's Aesthetka does distinguish between the logic of the 
imagination and the logic of reason, but relegates the former to 
a lower plane. The aesthetic is conceived as the lowest logical, 
not as an extra-logical function. The notion of form dominant 
here and in the Italian and French neo-classicists is a form of 
similar lines is offered by G. Kepes in Language of Vision, (Chicago, 1944), iaff. 
"The experience of an image is ... a creative act of integration. . . . Here is 
a basic discipline of forming, that 'is, thinking in terms of structure. . . . This 
new language can and will enable the human sensibility to perceive space-time 
relationships never recognized before. . . . Visual language . . . must absorb the 
dynamic idioms of the visual imagery, to mobilize the creative imagination for 
positive social action, and direct it toward positive social goals." 
"Particularly in Freihgit und Form, loc. cit. 
646 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
reason, not of sensuous matter. Art is but to reproduce the 
beautiful in nature, leaving no room for freedom or for the 
power of the imagination. The romantic theory, on the other 
hand, stressed almost exclusively the free poetic imagination 
as the clue to reality. And by dissolving the distinction between 
poetry and philosophy, art became a universal product, rather 
than the work of an individual artist. By this emphasis on art 
as a symbolic representation of the infinite, the Romanticists 
left no place for the finite world of sense experience. Their 
universal freedom was beyond the world of finite and deter- 
mined form. 
The discussion of historical aesthetic movements is supple- 
mented by analysis of specific writers on aesthetics. It extends 
frohi the general philosophic and aesthetic examinations of 
Shaftesbury, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Rousseau, 
Herder, Hamann and Wincklemann to concrete exemplifica- 
tion of art-theory in the drama and poetry of Lessing, Holder- 
lin, Schiller, and, above all, Goethe. Everywhere, Cassirer 
would show what connects and what distinguishes the various 
writers. And faithful to his strategy, he employs a different 
method in each case. 
In Lessing, Schiller and Goethe, Cassirer finds the nearest 
dialectic fusion of freedom and form in German classical litera- 
ture, with Kant as the most potent stimulant. 19 Lessing held 
that drama must be examined not only for its climax and con- 
clusion, but for the law of its construction. Foreshadowing 
Kant, Lessing saw in the freedom of creative genius the source 
of artistic necessity. The genius does "freely" what objective 
formal rules demand. And, in his stress that action is the 
primal ingredient of poetry, Lessing stated the objective of 
art itself to be that of producing inner movement. 
19 Through his rejection of English empiricism with its doctrine of "receptivity,'* 
Shaftesbury is credited with providing the seeds for a philosophic aesthetic which 
helped shape German intellectual history. Following English Platonism instead, 
Shaftesbury sought the beautiful not in the rtalm of the formed, but in activity, 
in the creative principle of forming. ("The Beautifying not the BeautifyM is 
the really Beautiful." Shaftesbury). Cf. Cassirer's Die Platonische Renaissance 
und die Schule von Cambridge, (Leipzig, Berlin, 1932), niff., 1381". 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE . 647 
In the case of Schiller, Cassirer traces his development from 
a eudaemonistic and rationalistic ideal of truth to the point where 
art appears as autonomous, not as a means to truth or ethics. 
Through Kant, Schiller came to realize that art finds its form 
and purpose in itself, and that the aesthetic acts as a mediator 
between the theoretic and practical realms. But, whereas Kant 
demands or postulates this mediation, Schiller, as artist, knows 
it as such. Kant's principles become "Triebe?* for Schiller. He 
sees the tension and resolution not as a static relation of concepts, 
but as a dynamic process. It is precisely here that Kant's tran- 
scendental methd begins to go over into the dialectic method 
of his followers. "In setting up the basic opposition between) 
stuff and form, receptivity and spontaneity, Kant proceeds as a 
transcendental analyst, . . . Schiller as dramatist." Schiller's 
"Spieltrieb" synthesizes "Formtrieb" and "Stofftrieb" which 
belong to the realm of Ideas without however leaving the 
sensuous world. Beauty for him is "freedom incarnate" (Frei- 
heit in der Erscheimmg). The analogy between the genuine 
work of art and the living organic form lies in that both are 
determined by a self-given rule. Herein Schiller reveals the 
highest degree of sensuous dialectic thought. 20 
GOETHE 
Cassirer's treatment of historical personalities and theories 
is such that at times one feels that he is identifying himself 
with them. This flows from his notion that the past is to be 
treated as a living force, not merely effective in the present, 
but closely interlocked with it. Still, Cassirer does distinguish 
between greater or lesser historic truth and error, validity and 
limitation, and we can thereby distinguish Cassirer's own posi- 
tion from those he presents. In one instance, however, this 
distinction almost disappears. It is in Cassirer's discussion of 
Goethe that one senses something like complete identification 
between author and subject. Indeed, some of Cassirer's very 
formulations on the role of form in art are identical with those 
* Rousseau Kant Goethe, 875 Freiheit und Form, 156, 4*iF.j Idee und 
Gcstalt, 8 iff., 90, 102. 
648 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
ascribed by him to Goethe. Likewise, Cassirer's principle of 
"serial order" appears completely illustrated in his presenta- 
tion of Goethe's own method in the natural sciences. The same 
holds for other problems, such as causation, the role of 
hypotheses, etc. 21 Cassirer is here at one with the German tradi- 
tion, particularly from Nietzsche to Thomas Mann, which 
looks to Goethe as the inspiring prototype. 
Goethe appears, in Cassirer's studies, as the highest develop- 
ment in the historical relation between form and freedom. 22 
For Schiller, natural law is in conflict with the idea of freedom 5 
for Goethe, it is in harmony with nature. Hence, Schiller regards 
the ethical imperative of freedom as the most inclusive cate- 
gory. For Goethe, objective existence itself provides the ma- 
terial for freedom. 
Cassirer's method avoids the traditional approach to Goethe 
in terms of "phases" and "periods," which gives parts instead 
of a whole. The problem is to show the inner unity and basic 
forms of Goethe's life, poetry, drama, science, etc., "to show 
how the same law operates in all ... that they are various 
symbols for one and the same living connection." This is 
the method Goethe himself employed in striving to find a cen- 
tral "pregnant point." Moreover, appreciation of Goethe's 
work requires more than seizing on his conclusions. The ap- 
proach must be functional: the results are to be shown as they 
were arrived at through the concrete process of his life and art. 
It was Hellenic art which helped shape the substance of 
Goethe's thought. It taught him that the content and essence of 
art and nature are analogous. 
Wie Natur im Vielgebilde 
Einen Gott nur offenbart, 
So im weiten Kunstgebilde 
Webt ein Sinn der ew'gen Art. 
From then on, Goethe's view on art struggles towards the 
typical, or the "Urbild" This type is not a fixed schema, but 
"a norm which cannot be known and grasped except through 
* Essay on Man, 140$ Freiheit und Form, 32iff.j Idee und Gestalt, 48fL, 57!. 
** Cassirer sees Greek philosophy and tragedy as the first to have expressed the 
connection between freedom and law. Logos Dike Kosmos, 22. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE , 649 
the regulated changes from one individual structure to the 
next." This does not exclude the method of abstraction a 
method Goethe did not reject, but use. Yet, Goethe's abstractive 
method does not detach itself from individual phenomena, but 
presents the totality in all of its combinations. It is not a prag- 
matic norm, for it seeks the structural processes in which various 
distinct moments interpenetrate. Cassirer gives something like 
a restatement of his own logical method when he writes that 
Goethe leaned towards that method in logic in which a law is 
based on the continuity of individual parts rather than of 
classes , which gives a series bound together by firm princi- 
ples. He calls attention to Goethe's term "ultimate phenom- 
enon" (Urfhanomen), as combining the Platonic concept of 
eternal Ideas with the notion of sensuous "phenomena." The 
Urphanomen appears in a dialectic play of antitheses (Polaritat 
and Steigemng), ultimately reducible to the basic antithesis of 
rest and motion. Every complete poem of Goethe's shows this 
blending of motion and structure, of individuality and totality, 
of freedom and form. All Being finds its fulfillment in Becom- 
ing, and there is no Becoming in which Being is not present. 
In that we think of the two (the "simultaneous" and the "suc- 
cessive") as united, we reach the plane of the "Idea." 
However, only the direction of this process, not its goal, is 
knowable. The essence of all true symbolism lies precisely in 
that here the particular represents the general not as a dream 
and shadow, but in Goethe's formulation "as a living and im- 
mediate revelation of the unfathomable." 23 Here, Goethe is at 
one with the greatest artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci. His no- 
tion that "the beautiful is a manifestation of secret natural laws 
which would be eternally hidden from us, if they did not come 
into concrete appearance," is altogether in Leonardo's sense. 
This reveals Goethe's relation to traditional metaphysics. In 
his essay "Goethe und Platon," Cassirer points out that, whereas 
in Plato becoming was the limit of knowledge, in Goethe it is 
transformed into a presupposition and a form of knowledge. As 
43 Idee und Gestalt, 137. Freiheit und Form, 277-79, 37> 3 IX > 3 2 7> 37^1 
412. Cf. the essay, "Goethe and the Philosophic Quest," by Slochower, H., in the 
Germanic Review, vol. VIII, No. 3, (July, 1933). 
650 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
an artist, he saw no antinomy between idea and experience. A 
work of art demands sensuous concretion of the Idea. With 
Plato, Goethe also saw the beautiful as an ｅxpression of truth 
and law. But for him, this truth cannot be measured or replaced 
by another. Its truth is that of the image, the highest moment 
of appearance. Plato rejected art, since it does not drive from 
nature to the Idea, but stays at the reproduction of the image. 
But to Goethe art was the realm where man both stays aloof 
from and also binds himself most firmly to the world. In it, we 
are no longer in the sphere of the sensuous, yet still stand 
within the periphery of the perceptual. It is the real mediator 
between idea and appearance. 24 
Goethe's "corporeal" {gegenstandlhhei) thinking is again 
shown in Cassirer's discussion of specific works, such as Pandora 
and Faust. His analysis of Pandora would demonstrate "how 
the artistic image gradually takes on the stamp of the idea and 
the idea takes on the stamp of the image and the sensation." In 
contrast to Platonic thinking (to which this poetic drama bears 
an inner relation), the idea has sensuous form. And "form" does 
not pertain to a transcendental plane, but emerges in the midst 
of the dynamics of life. Yet, the final truth is that man can 
never grasp the realm of form. His real formative power is not 
in the contemplation but in the creation of form which gains life 
and reality in the realm of action. In this way, Goethe reconciles 
the formless world of action (Prometheus) and the inactive 
visionary world (Epimetheus). The same point appears in 
Faust. Helen's veil dissolves in Faust's hands. His final wisdom 
is that the meaning of life lies in human co-operative work. His 
liberation takes place not in the world of beauty but in that of 
action. The highest goal lies in the liberation of mankind. "The 
world of freedom," Cassirer concludes, "arises from the world 
of form ... a freedom which exists only in that it continually 
becomes." As against the individualistic idealism of German 
humanism, we have here a new social ideal. 25 
M Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophic der Renaissance, (Leipzig, 1927), 
1 68. Goethe und die geschichtliche Welt y ii4f. 
w Idee und Gestalt, n, 27. Freiheit und Form, 415. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE d 651 

one of Cassirer's more notable contributions are his essays 
on Goethe's scientific studies. He does not agree with those who 
dismiss these studies as poetic fancies. Following Geoffroy de 
St. Hilaire, Helmholtz and others, Cassirer regards them as 
containing a vital contribution to methodology. He is concerned 
with showing that Goethe's conflict with the method of mathe- 
matical physics is not merely a historical phenomenon, but is 
permanently relevant. 
To begin with, Cassirer would establish that both Goethe's 
method and that of the mathematical physicist aim at finding 
"an analogy of form." In his studies on optics and morphology, 
Goethe too employs the idea of continuity and the method of 
genetic construction. He also recognizes the value of general 
formulation, and his morphological cognition is never identified 
with sensuous particularity. However, beyond this, there is a 
differentiation in their methods, as becomes apparent in Goethe's 
controversy with Newton. Newton's theory of color reduces 
differences of color to numerical differences. It is concerned 
with the general, not the real form of color. Goethe directs his 
problem to the world of vision, rather than to color. He too 
would introduce a definite principle} yet, he would not reduce 
it to numbers which represent things merely conceptually, but to 
a principle which would signify and be this order. The mathe- 
matical formula aims to make phenomena calculable^ Goethe's 
principle to make them visible. Actually therefore, the two 
views are not in conflict. Goethe was concerned with the physi- 
ological, Newton with the physical aspect of color. 
Goethe's scientific studies are an organic mode of his poetic 
productions as well. Likewise, there is an analogy between 
Goethe's critique of eighteenth century science and of eighteenth 
century poetics. He condemns Boileau's philosophy of art and 
Linne's philosophy of botany from the same angle: both 
slighted particular phenomena in their quest of the general. 
Goethe was persuaded that phenomena themselves were the 
final formula, insofar as they are regarded in their genetic 
connection which preserves their perceptual quality. The 
Urphanomen is Goethe's "final" principle beyond which he does 
652 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
not try to penetrate to ask for its "why." The nearest equivalent 
for the Urphanomen is "life." It follows that this principle is 
not a final solution and resolution, but only a final and highest 
problem. Goethe knew only one way in which this problem could 
be "resolved": practically, in the realm of action. He avoids the 
either-or of a mystic-pantheistic method and that of scientific 
abstraction. Nor does he urge an eclectic reconciliation of the 
"middle way" between the two. Instead, Goethe transforms the 
problem into a postulate to be resolved through the act. Cassirer 
quotes Goethe's maxim: "Theory and experience stand in per- 
petual conflict. All unity arrived at through reflection is illusion , 
only through activity can they be united." 
The value of Goethe resides in his significance for us. "The 
problems which he posed live among us and await decision: we 
feel them to be our problems." Our norm in approaching Goethe 
should not be in terms of praise and celebration. In Goethe's 
words: "The true celebration of the genuine man is the act." 26 
CRITIQUE 
Evaluation of Cassirer's work might well apply the func- 
tional method to "locate" his own system. Cassirer's neo- 
Kantian orientation places him in the idealistic "serial order." 
His notion that man is a "symbolical animal" with powers of 
reconstruction postulates that reality is basically constituted by 
thought. This confronts us with a number of problems and 
ambiguities in Cassirer's work. 
I. The stumbling block of idealistic systems arises from their 
difficulty in being able (or, more precisely unable) to account 
for evil and error. Despite Cassirer's modifications of tradi- 
tional idealism through his concept of concrete functional ob- 
jectivity, his analysis is heavily weighted towards regarding 
all historical creativeness as retaining validity through its loca- 
tion and order, by which it finally contributes to the whole. 
That is, Cassirer tends to identify history with value, what is 
M Idee and Gestalt, 37, 44. Goethe und die geschichtliche Welt, 121, ggL 
Freihett und Form, 326. Similarly, Cassirer writes that his study of the En- 
lightenment is for the purpose of finding "the courage to compare ourselves 
with it and to come to terms with it inwardly ... to free the original forces 
which produced and shaped this form." Die Philosofhie der Aufkldrung y 
(Tubingen, 1932), xvi. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE 653 
with what is good. To be sure, in his actual analysis, Cassirer's 
sensitive discrimination leads him to occasional criticism and re- 
jection. 27 But such critique is infrequent and generally tempered 
with the suggestion that even a narrow perspective contributed 
towards an evolving truth. Thus there arises an ambiguity be- 
tween what does develop and what should develop. Cassirer 
rarely views any pattern or doctrine as in basic opposition with 
another. Cassirer's dialectic is, in the main, one of reconcilia- 
tion. Although he criticizes the logical approach to art, Cassirer 
credits the rationalistic aesthetics of Leibniz with containing ele- 
ments which were later developed in the notion of the manifold 
in art. In reviewing the relation of Heraclitus to Parmenides, 
Cassirer focuses on the fact that they meet in centering on 
Logos and Dike. The discussion of Goethe and Plato begins 
by contrasting Goethe's conception of truth in terms of the 
image and Plato's notion of truth as a pure Idea. Yet, Cassirer 
notes that Plato also had recourse to the images of the sun and 
the cave to represent the Idea of the Good and the State, and 
that, in his later dialogues, Plato taught that motion and be- 
coming penetrated the sphere of pure Being. A similar approach 
is used by Cassirer in his historical analyses of science, language, 
mythical thought, religion, and culture. only in such relations 
and in such contrasts," Cassirer concludes, "does truth have its 
concrete historical being. . . . Whoever grasps history intellectu- 
ally and the intellectual historically hears everywhere this 
solemn-friendly sound of the bell and it becomes a consoling 
bass-sound which assures the inner harmony of ... world history 
in all its chaotic entanglement of outer happenings." 28 
2. Cassirer's dynamic concept of the dialectic clearly tran- 
scends his Kantian heritage. It also does greater justice to the 
material aspect than does Hegel's dialectic. Cassirer's functional 
methodology provides a general lever for examining the social 
along with the intellectual conditions for the conception and the 
2T Some of these have been noted earlier. Cassirer also speaks of Hellenic 
influence as having endangered the development of the dynamic form-concept. 
He criticizes Tolstoy's suppression of form in art, and rejects deterministic theories 
as "full of metaphysical fallacies." Essay on Man, i4if., 147, 192$, 
28 Logos Dike Kosmos, n. Goethe und die Geschichtliche Welt, 124.1"., 
148. 
654 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
reception of culture. Yet, the material aspect which Cassirer 
stresses is generally restricted to material form which art and 
other cultural ｅxpressions manipulate. He does view art as part 
of life and sees in "work" man's outstanding characteristic. But, 
in his specific analyses, "life" and "work" are considered mainly 
apart from social "life" and "work." 29 Similarly, Cassirer's gen- 
eral formulations recognize the reciprocal relationship between 
the subjective and objective factors. What becomes of the 
beams which philosophic ideas send out, he writes, "depends not 
only on the character of the source of light, but also on the 
mirror they encounter and in which they are reflected." Yet, 
Cassirer examines this source and mirror primarily in their 
intellectual and formal nature. His study of the Enlighten- 
ment aims to show the connection between its philosophy and 
its science, history, law, and politics. But, to Cassirer, it is phi- 
losophy which provides the "living breath, the atmosphere in 
which alone they can exist and function." Throughout his 
analyses, the conditions for "influence" are considered in terms 
of the "geistigeP situation. Questions such as why Goethe, Schil- 
ler, and others were ignored in certain periods, despite their 
stature, are not raised. Cassirer does not analyze the social ref- 
erence to revolutionary innovations in art and literature which 
condition their acceptance or nonacceptance, the specific accents 
in their development and related features. His discussion of 
Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, and others focuses on their formal or 
humanistic dialectic. He is less concerned with their rebellious 
social roles. Perhaps this predilection explains why Cassirer 
steers clear of the great literary rebels of the igth century. 80 
* However, some passing references should be noted. Cassirer speaks of the 
"narrowness of German life" which determined the rationalistic view of art. 
Language is said to have also "a social task which depends on the specific social 
conditions of the speaking community." Likewise, the classification of its idioms 
is dictated by needs which "vary according to the different conditions of man's 
social and cultural life." In discussing Diderot, Cassirer writes that his thought 
"moves within and is bound up with a specific social order ... the atmosphere 
of the Paris salons." See Freihett und Form, 1031"., aiyf. Essay on Man, 128, 
136, 178. Rousseau Kant Goethe, 8. 
80 Rousseau Kant Goethe, 98. PMlosophie der Aufklarung, x. Yet, Cassirer's 
orientation must be distinguished from that of Wilhelm Dilthey, to whom some 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE , 655 
3. If Cassirer slights the role of social materials, he all but 
ignores the weight of personal psychic elements. This is par- 
ticularly striking in his study of Kleist, whose personality and 
work are a clear ｅxpression of unconscious motivation and psy- 
chological estrangement. Cassirer would prove that Kleist's so- 
called "Kant-upheaval" was due, not to Kant, but to Fichte's 
Vocation of Man and to its doctrine of the subjectivity of per- 
ception. He demonstrates that Kleist's plaint over the relativity 
of knowledge could not have its source in Kant's transcendental 
idealism, which proved the validity of experience as against 
Berkeley's psychological idealism. Cassirer argues further that, 
through Kant, Kleist was induced to abandon his monistic tele- 
ology. Yet, whereas this shift produced an intellectual up- 
heaval in Kleist, it also made for a profounder objectivity in 
his art. Finally, the disciplinary impact of Kant's ethics appears 
in Kleist's last years in his drama "The Prince of Homburg." 
Now, shortly afterwards, Kleist committed suicide. Yet, Cas- 
sirer's study does not contain a single reference to this act, nor 
to the inner motives which were driving Kleist towards his 
tragic end at the very stage when he appeared to have found an 
intellectual center in Kant's ethics. Cassirer merely writes of the 
"immediate living force" which Kant exerted on Kleist, and 
notes that Kleist's nature was averse to compromise. There is no 
examination of Kleist's social context, involving factors such as 
his equivocal societal location as a member of a pauperized 
nobility in the era of the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, nor of his 
psychological dilemmas, the great attraction for his sister Ulrike 
have linked him. Dilthey saw the greatest task of the historian and artist in 
"understanding" and "reliving" experience. Although requiring passionate 
immersion into inner experiences, his "Verstehen" and "Erlebnis" were essen- 
tially a pious non-reactive homage to historical "lived experience." Hence 
Dilthey's prototypes were the German Romanticists, such as Novalis and 
Schleiermacher. Cassirer's concept of the historian and artist has a much more 
active and reactive tenor. His approach to the Romanticists is more critical, and he 
identifies himself most readily with writers preceding and following the Ro- 
manticists, with Shakespeare, Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, who viewed art 
and the genius in terms of their recreative, not merely relived, capacities. See 
Wilhelm Dilthey's Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, loth ed. (Leipzig and Berlin, 
1924), Cf. H. A. Hodges' Wilkelm Dilthey. An Introduction, (N.Y., 1944). 
656 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
and for men-friends, evidence of sublimation and compulsion in 
the relation to his bride, all of these factors which enter into 
the pattern comprising Kleist's complex emotional reaction to 
Kant, Rousseau and Fichte, and his final suicide. 
In his study of Rousseau and Kant, Cassirer similarly confines 
himself to speaking of Rousseau's "fundamental trait," of the 
turmoil in the man who was "always fleeing from himself." 
Kant, on the other hand, is termed "the man of the clock," 
whose "being" was guided by order and law. Cassirer's whole 
point in drawing the contrast in their personalities is to indicate 
that Kant's attraction for Rousseau's ideas can not be accounted 
for on the basis of their individual structures, but that the in- 
fluence was of an intellectual and moral nature. It was in these 
spheres that they met "at some profound stratum of their 
beings." 31 
Although Cassirer places the "symbol" into the center of 
human activity, the term is used solely in an honorific sense. 
Its imaginative transcendence is seen only as good transcend- 
ence. It stands in overlapping harmony with, never in opposi- 
tion to other elements. Metaphorical ｅxpression is analyzed to 
the extent that it is more than the object referred to, but not in 
terms of its conflicting variations. The dissociative and opposi- 
tional disparity in the relation between art and society is ignored, 
as is the complex interplay between public demands and private 
desires within the individual. In short, the whole problem of 
psycho-social alienation falls outside the framework of Cassirer's 
investigations. 32 This introduces a troubling problem for Cas- 
sirer's category of freedom. Freedom in Cassirer's work lies in 
creative reconstruction and in the preservation of the individual- 
concrete form within the presentation of the universal. Hence 
his high elevation of art, which can fulfill this task most ade- 
quately. He does not press towards the question of the realistic 
conditions which can offer the widest possibilities for art to exer- 
cise this ideal function. Cassirer blurs the adverse situation (in 
81 Idee und Gestalt, 164-188. Rousseau Kant Goethe, 3, 56, 4, 57. 
"Compare the chapter on Marx and Freud in Harry Slochower's No Voice 
Is Wholly Lost. Writers and Thinkers in War and Peace, (N.Y., 1945). 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE j 57 
its personal and public forms) from which man migbt free him- 
self. By slighting the factor of conflict, Cassirer's concept of 
freedom loses much of its own functional import. 88 
However, Cassirer's eighteenth and nineteenth century per- 
spectives not only mark the limits of his approach. They also 
make possible his distinctive contributions. The pyscho-social 
function which Cassirer neglects is today provided, and some- 
times over-provided. on the other hand, such analyses often 
lose sight of the broader intellectual and aesthetic forms. Here, 
Cassirer's work offers a much-needed corrective. His very classi- 
cal standards separate him from the secessionist vogue of our 
time. The era of "division of labor" has developed split and com- 
partmentalized motivations in which man appears separated 
from tradition, divided within himself, and lacking the basis for 
integrating the new complexities. Cassirer is not altogether un- 
aware of such disturbances, as shown in his analysis of psychical 
disturbances in Philosophic der symbolischen Formen. Yet, he 
is persuaded that men live in a common world and respond simi- 
larly to similar conditions. Cassirer's thinking in terms of or- 
ganic centers is a wholesome antidote to the divisionism in the 
critical fashion which would analyze art simply in terms of 
"form," where form is divorced from content and historical 
motivation. Here technical factors, such as plasticity, line, color, 
relief, are viewed as things in themselves, detached from subject 
matter and the artist's creative imagination. This has resulted in 
the phenomenon which Toynbee has called "etherealization." 
A similar emphasis violates denotation in art in the interests of 
maximum connotation. To be sure, all art is connotative insofar 
as it has general import. But art differs from philosophy and 
science in that it aims at maximum denotation, which it is in a 
position to approximate because of the particularity and sensu- 
ousness of its material. Cassirer J s functional objectivity offers a 
welcome alternative to such unreal dilemmas. 
Another signal value is the crucial weight Cassirer places on 
process and form. one of the melancholy aspects of much art- 
88 Relevant to this point is Helmut Kuhn's criticism of Cassirer in The Journal 
of Philosophy r , vol. XLII, no. 18, (August 30, 1945). 
658 HARRY SLOCHOWER 
criticism is its focus on the "what," "the point of view," or "pur- 
pose" of the artist. It seeks out a writer's "conclusion" and 
praises or condemns him on that score. This method blurs the 
distinction between an essay and a painting, between a logical 
exposition and a musical motif to the extent that it singles out 
what they "stand" for. This procedure obviously violates the 
specific character of the material. Moreover, it contains a fal- 
lacious assumption as to what constitutes "conclusions" in art. 
The "message" is identified with the moral exhortations of the 
"good" characters and the fate which overcomes the "sinners." 
This type of analysis leaves out almost everything that is pe- 
culiarly relevant to a work of art, which makes its "point" by 
way of imagery, metaphor, irony and, above all, the dramatic 
process. Cassirer's functional approach shows that to get at the 
artist's "what" we must enter into his "how," that its whole 
meaning lies precisely in the manifold of its form. Examining 
art from this angle, we may find that a writer's ostensible "con- 
clusion" is at least modified by the "sympathy" in the artist's 
form. Such sympathy appears in the relative enthusiasm re- 
vealed by the power and richness of depiction, by ironic reserva- 
tions introduced in motivating the context of "bad" acts, and 
similar structural and formal devices. The same principle holds 
for an evaluation of literary criticism itself, insofar as the latter 
is not mere documentation, but attempts reconstruction of lit- 
erary material. Cassirer makes an analogous point when he re- 
fers to the discrepancy between Taine's explicit formulation of 
naturalism in his Philosophie de Part and his actual investigation 
and description which corrects this formulation. It follows that 
appreciation of creative works requires entering into the process 
through which the conclusion is reached, requires attention to 
the formal elements involved, which are "part and parcel of the 
artistic intuition itself," in short, calls for something of the 
same temper and equipment which is exhibited by the art-work 
which is being evaluated. In Cassirer's formulation, "we cannot 
understand a work of art without, to a certain degree, repeating 
and reconstructing the creative process by which it has come into 
being." 84 
"Essay on Man, i94f., 155, 149. 
APPROACH TO ART AND LITERATURE , 659 
In conclusion: 
Cassirer's functional analysis sees man as a dialectical complex 
of a triadical unity: Man as history, Man as permanence, and 
Man as animal symbolicum. In the latter capacity, man recreates 
his world by means of his symbolical tools of which art is the 
most enriching. Cassirer's dialectic is not content with establish- 
ing "ambivalence," a favorite resting ground for contempo- 
rary truncated criticism , but penetrates towards the underly- 
ing valence. 
The stimulation and fertility of Cassirer's work stems from 
the dynamic concatenation of these elements. In his mastery of 
detailed knowledge, his catholic learning, his calm reasoning 
approach, and in some of his underlying logical framework, 
Cassirer reminds one of Morris R. Cohen. 85 To it all, Cassirer 
brings high imaginative sensitiveness and a synthesizing vision. 
The whole makes for living history, for life as art and art as life. 
The lines of the Earth-Spirit in Faust which Cassirer quotes for 
Goethe's method apply to his own: 
Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt, 
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt . . . 
Harmonisch all 1 das All durchklingen ! 
The final contribution of Cassirer's functional method lies in 
its own functional value for us: the extent to which it sets up, 
suggests and stimulates analogous waves of ideas and images, 
and helps us to reshape the world in accordance with new emerg- 
ing materials. This is in spirit with Cassirer's own supreme 
value the liberating social act. 
HARRY SLOCHOWER 
DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN 
BROOKLYN COLLEGE 
*See, in particular, chapter* II, III, IV of Cohen's A Preface To Logic, 
(New York, 1944). 
19 
Konstantin Reichardt 
ERNST CASSIRER'S CONTRIBUTION TO 
LITERARY CRITICISM 
19 
ERNST CASSIRER'S CONTRIBUTION TO 
LITERARY CRITICISM 
IN HIS Essay on Man, Cassirer in the form of a paradox 
defines the historian's aspiration as "objective anthropo- 
morphism." 1 Whereas the process of scientific thought shows a 
constant effort to eliminate "anthropological" elements, history 
appears not as a knowledge of external facts or events, but as a 
form of self-knowledge: man constantly returns to himself at- 
tempting to recollect and actualize the whole of his past experi- 
ence. The historical self, however, aspires to objectivity and is not 
satisfied with egocentricity. In his discussion of the various 
methods of historical research Cassirer expresses greatest warmth 
when speaking of the work of Ranke, who once voiced the desire 
to extinguish his own self and to make himself the pure mirror of 
things. This wish, clearly recognized both by Ranke and Cas- 
sirer as the deepest problem of the historian, remains at the 
same time the historian's highest ideal. His feeling of responsi- 
bility and his ethical standing will determine the value of his 
results according to the definition of "objective anthropomorph- 
ism." Cassirer reveals Ranke's ethical conception and his uni- 
versal sympathy for all ages and all nations as his principal 
merits and he contrasts Ranke's basic attitude with that of 
Treitschke's Prussian school. 2 
According to Cassirer, history belongs not to the field of 
natural science, but to that of hermeneutics. Our historical 
knowledge is a branch of semantics, not of physics. 8 Cassirer 
stands closer to Dilthey than to Taine. Submitting the "scien- 
1 Essay on Man, 191. 
i8 7 fF. 
1 95. 
66 3 
664 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
tific," statistical and psychological methods of Taine, Buckle, 
and Lamprecht to criticism he maintains that history, not being 
an exact science, will always keep its place and its inherent na- 
ture in the organization of human knowledge, and the speeches 
in Thucydides' work will retain their historical value, because 
they are objective and possess ideal, if not empirical truth. 4 
Cassirer asks for greater susceptibility in exactly this sense: "In 
modern times we have become much more susceptible to the 
demands of empirical truth, but we are perhaps frequently in 
danger of losing sight of the ideal truth of things and personali- 
ties. The just balance between these two moments depends 
upon the individual tact of the historian. . . ," 5 In order to 
achieve the high task, the last and decisive act is "always an 
act of the productive imagination." "It is the keen sense for the 
empirical reality of things combined with the free gift of imagi- 
nation upon which the true historical synthesis or synopsis de- 
pends. 3 ^ 
In other words, the just balance in historical research postu- 
lated by Cassirer will depend upon two basic elements: on the 
historian's ethical conception of his duties and on the disciplined 
greatness of his productive imagination, the full knowledge of 
the material being self-understood. Thus conceived, history be- 
comes a sister of art. Art turns our empirical life into the dynamic 
of pure form; history molds the empirical reality of things and 
events into a new shape and gives it the ideality of recollection. 7 
We could make psychological experiments or collect statistical facts. 
But in spite of this our picture of man would remain inert and colorless. 
We should only find the "average" man the man of our daily practical 
and social intercourse. In the great works of history and art we begin 
to see, behind the mask of the conventional man, the features of the 
real, individual man. 8 
In August 1943 I had the opportunity to read a then un- 
published manuscript by Cassirer on Thomas Mann's Goethe 
4 Ibid., 205. 
6 Ibid., 205. 
* Ibid., 204f. 
7 Ibid., 205. 
* Ibid., 206. 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 665 
novel Lotte in Weimar. I began to read the manuscript with a 
special kind of expectation. Knowing Cassirer's stern demand for 
the highest degree of objectivity in historical research, includ- 
ing literary criticism, and the complete absence of humor, irony, 
or any lighter tone in general in his writings, I was eager to see 
if Cassirer would make an exception in this case, which as I 
thought would tempt even the most serious and objective 
critic to some application of Thomas Mann's own and possibly 
most characteristic style element, his "loving irony." However, 
Cassirer had written his critical essay in the Cassirer mood: 
sympathetically and without one deviation from full seriousness. 
This consistency throughout all his publications shows how 
deeply his general demand for ethics and tact in historical re- 
search are rooted in his personality, and it also explains the 
almost complete absence of polemics in his contributions to the 
field of literature. Compared with many of his German contem- 
poraries Cassirer distinguishes himself by the objective spirit 
of his work. He seems to be urged to write whenever he feels 
able to improve or to elucidate, and not because he would like to 
correct or to attack. Thus, his own discussions appear usually as 
an investigation of a point without an edge. "Man cannot live his 
life without constant efforts to express it," 9 this would be Cas- 
sirer's general answer to a question about the value of literary doc- 
uments in the past or present. Every document requires, from a 
historian, a sympathetic and expert reading, and the true his- 
torian will remain sympathetic, since every document will be a 
contribution to his "self-knowledge" and the knowledge of man. 
How he himself will express his own attitude and beliefs will 
be a matter of ethics and tact. It is highly revealing how gently 
and without a trace of irony or impatience Cassirer treats far- 
fetched theories in aesthetics or the immature statements on art 
by the young Schiller. 10 They receive his serious attention as his- 
torically logical efforts of man to express the fact that he is 
living. And without sympathy significant interpretation is im- 
possible. 
f Ibid., 1 84. 
10 Die Philosophic der Aufklarung, 368-482. Die Methodik des Idealismus in 
S chillers philosophischen Schrijten, 86ff. 
666 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
Cassirer considered himself a philosopher, not a literary critic. 
With the exception of one article, all his publications in the field 
of literature appeared either in independent form or in strictly 
philosophical periodicals. The scope of his contributions is wide: 
the German enlightenment period and German classicism and 
romanticism stand in the foreground j however, there are many 
valuable chapters, passages, or remarks on Classical, French, 
English, Swedish, etc., literature in his work. They all deal with 
literary-philosophical questions and they are all directed toward 
an understanding of the relation between certain literary per- 
sonalities and certain philosophers or systems of philosophy} 
however, Cassirer's ideal problem seems never to be merely 
that. His investigations always exceed the concrete question 
of influences or individual works of art, and his deepest inter- 
est seems to lie elsewhere. Although Cassirer, as far as I can see, 
nowhere makes a statement to this end, his publications con- 
cerned with literature are of greater interest for the aesthetician 
than for either the philosopher or for the literary critic in gen- 
eral. Whenever Cassirer writes about a writer X in relation to a 
philosopher Y, he seems to be in spite of all his attention to 
X and Y more interested in Z, and Z is the individual essential 
poetic element (dichterisches Wesenselement) of X. 
In the introductory part to his essay on Holderlin 11 Cassirer 
expresses the aim of his investigation most significantly. I trans- 
late the passage: 
It [the investigation] will have to try to draw from Holderlin's poetic 
essence, as it belongs to him originally and as it precedes all abstract 
reflection, the interpretative conclusion in regard also to those trends 
which manifest themselves more and more distinctly in the totality of 
his theoretical attitude toward the world and life. 12 
This means clearly that Cassirer considers it the first duty of 
his investigation to clarify the character of Holderlin's "poetic 
essence" which he regards as Holderlin's "original property," 
before any possible statement about the development of his 
theoretical attitude can be made. Cassirer's wording looks like a 
"Holdcrlin und der deutsche Idealismut. 
"Idee und Gestolt, 118. 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 667 
sanctification of deductive method; however, the essay itself 
gives clear proof of the opposite and his other publications on 
literature support it. An inductive analysis is always made as 
far as such an analysis can go. The final evaluation of the 
material, however, is no longer a matter of scientific method. 
Thus, Cassirer's task here and elsewhere is a two-sided one. 
He does not limit himself to the never quite satisfactory in- 
vestigation of certain philosophical influences on certain ele- 
ments or periods of an artist's work, but tries to find a concrete 
picture of the artist's essence qua artist before the question of the 
artist's reflective world is raised. As a matter of fact, Cassirer 
without mentioning it has the tendency to protect the artist 
both from literature and from philosophy as these fields are 
usually represented in criticism. Cassirer, the philosopher, shows 
his greatest sympathy for the world of creative art and its indi- 
vidual rights. 
The essay on Holderlin may serve as an example for Cas- 
sirer's general attitude and method in the realm of literary- 
philosophical problems. The ideal subject for this purpose 
would be Cassirer's intensive occupation with his master, 
Goethe. However, this latter would greatly exceed the scope of 
our contribution. 
Before Cassirer wrote his Holderlin essay, three modern and 
important works on Holderlin had appeared, Dilthey's fa- 
mous essay, Zinkernagel's book, and Gundolf's deep analysis 
of Holderlin's Archfyelagus. The result of Cassirer's essay 
shows, besides important additions, intensification of Dilthey's 
views, agreement with Gundolf, and a sharp contrast to Zinker- 
nagel's method. 

one of the foremost questions in regard to Holderlin had 
been the exact determination of his position within the philoso- 
phy of German idealism. That Holderlin had been greatly 
and constructively influenced by Platonic reflections, Kantian 
criticism, and Spinoza's system was known. However, Holder- 
lin's relation to Fichte, Schelling, and particularly to Hegel had 
not been clarified. In this respect, Professor Zinkernagel had 
tried to reach results by an analysis of Holderlin's foremost 
work Hyperion and had offered a very thorough appearing list 
668 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
of "influences" which seemed to make Holderlin a receptive 
organon of all kinds of stimulations. A reader of Zinkernagel's 
book, in spite of all possible admiration for the author's knowl- 
edge and minute scholarship, would ask in vain why Holderlin, 
as both poet and philosopher, shows such remarkable and gen- 
erally acknowledged unity, and proved at the same time to be 
able to survive all these "influences" as an individual and to 
maintain his artistic personality to such an extent that today he 
is considered one of the most consistent and full grown lyric 
poets in world literature. It is in connection with ZinkernagePs 
book that Cassirer made his statement that Holderlin's artistic 
personality was to be the res 'prior of his investigation and all 
other questions were to be regarded as res $osteriores. The 
reciprocity between Holderlin's imaginative and rational world 
was to be investigated. 
Since Holderlin's poetry as a whole is an ｅxpression of his 
personal conception or philosophy of nature, Cassirer 
chooses at first to characterize Holderlin's peculiarity in contrast 
to Fichte and Schelling. Holderlin, seeing in Kant's Criti- 
cal philosophy a propaedeutic step towards a "system" and 
finding the ideal form of a system represented in Spinoza, tried 
as did Fichte and Schelling to establish an idealistic counter- 
part of Spinoza's construction. However he distinguished him- 
self from Fichte and Schelling by regarding the one not as the 
supreme principle of deduction but as a v 8ea<pep6[j,vov eauTcj> con- 
ceived in direct relation to his conception of nature. The 
study of Plato contributed greatly to Holderlin's peculiar 
mythical imagination} however, myth never was and to 
Holderlin never became a mere symbol or a poetic ornament; 
but it was a necessary organon to apprehend reality. Myth and 
mythical phenomena appear in all of Holderlin's works, includ- 
ing his letters and philosophical fragments, as sensuous-spiritual 
realities in which he believed without any noticeable sense of 
dualism. Holderlin's conception of nature manifests an inter- 
twinement of the reflective and perceptive elements without 
any break or inconsistency, and what Schiller tried to evoke 
sentimentally (sentimentalise^) in his poem "Die Gotter 
Griechenlands," Holderlin achieved naively and faithfully: to 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 669 
him the gods of Greece were not welcome poetical elements, but 
realities and therefore means towards the cognition of truth. The 
contact with Fichte's writings stimulated the depth of Holder- 
lin's reflective thinking, however again he reached his in- 
dependent conclusion: nature, for him, was not matter but form. 
ZinkernagePs belief that Schelling's influence was telling for 
Holderlin's repudiation of Fichte's doctrine is denied by Cas- 
sirer. Moreover, Cassirer is able to provide almost irrefutable 
proof for the opposite. Disregarding the fact that Schelling had 
been Fichte's follower until 1796, the year in which the "in- 
fluence" was supposed to have taken place, we have (with 
Cassirer) to take into consideration that Schelling's later phi- 
losophy of nature reminds one of Holderlin's earlier general 
attitude. A document made available in 1 9 1 3 seems to correct all 
former interpretations of the Schelling-Holderlin relation. In 
1913, the Royal Library at Berlin acquired a folio-sheet which 
shows HegePs hand and contains a brief outline of a philo- 
sophical system. The editor called it "the oldest systematic pro- 
gram of German idealism" and was able to prove that the manu- 
script is a Hegelian copy of a Schelling text. 13 The text ex- 
presses a demand for a system of philosophy that would combine 
"the monotheism of reason" with "the polytheism of imagina- 
tion," in order to develop a "mythology of reason." This is 
exactly what Holderlin in his more imaginative rather than ra- 
tional way of thinking had felt and fought for. Cassirer's con- 
clusion seems good enough: the widely discussed meeting be- 
tween Holderlin and Schelling in 1795 had not brought about 
a Schelling influence on Holderlin, but had given Schelling an 
opportunity to find stimulation from the side of Holderlin and 
to formulate rationally what had already been in Holderlin's 
mind. 
The result is the historically significant fact that Holderlin 
had been the responsible agent implanting the thoughts into 
the man who was to become the most Romantic representative 
of German idealism. Cassirer was able to supply the proof for 
this contention because of his correct basic presumption that 
" F. Rosenzweig, Das dlteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus (1917). 
670 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
Holderlin's imaginative world was clearly outlined before 
any outside influences came upon his reflective world. What fol- 
lows in the last part of Cassirer's essay is an intensively com- 
pressed description of Holderlin's pantheism. After giving one 
of his masterly surveys of the dialectic method in Kantian and 
Romantic philosophy, Cassirer shows that Holderlin, who used 
the categories and terms of philosophical idealism, transformed 
them gradually but consistently into a dialectic of feeling the 
simultaneously consistent and antithetic essence of every lyric 
poet. Holderlin did not try to solve the dialectical problem con- 
cerning the relation of the general and the particular j he only 
expressed the depth of the problem as an artist. 
I do not find sufficient reason for divergence from Cassirer's 
interpretation and, in particular, from his discussion of Holder- 
lin's "artistic essence." Newer and fuller investigations, carried 
through with greater ambition in regard to completeness, have 
enlarged on the material; however, they have not improved our 
understanding in general. 14 Yet, I should like to take up one 
specific statement in Cassirer's essay, a statement which makes 
me uneasy. 
In the introduction to his brilliant last section Cassirer ex- 
presses himself rather apodictically about the general character 
of a lyric poet. 15 According to him the peculiarity of a lyric 
poet is to be found in two elements: his individual conception 
of nature (Naturgejiihl)^ and his individual feeling for form 
and development (Ablauf) of spiritual occurrences (seelisches 
Gescheheri). When these two elements meet and determine 
each other reciprocally, the peculiar lyric form of ｅxpression 
arises. In other words, the individual conception of nature and of 
the human soul is the basic condition for a meeting which in 
the world of an artist makes lyric art. The important attribute 
here seems to be "individual," since all art shows the inter- 
relationship of nature (all manifestations of nature, from a 
flower to a slum dwelling) and man (the life of soul in all 
14 See W. Bohm, Holderlin I-II (1928-30), K. Hildebrandt, HSlderlin; 
Philosofhi* und Dichtung (1939). 
11 'Idee und Gestdt, 136. 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 671 
possible aspects). Therefore, what does "individual" mean? In 
the following passages Cassirer speaks lucidly of Holderlin's 
tragic efforts to find objectivity, and he manages, very methodi- 
cally, to leave the impression that Holderlin as an individual was 
one of the unusual artistic phenomena who were both influencing 
and being influenced in regard to their philosophical or cognitive 
achievements. However, this did not make Holderlin a lyric 
poet, and his individuality as such if we accept Cassirer's two 
conditions does not differ in principle from other artists who 
were not lyric poets, but, for instance, dramatists. 
I do not believe that Cassirer, in his statement about the lyric 
poet, and speaking of his "individual" conceptions, was en- 
tangled in the still rather common belief that subjectivity is one 
of the foremost elements of lyrics. Many years after he wrote 
his Holderlin essay Cassirer expressed himself clearly in this 
respect. After a discussion of Croce's aesthetic theories, 16 he says: 
It is of course true that the great lyrical poets are capable of the deepest 
emotions and that an artist who is not endowed with powerful feelings 
will never produce anything except shallow and frivolous art. But from 
this fact we cannot conclude that the function of lyrical poetry and of 
art in general can be adequately described as the artist's ability "to 
make a clean breast of his feelings." . . . The lyric poet is not just 
a man who indulges in displays of feeling. . . . An artist who is absorbed 
not in the contemplation and creation of forms but rather in his own 
pleasure or in his enjoyment of "the joy of grief" becomes a senti- 
mentalist. Hence we can hardly ascribe to lyric art a more subjective 
character than to all the other forms of art. For it contains the same 
sort of embodiment, and the same process of objectification. ... It is 
written with images, sounds, and rhythms which, just as in the case 
of dramatic poetry and dramatic representation, coalesce into an indi- 
visible whole. In every great lyrical poem we find this concrete and 
indivisible unity. 17 
There is an interval of twenty-six years between the Holder- 
lin essay and the Essay on Man. Yet I cannot find any basic in- 
consistency between the quoted passages from the latter and 
lf Essay on Man, 
I 4 f. 
672 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
Cassirer's general attitude in the former. However, the state- 
ment about the principal elements of a lyric poet still remains 
unexplained. Perhaps, Cassirer used a cliche an unusual proc- 
ess in his writings in order better to express the content of the 
directly following statement about the peculiarity of the German 
lyric poets in the period of Idealism, their desire to become con- 
scious of their actions as creative artists, and their further desire to 
verify these actions philosophically. This is, to be sure, not a sin- 
gular incident in the history of lyrics the French symbolists and 
their successors show a more than general parallel , but it is true. 
There are many relations between philosophy and literature 
which have been noticed surprisingly late 18 or have not as yet 
found a satisfactory explanation. Those cases appear most puz- 
zling in which there exists a deep similarity between a philo- 
sophical system and the ｅxpression of a poet without permitting 
the assumption of a "physical" influence. In the case of Holder- 
lin the existing material is such that his development simply 
could not be understood after eliminating the surrounding phil- 
osophical situation. In the case of Corneille, however, and his 
position in relation to the Cartesian system, the problem is much 
more involved. In consideration of the methodically different 
approach, Cassirer's attitude seems to be significant. 
G. Lanson 19 expressed the situation very well in a few words: 
Il y a non settlement analogie, mais identite d y esprit dans le 
Traite des passions et dans la tragedie cornelienne" The curious 
facts are that Descartes and Corneille were contemporaries 
Descartes' Discours de la Methode appeared in 1637, immedi- 
ately after the first performance of the Cid at the Theatre du 
Marais in Paris , that they represented a school of thought 
which was new and individual, and that yet a direct relation be- 
tween them cannot be established. Q. Krantz tried to show Des- 
cartes' constructive influence on the aesthetic theories of French 
classicism, and Faguet 20 made the attempt to establish reasons 
18 1 am thinking- especially of Plotinus* influence. See Franz Koch, Goethe 
und Plotin (1925). 
19 G. Lanson, Etudes d'Histoire Litter air e (1930), 58 ff, 
20 G. Krantz, Essai sur UEsthetique du Descartes (1882). Faguet, Dix-septttm* 
siecle, 175. 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 673 
for a possible influence on Descartes by Corneille, both in vain. 
Lanson, who is certainly right in not trusting either theory, ex- 
plains the similarity between Descartes' and Corneille's psy- 
chological and ethical aspects from their physical environment 
and tries to ascertain that the spiritual-moral reality in French 
seventeenth century life was reason enough to stimulate both 
the philosopher and the poet toward the same end; that the 
active-intellectual type of man, then representative in France, 
gave both of them an object of experience which contributed to 
the results in their respective attitudes. 
In his book on Descartes, Cassirer devotes a chapter to the 
discussion of Descartes and Corneille. 21 
Cassirer does not assume any direct influence. A Cartesian in- 
fluence on Corneille is impossible chronologically, and a Cor- 
neillean influence on Descartes highly improbable because of 
Descartes' well-known attitude toward literature in general and 
modern literature in particular. Since Lanson's explanation does 
not appeal to Cassirer, he directs his efforts towards finding 
reasons which may have brought about something like a pre- 
established harmony between Descartes and Corneille. His 
method is geisteswissenschajtUch, the essence in Descartes' re- 
flective and in Corneille's poetic psychology and ethics is to be 
defined and explained in their connection with the historically 
preceding or simultaneous philosophical development. 
According to Cassirer, both Descartes and Corneille were 
dealing with an object of thought which had been one of the 
foremost topics since the early Renaissance: the relation between 
Ego and World. They both express the "pathos of subjectivity," 
theoretically-ethically or poetically, and % striking parallel 
they have the same theory of freedom in contrast to their 
contemporaries. 
Essential for both Descartes and Corneille was their occupa- 
tion with the world of passions. Descartes tried to investigate his 
object as a physicist (en Physicien); only through cognition of 
the passions can we master them and use them to our ethical 
advantage. In Descartes' scale of values the highest ideal is 
81 Descartes, 71-117, 
674 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
represented by the combination of full energy of will and per- 
fect judgment, although Descartes does not deny the existence 
of a relative ideal besides the absolute one, which ideal would 
consist of a combination of full energy of will and not perfect 
judgment. Corneille, in his plays, shows an exactly equivalent 
attitude and was attacked by his contemporary critics as immoral 
because of his opinion that the application of great will power, 
no matter whether the aim is good or not, has its own value. 
Furthermore, Cassirer shows clearly that the Stoicism, as it 
appears both in Descartes' and in Corneille's work, experienced 
a significant transformation, losing its passive attitude (sustine 
et abstine!) and its moral characteristic as a doctrine for "bodi- 
less beings." Descartes' psycho-physical interpretation of the 
passions and Corneille's similar attitude distinguish them 
both from the classical and the Christian conception. 
Cassirer succeeds very well in pointing out sharply the gen- 
eral parallels which, without any doubt, are essential. In addi- 
tion to it, his literary discussion of Corneille's tragedies is of 
high value because of its historical objectivity. Corneille's 
dramatis fersonae will seem unreal or psychologically improb- 
able to anyone who has not been initiated into the essence and 
the laws of the poet's individual world; yet they regain their 
ideal truth as soon as the doors to this world have been opened. 
Then, and then only, is it not a question of liking or immediate 
appreciation any more, but a case of following a creative poet on 
his excursions through his imaginative world. 
All this granted, we are still waiting for an answer to the 
original question. There can be no doubt that certain lines of 
development can be traced down to Descartes and Corneille 
which will make them appear as historically "logical" personali- 
ties; yet their peculiar conformity in reaching the same conclu- 
sions in regard to such specific objects as human passions and 
the scale of values has not been explained by Cassirer. In his 
interpretation, Descartes and Corneille still remain lonesome 
giants, having many clear connections with the past and, at the 
same time, with modern views, yet lacking any significant con- 
nection with their own time. The clarification of their philosoph^ 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 675 
ical or poetic systems is helpful for our understanding of 
them; however not sufficient for the understanding of their 
positions in their time. 
Lanson's idea that Descartes and Corneille were basically in- 
fluenced by the peculiarity of their time is enticing in its me- 
thodical aspect. Cassirer finds the connection between them in 
the past} Lanson stresses their immediate relations as not result- 
ing from any direct physical influence but from the source of 
life surrounding them. And Cassirer himself, in a different 
chapter of his Descartes book, offers new material which seems 
to give Lanson substantial support. 
In the chapter about Descartes and Queen Christina of 
Sweden, Cassirer discusses the question whether Christina 
might have been acquainted with Corneille's writings. 22 There is 
no conclusive answer} yet Christina's interest in contemporary 
thought and art is established so well that her ignorance of the 
first great French dramatist would seem unbelievable. Cassirer 
goes farther} he not only shows that Christina in her reactions 
and actions resembles greatly the heroines in Corneille's plays, 
but also gives a highly interesting, concrete example which mani- 
fests a deep affinity between one historical reaction of the Queen 
of Sweden and a poetic one in Corneille's Pulcherie: Christina's 
decision to dissolve her engagement to Karl Gustaf and the 
parallel Pulcherie Leon. Corneille wrote his play twenty-five 
years after Christina had made her famous decision. Therefore, 
no fantastic hypothesis about the influence of poetry on life can 
be offered in this case. 
Queen Christina, after Cassirer's very valuable interpretation, 
appears as an addition to the list of seventeenth century per- 
sonalities who, according to Lanson, showed Corneillean char- 
acter in concrete. It is surprising that Cassirer, in spite of this, 
reacts so indifferently to Lanson's theory in his Descartes- 
Corneille chapter. Descartes and Corneille would become fully 
comprehensible, if not only their common roots in the past but 
also in their own time could be shown. Great philosophers and 
artists, I think, never stand apart from their own time, no matter 
251-278. 
676 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
whether they act as friends, enemies, or prophets. The sociologi- 
cal aspect of both philosophy and literature should never be 
forgotten, and in the case of Descartes' and Corneille's 
"strange" affinity it should be applied in full. Therefore, Lan- 
son's treatment of the question, although deplorably incom- 
plete, shows the way to future research. I am not at all in favor 
of giving the sociological method a prominent position in 
literary research 5 however, I think that the physician should 
know which medicine to use in each specific case. 23 
A completely different problem appears in connection with 
the most controversial German romanticist, Heinrich von Kleist. 
Kleist's relatively small artistic output stands in no quantita- 
tive relation to the amount of work dedicated to him in literary 
criticism. The Kleist-specialization in Germany has resulted in 
research conditions which have made every element in Kleist's 
life and work an object of passionate discussion. 24 The phe- 
nomenon Kleist represents an in many respects interesting rid- 
dle which, in order to be solved, seems to require a co-operative 
effort on the part of rather broadminded literary critics, histori- 
ans, and psychiatrists. The limitations of critics manifest them- 
selves almost necessarily in regard to Kleist. To make things 
worse, Kleist has some national importance for his country, and 
we need hardly enlarge upon the almost inevitable results in 
criticism. The most significant example of misunderstandings in 
regard to Kleist, however, is in my eyes the Katchen von Heil- 
bronn interpretation in F. GundolPs book on Kleist, 25 in which 
this truly exceptional and far-sighted critic manifests a complete 
lack of hermeneutic ability in this particular respect. All the dif- 
ficulties of interpretation in re Kleist arise from Kleist's own 
super-nervous and chaotic personality more than from his 
artistic work. He is one of the best examples both of the in- 
ability of the soul of man to master absolute ideal demands and 
also of a psychopathic condition together with a capacity for ex- 
ceptionally creative and lucid artistry. 
"The sociological method has been applied with good results in modern 
Russian criticism j see especially P. N. Sakulin, Die russische Liter atur (1927). 
84 See Jahrbuch der Kleist-Gesellschaft, 192 iff. 
*F. Gundolf, Heinrich von Kleist (1922). 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 677 
Kantian philosophy, as generally acknowledged, had a great 
influence on Kleist as a man and as a writer. Obvious records, 
among them his letters, give a solid basis for this contention} 
and his artistic works show Kleist's symbolical transformations 
of philosophical (and other) problems. However, the exact sig- 
nificance of Kant's philosophy for Kleist as an artist has not been 
clarified as yet, and certain gaps of understanding prevailed 
when Cassirer enlivened the Kleist research by his daring essay 
on Kleist and the Kantian philosophy. 26 Among other contribu- 
tions to the point, Cassirer advanced a new hypothesis which 
if accepted would, even though it would not change our gen- 
eral attitude toward Kleist, compel us to take new data into 
consideration. 
In his letters to his sister Ulrike and his fiancee Wilhelmine 
von Zenge, young Kleist gave an intimate account of his state 
of mind and his general views. The letters are sometimes so 
expressive and self-interpreting that many a statement in them 
has been taken for granted without due regard to Kleist's gen- 
eral characteristic of being very inconsistent and versatile in his 
moods, predilections, and self-ｅxpression. In his plays and short 
stories Kleist offers a magnificent example of his creative ability 
to transform a moment into a life. However, his letters suffer 
from the dualism between his creative, and therefore prac- 
tically not always reliable imagination, and the attempt of giv- 
ing an empirically realistic account of his life. This is likely to be 
a rather general situation in an artist's letters. Yet in this case 
it is more prominent than in others, perhaps because of the 
constant efforts in the Kleist research to establish the empirical 
truth instead of pursuing the wiser way towards the ideal truth. 
In a much discussed letter of March 22, 1801, Kleist, in 
utter despair, describes to his fiancee the annihilating effect of 
his occupation with the Kantian philosophy and gives a vivid 
picture of his total apathy after learning that "We cannot de- 
cide, whether what we call truth is really the truth or only ap- 
pears to us as such." Kleist's world of ideals, for which he had 
lived and from which he had received his strength, seemed to 
*"Heinrich von Kleist und die Kantische Philosophic," in Idee und Gestalt, 
159-302. 
678 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
be destroyed. This letter is a masterpiece of writing and could, 
without a change, fill the place of a monologue in any suitable 
tragedy. 
At least three specific questions arise directly from this letter. 
First, Kleist gives the impression that he had begun his occupa- 
tion with Kant's philosophy "a short time ago" ("vor 
kurzem"}) although we know that he had already studied Kant 
in 1800. Secondly, speaking of Kant, Kleist uses the strange 
ｅxpression "the more recent so-called Kantian philosophy" 
(neuere sogenannte Kantische Philosophie). Thirdly, Kant's 
Critical method and philosophy seem to have been misunder- 
stood by Kleist. 
The discussion of these three points is the backbone of Cas- 
sirer's hypothesis in the first part of his essay: that Kleist in this 
letter had in his mind not Kant's transcendental idealism but 
Fichte's Bestimmung des Menschen. 
The question is not of great importance outside the circle of 
the professional Kleist experts. However it has methodical sig- 
nificance. We know that in 1800 Kleist had occupied himself 
with Kant without experiencing any disastrous results. on the 
other hand, it is easy for Cassirer to show that Kant's Critical 
method did not imply the denial of the objectivity of man's 
cognitive efforts. These two facts, in connection with the strange 
formula "so-called Kantian philosophy," leads Cassirer to the 
possibility that Kleist, in 1801, had read Fichte's Bestimmung 
des Menschen y which had been published in 1800 in Berlin 
where Kleist lived under circumstances which made this book 
immediately one of the most widely discussed in Prussia's capi- 
tal. Kleist must have known the book; and it contained ideas 
which would make his reaction very plausible. 
Cassirer's hypothesis may be correct. However, I think that it 
represents one of the very few instances in his writings on litera- 
ture where he presses a point less from necessity than from his 
own status as a Kant expert. It is certainly strange to observe 
that Kleist, who in November 1 800 had written his sister that 
he would like to go to France in order to spread there the new 
(i.e., Kantian) philosophy, would have had such a shocking 
experience on account of this same philosophy less than half a 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 679 
year later. The explanation that Kleist was shocked after read- 
ing the Critique of Pure Reason is not sufficient, since this work 
does not express an attitude that would have been basically 
different from Kant's earlier works. on the other hand, Fichte 
had become such a well-known personality in Germany, after 
his "atheism controversy" and his leaving Jena for Berlin, that 
it is hardly comprehensible that Kleist should have hidden 
Fichte's name in his letter, if it was Fichte and not Kant whom 
he had in mind. Cassirer sees that the acquaintance with Fichte's 
Bestimmung des Menschen would have been without any 
misunderstanding a sufficient cause for Kleist's despair; how- 
ever, he does not sufficiently take into consideration a possible 
misunderstanding by Kleist as to the meaning of Kant's philoso- 
phy. Strong inconsistencies and quick impulsive reactions were 
characteristic of the violently emotional Kleist, and these two 
letters of 1800 and 1801 may be just other examples of this 
sort of conduct. If Fichte, a "Kantian" philosopher, misunder- 
stood Kant, why should not Kleist, certainly not a professional 
philosopher, have made a similar mistake? And his desire to 
spread Kantian philosophy in France is no proof by itself that 
Kleist, in 1800, had an intimate knowledge of Kant's tran- 
scendental idealism. 
To prove either opinion is, of course, impossible; and it was to 
be expected that critics of Cassirer's hypothesis were split into 
two camps. Oskar Walzel, one of the foremost experts in the 
field of German romanticism, remarked: "Among the numer- 
ous discussions of Kleist's 'Kant experience,' only . . . [Cassirer's 
essay] needs to be emphasized." 27 Eugen Kuhnemann, in his 
lecture on "Kleist und Kant," took the stand against Cassirer. 28 
The discussion of Kleist's confusing letter is only a part of 
Cassirer's essay. Its second half deals with the significance of 
transcendental idealism for Kleist as a creative artist, and shows 
in an exemplary manner how Kleist's artistic work received a 
constructive impetus from Kantian thoughts. Kleist's personal 
tragedy, experienced by him consciously in continuous philo- 
87 O. Walzel, German Romanticism, translated by A. . Lussky (1932), 302. 
9 E. Kuhnemann, "Kleist und Kant," in Jahrbuch der Kleist-Gesellschaft 
(1922), 1-30. 
680 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
sophic reflections, expressed itself in his art. Cassirer may be 
right in stating that Kleist is perhaps the only example of a 
great poet whose creative power had been awakened by a re- 
flective experience (gedankliches Erlebmi) , at least I do not 
find any striking parallels. In this connection Cassirer, after 
his adventure into the realm of empirical truth, is again search- 
ing for the ideal truth and is, consequently, at his best. 
I do not want to leave the Kleist essay without calling atten- 
tion to a brief passage in it 29 which is very characteristic of 
Cassirer as a historian. In the history of German literature there 
is one of those rather common little events which, sub specie 
aeternitatis would appear as mere trifles but which come up 
again and again and are discussed with much satisfaction: I am 
speaking of those numerous examples of apparent pettiness in 
great men. Our example concerns Goethe and his relation to 
Kleist and refers to the simple fact that Goethe had no under- 
standing for the tragic genius of his younger colleague. We 
know some examples of Goethe's not exactly admirable reac- 
tions in similar cases; but we do not think their discussion 
particularly valuable. However, if a discussion were necessary, 
the only possibly fruitful method is that used by Cassirer in his 
essay. His brief analysis appears to me to be a perfect example 
of the ideal method of procedure. Showing Goethe's individual 
views and his certainly broad, but naturally limited, i.e., defined, 
personal requirements for what he would have considered great 
art, Cassirer puts Goethe's lack of understanding for Kleist 
in the light in which it needs to be seen. There are worlds of 
thought and of art where friendship is not possible, and that is 
all. Another sober interpretation of one of Goethe's peculiar 
reactions was given by Cassirer in his essay, "Goethe and the 
1 8th Century." 30 Goethe astonished Mr. Soret, Prince Karl 
Alexander's educator at Weimar, in August 1830, by his-total 
indifference to the fact of the July revolution in Paris and at 
the same time by his very strong interest in the fact that his, 
Goethe's, synthetic method in scientific research had just been 
29 Idee und Gestalt, 1 8 6ff . 
80 Zeitschrift fur Aesthetik XXVI (1932), also in Goethe und die geschichtliche 
Welt (1932), 86ff. 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 68 1 
accepted by Geoffrey St. Hilaire. In this context Cassirer is 
able to give an objective and, to me, doubtlessly correct interpre- 
tation. Goethe believed in "representative moments" in history. 
To him the July revolution was less representative than the 
victory of his synthetic method. As we know today, Goethe 
was right. 
In the history of literary criticism Cassirer is one of the 
representatives of the field and methods of Geisteswissenschajt 
the study of the development of ideas. Usually the work of 
the individual in this line of endeavor shows individual con- 
centration, since what is investigated is not ideas far excellence 
but ideas in their relation to something else. Our survey of a 
few of Cassirer's contributions shows that his main concern is 
to be found in the investigation of the relation between the 
reflective and the imaginative world of the artist. Cassirer is 
most explicit and most eloquent when recreating the life of the 
artist's imaginative conceptions which manifest themselves as 
transformations of his reflective life. His most significant con- 
tribution seems to me to be in the neighborhood of this particu- 
lar point. I find it in the gap which Cassirer leaves unexplained, 
because he does not want to make a pretentious statement with- 
out offering the scale of processes which would solidify it. In 
spite of everything, Cassirer's apparent interest in the clarifica- 
tion of historical items Kleist and Fichte or Kant , or in 
the truer understanding of a poet's philosophical contribution 
Holderlin and Schelling , or a better psychological interpre- 
tation of a great individual's momentous reactions Goethe and 
Soret , he dedicates his greatest effort to re-telling the story 
of artistic imagination in those individual lives which caught 
his fancy. There is no doubt that Goethe is for Cassirer the most 
significant phenomenon since he is the broadest} a phenomenon 
which, in the rare combination of pure artistry, profound under- 
standing of the sciences, and peculiarly unacademic philosophiz- 
ing, represents an object of investigation beyond the usual 
scope. In his writings on Goethe 31 Cassirer has the opportunity 
to apply his own wholly constructive, positive, and synthetic 
"See especially Freikeit und Form (1916), Goethe and die geschichtliche 
682 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
mind better than anywhere else. But here also a lacuna remains. 
Cassirer expresses with great penetration his conception of 
Goethe's artistic essence as he sees it, and the discipline of his 
knowledge and thought restrains him from overstepping the 
limits of the material at his disposal. However, here also a point 
appears again and again where I would ask for further ob- 
jective penetration} Cassirer would probably reply that the 
remaining part is a matter of experience, tact, and taste. The 
demand for more becomes consequently so urgent that, if the 
demand is followed by a new investigation, Cassirer surely 
would have stimulated it. The investigation ought to be directed 
toward a more objective foundation of our conception of the 
artist's creative world. 
To be sure, Cassirer has never published a statement referring 
to what I shall try to express. He knew, however, that such a 
demand is a logical consequence of his writings on literature; 
and in conversations he liked to dwell on this point. Fortunately, 
Cassirer has published a comprehensive chapter on "Art" and 
there has given a clear picture of his aesthetic views. 82 There is no 
inconsistency between his general theoretical discussion and the 
method used in his more practical contributions. 
We must mention a few of Cassirer's statements, in order to 
clear the ground. 
Cassirer conceives art in general as a reality of the same value 
as, for example, science. 83 "Rerum videre formas is a no less 
important and indispensable task than rerum cognoscere 
causas"** Art has its own rationality, the rationality of form. 
Art is not fettered to the rationality of things or events. It may infringe 
all those laws of probability which classical aestheticians declared 
to be the constitutional laws of art. It may give us the most bizarre 
and grotesque vision, and yet retain a rationality of its own the 
rationality of form. 85 
Welt (1932), "Goethes Pandora? 9 (in Idee und Gestalt, 7-32), "Goethe und die 
mathematische Physik" (in Idee und Gestalt, 33-80), Rousseau Kant Goethe. 
* Essay on Man, 137-170. 
88 Ibid., fassim. 
"Ibid., 170. 
"Ibid., 167. 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 683 
The artist who discovers the form of nature is philosophically 
equal to the scientist who discovers nature's laws. Moreover, 
"language and science are abbreviations of reality 5 art is intensi- 
fication of reality. Language and science depend upon one and 
the same process of abstraction} art may be described as a con- 
tinuous process of concretion." 36 "Science gives us order in 
thoughts; morality gives us order in actions, and art gives us 
order in the apprehension of visible, tangible, and audible ap- 
pearances." 87 And "We cannot speak of art as 'extrahuman' 
or 'superhuman' without overlooking one of its fundamental 
features, its constructive power in the framing of the human 
universe." 38 
These incomplete quotations help us to summarize Cassirer's 
attitude. Cassirer believes in a creative world of art as a funda- 
mentally independent world of human behavior, with its own 
conditions and laws. The essence of the artist's mind is different 
from the reflective mind of the scientist or philosopher. The 
scientist deals with phenomena and makes the intellectual at- 
tempt to bring order into them, renouncing to the highest possi- 
ble extent an interference of anthropomorphic elements. The 
artist offers the principal human example of free creative action. 
The scientist's work comprises a reciprocity of the phenomenal 
and his intellectual world; his reflective activity has the form of 
conquest: he becomes master of the phenomena by fully con- 
scious induction, trying (never quite successfully) to reduce the 
exciting but dangerous combination by means of an always 
threatening semi-conscious deduction. The artist, on the con- 
trary, uses his intellect rather as a function than as a condition, 
in order to express the results of his creative imagination. 
The transformation of the "real" world which takes place in 
every great work of art shows something else which may be 
called intensification or concretion, a something which other- 
wise does not make an unhindered appearance in the regions of 
human behavior. In art, and only in art, a decade can be made 
an hour, and a life made a mere moment. 
143. 
* Ibid., 1 68. 
88 IbU., 167. 
684 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
The intellect's interference manifests itself most clearly in 
literature, because literature is a linguistic art. However, the 
total work of literary art does not always have any, and some- 
times has very little, direct relation to the world of reflection. 
The main characteristic of art, in contrast to philosophy and sci- 
ence, is its inherent particularity not to be basically dependent 
upon the laws of scientific reflection. Since form is the only com- 
mon rational factor of every art, and the form of each art mani- 
fests a specific order, the order and form of the arts are to be 
investigated, if we want to examine the artist's imagination at 
work and the architecture of the world of art. 
This has certainly been done again and again; however from 
a different methodical point of view. Since, in this context, we 
are not interested in the biographical, psychological, or general 
historical implications of an artist, nor in a more or less casual 
or accidental investigation of certain elements in the work pe- 
culiar to a certain artist, our task should be a complete investiga- 
tion of the artist's formative tendencies which result in the total 
of his artistic creation. Art's main element is not the content j 
it is the creation of a form which in all its dimensions offers 
us the cognition of a content. The formative tendencies may 
vary in one or in all artists. 
When Cassirer speaks of poetic essence (dichterisches 
Wesenselemeni)) he does not use simply a general term for 
an unclear conception, but thinks of the full essence of the 
artist's creative and created world. The method of finding it 
remains undiscussed. Aesthetic judgment, experience, taste, and 
tact combined in a mind of methodical strength and constructive 
imagination reach, as we know and as Cassirer himself shows, 
remarkable results. However, the stimulation to a "more" 
is given at the same time, since the road toward subjectivity is 
wide open and the question arises whether among the aesthetic 
opinions of several experts some may not approach the "ideal 
truth" more closely than others. As long as the object of investi- 
gation is not the function of pleasure but the formative condi- 
tions of a work of art, an objective method should, at least, be 
visualized. That such a method can never consist of the tradi- 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 685 
tional formidable computations of, for instance, rhymes, influ- 
ences, or new words, is obvious. 
In literary research we find some of the finest examples of 
hermeneutic ability. The changes and the continuous develop- 
ment of evaluation do not necessarily make the quality of the 
preceding or following critical opinions appear weak, because 
the liking of individuals, groups, and generations may differ. 
This will remain so forever. However, we are not dealing with 
a sociology of art or with a history of taste. We may not "like" 
a certain artistic creation. However we ought to find a method 
of discovering whether our dislike is simply a dislike or whether 
it is based on the fact that the work in question is not a work of 
art. We ought to have the methodical means of finding the 
characteristics of the numerous "essences" or "worlds" of art 
as objectively as possible. Acknowledging that form and order in 
art are a conditio sine qua non y we certainly should be able to 
reach a better understanding of all the forms and orders appear- 
ing in the history of art. This has been achieved quite admirably 
in one of the non-linguistic arts painting. 
An ideal work of art may be compared with a sphere, every 
external and internal point of which stands in a meaningful 
connection with every other point. To determine the connec- 
tions and the necessity of their full reciprocity is the aim of an 
investigation in regard to the form of art. Obviously, such an 
ideal example may be found best in an artistic genre which 
by necessity lends itself to a relatively easy analytical approach, 
for example in music and also in painting. Linguistic art is far 
more complex. A lyric poem or a drama can be approached much 
more easily than for instance a novel, a widely changing and 
only superficially definable object which, because of the lack 
of formal limitation, appears as the most difficult possible prob- 
lem in this respect. 
The enervating element in literary research, as in all arts, 
is the difficulty of determining why an apparently good work 
of art is good. Here Cassirer says: "It is the task of the aesthetic 
judgment or of artistic taste to distinguish between a genuine 
work of art and those other spurious products which are indeed 
686 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
playthings, or at most c the response to the demand of enter- 
tainment'." 89 I believe that more concrete results can be reached. 
A novel may be good, because it manifests profound psycho- 
logical insight in spite of bad style; and another novel may be 
bad, because it shows superficiality of content in spite of a very 
good style. But it is not psychology or style or content which 
make a novel good or bad; it is something else. We should 
try to find this "something else." We should find the conditions 
under which art manifests itself in literature. We should, in 
every work of real or presumed art, investigate and define those 
elements which make it art. 
Experience shows that certain results can be achieved very 
quickly, for instance in the field of the novel. An initial two- 
sided attempt usually clarifies the ground. A novel combines, 
under normal circumstances, the description of man with the 
description of man's environment nature in any kind of varia- 
tion. A minute investigation of the formative elements pertain- 
ing to the representation of man is the foremost aim. What 
literary research has done so far is only a part of the whole 
task. In discussions of paintings we are accustomed to point out 
every detail of a depicted being's characteristics; in literary re- 
search we are usually satisfied with less. It is not a question of 
physical colors, an artist's language transforms ideas and 
feelings into its own colors; "it is written with images, sounds, 
and rhythms . . . which coalesce into an indivisible whole." The 
character of a person in a novel as concerns his actions, feelings, 
and thoughts is the most obvious, although not the artistically 
most important part of it. A look at the formative tendencies of 
a novelist shows numerous, but not innumerable, pecularities in 
making a person come, go, think, speak, impress, yawn, weep, 
live, and die. A thorough examination of these peculiarities 
will tell us something rather important about, not the mere 
technique, but the creative activity of the artist. A com- 
plete analysis of a novel will give us a fairly objective compre- 
hension of his formative action. The literary critic should be- 
come a neighbor of the fine arts, since literature, in its greatest 
performances, manifests the same purity of form and order as 
does great painting. The reason why a complete analytical 
., 164, 
CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM 687 
investigation of a novel or even of a short story has never yet 
been made lies in the apparent enormity of the task. The task is 
great. However, considering the immense amount of time 
spent on other and sometimes hardly worthwhile types of 
literary research, one may be permitted to think this and similar 
objects worthwhile. 
Remaining with our subject, the novel, we may say that an 
investigation of nature as a formative element is much easier 
than is that of man. In literary criticism we are accustomed to 
find statements about the particular tendency or ability of certain 
artists to describe nature. Very little has been said of the various 
types of nature descriptions in prose works and still less about 
the part which descriptions of nature play as a constructive 
power, necessary for the understanding of the total essence of 
the work, or as a mere embellishment with no other reason 
than that of serving the pleasure of the reader. In the first, 
artistically significant, case there are various patterns or types 
of form, and in each individual example an objective picture 
of the artist's aim and creative ability can be found. The results 
may sometimes be surprising j here I am able to offer a small but 
concrete example, since a concrete analysis has been published. 40 
In the history of the German novel, Theodor Fontane holds 
an eminent place. Fontane's descriptions of North German 
landscape, an inherent and distinct element in his best novels, 
were praised by critics as creative achievements of high quality. 
An analysis of these descriptions, however, showed that Fontane 
used a superficial pattern, introducing the descriptions without 
necessary inner connection, phrasing them rather monoton- 
ously, and using them as a kind of background music. Fontane 
was clever, but not a creative artist in his descriptions of nature. 
His quality in other respects has thus far not been investigated. 
In his technical dealing with nature he shows a tendency toward 
ornament or embellishment. In the history of human taste, in 
regard to literature, fine arts, and music technical ornamenta- 
tion has been one of the safest steps to popularity and has often 
been mistaken for true art. 
"So long as we live in the world of sense impressions alone we 
40 Max Tau, Der assoziative Faktor in der Landschajtt- und Ortsdarstellung 
Theodor Fontanes I (1928). 
688 KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
merely touch the surface of reality. Awareness of the depth of 
things always requires an effort on the part of our active and 
constructive energies." 41 The active and constructive energies 
have not yet been used sufficiently for our better understanding 
of the means which make it possible for a creative artist to show, 
in a symbol, a concretion of his poetic world. Better understand- 
ing does not mean destructive analysis or hair-splitting. I be- 
lieve with Cassirer that creative art is the noblest activity of 
man. The investigation of the formative elements of poetic 
creation is a noble task. 
KONSTANTIN REICHARDT 
DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES 
YALE UNIVERSITY 
41 Essay on Man t 169. 
2O 
John Herman Randall, Jr. 
CASSIRER'S THEORY OF HISTORY AS ILLUS- 
TRATED IN HIS TREATMENT OF 
RENAISSANCE THOUGHT 
20 
CASSIRER'S THEORY OF HISTORY AS ILLUS- 
TRATED IN HIS TREATMENT OF 
RENAISSANCE THOUGHT 
Die Aufgabe der Geschichte besteht nicht lediglich 
darin, dass sie uns vergangenes Sein und Leben kennen 
lehrt, sondern dass sie es uns deuten lehrt. . . . Was uns 
tatsachlich von der Vergangenheit aufbewahrt ist, sind 
bestimmte historische Denkmaler: "Monumente" in 
Wort und Schrift, in Bild und Erz. Zur Geschichte wird 
dies fur uns erst, indem wir in diesen Monumenten 
Symbole sehen, an denen wir bestimmte Lebensformen 
nicht nur zu erkennen, sondern kraft deren wir sie 
fur uns wiederherzustellen vermogen. 
Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 85, 86. 
IN THE work of Ernst Cassirer, historical and systematic 
studies were not only carried on side by side, they were 
woven together and used to illuminate each other. From the 
outset he brought his great gifts for historical interpretation 
to bear on strengthening and extending the philosophy of 
humanism he found in Kant. The autonomy of reason, the 
creativity of the human spirit, der Wille zur Gestaltung this 
was Cassirer's central vision. It gave him a consuming interest 
in all the products of the human mind and in the processes by 
which they have been created in what he came to call "the 
universe of symbols." "History as well as poetry is an organon 
of our self-knowledge, an indispensable instrument for build- 
ing up our human universe." 1 The autonomy of thought was the 
lesson he learned from history 5 it was also the principle of 
interpretation he brought to the past to make it speak to us. 
Hence his special interest and love went out to those periods 
* An Essay on Man, (1944), 206. 
691 
692 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
in the past when men were most keenly aware of their own 
productive powers and responsibility to those periods in which 
a creative humanism was most alive, and was forging its 
weapons. Closest to his heart was the great humanistic move- 
ment in the classic literature and philosophy of eighteenth- 
century Germany. In Goethe and in Kant he found the culmina- 
tion at once of an emancipated imagination and an autonomous 
reason} here poetry, science and philosophy had at last reached 
maturity and began to realize their "unendliche Aujgabe." 
Dear also was the Greek humanism of antiquity, above all of 
Plato, which classic German humanism had used as an instru- 
ment to build its own human universe. And dear was the 
emancipating thought of that Renaissance which had earlier 
turned to antiquity to win its liberation from the theocentric 
world of the Middle Ages, and to create its own "jreies welt- 
Uches Bildungsideal." 2 
All three of these creative humanistic movements of the past, 
Cassirer held, can furnish inspiration and sources of power for 
creating further forms of culture in the future. When by care- 
ful historical study we have learned to understand their lan- 
guage, they can free us both from the optimism of a Hegel and 
from the fatalistic pessimism of a Spengler. once we have 
achieved "a humanistic foundation for culture," we shall find 
that "action once more has free scope to decide by its own 
power and on its own responsibility, and it knows that the direc- 
tion and future of culture will depend on the way it decides." 3 
"A humanistic foundation for culture" thus Cassirer had 
come to see his task. How then can we explain the central role 
he always gave to natural science in human thought and in his 
historical studies? How can we reconcile his humanism with his 
major contribution to the history of philosophy, his making the 
history of scientific thought an integral part of it? How was it 
that Cassirer the humanist became one of the outstanding his- 
torians of science of our times? 
* Freiheit und Form (1916), 3. 
8 "Naturalistische und humanistische Begrundung der Kulturphilosophie," 
Goteborgs Kung. Vetenskafs- och VitterhetsSamhalles Handlingar, Femte 
Foljden, Ser. A, Band 7, No. 3 (1939), p. 28. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 693 
This seems a paradox only so long as we remain with the 
conventional opposition between the humanist and the scientist. 
As William James pointed out, "You can give humanistic value 
to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, eco- 
nomics, mechanics are humanities when taught with reference to 
the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these 
sciences owe their being." Natural science Cassirer always 
looked upon as the highest and most characteristic ｅxpression 
of the powers of the human mind. Even when, as a young 
student, he was most under the spell of Kant's scientific inter- 
ests, with his teacher Hermann Cohen he emphasized this 
humanistic import of the exact sciences. Mathematics and 
mathematical physics were always for him great creative enter- 
prises of the human spirit, forms of Socratic self-knowledge. 
In analyzing precisely the concepts and methods by which men 
have constructed their natural science, we are really analyzing 
the nature of man himself. Hence from his earliest work on 
Leibniz down to the penetrating studies he wrote in Sweden 
and in this country, the history of natural science, the meaning 
and interpretation of its epoch-making creative achievements, 
formed the core of his investigation into the nature of man. 
We have only to consider his interpretation of the humanistic 
movement of the Renaissance. Of his favorite historical periods, 
this is the one in which science is conventionally held to have 
played the most minor role. From Burckhardt down, the control- 
ling interests of the Renaissance have been thought to be irrele- 
vant to, if not actually opposed to the development of natural 
science. Historians of science, like Lynn Thorndike, have in turn 
even questioned the existence of any significant "Renaissance." 4 
But for Cassirer, the "discovery of the individual," that humanis- 
tic task of Renaissance thought, "as the Renaissance pursued it in 
poetry, in the plastic arts, in religious and political life, found 
its philosophical conclusion and its philosophical justification" 
in the scientific achievements of Galileo and Descartes. 5 
But highly as Cassirer esteemed man's self-ｅxpression 
4 "Renaissance or Prenaissance?" Journal of the History of Ideas, IV (1943), 
65-74. 
8 "Descartes' Wahrheitsbegriff," Tkeoria, III (Gothenburg, 1937), 176. 
694 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
through natural science, the Kantian limitation of truth to 
mathematical physics was from the beginning far too narrow for 
him. As early as the Substanzbegriff in 1910, he attempted a 
further analysis of the concepts and methods of chemistry. More 
recently he did the same for biology. 6 But his outstanding theo- 
retical achievement was to carry through a similar methodo- 
logical analysis of all those other "symbolic forms" which man 
makes and which make man known to himself. An analysis of 
the "logic of the cultural sciences" of the categories and con- 
cepts, the methods and notions of truth and of objectivity by 
which men interpret these symbolic ｅxpressions of their life 
came more and more to occupy the center of his attention. only 
by sharpening these tools of interpretation can we make a 
knowledge of what man has created in his culture in the past 
into a genuine "humanistic foundation for the culture" of the 
future. 7 
Cassirer saw the "cultural sciences" as embracing primarily 
linguistics, the sciences of art, and the sciences of religion. And 
with them belongs history, so fundamental a part of them all. 
Cassirer did not attempt to formulate with precision the distinc- 
tive concepts and methods of historical investigation and inter- 
pretation until the latter part of his life. He then developed 
his analysis in critical opposition to most of the theories of 
history of the last generation in Germany, and against the back- 
ground of his general philosophy of symbolic forms. But his 
thought is also obviously his own aims and procedures come to 
critical self-awareness } he tested other views by what he had 
already learned during his own practice as an intellectual his- 
torian. With a thinker so conscious of method as Cassirer, it is 
doubly important to start any examination of his actual histori- 
cal work from his own statement of his theoretical views as to 
the nature and procedure of the historian's enterprise. "No- 
body," he says, "could ever attempt to write a history of mathe- 
matics or philosophy without having a clear insight into the 
systematic problems of the two sciences. The facts of the philo- 
*Zr Logik der Kulturwissenschaften (Gothenburg, 1942), 100-1045 see also 
the forthcoming fourth volume of the Erkenntnisproblem. 
7 See Zur Logtk der Kulturwissenschaften. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 695 
sophical past, the doctrines and systems of the great thinkers, 
are meaningless without an interpretation." 8 Likewise, no one 
can hope to understand Cassirer's historical practice without a 
knowledge of what he conceives to be the questions and prob- 
lems the historian is trying to answer. 
Consequently, the best way to understand what Cassirer has 
done as an historian is in terms of his own analysis of the his- 
torian's aim. This makes clear not only why he has proceeded 
as he has; it answers the questions as to why he has not done 
other things, why he has left out what many other intellectual 
historians would want to include, and minimized what they 
would make central. We shall start, therefore, with a statement 
of Cassirer's analysis of history. 
I 
Cassirer belongs with those who find a sharp difference be- 
tween natural science and history. Physical facts are not like 
historical facts, though neither are brute, "hard" data both 
depend on theoretical construction, and their objectivity is 
established only by a complicated process of judgment. Physical 
facts are determined by observation and experiment; they be- 
come part of the physical order only if we can describe them 
in mathematical language. "A phenomenon which cannot be so 
described, which is not reducible to a process of measurement, 
is not a part of our physical world." 9 But historical facts are not 
established by observation and experiment, nor are they meas- 
ured and expressed in mathematical terms. They have to be 
given "a new ideal existence." "Ideal reconstruction, not 
empirical observation, is the first step in historical knowledge." 10 
A scientific fact is always the answer to a question; the object 
is always there to be questioned. But the historian's questions 
cannot be directed immediately toward the past he is trying to 
understand; they must be addressed rather to documents or 
monuments. His data, indeed, are not things or events, but 
symbols with a meaning; he confronts a world of symbols to be 
8 Essay on Man, 179. 
9 1 bid., 174. 
10 Ibid. 
696 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
interpreted. The task of the historian is thus not the mathemati- 
cal ｅxpression of observed events, but the interpretation of 
symbols. 
Cassirer rejects, however, those distinctions between natural 
science and historical knowledge which have been most popular 
in recent discussion of historical knowledge and historical truth, 
especially in Germany. History has no distinctive "logic" of its 
own. Logic 
is one because truth is one. In his quest of truth the historian is bound 
to the same formal rules as the scientist. In his modes of reasoning 
and arguing, in his inductive inferences, in his investigation of causes, 
he obeys the same general laws of thought as a physicist or a biologist. 
So far as these fundamental theoretical activities of the human mind 
are concerned, we can make no discrimination between the different 
fields of knowledge. . . . Historical and scientific thought are distinguish- 
able not by their logical form but by their objectives and subject matter. 11 
But again, the difference does not lie in the fact that the 
objects of historical knowledge are past. Science too is concerned 
with the past: the astronomer, the geologist, the paleontologist, 
all succeed in disclosing a former state of the physical world. 
Nor does the difference consist in the historian's concern with 
individuals the view of Windelband and Rickert, who held 
that science aims at general laws and universals, history at 
unique events and particulars. 
It is not possible to separate the two moments of universality and 
particularity in this abstract and artificial way. A judgment is always 
the synthetic unity of both moments; it contains an element of uni- 
versality and particularity. These elements are not mutually opposed; 
they imply and interpenetrate one another. "Universality" is not a term 
which designates a certain field of thought; it is an ｅxpression of the 
very character, of the function of thought. Thought is always universal. 12 

on the other hand, many natural sciences, like geology, de- 
termine concrete and unique events. Thus, in distinguishing 
history from natural science, Cassirer avoids many of the theo- 
retical difficulties of those who have sharply divided the two 
realms. Above all, he does not rule scientific procedures out of 
Ibid., 1 8 6. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 697 
the historian's method, but makes them necessary if not sufficient 
conditions. 
The real difference, Cassirer concludes, is that the historian's 
object is human life and human culture. 
History can make use of scientific methods, but it cannot restrict itself 
only to the data available by these methods. No object whatever is 
exempt from the laws of nature. Historical objects have no separate 
and self-contained reality; they are embodied in physical objects. But 
in spite of this embodiment they belong, so to speak, to a higher 
dimension. 13 
The historian must use the concepts of science in reconstructing 
the past from its present traces, just like the geologist. But "to 
this actual, empirical reconstruction history adds a symbolic 
reconstruction." 14 Its documents are not dead remnants of the 
past but living messages from it to us. The historian must make 
us understand their language. Not the logical structure of 
historical thought, but this special task of "interpretation," is 
his distinguishing mark. 
What the historian is in search of is the materialization of the spirit 
of a former age. He detects the same spirit in laws and statutes, in 
charters and bills of right, in social institutions and political constitutions, 
in religious rites and ceremonies. To the true historian such material 
is not petrified fact but living form. History is the attempt to fuse 
together all these disjecta membra, the scattered limbs of the past and 
to synthesize them and mold them into new shape. 15 
The historian thus aims at a "palingenesis," a rebirth of the 
past. 
... an understanding of human life is the general theme and ultimate 
aim of historical knowledge. In history we regard all the works of man, 
and all his deeds, as precipitates of his life; and we wish to reconstitute 
them into this original state, we wish to understand and feel the life 
from which they are derived. 16 
All human works are forever in danger of losing their meaning. 
Their reality is symbolic, not physical; and such reality never ceases 
"Ibid., 176. 
14 Ibid., 177. 
" Ibid. 
M Ibid. t 178, 184. 
698 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
to require interpretation and reinterpretation. ... In order to possess 
the world of culture we must incessantly reconquer it by historical 
recollection. But recollection does not mean merely the act of reproduc- 
tion. It is a new intellectual synthesis a constructive act. 17 
The historian, consequently, is a kind of "retrospective proph- 
et." He interprets the meaning of the past 5 and the category 
of meaning is not to be reduced to the category of being. It is, 
in fact, an Ur$hanomen y in Goethe's sense; its "origin" is an 
insoluble question. It is a kind of "mutation" in evolutionary 
development that must be accepted with natural piety. 18 
If we seek a general heading under which we are to subsume historical 
knowledge we may describe it not as a branch of physics but as a 
branch of semantics. The rules of semantics, not the laws of nature, 
are the general principles of historical thought. History is included in 
the field of hermeneutics, not in that of natural science. 19 
In this work of historical interpretation of the meaning of 
the past, the historian must take his point of departure from 
his own times. 
He cannot go beyond the conditions of his present experience. Historical 
knowledge is the answer to definite questions, an answer which must 
be given by the past; but the questions themselves are put and dictated 
by the present by our present intellectual interests and our present 
moral and social needs. 20 
The questions we put to past thinkers are determined by our 
understanding of our own problems. Hence the need for con- 
tinual reinterpretation. 
As soon as we have reached a new center and a new line of vision in 
our own thought we must revise our judgments ... we have a Stoic, a 
sceptic, a mystic, a rationalistic, and a romantic Socrates. They are 
entirely dissimilar. Nevertheless they are not untrue; each of them gives 
us a new aspect, a characteristic perspective of the historical Socrates 
and his intellectual and moral physiognomy. . . . We have a mystic 
Plato, the Plato of neo-Platonism; a Christian Plato, the Plato of 
"Ibid., 185. 
* Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 109-112. 
19 Essay on Man, 195. 
*lbid., 178. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 699 
Augustine and Marsilio Ficino; a rationalistic Plato, the Plato of Moses 
Mendelssohn; and a few decades ago we were offered a Kantian Plato. 
We may smile at all these different interpretations. . . . They have all 
in their measure contributed to an understanding and to a systematic 
valuation of Plato's work. Each has insisted on a certain aspect which 
is contained in this work. . . . 21 
When we turn from the history of ideas to "real" history 
to the history of man and human actions, the same holds 
true. In political history we wish to understand not only the 
actions but the actors. "Our judgment of the course of political 
events depends upon our conception of the men who were 
engaged in them. As soon as we see these individual men in 
a new light we have to alter our ideas of these events." 22 Hence 
what Cassirer is emphasizing is a personal interpretation of his- 
tory, in which the key is in the last analysis the personality and 
character of outstanding men. And history is for him "per- 
sonal" in a double sense. Not only does the historian look for 
"a human and cultural life a life of actions and passions, of 
questions and answers, of tensions and solutions." He must 
also give a "personal" interpretation of these other personalities, 
a "personal truth." 
He infuses into his concepts and words his own inner feelings and thus 
gives them a new sound and a new color the color of personal 
life. ... If I put out the light of my own personal experience I cannot 
see and I cannot judge of the experience of others. Without a rich 
personal experience in the field of art no one can write a history of artj 
no one but a systematic thinker can give us a history of philosophy. 23 
Cassirer cites Ranke as his model not the Ranke of the fa- 
miliar precept of impersonality, but the Ranke who actually 
wrote history with a universal "personal" sympathy a sympa- 
thy which was intellectual and imaginative, not emotional. 
The procedure of the historian, therefore, is that of the inter- 
preter of another human personality. Thus, to understand 
Cicero's role in the events in which he took part, and to under- 
., i so. 
"Ibid., 1 8 1. 
"/*,, 187. 
700 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
stand those events themselves, we must first of all understand 
his personality and character. 
To this end some symbolic interpretation is required. I must not only 
study his orations or his philosophical writings; I must read his letters 
to his daughter Tullia and his intimate friends; I must have a feeling 
for the charms and defects of his personal style. only by taking all this 
circumstantial evidence together can I arrive at a true picture of Cicero 
and his role in the political life of Rome. Unless the historian remains 
a mere annalist, unless he contents himself with a chronological narration 
of events, he must always perform this very difficult task; he must 
detect the unity behind innumerable and often contradictory utterances 
of a historical character. 24 
In this delicate task he must be selective} but not necessarily 
of those events which have had important practical conse- 
quences, as Eduard Meyer held} he will single out those acts or 
remarks which are "characteristic," whose importance lies not 
in their consequences but in their semantic meaning, as "sym- 
bols" of characters and events. 
The true historian must thus be not only a trained scientific 
investigator, he must be an artist as well. 
But even though we cannot deny that every great historical work 
contains and implies an artistic element, it does not thereby become 
a work of fiction. In his quest for truth the historian is bound by the 
same strict rules as the scientist. He has to utilize all the methods of 
empirical investigation. He has to collect all the available evidence and 
to compare and criticize all his sources. He is not permitted to forget 
or neglect any important fact. Nevertheless, the last and decisive act is 
always an act of the productive imagination. 25 
I well remember a conversation with Cassirer, in which I was 
trying to establish some continuity between the procedures of 
the scientist whom I do not take in strictly Kantian terms as 
the mathematical physicist alone and of the historian. He 
admitted that the closest parallel in natural science to what the 
historian has to do is the physician's diagnosis of the ailment of 
his patient, in which all his scientific knowledge is brought to 
182. 
85 Ibid., 204. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 701 
bear upon a particular case. But he went on to insist that the 
historian must proceed always like the biographer of a man. He 
must gather together all his evidence evidence which is "sym- 
bolic" of the character of the man he is considering and then 
try to find that unifying focus or "center" from which all the 
manifestations of that character can be understood what he is 
at bottom trying to do. This is, of course, to try to interpret a 
thinker in terms of his central problem in terms, as Ebbing- 
haus put it, of "was er eigentlich will" This seems, indeed, the 
height of wisdom in interpreting the thought of any individual. 
But it is significant that Cassirer used this example as the way 
to interpret all history. It illustrates what I have called his 
"personal" view of the historian's enterprise; and it throws a 
flood of light on what he does not do in his historical studies 
on his complete indifference to any economic interpretation of 
intellectual history, for example. 
Cassirer's analysis of the aim and function of the historian is 
well summed up in the following passage from Zur Logik der 
Kulturwissenschaften : 
The task of history does not consist merely in making us acquainted 
with past existence and life, but in showing us how to interpret its 
meaning. All mere knowledge of the past would remain for us a "dead 
picture on a board" if no other powers than those of the reproductive 
memory were involved. What memory preserves of facts and events 
becomes historical recollection only when we can relate it to our inner 
experience and transform it into such experience. Ranke said that the 
real task of the historian consists in describing "wie es eigentlich 
gewesen." But even if we accept this statement, it is still true that 
what has been, when it comes into the perspective of history, finds there 
a new meaning. History is not simply chronology, and historical time 
is not objective physical time. The past is not over for the historian in 
the same sense as for the investigator of nature ; it possesses and retains 
a present of its own. The geologist may report about a past form of 
the earth; the paleontologist may tell us of extinct organic forms. All 
this "existed" at one time, and cannot be renewed in its existence and 
actual character. History, however, never tries to set before us mere 
past existence ; it tries to show us how to grasp a past life. The content 
of this life it cannot renew; but it tries to preserve its pure form. The 
wealth of different concepts of form and of style which the cultural 
702 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
sciences have worked out serves in the last analysis a single end: only 
through them all is the rebirth, the "palingenesis" of culture possible. 
What is actually preserved for us from the past are particular historical 
monuments: "monuments" in word and writing, in picture and in 
bronze. This does not become history for us until in these monuments 
we see symbols, through which we can not only recognize definite 
forms of life, but by virtue of which we can restore them for ourselves. 26 
II 
This is Cassirer's statement of the fundamentally humanistic 
task of the historian. By entering into the spirit of former ages, 
he can reveal man to himself, and in so doing enlarge man's 
imaginative sympathies beyond the narrow limits of the present 
cultural ｅxpressions of what man is. 
Like language or art, history is fundamentally anthropomorphic. . . . 
History is not knowledge of external facts or events; it is a form of 
self-knowledge. ... In history man constantly returns to himself; he 
attempts to recollect and actualize the whole of his past experience. 
But the historical self is not a mere individual self. It is anthropomorphic, 
but it is not egocentric. Stated in the form of a paradox, we may say 
that history strives after an "objective anthropomorphism." By making 
us cognizant of the polymorphism of human existence, it frees us 
from the freaks and prejudices of a special and single moment. It is 
this enrichment and enlargement, not the effacement, of the self, of 
our knowing and feeling ego, which is the aim of historical knowl- 
edge." 
With this statement of a humanistic historical enterprise, of its 
emancipating function in liberating us from the provincialism 
of the present, and of the imaginative enrichment and enhance- 
ment it can bring, no sensitive man could quarrel. Nor could 
the methodologist seriously doubt that Cassirer's procedure is 
appropriate to this goal of his. Not even the embattled pro- 
ponent of the unity of intellectual method could take real issue 
with that added "dimension" which Cassirer finds in history, or 
with the "artistic element," the final work of the "productive 
M Zitr Log'rk der Kulturwissenschaften, 85. 
* ; Essay on Man, 191. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 703 
imagination," which he sees it demanding. Cassirer has no 
scorn for "mere" science. He is only too anxious to make use 
of all the help which "scientific methods" can furnish. 
Philosophic reflection upon the fact of history and upon the 
ways in which it can be construed and understood might, indeed, 
point out that these ways are many and diverse. Cassirer's 
humanistic enterprise is but one of many types of historical in- 
vestigation, each of which has its own function and validity. Like 
most of those who have given thoughtful consideration to 
historical goals and methods, especially if they have been men 
who have themselves long and fruitfully pursued the interpre- 
tation of the meaning of the past, Cassirer is too ready to set up 
his own distinctive conceptions and working principles as the 
sufficient model for every approach to the past. But it is not 
only human existence that exhibits a "polymorphism"} so like- 
wise does men's concern with their living past. It is doubtless 
a "prejudice of the moment" to identify one's own historical 
enterprise with the task of "history" in general. In the his- 
torian's house are many mansions; and a comprehensive analysis 
of the ways in which history may be understood, and in which 
that understanding may illuminate human life today, would 
have to examine the specific functions and contributions of each. 
That task Cassirer has not attempted. 
What the historian, even the intellectual historian, is likely to 
find most questionable in Cassirer's "symbolic reconstruction" 
of the spirit of past ages in terms of the achievement of great 
men, is his almost total lack of concern with any questions of 
historical causation. Men and ages in the past thought differ- 
ently from each other, and from ourselves; to realize this 
elementary fact is an enhancement of our knowledge of man. 
But no mention is made that it might be a valid problem for 
historical investigation to ask why; there is not even a reasoned 
defense of a negative position on causation in history, as in 
theories like those of Croce or Collingwood. So far as Cassirer's 
analysis goes, thought might well be operating in a vacuum. 
The Hegelian cast of the passage quoted above about the non- 
individual self actualizing the whole of its past experience is 
obvious. But there is not even the Hegelian concern with the 
704 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
"immanent" development of thought. 28 All those questions 
which are certainly central in the "spirit" of our own age, as 
to the "dynamics" in history, are simply omitted. There is, in 
fact,.no place in Cassirer's discussion where it would be fitting 
even to raise the problem of a possible influence of technological 
or economic factors in determining the issues which confront 
thinkers. It is significant that in criticizing historical determin- 
ism, Cassirer examines three forms: the physicalistic determin- 
ism of the French positivists, the psychologistic determinism of 
Spengler, and the metaphysical determinism of Hegel. 29 Eco- 
nomic determinism is not so much as mentioned. Indeed, it is 
hard to ascertain whether the social sciences and their subject 
matters enter into Cassirer's thought at all. Certainly neither 
as symbolic forms nor as heuristic principles do they figure in his 
historical enterprise, nor are they ever mentioned as "Kulturwis- 
senschajten" 
Cassirer, however, is surely right in pointing out that the 
questions the historian puts to the past are the questions that are 
central in his own philosophic understanding of the world. As 
he maintains, only a philosopher can write a significant history 
of philosophy; and what he finds significant in past philosophies 
will depend on his own. Hence Cassirer's statement of his con- 
ception of the task of the historian is so intimately bound up 
with his systematic philosophy of symbolic forms that a search- 
ing examination would have to come to grips with that philoso- 
phy. This is not the place for such an undertaking. We can only 
be grateful that any set of leading principles, when applied by 
a mind with a scholar's equipment and scrupulous conscience 
before facts, is bound to shed a great light and reveal new rela- 
88 Cf., however, Essay on Man, 180: "The history of philosophy shows us 
very clearly that the full determination of a concept is very rarely the work of 
that thinker who first introduced that concept. For a philosophical concept is, 
generally speaking, rather a problem than the solution of a problem and the 
full significance of this problem cannot be understood so long as it is still 
in its first implicit state. It must become explicit in order to be comprehended 
in its true meaning, and this transition from an implicit to an explicit state is 
the work of the future." 
* "Naturalistische und humanistische Begrundung der Kulturphilosophie," 
of. cit., 12-14. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 705 
tions and meanings. It is not necessary to share Cassirer's exten- 
sion of the Kantian approach in order to appreciate his actual 
historical achievement. 
Ill 
But it is necessary to understand Cassirer's approach and his 
theory of history in order to understand why that achievement is 
what it is. Whatever our judgment of the importance of his 
humanistic conception of history, or of the validity of the phi- 
losophy on which it ultimately depends, it remains true that that 
conception does state the aim and method he himself pursued. 
It makes clear why he devoted himself with such success to the 
particular historical task he undertook, and why he set about 
that task in the particular way he did. It also makes clear the 
reasons for the self-imposed limitations of his historical work 
why he disregarded the problems he did, and why he gives 
no answer to many questions that have interested other intel- 
lectual historians. If his theory of history grew out of his own 
practice, that practice in turn can be taken to illustrate the 
theory} and the theory will furnish his own apologia, his own 
answer to the criticisms that have been directed against the prac- 
tice. I wish, therefore, to turn now to an examination of 
Cassirer's treatment of the Renaissance, to show how that treat- 
ment illuminates his theory and how it can be understood in 
terms of his systematic views. 
As an historical interpreter, a "retrospective prophet," Cas- 
sirer aimed to recreate the past, to recapture the spirit of a 
former age and to understand and feel it from within. In the 
Renaissance as a whole, or in any of the figures who represented 
its different facets, he was consequently concerned to grasp what 
was most distinctive and original, not what was merely tra- 
ditional and received as a legacy. His studies abound in phrases 
like "a wholly new feeling," "a completely different concep- 
tion." The Middle Ages serve as the foil, the contrast; they 
have for him little existence in their own right as themselves 
ｅxpressions of the human spirit and its achievements. 80 
80 For Cassirer, the fundamental trait of medieval thought, which sets it off 
706 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
Cassirer was not a medievalist, and when he first embarked 
on his pioneer studies of Renaissance thought the later Middle 
Ages were, as he has pointed out, largely a terra incognita. 
That a closer first-hand acquaintance with the complex currents 
of fourteenth and fifteenth century thought an acquaintance 
won only during the past generation, and still in great need of 
enlargement would have led to some modification of his inter- 
pretation of Renaissance figures, especially of the scientists, is 
certainly true. But it is doubtful whether that knowledge would 
have altered fundamentally his judgments. For the tracing of 
continuities and antecedents played a very minor part in his 
own historical enterprise. What interested him was rather the 
other side of history's shield, its novelties and new achieve- 
sharply from that of the Renaissance, is its subjection of reason to an external 
standard and authority. "In order to find an unchangeable, an absolute truth, 
man has to go beyond the limit of his own consciousness and his own ex- 
istence. He has to surpass himself. ... By this transcendence the whole method 
of dialectic, the Socratic and Platonic method, is completely changed. Reason 
gives up its independence and autonomy. It has no longer a light of its own; 
it shines only in a borrowed and reflected light. If this light fails, human reason 
becomes ineffective and impotent. ... No scholastic thinker ever seriously doubted 
the absolute superiority of the revealed truth. . . . The Autonomy' of reason was 
a principle quite alien to medieval thought." The Myth of the State (1946), 
83^5 95- "The discovery of truth and the foundation of truth [in Thomas 
Aquinas] is withdrawn from individual thinking and instead handed over to 
the Church as a universal institution." "Descartes' Wahrheitsbegriff," Theoria 
III (1937), 174. Speaking of Galileo, he says: "Just this character of the 
completeness, the self-sufficiency, the autonomy of natural knowledge the medieval 
system of doctrines and beliefs could not recognize. Here there could be no 
possible compromise: had the Church accepted Galileo's new conception of truth 
and his new conception of nature, it would have been giving up its own founda- 
tion. For what Galileo is demanding, not indeed explicitly but implicitly, is 
the abandonment of the dogma of original sin. For him there is no corruption 
of human nature through which it has been led astray from its goal of the 
knowledge of truth and of God." "Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitsproblem bei 
Galilei," Scientia, LXII (1937), 130$ cf. 191-3. 
That this formulation of the "medieval conception of truth," in the light of 
the many different and shifting views from the i3th century on, is hardly adequate 
to the complexity or even the "autonomy" achieved by reason in medieval 
philosophical discussion, no impartial student of medieval intellectual life would 
be likely to deny. 
M<< Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance," 
Journal of the History of Ideas, IV (1943), 50. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 707 
ments; this concern is implicit in his whole enterprise of 
"palingenesis." He had a genius for seizing on what was 
geninely original in a thinker, and lifting it out of its context 
in what was merely traditional. The traditional he freely recog- 
nized} but that was not what he was looking for. And, having 
no interest in causal questions, he was not concerned to show 
how a man, working with traditional materials upon new prob- 
lems, had managed to strike off original ideas. He loved sharp 
contrasts, the setting off of a "wholly new" idea against its 
background. Thus his symbolic reconstruction aimed ultimately 
at a description, an intellectual portrait of a man's ideas, not a 
genetic analysis. 
He stated the general problem: 
Even if it were possible to answer all these psychological, sociological, 
and historical questions, we should still be in the precincts of the properly 
"human" world; we should not have passed its threshold. All human 
works arise under particular historical and sociological conditions. But 
we could never understand these special conditions unless we were able 
to grasp the general structural principles underlying these works. In 
our study of language, art, and myth the problem of meaning takes 
precedence over the problem of historical development. . . . The neces- 
sity of independent methods of descriptive analysis is generally recog- 
nized. We cannot hope to measure the depth of a special branch of 
human culture unless such measurement is preceded by a descriptive 
analysis. This structural view of culture must precede the merely his- 
torical view. History itself would be lost in the boundless mass of dis- 
connected facts if it did not have a general structural scheme by means of 
which it can classify, order, and organize these facts. ... As Wolfflin. 
insists, the historian of art would be unable to characterize the art of 
different epochs or of different individual artists if he were not in 
possession of some fundamental categories of artistic description. 52 
For Cassirer, it is clear, the "spirit of a former age" is caught in 
a descriptive analysis, not in a causal or genetic explanation. 
Cassirer kept in touch with all the major secondary interpre- 
tations of the medieval background of Renaissance thought. He 
did not dream of questioning these discovered antecedents. But 
M Essay on Man, 6Si 
708 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
he brushed them aside with some impatience} they did not affect 
the fundamental question, as he saw it. Typical is a statement 
about Galileo: 
The antecedents of Galileo's science are now much more precisely 
known than they were a few decades back. When I began my studies 
in Galileo forty years ago, this field was largely a terra incognita. A 
turning-point here came with the investigations of Duhem. . . . The 
antecedents of Galileo's theory of method have also been thoroughly and 
intensively examined. . . . But can all this historical evidence seriously 
shake our conviction of the incomparable scientific originality of Galileo? 
I believe that it can only serve to strengthen this conviction and to sup- 
port it with new arguments. ... A work like the dynamics of Galileo 
could not come to birth all at once, like Athene from the head of Zeus. 
It needed a slow preparation, empirically as well as logically and meth- 
odologically. But to all these given elements Galileo added something 
completely new. . . . All this is wholly new and unique and unique 
not only as a particular discovery, but as the ｅxpression of a scientific 
attitude and temper. 33 
Or take his judgment of Descartes: 
That between Descartes' philosophy and the scholastic systems there 
are close relations, that the break between the two is by no means so 
sharp as it often appears in the traditional conception and presentation 
of his ideas: this cannot be contested after the fundamental investigation 
of Gilson. But no matter how many points of contact we may find 
between medieval and Cartesian thought, the whole accent of knowledge 
still changes when we pass from one to the other. The scholastics and 
Descartes can agree completely in assuming and establishing definite 
particular "truths" as in the ontological proof of God but in the 
conception of truth itself, in the explanation of its "nature" and its real 
meaning, there is an ineradicable, a radical difference. . . . The new in 
Descartes is not that he used doubt as the means by which alone we 
can arrive at truth. In this respect Augustine had preceded him. But 
88 "Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance," 
Journal of the History of Ideas, IV (1943), 50, 51. Cf. his comparison of Galileo 
with Machiavelli: "Recent research has taught us that both Machiavelli and 
Galileo had their precursors. . . . They needed a long and careful preparation. 
But all this does not detract from their originality. What Galileo gave in his 
Dialogues and what Machiavelli gave in his Prince were really 'new sciences.' 
. . . Just as Galileo's Dynamics became the foundation of our modern science of na- 
ture, so Machiavelli paved a new way to political science." Myth of the State> 1 30. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 709 
Augustine's maxim: "Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi, in interiore homine 
habitat veritas" had another significance from Descartes' return to the 
"Cogito." The inner experience that is here denoted is not that of pure 
knowledge, but that of the will and of religious certainty. . . . The prin- 
ciple of doubt becomes for Descartes the real synthetic constructive 
principle of knowledge. 34 
Or, in another field, take Cassirer's illuminating distinction 
between Luther and medieval mysticism: 
Here there is the closest connection between Luther and the reli- 
gious individualism of the Middle Ages, as it is expressed in mysticism in 
particular. But on the other hand it is clear that the conception in which 
this connection is above all presented contains also the decisive differ- 
ence. . . . Together with the dependence on objective things, mysticism 
destroys at the same time every principle of objective imposition of form: 
the "self" that it seeks is wholly without form, it is a "self" that has 
divested itself of all finite measure and limitation. ... In contrast, 
Luther's conception of freedom and of individuality contains not the 
mere principle of the denial of the world, but in that principle and 
because of it the principle of world transformation. The value of 
"working" itself is not destroyed along with the intrinsic value of 
particular works. 35 
And finally: 
The Platonism of the new age, as it appears in the Florentine 
Academy, remains in its beginnings still completely bound up with 
Augustinianism and, as it were, merged in it. Relying on the authority 
of Augustine, Ficino himself acknowledges, he first dared to combine 
Christianity with Platonism. Hence it is not the discovery of the "self" 
that is distinctive for the Renaissance, but rather the circumstance that 
a fact and content which the Middle Ages acknowledged only in its 
religious psychology the Renaissance removed from this connection and 
exhibited in independence. 86 
IV 
These instances make clear just what Cassirer meant by "re- 
creating the spirit of a former age." They also illustrate the 
* "Descartes' Wahrheitsbegriff," Thcoria III (1937), 173-5, 178-9. Cf. 
Indvoiduum und Kosmos (1927), 135. 
85 Freiheit und Form (1916), 19-21. 
16 Das Erkenntnisfroblem, I (1922; third ed.), 78. 
710 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
way in which another of his historical principles entered in to 
modify and give direction to his aim of symbolic reconstruction. 
This re-creation is to be no mere passive act of reproduction, we 
recall. 87 It is rather a new intellectual synthesis, a new Gestalt- 
ung y a new creative, constructive act. For, though the answers 
to the historian's questions must come from the past, the ques- 
tions themselves depend on his own interests and systematic 
problems. 38 Cassirer's central concern with the autonomy of 
thought, the creativity of the human spirit, not only directed 
his attention to the Renaissance in the first place, but made him 
devote to its thinkers a detailed study which he gave only in a 
derived sense to the medieval philosophers. It also determined 
the creative achievements and ideas he would single out. 
This is most apparent in his great Erkenntnis'problem. The 
first volume includes a careful and penetrating analysis of al- 
most all the major Renaissance thinkers, beginning with 
Cusanus. Its successive editions (1906, 1910) brought to light 
a great wealth of material then nearly unknown. The problem 
of knowledge is very broadly construed, and upon it is hung an 
analysis of most of the major themes of Renaissance thought. 39 
The store of otherwise inaccessible quotation from the sources 
has made it for a generation one of the most useful books for 
the student of the period. 
But the volume is unmistakably the work of a neo-Kantian 
philosopher. The reader gets at times the impression that the 
Renaissance was populated largely with Vorkantianer. It is not 
that Cassirer actually distorts the thought of the men he is 
dealing with ; for that he is too honest and scrupulous a scholar, 
and too largely endowed with a vivid historical sense. His 
interpretations have stood up remarkably well. It is rather that 
the problems he singles out for analysis are those which interest 
the Kantian. 
* Essay on Man, 185. 
88 Essay on Man, 178. 
89 Cf. Erkenntnisproblem, I, 13: "In general, the history of the problem of 
knowledge will mean for us not so much a fart of the history of philosophy 
for with the way in which all the elements in a philosophical system are 
internally and mutually determined, any such separation would remain an 
arbitrary limitation as rather the total field from a definite point of view and 
a definite approach." 
THEORY OF HISTORY 711 
For the Erkenntnis^roblem^ of course, was undertaken to 
furnish historical confirmation of "the power and the inde- 
pendence of the mind." It was designed to exhibit all scientific 
concepts "as the meaqs by which thought wins and makes secure 
its dominance over appearances." It belongs with the learned 
and penetrating historical studies of that other "critical idealist," 
Leon Brunschvicg, as an historical proof that science is a con- 
struction and creation of "reason" the reason embodied in the 
concrete social enterprise of science. By an analysis of the de- 
velopment of scientific thought it establishes the same position 
which the Substanzbegriff reaches by its systematic analysis. "In 
regarding the presuppositions of science as having come about, 
we are at the same time recognizing them as creations of 
thought j in discovering its historical relativity and conditions, 
we are opening up the prospect of its never-ending progress and 
its ever-renewed productivity." 40 
History becomes the completion and the touchstone of the results which 
the analysis and reduction of the content of the sciences gives us. ... 
The analytic task imposed on modern thought finds its logical conclusion 
in the system of Kant. Here is taken the final and conclusive step; 
knowledge is based completely on itself, and nothing further in the 
realm of being or of consciousness is prior to its own legislative activity. 41 
As Cassirer moved beyond the limits of a narrow Kantianism 
he came to be provoked that the label was still attached to 
him this apologetic aim and direction of his historical studies 
became less intrusive. He had reached "a new center and a new 
line of vision." But his fundamental humanism remained, and 
continued to dominate his interpretation of the Renaissance, 
and of what in it was of significance and importance. The 
Individuum tmd Kosmos is not a neo-Kantian book, in the same 
sense as the Erkenntnisfroblem. If anything, as its very title 
suggests, it is Burckhardtian. 42 But it is uncompromisingly 
"humanistic" in Cassirer's sense. 
* Erkenntnisfroblem (3rd ed., 1922), I, vi. 
41 Ibid., 6, 13. 
"This is also especially true of the brief sketch of the Italian Renaissance 
in the Introduction to Freiheit und Form, with its emphasis on the "new relation 
to politics," and "the state as a work of art." 
712 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
That Cassirer should have interpreted Renaissance thought 
from the standpoint of his own philosophic vision was inevitable. 
What is more important, it is also completely consistent with his 
considered conception of the very nature of historical interpre- 
tation. If it be a shortcoming, it was an intentional one. Like all 
perspectives, to be sure, it is a limitation: it excluded other 
aspects of the Renaissance from the center of his attention. 
From a less partial point of view perhaps merely from a 
different perspective, one that I happen to find more illumi- 
nating Cassirer was prevented by his Kantian humanism from 
realizing the full significance of at least one of the major cur- 
rents of Renaissance thought. He appreciated its Humanism, 
and he analyzed brilliantly its Platonism. But he failed to see 
the role of its Aristotelianism. He did not, like other great 
students of Renaissance thought like Gentile, for instance 
dismiss that Aristotelianism as a mere survival of "scholasti- 
cism." His analyses of Pomponazzi 43 are suggestive; and he was 
the first to call attention to the great importance of Zabarella. 44 
But he naturally saw in Renaissance Aristotelianism primarily 
its new humanistic element which was great and not its still 
greater naturalism. And since he did not adequately bring out 
the significance of that Aristotelianism, he did not contrast it 
effectively with the Platonistic movement, and thus failed to 
reveal the full significance of the latter. 
The contrast between the Platonism and the Aristotelianism 
of the Renaissance is at bottom one between a modernistic and 
a naturalistic humanism. Both focused attention on man and 
his destiny 5 both emphasized individual and personal values. 45 
41 Erkenntnityrobleni) I, 105-175 Individuum und Kosmos, 85-7, 108-12, 
143-49- 
44 Erkenntnisfroblem, I, 117-20, 136-44. 
48 Cf. Individuum und Kosmos, 148: "Both men, Pomponazzi as well as 
Ficino, are wrestling with the problem of individuality} both are trying to make 
the phenomenon of the Self* the center of psychology. But they pursue this goal 
in ways that are completely separate. For Ficino it is the purely intellectual 
nature of man which can alone form him into a 'self* in the strict sense, and 
elevate him above the realm of all that is merely corporeal. . . . For Pomponazzi, 
on the contrary, individuality is not to be asserted against Nature, but is to be 
derived and proved from Nature. . . . Just as Ficino in his fight for the rights 
and the uniqueness of the individual self calls for help upon supernaturalism 
and transcendence, so Pomponazzi in the same fight calls upon naturalism and 
immanence." 
THEORY OF HISTORY 713 
In this sense both were humanistic. But where Ficino and the 
Platonists, to support their religious modernism and "liberal- 
ism," went back to the Hellenistic world, to Plutarch and 
Alexandria, Pomponazzi and the greater Zabarella went to 
ancient Athens to find inspiration in its naturalistic and scientific 
thought. Their scientific humanism is much more original than 
the religious humanism of the Florentines. Where the Platon- 
ists vindicated the dignity of the individual soul by elevating it 
in freedom above nature, the Aristotelians made the soul a 
natural inhabitant of an orderly universe. Not until Spinoza 
and the eighteenth-century Newtonians is there another figure 
who effects so "modern" a blend between humanism and scien- 
tific naturalism as Pomponazzi and Zabarella. They are, in 
fact, the spiritual fathers of Spinoza's religious naturalism. The 
historical influence of the Platonists was great. But the Renais- 
sance Aristotelians have a more original as well as a much 
sounder philosophy, and one which much more closely fore- 
shadows later modern thought. 
This is hardly the place to substantiate this interpretation, 
made from another perspective than Cassirer's, or to maintain 
as I think can be done that it is closer to the problems of 
Renaissance thought itself. It is easier to show that Cassirer 
overemphasized the influence of Platonism and underempha- 
sized that of the Aristotelian tradition on points of detail, espe- 
cially in the development of science. Galileo, for instance, was 
much closer to the scientific Aristotelianism of the Italian 
schools, and much farther from Plato, than Cassirer realized.* 8 
** For Cassirer's view of Galileo's "Platonism," see Individuum und Kosmos, 
1785 "Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit," American Scholar, 12 (1943)1 
10 j "Descartes' Wahrheitsbegriff," Theoria, III (1937), 168. Cassirer has been 
very cautious in asserting the Platonism of Galileo's thought. It is mentioned 
only once in the Erkenntnisfroblem (I, 389), and does not appear in "Wahrheits- 
begriff und Wahrheitsproblem bei Galilei" (Scientia, LXII [1937]) at all. In 
contrast to A. Koyrc, e.g., who speaks of Galileo's work as "an experimental 
proof of Platonism," and identifies any mathematical science of nature with 
"Platonism," ("Galileo and Plato," Journal of the History of Ideas, IV [1943]) 
4285 cf. also his Studes Galileennes [Paris, 1940]), Cassirer emphasizes instead 
the differences between Galileo's and Plato's views. "Galileo had still another 
dualism to overcome before he could found a science of nature. Plato had based 
his philosophy upon the presupposition that we cannot speak of a science of 
nature in the same sense as we can of a science of mathematics. ... It was most 
difficult for Galileo to combat the authority of Plato. . . . But he was convinced 
714 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
And Cassirer likewise fails to give due importance to the 
Aristotelian background of the Nature philosophies of the 
Italian Renaissance. on the development of both science and 
Nature philosophy he underestimates the influence of the tra-* 
dition of Ockhamism. And he undoubtedly overestimated that 
of his favorite Cusanus, as he came reluctantly to admit/ 7 
that in his own work, in the new science of dynamics, he had removed the barrier 
Plato had erected between mathematical and natural science 5 for this new science 
proved nature itself a realm of necessity rather than of chance." "Galileo: a 
New Science and a New Spirit," American Scholar, 12 (1943), 10. Cf. also 
"Descartes' Wahrheitsbegriff," Theoria, III (1937), 168: "So long as the 
philosophical orientation was directed toward Plato alone, and to a certain 
extent committed to him, there was a weighty obstacle opposed to the carrying 
through of the ideal of an exact science of nature." And Cassirer distinguished 
sharply between the "mathematical mysticism" of much of the Pythagoreanizing 
Platonism of the Renaissance, and the "mathematical science of nature." Cf. 
"Mathematische Mystik und mathematische Naturwissenschaft," Lychnos (Upsala, 
1940). In his final judicious analysis ("Galileo's Platonism," Studies and Essays 
in the History of Science and Learning offered in homage to George Sarton (1947) ) , 
Cassirer identifies Galileo's very novel "physical Platonism" primarily with the 
hypothetical method of "problematical analysis" he found in the Meno as well 
as in Euclid and Archimedes, and best described in his letter to Carcaville. 
But if, as Cassirer emphasizes, Galileo insists that the subject-matter of 
knowledge is not an intelligible, "ideal" world dubiously related to the world 
of natural events, but is rather the intelligible structure of that world j and if he 
also insists that it is arrived at by the intellect through the careful analysis of 
instances of it encountered in sense experience, as Aristotle had suggested and 
the Italian methodolo gists more precisely formulated how can this be called 
a "Platonism" rather than an "Aristotelianism"? There is no evidence that 
Galileo was in any sense touched by Platonic metaphysics, or that he is any more 
of a Platonist than Aristotle himself. on the fundamental issue in any philosophy of 
science, the relation of discourse to knowledge and to the subject-matter of 
knowledge, Galileo was one with the Italian tradition of realistic Aristotelianism. 
Galileo's distinction was his startling illustration that the best human knowledge 
is mathematics, and that the intelligible structure of things which that knowledge, 
when clearly formulated, is able to grasp, is mathematical in character. Cf. my 
"Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua," Journal of the 
History of Ideas, I (1940), 204-6. 
* T "I avail myself of this opportunity to revise a former statement made in 
my Individuum und Kosmos. In the second chapter I tried to show that Nicholas 
of Cusa's philosophy exerted a strong influence on the general development of 
Italian thought in the Quattrocento. I still think this to be highly probable, but 
I should perhaps have spoken with more caution. I quite agree that, on the 
strength of new historical evidence, we can not give a direct and definite proof 
of this thesis. It is possible that Ficino conceived his general theory independently 
of Nicholas of Cusa. In this case the close relationship between the two thinkers 
THEORY OF HISTORY 715 
But when all this has been pointed out, it remains true that, 
in importing the issues of a later day into his study of the 
Renaissance, Cassirer had instruments with which to ask ques- 
tions. Even should we end by drastically modifying his interpre- 
tation of Renaissance thought, his questions have taught us an 
immense amount. What he learned forms the basis on which we 
have asked our own questions. And in the course of putting his 
questions to the Renaissance, Cassirer was led much nearer to 
the problems of the Renaissance itself. There is a vast difference 
between the Erkenntnisfroblem and late studies like those of 
Pico, Ficino, Galileo and Descartes. 48 The closer we can get to 
the problems of the Renaissance itself, and the farther we can 
get away from viewing them in terms of problems of a later 
incidence, the more likely we are to arrive at a genuine his- 
torical understanding. May our perspectives give us an equal 
chance to learn! 
V 
The illustrations already given show also how Cassirer him- 
self followed his third major principle, that historical interpre- 
tation must always center on individual persons, and under- 
stand events in terms of such personalities. His analyses are 
always carried out as the intellectual portraits of men, even 
when those men have been selected as "symbols" of an age, or 
of characteristic answers to a problem. 49 His interest in intel- 
would be all the more important and interesting from the point of view of the 
general history of ideas. For it would show us the common background of the 
philosophy of the fifteenth century the general intellectual and religious atmo- 
sphere of the Renaissance." "Ficino's Place in Intellectual History," Journal of the 
History of Ideas, VI (1945), 492n. 
48 "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola," Journal of the History of Ideas, III 
(194.*), 123-44, 3 1 9-46 j "Ficino's Place in Intellectual History," Journal of the 
History of Ideas, VI (1945), 483-501$ "Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitsproblem 
bei Galilei," Scientia, LXII (1937), 121-30, 185-935 "Galileo," American 
Scholar, 12 (1943)) 5-195 "Descartes' Wahrheitsbegriff," Theoria, III (1937), 
161-87. 
49 This is true of the one book Cassirer wrote specifically about the Renaissance, 
Individuum und Kosmos (1927). After quoting the major criticisms of the 
"concept of the Renaissance," Cassirer goes on: "What is needed is the universality 
of a systematic point of view and a systematic orientation, which by no means 
coincides with the universality of merely empirical generic concepts, commonly 
716 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
lectual personalities is so great that it quite bursts the frame of 
the context for which an idea has been introduced. It is the 
history of "thinking," of Denken, that he definitely gives us, 
not of ideas divorced from the minds that have entertained 
them. His analyses of ideas are beautifully lucid, but they aim 
to convey the feel of those ideas to the men expressing them 
he is true to his "personal" interpretation. He is at his best in 
such a "contextual" analysis, in pointing out how an idea in 
one man's thinking differs from what seems to be the "same" 
idea in another's. All this, of course, lends added value to 
Cassirer's work, and makes the reader quite forget the limita- 
tions originally suggested by his own intellectual framework. 
Thus whatever his shortcomings in appraising the significance 
of the Aristotelian movement as a whole, Cassirer cannot help 
but do a great measure of justice when he comes to individual 
Aristotelians like Pomponazzi or Zabarella. This is reinforced 
by the wealth of judiciously selected quotations quotations 
which are always "symbolic" of far more than the point for 
which they are introduced. 
In this art of portraiture, Cassirer's method is clear. He 
seeks above all for that "central focus" in terms of which every- 
thing the man says will form an "organic whole." His comment 
on the work of another historian, P. O. Kristeller, states this 
well. In the last article Cassirer wrote, he quotes Kristeller: 
"If we are to understand Ficino's metaphysics," he declares, 
we must start from the phenomenon of "internal experience." Here 
we find the real clue to Ficino's philosophy the fundamental fact and 
used to divide history into periods and to delimit conveniently its individual 
epochs. Toward this goal the following considerations are directed. . . . They 
remain within the history of philosophical problems, and seek to find an answer 
there to the question whether and in how far the intellectual movement of the 
1 5th and i6th centuries, in all the multiplicity of its ways of putting problems 
and all the divergence of its solutions, forms a self-contained unity." Individuum 
und KosmoSy 5, 6. 
But the book itself is far from a unity. It is a collection of studies of the 
views of different men grouped around a few central problems ultimately, as 
the title suggests, those raised by Burckhardt. Its organization is far from clear, 
it is full of digressions, and its enduring value is undoubtedly its presentation 
of the "intellectual portraits" of men looking at these problems. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 717 
principle on which all his special doctrines depend. ... If we accept 
this starting-point of Kristeller's interpretation and to my mind he 
has proved his point by conclusive arguments we have won a new 
perspective, a vantage-point from which we may see the whole of 
Ficino's system in a clearer light. Many questions that were highly 
controversial can now be answered in a better and more satisfactory 
way. ... He gives us a much more "organic" view of Ficino's philosophy 
than we find in other writers. Kristeller makes no attempt to conceal 
the contradictions inherent in Ficino's doctrine. But he shows convinc- 
ingly that in spite of all its discrepancies Ficino's work preserves its 
systematic unity. It is centered around a few fundamental problems 
which complete and elucidate each other. 50 
What Cassirer thus praises in the method of Kristeller he 
himself tried to do in his own. Thus, facing the apparent con- 
tradictions in the thought of Pico della Mirandola, he says: 
Pico . . . was trying to assert the validity of his own principle of 
knowledge. . . . The distinctive category under which he subsumed his 
doctrine of God, of the world and of man, his theology and his psy- 
chology, is the category of symbolic thought. once we ascertain this 
central point of his thinking, the different parts of his doctrine immedi- 
ately coalesce into a whole. . . . Pico is no longer trying to exhibit the 
Many as the effect of the one, or to deduce them as such from their 
cause, with the aid of rational concepts. He sees the Many rather as 
ｅxpressions) as images, as symbols of the one. 51 
Cassirer's method appears in a little different form in con- 
nection with Galileo: 
If we wish to comprehend Galileo's nature and activity, we confront 
the same problem we encounter in almost every portrayal of one of the 
great geniuses of the Renaissance. We cannot remain within a single 
area of his activity, however significant and consequential it may appear, 
and we cannot take our standards from this area alone. We must rather 
proceed, as in concentric circles, from the center of his intellectual 
activity to its ever wider and more comprehensive ｅxpressions. Here 
is revealed a definite scale: the extent of the problem becomes greater 
and greater, and embraces a richer and richer area, while the typical 
""Ficino's Place in Intellectual History," Journal of the History of Ideas, 
VI (1945), 485-7. 
""Giovanni Pico della Mirandola," Journal of the History of Ideas, III 
(1942), 137-8. 
;i 8 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
form in which the question is put as such remains the same. The follow- 
ing consideration has to do with no special content of Galileo's science, 
but rather with this universal type of his investigation and questioning, 52 
This procedure is clearly applicable to the thought of a single 
intellectual personality, where something like an "organic 
unity" with a discoverable "center" may reasonably be expected. 
Even here, one sometimes suspects, there may be more of con- 
flict and tension, even in a great thinker, than Cassirer allows 
forj his heroes emerge uniformly as intellectually integrated. 
For many philosophers, especially those facing problems of 
reconciliation, one could find equal illumination in an interpre- 
tation that took the strife of incompatibles as central. 
But the difficulties are greater when the method is extended 
to a group of men, and greatest of all in attempting to charac- 
terize an entire "age." Cassirer applies it to the Cambridge 
Platonists: 
With all this we have won only partial aspects; we have illuminated 
the work of the Cambridge School from different sides, but we have not 
grasped the real intellectual principle it represents, in setting forth and 
carrying through which it alone deserves a place in the history of the 
modern mind. To lay bare this principle and in it the real ideal center 
of the intellectual work of the Cambridge School is the task of the fol- 
lowing investigation. ... It is a unified and total view that is represented 
by the Cambridge circle: a view which is maintained and carried 
through as a constant basic theme amidst all the individual differences 
of the particular thinkers and all its extension to the manifold and 
disparate areas of problems. . . , What is embodied in it is a definite 
type of thinking of independent power and significance. 53 
The applicability of this search for a unifying "type of think- 
ing" grows more doubtful when we begin to seek for the 
"center" from which to interpret an entire age. In the 
Erkenntnisfroblem Cassirer is aware of the difficulties: 
In Jacob Burckhardt's portrayal, which first made the total picture 
w Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitoproblem bei Galilei," Scientia, LXII (1937), 
I25 ' 
51 Die Platonische Renaissance in England und die Schule von Cambridge 
(1932), 4. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 719 
of the Renaissance live once more in its individual traits, philosophical 
efforts and achievements recede completely into the background. While 
everywhere else they represent the structure and the real measure of the 
intellectual progress of a period, they here stand as it were outside the 
common pattern. Nowhere does there appear at first glance a recog- 
nizable unity, nowhere a fixed center about which the different move- 
ments are ordered. The conventional traits and formulae with which 
we are accustomed to indicate the character of the Renaissance fail us 
when we honestly consider the individual philosophical currents and 
their multiplicity. 54 
This raises the question whether we can hope to find any 
unifying formula in structural or morphological terms for the 
thought of the Renaissance as a whole the entire problem of 
"styles" of thought, a conception German Kultwgeschichte has 
taken over from the historians of art. As a conscientious scholar, 
Cassirer's attitude is very cautious and reserved. 
That in a mere chronological sense we cannot separate the Renaissance 
from the Middle Ages is obvious. By innumerable visible and invisible 
threads the Quattrocento is connected with scholastic thought and 
medieval culture. In the history of European civilization there never 
was a break of continuity. To seek for a point in this history in which 
the Middle Ages "end" and the modern world "begins" is a sheer absurd- 
ity. But that does not do away with the necessity of looking for an in- 
tellectual line of demarcation between the two ages. 55 
At times Cassirer was willing to use this notion of "style" in 
a definite non-temporal sense. 
Our controversy as to the originality of the Renaissance and as to 
the dividing-line between the "Renaissance" and the "Middle Ages" 
seems to me in many ways rather a "logical" dispute than one about the 
historical facts. Ideas like "Gothic," "Renaissance," or "Baroque" are 
ideas of historical "style." As to the meaning of these ideas of "style" 
there still prevails a great lack of clarity in many respects. They can be 
used to characterize and interpret intellectual movements, but they 
express no actual historical facts that ever existed at any time. "Renais- 
sance" and "Middle Ages" are, strictly speaking, not names for historical 
84 Erkenntnisfroblem^ I, 74. 
K Myth of the State, 130. 
720 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
periods at all, but they are concepts of "ideal types," in Max Weber's 
sense. We cannot therefore use them as instruments for any strict divi- 
sion of periods; we cannot inquire at what temporal point the Middle 
Ages "stopped" or the Renaissance "began." The actual historical facts 
cut across and extend over each other in the most complicated manner. 58 
The meaning of these ideas of "style" Cassirer tried to clarify 
and analyse in his Zwr Logik der Kulturwissenschajten: 
Jacob Burckhardt gave in his Kultur der Renaissance a classic por- 
trait of "the man of the Renaissance." It contains features that are 
familiar to us all. The man of the Renaissance possesses definite charac- 
teristic properties which clearly distinguish him from "the man of the 
Middle Ages." He is characterized by his joy in the senses, his turning 
to nature, his roots in this world, his self-containedness for the world 
of form, his individualism, his paganism, his amoralism. Empirical re- 
search has set out to discover this Burckhardtian "man of the Renais- 
sance" but it has not found him. No single historical individual can 
be cited who actually unites in himself all the traits that Burckhardt 
considers the constitutive elements of his picture. "If we try," says 
Ernst Walser in his Studien zur Weltanschauung der Renaissance 
"to consider the life and thought of the leading personalities of the 
Quattrocento purely inductively, of a Coluccio Salutati, Poggio Brac- 
ciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Lorenzo Magnifico or Luigi 
Pulci, it is regularly found that for the particular person being studied 
the traits set up absolutely do not fit. ... And if we bring together the 
results of inductive research, there gradually emerges a new picture of 
the Renaissance, no less a mixture of piety and impiety, good and evil, 
longing for heaven and joy in earth, but infinitely more complicated. 
The life and endeavor of the whole Renaissance cannot be derived from 
a single principle, from individualism and sensualism, no more than can 
the reputed unified culture of the Middle Ages." 
I agree completely with these words of Walser's. Every man who has 
ever been concerned with the concrete investigation of the history, 
literature, art, or philosophy of the Renaissance will be able to confirm 
them from his own experience and add many further instances. But 
does this refute Burckhardt's notion? Shall we regard it, in the logical 
86 "Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance," 
Journal of the History of Ideas, IV (194.3), 54-5. 
57 Ernst Walser, Studien zur Weltanschauung der Renaissance, now in Gesam- 
melte Studien zur Geistesgeschichte der Renaissance (19205 Basel, 1932), 102. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 721 
sense, as a null class as a class into which no single object falls? That 
would be necessary only if we were here concerned with one of those 
generic concepts which are arrived at through the empirical comparison 
of particular cases, through what we commonly call "induction." 
Measured by this standard, Burckhardt's notion could indeed not stand 
the test. 
But it is just this presupposition that needs logical correction. Certainly 
Burckhardt could not have given his portrait of the man of the Renais- 
sance without relying for it on an immense amount 6f factual material. 
The wealth of this material and its reliability astonishes us again and 
again when we study his work. But the kind of "conspectus'' he draws 
up, the historical synthesis he gives, is of a wholly different kind in 
principle from empirically acquired natural concepts. If we want to 
speak here of "abstraction," it is that process which Husserl has char- 
acterized as "ideirende Abstraction" That the result of such an 
"ideirende Abstraction" could ever be brought to cover any concrete 
particular case: this can neither be expected nor demanded. And "sub- 
sumption" also can never be taken here in the same way as we subsume 
a body given here and now, a piece of metal, under the concept of gold, 
because we find that it fulfills all the conditions of gold known to us. 
When we indicate that Leonardo da Vinci and Aretino, Marsiglio 
Ficino and Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Cesare Borgia are "men of 
the Renaissance," we do not mean that there is to be found in them all 
a definite particular trait with a fixed content in which they all agree. 
We shall perceive them to be not only completely different, but even 
opposed. What we are asserting of them is only that regardless of this 
opposition, perhaps just because of it, they stand to each other in a 
definite ideal connection; that each of them in his own way is co-operat- 
ing to construct what we call the "spirit" of the Renaissance or the 
culture of the Renaissance. 
It is a unity of direction, not a unity of existence, that we are thus 
trying to express. The particular individuals belong together, not be- 
cause they are alike or resemble each other, but because they are co- 
operating in a common task, which in contrast to the Middle Ages we 
perceive to be new, and to be the distinctive "meaning" of the Renais- 
sance. All genuine notions of "style" in the cultural sciences reduce, 
when analyzed more precisely, to such notions of "meaning." The 
artistic style of an epoch cannot be determined if we do not bring to a 
unity all its different and often apparently disparate artistic ｅxpressions 
by understanding them, to use Riegl's term, as ｅxpressions of a definite 
722 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
"artistic will." 58 Such notions indeed characterize, but they do not 
determine; the particular that falls under them cannot be derived from 
them. 
But it is equally incorrect to infer from this that we have here only 
intuitive description, not conceptual characterization; it is rather a mat- 
ter of a distinctive manner and direction of this characterization, of 
a logico-intellectual work that is sui generis. 59 
This passage hardly possesses the clarity we are accustomed 
to expect from Cassirer. Is it only an elaborate way of saying 
that we "perceive" certain common "tendencies" running 
through Renaissance thought, though fidelity to facts demands 
that we recognize its wide diversity? Or is Cassirer trying to 
indicate something deeper by his "ideal types," his "unities 
of direction," his "common task" and "will"? In saying that 
such "unities" are not historical facts discoverable in the web of 
history, that they can be used to "characterize" and "interpret" 
the facts, but do not "determine" them, Cassirer is of course, 
being faithful to his general Kantian epistemology. "Unities" 
in that theory of knowledge are applied to the materials of 
knowledge, they are not discovered in those materials. In 
Kantian terms, Cassirer is saying that these "unities," these 
concepts or historical "style," are not constitutive but regulative 
principles. They are closest, perhaps, to the idea of teleology 
as it appears in the Critique of Judgment. In any event, we 
should remember that for Cassirer the act of "interpreting" 
any symbolic forms is creative, productive of a new synthesis} 
the historical "meaning" that results from it is as much a crea- 
tion of the historian as a deliverance of the past. It is a gen- 
uinely new "Gestaltung." In less Kantian phraseology, all 
such unities are working hypotheses employed to explore the 
facts. 
Cassirer's labored distinctions are thus involved in all the 
dubieties of his philosophy of symbolic forms. That there are 
discoverable unities in history, and in the thought of the Renais- 
sance in particular, I should myself maintain. That thought, I 
should suggest, is unified in the light of the problems men were 
"Alois Ricgl, Stilfragen (1893), and Sfatromische Kvnstindustrie (1901). 
" Zur Logik der Kulturwissensckajten (Goteborg, 194.2), 79-81. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 723 
then facing. And there is much in Cassirer which points to such 
a unification in terms of problems, rather than in terms of the 
vague and indeterminate notion of "meaning." To be sure, 
his further notion of a common "task" is rather blind. In the 
Erkenntni$'[>roblem ) however, he puts the matter much more 
precisely. "It is the fight against 'substantial form' that is above 
all characteristic of the Renaissance." 60 This suggests that the 
problems of the Renaissance were primarily negative: intel- 
lectually, men were seeking to escape from earlier views, just 
as in their social life they were seeking to escape from the forms 
of medieval society which had outlasted their usefulness and 
were now felt to be constricting rather than directing. The 
vexed question of Renaissance "individualism" also, I think, is 
soluble if that "individualism" is construed in terms of the 
specific social organizations from which men were seeking to 
escape, rather than in terms of any positive content. Like the 
Romantic movement, the Renaissance is to be understood in 
the light of what it was revolting against. Being, like Romanti- 
cism, a reaction and a revolt, it naturally expressed itself in a 
wide variety of alternatives. 
Such a "functional" interpretation, I submit, is really closer 
to Cassirer's own fundamental position than the "structuralism" 
the attempt to find some common structural or morphological 
"meaning" into which he was occasionally seduced. Cassirer 
is at his best when he insists that the originality and novelty of 
a period, or a thinker, lies not in the statement of "erne neue 
Thematik" but in the serious confrontation of "erne neue Prob- 
lematik."** 
Whatever weight Cassirer was inclined to give to "styles" 
or unities as he reinterpreted them as regulative principles, in 
his last statement on this problem he returned to his funda- 
mentally "personal" conception of history. "What we learn 
from this discussion," he says in his final paper on Ficino, 
referring to the symposium on the originality of the Renais- 
sance, 82 
80 Erkenntnisfroblem, I, 76. 
01 Die Platonische Renaissance in England, etc., 5. 
68 Journal of the History of Ideas, IV (1943). 
724 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
is only the fact that the period of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento is 
too subtle and too complicated a phenomenon to be described by any 
simple term or abstract formula. All such formulae are bound to fail. 
When we come to the real question, when we begin to deal with any 
special problem or any individual thinker, we must forget them. They 
turn out to be inadequate and misleading. In every particular investiga- 
tion the question must be raised anew and answered independently. 63 
The question of novelty and originality, so important in all 
of Cassirer's studies of the Renaissance, remains. What is it 
which in that period can be called really "new"? Surprisingly 
enough, in view of his sharp distinction between the concepts of 
the natural and the cultural or symbolic sciences, in good 
Kantian fashion Cassirer often uses metaphors drawn from 
the science of mechanics "forces," "center of gravity," new 
"equilibrium." Thus in speaking of Machiavelli he says: "When 
Machiavelli conceived the plan of his book the center of 
gravity of the political world had already been shifted. New 
forces had come to the fore and they had to be accounted for 
forces that were entirely unknown to the medieval system." 64 
The fullest and most illuminating use of such a mechanical 
figure occurs in his discussion of the originality of the Renais- 
sance: 
Nevertheless the distinction [between Middle Ages and Renaissance] 
has a real meaning. What we can express by it, and what alone we 
intend to express, is that from the beginning of the fifteenth century 
onward the balance between the particular forces society, state, religion, 
church, art, science begins to shift slowly. New forces press up out of 
the depths and alter the previous equilibrium. And the character of every 
culture rests on the equilibrium between the forces that give it form. 
Whenever therefore we make any comparison between the Middle Ages 
and the Renaissance, it is never enough to single out particular ideas or 
concepts. What we want to know is not the particular idea as such, but 
the importance it possesses, and the strength with which it is acting in 
the whole structure. "Middle Ages" and "Renaissance" are two great 
and mighty streams of ideas. When we single out from them a particular 
idea, we are doing what a chemist does in analyzing the water of a 
68 "Ficino's Place in Intellectual History," Journal of the History of Ideas, 
VI (i 9 45)> 483-4. 
" Myth of the State > 133. 
THEORY OF HISTORY 725 
stream or what a geographer does in trying to trace it to its source. 
No one denies that these are interesting and important questions. But 
they are neither the only nor the most important concern of the historian 
of ideas. 
The historian of ideas knows that the water which the river carries 
with it changes only very slowly. The same ideas are always appearing 
again and again, and are maintained for centuries. The force and the 
tenacity of tradition can hardly be over-estimated. From this point of 
view we must acknowledge that there is nothing new under the sun. 
But the historian of ideas is not asking primarily what the substance is 
of particular ideas. He is asking what their junction is. What he is 
studying or should be studying is less the content of ideas than their 
dynamics. To continue the figure, we could say that he is not trying 
to analyze the drops of water in the river, but that he is seeking to 
measure its width and depth and to ascertain the force and velocity of 
the current. It is all these factors that are fundamentally altered in the 
Renaissance; the dynamics of ideas has changed. 65 
More often, however, Cassirer employs not a metaphor 
drawn from the natural science of dynamics, but the more 
appropriate conception that a new problem has been insistently 
posed. This conception of a new "Problematik" dominates his 
major treatments. In the Erkenntnisfroblem he says: 
The philosophical character of an epoch cannot be judged merely by its 
achievement in fixed doctrines; it announces itself no less in the energy 
with which it conceives and maintains a new intellectual goal. The unity 
of the different directions which stand opposed to each other in the 
thinking of the Renaissance lies in the new attitude which they gradually 
come to take toward the problem of knowledge. 66 
In Freiheit und, Form he says: "In destroying the whole medi- 
eval system of religious beliefs, the system of religious media- 
tion through fixed, objectively communicable means of sal- 
vation, Luther imposed upon the individual an immense new 
task. Union with the Infinite must now be accomplished in 
himself without the aid of any assistance in material means." 67 
* "Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance," 
Journal of the History of Ideas, IV (1943), 55. 
* Erkenntnisf roblem, I, 75-6. 
w Freiheit und Form, 1 8. 
726 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
The Individiwm und Kosmos 
remains within the history of philosophical problems and seeks to find 
there an answer to the question whether and in how far the movement 
of thought in the I5th and i6th centuries, in all the multiplicity of its 
ways of putting problems and in all the divergence of its solutions, forms 
a self-contained unity. 68 
And again: 
What characterizes and distinguishes the Renaissance is the new relation 
in which individuals place themselves toward the world and the form 
of community which they establish between themselves and the world. 
They see themselves facing an altered conception of the physical and 
the intellectual universe, and it is this conception that imposes upon them 
a new intellectual and moral demand, which requires of them an inner 
transformation, a rejormatio and regeneration 
VI 
When Cassirer goes beyond the attempt to analyze the in- 
tellectual personality of an individual thinker to essay the por- 
trait of an age, to try to reconstruct its spirit as a whole, he 
wavers between two rather different conceptions. on the one 
hand, he tries to introduce a unity into a mass of divergent 
currents of thought by constructing a synthesis in terms of a 
characteristic "style" or "ideal type" of thinking. on the other, 
he finds unification in terms of the new problems forced on 
men forced primarily, in his interpretation, by the advance 
of scientific knowledge and the new conceptions of truth to 
which that advance leads. Combining something of both con- 
ceptions is the notion he most commonly employs, that the 
unification can be constructed in terms of a new "task," a new 
"Aufgabe" The first idea is morphological, a descriptive analy- 
sis, though of a sort Cassirer claims to be not "merely em- 
pirical," but sw generis, appropriate to the human universe of 
symbolic forms. The second idea is equally appropriate to a 
human world: it finds understanding in terms of ends, goals, 
** Individuum und Kosmos, 6. 
* "Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitsproblem bei Gaillei," Scientia, LXII (1937), 
THEORY OF HISTORY 727 
and purposes, it is teleological and functional. Is it too much 
to say that the first was impressed on Cassirer by Burckhardt 
and Dilthey, whereas the second came from his own more 
original thought? The first can be called, in his own terms, a 
"substantial" or "structural" conception; the second is "func- 
tional." 
The structural unification has the disadvantage that when 
worked out with complete honesty in the face of facts, as 
Cassirer had to work it out, it leads to a conception that is 
unique and without parallel a conception, furthermore, that 
Cassirer has great difficulty in trying to formulate. It is a con- 
ception which by definition eludes public confirmation; it de- 
pends on the "productive imagination" of the historical inter- 
preter not only for its discovery, as do all hypotheses, but also 
for its validity. And it opens the way to no further inquiry 
as to its causes and conditions. The functional unification in 
terms of new problems forced on men by their changing social 
experience, on the other hand, introduces nothing that is not 
already familiar in human life. It is clear and precise, and it 
can be confirmed by public evidence. It suggests the further 
investigation of the many and complex causes, intellectual and 
social, which have led men's social experience to change. 
Cassirer quotes from Kant, in speaking of Plato: 
It is by no means unusual, upon comparing the thoughts which an 
author has expressed in regard to his subject, ... to find that we under- 
stand him better than he has understood himself. As he has not sufficiently 
determined his concept, he has sometimes spoken, or even thought, in 
opposition to his own intention. 70 
Cassirer himself adds: 
The history of philosophy shows us very clearly that the full determina- 
tion of a concept is very rarely the work of that thinker who first intro- 
duced that concept. For a philosophical concept is, generally speaking, 
rather a problem than the solution of a problem and the full significance 
of this problem cannot be understood so long as it is still in its first 
implicit state. It must become explicit in order to become comprehended 
w Critique of Pure Reason (and ed.), 370. Tr. N. K. Smith, 310. 
728 JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
in its true meaning, and this transition from an implicit to an explicit 
state is the work of the future. 71 
Is it not possible that we may be able to understand the idea 
of a truly functional interpretation of history better than Cas- 
sirer understood it, and that we may hope to make the problem 
which he introduced more explicit than he was able to do him- 
self? 
JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
71 Essay on Man, 180. 
21 
Walter M. Solmitz 
CASSIRER on GALILEO: AN EXAMPLE OF 
CASSIRER'S WAY OF THOUGHT 
21 
CASSIRER on GALILEO: AN EXAMPLE OF 
CASSIRER'S WAY OF THOUGHT 
"Als wie der Tag die Menschen hell umscheinet 
Und mit dem Lichte, das den Hohn entspringet, 
Die dammernden Erscheinungen vereinet, 
1st Wissen, welches tief der Geistigkeit gelinget." 
Holderlin.* 
THE following passage may be regarded as a typical "Cas- 
sirer" text. It can call to mind a few characteristics of Cas- 
sirer's philosophical style. 
Galileo emphasized unceasingly that the law which rules the phe- 
nomena, and their underlying reasons (ragioni), cannot immediately 
be read off of the phenomena by sensory perception. What is required 
for the discovery of those laws is rather the spontaneity of mathematical 
reasoning. For we learn to know the eternal and necessary in things 
not by means of mere piling up and comparison of sense experiences; 
rather the mind must have grasped it "from within itself" in order to 
be able to find it again in the phenomena. Each intellect knows from 
itself (da $er $e) the true and necessary things, i.e., those which could 
not possibly be [or act] otherwise; or else it is impossible for the mind 
ever to know them. 1 
There is nothing very extraordinary about this passage. It is 
an historical passage from an historical book, written in a rather 
* "Bright is broad day that beams around the 
Uniting with the light that comes forth from the heights 
The various things appearing in the dusk. 
Thus too beams knowledge that has blessed the spirit's depth." 
* Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosofhie der Renaissance. Studien der 
Bibliothek Warburg, vol. X, (Leipzig, 1927), 173. 
731 
732 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
conventional manner. The reader is carried along easily and 
pleasantly} his intellectual imagination is helped by a rhetorical 
antithesis in the form of "not thisj but that." Moreover, when 
read in the (original) German it recalls the pleasant rhythm of 
Cassirer's prose. You read through it almost without realizing 
that you have read some statement which might set you think- 
ing. As it stands, it looks rather trite, more or less a matter 
of course j but, if you read it in the context of the book, you 
are sustained by the very rhythm of the prose, expecting some- 
how that the real thing is yet to come, and is, so to speak, just 
around the corner. 
Now let us read the few sentences over again. And let us 
keep in mind that this is an historical statement, a fairly close 
paraphrasing of Galileo's text (as is quite common in Cassirer's 
historical books). Cassirer's writings can often be read as an 
anthology from an author or various authors an anthology, 
to be sure, with a very definite purpose in mind. (Cassirer was 
once asked what it was that made his books so readable} his 
reply was that this was due to the simple fact that he had read 
the authors themselves about whom he wrote.) 
In the present instance also we have an historical report. The 
strange thing, however, is that one is inclined to read historical 
reports by Cassirer, such as this, as if they were "systematic" 
statements} i.e., as if they were reports not about a thinker who 
lived several centuries ago, but as if they were reports about pres- 
ently stated and perceived truth. 
If read with these facts in mind, the passage here under con- 
sideration even when thus isolated from its context makes 
a significant, if not actually bold assertion. As a matter of fact, 
those few sentences state a fairly radical form of rationalism. 
For what is it that the sentences say? First of all, they say 
something about the methodology of science. In this respect 
they express and demand resignation as well as encouragement. 
They teach resignation by saying: we cannot know the world 
immediately, by unreservedly giving ourselves up to it, by 
just looking at it and faithfully observing it. We might be 
inclined to do so; we may desire to have the phenomena speak 
for themselves and by themselves so that we may listen to 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 733 
them faithfully, passively, and without prejudice. That can- 
not be done. In order to understand them and to arrive at 
some knowledge about them, our mind must work actively. 
But there is also the encouraging assurance that our mind can 
proceed in this fashion and still arrive at (some) objective 
knowledge. In fact, it cannot proceed otherwise else it will 
not be able to know anything at all. 
These methodological maxims depend on the theory of 
knowledge. Scientific knowledge consists of mathematical equa- 
tions, not of sense perceptions. Mathematical equations can- 
not simply be read from the stars or from whatever moves 
around on our own planet j the phenomena do not carry mathe- 
matical equations as labels pasted on their backs. one has to 
search for mathematical equations; they are found not by con- 
tinuously looking outside, but only by turning "inside," by 
questioning ourselves, and by drawing from the well of our 
own mind. 
Does this reliance on our own mind not compel us to 
recognize that science is something completely subjective and 
therefore merely a product of some arbitrary constructions? on 
the contrary, without mathematics there would not be such a 
thing as objectivity in this respect at all; we would not even 
be able to distinguish the subjective from the objective. 
This, then, is a definite statement of Galileo's view; but it 
is definitely misleading, if taken in isolation. In the context 
in which the statement occurs the passage is preceded by one 
which emphasizes Galileo's "empiricism" and the fact that 
Galileo was always fighting against a scholastic method which 
concentrated on the exposition of books instead of concerning 
itself with a description and interpretation of the phenomena 
themselves. 
Which statement, then, is true? In Cassirer's opinion, is 
Galileo an empiricist or is he a rationalist? The point is that 
both interpretations are true or, rather, that each of them is 
wrong, when taken by itself. It is only against the background 
of the passage on Galileo's empiricism that the antithetical asser- 
tion about his rationalism appears in its intended meaning; 
and the passage on Galileo's empiricism is meant to lead up 
734 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
to the surprising statement of its opposite. In other words, from 
the point of view of Cassirer, Galileo's empiricism is the em- 
piricism of a rationalist. 
Each of the apparently contradictory statements, then, is 
true. They are true, however, only in that both of them, thesis 
and antithesis, are but preparing the way for the synthesis. 
one arrives at definite knowledge only by means of empirical, 
experimental proof. But what is an experiment? An experiment 
is a method by which Nature is made to answer with "yes" or 
"no" to a question put to it. Without such a question there is 
no experiment. This question is an intellectual act. It is with 
my mind that I conceive (^mente concipo"} an "hypothesis." 
This hypothesis is an anticipation of what is the objective law of 
Nature. Such an hypothesis needs confirmation by experiment; 
but it is only such an hypothesis that can be either confirmed 
or refuted by the experiment. 
The historical statement quoted does not read as if it were 
a statement concerning the opinions of a scientist of several 
centuries ago; rather it reads "as if it were a present true 
statement." In reading a novel or in seeing a play and listening 
to it, you are tempted to forget that you are witnessing only a 
"story;" moreover, this is quite as it should be. A novel or play 
is supposed to exert this kind of temptation, and you are ex- 
pected to yield to it. But, if the same kind of experience is 
encountered in a scholarly book on the history of philosophy, 
you are apt to feel a little uneasy afterwards. You were fas- 
cinated and caught by the thought itself: you were following 
the several steps, and led to ask yourself: Is Galileo right? And, 
in asking this question, you look around for Cassirer's assistance: 
What does he think? Was Galileo right or not? But you look 
in vain for the author's assistance. You suddenly realize that it 
was not a present truth-assertion you were reading, but only a 
"story" the history of a philosophical opinion. The more you 
were fascinated and caught by the thought itself, the more 
quickly you are likely to lose interest. From the enthusiasm 
which your excursion or escape into history may have pro- 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 735 
duced, there is almost bound to result a kind of intellectual 
hangover. You ask yourself: But where is truth? And what 
is truth? 
Indeed, the context from which the above passage is taken 
makes it clear that we are faced with an historical statement. The 
passage serves as an illustration of some characteristics which 
were common to the period of the Renaissance, to its scientists 
as well as to its artists. This particular passage is included in a 
discussion of Leonardo da Vinci's theory of the arts; and 
Galileo's empiricism and rationalism are introduced only to 
show that Leonardo's views were of something more than in- 
dividual significance; that they were indeed a characteristic 
of the period. Accordingly, this short discussion of Galileo's 
theory leads to the statement that Galileo's theory about the 
relationship between thought and experience is in strict analogy 
to that relation which, according to Renaissance aesthetic the- 
ory, exists between the imagination (Phantasie) of a painter 
and the "objective" reality of things. The power of the mind, 
of artistic as well as scientific ingenuity, consists not in un- 
restrained or arbitrary procedure, but in the fact that only the 
mind can teach us to see and to recognize the "object" in those 
factors which are its highest determinants. The genius both 
in the artist and in the scientist discovers the necessity of Nature. 
There is considerable intellectual pleasure in being led from 
strict empiricism to rationalism, and from there to a compre- 
hensive synthesis of both, and again further to an interpretation 
of scientific method as something "artistic." In spite of the 
enjoyment of this intellectual process, however, we stop at this 
point, and ask: Does Cassirer really mean to say that science 
is founded on no firmer ground than the imagination of a 
painter? To be sure, one realizes that this is a statement which 
is meant to apply only to the period of the Renaissance. At the 
same time, however, the passage on Galileo recalls some of 
Cassirer's own views. Consequently, the reader's uncertainty 
is only increased: Is this statement of the historian supposed 
to be "true," i.e., is it at the same time an assertion by the 
present philosopher himself? The best way of getting an answer 
to this question is to look at some of the passages in which 
736 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
Cassirer discusses Galileo in his systematic philosophical 
treatises. 
3 
There is no doubt that the above passage from Galileo is 
a very "Cassirerian" passage. The keen paradox that the indi- 
vidual mind, out of itself, (da "per se) knows the objective 
laws of nature or rather the fact that this is not regarded as 
a paradox reflects the ideas one is accustomed to in Ernst Cas- 
sirer to such an extent that one almost expects to hear the ring 
of his voice, and to see the statement emphasized by his own 
personality. 
Indeed, the passage expresses Cassirer's basic epistemological 
position and at the same time it does not do so. The famous 
words come to mind in which, in the Preface to the second edi- 
tion of the Critique of Pure Reason, "Kant tried to appraise the 
consequences of empiricism and rationalism." These words de- 
note in general terms the starting point of Cassirer's own theory 
of knowledge} and the way in which he quoted them in one of 
his latest remarks on Galileo 2 suggests that they were also the 
starting point of Cassirer's own historical work, and especially 
of his history of the Erkenntnisproblem. "When Kant . . . tried 
to appraise the consequences of empiricism and rationalism, he 
was obliged to go back to the source of this development." one 
is greatly tempted to substitute here Cassirer's name for Kant's. 
When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had determined 
himself, roll down an inclined plane ... a new light flashed on all stu- 
dents of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that 
only which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must 
move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed 
law, and compel nature to answer her questions. . . . Reason holding 
in one hand its principles . . . and in the other hand the experiment, 
which it has devised according to those principles, must approach nature 
in order to be taught by it: but not in the character of a pupil who 
agrees to everything the master likes but as an appointed judge who 
compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself proposes. 
. . . Thus only has the study of nature entered on the secure method of a 
2 "Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit," The American Scholar , (Vol. 12) 
1943) 6. 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 737 
science, after having for many centuries done nothing but grope in the 
dark. 8 
These lines show where Kant and Cassirer (in so far as the 
latter was a Kantian) agree with Galileo. At the same time, 
these same lines, and the context from which they are taken, 
point out those principles in regard to which their thought 
moves in a direction diametrically opposed to that of Galileo. 
There is nothing in Galileo which suggests that Reason acts 
as the "legislator to Nature" and "prescribes its laws to Nature." 
on the contrary, Cassirer frequently quotes Galileo's statement, 
which says that the word of God is written in Nature, in mathe- 
matical language j Reason is capable of sharing the divine 
knowledge in kind, though not in extent. This claim of possess- 
ing divine knowledge, the claim of having an absolutely certain 
knowledge of Being-in-itself these ontological claims are ir- 
reconcilable with those 'Critical* views which Cassirer never 
ceased to share with Kant. 
The same vacillation between taking sides both "with" and 
"against" Galileo can be found in Cassirer's systematic writings 
on the philosophy of science. 
In order to testify for Cassirer's own views, Galileo is called 
in, e.g., when Cassirer discusses the problem of induction* 
Among the many theories of induction there are essentially two 
types; one of them is represented by Bacon and John Stuart 
Mill, the other one by Galileo, both in his capacity of a 
scientist and as a theoretician of science. In Galileo's 'classical' 
and a-prioristic* view the experiment answers a question; i.e., 
it answers only a question, and this question qua question is 
limited; it is defined by the "mental conception" which makes 
us raise the question. But, although it is only to a question that 
the experiment gives an answer, it does give an answer, and it 
8 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to and Edition. Translated 
by F. Max Muller, London, Macmillan and Co., (1881) Vol. I, p. 368. Quoted 
by Ernst Cassirer in his article "Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit," 
published in The American Scholar, (Vol. 12) 1943, 6. 
4 E.g., Substance and Function, Engl. Translation (1923) pp. 237-270, esp. 
252-270. Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik (hereafter 
abbreviated: Determinismus) pp. 103, 118, "Goethe und die mathematische 
Physik," in; Ifae und Gestalt, j$t ed., 42, 
73 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
answers the question once and for all. Every experiment can be 
made only under particular circumstances, and these circum- 
stances change from hour to hour, or even from one split second 
to another, and from place to place. The particular event which 
is observed can serve in the rank of an experiment only to the 
extent to which one abstracts from the particular circumstances} 
one can abstract from them only by taking them into considera- 
tion} in order to take the accidental circumstances into considera- 
tion, however, the decision must have been made beforehand 
as to what in the particular case is accidental and what is essential 
and necessary. That is to say, the criterion for the abstraction 
is a priori? and it is this a priori criterion which makes the 
universal validity of the experiment possible} i.e., makes the ex- 
periment an experiment. 
This universal validity of the experiment is contested by the 
doctrine of induction which Bacon and Mill represent; and 
with its universal validity they also question its a priori char- 
acter. The "induction from particular to particular," from 
which Mill stated his canons, gives up the a priori claim of 
universal validity, since, according to this conception, one experi- 
ment is always a set of experiments, the function of which is 
to discover the constant factor. Instead of stating a priori some- 
thing about the phenomena with preconceived notions, it is 
necessary to come to and to remain in constant touch with them ; 
if, through a great number of variations in various ways, two 
factors remain uniformly connected, then a constancy and uni- 
formity is shown in the connection between those two factors. 
This uniformity is proved strictly only for the number of cases 
for which it was shown to exist; there is no reason why this 
uniformity should last beyond the number of tested cases; 
the uniformity of nature, which we rely on, is itself supposed to 
be based only on an "induction" of this type. The disclaimer 
that such a theory of induction lacks a logical justification can 
not well be raised against it; for it is precisely one of the pur- 
poses of the theory to bring into sharp relief the fact that 
human knowledge does not have any such independent founda- 
tion, but remains ultimately exposed to the uncertainties of the 
unknown. It gives up the claim to universal laws. If physics, on 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 739 
the other hand, has shown that phenomena can not only be stated 
and measured, but that they can be subsumed under laws, then 
such a theory of induction is not sufficient for physics. 
Against Mill's notion that a natural law can always be only an "aggre- 
gate of specific truths" a decisive objection was raised by Galileo at the 
very beginning of modern science. Galileo declared: If this were so, 
then any general judgments concerning reality would be either impossi- 
ble or useless. They would be impossible, if the series of the individual 
cases which are observed is infinite ; for such a series cannot be exhausted 
by means of enumeration (per enumerarionem simflicem) ; and they 
would be superflous, if the series were finite ; for in this case we could be 
satisfied with ascertaining the fact specifically in the case of each of the 
members of the series. Mill's declaration "All inference is from particu- 
lars to particulars" is therewith declared void, at least for the field of exact 
physics. 5 
In other words, what Bacon's and Mill's type of induction 
can establish are statements of information which in the ideal 
(and unattainable) case of perfection, would have the form of: 
"Whenever X, then Y." The form of physical laws, as estab- 
lished by Galileo, has the form: "If X, then Y" whereby it is 
completely irrelevant whether X ever "happens." on the other 
hand, "if X ever happens, then Y must necessarily be the case 
too." 
Cassirer, as far as I can see, never in the least questioned the 
usefulness of the methods of induction as a means of finding 
"correlations" between two sets of phenomena between which 
so far no relation had been discovered. If I do not have any 
idea with what factors a certain phenomenon P might be con- 
nected, then, in my desperate need for a good idea, I look 
around and may try by the methods of trial and error, as im- 
proved by Mill's canons, to "get an idea," or any "suggestion" 
as to where to look for any relevant factors. Also, the other 
way around} suppose I have an idea, a "suspicion" that two 
phenomena, which have never before been related, may have 
something to do with each other j then again, by means of 
"induction," such as stated by Mill's canons, I can find out 
* Deter minismus, 51. (Cf. Galileo, Opere, ed. Alberi. XLI, 513). 
740 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
whether there is any basis for my suspicion and whether there 
is any possibility (and in this sense, any likelihood or proba- 
bility) of its being true. But such a suspicion is not an "hypoth- 
esis," and its "try-out" is not an experiment in the strict sense 
of the word. To be sure, it is merely a verbal question whether 
such a "try-out" is called an experiment. What is important 
is this: that the small, but immensely significant difference is 
recognized which exists between the "testing a suspicion" and 
an experiment in the strict sense, i.e., an experiment which 
serves to confirm an hypothesis. 
A "suspicion" in the sense in which the word was used here 
refers to a matter of some factual information, something that 
may happen to be the case, it can be proved completely, or 
rather replaced, by an observation j in fact, it makes sense only 
in the absence of an observation, as its substitute. An hypothesis 
represents an insight, and may be true even though there might 
never again occur a case to demonstrate the insight. As an 
insight it is not "derived" from experience, but is only provoked 
by an experience. (Plato's term is rcapa*aXef<j6ai). In the estab- 
lishment of an hypothesis, in the strict sense of the word, 
"experience" plays, so to speak, only the role of a trigger 
action. As one illustration out of many others in the history of 
science, Cassirer discusses in detail the very accidental "experi- 
ence" which led Robert Mayer to the first statement of the 
principle of the conservation of energy. Similarly, the study 
of the case of one single patient may give a physician the insight 
into the intrinsic and universal connection between some "mys- 
terious" symptoms, which so far had remained unexplained, 
and some relevant condition. 8 Cassirer quotes Goethe's criticism 
of Bacon's inductive method, and his comparison with that of 
Galileo. 
He who is not capable of becoming aware of the fact that often one 
case is worth thousands of them and includes them all, will never be 
able to promote anything for his own enjoyment and benefit, and that 
of others. . . . "Through Bacon's method of dispersion natural science 
seemed to be scattered forever. But through Galileo it became at once 
united and concentrated. Galileo proved in his early youth that for a 
6 Cf. Determinism > 59. 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 741 
true genius, one case may stand for a thousand cases, inasmuch as he 
developed the theory of the pendulum and of the fall of bodies from the 
observation of a swinging lamp in a cathedral." ... In the sciences 
everything depends on what is called an apergu, and on becoming aware 
of what lies at the basis of the phenomena. Such an awareness goes on 
to be productive ad infinitum. 7 
It is seen from these instances that in Cassirer's systematic 
writings Galileo appears in an extremely un-historical fashion. 
Galileo is pictured in discussion with John Stuart Mill, and 
Goethe is called in to aid himj no attempt is made to excuse 
the chronological anachronisms (as was done even by Plato, 
when he had old Parmenides meet young Socrates). Galileo has 
to dispute with the theoreticians of modern statistical physics, 
and even then is made to carry the day. He comes in to defend 
himself (and Cassirer) against Exner's questioning of the ulti- 
mate validity of the laws of dynamic physics. From the "classi- 
cal" point of view, any statistical arguments are regarded simply 
as preliminary, temporary statements which are supposed to 
be replaced eventually by "dynamic" statements. In the case of 
all "irreversible" processes, however, statistical statements must 
be regarded as final. If both the dynamic and the statistical 
forms of laws are required, then it seems necessary to consider 
the statistical laws of the general concept, and to subsume the 
classical form of dynamic laws under it as a special case. The 
laws of the kinetic theory of gases do not have any "exact," 
but only statistical validity, and offer average values gathered 
from a great number of observations. 
Is it different with the rest of the laws, with the laws of classical physics? 
Does the formula which Galileo has established for the free fall of bodies 
really apply always and everywhere? How can we decide about the 
universal validity of a law, since our experience can always cover only 
the "average" of a phenomenon during a long, but limited stretch of 
time? 8 
1 1bid.) cf. also "Galileo: A New Science and A New Spirit," 16. The internal 
quotation is taken from Goethe's Zur Farbenlehre, Historischer Teil, Weimar 
edition, Part II } Vol. 3, 236, 246ff. 
8 Determmismus, 102 (the quotation stems from Exner, Vorlesungen uber die 
fhysikalischen Grundlagen der Natttrwissenschajten, Wien, 1919$ 86th & 8;th 
Vorlesung, 647 fT.). 
742 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
Could it not be that the average laws would not apply within 
very small stretches of space and time? To this question Galileo 
answers with an extensive quotation from one of his letters, 
to this effect: his arguments would not lose the least of their 
force and collusiveness, even if the bodies of Nature did not 
happen to fall with a strictly uniform acceleration} for these 
arguments claim only a hypothetical and not an assertive va- 
lidity. 
This shows, according to Cassirer, that Galileo's equations are 
not supposed to give a collective description of "all" individual 
cases. one could express this, somewhat paradoxically, by say- 
ing that Galileo's equations do not claim to be true because they 
apply always and everywhere, and because this 'always' and 
'everywhere' had been experimentally proved but because, 
strictly speaking, they never apply anywhere." 10 
4 
And now something very strange happens, and something 
very unhistorical and antihistorical indeed although what Cas- 
sirer did here to Galileo is, from the historical point of view, 
probably not any worse than what Plato did occasionally to 
the historical Socrates. After having brought the argument to 
this point with the aid of Galileo, Cassirer takes it up again 
himself, and leads it to a point which represents the very 
opposite of what Galileo could ever have thought. There is, 
however, not the slightest historical misrepresentation. Galileo, 
so to speak, has left the room without his departure being 
noticedj and the stream of thought, within which he had 
emerged for a few "interviews," has gone on so rapidly and 
so smoothly that if and when you come to stop for a moment, 
and ask yourself: "Yes, but what about Galileo?", you notice 
that he has been left behind long ago. 
What Cassirer does is to take up Exner's argument, and in 
general the argument of "induction from particular to particu- 
lar," in a more radical form only in order to outdo it in its 
radicalism. It should be said at once that, in a later chapter on 
9 Ibid., 103 (Galileo to Carcaville, Ofere, ed. Alberi, VII, i56f). 
"/*#., 103. 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 743 
the logical analysis of probability, Cassirer stresses the fact that 
judgments of probability are just as "true" (or false), and just 
as "objective" as any judgments of the classical form. But here 
he considers Exner's objection to Planck's position of maintain- 
ing dynamic laws as an ideal of knowledge. Exner expresses 
very strongly that mood of the philosophy of empirical induc- 
tion in which man is regarded as a stranger in this world, in- 
significant as compared with the universe, and out of touch 
with it. Can we ever be quite sure whether what happens in 
Nature "really" corresponds to what we assume and establish 
in our general laws? 
Nature does not care whether man understands it or not; also, it is not 
appropriate for us to construct a Nature which is adequate to our under- 
standing; the only thing for us to do is to become resigned to accepting 
it as it is given to us. ... The actual empirical confirmation of the 
results of the calculus of probability demonstrates that "chance" must 
be something that is completely independent, something that is given in 
Nature. Otherwise, it would not be possible that physical laws could be 
derived on the assumption of chance. 11 
The argument of Exner does not concern Cassirer; he 
considers the question dealt with therein as a pseudo-problem. 
He replies with the counter-question: on what grounds may we 
assume that there does not prevail a complete chaos, but a 
certain regularity which is expressed in objective statistical 
laws? 
Cassirer, as has already been intimated, is more radical than 
Exner. Not only does Nature not care, but there is not any 
Nature which could either care or not care. For any scientific 
experience there is no Nature which "exists," as an absolute 
being, outside of a system of experience} the system of ex- 
periences by which we know phenomena may be called Nature. 
After having realized that we know by (the conception of) 
Nature rather than know Nature, it no longer makes sense to 
ask for laws "in" Nature. The boldness and efficiency of Kant's 
"Copernican Revolution" on which Cassirer insists is apparent 
in a context like this. 
11 Ib$d. t 1 08 (the quotations are taken from Exner, loc. cit., 697, 667). 
744 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
Thus, there does not "exist** any Nature, but there is objectivity. Not 
Nature "cares" and "asks," but "knowledge" asks whether and to 
what extent it may be possible to find an objective order and determina- 
tion within the phenomena: and all its individual concepts are but 
partial ｅxpressions for this one basic problem. If physical research, 
starting from some general hypothetical presuppositions, is able to link 
them together in such a manner that a more and more perfect knowl- 
edge of the particular phenomena will result, then we have all that 
can be meant by and expected from strict dynamic lawfulness (Gesetz- 
lichkeit.) 1 * 
The very analysis of the problem is offered as its complete 
solution. 
But would Galileo accept this solution? He is not mentioned, 
and a little reflection shows that, if Galileo were confronted 
with Exner's problem, he would not have considered it as a 
pseudo-problem as Cassirer did. For, whereas for Galileo the 
book of Nature is written in mathematical language, it is the 
book of an independent Nature that is written in this language; 
Galileo's doctrine is just as ontological" as is Exner's; and 
Exner's ontological" view is not more so than that of Galileo 
whom Cassirer had quoted against Exner. 
Let us consider this case of "Galileo versus Galileo;" a brief 
consideration of this somewhat disturbing phenomenon may 
give us some insight into the structure of Cassirer's thought. 
The case is disturbing, for several reasons. First of all, it is 
disconcerting, to say the least, to find that, whereas the witness 
is called in order to testify when he is needed to speak in favor 
of the cause, he is not called in at any other occasions. Perhaps 
it was assumed that he did not have anything relevant to say. 
But it has already been pointed out that what he has to say is 
relevant to the matter, and that he would be opposed to Cas- 
sirer's views here. And thirdly, it can easily be shown that 
Cassirer knew that what Galileo would have to say here would 
be contrary to his (Cassirer's) own views. 
., io8f. 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 745 
If this is so, then the counter-argument could have been 
omitted only for didactic or stylistic reasons of simplification. 
A psychological after-effect, however, may remain as the result 
of such procedure: namely, one might begin to distrust Cassirer's 
quotations, of which there are many. (As to this, however, there 
is no reason for concern, either in this particular instance, or, 
for that matter, in general.) In the p-esent case, one can easily 
convince himself that neither the historical truth nor the argu- 
ment suffers from the fact that on occasion the evidence to the 
contrary has been withheld, whereas that "in favor" has been 
given. 
Although the psychological after-effect may, then, be dis- 
missed, the "objective" question remains all the more disturbing. 
How is it possible that Cassirer agrees and disagrees with the 
same author at the same time and in the same respect? 
If one is familiar with Cassirer's thought, one is so used to 
the fact that Cassirer can agree and disagree at the same time 
that he no longer wonders about it. 
In his investigations into "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" 
Cassirer's problem is in part this: Kant's transcendental deduc- 
tions refer to the classical physics of Newton and Galileo. If 
classical physics is superseded by modern physics, are Kant's 
transcendental deductions also out of date? 13 
Since, in some respects, Cassirer is a Kantian, one might (if 
one did not know him well) expect him to tend to minimize the 
difference between modern and classical physics. However, the 
very opposite is the case. The reason for the insufficiency of 
classical physics lies in its very concept of "mechanism," and in 
the metaphysical and oncological basis on which Galileo's, New- 
ton's, and Leibniz' discoveries were based. As for Galileo, it is 
recognized that his foundation of dynamics is due to his con- 
ception of mathematical hypothesis (which we mentioned), 
which enabled him to "abstract" from the happenings in phe- 
nomenal or empirical space to which absolute being, ontological 
reality, is ascribed. At the same time, his own new concepts 
11 Cf. Einstein's Theory of Relativity, in: Substance and Function (Engl. 
transl.), 355. 
746 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
do not abandon the idea of such an "absolute reality" alto- 
gether; this is the reason, as Cassirer sees it, why Galileo's 
idea of mechanism is faulty and insufficient. 
. . . The way is open to Galileo's foundation of dynamics: for since 
place has ceased to be something real, the question as to the ground of 
the place of a body and the ground of its persistence in one and the same 
place disappears. Objective physical reality passes from place to change 
of place, to motion and the factors by which it is determined as a magni- 
tude. If such a determination is to be possible in a definite way, the 
identity and permanence, which were hitherto ascribed to mere place, 
must go over to motion; motion must possess "being," that is, from the 
standpoint of the physicist, numerical constancy. This demand for the 
numerical constancy of motion itself finds its ｅxpression and its realization 
in the law of inertia. We recognize here again how closely, in Galileo, 
the mathematical motive of his thought was connected with an ontologi- 
cal motive, how his conception of being interacted with his conception 
of measure. The new measure, which is found in inertia and in the 
concept of uniform acceleration, involves also a new determination of 
reality. In contrast with mere place, which is infinitely ambiguous and 
differs according to the choice of the system of reference, the inertial 
movement appears to be a truly intrinsic property of bodies, which be- 
longs to them "in themselves" and without reference to a definite system 
of comparison and measurement. The velocity of a material system is 
more than a mere factor for calculation; it not only really belongs 
to the system but defines its reality, since it determines its vis viva, i.e. } 
the measure of its dynamic effectiveness. In its measure of motion, in the 
differential quotient of the space by the time, Galileo's physics claims 
to have reached the kernel of all physical being, to have defined the 
intensive reality of motion. By this reality, the dynamic consideration 
is distinguished from the merely phoronomic. The concept of the "state 
of motion," not as a mere comparative magnitude, but as an essential 
element belonging to the moving system intrinsically, now becomes the 
real mark and characteristic of physical reality. ... In all these examples, 
it is evident how sharply, on the one hand, the physical thought of 
modern times has grasped the thought of the relativity of place and 
of motion, and, on the other hand, how it has shrunk back from follow- 
ing it to its ultimate consequences. 14 
So much then is clear: the fact that Galileo does not always 
14 Substance and Function, 3 6 if. 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 747 
agree with Cassirer's views is clearly understood and fully 
recognized by Cassirer. Cassirer finds that he cannot agree 
with Galileo because Galileo bases his theories on ontology and 
metaphysics. 
This is clear and simple. What remains puzzling is the fact 
that Cassirer can agree with Galileo after all. The simplest 
solution of this would, of course, be to say that he just happens 
to agree with some of Galileo's views and to disagree with some 
others. But Cassirer does not give such a superficial answer; 
and he cannot give it because he sees much too clearly how 
intimately Galileo's achievements, which Cassirer admires, are 
connected with Galileo's metaphysical doctrine, which Cassirer 
rejects. 
Galileo's (as well as Newton's and Leibniz') "error" con- 
sists in their mathematical metaphysics, i.e., in the fact that they 
were convinced of the identity of Mathematics and Nature. 
Their views in this respect are summarized in this manner: 
He who thinks and makes inferences mathematically, does not play 
around with empty thoughts; he does not move in a narrow world of 
self-made concepts, but he is in contact with the fundamentals of reality 
themselves. Here we are at the point in which thinking and being are 
in immediate touch with one another, and where, accordingly, there is 
not noticeable any difference between "finite" and "infinite" understand- 
ing any more. For the divine intellect has this privilege: it knows the 
objects not because it looks at them and observes them from the outside; 
it knows them because it itself is the very reason of their being. Its 
thought grasps Being because and in so far as it creates Being; and this 
original of creation is determined by magnitude, number, and measure. 
Far from being mere copies of reality, these concepts are the very 
originals, the everlasting and unchangeable "archetypes" of Being. on 
this assumption there rests Kepler's doctrine of "cosmic harmony," . . . 
and the same idea permeates Galileo's representation and justification 
of the Copernican system. In his Dialogues . . . Galileo emphasizes that 
with regard to mathematical knowledge there is no basic qualitative dif- 
ference between the human and the divine intellect. 15 
This is, as Cassirer remarks, a point which gave offense to the 
church and which, for dissimilar but related reasons, offends 
M Determinismus y 19. 
748 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
Cassirer's critical-philosophical mind. Nonetheless, as this pas- 
sage shows, Cassirer always has "the fullest understanding" 
for the ideas of other thinkers a human understanding and a 
historical understanding j sometimes it looks, therefore, as if 
this "understanding" enabled him to "agree and disagree at 
the same time;" i.e., as if he could forget his disagreement be- 
cause he was always making allowance for "extenuating cir- 
cumstances." In the views of these mathematical metaphysicians 
and metaphysical mathematicians, and in their identification 
of mathematics and Nature, 
there is expressed the characteristic subjective "pathos" which inspires 
the first founders and champions of the classical rationalism. ... It is the 
first exuberant enthusiasm and, as it were, the intoxication with the 
newly founded and established mathematical knowledge which coined 
this language, 16 
It is true, the word "language" in this connection, in a book 
by Cassirer, has a special connotation: he wrote a philosophy of 
language, and this philosophy of language is part of what 
could be called a philosophy of languages, or of "Language" 
in the sense and the effect that every form of world view can 
be regarded as one complete and consistent "Language" in the 
"words" or symbols of which every content can be expressed. 
Whereas "Language" becomes something very important 
( there is no world- view without such a "Language" ), the 
importance of the "vocabulary" of every world-view declines 
somewhat: in short, what Galileo and the "rationalists" had 
to say in metaphysical terms is no longer very important. But 
( and, in describing Cassirer's thought, the word "but" must 
be used again and again ), having made this statement, we 
notice at once that this is only half the truth, and that the very 
limitations of this metaphysical "Language" caused the insuffi- 
ciency and faultiness of the great systems of mathematical ra- 
tionalism. 
Hence a passage like this, which reveals Cassirer's willing- 
ness and ability to achieve "full understanding" of historical and 
human limitations, must not be taken too seriously in a strictly 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 749 
philosophical sense. It serves as a kind of protection, so to 
speak} it is as a sheath which is used for both purposes: for 
protecting the "human interest" from being hurt by the crystal- 
hard edge of the core of the argument and also for protecting 
the most sharply cut edges of the argument from being blunted 
by some inappropriate use. The core of the intellectual argu- 
ment in the case "against Galileo" remains unaffected, even 
though the sentence passed on the "human" factor has been 
mellowed by granting "extenuating historical circumstances." 
In his mechanistic metaphysics Galileo did not know what 
he was talking about. In drastic words, this is what Cassirer says 
in more urbane terminology, when he says that only the sub- 
sequent periods of science recognized what Galileo had meant. 
In the progress of mechanics the principle of inertia is recognized with 
increasing distinctness as what it meant fundamentally to Galileo. 17 
In a very agreeable manner, then, Cassirer disagrees with 
Galileo the metaphysician; but the agreeable manner does not 
change the fact of extreme disagreement; it is a fight which is 
going on or is it only a tournament? 
As has been shown, the reconciliation between Galileo, the 
defender of the principle of "hypothesis," and Galileo, the 
metaphysician, is made possible only on the assumption that 
one can understand Galileo better than he understood him- 
self. An adequate interpretation of this assumption and what 
it meant to Cassirer could be given only in a discussion of his 
theory of history. It sometimes looks as if Cassirer were inclined 
to give an answer, in terms of an optimistic rationalistic theory 
of history, to the effect that the "dim" ideas of former genera- 
tions are freed from their metaphysical make-up by the fol- 
lowing generations. Sometimes Cassirer does seem to come close 
to the "organic" interpretations of a mathematical metaphysics 
as advanced by Whitehead. All this, however, and all that has 
to do with the convictions and motives of Cassirer's philosophy 
must be disregarded in the present discussion which attempts 
"Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Substance and Function, 364. 
750 WALTER M. SOLMIT2 

only to sketch briefly the formal schematism by which Cassirer's 
thought proceeds. 
Galileo, the defender of "hypothesis," and Galileo, the de- 
fender of metaphysics, can be "reconciled" only because they 
are not treated impartially. What the defender of "hypothesis" 
has to say is accepted and believed; what the defender of meta- 
physics has to say, however, does not receive such acceptance. 
The judge knows better than the witness himself what the 
witness "means" to say; his statement is discarded as unessen- 
tial and accidental. As far as the form of the argument goes, this 
is the basic factor: the metaphysical statement is regarded as 
accidental. 
Hypothesis is an ｅxpression of Necessity. Metaphysics is 
accidental. 
If we give Cassirer's judgment this form then we recognize 
its formal connection with another pair of basic concepts of 
reflection in Cassirer's philosophy: "Function" is an ｅxpression 
of Necessity, "Substance" is accidental. 

on the other hand, and when more closely studied, we also 
see the formal connection with a paradox around which Cassirer 
centers his discussion on this point, a paradox which he found 
in Kant: the paradoxical conception of the contingency of neces- 
sity." 
What does this paradox mean, and how does Cassirer arrive 
at it? Stated in simplest terms it is this: if we are to have the 
concept of necessity, we need the concept of contingency. We do 
have and use the concept of necessity; therefore, we need the 
concept of contingency. Contingency is a requirement for neces- 
sity. The two concepts are correlates. This correlation can be 
expressed in different and more significant ways: The question, 
"Why?" can be answered and makes sense only within a certain 
system. If we ask for the "why?" of the system itself, it no 
longer makes any sense. The system itself remains contingent; 
without such a contingent system we could not ask or answer 
the question: "why?" Thus Kant says that there is no apodicti- 
cal proof for the principle of causation. It can be "deduced" 
18 Cf. Determinismus , iz8f. 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 751 

only through its relationship to something contingent, namely, 
"possible experience." Cassirer puts its as follows: 
The general principle of causation can be called both necessary and 
contingent with equal justification depending on the point of view 
which we happen to choose. The principle is necessary, since every 
empirical statement is based on it, and since, as a "synthetic judgment 
a priori" it precedes all empirical judgments. on the other hand, how- 
ever, it is "accidental" since the totality of experience, to which it refers 
and on which it depends for its justification, is itself given as purely 
factual. 19 
This interpretation of Kant appears to be very characteristic 
of Cassirer indeed. I am not sure whether it is possible to inter- 
pret and exhaust its real significance; quite apart from the 
question whether it is "defensible." A little metaphorical cir- 
cumlocution may lend some help to the imagination, if not 
to thought. Experience is intrinsically "necessary," and it is 
something which in itself is "moving." But it is moving only 
within itself self-contained, and well-rounded suspended, as 
it were, in a vacuum, without support, kept in balance and kept 
in motion only by itself. Although such a metaphorical circum- 
locution certainly does not help with the technical explanation, 
and although in its vagueness it would not be acceptable to 
Cassirer himself, it may help the imagination to realize, if 
not the logical ground, then at least the ideal of knowledge 
which Cassirer seems to have in mind. 
What needs to be stressed within this context is the following: 
if we fully realize the significance of the idea that experience as 
a fact is accidental, then Kant's transcendental deductions ap- 
pear in a light which is different from their customary and 
historically well-founded interpretation. The transcendental 
deductions lose some of the pragmatic "weight" which they 
usually have. More simply expressed, we may describe the 
principle of the transcendental deduction in a somewhat "prag- 
matic" fashion as follows: "there is the fact of experience; and 
the pure concepts of the understanding are the necessary condi- 
tions or instruments of this fact." By emphasizing the contin- 
19 Determinismus , 128. 
752 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
gency of this "fact," Cassirer takes away from the solid "factual- 
ness" and what I have called the "pragmatic weight" of such 
a formulation} he has made experience a "structure j" or, in 
a metaphor he used to employ occasionally during the last two 
decades, he has made the "fact" of experience "transparent." 
In proceeding thus, Cassirer conceived of experience as of a 
Platonic Idea. 

only if we keep in mind this "transparence" and ideality 
of experience can Cassirer's following argument appear in its 
proper light and function. As soon as pragmatic or teleological 
ｅxpressions appear in Cassirer's arguments, one has to inter- 
pret them as metaphors which are supposed to express "ideal" 
relationships which cannot be expressed "directly." This is a 
feature Cassirer's thought has in common with Plato's thought. 
In such half-metaphorical language Cassirer can now say 
that both concepts, necessity and contingency, are "required for" 
and "justified by" the fact of experience. 

on the whole the isolation of formal structures which has 
been attempted in these remarks is not at all in line with the 
tendency of Cassirer's work. Cassirer not only holds the theory 
that there is no form without content, and vice versa, but he 
never actually deals with a form without its corresponding 
content. It is perhaps for this very reason, however, that a para- 
doxical formulation like that of the contingency of necessity 
can be used in interpreting various levels of Cassirer's thought, 
and in this respect presents a key to many of his doctrines. 
Out of the many variations of this theme in Cassirer's philos- 
ophy, only a few examples from our context may be cited. 
1. The necessary and the contingent are not two different 
"powers" or "things," but correlates. 
2. There is no "system of experience" (mythical thought, 
theoretical thought, or systems of individual philosophers) 
without these concepts. 
3. In this respect they represent something which is common 
to all systems of thought and a principle of unity, 
4. and diversity, since the accentuation of what is neces- 
sary and what is contingent varies in every system. 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 753 
5. Therefore this paradox is applicable to itself: for just 
what is necessary in every system is contingent. 
6. Thus there is a dialectic, according to which every "suc- 
ceeding" system regards as contingent (and rightly so) what was 
regarded as necessary in the "preceding" system. 
7. This applies to Cassirer's own system too; so that its 
most fundamental concept (the concept of "understanding," 
"verstehen"} is also regarded as contingent as an ｅxpression of 
an ultimate problem rather than as a definite "being." 
Applications to Galileo are easily made: 
1. Within Galileo's system the necessary is represented by 
the equations of motion; the contingent is represented by the 
subjective sense qualities. 
2. The concept of determination in Galileo has the form 
y = f (x). That is to say, y is precisely determined by x, and 
in that sense the relationship is "necessary." An equation of 
this form answers the question "how does y change?" but it 
does not answer the question "why does y change?" (in the 
sense of one of the four Aristotelian causes). Because the kind 
of determination is not expressed, there is an element of in- 
determination and contingency. 
3. There is no answer to the question why the equations of 
motion are as they are. They are to Galileo ultimate metaphysi- 
cal realities; but as such they are contingent. 
From these schematic remarks, it may be seen why "Galileo 
the metaphysician" could be "rejected," and yet be "reconciled" 
with "Galileo the defender of hypothesis." In this sense the 
"case" of Galileo is an exemplification of the principle of the 
contingency of necessity. 
Upon reflection, the more one considers the formulation of 
the "contingency of necessity" with respect to all fields and 
aspects of Cassirer's philosophy, (as well as in itself), the more 
one realizes the intellectual impetus which such a "symbolic" 
concept provides and the more one experiences the suggestive 
power and fascination which comes from it. Yet, perhaps, a 
more serious and sober reflection would now seem to be called 
for. The question arises: Have we not fallen victim to a 
754 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
splendid performance of subtle sophistry? If a theory, such 
as mathematical metaphysics, is first rejected and then accepted 
on a different level, is this not exactly "making the weaker 
cause the stronger?" Furthermore: is a concept like that of 
"the contingency of necessity" not simply a device of sophistic 
jugglery? What does it really mean to say that "contingent" 
and "necessary" are correlative concepts, and that in order to 
have a necessary system of experience the idea of contingency 
is required? Is this different at all from saying that for the 
preservation of health some sickness is required? This may be 
true in some special sense, but the suspicion of a sophistic 
trickery cannot be repressed. Brought to more abstract formu- 
lation: would such a thesis not correspond to the postulate that 
the concept of Non-Being is required in order to have a concept 
of Being? 20 
As soon as we arrive at this more general formulation, how- 
ever, we become aware that it might be advisable to become 
suspicious of our suspicion. At any rate, the central problem 
is indicated: Is there a possibility that "in looking for the 
Sophist we have encountered the Philosopher unaware?" 21 
This is possible} and the contrary is also possible: in looking 
for and believing ourselves to be following a philosopher, we 
may have caught (or may have been caught by) a sophist. This 
question does not yet admit of a ready answer; but it certainly 
needs at least to be raised whenever one undertakes to under- 
stand and examine the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. 
In this region [of dialectic] we shall discover the philosopher now 
or later or whenever we shall look for him ; like the sophist, he is hard 
to recognize precisely, although the difficulty with him is different from 
the difficulty one has with the sophist. The sophist runs away into the 
darkness of not-being where he is used to feel his way by routine; and 
because of the darkness of the place he is hard to recognize. The 
philosopher who has his mind and thought fixed to the idea of Being is 
also hard to recognize, because of the shining brightness of the place. 22 
80 Cf. "Zur Logik des SymbolbegrifFs," Theoria, IV, 145-175, Gcschichte der 
griechischcn Philosophic (in: Lehrbuch der Philosophic, cd. M. Dessoir), 129 
and frequently. 
21 Plato, Sophist, 2535. 
24 Plato, Sophist, 
CASSIRER on GALILEO 755 
Just as the student is blinded by a philosopher no less than 
by a sophist, there is a deceptive resemblance between the two. 
A sophist appears like a philosopher, and a philosopher appears 
like a sophist, as a dog resembles a wolf, and, as we may add, 
a liar may resemble a poet, or the tyrant may resemble the 
philosopher-king. There is an infinitely fine and yet immensely 
decisive difference between the two. Both the philosopher and 
the sophist employ the same means and tricks, both use the 
playful joke. 23 In fact, the philosopher is the "good" sophist. 
Diotima speaks fiurcep oi TeXeoe ao^ecnrae^ like one of the accom- 
plished sophists. 
The criterion lies in their concepts of Being. Until these are 
analyzed, the issue between Sophist and Philosopher remains 
in suspense. Yet, in the case of Ernst Cassirer, whoever thinks 
of his person and his style may be confident about the outcome, 
"because of the shining brightness of the place." 
7 
The present illustrations, loosely knit as they are, may have 
at least suggested that the very rhythm of Cassirer's prose re- 
flects his philosophical dialectics. A statement by Cassirer, valid 
in itself, must yet be seen within its dialectical context. Further- 
more, in addition to the horizontal dialectics, there is a kind of 
vertical dialectics: a historical statement by Cassirer has a sys- 
tematic significance at the same time. The fact that Cassirer 
could "revive" and "re-present" Galileo on the contemporary 
intellectual scene is obviously due to the special form of Cas- 
sirer's systematic interest in Galileo. 
Cassirer does not simply write a detached historical report 
about Galileo nor does he really enter into an intimate discussion 
with him. His relationship to Galileo is much more and much 
less close than is that of two persons talking to one another: 
either Cassirer agrees with Galileo and then speaks "through" 
Galileo, somewhat like a dramatist speaks through a historical 
character $ or else he disagrees with him and then he makes 
Galileo the object of his comprehensive and extremely liberal 
understanding in such a manner that even where Galileo seems 
** Phaedrus, 2770$ S of hist y 
756 WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
to "disagree" he is also made to "express" the truth in a dif- 
ferent language. (Cassirer had started from the ahistorical neo- 
Kantian approach j but he combined HegePs method and that 
of a historical relativism in order to arrive at what may be called 
a new timelessness in history.) 
In fact, the ways in which Galileo is made to reflect Cassirer's 
thought are far more manifold than could be indicated in this 
sketch. Cassirer tried to find a theoretical synthesis of scientific 
and aesthetic understanding 24 just as he tried to find a synthesis 
of historical and systematical understanding} and his own actual 
understanding has definitely an artistic note in addition to, and 
in combination with, its scientific and historical character. These 
manifold relationships are apt to be implicitly present in what 
he says, and a statement by Cassirer can often be read on various 
levels, just as symbols can be in a work of art. What may appear 
as an ambiguity is in fact a multiplicity of meanings which, 
however, do not necessarily impair one another at all. The spell 
which emanates from Cassirer's style (as it did from his person) 
fascinates his reader and student} its recognition must make one 
wonder whether what Cassirer taught should and could be 
separated from how he taught it. 
Cassirer's art is that of the Platonic philosopher, playful and 
used with that irony and sovereignty which is owed to the Idea 
of the Good. With the cunning of this idea, in HegePs term, 
its light "unites the various things appearing in the dusk." 
Cassirer's synthesis, unifying through that understanding and 
reconciliation of opposites which made him an extremist of uni- 
versal liberalism, is basically Platonic. If Plato found it difficult 
to distinguish between a sophist and a philosopher when he met 
one, we need perhaps not be ashamed if we require a little more 
time and space to arrive at a full view of, and a clear distinction 
between, the scientific, historical, and aesthetic elements in the 
structure of Ernst, Cassirer's philosophical thought. 
WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN 
BOWDOIN COLLEGE 
M Cf. "Goethe und die mathematische Physik" in Idee und Gestalt (Berlin, 19*1), 
27-76. 
22 
William H. Werkmeister 
CASSIRER'S ADVANCE BEYOND 
NEO-KANTIANISM 
22 
CASSIRER'S ADVANCE BEYOND 
NEO-KANTIANISM 
WHEN critics of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism 
argued that the theories of Cohen and Natorp had little 
in common with the original views of Kant, Paul Natorp re- 
plied 1 that it had never been the intention of the Marburg 
School to revive orthodox Kantianism; that, on the contrary, 
the step back to Kant had been taken only in order to gain a 
more profound understanding of the genuine insights of the 
Sage of Konigsberg, and to advance from his position in a 
direction more in conformity with the developments of modern 
science j that, finally, the spirit of Kant, rather than any one 
of his propositions, was to be preserved. A poor student of 
Kant is he, Natorp stated, who understands the meaning of 
"critical philosophy" in any other way. 
In the same spirit in which Cohen and Natorp advanced 
beyond Kant, Ernst Cassirer seems to have advanced beyond 
the neo-Kantians. 
When Cassirer published his monograph, Zur Einsteinschen 
Relativitatstheorie, several critics, although agreeing with his 
conclusions, doubted that he was justified in drawing them, 
unless he relinquished at the same time his neo-Kantianism. 
Readers of Cassirer's later works in particular, readers of his 
Philoso^hie der symboUschen Formen y and of his Determinis- 
mus and Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik may ex- 
perience similar doubts. Cassirer himself, however, feels that 
the ties which connect him with the founders of the Marburg 
School have not been loosened, and that the "debt of gratitude" 
he owes them has not been diminished j although he may now 
'"Kant und die Marburger Schule," Kant-Studien> Vol. XVIII (1910). 
759 
760 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
interpret the foundations of modern science in a way which 
differs in some essentials from the interpretations given by 
Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. 2 
It will be our task to examine briefly the extent to which 
Cassirer's views still fall within the general framework of neo- 
Kantianism, and to describe those points of doctrine which 
constitute a definite and decisive modification of the original 
position of the Marburg School. 
This task is formidable and can be fully accomplished only 
in a detailed study which far exceeds the space available in 
this volume} for Cassirer has been a prolific writer. His in- 
terests are truly catholic and his books deal with a great variety 
of problems. Even if we restrict our considerations to ques- 
tions of epistemology, Cassirer's discussions range from the 
foundations of mathematics and modern physics to an approach 
to art, religion, and a general philosophy of culture. 
Our task is somewhat simplified, however, by Cassirer's 
own recent statement 3 that the essentials of his philosophy of 
science have undergone no significant change since the publica- 
tion in 1910 of his book, Substanzbegriff wnd Funktionsbegriff, 
and that today he still adheres to the point of view of that 
work. In view of the developments of modern physics he has 
been able to formulate more clearly and demonstrate more 
effectively the basic ideas expressed more than thirty years ago 5 
but his philosophical position remains substantially unaltered 
and, in the opinion of Cassirer himself, has been confirmed by 
what has happened in the sciences. It is therefore possible for us 
to disregard the problem of a gradual evolvement of Cassirer's 
philosophy, and to concentrate on its most adequate and most 
recent formulations, leaving to the historian of philosophy the 
additional task of determining to what extent, if any, these 
formulations modify Cassirer's earlier position. 
Our discussions will be concerned primarily with Cassirer's 
views as expressed in his monograph, Determinisms und In- 
determvmsmus in der modernen Physik, and in his three- volume 
work, Die Philoso'phie der symbolischen Formen. These views 
2 Cassirer, Determinismus, viii. 
* Ibid., vii-viii. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 761 
we shall compare with Natorp's position as formulated in Die 
logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften (1910) and, 
for the sake of completeness, with certain sections of Cohen's 
Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (1902). Such a comparison should 
reveal the extent to which Cassirer has advanced beyond neo- 
Kantianism and should disclose also the affinities he still has 
with the founders of the Marburg School. 
In order to facilitate our task further, we shall restrict our 
comparison to a consideration of a few basic concepts; all minor 
issues can have only a secondary bearing upon our problem. 
We have chosen for our analysis the concepts "object," "space- 
time," and "causality," and the general problem of an epistemo- 
logical basis of the cultural sciences or Geisteswissenschaften. 
We begin our discussion with a consideration of the concept 
"object." 
I. "OBJECT" 
We must understand from the start that the founders of the 
Marburg School were interested primarily in scientific knowl- 
edge, and that they saw in scientific cognition the prototype of 
all cognition worthy of the name. Scientific cognition, moreover, 
they identified in all essentials with mathematics and mathe- 
matical physics. Epistemology, therefore, became for them an 
analysis of "the logical foundations of the exact sciences;" and 
this limitation of the scope of their analyses became decisive 
for their whole point of view. We shall return to this in Part IV 
of our essay. 
If, for the time being, we accept the restrictive definition of 
knowledge as given by Cohen and Natorp, the question arises: 
What is the "factum" of science? What is the ultimate basis of 
validation of scientific cognition, and what are the "objects" 
concerning which science gives us "knowledge"? 
The "factum" of science, Natorp maintains, is neither 
"given," ready-made and complete in itself; nor is it some 
"completed or definitive knowledge;" for every cognition 
which provides the answer to a given problem leads to, or 
implies, new and even greater problems. Plato, therefore, was 
right in the opinion of the neo-Kantians when he saw the task 
762 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
of science in an infinite process of determining the indeter- 
minate. And since the infinite process of determination may 
move ifi two directions toward the determination of particu- 
lars as well as toward the determination of an all-inclusive 
universal there can be no absolute or definitive starting-point 
of the process of cognition any more than there is an absolute 
or definitive terminal point. The process is unending in either 
direction. 
In order to get the process going at all, that is to say, in order 
to have some anchorage, some vantage-point from which to 
begin the determination of the indeterminate, it is necessary to 
"posit" or "fixate" something in experience as our point of 
departure and then to advance from it as far as possible on 
logically justifiable grounds. We must remember at all times, 
however, that our starting-point was "posited" or assumed 
and that it is subject to revision as soon as such revision seems 
possible or necessary in the light of subsequent experiences. 
The individual "factum," therefore, originally posited as our 
starting-point or "discovered" in the process of advancing cogni- 
tion, is never an isolated datum, but must needs be an element 
within a context within the context of cognition itself. 
Mathematics provides the most clear-cut example of what 
is meant; for the basic concepts of mathematics are "posited" 
concepts which find their justification and validation only within 
the orderly process of mathematical thinking. This reference 
to mathematics, incidentally, also makes it clear that the "prog- 
ress" here meant is essentially not a progress in time, not a 
merely psychological or historical progress, but a logical pro- 
gression, a system of implications. Time itself is but one aspect 
and by no means the most fundamental one of the systemic 
progress with which epistemology is concerned. 
If it is true that the "factum" of science finds justification 
and determination only within the systemic context of which it 
is an element, then we can no longer speak of "objects" as 
"given," ready-made and complete, or of cognition as an "analy- 
sis of the given." on the contrary, the "object" itself is now 
a "problem," something which we may attain at the end of the 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 763 
cognitive process but which we certainly do not possess at its 
beginning. And cognition, in so far as it is concerned with 
"objects" is necessarily "synthetic" in Kant's meaning of the 
term, i.e., it is the enlargement of, or the continuous progress 
in, our context of experience. 
From the above it follows also that there is not and cannot 
be a "favored" starting-point of cognition. The integration of 
experience according to law may be started, ideally, wherever 
one wishes. The context of experience can be established no 
matter what we posit at the beginning so long as we remember 
that this starting-point, being only assumed to begin with, is 
subject to constant revision as we progress. only one condition 
is indispensable. The context of cognition must be grounded 
in a unitary origin of thought. 
This unitary origin (Ursfrungseinheit), however, is not an 
undifferentiated logical one. Such a one could never provide an 
adequate basis for a variegated context. The unitary origin, 
furthermore, is neither a psychological nor a metaphysical 
entity whose "existence" would have to be assumed. It is rather 
the logical ideal of the all-comprehensive context of experience 
in and through which each "posited" element leads to all other 
elements of that context. It is the ideal of "systemic" thinking, 
the idea that all thinking ultimately strives toward systemic 
unity. 
But this context, as unitary origin, is also not "given" in 
actual concreteness. It is an implied but as yet unrealized goal. 
All cognition begins with the implicit assumption that the estab- 
lishment of a systemic context is the logical task ahead of us. The 
unitary origin, in other words, is neither a system in nuce 
nor a first element within a system. It is in itself not even 
"systemic" but is only the demand for a system. 
Hermann Cohen, in particular, attempted to clarify the 
demand for a starting-point of cognition. He argued that, strict- 
ly speaking, all cognition would have to start from "nothing." 
From "nothing," however, nothing can be derived, and if the 
starting-point of cognition were strictly interpreted as "noth- 
ing," cognition itself would be impossible. The "nothing" 
764 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
Cohen speaks of must therefore be only a "relative nothing." 
In Cohen's own argumentation it turns out to be the "possibility 
of transition, of logical progression (or regression)" which, in 
Natorp's terminology, is identical with the ideal of an all- 
inclusive cognitive context, the ideal of the context of logical 
proof, logical interdependence. 
As has been mentioned before, this context may be "traced" 
in two directions: toward the unification of differentiated ele- 
ments, or toward the differentiation of what is unified. This 
double-faced context of logical interdependence is, for the 
neo-Kantians, the basis of all cognition. 
Context, as here understood, must mean and imply the 
preservation of the logical significance of each individual ele- 
ment and, at the same time, the unification of elements in a 
higher logical unity; and, vice versa, it must mean the preser- 
vation of the logical unity of the context and, at the same time, 
the diversification and preservation of the individual elements. 
The particulars must be preserved within the context, and the 
context must be maintained despite all differentiations. Logical 
context, as exemplified in mathematics and mathematical phys- 
ics, fulfills both requirements. 
This context is encountered in its most elementary form in the 
relationship of a question and its answer. The question antici- 
pates its answer; the answer fulfills or satisfies the question. 
Both belong indissolubly together. 
The relationship of question and answer, however, also 
defines the problem of the "object;" for the "object" is an 
answer to a question. Its primary meaning is that of an answer, 
that of an element within a context determined by a question. 
The fact that the "object" seems to lie "outside" cognition and 
that it is "appropriated" by cognition is fully explained, accord- 
ing to Natorp, by the idea of anticipation which we encounter in 
the question. It is the context defined by a question which, in 
and through its anticipation, defines or determines the "ob- 
ject." As in the case of mathematical equations the unknown 
variables x, y, z have meaning for the equation and within the 
equation only by virtue of the meaning of the equation itself, 
i.e., in relation to the "invariables," the assumed "variables," 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 765 
and the "roots" of the equation, just so, and only so, is the 
great X of cognition, the "object," meaningful and understand- 
able only as an element within the context of cognition. 
So interpreted, the "object" of cognition becomes an antici- 
pation, a "projection," and ceases to be an unapproachable 
"thing-in-itself," a something which literally and in the abso- 
lute sense transcends all cognition. There is no longer any need 
for the assumption that "objects" exist in and by themselves. 
All we need to accept now is the possibility of an orderly 
progress of cognition, the possibility of establishing an all- 
comprehensive context according to law, the method of securing 
scientific cognition. The "object" becomes the ultimate goal of 
that process, the ultimate determination of the X in our initial 
question. 
The unity of context is unity of thought. To think, so Natorp 
maintains, is to unify. That which is to be unified, however, is not 
something beyond or outside of thinking. It is, rather, some- 
thing "posited" as a terminal of synthetic relations and there- 
fore is a product of thought itself. The psychologist may still 
speak of "sense impressions," "images," and the likej but so 
far as logic is concerned, we can speak only of "contents" and 
"content relations" which are determined and defined in and 
through thinking. From a strictly "critical" point of view it is 
meaningless to speak of a "manifold of the senses" which exists 
prior to, and independent of, thinking and which is "unified" 
in cognition through a secondary thought process. For the neo- 
Kantians, to think means to posit that something "is." What 
this something may be prior, or in addition to, our thinking, is 
a question which cannot be asked legitimately within the frame- 
work of thought itself, for the demand for a meaning, the de- 
mand that the "something" mean something within the con- 
text of thought, is already a demand for a justification of it in 
and through thought, a demand for its validation as a content 
of thought. For thought, all "being" exists only in and through 
thought itself. Logically there is nothing prior to thinking. 
The X of cognition may be determined as an A or a B or a C} 
but as X it is only the "pure ｅxpression of a question" and not 
an entity, psychological, metaphysical, or otherwise. 
766 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
If thinking, and thinking alone, creates the comprehensive 
context which, through its unity or interrelations, determines or 
defines the X of cognition as an A or a B or a C, then the epis- 
temological problem reduces to a problem of the ultimate logical 
functions of thinking. The problem of cognition, in other words, 
will have been solved as soon as we solve the problems of the 
"categories" which govern and determine the basic functions of 
thought. 
Natorp finds that, to begin with, the categories "quantity" 
and "quality" are indispensable. Wherever an X is to be trans- 
formed by thought into a determinate A or B or C, we must 
think that X in terms of quantity and quality at least. Neither 
one of these categories by itself is sufficient as a determination of 
X, for the "quantum" is only the quantum of a quale, and the 
"quale" is but the quale of a quantum. Both together, and in 
their interpenetration only, constitute magnitude the first 
product of thought, the first synthetic or integrational unity of 
experience. They determine X as an "object," but only in a 
general way. They certainly do not yet determine the interde- 
pendence of "objects" within a determinate context of experi- 
ence. 
The next step in cognition is to advance from such simple 
and primary syntheses to a new level of unification, to a 
synthesis of the elementary syntheses, i.e., to the construction of 
a system of interrelations. The interrelations to be established 
are the "relations" of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason; that is 
to say, they are "relations of dependence according to law;" 
they are "functional relations." 
The goal of cognition, so we have seen, is the universal and 
complete determination of the "object" of cognition which 
leaves nothing undetermined in the original X. The method 
by means of which alone this can be achieved is, according to 
Natorp, the method of establishing functional relations which 
are integrated into a contextual system of experience. Upon 
such integration depends the very meaning of our term "nature" 
the possibility of conceiving "nature" as a system of laws or 
dynamic interrelations. 
The complete integration is, of course, not attainable at once 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 767 
and at one stroke. only little by little does our thinking move 
toward the all-comprehensive context of the whole of experi- 
ence. At every step, however, "nature" or "reality" is encoun- 
tered and understood to exactly the same degree as univocal in- 
terrelations of the diverse elements have been established, or 
to which, for any given field of investigation, the choice be- 
tween possible kinds of functional interrelations has been re- 
stricted. Admittedly, every fixation of interrelations thus 
achieved raises new problems and does not constitute a defini- 
tive terminal of integration} but we are not interested in defini- 
tive terminals anyway. Our concern is with the discovery of a 
method of progressive determination which will lead toward the 
ultimate goal of cognition, the one univocal context. 
This progressive determination must be defined by the basic 
law of synthetic unity, i. e., by the generic law of the synthetic 
process itself. This law involves or presupposes, first, a "start- 
ing-point" or an "anchorage" as the foundation or reference 
point of the integration. It presupposes, secondly, the possibility 
of unrestricted progression from one element to another. And 
it implies, lastly, a relative termination of the process for each 
level of integration reached. Natorp identifies these three 
"indispensables" of the generic law with the "basic series," with 
the "space-time" schema, and with "causality," respectively. 
The possibility of arranging experience in series presupposes 
a secure basic series as reference point and foundation of the 
whole schema of order a fundamentum relationis or basic 
scheme which provides a univocal and unchanging standard for 
all subsequent series, a sequence of positions or a "scale" in 
terms of which the progression of all other sequences can be 
determined. This requirement of the generic law gives rise to 
the age-old demand for something constant or permanent as the 
basis of all change, for a subjectum (in the Aristotelian sense). 
Since the required "invariable" subjects are not provided by 
sensuous things, we must construct them as science has always 
done. The unchangeable basic constants of science are the per- 
manent relations which, in our various equations, take the place 
of "things." Science, in other words, deals with "mass," 
"energy," "gravitation," or whatever it may be, but these con- 
768 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
cepts represent, not "things," but ultimate relations which have 
been posited hypothetically for the sake of the laws based upon 
them. In especially favorable cases these "posits" serve well, 
for a time at least, the purpose of integration. But as soon as the 
field of experience is broadened it may be necessary to revise 
our original hypotheses and to employ different "constants." 
In any case, however, it remains necessary to posit something as 
ultimate, for without any "positing" of some constants it would 
be impossible to deal with "nature" scientifically or to deter- 
mine events in accordance with lawsj and only such determina- 
tion can lead to the conception of one all-comprehensive "nat- 
ure." only through the assumption of some basic constants 
will it be possible to determine "nature" univocally and as 
a whole. 
The one sequence of order which is basic and common to all 
experience is time. Time is the clearest form of the type of scale 
requisite to a progressive synthesis. But it must at once be sup- 
plemented by space, as the basis for an interrelation of parallel 
series. Together, space and time provide the relational founda- 
tion for every possible progression from one element of experi- 
ence to another. 
Since we shall deal with Natorp's interpretation of space and 
time more fully in Part II, we refrain here from giving further 
details. Suffice it to say that through the relations involved in 
the space-time schema we can now define "change" as well as 
"permanence." Every change which occurs in a definite time 
and at a definite point in space must be representable as the 
univocal result of the continuously changing spatial distribu- 
tion of a "substance." "Substance," therefore, is nothing 
"given" as independent or as existing in and by itself; it is 
"posited" as required by the "relations according to law" which 
describe observable changes. 
Space and time, being infinite, cannot by themselves deter- 
mine any particular "object." They provide only the "possi- 
bility of progression" from one element to another. The actual 
synthesis is achieved through the "law of causality" which 
defines the order of relation as an order of "antecedent" and 
"consequent": If x, then y; "y" is now regarded as in some 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 769 
manner dependent upon, or conditioned by, "x." And this rela- 
tion of dependence is posited as a permanent relation. What- 
ever determinateness an object possesses must be derivable from 
this general law through the means of cognition; it must be 
"constructable" on the basis of the law of causality. 
According to Natorp, the first and primary means of the 
"construction" is the positing of "rectilinear uniform motion" 
as the one unchangeable factor in all our calculations which are 
meant to describe events in nature. Upon this "posit" the 
validity of Newtonian mechanics depends, and upon it also 
depends the integrative success of classical laws. 
Newton's three laws of motion do not describe directly and 
as such the events in nature; they only formulate the broadest 
and most fundamental presuppositions in accordance with which 
an interpretation of motion is at all possible in systemic integra- 
tion. Together they provide the framework within which an 
"object" may be specifically determined in accordance with the 
law of causality, the schema in and through which the X of 
experience may be described as an A or a B or a C. 
Newton's first law of motion, the "principle of inertia," ful- 
fills only the demand for substantiality; for mass, strictly 
speaking, is nothing but the measure of inertia. As yet no 
reference is made to "forces" which might determine change. 
Newton's second law provides the rule in accordance with 
which all "forces" must be posited the rule, namely, that 
"forces" must be posited in proportion to determinate accelera- 
tions. 
To state this matter differently, the first law formulates the 
general presupposition of an underlying "substance" of all 
motion. The second law corresponds to the law of causality 
which, according to Natorp, makes it at all possible to fulfill 
the demand for substantiality. 
Newton's third law, stipulating that for every action there 
exists an equal and opposite reaction, expresses a more pro- 
found conception of causality. The mere "chain" of events has 
been transformed into a "system" of interactions. 
But this third law, too, is only another version of the first. 
Both express the same factual situation from different points 
770 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
of view. We attribute the n-fold mass to a body which gives 
to another body (chosen as unit) an acceleration n-fold of that 
which it itself would receive from the latter. The proportion- 
ality of the masses can thus be defined through the negative and 
inverse proportion of the counter-acceleration. Mass, in other 
words, is not "given" prior to the dynamic or functional rela- 
tions of causation but in and through those relations, for mass 
is the proportion of force to acceleration. 
Mass, however, is an indispensable factor in all calculations 
through which the principles of pure mechanics are specifically 
applied to concrete physical situations. Mass ties the equations 
to physical "reality." Mass itself and "mass-points," neverthe- 
less, have no "physical existence." It is not permissible to say 
that bodies "consist" of masses or of mass-points. Masses and 
mass-points are only the conceptual integrals of "bodies 5" they 
are what scientists mean by "objects." 
It is clear from the above statements that, according to 
Natorp, laws are not derived from "objects" by a process of 
abstraction, but that "objects" are posited in requirement of cer- 
tain functional or dynamic relations according to law. They are 
the product of progressive integration. 
Hamilton's principle of energy extends this procedure of in- 
tegration to the whole field of physics. In the realm of electricity 
the "ponderable masses" of classical mechanics are dissolved 
into "forms of energy," but the epistemological procedure is 
unaltered. Such at any rate is the theory of Natorp and of the 
neo-Kantians in general. 
We shall now try to understand Cassirer's view with respect 
to this problem. 
To begin with, Cassirer, like all neo-Kantians, asserts "the 
epistemological primacy of the concept of law over the concept 
of things." 4 "Understanding" the world is not a purely passive 
process, a mere copying of some "given" structure of reality, 
but is a free and constructive activity of mind. "Objects" as 
such are not "given," ready-made and rigidly fixed in them- 
selves; they do not exist prior and external to the synthetic 
unity of comprehension, but are "constituted" through that 
* Philosophie der symboUschen Formtn, III, vii. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 771 
unity, are the result of an integration in and through con- 
sciousness. Every picture or conception of the world which we 
have has been achieved through some kind of "objectification," 
some kind of synthetic transformation, which changes mere 
"impressions" into determinate and integrated "representa- 
tions." 5 Even the most elementary sensuous content of experi- 
ence is already permeated with a "tension" between "content" 
and "representative function," is not "mere" content but content 
pointing beyond itself. It is not simply "given" in isolated inde- 
pendence but is already viewed sub specie and in a certain "re- 
spect j" and this "respect" alone gives meaning to the impres- 
sion. Just as any word of a language can be understood only 
within the totality of a sentence, so each individual impression 
has meaning and significance only in and through the context 
within which we view it. 8 
The cognitive process begins when in the flux of sensuous 
impressions certain "units" are "fixed" and retained as centers 
of integration. Individual phenomena receive their characteristic 
meaning only through their relation to such fixed centers or 
points of reference. 7 The "incisions" which determine the 
"fixed units" are the product of thought, the first determina- 
tions of the X of experience, and obviously correspond to the 
"posits" of Natorp's terminology. They provide the anchorage 
for the progressive determination of the "objects" of experi- 
ence. 
Every individual content is determined "objectively" and 
as an "existant" when it is brought into a space-time order, a 
causal order, and a thing-attribute order. Participation in the 
contextual interrelations of these "orders" assures each particu- 
lar phenomenon of "objective reality" and "objective deter- 
minateness" 8 or, as Natorp said, it changes the X into a specific 
A or B or C. For Cassirer, as for Natorp, any object as deter- 
minate existant "is" only in so far as it is an integral element 
of a relational context established by cognitive thought. 9 It is 
., II, 39- 
6 Ibid., Ill, 149-* 55 H, 40. 
'Ibid., Ill, 165. 
8 Ibid., 235-236. 
/*., II, 40. 
772 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
Cassirer's contention that this fact becomes perfectly clear when 
we consider sensuous impressions in various space configura- 
tions. 
The relation of externality and spatial separateness, i.e., the 
relations of co-existence, Cassirer argues, are not "given" along 
with sensuous impressions; they are highly complex and medi- 
ated results of constructive thinking. When we attribute to 
things in space a specific magnitude, a specific position, or a 
specific distance from one another, we refer to no simple data 
of sense impressions but place the sensuous elements into a 
context of relations, into a system, which, in the end, is a 
context of judgments, a product of pure thought. 10 
Throughout our discussion of Cassirer's point of view we 
have repeatedly spoken of "sense impressions" and "sensuous 
element," as Cassirer himself does; and it seems that, with re- 
spect to this reference to "sense data," Cassirer has already 
forsaken the position of the orthodox neo-Kantians, for it was 
Natorp's contention that as far as epistemology is concerned 
there is nothing prior to thinking. To think is to posit that 
something "is." Upon analysis we find, however, that the dif- 
ference between Cassirer and Natorp on this point is verbal 
rather than real. Natorp admitted that the psychologist might 
speak of "impressions," "perceptions," "images," etc., but 
maintained that neither "impressions" nor "perceptions" could 
be thought without being taken up into thought, without being 
permeated with thought; that their very meaning depended 
upon their being elements within the context of thought. What 
he repudiated was the idea of "impressions," "perceptions," 
and the like, existing by themselves in complete separation 
from thought and having meaning or epistemological signifi- 
cance in and by themselves. Cassirer, if I understand him cor- 
rectly, is saying the very same thing because, as he puts it, even 
the simplest sensuous impressions are already permeated with an 
"internal tension" involving elements of thought. He would 
join Natorp in repudiating the idea that sensuous elements are 
significant or meaningful for cognition prior to and independent 
of systemic thought. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 773 
But let us return to our main theme. 
The transition from the level of sense impressions to the 
mediated world of spatial representations is made possible by 
the fact that within the sequence of fluctuating impressions cer- 
tain constant relations can be fixed and defined and can be 
asserted as something permanent and independent of the flux 
itself. 11 Each impression must then prove its objective sig- 
nificance by becoming an integral element of these relations or, 
rather, of the totality or the system of these relations. Its fusion 
into the systemic context, and this alone, gives objective meaning 
to the individual impression. From the very first, every forma- 
tion of concepts, irrespective of the field in which it is carried 
through, points toward one ultimate goal, the one goal of all 
cognition, namely, the fusion of all specific "positings," of all 
particular conceptual structures, into one unique and univocal 
all-comprehensive context of thought. 12 This complete syn- 
thesis, this absolute systemic unity, is the goal and driving force 
impelling the process of cognition and it is this for Cassirer 
no less than for Natorp and Cohen. only at the end of the 
process of integration is the object of experience fully deter- 
mined, and only then has truth, absolute and unchanging truth, 
been attained. 
However, before the contents of experience can be inte- 
grated as here demanded they must be transformed. The "sense 
data" or "immediate impressions" must be "resolved" into 
elements of theoretical thinking. They must be "posited" as 
such elements. 13 Without this transformation, carried through 
most effectively in the physical sciences, it would be impossible 
to formulate the laws which describe and determine the context 
of experience. And without attaining at least in some measure 
the systemic unity according to law we could not even speak 
about "nature." "Nature" for Cassirer as well as for Natorp 
is the unity according to law, the systemic context of all 
particulars in experience, the totality of progressive integra- 
"I bid., Ill, 331. 
/*., II, 43. 
774 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
tion and objective determination of the "objects" of experi- 
ence. 14 
In the field of physics the "transformation" referred to in- 
volves a change from the quale of immediate impressions to 
concepts of measure and number. The laws of physics are state- 
able only with respect to such transformed "objects." And, vice 
versa, the significance of an "object" as object now depends 
exclusively upon the clarity and univocality with which it re- 
flects or represents the law or the determinateness of the con- 
text, upon its inclusion within a system of law. Cassirer and 
Natorp would agree on this point. They differ, however, in their 
reference to the specific laws determining the content. Natorp 
based his interpretation exclusively upon Newtonian mechanics; 
Cassirer, on the other hand, took into consideration more recent 
developments in the field of physics. For Natorp, "existence" 
means the complete and absolute determination of an "object" 
with respect to space and time. 15 Cassirer, contemplating the 
conclusions reached by quantum mechanics, knows that such 
complete determination is impossible even in theory, and that 
we must rest satisfied with a less rigid demand. 1 * Let us follow 
Cassirer's argument in greater detail. 
Cassirer finds that quantum mechanics has confirmed rather 
than disproved the general position of the neo-Kantians. At 
least it has cut the ground from under all realistic interpretations 
of reality. "Things" no longer provide the starting-point of 
cognition but are the ultimate goal of our interpretations. Laws 
can no longer be derived from "things" through a process of 
abstraction} they constitute the basis upon which alone we can 
assert the existence of "things." The concept of law is logically 
prior to the concept of thing. 17 Our knowledge of "nature" 
extends only so far as does our concept of law. Objective 
"reality" can be asserted only in so far as there is order in ac- 
cordance with law. "Things" are the "limit," the ultimate goal 
toward which the process of cognition moves but which it never 
</., n, 6 5 $ in, 367. 
15 Logische Grundlagen, 34 iff. 
M DeterminismuSy 236. 
11 Ibid., 163. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 775 
actually reaches. The "object" of experience is not something 
completely determined in itself but something determinable 
without end in the process of cognition. 18 Except through the 
medium of laws, no "object" is "given" or known. 19 
So far Cassirer is in complete agreement with Paul Natorp. 
But, whereas Natorp believed that Newtonian mechanics pro- 
vided the means, in principle, for a complete determination 
of an object in space-time, Cassirer points out that this thesis 
involves an over-simplification of the facts. "Field" theories, 
the phenomena of "entropy," and the "uncertainty relations" of 
quantum mechanics involve problems which cannot be solved 
within the framework of classical mechanics. 
"Fields of forces," for example, are not "entities" in the 
classical sense of "material bodies." As far as such "fields" 
are concerned, "mass" can no longer be regarded as "ponder- 
able reality" but must be resolved into electric "charges." 
The whole conception of a "physical body" must therefore be 
redefined. 20 The "field" is not a "thing," but a "system of 
effects." 
Similarly, the "atom" can no longer be conceived as a 
"thing." It has turned out to be an intricate "system" of 
dynamic relations and can be described only through the laws 
which express its effects. 21 To assert that "electrons" exist within 
the atom and that they move in definite orbits actually means 
only that certain laws, formulated to describe observable phe- 
nomena of cathode rays and line spectra, are valid; that they 
are descriptive of the phenomena. 22 Neither the "electrons" nor 
their "orbits" are "things-in-themselves," mere "stuff," 
"given" to us prior to cognition. They are, rather, terminals 
within the integrative process of cognition. 23 The electron 
"exists" only relative to a "field," relative, that is, to a "system 
of effects," and as a particular "place" of that field. 24 
18 Ibid., 164. 
19 Ibid., 178. 
90 Ibid., 163. 
n Ibid., 165. 
"Ibid., 1 68. 
*Ibid., 171. 
24 Ibid., 222. 
776 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
The laws of classical mechanics are so formulated that they 
are valid only under two assumptions. First, all physical objects 
must be reducible to mass-points; and, second, these mass-points 
must be definitely localizable in space at any given time and 
with any given momentum. Quantum mechanics shows, how- 
ever, that it is impossible to determine the exact location of an 
electron if we determine its momentum at the same time with an 
accuracy required by the classical laws. The impossibility here in- 
volved is not merely of a practical nature but is one in principle. 
We must therefore conclude that the individuality of an electron 
can no longer be defined or determined as that of a "thing" 
in space and time. 25 If we continue to speak about individual 
electrons we can do so only indirectly. That is, we can speak 
of their "individuality," not as something "given," but only as 
constituting specific focal points of relations, "intersections" 
within a system of effects. 28 All formulations of quantum 
mechanics are systemic formulations concerning functional de- 
pendencies, not statements concerning individual "things" called 
"electrons." 27 
The situation, in brief, is something like this: Classical 
mechanics assumed that the "state" of a "thing" in space can be 
completely determined at any given moment and in every 
respect. The possibility of such determination was regarded 
as so certain that it became the basis for the definition of the 
"reality" of a thing. only an object that could be determined 
completely in space-time was said to be "real." 28 Now this 
definition of "reality" must be relinquished, for we now know 
that the "picture" of an object which we obtain is inescapably 
conditioned by the process of observation. If we carry out one 
type of experiments, we can locate the electron in space-time 
and can regard it as a "particle;" but its momentum cannot be 
determined with accuracy. If we resort to a different type of 
experiments, we can determine the momentum of the electron 
with complete accuracy, but we cannot locate it in space; we 
224. 
"ibid., 225. 
* Ibid., 228. 
"Ibid., 235. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 777 
must then consider it as a "wave." What an electron "is," in the 
absolute sense and independent of specifically defined condi- 
tions of observation, we cannot say. 29 
If we insist upon an absolute determination of the "object," 
we retain nothing but a shadowy abstraction. If, on the other 
hand, we relinquish the demand for an absolute determination 
and are satisfied with a relative one, then we find that this rela- 
tive determination can be achieved with great accuracy. 30 This 
means, however, that we must abandon the cognitive ideal 
which, for Natorp, was the goal of all science. Cassirer is willing 
to take this stepj and there is no question in my mind that 
Natorp himself would have taken it had he lived long enough 
to come in contact with modern quantum mechanics. The spirit 
of Natorp and the whole conception of his theory of knowl- 
edge warrant such a conclusion ; for there is nothing involved 
in this step which in the least challenges the idea of the 
primacy of law over things. on the contrary, Cassirer is per- 
fectly right when he sees in the development of quantum 
mechanics a confirmation of the neo-Kantian thesis. Just as 
in mathematics "point" and "straight line" are implicitly de- 
fined by the relations which govern them, so, in quantum 
mechanics, "atoms" and "electrons" are defined by the laws 
and relations of the system as a whole. 31 The only difference 
between physics and mathematics is that the axiomatic asser- 
tions of mathematics are replaced in physics by hypothetical 
"posits" of such a type that their interrelations constitute the 
most complete system, the most comprehensive context, of the 
phenomena of experience. In neither case are the laws derived 
from existing "objects" by a process of abstraction, but the 
"objects" are constituted and determined through the laws of 
integration. Cassirer and Natorp are equally emphatic on this 
point. 
II. "SPACE" AND "TIME" 
Our second point of comparison involves the interpretation of 
space and time as given by Natorp and Cassirer, respectively. 
id. t 238. 
10 ibid., 239. 
"Ibid., 2*3- 
778 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
For Natorp, "time" is a "mode of order," just as "space" 
is such a "mode." "Time," however, is the one "mode" com- 
mon and basic to all happenings, whereas "space" is the "order" 
of coexistence. The definite co-ordination of specific points in 
space with successive points in time enables us to define all 
change as "motion," i.e., as "change of position in time." 
But if "time" is only an "order of position," it is essentially 
a "parameter" in the purely mathematical sense in the sense, 
that is, in which all space co-ordinates also are such "parame- 
ters." As "modes" of arranging the manifold phenomena of 
experience in specific ways, space and time are of exactly the 
same logical significance for cognition. 32 They represent the 
"form," i.e., the kind of order according to law, in accordance 
with which alone the manifold of experience can be viewed 
concretely and in relations of succession and coexistence; they 
represent a certain "mode" in which the integration of the 
phenomena can be accomplished, a "condition" which restricts 
the activity of synthetic thinking in its dealings with sense 
impressions by imposing upon it certain laws of relations. 33 
As we have seen in the previous section, the cognition of an 
"object" means, for Natorp, the progressive determination of 
an undetermined X; and univocality of cognition means com- 
plete determination. Such determination, Natorp believes, can 
be achieved with respect to space and time, giving rise to the 
concept "existence." We must, however, examine more closely 
the meaning and nature of space and time. 
To begin with, space and time may be considered from two 
points of view, namely, as mathematical structures and as in- 
dispensable conditions of the existential determination of all 
possible experience. Viewed from the point* of view of pure 
mathematics, space, like time, is but an order of position and 
is without content. Time and space, as mathematical structures, 
are "empty." They are, however, subject to one and the same 
type of law the law of any order of position, the law of 
"number" and, in this sense, are inseparably interrelated. 34 
"Natorp, op. cit., 72-78. 
"Ibid., 268-269. 
280. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 779 
As mathematical structures, space and time are subject only 
to the laws of integrative thought and their qualities depend 
exclusively upon that thought. The "directions" and "dimen- 
sions" of space, for example, may be arranged in complete 
freedom. All types of non-Euclidean geometry are acceptable 
so long as they fulfill the logical requirements of coherent 
systems. 35 Natorp, in other words, fully accepts the modern 
developments in geometry 36 and he approves of Cantor's "trans- 
finite" numbers. Indeed, he sees in both developments a verifi- 
cation .of his neo-Kantian position. 
However, when we leave the realm of pure mathematics and 
attempt to determine the X of experience through the "forms" 
of space and time, a specific restriction in the development of 
space-time relations must be accepted. This restriction may be 
formulated as the demand that the directions and dimensions 
admitted must constitute a univocal and closed system of rela- 
tions, and that no greater number of dimensions be introduced 
than is necessary and sufficient to establish a complete, univocal, 
homogeneous, and continuous context of spatial determinations 
for the contents of experience. 37 
This demand for a limitation of the free creativeness of 
mathematical thought does not arise from any need or implica- 
tion of mathematics, but solely from the nature of our judg- 
ments of existence. In their epistemological significance, "di- 
mensions" are means of determination j but an infinite number 
of dimensions would determine nothing. 
If the limitation of the dimensions of space be carried 
through in conformity with the stipulation that only such a 
number of dimensions is to be admitted as is necessary and 
sufficient for the univocal determination of "objects," then, 
Natorp argues, we are at once restricted to three dimensions 
of Euclidean constitution. The space within which our mani- 
fold experience can be arranged in univocal and complete 
order is a continuous, homogeneous, and three-dimensional 
space j it is the Euclidean space. 38 . 
304. 
308. 
305. 
98 Ibid., 306-308. 
780 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
Natorp points out, however, that the Euclidicity of physical 
space is neither an absolute necessity for pure thought nor a fact 
of pure experience. It is only a "necessary presupposition" for 
the integration of experience in the sense that it is required as 
the basis for a univocal determination of the "objects" of experi- 
ence. It is a requisite for thought only when thinking is con- 
cerned with the actual integration of "objects," with their uni- 
vocal determination as coexisting entities within the context of 
experience. 39 
Consequently, if relations of objects are discovered which 
deviate from the assumptions implicit in Euclidean space, it 
may be necessary to modify our geometrical presuppositions. 
If non-Euclidean geometries offer technical advantages in the 
integration and determination of experience, so Natorp main- 
tains, it would be foolish not to employ them. 40 Every empirical 
datum can be reconciled mathematically with every type of 
geometry if proper assumptions are made, 41 and only the 
demand for univocality of description and the stipulation that 
no unnecessary assumptions should be made can guide us in our 
choice of the geometrical system which we regard as constitu- 
tive for the world of experience. 
For Natorp, the univocal determination of the "objects" 
of experience can be achieved only through the establishment of 
"causal" relations in space and time of relations, that is, as 
exemplified in the laws of classical mechanics; and these laws 
presuppose and imply the Euclidicity of space. 42 Physics, how- 
ever, as actual cognition, can never fully attain the ideal of 
absolute determinateness, for we can measure only with em- 
pirical means. The degree of determinateness achieved de- 
pends in every case upon the accuracy of our measurements. 
This being the case, we must employ, as the basis for measure- 
ment, that empirical value which most closely approaches the 
ideal limit. For contemporary physics this value is the constant 
"Ibid., 312. 
40 ., 3 1 5- 
316. 
339-347- 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 781 
velocity of light in empty space 43 as disclosed in the Michelson- 
Morley ether-drift experiment and as "posited" in the Einstein- 
Minkowski theory of relativity. 
Natorp, who published his Logische Grundlagen in 1910, 
i.e., five years prior to the publication of Einstein's generalized 
theory, sees in the Einstein-Minkowski theory the reconcilia- 
ton between pure, absolute, and mathematical space and time 
on the one hand, and empirical, relative, and physical space 
and time determinations on the other. 44 That is to say, he sees 
in the "special" theory of relativity the completion of Newton 
and Kant, the reconciliation of the ultimate ideal of absolute 
determination with the restriction of all knowledge to relative 
determinateness. Instead of achieving absolute determinateness, 
science must now rest satisfied with a determinateness in space 
and time which depends upon the value c as upon the last uni- 
vocal measure empirically attainable. 45 The laws of motion and 
the principle of the conservation of energy must be restated in 
somewhat different form, but they appear again in classical 
form if, instead of c y we posit o as the ideal constant. 
It is obvious from this line of reasoning that Natorp accepts 
the special theory of relativity and maintains that, far from im- 
pairing the basic position of the neo-Kantians, this theory actu- 
ally confirms the epistemological views of the Marburg School. 46 
The ideal of absolute and univocal determination of the "ob- 
jects" loses nothing of its attractiveness or of its logical validity 5 
only the possibility of its empirical fulfillment has been re- 
stricted in a very specific way. The theory of relativity stipulates 
a freedom of choice so far as space and time co-ordinates are 
concerned which was not found in classical mechanics j but this 
freedom does not endanger the integrated unity of our cogni- 
tion of nature because it does not impair the univocality of the 
laws of nature. on the contrary, the recognition of the "in- 
variance" of the laws of nature despite the relativity of the 
id., 398. 
4 Ibid., 399- 
8 Ibid., 401. 
782 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
space-time factors (as expressed in the Lorentz "transformation 
equations") is, according to Natorp, the most important result of 
the relativity theory/ 7 
What is Cassirer J s view with respect to this point? 
Natorp, we repeat, published his book, Die logischen Grund- 
lagen der exakten Wissenschaften, five years before Einstein's 
general theory of relativity became known. Cassirer, on the 
other hand, published his monograph, Zur Einsteinschen Rela- 
tivitatstheorie y six years after the general theory first appeared 
in print. This circumstance alone, I believe, is sufficient to 
account for whatever difference concerning the interpretation 
of space and time there may be in the writings of these two 
men. 
In accord with Natorp's view, Cassirer maintains that "the 
doctrine of space and time developed by the theory of relativity 
is a doctrine of empirical space and empirical time, not of pure 
space and pure time," 48 and that to this extent the relativity 
theory constitutes "the most definite application and carrying 
through of the standpoint of critical idealism within empirical 
science itself." 49 
Space and time, by themselves, "signify only a fixed law of 
the mind, a schema of connection by which what is sensuously 
perceived is set in certain relations of coexistence and se- 
quence." 50 That is to say, time is, like space, a schema in which 
we must arrange events, if the flux of our subjective impressions 
is to have objective order and significance. The actual arrange- 
ment of impressions, however, can be accomplished only upon 
the basis of measured relationships. And, as the theory of rela- 
tivity shows, two observers in relative motion to each other 
will make the arrangement in different ways. Each will regard 
his own system of reference as the starting-point in relation to 
which the space-time order of events is to be established, but 
each order will be different. 
Nevertheless, both arrangements, if carried through con- 
sistently, will have objective significance, since it is possible to 
" ibid., 403. 
48 Cassirer, E., Substance and Function, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity 
(W. C. and M. C. Swabey, trans.), 409. 
"Ibid., 412. 
60 Ibid., 412. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 783 
deduce from each the particular arrangement valid for the other 
observer. The old idea of a unitary time and a unitary space has 
been abandoned, but its place has been taken by a one-to-one 
correlation of space-time values in empirically different systems. 
The dynamic unity of temporal and spatial determinations has 
been retained, but only as a postulate of relations which are 
validated in and through a system of laws other than that of 
Newtonian mechanics. 
Following Newton, Kant assumed that the three laws of mo- 
tion of classical mechanics provided the sole and sufficient basis 
for an integration of experience; and these laws presuppose 
absolute space and absolute time. In the special theory of rela- 
tivity, the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light 
was accepted as the basic presupposition of our integration of ex- 
perience. Natorp and Cassirer agree on this, and both modify the 
Kantian position accordingly. 
In the general theory of relativity even this principle is re- 
placed by a still different one by the principle of the equiva- 
lence of gravitational and inertial fields; and it follows from 
this principle that "all Gaussian co-ordinate systems are of 
equal value for the formulation of the universal natural laws." 51 
We must still conceive an absolute space and an absolute time, 
i. e., an absolute unity of all space-time determinations; but 
this unity is not the unity of some "real" object. It is, rather, an 
Idea (in the Kantian sense) which serves as "a rule for con- 
sidering all motions in it as merely relative." "The logical uni- 
versality of such an idea," Cassirer argues in complete agree- 
ment with Natorp, "does not conflict with the theory of rela- 
tivity." 52 on the contrary, it alone assures the validity of the 
empirical laws. All motions in space must be regarded as merely 
relative because only in this way is it possible to combine them 
into a definite concept of experience which unifies all phe- 
nomena. "The one valid norm is merely the idea of the unity of 
nature, of exact determination itself;" 53 and this the theory of 
relativity safeguards by guaranteeing the "invariance" of the 
laws of nature despite the relativity of all space-time co-ordi- 
, 416. 
"Ibid., 41*. 
784 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
nates. Cassirer and Natorp are in complete agreement on this 
point; although Natorp did not know the generalized theory of 
relativity when he wrote his Logische Grundlagen. 
When Natorp's book was republished without revision in 
1923, Cassirer's interpretation of relativity was well known, and 
Natorp, in the new preface to his book, referred his readers to 
Cassirer's monograph, saying that this monograph provided a 
substitute for Natorp's own interpretation, since it "contains 
much of what I myself might have said concerning this mat- 
ter." 54 
III. CAUSALITY 
Our third point of comparison involves the interpretations of 
causality as given by Natorp and Cassirer, respectively. 
According to Natorp, experience is integrated and the "order" 
of experience is established in conformity with the ideas of suc- 
cession and simultaneity. Through the idea of succession, im- 
pressions are related in series, and these series, in turn, are 
related in sequence until the whole of experience has been in- 
corporated into one unitary system of series. Through the idea 
of simultaneity, parallel series are interrelated in accordance 
with a law of progression which establishes a mutual dependence 
or interdependence of coexisting series. The arrangement in- 
volving succession is carried through on the basis of "causality;" 
the arrangement involving interdependence presupposes "inter- 
action." 
The "law of causality," according to Natorp, asserts that a re- 
sult attained under certain conditions at a time / will be at- 
tained again under the same conditions at a time / but it does 
not stipulate what the specific conditions are in any given case. 55 
In other words, the "law of causality" affirms merely the de- 
pendence of a consequent in general upon an antecedent in gen- 
eral. It affirms an "orderliness according to law" which involves 
immediately and directly only an order of succession. 
In so far, however, as we deal not only with a single series 
in time but with the interrelation of parallel series, the general 
B * Natorp, op. cit. y vii. 
, 80. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 785 
relationship of antecedent and consequent does not adequately 
represent the idea of causality. 56 A comparison of various 
parallel or "co-ordinated" series of changes shows that the law 
which determines the specific sequence of each series is deter- 
minable only through a law which defines the relation of co- 
ordination a law, that is, which defines a "totality of order," 
a system of interrelations, within which each individual series is 
determined by all other series, and in which each series contrib- 
utes to the determination of all others. Such a law, however, 
is nothing but Kant's "principle of interaction," the culmination 
of our conception of "nature" as a dynamic system, i.e., as a 
singular and all-comprehensive functional context of events. 57 
The demand for a general law of causality has been fulfilled, 
according to Natorp, through Newton's formulation of the 
three basic laws of motion. The second of these laws, in particu- 
lar, is an ｅxpression of the most general demand for a depend- 
ence of a consequent upon some antecedent. The third law pro- 
vides the more profound interpretation of causality as "inter- 
action." 58 
Through the application of the law of causality in its most 
profound sense, a totality of order, a system of order, is estab- 
lished the totality or system which we call "nature." The 
nature of the law itself is such that the mathematical term 
"function" describes it most adequately. We may say, therefore, 
that only through the idea of "function" can the demand for an 
all-inclusive and orderly context of experience be fulfilled. 
"Nature" or "reality" is known or "understood" only to the 
extent to which such a "functional" or "dynamic" context has 
been established. 59 
Cassirer, I am sure, would agree with Natorp that only the 
"functional" or "dynamic" context according to law discloses 
to us the reality and the essence of "nature." His earlier book, 
Substance and Function, is sufficient proof for this. But, whereas 
Natorp argues that the functional equations of classical me- 
m lbid., 8 1. 
"Ibid., 81. 
88 Ibid., 371. 
d. 9 67. 
786 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
chanics, as based upon Newton's three laws of motion, are the 
sole means through which that context can be established uni- 
versally, Cassirer maintains that these classical equations must 
be supplemented and that even new types of laws may be re- 
quired for the establishment of an all-comprehensive context. 
According to Cassirer, the "law of causality" must be clearly 
distinguished from the specific equations of the empirical sci- 
ences. It is logically on a different level. The equations ex- 
press particular interrelations of various magnitudes, but the 
"law of causality" is the general demand that the cognitive 
process of transforming the data of observation into concise 
ｅxpressions of measure, the process of synthesizing the results 
of measurements in functional equations, and of unifying these 
equations in conformity with certain uniform principles, shall be 
possible without end. The "law of causality," in other words, is 
the axiomatic demand that the progressive functional interpreta- 
tion of experience can and must be carried through. 60 
The "law of causality" is in so far sui generis as it is not a 
statement about "things" or "events," but a statement concern- 
ing laws and principles. It is the axiomatic assertion that the 
results of our measurements, the laws governing these results, 
and the principles of interrelating those laws can be integrated 
in such a manner that they constitute one coherent system of 
cognition, one unitary and univocal integration of "nature." 
If I understand Natorp's arguments correctly, they imply this 
very same conception of the "law of causality;" for does not 
Natorp maintain that the law of causality in its profoundest 
sense is the demand for the homogeneous functional system, and 
not some specific equation describing "events"? But so far as 
Natorp is concerned, this demand for a system is completely 
realizable through the equations of classical mechanics. These 
equations, for Natorp, express the prototype of relations which 
fulfill the demand for causal interdependence. 
Cassirer admits that the "law of causality" has been decisive 
for the development of classical physics, that it has given im- 
petus and direction to this development. 61 But Cassirer shows 
* Cassirer, Determinismus, 76. 
82. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 787 
that the statistical treatment of entropy, as given by Boltzmann, 
has introduced into physics a new type of "law," a new type of 
equations of interdependence, which must be given equal status 
with the dynamic laws of Newtonian mechanics. A dualism has 
thus been introduced into the conception of "physical laws." 62 
Natorp, in agreement with most of his contemporaries, seems 
to have regarded the "statistical laws" as approximations which 
did not affect the ideal of a rigid functional interpretation. Ac- 
cording to this view, the "fate" of individual particles is strictly 
determinable through classical laws, but it is not always conven- 
ient or possible for practical reasons to ascertain all the "condi- 
tions" requisite for a complete functional interpretation. In 
principle, however, the demand for a complete determination 
remains unchallenged. 
Cassirer argues in a somewhat different manner. He points 
out that even Galileo claimed unconditional or complete exact- 
ness for his laws only in so far as these laws are hypothetically 
exact formulations, not in the sense that they describe actual 
events with absolute exactness. They are ｅxpressions of an "if- 
then" relation rather than descriptions of the "here-and-now" 
of events. They apply, strictly speaking, to "ideal" cases, not to 
empirically given situations. 
What is true of Galileo's laws, Cassirer points out, is true 
also of all laws formulated in conformity with the Galilean 
model. It is true, in particular, of the equations of Newtonian 
mechanics. 68 
The laws of classical mechanics, however, involve only "re- 
versible" processes. The principle of entropy, on the other hand, 
deals with processes which are not reversible; and such proc- 
esses, Cassirer argues, require a new type of "law," statistical 
laws, and laws involving the calculation of "probabilities." 64 
The "probabilities" involved in these laws are not of a sub- 
jective nature but are objective in their significance and mean- 
ing. once the factors present in a cognitive situation have been 
analyzed, our probability calculations determine rigidly what 
., 96. 
68 Ibid., 103. 
"IbiL, in. 
;88 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
is a probable (or improbable) result under those conditions, and 
they determine this probability or improbability of the event 
in complete independence of our subjective opinion in the mat- 
ter. 65 
Probability calculation is a branch of pure mathematics and 
leads to definite conclusions in accordance with strict rules once 
we apply it to certain assumed or stipulated empirical conditions. 
And, Cassirer argues, in so far as this is true, statistical expres- 
sions have the same epistemological significance as the laws of 
classical mechanics. They can and must therefore be co-ordinated 
with those laws. 66 
This co-ordination is easily accomplished if we remember that 
the classical laws expressing specific causal relations pertain to 
the course of an event, whereas probability concerns our knowl- 
edge of the initial conditions which give rise to that event. The 
idea of causality in conjunction with the conception of probabili- 
ties results in the special laws of "statistical mechanics" which 
strictly determine an event as a consequent of the assumed or 
stipulated conditions but which, when applied to actual events, 
constitute the prototype of a physical hypothesis. 67 only through 
the interpenetration of causality and probability is the general 
form of "order in conformity with law" at all conceivable. New- 
ton's law of gravitation, for example, tells us exactly what will 
happen under condition of some specific distribution of matter 
in space, but the actual state of that distribution is not deter- 
mined by the law of gravitation and can be ascertained only 
through measurements and calculations involving probabilities. 
So far, therefore, no radical change of the epistemological 
position of neo-Kantianism is required to accommodate the statis- 
tical laws. So far Cassirer was not compelled to modify Natorp's 
view in any radical manner. The question arises, however, to 
what extent and in what sense the significance and meaning of 
the "law of causality" have been affected by the transition from 
classical mechanics to quantum theories. Natorp, so we have 
seen, died before quantum mechanics came into its own. Hence, 
" Ibid., 113. 
*lbid. 9 1 1 8. 
Ibid., 130. 
87 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 789 
if Cassirer's views differ essentially from those of orthodox 
neo-Kantians, this difference should become noticeable at this 
point. 
It is Cassirer's thesis, as it was Natorp's, that the principle of 
causality is not a proposition dealing directly with things or 
events but is, rather, a stipulation concerning the means through 
which things and events are constituted in experience. This gen- 
eral meaning of causality, according to Cassirer, remains un- 
affected by quantum mechanics. It is true that Heisenberg has 
shown that specific "uncertainties" are unavoidable whenever 
we deal with individual electrons or similar particles, and that 
therefore "probability equations" alone adequately describe the 
observed processes. But, as Heisenberg himself has pointed out, 
these "probabilities" are by no means indeterminate. They are 
derivable from the principles of quantum mechanics and are 
strictly and univocally determined by them. 68 The "uncertainty 
relations," therefore, do not imply a lack of precision in 
quantum mechanical laws. 69 
To put it differently, quantum mechanics, like every other 
branch of science, makes certain stipulations from which it pro- 
ceeds and upon which the validity of its formulations depends. It 
no longer accepts all the stipulations of classical mechanics and 
has abandoned the hope that all propositions of physics can 
ultimately be reduced to one type of functional laws; but, within 
the framework of its own stipulations, the equations of quantum 
mechanics reveal objective interrelations of events with exacti- 
tude and precision. 
When Heisenberg rejected the "law of causality," his argu- 
ments were directed only against a narrowly conceived version 
of that law, not against the general idea of "orderliness in accord- 
ance with law." 70 But "causality" in the narrow sense, Cassirer 
maintains, had been invalidated even before the advent of 
quantum mechanics. It had lost status in classical physics, because 
the equations of classical mechanics could be applied to actual 
situations only on the basis of probability considerations. 
m Ibid., 144. 
* Ibid., 146. 
70 Ibid., i43i 153. 
790 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
If we discard this narrow conception of causality and adhere 
only to the general demand for "orderliness according to law" 
(Gesetzlichkeit), Cassirer argues, then the "uncertainty rela- 
tions" of Heisenberg "do not constitute a contrary instance." 71 
The very demonstration of the validity of the "uncertainty rela- 
tions" presupposes the validity of the generalized law of caus- 
ality. Moreover, the basic postulates of quantum mechanics are 
inseparably tied up with the principles of conservation of energy 
and conservation of momentum, with principles, that is, which 
are "pure and typical statements of causality." 72 
The general principle of causality demands in general the de- 
pendence of a consequent y upon an antecedent x: If x, then 
y. Even traditional logic reveals ( i ) that the falsity of x does 
not necessarily imply the falsity of y> and (2) that the universal 
validity of the conditional proposition is unaffected by the fal- 
sity of the antecedent, or by any restriction of its truth. Hence, if 
the "uncertainty relations" imply that in the field of physics 
some judgements of causality rest upon false premises or upon 
premises of restricted truth, nothing is said thereby concern- 
ing the pure form of the hypothetical syllogism or concerning 
its formal validity. The schema, // x, then y, as purely formal 
schema, loses nothing of its force or of its validity. If, however, 
the schema is to be applied to some concrete situation, it is neces- 
sary to ascertain whether or not the values to be inserted for x 
can be determined by measurement with complete and absolute 
accuracy. The problem, in other words, pertains not to the causal 
relation as such but to the "empty places," the measured vari- 
ables, which make the general principle applicable in concrete 
cases. The values of x must be "admissible" if the principle of 
causality is to have specific and univocal meaning in some par- 
ticular situation. 
From the point of view of physics, only such values are "ad- 
missible" which can be definitely ascertained through determi- 
nate and definable methods of measuring. This restrictive inter- 
pretation of the conditions under which the law of causality 
becomes applicable alone assures the physical significance of 
153. 
, 154. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 791 
that principle. Natorp, I am sure, would agree with Cassirer on 
this point, for the idea as such is not new. Newton already in- 
cluded it in his regulae fhiloso'phandi. The new aspect is that 
quantum mechanics reveals, through its "uncertainty relations," 
that it is forever impossible to obtain experimentally certain 
pairs of magnitudes such as the place and momentum of an 
electron with complete accuracy. Through this discovery the 
application of the principle of causality is subjected to a condi- 
tion of which classical physics knew nothing j but the restriction 
in applicability does not entail the suspension of the principle 
itself. 73 
So far as quantum mechanics is concerned, the law of causality 
stipulates that, if at any time certain physical magnitudes have 
been measured with the greatest accuracy possible in conformity 
with the "uncertainty relations," then there exist at some other 
time certain other magnitudes the measurable qualities of which 
can be predicted with accuracy. It is impossible, however, to 
describe completely in space and time the actual connections 
expressed by the functional law, just as it is impossible to con- 
struct a mechanism on the basis of classical laws which reveals 
the quantum theoretical connection between waves and particles. 
Such a representation and description in space and time is, how- 
ever, not needed for the application of the principle of causality. 
The formalism of quantum mechanics itself provides all neces- 
sary "functional" connections. So long as empirical events can 
be measured and, on the basis of these measurements, can be 
described in mathematical terms and by means of mathematical 
equations, the postulate of the "comprehensibility of nature" 
is fulfilled. Moreover, inasmuch as this "comprehensibility" 
rests upon the principle of causality in its broad sense, this prin- 
ciple, too, has lost nothing of its epistemological significance. 74 
Natorp, I feel certain, would endorse wholeheartedly this 
conclusion of Cassirer's argument. Had he lived to see the ad- 
vent of modern quantum mechanics he would have moved on 
beyond the position of orthodox neo-Kantianism in the same 
direction in which Cassirer has actually moved. The initial posi- 
" Ibid., i 57 . 
74 Ibid., 234. 
792 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
tion taken by Natorp with respect to the presuppositions of scien- 
tific cognition implies this. In developing his interpretation of 
quantum mechanics, Cassirer has not broken with neo-Kantian- 
ism but has adapted its established principles to the latest results 
of scientific research. He has carried out a program first enunci- 
ated by Natorp, and he has carried it out in the very spirit of 
Natorp. In one essential respect, however, Cassirer has gone 
far beyond the orthodox neo-Kantians. We shall consider this 
point in our next section. 
IV. FOUNDATIONS OF THE "GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN" 
Up to now we have considered Cassirer's views only in so 
far as they pertain to the epistemological basis of the exact 
natural sciences. We have found that in all these matters Cas- 
sirer has advanced beyond orthodox neo-Kantianism only in a 
very restricted sense. However, in the course of his many-sided 
investigations, Cassirer became convinced that the traditional 
epistemology in its usual limitation to "scientific cognition" does 
not provide a basis for the Geisteswissenschaften or cultural 
sciences. 
If all types of knowledge are to find epistemological justi- 
fication, then the basic principles of epistemology itself must be 
radically expanded or generalized 75 and must be conceived in 
such a manner as to admit knowledge differing in kind, not only 
in degree, from that obtained in the natural sciences. And with 
this demand for a generalized epistemological basis of all knowl- 
edge Cassirer departs radically from the position of orthodox 
neo-Kantianism 5 for Natorp is committed to the idea that the 
prototype of all knowledge is found in the mathematical sciences. 
The cultural sciences find no consideration in the Logische 
Grundlagen or in Natorp's other epistemological writings. The 
epistemological problems of these sciences are not recognized as 
such unless we are to accept Natorp's explicit restriction of 
analysis to the foundations of the so-called exact sciences as an 
implied admission that other sciences may require a different 
treatment. 
Despite this break with the orthodoxy of the Marburg School, 
" Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, I, v. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 793 
Cassirer has by no means abandoned the essence of Kantianism. 
on the contrary, he finds ample room for the new generalization 
within the framework of that position. 
Starting once more from the premise that the basic concepts 
of science are obtained, not through a process of abstraction, but 
through an integrative or synthetic act of mind, Cassirer argues 
that this integrative activity of mind permeates all types of 
knowledge. Our concepts, whatever they may be in any given 
field of investigation, are man-created intellectual symbols by 
means of which experiential contexts are established; they are 
integral parts of logical systems and are defined and determined 
in and through the logical structure of their respective systems. 
But if this is true, then our basic concepts participate in, or 
"share," the logical structure of the system to which they be- 
long. And if an "object" of experience is constituted only 
through these concepts, then "we cannot reject" the idea that 
the variety of such constitutive logical means produces a variety 
of "objective" contexts, a variety of differently integrated "ob- 
jects." 76 Even within the realm of "nature" the "physical" ob- 
ject is not strictly identical with the "chemical" object, or the 
"chemical" object with the "biological" object, for "physical," 
"chemical," and "biological" cognition, respectively, involve spe- 
cifically different points of view from which the questions are 
raised which guide our inquiries, and from which the phenomena 
of observation are subjected to interpretation and integration. 77 
The one Being, presupposed in all realistic epistemologies, 
the thing-in-itself as it exists in and by itself, recedes more and 
more from the field of investigation and becomes the unknow- 
able X. It is not encountered at the beginning of cognition as 
something "given," but only at the end, as the fulfillment of 
completed cognition, the culmination of all integration. Our 
basic concepts of cognition cannot be obtained from this X 
through a process of abstraction. All Kantians agree on this. 
But is it possible to take the opposite view and to interpret all 
intellectual symbols, irrespective of the field of their applica- 
tion, as ｅxpressions of one and the same basic function of mind? 
., 6. 
7. 
794 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
Natorp maintains that all cognition, no matter how different 
its ways and modes may be, aims ultimately at an integration of 
experience in terms of causality, at the complete subsumption of 
all objects of experience under the law of causality. The partic- 
ular is not to remain an isolated particular but is to be merged 
into a context determined and defined by causal interrelations. 
Cassirer, on the other hand, finds that the causal mode of 
integration is only one of many which are equally possible and 
equally actual. "Ob j edification" is carried on, and the particular 
is fused into context, by means quite different from that em- 
ploying logical concepts and laws of logical relations. Art, my- 
thology, and religion exemplify these other types of integration. 
No work of art, no mythology, no religion merely reflects 
an empirically "given." All of them constitute their "objects," 
their "world," in conformity with some independent principle 
of integration. Each creates its own symbolic forms, forms which 
are not of the same type as the "intellectual" symbols of science 
but which, nevertheless, considering their origin, are episte- 
mologically equivalent to them. Not one of these different types 
of symbols can be fully represented by any other, or can be trans- 
lated into, or derived from, any other. Each type represents 
a distinct approach to, and a distinct mode of interpretation of, 
experience and thus constitutes in and through itself a specific 
aspect of the "real." These types of symbols are not different 
ways in which one and the same "thing-in-itself" reveals itself 
to us, but they are modes through which mind accomplishes its 
"objectification" of experience. 78 Kant's "Copernican revolu- 
tion" must therefore be extended to all of them. 79 
The question in all cases of "objectification" is this: Is the 
function of the "symbol" derivable from the "object," or 
does the "object" presuppose the functional significance of the 
"symbol"? Does the "symbol" find its validation through the 
"object," or is the "object" constituted through (or by means of) 
the "symbol"? Since this question arises in every field in which 
symbols are employed, it represents the intellectual bond, the 
methodological unity, which holds these fields together. 
9. 
19 Ibid., 10. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 795 
Answering this question in the basically Kantian sense of the 
primacy of "functions" or "laws" over "objects," Cassirer finds 
that it is possible to transcend the narrowly conceived position 
of the neo-Kantians without discarding the essence of Kantian- 
ism itself. As he now sees it, the integrative activity of mind is 
not restricted to a purely cognitive function. In addition to the 
logical integration of experience we can discern a "function of 
linguistic thinking," a "function of mythico-religious thinking," 
and a "function of artistic intuition." Each one of these integrat- 
ing functions leads to a particular type of integration and is 
therefore constitutive to its own specific context of experience, 
to its own "objective totality." 80 
Interpreted in this way, the critique of reason becomes a 
generalized critique of culture, showing how all content of 
culture presupposes and involves a primordial act of mind, an 
act of creative integration. And in this generalized critique the 
basic thesis of idealism finds its proper and complete validation. 81 
The varied products of culture language, scientific cognition, 
myths, art, and religion despite their diversified character and 
despite the difference in method and aim of integration, now are 
conceived as being one in ultimate purpose in the purpose, 
namely, of transforming the passive world of mere impressions 
(in which mind seems at first imprisoned) into a "world of 
pure spiritual ｅxpression." 82 
If we insist upon the complete logical unity of all integrations, 
the universality and exclusiveness of the logical form tend to 
destroy the specifically and uniqueness of the obj edifications 
in non-logical spheres of integration. If, on the other hand, we 
acknowledge the specifically of these integrations without ad- 
vancing at the same time beyond it to an all-inclusive principle 
of integration, we are in danger of losing ourselves in particu- 
lars. 83 But, if we accept the expansion of Kant's "Copernican 
revolution," then, according to Cassirer, both of these fatal 
alternatives can be avoided. We can then admit the greatest 
80 1 bid., ii. 
81 Ibid., ii. 
"Ibid., 12. 
"/<*., 1 6. 
796 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
diversity of forms without being forced to relinquish the de- 
mand for ultimate unity in the creative function of mind. For 
example, the synthesis in which the succession of tones is trans- 
formed into the unity of a "melody" is quite different from 
the synthesis through which the manifoldness of linguistic 
sounds is integrated into the unity of a "sentence}" but common 
to both is the fact that the sensuous elements no longer remain 
isolated particulars but are fused into a context in and through 
which each element receives its real meaning and significance. 84 
Each field of integration is characterized by its own approach 
and procedure; each involves its own specific integrative princi- 
ple. But all of them are, nevertheless, only functions of the same 
integrating mind, 85 and in and through its diversified products 
this mind reveals itself and reveals the world of experience as an 
ｅxpression or manifestation of mind. 86 
Such is the essence of Cassirer's thesis. That it involves a step 
beyond orthodox neo-Kantianism is obvious. It is true, further- 
more, that in all cultural achievements in language, art, re- 
ligion, and science creative and integrating minds reveal them- 
selves. Whenever we deal with "symbols," a creative mind 
which integrates and interprets them may be assumed to be at 
work. The use of "symbols" is an act of synthesis, of con- 
struction, not of abstraction or passive reception. To this extent 
at least Cassirer's thesis may be regarded as validated. 
However, Cassirer's three- volume work, Die Philosofhie der 
symbollschen Formen, still leaves many questions unanswered. 
The epistemological problem of the exact sciences (mathe- 
matics, mathematical physics, and chemistry) may be regarded 
as solved, for the principle of integration is evident in each 
case. It may be granted likewise that the epistemological prob- 
lem of "mystical" thinking (mythology and religion) has found 
its solution. Its integrating principle seems to be identical with 
what Levy-Bruhl has called the principle of "participation." 
Both mathematical science and mythology (religion) have, 
however, in common that they aim at an integrated totality of 
*/<*., 27. 
31. 
ADVANCE BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM 797 
experience. Language and art, on the other hand, do not share 
this aim. 
No "object of art" claims to be an all-inclusive totality of 
experience, nor do all "objects of art" together constitute such 
a totality. The creative synthesis in a work of art is undeniable, 
but in intent and method it is not on the same level with a law 
or theory of science or with an "explanatory" myth. 
Language also is the product of creative synthesis} but it, 
too, is, epistemologically speaking, not on the same plane with 
science or mythology (religion). Both science and mythology 
represent distinct world-views, intellectual positions from which 
the manifold of experience is to be integrated into comprehen- 
sive contexts. Language, on the other hand, despite its sym- 
bolic character, is but a means to be employed in such integra- 
tion. It may reflect in its forms and vocabulary predominantly 
the point of view of mythology or that of science (and usually 
is a fair mixture of both), but in itself it provides no "point of 
view" from which experience is to be integrated. This is not 
to say that the development of language remains unaffected by 
the purpose for which linguistic symbols are employed. My 
contention is merely that language as an instrument useful in 
integrating experience cannot be set in strict parallel with 
science or mythology as "point of view" and as mode of inte- 
gration. Cassirer's "philosophy of symbolic forms" needs clarifi- 
cation at this point. 
Cassirer, as will be recalled, generalized the position of the 
neo-Kantians in order to provide an epistemological basis for 
the cultural sciences. But neither in his Philoso$hie der symbo- 
lischen Formen nor in his other books does this problem find 
further consideration. 
It may be granted that the general thesis of the primacy of the 
integrative functions of mind over all "objects" of experience 
implies a suggestion of the direction in which an answer to this 
problem must be sought. But the task of carrying through the 
required analysis of categories and principles of integration still 
remains to be done. What, for example, is the principle (corre- 
sponding to the law of causality in the exact sciences) which 
determines obj edification and integration of historical knowl- 
798 WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
edge? Upon what basis is the historical context of experience 
to be established? If in the field of history, too, the basic princi- 
ple of integration is to be a law of causality, then, it seems, this 
law must be even more generalized than it was in the field of 
quantum mechanics and generalized in a different manner. 
It may have to be transformed into a "principle of relevancy" 
a principle, that is, the application of which involves value 
judgments. If so, new questions arise, questions which tran- 
scend the field of history proper. We must then ask: What are 
values? What is the epistemological basis of value judgments? 
What is the principle of integration in the general field of 
axiology? All these questions must be answered before the 
epistemology of Geisteswissenschaften is complete} but none of 
them are answered by Cassirer. His radical step beyond the 
neo-Kantians of the Marburg School is also a step away from 
specifically epistemological problems and from the type of 
analyses which such problems demand. 
WILLIAM H. WERKMEISTER 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 
Fritz Kauf matin 
CASSIRER, NEO-KANTIANISM, AND 
PHENOMENOLOGY 
SYNOPSIS 
I. The Historical Conjunction 801 
II. Variety of Experience vs. Autonomy of Cultural 
Realms 805 
III. The Nature of the Subjective 806 
IV. The Form (in Construction and Intuition) 812 
V. The Rapprochement between neo-Kantianism and 
Phenomenology 823 
VI. The Symbolical Forms (neo-Kantian and Phenom- 
enological Philosophies of Man) 831 
VII. Philosophy and Religion 845 
CASSIRER, NEO-KANTIANISM, AND 
PHENOMENOLOGY 
The Historical Conjunction 
IT IS NOT the purport of the present paper to pin down 
to any 'Ism* so rich and distinguished an individuality as 
Ernst Cassirer's. I am convinced, however, that the encyclopedic 
nature of his thought, of his learning and empathy and the 
peculiar lucidity of his style are partly due to the sound philo- 
sophical tradition and scholarly discipline of "Marburg neo- 
Kantianism" (just as, for instance, the followers of Hegel were 
privileged to harvest the fruit of their master's systematic 
achievements and historical wisdom). 
Yet, although Cassirer, skillfully and conscientiously at once, 
cultivated and transformed his teachers' heritage, he remained 
closer to the original Idealism than even Cohen and Natorp 
themselves in their last writings. Their turn toward religious 
metaphysics took place at a time when Cassirer's ideas had 
already crystallized in a form which he continuously developed 
without ever reaching a breaking-point such as Cohen did in the 
religious personalism of his Religion der Vernunft (1919) or 
Natorp in the religious mysticism of Praktische Philosophie 
Cassirer's Kantianism has to be seen against the background 
of Hermann Cohen's Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (1902) and 
Paul Natorp's Einleitung in die Psychologie nach Kritischer 
Methode (1888), the original version of the Allgemeine Psy- 
chologie of 1912. Hence we shall have to make particular refer- 
ence to these classical writings of the school. This will be espe- 
801 
8oa FRITZ KAUFMANN 
cially fitting in our context, since HusserPs Phenomenology 
also profited very much from his ponderings over Natorp's 
Psychologic and the preceding article "Ueber objective und 
subjective Begriindung der Erkenntnis" (Philoso'phische 
Monatshefte, iSSy). 1 These are the main sources for any at- 
tempt at defining and evaluating anew the relationship between 
neo-Kantianism and phenomenology proper. Cohen's breaking 
away from an orthodox neo-Kantianism had its effect primarily 
on the Jewish philosophy of religion (Franz Rosenzweig), and 
Natorp's thoughtful Praktische Philosofhie has not yet at- 
tained the productive recognition which it deserves, i.e., the 
status and dynamics of a historic philosophical motive. As 
regards phenomenology, only the grandiose syncretism of 
Heidegger's Sein und Zeit seems to show traces of the 
metaphysical philosophy of language in Natorp's posthumous 
work. 2 
In German philosophy, the beginning of the twentieth cen- 
tury was marked by the appearance of three classic works: 
Edmund HusserPs Logische Untersuchungen (1900/01), 
Hermann Cohen's (already mentioned) Logik der reinen Er- 
kenntnis (1902) and Heinrich Rickert's Die Grenzen der 
naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildtmg (1902) the third of 
which, the foremost exponent of the so-called Southwestern 
neo-Kantian School, does not fall within the scope of this study. 3 
Whereas Cohen's Logik climaxed a movement which lost more 
and more ground in the following decades, HusserPs Unter- 
suchungen was the beginning of a philosophical enterprise 
which was to make proselytes from all schools of German 
philosophy. This success it owed not only to its inner strength 
and radical method: it was also favored by the tendencies of 
1 Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (and edition) II, I, 35 3! 5 Ideen zu einer 
reinen Phaenomenologie, io9fj Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie, 335$ 28off. 
HusserPs relation to Natorp's early writings is carefully studied in Marvin Farber's 
The Foundation of Phenomenology (1943). 
a Cp. Natorp's Praktische Philosofhie, 2495, 261 with Heidegger, Sein und 
Zeit, i6of. 
8 Besides, a phenomenological criticism of Rickert's position was set forth both 
by the present writer in GescMchtsfhilosofhie der Gegenwart (1931) and Eugen 
Fink in Die Phaenomenologische Philosofhie Edmund Husserls m der gegen- 
wartigen Kritik (1934). 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 803 
the age/ Husserl put to philosophical use the descriptive method 
introduced in psychology by Brentano, James, Dilthey and 
Lipps. He contributed also to the rise of the new morpho- 
logical trends which heralded by the disciples of Burckhardt, 
Nietzsche and Stefan George came to prevail, first, in the 
analysis of the forms and products of culture. But from the 
interpretation of poetry, art, religion, etc., these trends began 
to expand and invade all realms of being and experience, psycho- 
logical as well as biological and physical: they all were to unfold 
the variety and articulation of their forms and show their spe- 
cific, irreducible natures. Phenomenology served the self- 
understanding of all these movements by providing them with 
a methodical foundation and bestowing upon them a systematic 
unity. 
When we analyze the implications of this phenomenological 
approach to the facts and problems of world and life, the points 
of contact with neo-Kantian thought as well as those of con- 
trast to it (and, hence, the mixture of alliance and tension be- 
tween the two movements) will immediately come to the sur- 
face. It should be stated, however, from the outset that this 
relation was not static, but seemed to lead toward a qualified 
rapprochement to which the later writings of Natorp, Husserl 
and Cassirer bear witness. 5 The present article, too, was intended 
to advance a closer co-operation between the thinkers of both 
schools: a purpose which is now largely frustrated by the 
untimely death of my eminent partner in the originally con- 
templated dialogue. 
Husserl found himself in a common front with the Marburg 
scholars in his victorious struggle against the psychologism of 
1900. As a matter of fact, the anti-psychologism which domi- 
4 It is symptomatic that, in the late twenties, most of the teachers in the Depart- 
ment of Philosophy at the University of Marburg itself (Heidegger, Mahnke, 
Loewith, (Gadamer), Krueger) claimed to be adherents of phenomenology. 
8 Historically the germs for such an understanding were present from the 
beginning in the profound admiration for Leibniz which the author of the Unter- 
suchungen has in common with Cassirer (whose book, Leibniz* System, appeared 
in 1902) as well as in Husserl's grateful interest in Natorp's Psyckologie an 
interest which shows not only in HusserPs writings, but also in the fact that Natorp's 
book was repeatedly the subject of discussion in HusserPs (and later, Heidegger's) 
seminars. 
804 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
nates the first volume of the Logische Untersuchungen proved 
so successful that only few readers, like Dilthey, realized the 
methodological importance of what the second volume offered 
under the somewhat misleading title "descriptive psychology:" 
this 'psychology' was as little a piece of merely empirical re- 
search as was the psychology that played its part in the philo- 
sophical systems of Cohen and Natorp. At the same time, the 
systematic function of HusserPs 'psychology' was not that of 
studying the unity of human culture or reconstructing the 
original unity of consciousness the tasks set for "psychology 
according to the critical method" by Cohen and Natorp re- 
spectively. In the terms of Natorp's philosophy, the comple- 
mentary methods of direct construction and psychological re- 
construction express the correspondence between two procedures 
that of objectification and subj edification (a difference said 
to be logically prior to the determination of object and subject 
proper). According to Cohen and Natorp the unity of the 
subject, i.e., of the concrete living consciousness, this unity di~ 
rectly enjoyed, but not directly grasped, has to be regained 
through a reversal of the processes of objectification through 
fusing what, under the theoretical, ethical and aesthetic aspects, 
had been separated in the pure forms and normative products 
of science, art, and the moral "kingdom of ends." The unity 
of the mind is said to consist in the unity of these aspects, i.e., 
of these types of objective synthesis and legislation which make 
up the worlds of pure science, pure morals, and pure art. 
In neo-Kantianism the search for this unity of conscious life 
and its world the life and world wherein these different atti- 
tudes (Einstellungen) pervade one another is not the first 
step to be taken. It is preceded by the investigation into the 
constitutive principles (the "inner forms") through which ob- 
jectivity in one sense or the other can be achieved. The critical 
distinction between the different ways of objectification and 
between the corresponding realms of culture is intended to 
secure the autonomy of these realms, ascertain the both irreduc- 
ible and limited variety of the 'styles' of human experience and 
overcome the dangers of one-sided naturalism (including psy- 
chologism), moralism, and aestheticism. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 805 
What distinguishes this neo-Kantian philosophy from the 
phenomenological approach are (i) the different roles assigned 
to the element of jorm y (2) the different concept of subjectivity 
and (3) the greater variety of experiences accounted for by 
phenomenology. 
II 
Variety of Experience vs. Autonomy of Cultural Realms 
It is advisable, perhaps, to begin with the discussion of this 
third factor. Neo-Kantianism is a "philosophy of human cul- 
ture:" even the latest important document of the school 
Cassirer's Essay on Man has "philosophy of culture" in its 
subtitle. The philosophical interest is centered in the founda- 
tion, forms, and products of human civilization. The traditional 
tripartition of the realms of culture tended, at first, to determine, 
i.e., both to fix and to limit the various types of human ex- 
perience. The religious experience, e.g., does not fit into this 
schema: the very possibility of a philosophy of religion is denied 
by Natorp at least in his capacity as a transcendental criticist j 6 
in Cohen's last works its recognition comes close to destroying 
the framework of critical idealism; and in Cassirer's thought 
religion occupies a somewhat precarious position between myth 
and morals: in his Essay on Man it seems almost restricted to 
the moral, positive revaluation of the ancient taboo system. 7 
To be sure, following Natorp's own suggestion, Cassirer en- 
riched the neo-Kantian system by a variety of symbolic forms 
and, with their help, by the systematic interpretation of an 
enormous wealth of relevant phenomena. We shall turn later 
on to this new phase of a more versatile transcendental method. 
For the moment, it may be stated, first, that the very rise 
and attraction of phenomenology was greatly due to its insist- 
6 Cf. Natorp, Praktische Philosophie (1925), 534! (in partial revision of 
Allgemeine Psychologic, 94) . 
T Cf. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 1056*. In his Philosofhie der symboliscken 
Formen (II, i6> n. x) he lists, however, with chivalrous praise "amongst the 
epochal merits of Husserlian phenomenology that it has sharpened our eyes for 
the differences between the 'structural forms' of the mind and, in a departure from 
the method of psychological inquiry, has shown us a new way of viewing them," 
viz., through analysis of their essential meanings. 
8o6 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
ence on, and exhibition of, a manifoldness of experiences and 
types of being an open-mindedness which was not narrowed 
down by the preconception of three spheres of objective experi- 
ence. To survey and divide the otherwise boundless 'field of 
investigations, Husserl used tentatively the different formal 
and material ontologies (of nature, soul, spirit, etc.,) as "guid- 
ing clues" for the analysis of the different types of phenomena. 
But these ontologies functioned as mere "indicators," and their 
establishment was in itself a philosophical task. To the phe- 
nomenologist there are no pre-established "transcendental 
facts" like the fact or even fieri of science data which have 
only to be resolved into their constitutive factors. 
Phenomenology is not a philosophy of culture in the sense 
that it takes orders from any canonic standard. It is free not only 
to criticize the actual state of our culture, but to delimit even 
the idea and claims of culture as such. 8 It does not accept 
Cohen's identification of the subject, i.e., the unity of con- 
sciousness, with the unity of the human culture an identifica- 
tion through which the objective mind comes to account for the 
whole sphere of the human spirit. 
Ill 
The Nature of the Subjective 
In the neo-Kantian interpretation subjectivity is c nothing but' 
the system of objectifying functions read from the cultural 
documents in which they have manifested themselves and in 
which alone they are said to have their true life and being. 9 
Ou YP &*u TOU eovcoSj $v fit rce^aTKJixGVov eaftv^ eupqareis TO voeiv: 
"You will not find thought apart from the objective content 
wherein it found its ｅxpression" (Parmenides). 
My purpose cannot be to discredit the great Parmenidean 
tradition which is still alive in Kant and his followers. The 
8 Cf., e.g., Husserl, Formate und Transzendentale Logik (Jahrbuch fur Philo- 
sophic) X, 161$ Die Krisis der Europdischen Wissenschaften und die Transzen- 
dentale Phaenomenologie (Philosophia y I) 79$. But even Natorp eventually comes 
to criticize Cohen's reliance on the transcendental facts of physics, jurisprudence, 
etc.: Cf. Praktische PMlosopfa, 2o8ff. 
' Cf. e.g., Cassirer, Philosophic der symbolischen Formen ///, 59. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 807 
primacy of the positive Leibniz's conviction that people are 
right in what they see and aver, although they may be wrong 
in what they deny only because they do not see it is a leading 
principle of phenomenological interpretation. The quasi in- 
direct, hermeneutic approach to human being the discovery 
of this being in its most characteristic ｅxpressions is the right- 
ful method of moral sciences (Geisteswissenschafteri). It has 
been analyzed and practiced as such in an admirable way by 
a thinker like Wilhelm Dilthey. All we know and all we need 
to know, e.g., of Shakespeare, lives, indeed, in his works and has 
not passed with the passing of his private life nor been buried 
in the archives of London and Stratford-on-Avon. Still, the 
historical and geisteswissenschaftliche approach is not the only 
way of human self-concern and self-knowledge. Cassirer's main 
methodical principle that only by expressing itself the spirit 
reaches its true and perfect inwardness (Innerlichkeity 10 has 
its historical foundation in idealistic thought, but represents an 
indisputable truth only if it is properly qualified and under- 
stood: it cannot be simply presupposed; the roots it has in the 
structure of our being must be bared. That introspection would 
yield only "a very meager and fragmentary picture of human 
being" 11 is not borne out by the Confessions of Augustine, the 
Thoughts of Pascal or the Journals of Kierkegaard. 
Yet, man's true and direct self-knowledge is not even con- 
fined to these religious confessions or to the existential re-flec- 
tions of men who are thrown back upon themselves that type 
of 'immanent perception' in which consciousness and conscience 
may become one. In addition there may well be a scientific 
research for the essence of subjectivity and for the different 
types of what Brentano and Husserl called the intentionality 
of consciousness. By the nature of its subject such analysis will 
grow in intensity so as to uncover the innermost springs of con- 
scious life including those of philosophy itself as a way of 
life leading toward the appropriation of our very own essence. 
In this regard Heidegger's existentialism (biased and one-sided 
10 Cassirer, Philosophic der symbolischen Formen, II, 242$ cf., e.g., 193, 229, 
246, 267. 
u Cassirer, Essay on Man, ^. 
8o8 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
as its execution proved to be) is no mere deviation from Hus- 
serl's thought, but its rather unorthodox pursuance into a sphere 
of problems which Husserl considered a cwra posterior of the 
phenomenologist. 
Husserl has shown how the 'noetic' processes of the mind 
(e.g., the synthetic actions of judging) are to be studied 
parallel (i) to its 'noematic' contents (e.g., the meaning of 
judgments the subject-matter of apophantic logic) and (2) 
to real or ideal facts judged of (and studied, first of all, in the 
system of formal and material ontologies). The neglect of the 
noetic studies (which are prefigured in Kant's "Subjective De- 
duction," i.e., in an approach that was long somewhat dis- 
credited in the Marburg school) deprived neo-Kantianism of 
such fundamental insights as are worked out in HusserPs 
analysis of time-consciousness ("Vorlesungen zur Phaenome- 
nologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins" Jahrbuch IX, 367-496). 
This neglect may have been caused partly by the fear of 
falling prey to psychologism, partly by the adherence to the 
Cartesian dogma that the mode of consciousness (Bewusstheii) 
is always the same, and that consciousness differs only in its 
contents, objects, and their respective orders. 12 Following 
Husserl, 13 Adolf Reinach 14 had already protested against level- 
ing all functions of consciousness, and asked how, without the 
awareness of functional differences, the indistinct hearing of a 
loud tone could be distinguished from the clear and distinct 
hearing of a low one. As a matter of fact, the differences of 
attention and the distinction between intentional experiences 
in general like just seeing and hearing things and inten- 
tional acts in particular like the explicit looking at, listening 
to something have played an important part in phenomeno- 
logical analysis. Yet they are far from being the only themes 
of noetic investigations: the centrifugal or centripetal ways of 
experience; the looking upward, downward, or straight forward 
at things or persons j the variations in pace, temper, genuineness, 
"Cf. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis y 363^., Natorp, Allgemeine Psy- 
chologie, lyff., 40^. 
11 Log ische Untersuchungen (and edition) II, I, 362. 
14 Gesammelte Sckrtften } 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 809 
etc., represent additional ways of dealing with things, i.e., par- 
ticular modifications of "intentionality." They can be over- 
looked only by one who identifies without reservation the "being 
conscious of" with the appearance of a thing, with the TIVWI 
itself this "most wonderful phenomenon of all" (Hobbes), 
behind which allegedly no question can reach, which is no prob- 
lem itself, but gives to all questions an unquestionable founda- 
tion. 15 And, indeed, consciousness cannot be deduced and ex- 
plained j but why should it not be explored in its modes as well 
as in its contents? 18 
Failing the recognition of this possibility, the life and nature 
of the subject appear only by way of interweaving the diverse 
principles to which all types of objects owe their existence and 
re-constructing thus, at the bottom of all specific experiences, 
the original, formative unity of consciousness as such (Kant's 
unity of the transcendental synthesis of apperception). The 
construction of the object is temporally and logically prior to its 
reversal, the reconstruction of the subject. 
As a matter of fact, even according to Husserl, the method of 
reflection which gives us access to pure consciousness is but the 
reverse of the primary, natural attitude (natiirliche Einstel- 
lung) and its orientation. Still, reflection is to him a way of 
immanent intuition 5 it is no bare reconstruction of the sub- 
jective, does not presuppose the whole work of objectification 
and is not restricted to the Penelope-labor of undoing the care- 
ful syntheses of the mind. It starts from distinctive unities of 
experience (phenomena in this sense) and is free to go back 
all the way through the synthetic processes and actions which 
lead upward to these appearances or else to go on to objective 
unities of a higher level. The given experience appears thus 
15 Cf. Cohen, Logtk, 365$ Natorp, Allgemeine Psychology 29, 35 j Cassirer, 
Das Erkenntnisproblem, II, 67 f. 
16 To be sure, it is a remarkable fact that in as early a writing- as Substanz- 
btgriff und Funktionsbegriff (32!) Cassirer refers to Husserl in acknowledging a 
variety of the most different acts of thought. Each of them is a mode of conscious- 
ness which represents "a specific way of interpreting its content, a peculiar inten- 
tional relation to the object." Still, he continues to study the life of consciousness 
only in the dialectics of its formations, in the objective meaning which the sensory 
material acquires and in the transformation of meaning which it undergoes} in 
Husserlian terms the analyses remain within the 'noematic* realm. 
8io FRITZ KAUFMANN 
as the product of a phenomenological genesis which can be 
verified by retracing the whole process springing back from a 
given point to a more primitive state and following from there 
the stream of consciousness just as in the case of living remi- 
niscence we are drawn back into the past to embark once more on 
the path toward the present. The phenomenological research 
never loses the color of life, the dynamics of consciousness which 
it is in search of the concrete experience from which mere 
objectification and subjectification, mere construction and re- 
construction are alienated. (So much so that in his Practical 
Philosophy Natorp would like to describe the process of tran- 
scendental synthesis entirely without any reference to the 
Kantian Ego, to subject and consciousness. 17 ) 
Even so, Natorp considers himself faithful to the spirit of 
Kant's basic intentions. And Cassirer is at one with him in 
emphasizing that the process of experience as such not only of 
theoretical experience as described in the first Critique ante- 
dates the distinction between the objective and the subjective, 
between being and consciousness. Self and object are not pre- 
supposed from the first, nor is one the foundation of the other 
and its knowledge, "but in one and the same process of objecti- 
fication and determination the whole of experience comes to be 
divided for us into the 'spheres within and without,' into 'Self 
and 'World'." 18 
This may be compared with Husserl's conception of pure 
consciousness as the sphere of origin within which alone the real 
person and his real world are to find their "phenomenological 
constitution." The absoluteness of the latter constitutive process, 
however, is not so remote as to make it a mere dialectical con- 
struction. Even where intentional experience (intentionales 
Erlebnis) is not a matter of personal activity, it is still borne and 
animated by living consciousness. And, whereas Natorp speaks 
of a quasi-automatic and Utopian "movement of the categories" 
as such, taken to enjoy a sort of mythical super-being, Husserl 
"Natorp, Praktische Philosophic, 241. Cf. also Cohen, e.g., Logik der reinen 
Erkenntnis, 415, Ethik des reinen Willens, 130. 
38 Cassirer, Kants Leben und Lchre, 209. Cf. Philosophic der symbolischen For- 
men ///, 59. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 811 
deals not only with the categories, but with the aai^Yopetv itself, 
the very acts of determining things. Here the procedures of 
objectification as such are followed out and not merely fixed as 
to their results at the different stages of their evolution. 
The function of objectification certainly plays an important 
part in Husserl's transcendental phenomenology the very 
title 'transcendental" refers to the self-transcendence of the 
subject towards the object. But it does not cover the whole of 
conscious life and is not the only concern of the phenomenolo- 
gist. This fact would have come out even more clearly, if the 
second and third parts of HusserPs Ideas had ever been pub- 
lished. While speaking of the subjective side of a phenomenon 
as well as of the objective one, i.e., "that experiential content 
which points away from the Ego," Husserl gives in the first part 
of the Ideas preference to the latter to the "objectively 
oriented aspect, since it is this aspect which is most familiar to 
us from our natural attitude." 19 Yet even in the description of 
the synthesis in which an identical object comes to be realized, 
Husserl does not confine himself to the spontaneity of the 
intellect and the process of "categorial constitution." 20 He 
studies also the more primitive fusion of appearances, the work 
of what he calls primary passive syntheses, i.e., syntheses in 
which the Ego is still latent, just as there is a secondary pas- 
sivity into which each previous activity is likely to fall back: a 
judgment, for example, after having been actively built up, 
lives on in a sedimentary state in which it enters new connec- 
tions, new passive syntheses. 21 In this way the formative power 
of pure consciousness can be exhibited and analyzed, whether or 
not the subject qua agent is openly on the stage and personally 
engaged in performing any synthetic activities. 
19 Husserl, Ideen I, 1605 cf. also 192, 21 9, 232. 
"Natorp, Praktische Philosophic, 2i2ff, 222. Cf. Cassirer, "Paul Natorp," 
Kantstudien, XXX (1925) 280. 
** Cf. Husserl, Meditations Carte siennes: 38, "Genese active et passive" (658) $ 
Erjakrung und Urteil, pass. (e.g. 1 6, 74^ ) . These problems are intimately con- 
nected with Dilthey's attempt to lay a foundation for formal logic and its categories 
through a logic and categories of life: cf., especially, Dilthey, Schriften VII, 228ffj 
Georg Misch, Lebemfhilosofhie und Phaenomenologie (1930), fast. 
812 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
IV 
The Form (in Construction and Intuition) 
The confrontation of HusserPs "passive syntheses" with the 
ideals of "construction and re-construction" in neo-Kantianism 
can serve very well to characterize the difference in the tenor of 
these two types of philosophy. Neo-Kantianism, attributing to 
construction a foremost place in the growth of all experience, 
pursued a constructive method in its own procedure. Cassirer 
always insisted on the paradigmatic importance of Kant's 
"Copernican revolution" in philosophy: 
In each and every sphere of objects the viewpoint of "ectypal reflection" 
(nachbrldende y copeyliche Betrachtung) has to be abandoned for that of 
'architectonic ordering/ . . . Even outside of the realm of pure theory we 
ought to see that the object of a certain synopsis is constituted rather than 
copied by this form of unification, the synopsis. 22 
As a matter of fact, this unqualified emphasis on the arche- 
typal function of the forms of our experience makes neo- 
Kantianism border on anti-Kantianism. It is not balanced by 
the recognition of the finiteness of our knowledge in contra- 
distinction to an intuitus originarms which brings the Ding an 
sich into being. In this neo-Kantian interpretation the Ding an 
sich is not determined in itself; it is not qualitatively different 
from the objects and products of experience; it is reduced to a 
methodological idea the sum total of experience and has 
become relative to the process of objective determination; as an 
ideal limit it marks only the point of complete determination 
of things in every possible way a point never reached, but 
always striven for. Leibniz's principle of a continuous scale of 
representation has gained the upper hand over the transcen- 
dental contrast between the two forms of representation (sen- 
sory and intellectual) in Kant. 
This is why the procedure in the different ways of cultural 
** Cassirer, "Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophic" 
(Zeitschrift fuer Aesthetik XXI (1927)9 311). For thought qua determination cf. 
Natorp, Die logischen Grundlagen der exacten Wissenschaften (1910), 38f: "To 
think does not mean anything else but to determine. . . . Thought does not recognize 
any determination prior to that which is of thought's own making." Cf. Kant, 
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B, 375. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 813 
life, as described by Cassirer, resembles so much the building 
of the Tower of Babel: it seems to reach into the void, governed 
as it is exclusively by internal principles, without being oriented 
toward anything or controlled by anything independent of 
this whole process and without being animated by the messianic 
spirit of Cohen. The constructive schemata designed by thought 
"do not borrow their hold and support from the empirical 
world of things, but create this support themselves" by way of a 
context of signs contrived to represent a system of universal 
relations. 28 
The full meaning of this contention comes to light by the 
help of its negative counterpart: the rejection of sense-percep- 
tion as a mediating link in a causal chain between subject and 
object. The relation between object and consciousness being that 
of "intentionality" (Husserl), no causal relation can prevail 
between them, since causality, according to Cassirer, has its 
place exclusively within the realm of things. This statement 
neglects, however, the variety of causal experience and narrows 
causality down to a phenomenologically derivative type, the 
relation between physical events. Even the Kantian category 
had been much more comprehensive. Cassirer insists that sensa- 
tion can be only the sign, the representative of its 'intentional* 
object, never the effect of a transcendent Ding an sich which 
affects our mind. 24 
28 Cassirer, Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis y 33 if. 
M Ibid., 365*1, above all 376ff. In his Essay on Man, however, Cassirer actually 
did employ such biological terms as 'stimulus* and 'response* to characterize the 
dynamic, i.e., causal relations between man and world. At the same time, thought 
appeared as a refined means to regulate this rapport as well as conquer a new 
dimension of reality. In this way Cassirer seems to have accommodated himself to 
the American scene. But this adaptation to Dewey's thought ought not to be over- 
rated : there has always been a bridge between panmethodologism and instrumental- 
ism. Moreover, Cassirer does not take these biological and instrumental aspects to 
be distinctive of man. In the formation of his symbolic worlds man still enjoys 
perfect autonomy and is left to what we may call his inner genius. As regards, 
finally, the organic correlation between stimulus and response, we must consider, 
first, that affection by way of stimulus is not simply identical with sensation, and 
then that things must not needs be treated alike in philosophical anthropology, on 
the one hand, and a logic of pure knowledge and other transcendental disciplines, 
on the other. Unfortunately, the systematic locus of An Essay on Man is nowhere 
sufficiently clarified from the viewpoint of transcendental idealism. 
814 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
Hence sensation is not backed by reality: its own ontological 
status is not defined with respect to a reality which is more than 
the final product of objectification. only because in his philoso- 
phy sensation had such support by the Ding an sich, could Kant 
make the "being bound up with sensation" the criterion of 
actual existence. 25 That an idea is right when its consequences 
agree with the data of our senses this explanation may be 
satisfactory within the peculiar framework of Leibniz's meta- 
physics; 26 it may accurately describe the way of scientific veri- 
fication hence it appears in Heinrich Hertz's famous Prin- 
zifien der Mechanik (a passage which Cassirer quotes repeat- 
edly 27 ) : but, on new-Kantian ground, it is hardly sufficient to 
bear out the full meaning of real truth. 
The neo-Kantian thinker cannot want to have a theoretical 
assertion verified by mere reference to immediate sensation 
for the simple reason that to him pure, formless sensation may 
be the methodical presupposition of all objective determination 
as well as (mutatis mutandis} the ultimate result of psychologi- 
cal reconstruction, but never an immediate and self-evident 
datum of consciousness. Referring to the findings of modern 
psycho-pathology, Cassirer takes great and well rewarded pains 
in showing the conceptual ingredient in all sense perception. 
Sensation itself remains a mere hypothesis; its possibility is 
never accounted for. In phenomenology, on the other hand, 
the Kantian affection has found its revaluation in HusserPs 
analysis of the field of passive pre-acquaintance, affective 
tendencies, and the receptivity of the Ego studies to which, in 
the present essay, I can only refer. 28 
If the objective validity of a theoretical, moral, or aesthetic 
idea is to mean more than its consistency with other ideas and 
its quasi-stylistic purity according to the inner rules of pro- 
cedure, Cassirer does not seem to have set forth the solution 
to this problem. The concluding thoughts of his Phaenomeno- 
28 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunfa B 2$6fL 
* Leibniz, "Quid sit Idea" Philosophised Schriften (ed. Gerhardt) VII, iSaf. 
aT Cf., e.g., Philosophic der symbolischen Formen I, 5!. 
38 Cf. Husserl, Erjahrung und, Urteil, i6f with Cohen's declaration (Logik 
der reinen Erkenntnis, 402 :) "We have nothing* to do with . . . sensation. This is 
our logical direction." 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 815 
logic der Erkenntnis (552ff) can hardly be taken as the proper 
fulfillment of a promise to this effect given previously, 29 yet 
finally postponed perhaps for an additional volume which has 
never been published. Meanwhile, in the Philosophic der sym- 
bolischen Formen as well as in Substanzbegrijf tmd Funktions- 
begrijf and in some later articles, Cassirer understands "ob- 
jectivity" to abide in the invariability of universal relations. 
This is a problem to which we shall return later on. 
Whereas to Kant knowledge is essentially intuition, 80 the 
strict imperceptibility (Unanschaulichkeii) of the object of 
knowledge is proclaimed (from Cohen to Cassirer) as the true 
corner-stone of the "critical" theory of knowledge. 31 In Cas- 
sirer's youth this problem had been the very point of dispute 
between the neo-Kantianism of the Fries-school and that of 
Marburg. The same question arises again in relation to phe- 
nomenology and its revised and enlarged concept of intuition 
(the paramount importance of which does not prevent us from 
recognizing the impossibility of giving a perceptual illustration 
to the key concepts of modern physics.) 
The idea of construction as the general character of mental 
life on the whole is so strong in neo-Kantianism that it makes 
knowledge also exclusively a matter of constructive or recon- 
structive determination. Since the form-matter relation and 
correlation witness its original meaning in Aristotle is most 
congenial to this idea of 'poietic' activity, it dominates the neo- 
Kantian theory of knowledge to such a degree as to make its 
repeated application somewhat dull and monotonous in the long 
run even more so in the form-matter hierarchy characteristic 
of the school of Rickert and Lask than in that of Marburg. 
This accounts for the fact that in the early stages of phenome- 
nology the uniformity and recklessness of this constructive pro- 
cedure ("matter does not deserve any forbearance") was most 
suspicious to us young phenomenologists who felt committed 
to do justice to the variety of phenomena: the opposition to 
* Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis, 2711, having reference to a (non-existent) 
Book III, ch. 6. 
10 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft, B 33. 
11 Cassirer, Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis > 367. 
816 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
neo-Kantian criticism thus became focussed in the polemics 
against "construction" a term which came close to being an 
invective. 
The form-matter relationship is too useful a pattern not to 
play an important role even in HusserPs philosophy e.g., 
under the title of syntactic forms and syntactic materials. 82 But 
it did so only within the frame of a much more comprehensive 
and flexible pattern of interpretation that of intention and 
fulfilment. A first 'empty' intention of the mind was to be 
given an original fulfilment in direct intuition. I take it that 
this conception of knowledge, of which Cassirer also availed 
himself occasionally, 83 was much more both in the letter and in 
the spirit of Kant (who spoke of thought as a mere means for 
direct intuition 34 ) than was this type of neo-Kantianism itself. 
It is partly true that in Husserl also "the content of perception 
depends on thought, 'fulfilment' on intention,' presentation on 
representation and that the perceptual aspect is fundamentally 
determined" by the conceptual outlook. 35 Yet a given intention 
is no ultimate with Husserl, but an intellectual habitude which, 
in genetic phenomenology y can be accounted for as an outgrowth 
of (i) processes of "associative synthesis" and (2) the still more 
primitive syntheses of the "immanent time-consciousness." 36 
In the eyes of the phenomenologist, the fulfilment given to 
our intentions by way of intuition makes the process of knowl- 
edge as much a process of discovery and explication as of de- 
termination. To apprehend is not identical (as it is in Cassirer 37 ) 
with the establishment of relations even the recognition of 
32 Cf. Husserl, e.g., formate und Transzendentale Logik, 2598. 
83 E.g., in the necrology on Natorp (Kanstudien, XXX, 287). 
84 Kant, loc. cit. 
"Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie> 287. But cf. Praktische Philosofhie, 21 off 
for the final recognition of the primacy of content. 
M At this point I must content myself with these terms indicating problems 
with which Husserl dealt, e.g., in Ideen, 73^ Meditations Cartesiennes, 656*, in 
the "Vorlesungen zur Phaenomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins" (JaArbuch, 
IX, 2521!) $ Erjahrung und Urteil, 746:, 4601!. 
"Cf. Cassirer, Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis, 346. In Zur Logik der 
Kulturwissenschaften (8of), Cassirer comes closer to adopting the descriptive aims 
of phenomenology, namely with regard to the concepts of style, which (he says) 
are reached by way of ideation and characterize rather than determine their objects. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 817 
relations is only a part of it. To equate knowing with relating 
is a dangerous oversimplification, which cannot but have detri- 
mental consequences in epistemology and is implicitly refuted 
by the careful way in which Husserl distinguishes, within the 
course of knowledge, phases of simple apprehension, explicative 
study, perception of relations, determinative and relational 
judgment (bestimmendes und beziehendes Urteileri), etc. 88 
Altogether, 'intentional experience,' as it appears in Husserl, 
is not restricted to noesis in the sense of actively constituting a 
certain meaning (Sinngebung): it is always acknowledgment 
of meaning (Sinnfindung) at the same timej and it is only in 
one specific stratum of transcendental phenomenology that the 
former character appears all-dominating. 89 
88 Cf. Husserl, Erjahrung und Urteil, 2 3 fT, 54. 
89 It is worth mentioning- that the language of Cassirer's last work Essay 
on Man is far less rigorous in maintaining the panmethodology of the Marburg 
school. The diction of critical idealism is often abandoned in favor of terms 
which have their proper place in epistemological realism. He stresses the fact 
that material objects exist independent of the scientist (185)5 speaks of the 
symbolic systems as links between man and reality (24^) 5 characterizes knowledge 
as interpretation (138, 146, 170) and even as discovery and abbreviation (143, 
156) of reality, art as an intensification of it (143) j and, in a phrase which 
reminds one of objective idealism (in Dilthey's sense) rather than of neo-Kantian 
criticism, he sees in art the apprehension of "the dynamic life of forms" by "a 
corresponding dynamic process in ourselves" (151) a formula which may reveal 
the growing influence Kant's Critique of Judgment in its more metaphysical 
prefigurements had on Cassirer's mind. (Cf. Kants Leben und Lehre, 354). Point- 
ing in the same direction is his emphasis on the Stoic maxim of the "sympathy 
of the whole" as one of the firmest foundations of religion." (Essay on Man, 
95). 
The trend away from the earlier logical idealism of the Marburg school 
toward objective idealism is strongly accentuated in Natorp's Praktische Philosofhie. 
But it is also noticeable (though less pronounced) in Cassirer's discussion of 
Scheler's philosophical anthropology: first at Davos in 1929, in the following 
year in an article of Die Neue Rundschau: " *Leben' und 'Geist' in der Philosophic 
der Gegenwart."* Here Cassirer tries to resolve the alleged opposition of Life and 
Spirit into two complementary forms of movement within life as a whole spirit 
representing- a later phase of life itself. This idea of immanent transcendence is 
closely akin to the role which I myself have assigned to 'absolute consciousness* 
* EDITOR'S NOTE: The interested reader will find this essay from Cassirer's 
pen reprinted in English translation as Part III of the present volume, under 
the title: "'Spirit' and 'Life' in Contemporary Philosophy," (855-880 infra). 
8i8 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
The objectivistic ingredient in the phenomenological concept 
of knowledge is expressed by the mistakable and often mistaken 
watchword of the movement: "back to the things themselves j" 40 
and it is also evidenced by the term "eidos" (essence) as the 
object of this discovery, i.e., as the correlate of 4-M)Beia (truth 
in the predominantly objectivistic view of the Greek mind). 
It is symptomatic that the tribute which the thinkers of Mar- 
burg paid to Plato's idealism was more in the enthusiastic recog- 
nition of the idea than in that of the eidos. Natorp's Platons 
Ideenlehre begins with the distinction of these terms: the latter 
is said to stand for the sight a thing offers, whereas the former 
is said to mean the aspect, the point of view from which this 
thing comes to be seen, 41 The emphasis on the eidos in Husserl's 
phenomenology thus betrays a genuine interest in the nature 
of things as much as the praise of the idea shows Cohen's, 
Natorp's, and Cassirer's primary concern with the nature of 
thought^ i.e., "with the immanent laws according to which 
thought does not accept its object as simply given, but con- 
structs it in conformity with thought's own way of looking at 
things." 42 
In the sharpest contrast to this declaration is what Husserl 
announces as "the principle of all principles," i.e., that "what- 
ever presents itself in 'intuition' directly and as it were in bodily 
reality has to be accepted just as it shows itself, though only 
within the limits of such self-presentation." 43 Whereas the 
panmethodology of neo-Kantian philosophy cannot but abolish 
within the sphere of the 'Absolute' an attempt at broadening HusserPs concept 
of the absolute sphere as being identical with the sphere of immanent consciousness. 
(Cf. "Art and Phenomenology" in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund 
Husserl). But the self-transcendence of life, which is here in question, underlies 
and is by no means one with, the inner dialectics of the categories or that of the 
pure forms of culture, which is in the foreground of Natorp's and Cassirer's 
interest (cf., e.g., Praktische Pkilosofhie, 209$ Essay on Man y pass.). Logical 
idealism and phenomenology may converge, but they never coincide. 
40 In its true and original meaning this word occurs in the Introduction to 
the second volume of Logische Untersuchungen (second edition), 6. 
u Natorp, Platons Ideenlehre (second edition, 1921) p. i. 
Loc. cit.y cf. Cassirer, e.g., Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis, 3475. 
43 Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phaenomenologie, 24 (Jahrbuch, I) 43^ 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 
the definition of truth as adaequatio (ret et intellectus), this 
definition was to be restored in a new sense through the 
Logische Untersuchungen: by conveying an ultimate intuitive 
fulfilment of a certain intention a thing may present itself as it 
is at least as regards its general nature. At this point the 
essentia jormalis and the essentia objective* of the thing will 
coincide. Complete evidence, i.e., the experience of adequate 
fulfilment, and true being thus become correlative terms. 
Actually such consummate evidence cannot be obtained for each 
and every type of being. The adequate knowledge of outer 
reality, above all, exists only (but actually) as an ideal in the 
Kantian sense. This fact, however, does not detract from the 
meaning of truth: truth is experienced wherever that which is 
meant is fully 'covered' by that which is given given in the 
mode of perfect self-presentation. 44 
To be sure, the adequacy of knowledge which phenome- 
nology is seeking is not that of faithfully copying mere facts 
phenomenology deals with the essence of things but neither 
is it mere faithfulness to the purity of its methodical principles. 
It consists in the adequate fulfilment of original intentions. As 
mentioned above, there is a mutual dependence between inten- 
tion and fulfilment (cf. supra, p. 816). on the one hand, the in- 
tentions are charged with expectations marking out the ways and 
types of intuitive experience in which a proper fulfilment may 
be sought and found. Intuition thus responds and corresponds 
to intention and varies with it. This relation accounts for that 
broadening of the concept of intuition in phenomenology of 
which we spoke before j<?w<?-perception exhibiting only one 
peculiar (though peculiarly important) mode of intuitive ful- 
filment. on the other hand, an intention is to be verified (or 
disproved) by subsequent perception. In its objective orienta- 
tion it represents an aspect which, as experience goes on, is 
continuously adjusted to the things that are to be disclosed 
from this point of view. It needs must be congenial to the inner 
essence (sachhaltiges Wesen) of the phenomenon in question. 
"Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (second edition, 19*1) II, 2, nsffj Ideen 
zu einer reinen Phaenomenologie (Jahrbuch, I) 125^., 2 8 iff. 
8ao FRITZ KAUFMANN 
Thus it is under the dictate of the experiental content just as 
much as this content appears in the forms in which it is appre- 
hended 'as' such and such a thing, as a chair or a table, as H^O 
or a drink, i.e., according to the meaning that is carried by a 
certain intention. 
Consisting in this adequacy of intention to its stuff, truth has 
a dimension of depth: it does more or less justice to the inner 
nature of the material in question. Philosophical truth, at least, 
is not exhausted by the alternative 'right or wrong.' The higher 
or lower degree of adequacy of interpretation becomes particu- 
larly relevant in phenomenological philosophy, devoted as it is 
to the disclosure of the essential structures within the world of 
conscious life. For it is the nature and experience of life which 
give rise to the use of the term 'depth' in connection with the 
truth of being. Phenomenology as the analysis of the original 
constitution of consciousness tries to penetrate into the very 
depths from which the various formations of consciousness 
originate. 
The search for these original springs, modes and structures 
of life presupposes and sharpens a sense of the original, a ca- 
pacity of retracing familiar appearances to their sources, of 
renewing and intensifying insights of the past and piercing 
through conventional interpretations so as to understand where 
and why they veil rather than unveil the essential truths of 
life. In this way a phenomenological description will pass 
through different strata and become more and more profound 
as it reaches more and more original depths. This procedure 
has been inaugurated in HusserPs Ideen starting as he does 
from the naive, worldly attitude of life to discover then its true 
origin in the stream of pure, transcendental consciousness. 
Yet this " 'Absolute' again is not truly ultimate but constitutes 
itself in a certain hidden and most peculiar sense, having its 
original source in an ultimate true Absolute." 45 This latter 
dimension is only hinted at in the Ideen: it is that of inner time- 
consciousness which has been analyzed by Husserl in courses, 
parts of which were published by Heidegger in the Jahrbuch y 
IX (1928). 
45 Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phaenomenologie, 163. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 821 
Heidegger's own Sein und Zeit betrays both in its title and its 
composition his dependence on Husserl's approach and results: 
he too tries to identify 'absolute being' with the being or rather 
welling up (Zeitigeri) of time} he too advances from the worka- 
day world, the world of tools, and from Everyman's attitude to 
the original mode of true temporality. In the academic courses 
of both, Husserl and Heidegger, the term "Abbau" (destruc- 
tion) marked this regress from the established positions of con- 
scious life to its sources, although it had a much less aggressive 
note with Husserl. 
The inner historicity of consciousness can be sounded by what 
Husserl called 'genetic phenomenology' a splitting up, as it 
were, of given experiences and formations into the different 
layers and sediments of meaning which they imply and the 
processes through which this meaning came to be constituted and 
settled. Each phenomenon has a coming into being (a Yve<n<; 
et<; otaiov) the style of which is prescribed by its very nature. 
Thus the discovery and descriptive analysis of these implications 
is, on the whole, independent of empirical studies of the primi- 
tive mind or of psycho-pathology such as .are accumulated in 
Cassirer's Das mythische Denken and Phaenomenologie der 
Erkenntnis. In saying this, I do not deny that findings of this 
kind can be used to good advantage by the phenomenologist. In 
fact, they have been employed this way, e.g., by Max Scheler. 
They help to enlarge the scope of variations which are indis- 
pensable for the control of phenomenological intuition (cf. 
infra, pp. 827-830) ; and mental deficiencies as in aphasia or 
deviations from the norm may be referred to in order to place 
the very norm into bolder relief. on the other hand, a pre- 
knowledge of the norm is obviously the condition without which 
the abnormal cannot be characterized as such. 
It may be added that the phenomenological re-search after 
the sphere of origin, although bearing some analogy with 
Natorp's 'psychological reconstruction' of the original unity of 
consciousness, cannot be identified with it either. The leaping 
back from objective units to the underlying manifoldness of the 
contents of consciousness remains a mere inference with Natorp: 
how can this manifoldness be regained from the synthetic unity 
822 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
of the objects by which it seems absorbed (whereas an infinity 
of perspectives is of the very essence of the phenomena which 
are the primary concern in HusserPs analyses)? Above all, 
however, the true meaning of 'original life' does not lie in the 
dimension and hierarchy of contents and objects at all: it 
denotes a distinctive mode of experience which Natorp cannot 
account for because he denies all distinctions of modes in con- 
sciousness (Bewusstheit), trying to reduce them to mere differ- 
ences in the order of contents (cf. supra, p. 808). In the same 
vein Cassirer also neglected somewhat the problems of the How 
of Experience (Vollzugssinn) in favor of its What (Gehalts- 
sinn to use two terms of Husserl and, especially, of Heideg- 
ger): he showed the 'subject' only in the ways in which it rises 
above impressions, not in those in which it is subjected to them. 
Finally (and this, perhaps, marks the disparity in the outlook 
of the two schools most clearly) the phenomenological research 
into origins is not the laying of a foundation in the sense of a 
rational principle as in Herman Cohen, where the "principle" 
and the "judgment of origin" give rise to the physical object 
(in Logik der reinen Erkenntnis) and to the human individual 
(in Ethik des reinen Willens). This difference must be stated, 
not to disparage the sagacity in which the Logik shows how the 
something originates in the relative nothing (the W v ) of the 
"infinitesimal number" (the "differential"), nor to discredit the 
moral wisdom which seeks the origin of the Self in the recogni- 
tion of the Alter Ego, but to prove the different atmospheres 
in which phenomenological and neo-Kantian thought, including 
that of Cassirer, came to grow. The feeling of this dissimilarity 
could be even intensified by comparing the way (just men- 
tioned) in which Cohen reaches Being "through the detour 
of the Nothing"* 6 with that of Heidegger, who finds the 
original revelation of Being in the "clear night of Nothing- 
ness" 47 (the nothingness of dread) an extreme, but also, for 
this very reason, exaggerated contrast. (It would appear much 
milder, even as far as Cohen and Heidegger are concerned, 
if we took account of the concepts of origin, Being, and Non- 
* Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis , 69. 
* Heidegger, Was i$t Meta-physikf^ 19. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 823 
Being in the religious function they obtain in Cohen's posthu- 
mous work Religion der Vernunft.**) 
In short, the paramount difference between the two move- 
ments which we are trying to present consists in their different 
philosophical ethos: in the self-reliance of reason as a sys- 
tematizing power, the passionate interest in the purity of 
method on the one hand, and the faithful devotion to Being in 
all of its manifestations on the other. It must be admitted, 
however, that this latter amor intellectualis has sometimes been 
lacking in humility and trustworthiness even in the case of some 
of the most gifted phenomenologists men who proclaimed this 
love most fervently (as, e.g., Max Scheler) whereas the 
school of Marburg was always distinguished by a spirit of 
admirable scholarly discipline. 
The Rapprochement between neo-Kantianism and 
Phenomenology 
The discussion between Marburg neo-Kantianism and phe- 
nomenology has always been carried on in an exemplarily fair 
way. The gap between them did not and could not be bridged, 
but it was narrowed in the second and third decades of the 
present century. Whereas in Logische Untersuchungen the 
ultimate philosophical decisions were still in a state of suspen- 
sion, HusserPs Ideen made the transition to transcendental 
idealism and accepted Natorp's concept of the Pure Ego al- 
though in a sense vastly different from that of the neo-Kantians: 
HusserPs Pure Ego is individual in character and not identical 
with the pure unity of objective thought represented by "pure 
apperception, i.e., the pure 'Ego'," "the ideal subject as such 
(Subjekt iiberhauft) ," 49 The famous debate between Cassirer 
and Heidegger at Davos (Switzerland) in April 1929 was pre- 
ceded by a series of lectures which showed a curious crossing in 
48 Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 48, 51, 76ff. 
^Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie, 244^ The contrast to phenomenology is 
much milder in Cohen's ethics and, especially in his philosophy of religion j also 
in Cassirer's account of the aesthetic experience j cf., e.g., Essay on Man, 228. 
824 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
themes Cassirer speaking on Philosophical Anthropology, 
Heidegger on Kant. 
But, again, Cassirer's conception of man was far from being 
Heidegger's (it was actually in striking contrast to it); and 
Heidegger's interpretation of Kant stressed the importance of 
the first Critique for the foundation of metaphysics and not, 
as the neo-Kantians did, for the theory of scientific knowledge. 
It may be profitable to study the rapprochement in question 
with specific regard to the problems discussed in the preceding 
sections of this essay. In his old age, when death intervened with 
his purpose, Natorp was about to supplement the formalism of 
his earlier thought with an increased emphasis on the content 
of experience 50 taken as an "actuated individual factor." 51 Strug- 
gling beyond the limits of his original neo-Kantian position, 
he began to realize that the actuality and the meaning of a thing 
(its Dasssinn and Wassinri) were to be acknowledged rather 
than posited. Knowledge qua determination no longer meant 
to him imposing a unifying form on a variety of materials: it 
was now supposed to ascertain and fix the intrinsic meaning of 
given phenomena. 52 He came to disclaim the creativity of 
knowledge by what amounts almost to a play on words by 
re-interpreting the ambiguous German word "Schoepfen:" in- 
stead of meaning "to create" it was now taken to mean "to draw 
from the source of being." 53 (It is to be regretted that all this 
did not lead to any serious revision of Cassirer's own theory of 
being and knowledge). 

on the other hand, Husserl's own writings and particularly 
those of the following generation bore witness to the legitimate 
role construction can play as an element of phenomenological 
interpretation. With so widely varying representatives of phe- 
nomenological thought as Heidegger or Felix Kaufmann, 'con- 
struction' (Heidegger's 'Entwurf'} has ceased to be a sort of 
phenomenological bogy. "There is no meaning" says Felix 
" Natorp, Praktische PMlosofhie, 21 if 5 cf. Cassirer, "Paul Natorp," Kant- 
studien, XXX, 291. 
"Natorp, Praktische Philosofhie, 
52 Cf. op. cit., 240, 261. 
** Op. cit., 212. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 825 
Kaufmann "either in scientific thinking or in pre-scientific 
thinking, that does not imply a mental construction (syn- 
thesis)." 54 
Cassirer's own attitude toward phenomenology cannot be 
read simply from the growing use he made of the term 'phe- 
nomenology' itself: this use is greatly influenced by HegePs 
description of the spirit's way from naive consciousness toward 
knowledge proper. 55 Such a dialectical movement, from mythi- 
cal to scientific thought, is the theme of Cassirer's Phenome- 
nology of Knowledge, the third volume of the Philoso'phie der 
symbolischen Formen. In the same sense he describes his Essay 
on Man not only (in the subtitle) as an "Introduction to a 
Philosophy of Human Culture," but equally as a "phenome- 
nology of human culture." 56 
This dialectic proceeds in articulated steps and passes through 
well distinguished stations. In other words, each of these steps 
represents a specific form of consciousness and cultural expres- 
sion. Thus genetic interest and genetic description are supple- 
mented by the morphological ones in a phenomenology of the 
"main forms of the objective mind." 57 This procedure is some- 
what analogous to the way in which the problems of static and 
genetic constitution combine in HusserPs later works. 58 And 
'phenomenology' stands here not only for HegePs conception 
of this term, but also for HusserPs eidetic description of the 
phenomena. 
Hence there are not only occasional points of contact between 
phenomenology and Cassirer's theory of symbolic representa- 
tion such as when he refers to the analysis of "ｅxpression and 
signification" in the second volume of HusserPs Logische 
Untersuchungen or even relates his own concept of representa- 
54 Felix Kaufmann, Methodology of the Social Sciences (1944), 34- 
85 Cf . Cassirer, " 'Geist* und 'Leben* in der Philosophic der Gegenwart," Neue 
Rundschau (1930), 260 (cf. translation of this article in the present volume, 
p. 875) $ Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, I, 155 II, xf$ III, vi, 
"Essay on Man, 52. 
57 Philoso'phie der symbolischen Formen y III, 58. 
88 Cf., e.g., Husserl, Meditations Cartesiennes, 115. 
M Cf. Phihsofhie der symbolischen Formen III, 375, 
826 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
tion to HusserPs idea of intentionality. 60 It is also methodically 
important, but not yet decisive that his theory of perception 
and ｅxpression has much in common with Max Scheler's phe- 
nomenology of inner and outer perception, 61 etc. But over and 
above all this, the common morphological interest creates a 
general affinity between the two ways of philosophizing. 
Through his whole description of the forms of human culture, 
his analysis of the structures of linguistic, mythical, and religious 
thought, Cassirer draws close to phenomenology and its descrip- 
tive analysis of the essential forms. In this spirit Cassirer empha- 
sizes, e.g., the fundamental difference between "the genetic 
question" and "the analytical and phenomenological" one as 
regards the nature of language. 62 
This affinity is given another ｅxpression in Cassirer's philo- 
sophical group-theory dealing with the universal relations 
which remain invariant throughout the transformation of struc- 
tures in both the perceptual and conceptual realms. The unity 
of the manifold, which in this way comes to the fore, gives to the 
particulars a community of being (Wesen) which must not lie 
in external resemblances, but consists in an analogy of function 
within a context of relations. 63 
This theory is, in a certain way, an application of Poncelet's 
"principle of the permanence of mathematical relations." 
Within its original realm it enjoys, therefore, the privilege of 
mathematical exactness. In recent publications, however, Cas- 
sirer was anxious to show that essentially the same procedure 
can take place even where this privilege has to be renounced, 
i.e., in non-mathematical realms such as perception 64 and lan- 
guage. 65 
60 Cf. e.g., Cassirer's article on Paul Natorp, Kantstudien, XXX, 2875 
Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, III, 2276. 
81 Cf . Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis, \ ooff . 
82 Essay on Man, 30. 
" Cf. Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbe griff, igffj Pkilosophie der symbolischen 
Formen y III, 3418, particularly 352$ 4635. 
64 Cassirer, "Group Concept and Perception Theory," Philosophy and Phenom- 
enological Research, V (1944), 1-35. 
"Cassirer, "The Influence of Language upon the Development of Scientific 
Thought," Journal of Philosophy, XXXIX (1942), 309-327. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 827 
Thus he emphasizes the importance of the ideal 'schema' 
(in the Kantian sense) for the establishment of perception and 
the constitution of our world. With reference to Ehrenfels' 
concept of Gestaltqualitaten (the 'Einheitsmomente? of Hus- 
serPs Philosophic der Arithmetik} he points out that the 
identity of a perceptual form e.g., a melody throughout the 
change of all its elements is but what, "in a much higher degree 
of perfection/' prevails in the domain of geometrical concepts. 
"What we find in both cases are invariances with respect to vari- 
ations undergone by the primitive elements out of which a form 
is constructed." 66 The reason for such a perceptual invariance is 
the 'goodness' of a certain exemplary 'form.' "The 'true' color, 
the 'true' shape, the 'true' size of an object are by no means that 
which is given in any particular impression, nor need they be the 
c sum' of these impressions." "The constitutive factor . . . mani- 
fests itself in the possibility of forming invariants." 67 The 'true' 
impression is that which is transformed into a fixed value able to 
build up a knowledge of constant reality. 
These ideas are not only in agreement with Husserl's analysis 
of perception and, e.g., with his emphasis on the role of per- 
ceptual optima, they go far in the direction of Husserl's We- 
sensschau (intuition of essences). Cassirer's statement that "the 
intentional reference to an object is not, to the extent to which it 
is realizable at all in perception, fulfilled all at once, but gradu- 
ally only" 68 is couched in the terms of both Husserl's phenome- 
nology of perception and of his phenomenology of intuition. 
Nothing is ready made and given uno intuitu^ the intuition of 
essences is as much in need of verification and elucidation as any 
individual perception. Far from being an uncontrolled mystical 
or a dogmatic rationalistic concept, Husserl's idea of intuition 
and eidos is bound up with a process of methodical discovery 
(ideation). And the pith and marrow of this ideation is nothing 
else but variation in a sense not altogether different from that in 
Cassirer's writings. 
* "Group Concept and Perception Theory," 25. For the whole problem of 
this paragraph cf. Husserl, Ideen, 71-75. 
"Cassirer, "Group Concept and Perception Theory," 34. 
68 Cassirer, ibid., 30. Cf. Husserl, Ideen, 67. 
828 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
In what amounts to a mental experiment, Husserl shows how 
to vary a certain given phenomenon by way of free imagination 
while preserving the unity of the original intention. Without 
being restricted by the limits of real experience (or even of 
experience possible within the frame of our real world), he 
moves through all possible dimensions of change implied within 
the horizon of the same phenomenon. Thus he manages to grasp 
the identical content the general essence at the bottom of an 
infinitude of possible varieties. This 'ideational abstraction' can 
do with one (preferably one pregnant) example and thus differs 
radically from inductive abstraction, which is dependent on the 
accumulated evidence of many instances. 69 
HusserPs method of ideation was to be applied to all types 
of experiences and attitudes perceptual, social, historical, 
moral, aesthetic, religious, etc. A large stock of a priori knowl- 
edge of this morphological type has thus been gathered by Hus- 
serl himself, by his friends and disciples, but also by scholars like 
Litt, Riezler, and many others who never belonged to the 
inner circle of the phenomenological movement. I restrict my- 
self to the quotation of one recent statement: 
We cannot hope to deal scientifically with any problem of social or 
cultural change if we tie our concepts to particular and changing con- 
ditions. As our variables must at least aim at universality, they cannot 
be defined in terms of mutable institutions. If we do not eventually 
succeed in finding universal variables that constitute a pattern of all 
patterns, containing in itself the principles of its variations, social change 
will continue to engulf the meaning of the concepts in which we pretend 
to formulate its laws. 70 
Thus the concept and method of variation figure as a link 
between Cassirer and phenomenological thought. The value of 
this rapport at first seems to be limited, however, by his specific 
way of approach. Motivated as he is by mathematical prece- 
**A much more thoroughgoing- description of this method is given in HusserPs 
Erfahrung und Urteil, III. Abschnitt, II. Kapitel (402-442). Cf. also my article 
"In Memoriam Edmund Husserl," Social Research, February 1940, especially 
74-76. 
70 Kurt Riezler, "What is Public Opinion?" Social Research, November 1944, 
397*. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 829 
dents, he insists that the "form of logical systematfaation which 
is both possible and necessary in the domain of geometrical 
thought is once and for all inaccessible to perception." 71 This is 
contrary to the convictions and practice of phenomenologists like 
Husserl, Scheler, Schapp, Leyendecker, the two Conrads and 
others. They concentrated on studying the a priori structure of 
the perceptual sphere as, for instance, the essential relations 
between impression, retention and protention in every percep- 
tion (Husserl). They could expand the span of the a priori 
without falling prey to intellectual hybris because in phenome- 
nology the a priori forms are not imposed on the phenomena, 
but (by way of ideational abstraction) abstracted from them. 
Cassirer, on the other hand, leaves the constancies in the per- 
ceptual realm to the empirical observation of the psychologist: 
"here no a priori judgment is possible." 72 
This attitude may account for the abundant use he makes 
of psychological, psycho-pathological and anthropological ma- 
terial both in the Philosophic der symbolischen Formen and in 
his Essay on Man. Even so, his philosophical practice is some- 
what different from his methodological theory. Just as his 
Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems is not only an inestimable 
source of authentic historical knowledge, but interprets modern 
science and philosophy on the basis of a principle which is truly 
congenial with them (the concept of function over against that 
of substance), so besides being a mine of information his 
Philosophy of Symbolical Forms bears out general philosophical 
convictions and is interspersed with analyses which are of an a 
priori character and phenomenological in a broad sense, even 
though they remain fragmentary and are not ruled by so strict 
and clear a method as that of HusserPs eidetic and phenomeno- 
logical reductions. There are, e.g., in the Essay on Man, the 
sections on experienced space and time} in the Phaenomenologie 
der Erkenntnisy the investigation into the inner unity of percep- 
tion and conception; in an (unpublished) essay on Thomas 
Mann's Lotte in Weimar one of the masterpieces of Cassirer 
"Cassirer, "Group Concept and Perception Theory," 26. 
" Ibid. 
830 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
as a literary critic an appreciation of the formative power of 
(symbolic) memory. 78 In "The Influence of Language upon the 
Development of Scientific Thought" (Journal of Philosophy, 
XXXIX, 309-327) and elsewhere, he investigates the nature of 
speech those characters which are independent of a specific 
situation or the medium of a particular language; and with 
reference to Buehler's "Organmodell" (cf. Karl Buehler, 
Sprachtheorie, 1934), he points out how, in all speech as such, 
speaker, hearer, subject matter, etc., combine to form an in- 
trinsic unity. 
Moreover, though established on the basis of innumerable 
scientific findings, his 'symbolical forms' have an inner con- 
sistency and almost self-containedness which give even to pre- 
rational structures a quasi-rational cogency. Their components 
are related to one another in a way which is empirically dis- 
covered, but intuitively evident j and this super-factual evidence 
resembles that which illumines the relations between essences 
(general qualities), like color and extension, or red, orange and 
yellow (to give some primitive examples of the 'relation of 
ideas' which are a main subject of phenomenological inquiry). 
The essential forms of language, myth, etc., come thus to 
complement the general laws in which the earlier neo-Kantian- 
ism had been too exclusively interested. Science is not the only 
transcendental fact which can be analyzed by way of transcen- 
dental philosophy. Even if ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of 
religion were concerned with nothing but universal and neces- 
sary laws, "does the same hold true of their spiritual content, 
that is to say of morals, art, religion themselves} " this is the 
question in terms of which Cassirer objects to the pan-nomism of 
Cohen and Natorp. 74 He did not try as Natorp did to iden- 
tify "phenomenology of consciousness" with the psychological 
"description of ethical, aesthetic, religious knowledge"' 1 * He 
realized the heterogeneous natures of these different ways of 
11 For this latter point cf. also Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, I, 2 if 5 
Essay on Man, 52!. 
T4 Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, III, 66. It must be said, however, that 
Natorp himself rectified his earlier attitude in Praktische Philosophic: cf. especially 
209. 
w Natorp, Allgemetne Psychologic, 241 j cf. 72, 94. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 831 
objectification and gave 'structuralism' 78 the investigation into 
the 'inner forms' of language, myth, religion, etc., its place 
alongside the 'legalism' of knowledge, i.e., the search for 
general laws. By this way of aiming at a philosophical mor- 
phology he countenanced the phenomenological attempt to bare 
the inner nature, the typical structure of the acts, objects, and 
contents of consciousness. 
To be sure, this convergence with phenomenology was more or 
less incidental in Cassirer's development. It was not only, and 
not even so much, phenomenology which stood behind his new 
version of neo-Kantian philosophy Cassirer's emphasis on the 
'inner form' derives, first of all, from the artistic ingredient of 
his own nature, the Goethian element of his being, and tallies 
with the Goethe revival in his generation. (Whereas Natorp, 
and above all, Cohen represented much more the moral ideal- 
ism of Kant, Schiller and Fichte, ethics plays a very minor role 
in Cassirer's systematic writings). It is connected with the 
"wholism" of the later nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, 
which expressed itself in the mathematical group-theories as well 
as in the field-theories of physics and psychology, in Wolfflin's 
analysis of fine arts 77 as well as in the biology of thinkers like 
Kurt Goldstein, on whom Cassirer drew heavily for his Phaeno- 
menologie der Erkenntnis. (In his theory of the organism 
Goldstein makes use of the concept of essence in a combination 
of Goethian and phenomenological thought which could not fail 
to strike a sympathetic vein in Cassirer.) 
VI 
The Symbolical Forms 
Neo-Kantian and Phenomenological Philosophies of Man 
The 'symbolical forms' figuring in a scale of representations 
Cassirer distinguishes between the ｅxpressional, the strictly 
representative, and the significatory dimensions of the symbol 78 
w Cassirer, Essay on Man, 121. 
n Cf. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 69. 
TO Cf., e.g., "Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophic," 
Zeitschrift juer Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissensckaft, XXI, 303**. 
832 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
remind us of the gamut of representations in Leibniz. Since 
the beginning of his philosophical career Cassirer was deeply 
familiar with Leibniz's philosophy ; and this fact was doubtless 
instrumental in Cassirer's peculiar relation to Goethe, in so 
many regards an heir to Leibniz's mode of thinking. 
In Freiheit und Form Cassirer had shown how the founder 
of modern philosophical aesthetics, Alexander Baumgarten, 
employed and transformed the Leibnizian schema of representa- 
tion. Baumgarten inserted between the lower pole of obscure 
and confused perception and the highest point of clear and dis- 
tinct conception a stage of singular perfection in clarity, yet 
without distinctness: the perfectio phaenomenon, the cognitio 
perfecte sensitiva of aesthetic experience. This is analogous to 
the role the non-scientific symbols of language and the myth 
have in Cassirer J s philosophy: while showing a perfection of 
their own, they are, at the same time, preconditions of scientific 
and philosophical knowledge. "Each genuine and fundamental 
function of the spirit has one decisive feature in common with 
knowledge: in every one of them resides an archetypal power, 
not only an ectypal one." 79 
To vary a famous verse of Schiller's: we enter the land of 
knowledge only through the morning-gate of the myth. In a 
similar way language is said to figure in a dialectical movement 
in which it heals its own (logical) defects by setting itself "dif- 
ferent and higher tasks." "Man can proceed from ordinary 
language to scientific language, to the language of logic, of 
mathematics, of physics." 80 And as regards religion its ulti- 
mate truth seems ascertained only in a philosophy of religion 
like that of Schleiermacher (we shall see presently that its 
ultimate aim the perfect balance between meaning (Sinn) and 
image (Bild) is reached only in art). 81 In all this there are 
tokens and remnants of that scientism which is of the original 
dowry of neo-Kantian thought. The questions, how far theo- 
retical knowledge can accept the honors assigned to it, how 
ro Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, I, 8. 
80 Cassirer, "The Influence of Language upon the Development of Scientific 
Thought" (op. cit.) y 327. 
"Cf. Philosofhie der tymbolischen Formen, II, 3i8ff. Cf. infra, 85off. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 833 
congenial it is to the original impulses that live in language and 
religion, how much of these primitive motives will be lost on 
the way of their intellectual transformation such questions are 
either not asked at all or answered in an unduly optimistic vein. 
To be sure, the critic of each dialectical movement and, 
therefore, of each dialectical treatment is on difficult ground. 
His subject will always offer an aspect complementary to that 
under which he tries to attack it. In our case, the preliminary 
character of certain symbolical forms is made up for by their 
indispensable function: they are autonomous constituents in the 
system of culture. They have structural laws of their own which 
we ought to recognize, even if they do not fully participate in 
the canonic authority which Cohen's classicism attributed to the 
topmost formations of the objective mind.The phenomenologist 
will be inclined to challenge this whole dialectical construction 
of a self-contained cultural process. He will question the strange 
synthesis between the autonomous perfection of the forms of 
culture on the one hand and, on the other, the reduction of most 
of them to mere prefigurations of final truth the truth of 
knowledge. This is, indeed, the tenor of Heidegger's review 82 
of Das mythische Denken> the second volume of the Philoso- 
phic der symbolischen Formen. He argues that the systematic 
unity of the symbolic forms ought to be sought for, more radi- 
cally than Cassirer does, in the original make-up of human exist- 
ence (Lebensform) j and intimates, for instance, that mythical 
thought is not fully elucidated by making it an ｅxpression of hu- 
man creativeness. A fundamental concept like that of c mana' be- 
trays as its ultimate motive man's perplexity in the face of his 
tasks and his feelings of being overwhelmed by the world around 
him. Man does not extricate himself from such a predicament by 
acknowledging it in this fashion. The myth may thus testify 
to his resigning himself to the domination of uncontrollable 
powers as well as exhibit his constructive capacities. The world 
of the myth, though being in one sense the work of his creative 
imagination, may still fail to be man's proper world the world 
in which he feels at home. The needy man, the man dependent 
81 Cf. Deutsche Literaturzeitung (1928), xooo-ioiz. 
834 FRITZ KAUFMANN 

on mercy and subject to renunciation, disappears (here as well as 
elsewhere in Cassirer's writings) behind the screen of his spe- 
cious cultural achievements. 
With all its wealth of new materials, the Philosofhie der 
symbolischen Formen is still neo-Kantian in its method. This 
can best be shown by tracing its plan back to suggestions con- 
tained in the tenth chapter of Natorp's Allgemeine Psychologie. 
Natorp recognizes as one "mighty and central province" of 
general psychology a 
description of the formations of consciousness . . . which must not be 
restricted to the pure forms of knowledge, volition, and art, and, further- 
more, to the pure foundations of religious consciousness, but may be 
extended to the ... imperfect objectifications of opinion, belief, and 
imagination regardless of, and unlimited by, their inner relation to 
truth and the realm of laws. . . . Even the most irresponsible opinion, 
the darkest superstition, the most boundless imagination make use of the 
categories of objective knowledge; they are still ways of objectification, 
however poor the means and impure the performance of this process 
may prove to be. 83 
And as regards "the almost inexhaustible fund of primitive 
knowledge" stored in the words and syntax of higher lan- 
guages there we have even "objectifications which, within the 
limits of their specific: purpose, do not fall very short of the 
exactness and precision of scientific knowledge." 84 Almost the 
same applies to other subject-matters of "differential psychol- 
ogy" the special social classes and orders and the ways in 
which the sexes and ages of man assert themselves. 85 In the 
terms of Natorp, it is largely to these "lower stages of objec- 
tification" that Cassirer's phenomenologies of language, the 
myth, etc., are devoted although he tried to distinguish them 
and their genuine value more clearly from the particular form 
of intellectual synthesis than Natorp may have done in his ear- 
lier writings. 86 
81 Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie, 241 f. 
84 Ibid., 99. 
88 Ibid., 221. 
**Cf. Philosophie der symbolischen Formen I, 8; III, 6^fL. Cp., however, 
Natorp himself, Praktische Philosophic, 209. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 835 
The interpretation of life as a contest of objectifying func- 
tions tends to bear out the hermeneutic nature of neo-Kantian 
idealism. The way to man leads through the analysis of human 
ｅxpressions. Although testifying once more, to its great value, 
I have to hint at the limits of this procedure which cannot serve 
as a philosophical 'passe-partout. 
Our discussion will be under the restriction set by the title 
of the present article. It cannot deal with the cardinal problem 
whether nature and function, locus and scope of the symbolic 
are defined by Cassirer in a way radical and consistent enough 
to make this idea of the symbol the firm corner-stone of a phil- 
osophical system. 87 Instead of probing these depths, I confine 
myself to such methodological remarks as are invited by our 
previous considerations. 
Cassirer emphasizes that he deals with the world of man 
above all in order to pass through it to the being of man which 
is expressed in such a "world of his own an 'ideal' world." 88 
Perhaps, he is not quite consistent in speaking of c ideaP worlds 
as links between man and "physical reality" ** terms which 
presuppose a concept of the real which neo-Kantianism fails to 
provide. Cassirer is always inclined to think of physical reality 
as reality proper. This attitude, however, is by no means an 
essential part of transcendental idealism: Cohen's conception of 
reality, e.g., is much more plastic and corresponds to the dif- 
ferent ways of the human outlook. Take, e.g., the following 
passage from Cohen's Judische Schriften (III, 142):" Real, 
eminently real is what is not yet actual, but anticipated by way 
of hope so that its actuality is postulated in the vision of hope. 
Hope, the future, humanity belong together: they are the pro- 
test against taking reality only as what is actual in nature and 
history." 
However this may be, it is quite in the neo-Kantian style of 
thought to see and define man according to the ways in which 
87 1 have discussed this question in my review of An Essay on Man, see Phi- 
losophy and Phenomenological Research, VIII, 2 (1947), 283-287. 
* Cassirer, Essay on Man y 228. Cf. Philosofhie der symbolischen Formen, III, 
104. 
*Cf. Essay on Man, 241". 
836 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
he realizes himself in worlds of his own making. He is not seen 
in the ways he faces a reality and moves in a world in which he 
is never quite at home. "No longer," says Cassirer, "can man con- 
front reality immediately, he cannot see it, as it were, face to 
face. Instead of dealing with the things themselves, man is in a 
sense constantly conversing with himself." 90 If that were really 
the case, we would know only objectifications, projections of our 
own being, and no objects at all no things which may 'object' 
to us and to our existence. As a matter of fact, we come to deal 
with objects even through these objectifications. Just as it seems 
of the very nature of things in space to manifest themselves in 
certain spatial perspectives, thus in our intercourse with things 
they may present themselves in mythical, historical, linguistic, 
and other perspectives. Although qualifying our views, neither 
the spatial nor these personal aspects are separated from, and 
block the sight of, the things themselves. This is almost admit- 
ted by Cassirer in one of the following sentences: man "cannot 
see or know anything except by the interposition of this arti- 
ficial medium," sc. the symbolic forms 5 but even here we 
must take exception to the figurative use of the term "medium" 
which is as likely to be misunderstood as is the epithet "artifi- 
cial" used in connection with it. 91 
That things present themselves in more or less adequate 
forms of appearance and modes of interpretation does not do 
away with the fact that they present themselves. on the other 
hand, the fact of this self-presentation is not incompatible with 
the recognition of something beyond cognition beyond it, be- 
cause it is MW*V TYJS ouaia^ beyond any definite form of being: 
the Alpha as well as the Omega of our life, i.e., not only the 
final point of all ways of determination, but also the dark yet 
everpresent ground from which all beings seem to rise, against 
90 Essay on Man, 25. 
91 Ibid. The same incongruity appears, e.g., in " 'Geist* und 'Leben' in der 
Philosophic der Gegenwart," Neue Rundschau^ 1930, 254-259. Cf. pp. 870-874, 
infra. According to this passage reality can be reached only after passing through 
the sphere of the ideal. But, although this contention may be borne out by 
reference to mathematics, some fields of art, etc., it is far from being universally 
valid. The ideal factors are not always so separable from the real ones as to 
allow such a dialectical movement to take place between them. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 837 
which they stand out for some time and into the embrace of 
which they seem to return after their time is over (*orca TYJV 
TOO Xpovou Tgiv). This principle of origin is of a metaphysical 
order, not a logical one. It lays a foundation which cannot be 
laid by such a principle of thought as Cohen tried to establish. 92 
The pathos of this metaphysical experience the fountain-head 
of all religious feeling is conspicuously absent in Cassirer's 
work. 
The neo-Kantian pan-methodology 98 is the complement of 
the "critical" attitude which separates reality proper from the 
forms of appearance and leads many of its representatives to 
an anti-metaphysical position, an unconcern with reality far 
excellence. It is partly for these reasons that the chapter on "His- 
tory" in An Essay on Man fails to deal either with histori- 
cal reality as such or with the historical nature (the 'histor- 
icity*) of man problems which have played a more and more 
prominent role in the phenomenology of the last twenty years. 
Cassirer takes here a somewhat belated part in the methodo- 
logical discussion, which took place, around 1900, between his- 
torians and neo-Kantian philosophers such as Karl Lamprecht, 
Eduard Meyer, and Heinrich Rickert. In contrast to Natorp 
(Praktische Philosophie, 66ff), he treats history almost ex- 
clusively as historical science, not so much historical science as a 
variety of historical consciousness and as continuous with his- 
torical life and historical tradition. 94 
History as found in classical writers like Ranke stands with 
science among the refined, perfected forms of civilization, "an 
indispensable instrument for building up our human uni- 
verse." 95 These regions are the birth-place of logical idealism. 
We have seen, however, that Cassirer tried to deal not only with 
the super-structure of highest objectifications, but also with the 
primary phenomena of human life.The intermediate forms of 
the myth, language, etc., are closer to naive life and cannot 
M Cf. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis y 32. 
M "There is not any difference more radical than that of method," says Cohen 
(J&disck* Schriften, III, 143). 
** Cf. Essay on Man, 206. 
838 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
claim the universal validity of the exact sciences. 96 But whatever 
may be the character of the forms he takes as his starting point, 
they represent eo ipso, i.e., by their very nature as forms and 
objectifications, certain human achievements. Thus, they put 
man from the very beginning into a, perhaps, too favorable 
light. The image of man is not independent of the setting in 
which it appears. To be sure, there is a distinction to be made 
between a form itself and its content. Through scientific his- 
tory, e.g., we become more thoroughly acquainted with man 
man's joys and sorrows, possibilities and dangers, his passions 
and sufferings, his greatness and defects. Still, the objectivity 
of this representation has an effect similar to the mastery of the 
artist: the wonderful polish of the mirror reconciles us with the 
sadness of the image; the perfect representation succeeds in 
outbalancing the imperfections of what is represented in such a 
way. 87 
Cassirer's own philosophy of man, moreover, shows a quasi 
superhuman aloofness by which he seems to outdo even the 
composure of the historian and the artist. At first glance, neither 
the tenor nor the themes of the Essay on Man betray any effect 
of the crisis of man in our eschatological age not to speak of 
the experiences of the author himself who was driven from land 
to land as a victim of racial persecution and global war. only on 
second thought does the reader come to realize that Cassirer's 
interest in myth is partly prompted by a present day revival of 
mythical thought, and that his studies in mythology may well 
serve to understand the effectiveness of mythical symbolism 
and check its misuse. on the other hand, the economic problems 
of human existence are scarcely mentioned at all; and even the 
forms of political life are passed over as being "a late product 
of the civilizing process." 98 The process of civilization, the 
movement of self-propelling pure forms (so to speak), seems 
to be something like a metaphysical absolute; it goes on 
H Cf., e.g., PhilosofMe der symbolischen Formerly III, 14, 3571". 
w Cf. Essay on Man, 149. Cf., however, in qualification of what follows, 
Cassirer's posthumous writing 1 , The Myth of the State (1946). 
18 Ibid., 63. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 839 
smoothly and essentially undisturbed by the regrettable acci- 
dents of our own life. 
Whereas as early as in 1902 a William James dared to re- 
mind his audiences that "our civilization is founded on the 
shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely 
spasm of helpless agony," 99 Cassirer's happy eyes saw man even 
as late as 1944 only in the light of his cultural products, not in 
the darkness of his earthly struggle, nor in the hours of his 
despair and in the loneliness of his death. In difference from 
Aristotle, Cassirer defines man somewhat loosely as the animal 
symbolicum in the sense of the animal symbola formans or, 
as we would have preferred to say, the animal imaginativum. 
This latter formula would imply an allusion to imagination as 
the central root of human nature, "our destiny, our being's 
heart and homej" but, although being in accordance with ideas 
of Hume and Kant, 100 of Coleridge and Wordsworth, to give to 
'imagination' so dominant a place would meet with Cassirer's 
aversion to any 'image' theory of knowledge. 101 Although he 
stressed its importance repeatedly, 102 imagination did not be- 
come a patent factor in his definition of man. 
The noble Aristotelian tradition of defining man by his high- 
est capacity reason is slightly modified by Ernst Cassirer. 
The latter's definition of man gives a specific difference the 
symbolizing power which is said to extend further down than 
does reason. 108 His statement fails, however, to grasp the true 
significance of Aristotle's approach to the problem. Aristotle does 
not offer a pars pro toto definition. 10 * In his psychology Aris- 
totle tries to show how reason functions as the formal cause of 
our whole being, and how man's development is to be under- 
stood as the growing self-assertion of reason. 
*W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience (Modern Library), 160. 
100 Cf. Cassirer himself, e.g., in " 'Geist' und 'Leben' in der Philosophic der 
Gegenwart," Neue Rundschau (1930), 257 (cf. 871 infra). 
m Cf. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 57. 
101 Cf. Cassirer's "Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik," Kantstudien, 
XXXVI (1931), 8f., 1 8 \ "The Concept of Group and the Theory of Perception," 
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, V (1944), 3*f. 
*** Essay on Man, 25. 
840 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
Moreover, Cassirer loses the great advantage of the Aristo- 
telian definition its dynamic possibilities. Whereas 'animal 
symbolicum* adds only a specific difference to the generic one, 
'animal rationale? by showing man between the heights to which 
he can attain and the depths to which he can sink, may indicate 
the permanent tension and strife between man's animal and 
rational natures, the promise as well as the danger of human 
freedom. To be sure, Aristotle himself did not exhaust the dra- 
matic potentialities implied in his definition. The instability of 
the human condition in the realm between the two poles pure 
rationality and mere animality is seen in contrast to the 
blessedness of the divine being, but this contrast is not fully 
developed in its tragic implications. He is more interested in 
normal mentality, in the organic health of human life than in 
its extremities and conflicts. The same may be said of Cassirer. 
He was not a tortured soul. Both in his writings and in his ap- 
pearance he made the impression of an Apollonian nature. He 
was a neo-Kantian in the sense that his intellectual temper was 
congenial to the Kant whom he loved and admired. What he 
said of Kant, applies to himself and explains the high pleasure 
we experience in reading his works: He "is and remains a 
thinker of the Enlightenment in the most radiant and sublime 
sense of this word: he aspires toward light and clarity even 
when reflecting on the darkest depths and 'radices 5 of being." 105 
Yet, we cannot help feeling that the darkness of these depths is 
not sufficiently represented in Cassirer's own philosophical out- 
look. Thus he extolled the positive aspect of existence: the 
self-transcendence of life into spirit, of rcpo&s into wofrqori^ of 
organic formation into the formation of ideas and symbols: 
he remonstrates on the metaphysical hypostatizing of Life and 
the Spirit, on their being taken for two hostile entities (as in 
Klages) or for two heterogeneous powers which are on pre- 
carious terms with one another (as in Scheler). 106 Yet, like 
Aristotle, he sees human freedom too exclusively in the growing 
108 Cassirer, "Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik," Kantstudien, XXXVI, 
(1931), 24. 
100 Cf. "'Geist' und 'Leben' . . .", o/. cit., 244-264; also Part III of the 
present volume, 862-880. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 841 
independence from the senses manifested as it seems by the 
processes of symbolization. He does not really plunge into the 
abyss of freedom in the human soul that freedom which 
is, at once, man's distinction and his temptation, man's pride 
and his torment and he does not ask how human freedom can 
coexist with human finiteness. He is so engrossed by the dialec- 
tics of the spirit as "a new turn and conversion of life itself" that 
he all but forgets about the labor-pains of such a dialectical 
turn this perennial turn and, therefore perennial crisis of 
human existence. 
It is of the very nature of human freedom that the outcome 
of this crisis and, therefore, the continuation of the objectifying 
process can never be foreseen. We know it again: just as the in- 
dividual person, so is the whole of cultural life threatened by 
death. But in the radiance of his own being and in his admira- 
tion for the triumphal procession of culture, Cassirer was in- 
clined to neglect its sad, tragic, even suicidal traits. Yet life 
creates idols as well as true symbols; the work of the spirit 
drains man's vital energies; there are all the frustrations of hu- 
man endeavor; and man chokes to death in the very shelters 
(Jaspers' Gehause) and is slain by the very arms he built him- 
self. Cassirer's philosophy suffers from too much light; still it 
is a noble and finished account of come I'uom s'eterna. "The 
various modes of [his] ｅxpression .... have a life of their own, 
a sort of eternity by which they survive man's individual and 
ephemeral existence." 107 
A corollary to their assertion of the autonomous course of the 
objectifying process is Natorp's and Cassirer's insistence that, 
both genetically and systematically, individual self-knowledge 
is a very late product of consciousness. Cassirer agrees with Max 
Scheler's theory in the contention that experience is at first quasi 
anonymous and only subsequently attributed either to myself or 
to other Egos. 108 This phenomenological description may be 
correct as to the origin and qualification of the contents of hu- 
man consciousness} but it applies neither to the noetic side of ex- 
1W Cassirer, Essay on Man, 224. 
108 Max Scheler, Wesen und Formen der SymfaMe, 284*!. Cf. Cassirer, 
Philosofhie der symboUschen Formen, III, 100-107, 
842 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
periences, i.e., to the actualization (Vollzugsmodus) of these 
contents, nor to the pure Ego of phenomenological reflection, 
which is to be distinguished from the inner perception, the Na- 
tural' self-knowledge of man. 109 
In Cassirer the two levels of analysis that of empirical or 
even eidetic psychology of human life and that of transcendental 
philosophy of pure consciousness are not always as clearly sep- 
arated as these subtle problems require. But, although in the 
case of empathy psychological findings are played off against the 
data of original constitution (as these appear in the light of 
transcendental reflection), usually the transcendental process of 
objectification is given the upper hand over anthropological 
facts. 110 
We have seen that Cassirer's pre-occupation with the bound- 
less objectifying process almost blinds him to the essential lim- 
itations of human life. This applies, above all, to the life of the 
individual. 111 Cassirer's main concern is, like Kant's, with the 
**. the dissertation of HusserPs assistant Edith Stein, Zum Problem der 
EinfueMung, 1917, 30-39. Edith Stein reproduces fairly well HusserPs own 
teaching on empathy. I regret that in the present article references to HusserPs work 
must be brief and may appear, therefore, in spots somewhat cryptical or dogmatic. 
But it is obviously impossible within the framework of this essay even to attempt 
to render HusserPs subtle analyses with any degree of adequacy. 
110 With the neo-Kantians Cassirer used to distinguish very carefully between 
the transcendental and the psychological or anthropological methods. (He did it as 
late as in 1931 in his discussion of Heidegger's "Kant und das Problem der 
Metaphysik:" Kantstudien XXXVI, i5f. But whereas the Pktlosofhie der sym- 
bolischen Formen was thought to conquer new territory for transcendental 
idealism, An Essay on Man for the most part an abstract of the former work 
is obviously an experiment in philosophical anthropology. Is the purity of the 
transcendental method impaired by the anthropological material of the Philosofhie 
der symboUschen Formen 9 or is the anthropological turn in the Essay impeded 
by the demands of neo-Kantian transcendentalism? 
m HusserPs position differs from that of Cassirer in so far as HusserPs tran- 
scendental Ego, although not being essentially finite either, is from the outset 
a single Ego, not a universal subject as such: this Ego apperceives itself only 
afterwards as a member of a monadic universe, i.e., of an intersubjective sphere 
of transcendental Egos, and ends with identifying itself in a certain way with a 
particular and finite human being* part of the transcendentally constituted 
human world (cf. the fifth of HusserPs Meditations Cartesiennes). The analysis 
of intersubjectivity was complemented in HusserPs courses (e.g. on Ethics) by 
that of interpersonal relationships which have their ultimate end in constituting 
the real world of true humanity. It must be admitted, however, that neither 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 843 
'intelligible substrate of humanity,' not with human existence. 112 
The problems of individual birth and death personal prob- 
lems rather than merely creatural ones are scarcely handled at 
all (death only in a negative way). While under the influence 
of Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Heidegger the second generation 
of phenomenologists was almost obsessed by this latter prob- 
lem, inclined as they were to see life only in the light (and the 
shadow) of death, Cassirer adhered to a tradition that prevails 
from Descartes to Eucken and Caird: he recognized in man's 
knowledge of his finiteness the very dawn of the infinite. 
This was in fact not only the general tenor of his discussion 
with Heidegger at Davos , it was also his main objection to the 
sort of existentialism which Oskar Becker tried to build into the 
very foundation of mathematics. Whatever the truth-value of 
either position may be, it is symptomatic that in the well-known 
definition of the mathematical procedure 'the mastery of the 
infinite through finite means' Becker stressed the element of 
the finite, Cassirer that of the infinite. 113 
To introduce a philosophical anthropology under the sub- 
title of a "philosophy of human culture" implies (as indicated 
above) a foregone conclusion: it anticipates the answer to the 
first question of the Essay on Man: "What is man?" It elimi- 
nates in one stroke from the field of research such profound ex- 
periences as love and hatred, fear and trembling, shame and re- 
pentance, guilt and sin, and such revealing traits as concentration 
and distraction and innumerable others so far at least as their 
existential meaning is not exhausted by their contribution to the 
forms of cultural life. It neglects man's inability to express cer- 
tain experiences in an adequate way as well as his unique capacity 
Husserl nor Cassirer fully developed all three dimensions implied in the idea of 
self-realization which are (i) the awareness of the individual Self as determined 
and limited by the Other (Thou) j (2) the fulfilment of one's own being in this 
very relationship 5 and (3) finding one's place in the real world by way of inter- 
personal communication. 
1M Cf. Cassirer, "Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik," op. /., i8j H. 
Cohen, EMk des reinen Willens, 3. 
""Cf. Oskar Becker, Mathematische Existen (19:17) j Cassirer, Philosophic der 
symbolischen for men > III, 4696*. It ought to be acknowledged, however, that at 
this point the difference is one of two generations rather than of two schools. 
844 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
for going into hiding by the very means of communication. 
Cassirer did not and could not proceed the way Kierkegaard, 
Jaspers and, within their sphere, the great tragedians and also 
such novelists as Joseph Conrad and Franz Kafka did: he could 
not 'define' man with a view to the extreme situations (Grenz- 
situationen) in which man's true being, his greatness and weak- 
ness come out most eloquently in the very moments of his 
growing silent and succumbing to destiny. (Personal 'destiny' is 
not a category that fits into a dialectical schema of the objective 
mind.) 
Why should philosophy rely entirely on previous obj edifica- 
tions without doing some objectifying of its own? Why should it 
be confined to the conceptualization of previous ｅxpressions? It 
may well discover and even prefigure new human possibilities or 
reveal moods and modes of life which von Menschen nicht ge- 
wusst oder nicht bedacht waited for the penetration and the 
candidness of a great thinker to be unearthed. The claim to make 
such a new, original beginning, to lay a new, absolute foundation 
not only of thought, but (through thought and even a very ab- 
stract thought) of life itself, was the secret behind HusserPs in- 
creasingly priestly and almost prophetic attitude. His phenom- 
enology was designed to overcome "the radical crisis in the life 
of the European man." 114 And due to the specific phenomeno- 
logical impulse and approach to things, a similar absolute claim 
lives (mutatis mutandis) in the phenomenological philosophies 
of Scheler, Heidegger, and Nicolai Hartmann. Cassirer, on the 
other hand, remained in accordance with the hermeneutic prin- 
ciples of critical idealism when he restricted himself to the noble 
task of a sovereign interpreter of given ｅxpressions. He felt far 
too modest for the role of a path-finder of life and was far too 
honest for that of a false prophet. 
Cassirer's definition of man as the animal symbolicum is in- 
tended to absorb both of the Aristotelian definitions man as 
the rational and man as the social animal. He considers the first 
definition too narrow, the second too broad: the social character 
of human life needs to be specified by reference to language, 
1X4 Cf. Husserl, "Die Krisis dcr curopaischen Wissenschaften und die Phae- 
nomenologie," Philosofhia, I (1936), 77 ff. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 845 
myth, art, religion, science as "the elements and the constitutive 
conditions of this higher form of society." 115 But since this re- 
mark appears only in the 'Summary and Conclusion' of the Essay 
on Man, its implications are not sufficiently elaborated. The dif- 
ferent symbolical forms which are meant to establish the specific 
difference of human social life are not really evinced as means of 
personal intercourse. The communicative function of language, 
e.g., is much less prominent in Cassirer's writings than its repre- 
sentative nature, i.e., its relation to things, its inner form, its pre- 
figuring of scientific concepts. 116 
Besides, it is questionable whether the cultural media in 
which human relationships develop are the only distinctive 
marks of intersubjective and, above all, interpersonal life. There 
are many modes and dimensions of these relationships which 
are, of course, reflected and evolved in myth and language, reli- 
gion and art, but have a structure and dynamics of their own in 
the very actuality and, as it were, welling up of human inter- 
course. These original relations between I, Thou, and We, the 
essential attitudes prevailing between the first, the second and 
the third person, the specific characteristics of social, socially con- 
ditioned, socially addressed acts, etc., are studied in the often 
masterly descriptive analyses of Husserl, Reinach and Scheler, 
Pfaender and Geiger, Edith Stein and Dietrich von Hildebrand, 
Theodor Litt and Karl Loewith. The approach of these scholars 
is more direct, their patience and subtlety of description greater 
than Cassirer's, even though he may be superior to them in the 
careful evaluation of the most modern scientific results. 
VII 
Philosophy and Religion 
Since, according to Cassirer, to know means to relate, the 
whole of being is defined as a net of relations. Man, however, is 
not (or not primarily) defined by his peculiar relationships by 
115 Cassirer, Essay on Man, 251"., 223. 
"'This impression is slightly modified but not overthrown by the discussion 
of the I-Thou relation in Zur Logik der Kulturwissensch&ften (particularly 44), 
a book published in Sweden in 1942 and not available when the present article 
was written. 
846 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
the ways he relates himself and finds himself related to things, 
to his fellows perhaps to God. He is not defined in these ways, 
i.e., his limits are not delineated, his concrete determination is 
not given through the correlations which prevail between re- 
sponsive and responsible beings. 
Since the dialectical, more or less anonymous and almost 
mythical process of objectification and transformation is always 
considered first 117 (even in aesthetics 118 ), personalism also 
personalism in religion has little chance to be embraced in 
this form of anthropology. To be sure, Cassirer recognized re- 
ligion as giving scope to the feeling for individuality} 119 and, 
following Cohen's example, he saw as the meaning and merit of 
Jewish prophetism the insistence on a moral and spiritual rela- 
tionship between God and man the most intimate correlation 
of two persons I and Thou. But, just as in Cassirer the pro- 
phetic spirit is a theme and not an element of thought (as it 
was in H. Cohen), the I-Thou relationship either between 
God and man or within the human sphere proper never be- 
came a pivot of Cassirer's philosophy (in contradistinction to 
Cohen in his old age, Ferdinand Ebner, Franz Rosenzweig, 
Martin Buber, and the theologians around Karl Barth 120 ). 
The nature of this relationship was not expounded by him in 
the thoroughgoing way we find, e.g. (on the basis of sugges- 
tions by Pfaender, Scheler and Reinach), in Kurt Stavenhagen's 
Absolute Stellwngnahmen (1925). Cassirer does not see nor, as 
it were, locate man in this paradoxical and precarious relation 
UT Cf. e.g., Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, II, 289^ 
111 Essay on Man, 141$, 154, 1645 but cf. 226fL 
139 Essay on Man, 96. 
x * The relation between Kant and Cohen on the one hand, the school of Karl 
Barth on the other, is mediated through Kant's distinction between the noumenal 
and the phenomenal worlds, corresponding to that between the infinite intellect 
of God and the finite intellect of man, and through Cohen's principle of origin 
(Prinzip des Ursprungs) which is no longer the central problem in Cassirer's 
philosophy. For this relation cf. Heinrich Barth, Das Problem des Ursprungs in der 
platonischen Philosophie (1921), Emil Brunner, Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube 
(1923) and Religionsphilosophie evangelischer Theologie (1927), Max Strauch, 
Die Theologie Karl Earths (1926), H. W. van der Vaart Smith, "Die Schule Karl 
Barths und die Marburger Philosophic," Kantstudien, XXXIV (1929), 333-350. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 847 
between the finite and the Infinite, Without annihilating alto- 
gether the duality involved in any relation as such, he pushes it 
into the direction of a mystic union, where nothing happens to 
the soul that did not happen in it eternally, and where the I and 
the Thou are poles of a movement in which neither of them 
has the status of an independent value. 121 
This account of religious experience, however, neglects the 
essential inequality between the terms of a relation which man 
does not feel able to determine himself, whereas he himself 
feels determined by it} a relation, moreover, in which God is 
grasped by man only when man is 'grasped' by God, and as 
far as God deigns to reveal himself to man. (That is the reason 
why in the Bible man is entitled to give names to all living 
creatures, whereas only God Himself can disclose His own 
name, i.e., His very essence.) 
According to Cassirer man learns to recognize his own 
capacities as a free agent by projecting them into the figure of 
his God. 122 In this way it is man who is understood in the symbol 
of his God, instead of God's being approached, however inade- 
quately, through the human symbols. The God-man relation- 
ship in which man is confronted by another, infinitely superior 
(if not altogether different) being is re-absorbed by one of the 
forms of the cultural process, one of the modes of objectification. 
Offerings and prayers, e.g., 
are typical forms of religious ｅxpression which do not lead from a pre- 
viously determined and well described sphere of the Ego to an equally 
fixed sphere of the divine, but serve to determine either sphere and draw 
the limits between them in always different ways. What the religious 
process takes to be the spheres of the divine and the human are not 
two strictly exclusive realms of being rigidly separated from one another 
at the outset by spatial and qualitative boundaries: rather we are dealing 
here with an original form of the religious spirit's movement the opposite 
poles of which do not cease to flee from and seek one another. 123 
But what is this spirit, if it is not the spirit of man? And 
181 Cf. P^losofMe der symbolischen Formen, II, 28jff, 307. 
1M /***., 252, 261. 
'"/., 283. 
848 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
what is this movement, if it is not the "performance of the 
mythical-religious consciousness" bent on building up its own 
symbolism without recognizing anything beyond itself? 124 
These ideas are contrary to the development neo-Kantianism 
has taken, for instance, in the later Natorp. He protested against 
"drawing the divine into the human realm, the realm of human 
culture." And he revised his own former Religion within the 
Limits of Humanity by "seeking religion not any longer 
within, though just as little without the limits of humanity, but 
precisely in its very limit" the one ultimate limit which marks 
man's difference from the absolute one. 125 
To proclaim the religious experience a form of cultural 
achievement runs counter to two of its mainsprings. First, to the 
neediness of the individual to whom the presence of God is 
proved by yea, consists in His gracious assistance (this is 
implied in the Eheje Asher Eheje of the God of the Bible). 
This dependence on God finds a more specific ｅxpression in 
the second motive: man's reliance on divine mercy because he 
realizes his incapacity to perform satisfactorily the moral task 
of 'objectification' which is assigned to him as a moral agent 
the establishment of the "kingdom of ends." Although man is 
honored by his moral responsibility as a moral agent he bows 
only to the moral law within himself ,he is humbled by the 
facts of his religious consciousness and rehabilitated only from 
above (a statement which needs to be qualified differently in 
different religions). 
These facts have been in the forefront of Cohen's philosophy 
of religion. They recede into the background in Cassirer's 
analysis of religious thought. He took religion for the new 
moral form of ancient mythical contents the spiritualization, 
e.g., of the external purity prescriptions and prohibitions of the 
taboo system. 128 They are not abolished j but what counts in 
religion is only the purity of the heart and the inner obligation. 
Yet this dialectical description will not do. Religion is not only 
the moral transformation Aujhebung of the naive mythical 
124 Cf. Ibid., 291!. 
125 Natorp, Platos Ideetilehre, 2nd edition, 511$ cf. 468. 
136 
Cf. PMlosofhie der symbolise hen Formtn, II, 294) Essay on Man, 103*?. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 849 
consciousness and a declaration of man's moral freedom; it is 
also man's abdication of moral autarchy, his declaration of abso- 
lute dependence. 
But even the purely ethical correlation between I and Thou, 
between man and the Highest in person (the pure and eternal 
form of religious consciousness which Cassirer seemed to recog- 
nize with H. Cohen, presenting as it does the highest trans- 
figuration of formerly mythical motives 127 ) this concrete per- 
sonal relation comes to be weakened and quasi- c neutralized' 
at the end: Cassirer makes it a relation between man and the 
Whole or, rather, between man and the principle (s) of the 
Whole, the laws of the Universe. Thus he shifts the consumma- 
tion of religion to a realm beyond the limits of religious con- 
sciousness itself to the realm of systematic thought: he finds 
it in Leibniz's monadism and in his characteristica univer salts, 
and in Schleiermacher's philosophy of religion. Now 
an event derives its religious significance not any longer from its con- 
tent, but merely from its form ; its character as a symbol does not depend 
on what it is and whence it directly comes, but from the spiritual aspect 
under which it is placed, from the "reference" to the universe which 
it bears thanks to the religious feeling and religious thought. 128 
The neo-Kantian primacy of the method reasserts itself once 
more over against the "inner form" of the original contents of 
experience, and against the very insight which he, like Natorp, 
gained in the nineteen twenties: that the character of any 
synthesis depends on the peculiar nature of its material contents, 
and that "the specific *f orm' of the mythical 'meaning' as well as 
of the theoretical one is expressed, more profoundly and more 
clearly than in any complex formation, in the relatively simple, 
the truly 'primitive' structures." 129 
In a similar way the existential tension which the finite in- 
dividual feels in view of the infinite God is, as it were, shifted 
to the objective sphere: we are told that the religious attitude 
differs from the mythical one by clearly recognizing the in- 
187 Cf. Philosophic der symbolischen Formen II, lySff. 
Ibid., II, 319. 
1W Cassirer, "Zur Theorie dcs Begriffs," Kantstudien, XXXIII (19*8), 136. 
850 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
commensurability between religious image and religious mean- 
ing. 180 The inadequacy of the religious symbol is emphasized by 
Cassirer almost to the point of neglecting the insufficiency of 
the human being. The gap between the human and the divine 
is said to be "created," by consciousness itself in order to be 
closed again by the same consciousness. 181 
As mentioned above, the shortcomings (not of man but) of 
religion are to be made up for by another form of cultural 
creativity by philosophy and art. The tension between image 
and meaning, the fact that the symbol (Sinnbild) cannot wholly 
surpass the limits of sensory appearance (SinnenbilcT) is of the 
very nature of religious experience. In art, however, a perfect 
equilibrium is reached between the spheres of the sensory and 
the spiritual. Here "the image does not appear as a thing by 
itself which, in turn, affects the mind, but has become a pure 
ｅxpression of one's own creative power for the mind." 132 
As represented by the Philosophy of the Symbolical Forms> 
the dialectics of consciousness seems to proceed beyond the re- 
ligious level to issue in philosophy of religion on the one hand, 
and in art on the other. It is doubtful, however, whether either 
art or philosophy is fully equipped to play the superior part 
assigned to it. A phenomenology of art and religion, e.g., will 
have to ask whether the alleged dialectical movement from 
religion to art is not, at least, counterbalanced by a correspond- 
ing movement leading from art to religion. In an article on 
"Art and Religion" I have tried to indicate such an aspect, 
from which art can be considered a prefigurement of religion, 
and the fruit of religious experience appears the ultimate ful- 
filment of the specious promise which is embodied in the flower 
of art. 188 
180 Phllosofhie der $ymbolischen Formen, II, 2 9 off. 
m /***., 2 84. 
1W Ibid.y 320. I refer, however, to note 39 as regards the slightly different 
attitude in a passage of the Essay on Man (151): there "the sense of beauty" is 
taken to be "the susceptibility to the dynamic life of forms." 
** Fritz Kaufmann, "Art and Religion," Philosophy and Phenomenologkal 
Research^ I (1941), 463-469. A somewhat similar position can be found in Paul 
Haeberlin, Allgemeine Aesthetik (1929). 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 851 
It is quite true (as Cassirer stresses repeatedly 134 ) that a work 
of art is the more universal in character, the more deeply indi- 
vidual it proves to be. Yet this universality is not only flavored, 
but also qualified by the individual point of view. Ttye work of 
art incarnates the spirit of the artist's world the world which 
is the common denominator of his impressions and the objective 
correlate of his productive reaction. This universal representa- 
tion gives to his work an inner infinitude which is, neverthless, 
(to speak with Spinoza) an infinitum in suo genere, rather than 
the absolute infinitum. While his point of view serves to 
integrate the phenomena into a whole, the artist cannot but sift 
them, accenting what is essential under his aspect, while neglect- 
ing what does not add to his image of the world. The artist 
conjures up what may be called the genius of the universe; but 
this genius speaks the language and voices the experience of the 
author. Man succeeds in mastering his impressions as far as he 
can extend the mastery of his ｅxpression. 
The religious prophet, on the other hand, is not the author 
of his speech nor does he find 'composure* in the 'composition' 
of his masterwork. He feels himself to be the mouth-piece of a 
voice which is no more his own and speaks in terms which may 
be beyond his grasp. Through the voice of man sounds here that 
of his God. This is a difference of type, of meaning and of claim 
which is to be acknowledged whether or not the disparity be- 
tween the aesthetic experience and the religious one derives 
from two really different existences God and man. This dif- 
ference between the Absolute and the finite is more radical than 
that between two poles within a movement whose dynamics is 
the true Absolute in Cassirer's philosophy. 
The two types of experience in question have to be recog- 
nized as heterogeneous, even though they may be found in a 
personal union. There is the element of poetic fascination in all 
religious ｅxpression, since in God himself the mysterium 
fascinosum is one with the mysterium tremendum. And re- 
ligious art may bear witness not only to some congeniality be- 
** Cf. Preiheit und Form, 312^, 363!?} Kants Leben und Lehre, 3545 Essay on 
Man, 143. 
852 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
tween the artist and the Creator Sprites wundi, but also to 
man's personal response to this spirit and its claims and to his 
trustful invocation of it. In ecstatic experiences, such as Rilke's at 
the time of the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Elegies of Duino 
(experiences which almost destroy the framework of human 
nature), the artist's state of mind comes close to that of the 
prophet though even here the measure of man comes finally 
to prevail. "Denn das Schone ist Nichts als des Schrecklkhen 
Anjang y den wir noch grade ertragen" The poet as such is 
always victorious in his work, whereas the religious person con- 
quers only in his absolute surrender. 
Although the essential differences are clear, the actual 
boundaries between both states are often hidden so as to leave 
a man like Kierkegaard tragically uncertain whether he has only 
the talents of a religious poet or the call of a religious witness. 
But the thirst of the religious person is not satisfied by the 
draughts of poetical imagination. The distinctive gift of man, 
the gift of thinking in terms of open possibilities, 136 needs to be 
complemented by the recognition of an ultimate reality which 
is not a product of objective determination, but the very origin, 
the fiat behind both facts and fieri of experience. 
The reliance on the autonomy of culture with all its symbolic 
forms is challenged by the religious experience in which man 
ceases to exploit his own possibilities. In this experience man 
sees himself determined not only by what amounts to a process 
of self-realization (and self-liberation) 137 or by that anonymous 
process of the "categorial constitution" whose secret author and 
hero he actually is himself, but fundamentally by a power which 
is not only beyond the empirical self but also beyond the multi- 
form unity of transcendental synthesis. 
All this had to be said not in order to substitute for Cas- 
sirer's never fully developed philosophy of religion a sketch 
of our own making, but to show how the implications of this 
cultural immanentism compare to the claims of religious experi- 
138 R. M. Rilke, from the first of the Duineser Elegien. 
186 Cf. Essay on Man, 56-62. 
228. 
NEO-KANTIANISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY 853 
ence. We do not shut our eyes to the possibility that these 
claims cannot be ultimately verified; but their eventual ful- 
filment has to be true to the very nature of the religious inten- 
tions. This is not only a necessary postulate of the phenome- 
nological method a principle which Cassirer would have been 
the last to repudiate; it is an ideal to which HusserPs phenome- 
nology has actually tried to live up even on this point, i.e., in 
spite of his own emphasis on the absoluteness of the process of 
pure consciousness. I am referring to the modest hypothetical 
reflections on the theological problem in the Ideen They 
have been acclaimed even by so strictly Christian thinkers as 
Theodor Haecker 189 and proved instrumental in the beginnings 
of a genuine phenomenology of religion. 
Husserl speaks of God's transcendence in contradistinction to 
that of the Ego and that of the world. None of the three is an 
immanent part of consciousness as such. But, whereas the pure 
Ego and pure consciousness cannot be disconnected, it is differ- 
ent with God and consciousness. Consciousness is confronted by 
God just as it is confronted by the world; yet these two forms 
of transcendence belong to opposite dimensions: God's trans- 
cendence is "as it were the polar opposite to the transcendence 
of the world." But whereas, according to Husserl, the real 
world is relative to pure consciousness, God as the ordering 
principle of absolute consciousness would be absolute himself 140 
though again in a different sense both from the absoluteness of 
myself qua Ego of the phenomenological reduction and from 
that of the Alter Ego, or rather, all the other "transcendental 
Egos" who are "constituted" within my consciousness by way 
of empathy, yet recognized as being essentially my equals. 141 
The divine being "would be an 'Absolute' in a sense entirely 
different from the absoluteness of consciousness while, on the 
other hand, it is a transcendent being in an entirely different 
188 Husserl, Idten zu einer reinen Phaenomenologie und fhaenomenologischen 
Philosofhie, 961", nof. 
180 Cf. e.g., Haecker*s Nachwort to Kierkegaard's Der Begriff des 
344*- 
140 Husserl, Ideen, 96. 
141 Husserl, Meditations Cartetitnnts, Meditation V. 
854 FRITZ KAUFMANN 
sense from that in which the world is understood to be trans- 
cendent." 142 
What holds for "absolute consciousness" in Husserl's sense, 
applies a fortiori to finite human consciousness. The recognition 
of such an absolute transcendence would doom the enterprise of 
a predominantly 'humanistic' anthropology like Cassirer's. It 
would make it impossible to write an Essay on Man with ex- 
clusive regard to a 'Philosophy of Human Culture' and would, 
thus, prevent an idolization of the cultural process the danger 
which threatens this neo-Kantian idealism. Man's true nature 
would not be seen in his cultural achievements alone, but in his 
failures and limitations as well. And but this assertion has to 
be made true, in order to be true man would be at his best 
where culture becomes cult again: a praise of the Highest and an 
offering to Him: 
". . . . die Erde grunt 
Und stille vor den Sternen tiegt, den 
Betenden gleich in den Staub geworjen, 
Frehuillig uberwunden die lange Kunst 
Vor jenen U nnachahmbaren da; er selbst 
Der Mensch mit eigner Hand zerbrachy die 
Hohen zu ehren, sein Werk der Kiinstler." 1 * 3 
FRITZ KAUFMANN 
DEPARTMENT OP PHILOSOPHY 
THE UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO 
142 Husscrl, Ueen, m. 
** Holderlin, "Stimme des Volks." 
Ernst Cassirer 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" IN CONTEMPORARY 
PHILOSOPHY 
HOCSKOLA 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" IN CONTEMPORARY 
PHILOSOPHY* 
A MONG the minor works of Heinrich von Kleist may be 
JL^L found a brief essay in which the author has succeeded in 
setting forth one of the philosophical problems of his era with 
all the brevity and succinctness, all the cogency and penetration 
which mark his incomparable prose style. Kleist attains this 
pregnancy of thought by capturing content of it in the form of 
a tale by the telling and creation of which the whole art of the 
epic poet is revealed. He starts out from the recollection of an 
occurrence which he depicts as one experienced by himself. A 
youth, excelling not only in physical beauty but also in the 
naturalness of his whole bearing and demeanor, comes to lose 
this attractiveness the moment he accidentally becomes aware 
of it 5 and once lost, it proves to be irrecoverable by will-power 
or by any conscious effort. The consequence which Kleist draws 
from this is that nature and consciousness, beauty and reflective 
thought belong to different realms and stand in a relation of 
polar tension and opposition to each other. Insofar as the one 
comes to the fore, the other must give way. Confronted by the 
bright daylight of consciousness, by reflection's piercing ray 
which strikes it to the heart, beauty must needs pale and vanish. 
"We can see that just insofar as reflection grows weaker and 
more obscure, in the organic world, beauty emerges all the 
brighter and more overpowering. Nevertheless, just as two 
lines diverging from a point, extended to infinity, will suddenly 
come together again on the other sidej or, just as the image in 
* From the original German essay, " 'Geist* und 'Leben' in der Philosophic 
der Gegenwart," which appeared in Die Nfue Rundschau (Berlin und Leipzig, 
1930 I, pp. 244-264), translated specifically for this volume by Robert Walter 
Bretall and Paul Arthur Schilpp. 
857 
858 ERNST CASSIRER 
a concave mirror, when extended to the infinite, suddenly 
emerges again directly before us: even so, when knowledge 
has, so to speak, traversed the infinite, beauty once again will 
disclose itself, so that simultaneously it will appear in its purest 
form in that human organism which either is without con- 
sciousness at all or has an infinite consciousness i.e., in the 
marionette or in God." For man, once driven from the paradise 
of immediacy man who has once partaken of the tree of 
knowledge and therewith has forever left behind the limits of 
merely natural existence, of life which is unconscious of itself 
for man it follows that he must traverse his appointed orbit, 
in order at the end of his road to find his way back again to its 
beginning. That is the fate imposed by our "circular world." 
"Paradise is bolted fast, and the cherub far behind us; we must 
travel around the world and see whether perchance an entrance 
can be found somewhere from the rear." 
Kleist's essay, "The Marionette Theatre," appeared in the 
Berliner Abendblatter in 1810 and is thus well over 100 years 
old. But if some one came upon it today who did not know its 
original author, he might well imagine that the writer belongs 
to our own time so clearly does he mirror the problematic 
character of our anthropology today, of our philosophical doc- 
trine of man. At once all the well-known names and works of 
present-day philosophy press for comparison: in this trend we 
see once again how deep the roots of our "modern" and most 
up-to-date philosophical thinking go down into the soil of 
Romanticism, and how, consciously or unconsciously, they all 
depend upon Romantic prototypes. Today anew the great 
antithesis of "Nature" and "Spirit," the polarity of "Life" and 
"Knowledge," looms as the very centre of philosophical specu- 
lation and it is still in terms of Romantic concepts and Ro- 
mantic categories that the problems are posed and their solu- 
tion is sought. But really the conflict seems to have been 
sharpened, and the contradiction stands before us even more 
definitive and inexorable than in the days of Romanticism. For 
in order to meet this contradiction, however sharply it might 
be set forth, Romantic philosophy has always held ready a 
definite metaphysical solution and reconciliation: in the last 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 859 
analysis, by way of various mediations, the contradiction runs 
squarely into the underlying concept of the "Identity philoso- 
phy." "What we call Nature/ 1 as Schelling puts it in his 
System of Transcendental Idealism, "is a poem which lies locked 
up in a wonderful, secret script. Yet the riddle could be solved, 
if we would but learn to recognize the spirit's Odyssey as, 
wondrously deceptive, it seeks itself in continual flight from it- 
self." From any such solution of the riddle, from any such 
aesthetic harmonizing of the contradiction between Nature and 
Spirit, modern philosophy is far removed. It recognizes and 
permits, on this point, no purely aesthetic compromise, but 
rather seeks to apprehend and to tear open for us the chasm 
between the two worlds in all its yawning depth. Thus espe- 
cially in the writing of Ludwig Klages, where the problem has 
been given its most pointed ｅxpression, Spirit appears as a 
power which in the very depths of its being is anti-divine and 
hostile to Life. "Consciousness" and "Life," "cogitare" and 
"esse" remain sundered from each other at the very root of 
their being. Having given himself to the domination of Spirit, 
man sets himself at variance with Life and entrusts himself to 
vampiric forces which enter into the music of the spheres as a 
piercing dissonance. 

one feels it almost as a redemption from this magic-mythical 
web in which Klages 5 theory of consciousness threatens to en- 
tangle us, when we shift our attention from this to the basic 
doctrines of Max Scheler's "Anthropology," as developed in 
his latest philosophical writings, particularly in his book, Die 
Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. 1 A presentation, and inter- 
pretation and critical examination of these basic doctrines re- 
mains indeed an audacious undertaking. For Scheler's Anthro- 
pology remained fragmentary; we still do not know whether 
we shall ever possess it in all the breadth and fulness in which 
he himself had originally planned and conclusively envisaged 
it. only a few brief sketches of the project as a whole were 
published by Scheler himself; only a few of the major lines 
1 First appearing under the title, "Die Sonderstellung des Menschen," in the 
collection of essays, Mensch und Erde; now published separately (Otto Reichl 
Verlag, Darmstadt). 
860 ERNST CASSIRER 
of demarcation were drawn and firmly laid down. We must try 
to hold to these lines of demarcation in order to use them as 
guide-posts to the new world of ideas which opened up to 
Scheler during the last few years of his life. What makes 
Scheler's solution so distinctive, and also, at first glance, so 
paradoxical and foreign to our customary thought-patterns, is 
this: in no wise does he seek to reconcile "Life" and "Spirit" 
or to overcome the dualism between the two} but he succeeds 
nonetheless in drawing a totally different picture of the real 
meaning and significance of this dualism, of this original cleav- 
age of Being within itself, from that presented by traditional 
Western metaphysics. From this tradition he parts company 
in two respects. on the one hand he absolutely forswears any 
and all attempts at a monistic "identity-philosophy," whether 
of the speculative or of the empirical-scientific variety. Accord- 
ing to Scheler there is no such thing as an evolution leading 
from bare Life to Spirit, no such thing as a gradual emergence 
of the latter out of the former. "The new principle," he empha- 
sizes, "which makes man truly man, is something that stands 
entirely outside the realm of what can be called 'Life' ... in 
even its most inclusive sense. That which makes mankind truly 
human is a principle standing in direct opposition to all Life qua 
Life, and which, as such, cannot in any way be traced back to 
'the natural evolution of life'." That this is so, that in all those 
activities which are usually embraced under the term "Spirit," 
what we have is not any simple extension of the functions of Life 
as such, nor so to speak any tranquil emergence therefrom, but 
on the contrary a resolute reversal of Life's basic direction: 
according to Scheler this much is shown, above all, in that just 
the aforementioned activities, measured in terms of bare Life, 
are not positive but negative in kind. What makes itself felt in 
them is no intensification of Life's natural forces, but rather 
their obstruction, a giving pause and a turning aside from every- 
thing toward which Life is oriented, when Life is conceived 
purely as impulse, purely in its own sphere and according to 
the principle of its own dynamic motion. Man is not wholly 
man until he executes this turning aside until he is no longer 
tied and bound fast to the wheels and engines of purely vital 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 86 1 
events, but is able to view them from a vantage-point outside 
and above. 
The basic determination of a spiritual being, according to 
Scheler, is consequently his existential disengagement, his free- 
dom, his release from confinement, from compulsion, from 
dependence upon the organic. "Such a Spiritual' being is not 
longer bound to impulse or to his environing world, but free 
from it and, as we should like to call it, open to the world. Such 
a being may be said to have a 'world;' he is able to raise to the 
status of 'objects' those centres of resistance and reaction origi- 
nally presented to him by his environment (in which environ- 
ment the animal ecstatically loses itself), and even to grasp 
the very quintessence of these 'objects' in their essential being, 
without the limitations of experiencing this world of objects 
or its 'givenness' via the apparatus of vital impulses and via its 
sense functions and organs. Hence Spirit is objectification, the 
capacity of determination through the essence of things as such. 
And such a being is a 'carrier' of Spirit, whose principal inter- 
course with reality outside itself has dynamically reversed itself 
completely in its relation to the animal." By means of highly 
original and epistemologically weighty and fruitful trains of 
thought Scheler seeks to show how precisely the fundamental 
cognitive functions those functions to which we are indebted 
for the construction of an "objective" world in any proper 
sense measured purely by reference to Life's relational 
system, exhibit a negative prefix. "Pure" space and "pure" time, 
for example, are nothing but schemata i.e., empty forms of 
cognition. Manifestly neither one has any positive content; 
neither are they "objects" in the sense that effects flow from 
them or can be wrought upon them. on the other hand, they 
are clearly not a mere nothing: rather it is in this their very 
negativity, in this basic opposition of theirs to anything real, 
that they possess an entirely definite meaning, which is a neces- 
sary function for the theoretical formation and for the theoreti- 
cal cognition of reality. This function depends upon the fact that 
empty space and empty time are pure forms of order forms 
which apply not only to the actual, but extend beyond that to 
the possible. Space as Leibniz already defined it is the order 
862 ERNST CASSIRER 
of all possible togetherness, just as time is the order of all 
possible successiveness. This concept of the possible which 
Leibniz first used to open up the realm of the Ideal, the region 
of "eternal truths" from the standpoint of philosophical 
anthropology now reveals itself as a quite peculiar, a specifically 
human concept. What perhaps differentiates man most sharply 
from the beast, according to Scheler, is just this, that he is not 
fast bound to the actuality of the moment which surrounds him, 
and that he is not held by it, but is capable of the free contem- 
plation of the Possible. "The animal is as little able to separate 
the empty form of space and time from the specific content of 
things in its environment, as it is to abstract 'number' from the 
greater or lesser 'quantity' of things themselves. It lives entirely 
in the concrete actuality of its specious present. only when the 
instinctive expectations, transforming themselves into motivat- 
ing impulses, gain the ascendancy over everything which is 
[merely] factual instinctive fulfilment in perception or sensa- 
tion, does there take place in man the exceedingly unique phe- 
nomenon that spatial and also temporal emptiness appear to 
precede and to be the foundation of all possible contents of per- 
ception and of the whole world of material objects." 
Thus again we see the antithesis between "Life" and "Spirit" 
stressed as sharply as possible and rigorously carried out 
nevertheless, in the definition of the basic relationships of the 
two to each other, the prefix, so to speak, has now been changed. 
For Scheler has not the slightest doubt concerning the superi- 
ority and sovereignty of the spirit in the metaphysical hierarchy 
and order of values. one thing only he emphasizes that this 
superiority in point of value be in no way equated with superi- 
ority in point of existence or efficacy. Rather we encounter here 
another peculiar antithesis, and one which seems at last destined 
to trace the dualism of Life and Spirit down to its very deepest 
roots. Scheler most resolutely opposes the doctrine that the 
higher value, in the totality of being and becoming, must also 
be endowed with the greater strength. Over against this opti- 
mistic viewpoint he sets the sharply contradictory thesis: the 
Spirit, or the Idea, in which a supreme value seems collected and 
concentrated, is, precisely because of this fact, by no means 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 863 
commensurable in terms of power, of immediate actuality and 
efficacy, with Life and with the merely vital forces. As we have 
seen, man was defined by Scheler as the living being who is 
capable of assuming a primarily ascetic attitude toward his own 
life. Compared to animals, who always say "Yes" to whatever 
happens to be, even when they are repelled and are running 
away, man is "the being who is able to say <No'," "the ascetic 
toward Life," the everlasting protestant against sheer actuality. 
"Here, however, arises the decisive question: does the Spirit 
arise out of ascesis y repression, and sublimation or does it 
merely derive its energy from these? In the answer to this 
question lies a radical parting of the ways. It is my own con- 
viction that the being of the Spirit in no way hinges on this 
negative activity, this 'No' to actuality, but only, as it were, its 
supply of energy and therewith its ability to manifest itself." 
Hence the Spirit, as Scheler understands it, is at the outset abso- 
lutely powerless. All the power of which it can avail itself in its 
struggle with Life stems not from itself; it must rather, in a 
unique roundabout way, wrest it from the realm of Life itself, 
step by step, through just that act of asceticism and impulse- 
sublimation. Erroneous, according to Scheler, is that theory 
which originates in the Greek conception of Spirit and of the 
Idea the doctrine of the "inherent power of the Idea," its 
inner strength and activity, its independent efficacy. True, the 
Spirit may gradually attain power to the degree that Life's im- 
pulses enter into its lawfulness: "but to begin with and in its 
original form, the Spirit has not energy of its own." Hence the 
Spirit must be content with pointing Life's forces toward a 
definite goal, in terms of its own ideational structures and mean- 
ings; but it is not the Spirit's own task to produce this goal. The 
promised land to which it points is and remains a land of mere 
promise. At no other point, perhaps, does Scheler's theory 
diverge so clearly from that of Hegel, which comes to a focus 
precisely in this one thought, the conviction that the Idea is not 
merely a task, but a "substantial power." "Human spirit and 
human volition" Scheler emphasizes, over against Hegel 
"can never mean more than guidance and direction." And this 
means simply that the Spirit, as such, presents Ideas to the 
864 ERNST CASSIRER 
impulsive forces} but not that it introduces any original potency 
of its own for the realization of these Ideas. Consequently, this 
is how the goal and the true meaning of human evolution now 
appear: "the mutual penetration of the originally impotent 
Spirit and the originally demonic Impulses (i.e., one which, as 
over against all spiritual Ideas and values, is blind) . . . and 
the simultaneous empowering, i.e., enlivening, of the Spirit is 
the final End and Goal of all finite being and becoming which 
Theism mistakenly posits as the point of departure." 
II 
Here, however, two questions arise to which, as far as I can 
see, this firmly joined and internally coherent system of 
Scheler's anthropology no longer affords any answer. First of 
all: if Life and Spirit belong to entirely disparate worlds if 
they are completely foreign to each other in their nature as well 
as in their origin how is it possible that they nevertheless can 
accomplish a perfectly homogeneous piece of work, that they 
co-operate and interpenetrate in constructing the specifically 
human world, the world of "meaning"? Is this interpenetration 
to use a word which Lotze once coined in another epistemo- 
logical connection nothing more or less than a "happy acci- 
dent"? How can it be explained that the forces of Life the 
purely vital, impulsive urges in Scheler's sense permit them- 
selves to be diverted from their own paths and to take that 
other, precisely opposite direction, which the law of the Spirit 
demands? True, Scheler emphasizes the fact that the Spirit by 
no means directly breaks in or infringes upon the world of Life 
that it has no force of its own to set over against the force of 
Life's impulses, but that it is content to function in a purely 
symbolic manner, by pointing and showing the way. The Ideas 
are not efficacious; they merely lead and direct; they illumine 
the course of Life, but they do not compel it to take a certain 
direction. But in spite of all this: how is Life capable of even 
seeing the Ideas which the Spirit holds up to it and of directing 
its way by them, as by starry constellations, if its pristine nature 
be defined as mere impulse, i.e., as spiritually blind? If we are 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 865 
to gain an answer to this question, within the framework of 
Scheler's anthropology, we must, it seems, risk a leap into the 
darkj we must refer back to the unity of the metaphysical 
world-ground the ground which nevertheless unites what to 
us is and remains manifestly heterogeneous and knits it into 
a single whole. Scheler himself, at one point in his essay on 
"Die Stellung des Menschen," has pointed the way toward some 
such solution. He stresses the idea that the Spirit absolutely 
never can be derived from Life or explained in terms of Life, 
since it is rather a principle standing in opposition to all Life 
as such, so that it must fall back, if on anything at all, upon the 
supreme Ground of things themselves. However widely Spirit 
and Life may diverge, for us, in all their phenomenal forms 
and appearances, there always remains nonetheless the possi- 
bility that the two may meet at some infinitely distant point 
that they may, in some manner unknown to us, be held together 
in that X which is the ultimate ground of the universe. But 
with such an answer the Gordian knot is really not so much 
untied as cut. It is remarkable that Scheler, with all the evident 
originality and excellence of his last philosophical works, is here 
thrown back upon problems which belong to the very oldest 
stratum of the metaphysical thinking and self-reflection of man- 
kind. Already his conception of "Spirit" as such, in its very 
wording and original definition, is unmistakably reminiscent 
of Aristotle's, and Scheler confronts us with the same internal 
difficulties in which the Aristotelian doctrine of Spirit finally 
ensnares us. Aristotle's Spirit, or vou^ i s related to the lower 
mental faculties, to the forces of the purely vital sphere to 
sense-perception, memory and ideation not as an additional 
member of the same evolutionary series, but rather as super- 
ordinate to them all: it enters into the world of Life and of 
psychical being "from without." Here, however, burst upon us 
all those questions with which the entire metaphysics and the 
whole psychology of the Middle Ages, and thereafter the psy- 
chology of the Renaissance, wrestled on and on, and which even 
today, as the structure of Scheler's anthropology shows, seem 
not yet to have been definitively silenced. How is the Spirit able 
866 ERNST CASSIRER 
to exert any effect on a world to which it does not itself belong j 
how can the transcendence of the Idea be reconciled with the 
immanence of Life? 
For Aristotle himself the answer to this question is supplied 
by his system of teleology. The Aristotelian God who is con- 
ceived as pure Spirit without admixture of anything material, 
as actus purus, as "thought thinking thought" nevertheless 
moves the world: but he does so not in a mechanical way, not 
through any external impetus, but rather because, as the Su- 
preme Form, he also constitutes the purpose towards which the 
universe itself is striving as the goal of its own self-realization. 
Thus God moves the world not through physical force, but "as 
the beloved object moves the lover." This interpretation (so 
profound and beautiful in itself) of the relation between God 
and the world, between Idea and Life, is, however, no longer 
useful to Scheler in the last phase of his philosophy; it is, 
for him, antiquated and superseded. He charges the "classical 
theory" of the Spirit, as developed in ancient Greece, with 
precisely this, that in its consequences it has led "to the untena- 
ble nonsense of a so-called teleological Weltanschauung" as it 
has dominated the whole theistic philosophy of the Occident. 
But failing this classical, theistic-teleological solution of the 
problem what other solution remains? How is it to be ex- 
plained that Life follows the pattern set before it by the Idea 
if there is not contained in Life itself an immanent "trend 
toward the Idea" if (to speak in Platonic terms) a yearning 
for the Idea and striving toward it were not already prevalent in 
the phenomenal world? May not Life, after all, be something 
other and something more than mere impulse, more than a drive 
into the indeterminate and the aimless? Does there not exist 
originally within Life itself the Will to attain its own self- 
portrayal, its own self-objectification, its own "visibility"? And 
on the other hand: must not the Spirit even if one ascribes to it 
no original energy of its own and confines its activity merely to 
the inhibiting of the natural, purely vital forces must not the 
Spirit, even in this inhibiting, still be something positively 
determinate and something positively effective? How could 
even this stoppage, this unique damming up of Life's forces 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 867 
and impulses ever succeed, if, from the very beginning, the 
Spirit were entirely impotent? The problem of the opposition 
between Life and Spirit, as posed in modern metaphysics, is 
strikingly reminiscent in more ways than one of that set of 
problems in the older metaphysics which centered around the 
mind-body problem. As greatly different as is the mere content 
of the questions in these two cases, the essential, purely methodi- 
cal motives repeat themselves in both instances in a peculiar 
way. Thus immediately alongside Scheler's answer to the ques- 
tion concerning the unification of Life and Spirit we may place 
Descartes' answer to the question of the unification, the "union" 
of body and soul. Descartes begins with the proposition that the 
soul can neither beget any new force in the field of bodily events, 
nor destroy any force already extant: for the realm of bodily 
events constitutes a homogeneous, tightly closed causal system, 
which is determined by a strict law of conservation, by the law 
of constancy of momentum in the universe. Thus the soul, of 
itself, can neither create any physical energy nor can it destroy 
any already in existence. only one possibility remains to the 
soul, according to Descartes, and this is that it may determine 
and under certain conditions alter the direction of these move- 
ments operating in the physical realm} and it is supposed to be 
precisely this change of direction, which marks the souPs in- 
fluence upon the body, and to which this effect is confined. The 
objection which remained standing against this solution of the 
mind-body problem, and which was at once raised by Leibniz, 
lay just in the fact that even this mere change of direction 
necessarily demands a certain definite expenditure of energy, 
without which it is inconceivable. Quite analogously, even that 
process of mere inhibition which, with Freud, Scheler calls the 
sublimation of life would be incomprehensible and impossible, 
were the Spirit, which is to effect this result, in its essence to be 
thought of as totally impotent. Even this inhibition must ulti- 
mately go back to some sort of positive factor and to some posi- 
tive impulse. If one takes the "Spirit" exclusively in the sense 
of Scheler's original definition, it will never be able in any way 
to effect anything beyond itself. Of it, Faust's saying would hold 
strictly true: 
868 ERNST CASSIRER 
The god that dwells within my soul 
Can stir to life my inmost deeps. 
Full sway o'er all my powers he keeps, 
But naught external can he e'er control. 2 
When Life is once defined as the "wholly other," as the contra- 
dictory opposite of Spirit, it becomes impossible to see how this 
contradiction can ever be resolved how the Spirit's summons 
is not to die away in emptiness, but is still to be heard in the 
sphere of Life and to be understood there. 
Ill 
Herewith we at once arrive at a very general question which 
must be put to Scheler's projected philosophical anthropology. 
Does there really obtain this relationship of strict opposition, 
i.e., a genuine logical disjunction between the "classical" doc- 
trine, which Scheler combats, and his own basic point of view 
between the view which grants the Spirit absolute substantial 
power over all actuality and, on the other hand, that which sees 
it as a principle "powerless" from the very beginning? Such 
would only be the case, if the concept of "power" itself were a 
completely definite, logically entirely unambiguous concept, so 
that we could be quite certain it was being taken in exactly the 
same strictly circumscribed sense in both theses of the disjunc- 
tion. But it is precisely this presupposition which seems not to 
be fulfilled in this case. A keener analysis of HegePs, as well as 
of Scheler's, concept of "power" seems to me to indicate that 
there exists here an equivocation which must first be cleared up, 
if we wish to lay bare the distinctive, the fundamental problem 
which is in question at this point. Scheler himself does not? 
distinguish between efficient energy and that kind which might 
be called jormatvue energy or energy of pure formation. Yet 
between the two there is an essential and very specific difference. 
Efficient energy aims immediately at man's environment, 
whether it be in order to apprehend it as it actually is and take 
possession of it, or in order to alter its course in some definite 
direction. Formative energy, on the other hand, is not aimed 
"Lines 1566 to 1569 (incl.) of Goethe's Faust, First Part, as translated by 
George Madison Priest (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1941), 46. 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 869 
directly at this outer environment, but rather remains self- 
contained: it moves within the dimension of the pure "image," 
and not in that of "actuality." Here the human spirit does not 
directly turn against objects, but rather weaves itself into a 
world of its own, a world of signs, of symbols and of meanings. 
And herewith it really forfeits that immediate oneness which, 
in the lower animals, unites "observing" and "effecting." This 
is perhaps one of the most characteristic traits of the animal 
world, of its organic firmness and its inner organic health, 
that in it this unity is most strictly preserved. The world of the 
Spirit, on the contrary, does not come into existence until the 
stream of Life no longer merely flows freely, but is held back 
at certain points until Life, instead of unceasingly giving birth 
to new Life and consuming itself in these very births, gathers 
itself together into enduring forms and projects these forms 
out of and in front of itself. Herein seems to me to lie the truth 
of Scheler's fundamental position: that by no mer quantita- 
tive increase, enhancement or intensification of Life can we ever 
attain the realm of the Spirit, but that in order to gain entrance 
into this sphere a turnabout and return, a change of "mind" 
and of direction are necessary. But from this it by no means 
follows that in its peculiar, constitutive principle the Spirit 
would have to be understood as completely powerless, as utterly 
static and as "the ascetic of Life." Indeed the Spirit would not 
be capable of bringing Life to this relative stand-still, which in a 
certain sense marks the beginning of all "understanding," if it 
did not have some power of its own to set over against Life, 
power which is not borrowed from Life, but which it draws from 
the depths of its own being. The mediate activity of form- 
creation, to be sure, differs from the immediate activity of work 
and deed in the direction which it takes and in the goal at which 
it aims; but it is, no less than the other, pure activity, actus purus. 
The genuine "ideas" according to Spinoza, and this is true 
not only of the ideas involved in pure cognition, but also of the 
creations of language and the arts, of myth and religion stand 
there not like silent pictures on a blackboard} they bring them- 
selves into being, and in this their act of self-generation they 
afford at the same time a new intuition into "objective" reality. 
870 ERNST CASSIRER 
From this functional character of pure Form i.e. y from the 
circumstance that it ever exists only insofar as it continually re- 
creates itself it first becomes wholly clear how and why each 
form is antithetical in itself why a necessary polarity must 
reside therein. It is always a double movement that works itself 
out here: a continuous alternation of the forces of attraction and 
repulsion. "There is no surer way of evading the world than 
through art," so says Goethe, "and there is no surer way of 
binding oneself to it than through art." This double determina- 
tion applies to every kind of creative activity and of "symbolic 
formation." This formative activity always begins by holding 
off the world, as it were, at a distance and by erecting a barrier 
between the I and the world. In the purely vital sphere no such 
division has yet taken place. Here action immediately follows 
action j effect is followed by counter-effect, from which again a 
new effect arises. Even relatively very complicated instinctive 
actions of animals appear to be nothing other than such "reflex 
chains." But with the first dawning of spirituality in man this 
kind of immediacy is a thing of the past. Henceforth, the ten- 
sion between the I and its environment is not resolved with a 
single stroke, the spark between the two no longer leaps over 
directly; rather it is mediated in a way which, instead of leading 
through the world of event and action, proceeds by way of 
creative formation. only at the end of this long and difficult 
way of inner formation does actuality again come into the 
purview of man. In his research into anthropoid intelligence 
Kohler has shown that the highest achievement which can 
possibly be expected of an animal is the art of the "detour" 
and that even the highest animals learn this art only with 
great difficulty and to a very limited degree. Compared to this, 
the world of the human Spirit, as built up in language and in 
the use of tools, in artistic representation and conceptual knowl- 
edge, is nothing other than the persistent, continuously expand- 
ing and refined "art of the detour." More and more man learns 
to set the world aside, in order to draw it to himself and more 
and more these two basic antithetical directions of efficient action 
come to melt, for him, into one homogeneous activity, both sides 
of which, like inhaling and exhaling, reciprocally condition one 
another. Man must retreat into the world of "unreality," into 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 871 
the world of appearance and of play, in order therein and there- 
by to conquer the world of reality. For aesthetic theory, this 
basic insight was set forth above all by Schiller, and developed 
by him in all its ramifications. From this point of view Schiller's 
"Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind" looms up as 
one of the fundamental writings on which modern philosophical 
anthropology is also based. Here is the root of that famous idea 
(Begriffserklarung) in which Schiller seeks to express man's 
essential nature: "Man only plays when he is man in the fullest 
sense of the word, and he is only fully man when he plays." 
This pregnant explanation of man's being is, however, expressly 
limited by Schiller to the aesthetic sphere: according to him 
man should only play with beauty, but also he should play only 
with beauty. But if we take the concept of play as broadly as 
possible, this limitation [to aesthetics] turns out to be unsound 
and unnecessary. Rather one may venture the paradox that not 
only the sphere of beauty but also that of truth is first wholly 
disclosed to man by the play-function. In one of the deepest and 
most fruitful sections of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, it is 
shown that the function of pure reason, if it is not to remain 
empty, has need of another function as its completion and neces- 
sary correlative a function which Kant designates by the name 
of "productive imagination." And he went on to infer that 
everything we are accustomed to call simple sensory "percep- 
tion" is most closely bound up with this function that the pro- 
ductive imagination also forms an "ingredient of every possible 
perception." If this is so, then what we call the intuition of "the 
actual" does not occur without the outlook and prospective 
glance into "the possible" then furthermore, the construction 
of the "objective" world of experience is dependent upon the 
original formative powers of the Spirit and upon the funda- 
mental laws according to which they act. 
IV 
It is impossible to enter into the weighty and decisive conse- 
quences for epistemology which follow from this basic view- 
point. 8 If we return, instead, to our starting-point once more, 
1 1 have tried to draw these consequences in another place, the third volume 
of my Philosophic der symbolischen Formen (published by Bruno Cassirer). 
872 ERNST CASSIRER 
to the way in which the problem is posited in Scheler's philo- 
sophical anthropology, we shall then be able to define more 
sharply the basic thesis of this anthropology, both positively 
and negatively. What Scheler saw and what even in the brief 
sketch of his anthropology which is all we have had until now 
with his extraordinary dialectical power and mastery, he has 
succeeded in working out, is precisely that tension, that ir- 
reconcilable difference, that antithesis which holds between the 
region of "Spirit" and that of "Life." Here he successfully dis- 
misses every attempt at a comfortable "monistic" solution. 
Scheler, however, does not stop with the primary and methodi- 
cal contradiction herein demonstrated: he goes on immediately 
to another, metaphysical contradiction which for him arises out 
of the former an antithesis not between functions but between 
real powers of Being. The metaphysical concept of "being," how- 
ever, is marked by this peculiarity, that it possesses a strongly 
absolutistic character. Within it there is basically no room for 
"being" of a different stamp and different type of meaning. 
Rather we are led sooner or later to a simple "either-or" to 
that "crisis" between being and non-being by which the first 
great thinker of Western metaphysics, Parmenides, already 
found himself confronted. In Scheler's philosophical anthro- 
pology, too, this fate of metaphysics is borne out anew in a 
rather singular and remarkable way. What Scheler gives to the 
Spirit he must take away from Life; what he allots the latter 
he must deny the former. Thus for him originally a Spirit 
hostile to Life and a Life blind to Ideas stand confronting one 
another only in order then to be drawn to each other after all, 
and, as if by a miracle, to "find their way back to each other." 
The Spirit, powerless in itself, and without drawing upon its 
own resources, but sheerly through its presence (Daseiri) and 
nature (So-Seiri), at last steers Life into its own orbit; and Life 
yields itself to the Spirit, it follows the Ideas which are held 
before it, even though these Ideas, seen purely from the stand- 
point of Life, mean nothing more than a diversion from its own 
goal and consequently a definite weakening and obstruction. 
The supreme, yes indeed the only power which man can bring 
to bear, in order to outgrow the realm of mere vitality and 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 873 
attain his distinctive being and his specific worth, is accordingly 
the power of asceticism. That Scheler should impute to ascetic- 
ism this moral-spiritual power is perhaps the only, yet at the 
same time a most significant symptom of the fact that even the 
final "atheistic" phase of his philosophy is still bound as by 
invisible threads to the earlier period of his thinking. But just 
here it seems to me that the actual inner logic of Scheler's 
fundamental position clearly points even beyond the stage to 
which he himself had pursued it in his last works on anthro- 
pology. For it would indeed be comprehensible that asceticism 
might, so to speak, break the path for energies already at hand 
and standing on their own; but not that it could call these 
energies forth, as it were, out of nothing, or that it should be 
able to endow with real strength, in the first place, an in- 
herently impotent principle. For in truth that asceticism which 
is viewed by Scheler at the pre-condition and the point of de- 
parture for all basic phenomena of the Spirit, more closely 
scrutinized, bears not so much an absolute as a definitely relative 
character. Plainly it is no turning away from Life as such, but 
rather an inner transformation and about-face experienced by 
Life itself. This about-face this pathway from "Life" to "the 
Idea" is not marked by rest as opposed to motion; it is no 
quietistic, inherently inactive principle as contrasted with rest- 
less becoming. Rather it is energies of a different order and, as 
it were, of a different dimension which here stand confronting 
one another. The most comprehensive definition of "Spirit" 
set down by Scheler is to the effect that for him Spirit means 
objectivity, "determinability through the essence (So-Sein) of 
things as such." In his activity man is presumed to be deter- 
mined not, like the animals, by the mere reaction to opposing 
forces, but by the intuition of objects and this elevation above 
the circumstantial to the realm of the objective, this pure object- 
existence is supposed to be the most formal category of the logi- 
cal aspect of the Spirit. But as soon as this definition has been 
agreed to, the further question must at once be raised, how pre- 
cisely this fundamental act of objectification is itself possible, 
and by what it is conditioned. The totality of its conditions, it 
seems to me, can be surveyed and exhibited only by entering 
874 ERNST CASSIRER 
into the "in-between" realm of the "symbolic forms," by view- 
ing the many-sided image-worlds which man interposes between 
himself and reality, not in order to remove and thrust the latter 
from him, but in order, by thus gaining distance, to bring it 
properly within the purview of his vision in order to elevate it 
from the merely tangible sphere, which demands immediate 
proximity, to that of the visible. Language and the arts, myth 
and theoretical knowledge, all work together, each according to 
its own inner law, at this process of spiritual "setting at a 
distance:" they are the great stages on the way which leads 
from the Space of grasping and doing, wherein the animal lives 
and remains, as it were, imprisoned, to the Space of intuition 
and thought, to that of the spiritual "horizon." 
Viewed in this perspective, the polarity of Spirit and Life, 
which constitutes the basic idea of Scheler's anthropology, is by 
no means cancelled j but, systematically considered, it now ap- 
pears in a different light. Even in his last works, however 
radical a transformation of his views they may contain, Scheler 
still speaks the language of a definitely realistic metaphysics. He 
sets Spirit and Life over against each other as primeval powers 
of being as real forces which, in a certain way, contend with 
one another for dominion over the whole of reality. In doing 
this, however, a purely functional antithesis is transformed into 
a substantial one from a distinction exhibitable in phenomena 
we are suddenly led to an assertion about the transcendental, 
initial cause. To be sure, Scheler even here remains far removed 
from Klages' mythicizing and demonizing of the Spirit. For 
Scheler the Spirit is demarcated and distinguished precisely by 
the fact that it can never be exhibited as a substantial entity, but 
only in its pure act of functioning, in its living actuality. Just 
because it represents the principle of objectification it can never 
itself become objective, it cannot be defined and comprehended 
in the manner of any objective entity. But in spite of this dis- 
claimer and this critical delimitation, the Spirit, even for 
Scheler, still remains, as it were, a kind of substantive. In him 
too the metaphysical interest in the end takes precedence over 
the purely phenomenological: the Spirit becomes a Being sui 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 875 
standing over and above the being of mere Life. If, 
instead, one understands Life and Spirit not as substantial 
essences set over against one another, but takes both of them 
in the sense of their pure functional activity, the antithesis be- 
tween the two immediately acquires a different meaning. No 
longer need the Spirit be viewed as a principle foreign or hostile 
to all Life, but it may be understood as a turning and about- 
face of Life itself , a transformation which it experiences 
within itself, insofar as it passes from the circle of merely organic 
creativity and formation into the circle of "form," the circle of 
ideal formative activity. 
At this point the fundamental thesis of "Objective Idealism" 
completely maintains its ground, in the face of all the criticism 
which the nineteenth and twentieth centuries', "philosophy of 
life" has urged against it. Especially as concerns Hegel, it 
would be a complete misunderstanding of his system to bring 
against it the reproach that by reason of its panlogistic tendency 
it denies the rights of Life that it has sacrificed the vital 
sphere to that of logic. Even a mere glance at the historical de- 
velopment of the Hegelian doctrine is sufficient to invalidate 
this objection: for it is precisely in the writings of HegePs early 
period that, in connection with his investigations in philosophy 
of history and philosophy of religion, a new, systematically most 
fruitful concept of Life is coined. In the introduction to his 
Phenomenology of Spirit, however, Hegel then, in propositions 
of truly classical formulation, proceeded to carry out the ad- 
vance and to make the definitive break. He now demands that 
the self-contained and closed substantiality of life open up, that 
it spread out and reveal itself: for only in this process and by 
virtue of it can mere substance achieve its "Being-for-itself" 
and become a "subject." "The strength of the Spirit is only as 
great as its ｅxpression; its depth only as deep as in its revelation 
it dares to expand and lose itself." The realization of this princi- 
ple demands not only that Spirit and Life come to know them- 
selves as opposites} but that, at the same time, on account of 
this very opposition, they seek and demand each other. The 
polarity between the two remains, but it loses its appearance of 
876 ERNST CASSIRER 
absolute estrangement. Indeed, if we pass in review the whole 
series of accusations which the modern "philosophy of life" has 
raised against the usurped supremacy of the Spirit, one objec- 
tion immediately obtrudes itself. Who exactly it must be in- 
quired is the plaintiff, and who the defendant in the trial here 
getting under way? It seems as if Life were here brought to 
the bar against the Spirit, in order to defend itself against the 
latter's enroachment, against its violence and its conceit. And 
yet this impression is deceptive for Life as such is self-im- 
prisoned, and in this self-imprisonment is speechless. It has no 
language other than that which the Spirit lends it. Hence, 
wherever it is summoned against the Spirit, the latter in truth 
is always both assailant and defendant, plaintiff and judge in 
one. The real drama takes place not between Spirit and Life, 
but in the midst of the Spirit's own realm, indeed at its very 
focus. For every accusation is a form of predication; every con- 
demnation is a form of judgment; predication and judgment, 
however, are the basic and time-honored functions of the Logos 
itself. In connection with this we may recall that in Greek it is 
one and the same word, one and the same term the term 
xcmQYopeiv and xaTYftopt'a which expresses accusation as well as 
predication in general. All of the passionate speeches of accusa- 
tion against the Spirit, in which modern philosophical literature 
is so rich, cannot make us forget, therefore, that here in truth 
it is not Life striving against the Spirit, but the latter striving 
against itself. And this internal conflict is really its appointed 
fate, its everlasting, inescapable pathos. The Spirit is only, inso- 
far as it turns against itself in this manner; its own unity is 
thinkable only in such contrariety. Hence the Spirit is not only 
as Scheler defines it the ascetic of Life, not only that which 
is able to say "No" to all organic reality; it is the principle 
which within itself may negate itself. And the paradox of its 
nature consists precisely in the fact that this negation does not 
destroy it, but first makes it truly what it is. only in the "No" 
with which it confronts itself does the Spirit break through to 
its own self-affirmation and self-assertion: only in the question 
which it presents to itself does it become truly itself. Montaigne 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 877 
said once that man is the enigmatic animal who is capable of 
hating himself: an anomaly and a contradiction for which no 
precedent exists anywhere else in the realm of nature. Nature 
knows suffering and death, destruction and annihilation ; but it 
knows nothing of that self-disintegration whereby man turns 
against himself. As the being who alone is capable of question- 
ing, man is also the being who is and remains to himself 
thoroughly problematical, the being eternally worthy of ques- 
tioning. In this sense all those who, in the name of Life, bring 
the Idea into court, remain, to use HegePs ｅxpression the 
"agents of the Idea," for just this passing of judgment upon 
itself is nothing but a primeval phenomenon and an imperative, 
a categorical demand of Spirit ; and from this setting of the 
problem it necessarily follows that precisely the Spirit's own 
accusers must in the end become its custodians and its witnesses. 
This fundamental situation emerges most clearly and most 
definitely perhaps, if we endeavor to grasp it by way of Lan- 
guage and to throw light upon it from the basic and peculiar 
spiritual structure of the latter. It can be said that as long as 
there has been philosophy of language, so long has there also 
been critique of language that the insight into the positive 
strength and the positive meaning of language has always been 
followed by scepticism, as by a shadow. And this doubt about 
language, indeed this despair regarding it, remains by no means 
limited to philosophy; it is not even foreign to the great poets 
and to the greatest coiners of language in the realm of poetry. 
In a well-known Venetian epigram Goethe complained of the 
fact that, bound as he was to the medium of the German lan- 
guage, he unfortunately had to corrupt both life and art by 
having to use this "worst of material." But among his works 
there is also to be found another poem, entitled "Language," 
which, compared with this epigram figures as its polar opposite 
and palinode: 
What's "rich," what's "poor"! What's "strong" and "weak"! 
Is rich the treasure in the buried urn? 
878 ERNST CASSIRER 
Is strong the sword within the arsenal ? 
Grasp gently, then, and benign fortune 
Flows, Godhead, out from Thee; 
T'ward victory, might, reach for the sword 
And glory o'er thy neighbors. 4 
Here again the feeling of the true language-coiner breaks 
through: the feeling that, essentially, language is only what the 
momentary impulse, the animating and life-giving moment, 
makes out of it. Its meaning and value depend not on what it 
may be "in itself," in its metaphysical nature, but on the 
manner of its use, its spiritual employment. For it is not the 
rigid substance of language, but its living, dynamic function, 
which determines this meaning and value. Language is mis- 
judged if it is taken in some way or other as a thinglike being, 
as a substantial medium which interposes itself between man 
and the reality surrounding him. However one were then to 
define this medium more precisely, it always appears neverthe- 
less while wanting to be the connecting link between two 
worlds as the barrier which separates the one from the other. 
However clear and however pure a medium we may then see 
in language, it always remains true that this crystal-clear 
medium is also crystal-hard that however transparent it may 
be for the ｅxpression of ideas, it still is never wholly penetrable. 
Its transparency does not remove its impenetrability. But this 
misgiving vanishes the moment we remember that basically we 
are dealing here with a self-created difficulty that the 
antinomy is grounded not so much in the nature of language 
itself as in an inadequate metaphorical description of its essen- 
tial nature. If, instead of likening Language to an existing thing, 
we understand it rather in the sense of what it really does, if 
*The German original reads as follows: 
Was reich, was arm! Was stark und schwach! 
1st reich vergrabener Urne Bauch? 
1st stark das Schwert im Arsenal? 
Greif milde drein und freundlich Gliick 
Fliesst, Gottheit, von Dir aus, 
Pass an zum Siege, Macht, das Schwert 
Und iiber Nachbarn Ruhm. 
"SPIRIT" AND "LIFE" 879 
we take it, in accordance with Humboldt's injunction, not as an 
erg [quantity of work] but as energy then the problem im- 
mediately assumes a different form. Language then is no longer 
a given, rigid structure} rather it becomes a form-creating 
power, which at the same time has to be really a form-breaking, 
form-destroying one. Even the world of grammatical and syn- 
tactical forms is not merely a kind of firm dike and dam, against 
which the formative, the truly creative forces of language con- 
tinually break. Rather is it the original, creative power of lan- 
guage which floods through this world as well, and which 
supplies it with ever new momentum. In this process the 
hardened forms are also ever and again melted down, so that 
they cannot "clothe themselves in rigid armor 5" but on the 
other hand, only in this process do even the momentary im- 
pulse, the creation of the moment, receive their continuity and 
stability. This creation would, like a bubble, have to dissolve 
before every breath of air if it did not, in the midst of its 
originating and becoming, encounter earlier structures forms 
already originated and in existence to which it may cling and 
hold fast. Thus even this which has already come into being 
is for language not merely material, against which foreign and 
ever stranger material is ever pressing; but it is the product 
and attestation of the same formative powers to which even 
language itself owes its existence. Every single act of speech 
flows again back into the great river-bed of language itself, 
yet without being entirely lost and perishing therein. Instead, 
the stronger was its own individuality, borrowed from the 
originality of its creator, the more it maintains itself and the 
more strongly it transmits itself in such a way that, by means 
of the new momentary impulse, the current as a whole may 
be altered in its direction and intensity, in its dynamics and 
rhythm. To be sure, it is evident that all these turns of expres- 
sion can be nothing other and nothing more than metaphors; 
but, if at all, it is only in dynamic metaphors like these, and not 
in any figures whatsoever borrowed from the static world, the 
world of things and thing-relationships, that the connection 
between the "particular" and the "general" in language, the 
88o ERNST CASSIRER 
relation between "Life" and "Spirit" therein, can properly be 
described. And the same fundamental relationship exhibited 
here in the realm of language holds true of every other genuine 
"symbolic form." The inner contradictoriness, the polarity 
which necessarily dwells within every such form, does not rend 
or demolish it$ rather it constitutes the condition whereby its 
unity may again be established out of that contradiction and may 
thus again present itself to the outside world. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF 
ERNST CASSIRER 
To 1946 
Compiled, by 
CARL H. HAMBURG AND WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
PREFACE TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY 
THIS list of the published writings by Ernst Cassirer and 
of their translations contains, as far as we know, all of his 
publications which have come out, either during his lifetime or 
posthumously. It also includes a number of books now in prep- 
aration. 
The material for the publications from 1899 to 1936 could 
mostly be taken from the Bibliography of Ernst Cassirer*s 
Writings by Raymond Klibansky and Walter Solmitz which ap- 
peared in the volume Philosophy and History (Essays pre- 
sented to Ernst Cassirer 5 edited by Raymond Klibansky and 
H. J. Paton. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1936). For the period 
after 1936 we had at our disposal Professor Cassirer J s own 
continuation of this bibliography as well as Mrs. Cassirer's list- 
ing of the posthumous publications. To her we are greatly in- 
debted for providing us generously with all the material at her 
hand; and to the editors and publishers of Philosophy and His- 
tory our thanks are due for allowing us very kindly to use the 
material from their book. We had the privilege of using the 
facilities of the Libraries of Bowdoin College and Columbia 
University, and of the Harvard College Library, and of draw- 
ing freely on the collection of Ernst Cassirer's writings which 
Professor Koelln of Bowdoin College owns, who also kindly 
helped us with his advice. We also should like to thank Messrs. 
Max Hamburg from Fordham University, and John E. Smith, 
Instructor at Barnard College, for their help. We are particu- 
larly grateful to Professor Raymond Klibansky of McGill 
University for reading the proofs and making some valuable 
suggestions. 
As in all the Bibliographies of the Library of Living Philoso- 
phers, the writings have been arranged in the chronological 
order of the dates of publication. The Bibliography of 1936 
883 
884 PREFACE TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY 
had grouped the items according to subject matter, from a 
^systematic" point of view. In this respect the earlier list should 
still prove useful as an initial guide to Ernst Cassirer's philoso- 
phy. It represents graphically the universal scope of his work, 
marking, as it were, on the globus mtellectuaUs its widely spread 
topics, and suggesting their multiple systematic and historical 
interrelation. A story of the development of Ernst Cassirer's 
thought may be read, on the other hand, from the chronological 
list that follows here. In Cassirer's work as a whole, as is the 
case in each of his individual writings, this development was as 
full of surprises as it was methodical. Step by step was taken 
until, on a higher level each time, a new and wider vista opened 
up. The basic points of orientation remained the same through- 
out his life's work. But the same themes, taken up again and 
again, were carried on by means of ever new variations to ever 
new phases of interpretation. one of Cassirer's favorite quota- 
tions was Goethe's, "Die Quelle muss fliessend gedacht warden" 
The present chronological record of his writings may perhaps 
be used, in this manner, as a source for the study and the 
realization of Ernst Cassirer's thought. 
CARL H. HAMBURG 
WALTER M. SOLMITZ 
Summer 1948 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
NEW YORK, N.Y. 
BOWDOIN COLLEGE 
BRUNSWICK, MAINE 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
To August 1946 
1899 
i. DESCARTES' KRITIK DER MATHEMATISCHEN UND NATURWISSEN- 
SCHAFTLICHEN ERKENNTNis. Inaugural Dissertation, Marburg, 
1899. 
Reprinted: as Einleitung in Leibniz* System, 1902, pp. 3-102. 
1902 
/. LEIBNIZ' SYSTEM IN SEINEN WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN GRUND- 
LAGEN. Marburg, N. G. Elwert, 1902. xiv, 548 pp. 
Contents: Vorrede EINLEITUNG: DESCARTES' KRITIK DER MATHEMATISCHEN 
UND NATURWISSENSCHAFTLICHEN ERKENNTNIS. I. Die erkenntniskritische 
Begriindung- der Mathematik II. Die erkenntniskritische Begriindung- der 
Naturwissenschaft III. Der Begriff der Substanz und die Substanzialisierung 
des Raumes IV. Substanz and Veranderung V. Der Begriff der Erfahrung 
VI. Das Problem des Unendlichen VII. Der Begriff der Zeit. LEIBNIZ* 
SYSTEM IN SEINEN WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN GRUNDLAGEN PART onE: DIE 
GRUNDBEGRIFFE DER MATHEMATIK. Ch. I. Verhaltnis von Mathe- 
matik und Logik Ch. II. Die Grundbegriffe der Mathematik Ch. III. Das 
geometrische Raumproblem und die Analysis der Lage Ch. IV. Das Pro- 
blem der Kontinuitat PART TWO: DIE GRUNDBEGRIFFE DER ME- 
CHANIKCh. V. Raum und Zeit -Ch. VI. Der Begriff der Kraft PART 
THREE: DIE METAPHYSIKCh. VII. Das Problem des Bewusstseins 
Ch. VIII. Das Problem des Individuums Ch. IX. Das Problem des Indi- 
viduums im System der Geisteswissenschaften PART FOUR: DIE ENT- 
STEHUNG DES LEIBNIZISCHEN SYSTEMS I. Die Jugendwerke bis zur 
Zeit des Pariser Aufenthaltes. (1633-1673) II. Der Pariser Aufenthalt. 
(1673-1676) III. Von der Riickkehr nach Deutschland bis zur Abfassung 
des metaphysischen Diskurses. (1676-86) KRITISCHER NACHTRAG 
(I. Bertrand Russell, A critical exposition of the philosophy of Leibniz. 
Cambridge, 1900. II. Louis Couturat, La logique de Leibniz d'apres des 
documents inedits. Paris, 1901) 
1904 
/. G. W. LEIBNIZ. PHILOSOPHISCHE WERKE. 
HAUPTSCHRIFTEN ZUR GRUNDLECUNG DER PHILOSOPHIE. 
885 
886 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
(Jbersetzt v. A. Buchenau. Durchgesehen und mit Einlcitungen 
und Erlauterungen hrsg. von E. Cassirer. Vol. I. (Phflosophische 
Bibliothek. Vol. 107). Leipzig, Durrsche Buchhandlung, 1904. vi, 
374 PP- 
Second edition : Leipzig, F. Meiner, 1 924. 
Cassirer*s Introductions: Vorrede (pp. iii-vi) Zur Logik und Mathematik: 
Einleitung (pp. 1-12) Schriften zur Phoronomie und Dynamik: Einleitung 
(pp. 107-119) 
1906 
/. G. W. LEIBNIZ. PHILOSOPHISCHE WERKE. 
HAUPTSCHRIFTEN ZUR GRUNDLEGUNG DER PHILOSOPHIE. 
Obersetzt von A. Buchenau. Durchgesehen und mit Einleitungen 
und Erlauterungen hrsg. von E. Cassirer. Vol. II, (Phflosophische 
Bibliothek. Vol. 108). Leipzig, Durrsche Buchhandlung, 1906. 
Second edition: Leipzig, F. Meiner, 1924. 582 pp. 
Cassirer 3 s Introductions: Zur Biologic und Entwicklungslehre: Einleitung 
(pp. 3-34). Zur Monadenlehre: Einleitung (pp. 81-122). Sach- und Na- 
menregister (pp. 561-579). 
2. DER KRITISCHE IDEALISMUS UND DIE PHILOSOPHIE DBS GESUN- 
DEN MENSCHENVERSTANDES. (Philosofhische Arbeiten, hrsg. von 
Cohen und Natorp. Vol. I, No. i.) Giessen, A. Topelmann, 1906. 
35 PP- 
A criticism of Leonhard Nelson's Die kritische Methode und das Verhaltnis 
der Psychology zur Philosophic and Friedrich Fries und seine jungsten 
Kritiker. 
3. DAS ERKENNTNISPROBLEM IN DER PHILOSOPHIE UND WISSEN- 
SCHAFT DER NEUEREN ZEIT. Vol. I. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1906. 
xv, 608 pp. 
Second, revised Edition (with some corrections and additions, but omitting 
an introduction about Greek philosophy, contained in the First Edition), 
1911. xviii, 601 pp. Third Edition, 1922. 
Contents: Vorreden EINLEITUNG: DAS ERKENNEN UND SEIN GEGENSTAND 
Bk. i. DIE RENAISSANCE DES ERKENNTNISPROBLEMS CH. /. NIKOLAUS 
CUSANUSCarolus BovillusCH. II. DER HVMAN1SMUS UND DER 
KAMPF DER PLATONISCHEN UND AR1STOTELISCHEN PHILOSO- 
PHIE Einleitung 1 I. Die Erneuerung- der Platonischen Philosophie Geor- 
gius Gemistos Plethon Marsilius Ficinus II. Die Reform der Aristotelischen 
Psychologic Einleitung Pietro PomponazztGiacomo ZarbarcllaFran- 
cesco Pico delta Mirandola Marius Nizolius IV. Die Erneuerung der 
Natur- und Geschichtsansicht CH. III. DER SKEPTlZlSMUSMontaign$ 
Charron Sanchez und La Mothe le Vayer BK. II. DIE ENTDECKUNG 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 887 
DES NATURBECRIFFS CH. /. DIE NATURPHILOSOPHIEA. Der Be- 
griff des Weltorganismus Agrippa von Nettesheim Paracelsus B. Die 
Psychologic des Erkennens I. Girolamo Fracastoro II. Telesiolll. Cam- 
panellaC. Die Begriffe des Raumes und der Zeit Die Mathematik 
Cardano, Scaliger und Telesio Patrizzi D. Das Copernikanische Welt- 
system und die Metaphysik Giordano Bruno CH. II. DIE ENTSTEHUNG 
DER EX A K TEN WISSENSCHAFT-Begrift und Erfahrung i. Leonardo 
da Vinci 2. Kepler a) Der Begriff der Harmonic b) Der Begriff der 
Kraft c) Der Begriff des Gesetzes 3. Galilei 4. Die Mathematik 
BK. in. DIE GRUNDLEGUNG DES IDEALISMUS CH. /. DESCARTES I. Die 
Einheit der Erkenntnis II. Die Metaphysik CH. //. DIE FORTBILDUNG 
DER CARTESISCHEN PHILOSOPHIE A. Pascal B. Logik und Kate- 
gorienlehre Claubergs Logica vetus et nova und die Logik von Port Royal 
Pierre Silvain Regis Geulincx Richard Burthogge-C. Die Ideenlehre. 
Malebranche D. Der Ausgang der Cartesischen Philosophic Bayle. 
1907 
/. DAS ERKENNTNISPROBLEM IN DER PHILOSOPHIE UND WISSEN- 
SCHAFT DER NEUEREN ZEIT. Vol. II. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1907. 
xiv, 732 pp. 
Second Edition, 1911. xv, 832 pp. Third Edition, 1912. 
Contents: BK. iv. DIE ANFANGE DES EMPIRISMUS CH. /. BACON I. Die 
Kritik des Verstandes II. Die Formenlehre CH. //. GASSENDICH. III. 
HOBBES BK. v. FORTBILDUNG UND VOLLENDUNG DES RATIONALISMUS 
CH. /. SPINOZA I. Die Erkenntnislehre des "Kurzen Traktats" II. Der 
"Tractatus de Intellects Emendatione" III. Der Begriff der Substanz CH. 
//. LEIBNIZ CH. III. TSCHIRNHAUSCH. IV. DER RATIONAL- 
ISMUS IN DER ENGLISCHEN PHILOSOPHIE I. Herbert von Cherbury 
Kenelm Digby II. Die Schule von Cambridge Cudworth John Norris 
BK. vi. DAS ERKENNTNISPROBLEM IM SYSTEM DES EMPIRISMUS CH. /. 
LOCKE Die Grenzbestimmung des Verstandes. Der Kampf gegen das 
"Angeborene" I. Sensation und Reflexion II. Der Begriff der Wahrheit 
III. Der Begriff des Seins CH. //. BERKELEY 1. Die Theorie der Wahr- 
nehmung II. Die Begrundung des Idealismus III. Kritik der Berkeleyschen 
Begriffstheorie IV. Der Begriff der Substanz V. Die Umgestaltung der 
Berkeleyschen Erkenntnislehre CH. ///. HUME Die "Gleichformigkeit der 
Natur" Die Kritik der abstrakten Begriffe I. Die Kritik der mathema- 
tischen Erkenntnis II. Die Kritik des Kausalbegriffs III. Der Begriff der 
Existenz BK. vn. VON NEWTON zu KANT: Wissenchaft und Philosophic im 
achtzehnten Jahrhundert CH. /. DAS PROBLEM DER METHODS 
I. Die Aufgabe der Induktion Joseph Glanvill Newtons Grundlegung der 
Induktion Die Schule Newtons: Keill und Freind d'Alembert II. Ver- 
nunft und SprzcheCondillac Lambert, Ploucquet, Sulzer III. Der Begriff 
der Kraft Maupertuis IV. Das Problem der Materie Die Chemie CH. 
//. RAUM UND ZEIT. i. Das Raum- und Zeitproblem in der Metaphysik 
und spekulativen Theologie I. Raumbegriff und Gottesbcgriff Henry 
Moore Newton und seine Schule Samuel Clarke Joseph RapJuon~Il. 
888 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
Isaac Watts 9 Enquiry concerning Space Edmund Law 2. Das Raum- und 
Zeitproblem in der Naturwissenschaft a) Newton und seine Kritiker b) Die 
Fortbildung der Newtonischen Lehre Leonhard Euler Euler und Maclaurin 
3. Die Idealitat des Raumes und der Zeit Die Antinomieen des Unendlichen 
Maufertuis Maufertuis und Kant} Schofenhauers Urteil Die Entwick- 
lung des Leibnizischen Phaenomenalismus: Joh. Aug. Eberhard und Kasimir 
von Creuz Maufertuis 9 Theorie der Existentialurteile Gottfried Ploucquet 
Ploucquet und Malebranche Grandi und Sturm Das Unendlichkleine bei 
Leibniz und Maclaurin Fontenelles "Elements de la Geometric de Plnfini" 
Eulers Kritik des UnendlichkeitsbegrifTs 4. Das Raum- und Zeitproblem 
in der Naturphilosophie- Boscowich CH. III. DIE onTOLOGIEDER 
SATZ DES WIDERSPRUCHS UND DER SATZ VOM ZURE1CHENDEN 
GRUNDEl. Der WahrheitsbegrifT bei Leibniz und Wolff Die Kritik der 
Wolffschen Lehre: Andreas Rudiger Die neue "Methode" von Crusius 9 
Philosophic und ihre geschichtliche Wirkung: Lambert und Mendelssohn 
Joh. Heinr. Lambert II. Der Satz des Widerspruchs und der Satz vom zu- 
reichenden Grunde Wolff und seine Schule, der syllogistische Beweis des 
Satzes vom Grunde (Darjes, Carpow, Meier) Crusius 9 Kritik des Satzes 
vom Grunde Crusius und Schopcnhatter Die Kritik des CausalbegrifTs: 
Nik. Beguelin Beguelin und Hum e Thummig und Crusius CH. IV. 
DAS PROBLEM DES BEWUSSTSEINS. SUBJEKTIVE UND OBJEK- 
TIVE BEGRONDUNG DER ERKENNTNISI. Fortbildung und Kritik 
von Lockes Psychologic Peter Browne Hartley und Priestley Condillac 
Psychologic und Aesthetik im 18. Jahrhundert Tetens II. Das psy- 
chologische und das logische Wahrheitskriterium. Die physiologische Be- 
dingtheit der Erkenntnis Diderots Lettre sur les aveugles Lossitts 9 "Phy- 
sische Ursachen des Wahren" Tetens 9 Kritik der Common-Sense-Philosophie 
Psychologische und logische Deutung der Grundprinzipien BK. vin. DIE 
KRITISCHE PHILOSOPHIE -CH. I. DIE ENTSTEHUNG DER KRIT1SCHEN 
PHILOSOPHIE I. Die Schriften des Jahres 1763 II. Die "Traume eines 
Geistersehers" (1765) Verhaltnis zu Rousseau Kant und Hume III. Von 
den "Traumen eines Geistersehers" bis zur "Dissertation" (1765-69) IV. 
Vorbereitung und Abschluss der Dissertation (1769-70) Kant und Euler 
V. Der Fortschritt zur Vernunftkritik (1772-1781) -CH. II. DIE VER- 
NUNFTKRITIK I. Der metaphysische Gegensatz von Subjekt und Objekt 
und seine geschichtliche Entwicklung II. Das Problem der Objektivitat. 
Analytisch und synthetisch. III. Raum und Zeit IV. Der Begriff des 
Selbstbewusstseins V. Das "Ding an sich" NAMEN- UND SACHREGISTER. 
2. KANT UND DIE MODERNE MATHEMATIK. 
MIT BEZIEHUNC AUF BERTRAND RUSSELLS UND Louis COUTURATS WERKE 
UBER DIE PRINCIPIEN DER MATHEMATIK. 
Kant"Studten y Vol. XII, 1907, pp. 1-40. 
j. ZUR FRAGE DER METHODE DER ERKENNTNISKRITIK. 
EINE ENTGEGNUNG. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 889 
Vierteljahrsschrift jiir wissenschaftliche Philosofhie und Soziologie. 
Vol. XXXI, No. 4. 1907. 
1909 
/. REVIEW OF: RICHARD HONIGSWALD, BElTRrfGE ZUR ER- 
KENNTNISTHEORIE UND METHODENLEHRE. Kant- 
Studien, Vol. XIV, 1909. No. i, pp. 91-98. 
1910 
7. SUBSTANZBEGRIFF UND FUNKTIONSBEGRIFF. 
UNTERSUCHUNGEN UBER DIE GRUNDFRAGEN DER ERKENNTNISKRITIK. 
Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1910. vii, 459 pp. 
Second Edition: 1923. 
Russian Translation : 1912. 
English Translation in: SUBSTANCE AND FUNCTION, AND EINSTEIN'S THEORY 
OF RELATIVITY. Translated by William Curtis Swabey and Mary Collins 
Swabey. Chicago and London, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1923. 
pp. i-xi, 1-346. 
Contents: Preface PART onE. THE CONCEPT OF THING AND THE CONCEPT 
OF RELATION Ch. I. on the Theory of the Formation of Concepts Ch. II. 
The Concept of Number Ch. III. The Concept of Space and Geometry 
Ch. IV. The Concepts of Natural Science PART Two. THE SYSTEM OF 
RELATIONAL CONCEPTS AND THE PROBLEM OF REALITY Ch. V. on the 
Problem of Induction Ch. VI. The Concept of Reality Ch. VII. Sub- 
jectivity and Objectivity of the Relational Concepts Ch. VIII. on the 
Psychology of Relations. 
2. REVIEW OF: JONAS COHN, VORAUSSETZUNGEN UND 
ZIELE DES ERKENNENS. Deutsche Liter aturzeitung, Vol. 
XXXI, 1 910, No. 39. 
1911 
/. LEIBNIZ. Article in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, New 
York, 1911. 
2. ARISTOTELES UND KANT. 
Zu GORLANDS BUCK: ARISTOTELES UND KANT. 
Kant-Studten y Vol. XVI, 1911, pp. 431-447. 
1912 
/. IMMANUEL KANTS WERKE. 
GESAMTAUSGABE IN 10 BANDEN UND EINEM ERGANZUNGSBAND. 
890 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
In Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen, Arthur Buchenau, Otto 
Buck, Albert Gorland, B. Kellermann, Otto Schondorfer, hrsg. 
von Ernst Cassirer. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1912. 
Volumes edited by Ernst Cassirer: Vol. IV. Schriften von 1783-1788. 
Hrsg-. von A. Buchenau und Ernst Cassirer. Vol. VI. Schriften von 1790- 
1796. Hrsg. von Ernst Cassirer und Artur Buchenau. Vols. IX and X. 
Briefe von und an Kant. Hrsg. von Ernst Cassirer. Erlauterungsbande : 
i. KANTS LEBEN UND LEHRE. Von Ernst Cassirer (see 1918, i). 
2. HERMANN COHEN UND DIE ERNEUERUNG DER KANTISCHEN 
PHILOSOPHIE. Kant-Studien, Vol. XVII, 1912. No. 3, pp. 252- 
273- 
3. DAS PROBLEM DES UNENDLICHEN UND RENOUVIERS "GESETZ 
DER ZAHL." In: Philosofhische Abhandlungen y Hermann Cohen 
zum jo. Geburtstag dargebracht. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1912, 
pp. 85-98- 
1913 
i. ERKENNTNISTHEORIE NEBST DEN GRENZFRAGEN DER LOGIK. 
Jahrbucher der Philosophic, Vol. I. Berlin, E. S. Mittler, 1913, pp. 
1-59. 
1914 
/. DIE GRUNDPROBLEME DER KANTISCHEN METHODIK UND IHR 
VERHALTNIS ZUR NACHKANTISCHEN SPEKULATION. Die Geistes- 
wissenschajten^ Vol. I. Leipzig, Veit, 1914. Pp. 784-787 and 812- 
815. 
1915 
/. G. W. LEIBNIZ. PHILOSOPHISCHE WERKE. VOL. ni. NEUE 
ABHANDLUNGEN UBER DEN MENSCHLICHEN VERSTAND. In 3. 
Auflage mit Benutzung der Schaarschmidtschen t)bertragung neu 
iibersetzt, eingeleitet und erlautert von E. Cassirer. Philosofhische 
Eibliotheky Vol. 69. Leipzig, F. Meiner, 1915. 
New Edition, with an author and subject index, 1926. 
Einleitung, by Ernst Cassirer: pp. i-xxv. 
1916 
/. FREIHEIT UND FORM. 
STUDIEN ZUR DEUTSCHEN GEISTESGESCHICHTE. 
Berlin, Bruno Cassirer. 1916. xix, 575 pp. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 891 
Second Edition: 1918. Third Edition: 1922. 
Contents: Vorwort EiNLEiTUNO i. Die Entwicklung des Personlichkeits- 
begriffs bei den modernen Kulturvolkern 2. Das System der mittelalterlichen 
Weltanschauung und Lebensordnung Luthers Glaubens- und Freiheitsbegriff 
Die Grundformen des religiosen Individualism us: Luther und Zwingli 
CH. i. LEIBNIZ i. Die Anfange der deutschen Wissenschaft 2. Das Pro- 
blem des Bewusstseins und des Individuums 3. Die Monade als Einheit von 
Formbegriff und Kraftbegriff CH. n. DIE ENTDECKUNG DER ASTHETISCHEN 
FORMWELT i. Das asthetische Problem in Leibniz* Metaphysik 2. Die 
Anfange der deutschen Poetik Gottsched und die Schweizer Der Begriff 
der poetischen Wahrheit bei Bodmer und Breitinger 3. Die Begriindung der 
philosophischen Asthetik durch Baumgarten und Meier 4. Das Problem der 
Sinnlichkeit in der Leibnizschen Metaphysik Leibniz und Shaftesbury 5. 
Lessing 6. Hamann und Herder Leibniz und Herder 7. Winckelmann 
CH. in. DIE FREIHEITSIDEE IM SYSTEM DES KRITISCHEN IDEALISMUS 
1. Die Stellung des Kantischen Systems in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte 
2. Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft CH. iv. GOETHE i. Die neue Stellung 
der Subjektivitat in Goethes Welt- und Lebensansicht Goethe und Rousseau 
2. Weltanschauung und Lebensform des jungen Goethe 3. "Freiheit" 
und "Notwendigkeit" 4. Die italienische Reise und die Entwicklung des 
"klassischen" Formbegriffs Die lyrische Symbolik in Goethes Jugend- und 
Altersdichtung 5. Naturanschauung und Naturtheorie Die t)berwindung 
des naturwissenschaftlichen Klassenbegriffs Das Problem der "Gestalt" und 
die Idee der Metamorphose Die Urpflanze als Wirklichkeit und als Symbol 
6. Der Begriff der Metamorphose und der Aufbau der geistigen Welt 7. Die 
Methodik der Goetheschen Naturbetrachtung und sein Wahrheitsbegriff 8. 
Das Faustdramaj Faust und Helena. CH. v. SCHILLER FREIHEITSPROBLEM 
UND FORMPROBLEM IN DER KLASSISCHEN ASTHETIK 1. Die FreiheitSldec 
in der Dramatik des jungen Schiller Die Entwicklungsphasen der Schil- 
lerschen Asthetik 2. Die "Theosophie des Julius" j Schiller und Leibniz* 
Der Briefwechsel mit Kornerj die a Autonomie des Organischen" Der Frei- 
heitsgedanke als aesthetisches Prinzip Verhaltnis zu Kant und Goethe $. 
Schiller und Fichte Klassischer und romantischer Formbegriff CH. VI. 
FREIHEITSIDEE UND STAATSIDEE i. Der Begriff des Deutschtums bei Schiller 
und Fichte 2. Die Staatstheorie des deutschen Idealismus Leibniz und 
Wolff Der Begriff des Staates und der Staatspersonlichkeit bei Friedrich 
dem Grossen 3. Kants Stellung in der Entwicklung des Staatsproblems 4. 
Wilhelm von Humboldt 5. Fichte 6. Die Staatslehre Schellings Die ro- 
mantische Staatslehre Adam Mullers "Elemente der Staatskunst" 7. Hegel. 
1917 
J. HOLDERLIN UND DER DEUTSCHE IDEALISMUS. LogOS, 1917-1918. 
Vol. VII, pp. 262-282. Vol. VIII, pp. 30-49. 
Reprinted in: Idee und Gestalt (see 1921, 2). 
1918 
j. KANTS LEBEN UND LEHRE. Immanuel Kants Werke. In Gemein- 
892 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
chaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. herausgegeben von Ernst Cassirer, 
Vol. XI (Erganzungsband), Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1918. xi, 
448pp. (See 1912, i.) 
Second Edition: 1921. VIII, 448 pp. 
Contents: Vbrrede Einleitung Ch. I. Jugend- und Lehrjahre Ch. II. Die 
Magisterjahre und die Anfange der Kantischen Lehre i. Das naturwissen- 
schaftliche Weltbild Kosmologie und Kosmophysik 2. Das Problem der 
metaphysischen Methode 3. Die Kritik der dogmatischen Metaphysik 
Die "Traume eines Geistersehers" 4. Die Scheidung der sinnlichen und 
intelligiblen Welt 5. Die Entdeckung des kritischen Grundproblems Ch. 
III. Der Aufbau und die Grundprobleme der Kritik der reinen Vernunft 
Ch. IV. Erste Wirkungen der kritischen Philosophic Die "Prolegomena" 
Herders "Ideen" und die Grundlegung der Geschichtsphilosophie Ch. V. 
Der Aufbau der kritischen Ethik Ch. VI. Die Kritik der Urteilskraft 
Ch. VII. Letzte Schriften und Kampfe Die "Religion innerhalb der Grenzen 
der blossen Vernunft" und der Konflikt mit der preussischen Regierung. 
Spanish Translation: Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Economica (In prepara- 
tion). 
2. GOETHES PANDORA. Zeltschrijt fur Asthetik und allgememe 
Kunstwissenschajt. 1918. Vol. XIII, pp. 113-134. 
Reprinted in: Idee und Gestalt (see 1921, 2). 
j. HERMANN COHEN. Worte gesprochen an seinem Grabe. Neue 
Judische Monatshefte. 1918. No. 15-16. 
1919 
/. HEINRICH VON KLEIST UND DIE KANTISCHE PHILOSOPHIE. 
Philosophische Vortrage der Kant-Gesellschaft. No. 22 Berlin, 
Reuther und Reichard, 1919. 56 pp. 
Reprinted in: Idee und Gestalt (see 1921, 2). 
1920 
/. DAS ERKENNTNISPROBLEM IN DER PHILOSOPHIE UND WISSEN- 
SCHAFT DER NEUEREN ZEIT. 
DIE NACH KANTISCHEN SYSTEME. 
Vol. III. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer. 1920. xiv, 483 pp. 
Second Edition: 1923. 
Contents: Vorwort EINLEITUNG CH. i. DER "GECENSTAND DER ER- 
FAHRUNG" UND DAS "DiNC AN SIGH" i. Friedrtch Heinrich Jacob* 2. 
Reinhold I. Die Methode der Elemental-philosophic und der "Satz des 
Bewu$8t$eins" II. Begriff und Problem des "Dinges an sich" 3. Aentsidem 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 893 
4. Jakob Sigismund Beck Salomon Maimon Maimons Denkform und 
Stil I.Dcr Begriff des "Gegebenen" und das Humesche Problem II. Die 
Idee des "unendlichen Verstandes" und die Theorie der Differentiale III. 
Der Satz der Bestimmbarkeit CH. 11. FICHTE I. Die Begrundung der 
Wissenschaftslehre II. Der Atheismusstreit und die Grundlegung von Fichtcs 
Religionsphilosophie III. Das Absolute und das Wissen IV. Problem und 
Methode der Fichteschen Philosophic CH. m. SCHELLING I. Die Grund- 
legung der Naturphilosophie und das System des transcendentalen Idealismus 
II. Das Erkenntnisprinzip der Schellingschen Philosophic III. Der Aus- 
gang der Schellingschen Philosophic CH. iv. HEGEL I. Der Begriff der 
Synthesis bei Kant und Hegel II. Die Kritik der Reflexionsphilosophie 
III. Die geschichtliche und systematische Stellung der dialektischen Methode 
IV. Die Phaenomenologie des Geistes V. Der Aufbau der Hegelschen 
Logik VI. Kritischer und absoluter Idealismus CH. V. HERBART I. Die 
Methode der Beziehungen II. Die Lehre von den 'Realen' CH. vi. SCHOPEN- 
HAUER Die Physiologic als Grundlage der Erkenntnistheorie I. Die physio- 
logische Erkenntnistheorie und die Welt als Vorstellung II. Die meta- 
physische Erkenntnistheorie und die Welt als Wille III. Die Begrundung 
der Aprioritatslehre in Schopenhauers System IV. Erkenntnisproblem und 
Wertproblem CH. vn. FRIES I. Die Lehre von der unmittelbaren Erkennt- 
nis II. Die Methode der Friesschen Philosophic. 
2. HERMANN COHEN. Vortrag. Korresfondenzblatt des Vereins zur 
. Grundung und Erhaltung emer Akademie des Judentums. Frank- 
furt, Kauffmann, 1920. Vol. I, p. I ff. 
5. PHILOSOPHISCHE PROBLEMS DER RELATIVITATSTHEORIE. Die 
Neue Rundschau. Berlin, S. Fischer, 1920. Vol. XXXI. No. 12. 
PP- I337-I357- 
1921 
/. ZUR ElNSTEINSCHEN RELATIVITATSTHEORIE. 
ERKENNTNISTHEORETISCHE BETRACHTUNGEN. 
Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1921. 134 pp. 
Second Edition: 1925 
Russian Translation: 1922 
Japanese Translation: 1923 
English Translation in: Substance and Function and Einstein 9 s Theory of 
Relativity. Translated by W. C. Swabey and M. C. Swabey, 1923 (see 
1910, i) 
Contents: I. Concepts of measure and concepts of thing's II. The empirical 
and conceptual foundations of the theory of relativity III. The philosophical 
concept of truth and the theory of relativity IV. Matter, ether and space 
V. The concepts of space and time of critical idealism and the theory of 
relativity VI. Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry VII. The theory of 
relativity and the problem of reality Bibliography. 
894 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
2. IDEE UND GESTALT. Fiinf Aufsatze. Berlin, Bruno Cassircr, 1921. 
II, 200 pp. 
Second Edition: 1924. 
"Die folgenden Studien wollen eine Erganzung zu den Studien zur deutschen 
Geistesgeschichte bilden, die ich unter dem Titel "Freiheit und Form" (Ber- 
lin, 1917, 2. Aufl. 1918) verSflfentlicht habe" (see 1916, i) 
Contents: I. GOETHES PANDORA (see 1918, 2) II. GOETHE UND DIE MATHE- 
MATISCHE PHYSIK. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Betrachtung III. DIE 
METHODIK DBS IDEALISMUS IN SCHILLERS PHILOSOPHISCHEN SCHRIFTEN 
IV. HOLDERLIN UND DER DEUTSCHE IDEALISMUS (see 1917, l) V. 
HEINRICHVON KLEIST UND DIE KANTISCHE PHILOSOPHIE (see 1919, i) 
1922 
/. GOETHE UND PLATON. Vortrag in der Goethe-Gesellschaft Berlin. 
Sokrates. 48th year of issue. No. i. Berlin, Weidmann., 1922. 
Reprinted in: Goethe und die geschtchtliche Welt (see 1932, 3). 
2. DIE BEGRIFFSFORM IM MYTHISCHEN DENKEN. Studien der Biblio- 
thek Warburg, I. Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 1922. i, 62 pp. 
3. EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF RELATIVITY FROM THE EPISTEMO- 
LOGICAL POINT OF VIEW. The Monist, July 1922, pp. 412-418. 
A selection from: Einstein's Theory of Relativity (see 1921, I. Ch. 
VI) 
1923 
i. PHILOSOPHIE DER SYMBOLISCHEN FORMEN: PART onE. DIE 
SPRACHE. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1923. xii, 293 pp. (see 1925, 
i; 1929, i; 1931, i) 
Contents: Vorwort EINLEITUNG UND PROBLEMSTELLUNG I. Der BegrifF 
der symbolischen Form und die Systematik der symbolischen Formen II. 
Die allgemeine Funktion des Zeichens Das Bedeutungsproblem III. Das 
Problem der "Representation" und der Aufbau des Bewusstseins IV. Die 
ideelle Bedeutung des Zeichens -Die Oberwindung der Abbildtheorie. 
PART onE: ZUR PHAENOMENOLOGIE DER SPRACHJLICHEN FORM CH. /. DAS 
SPRACHPROBLEM IN DER GESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE I. 
Das Sprachproblem in der Geschichte des philosophischen Idealismus (flaton, 
Descartes, Leibniz) II. Die Stellung des Sprachproblems in den Systemen des 
Empirismus (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke , Berkeley) III. Die Philosophic der 
franzosischen Aufklarung (Condillac y Maupertuis, Diderot) ^IV. Die Sprache 
als Affektausdruck Das Problem des "Ursprungs der Sprache'* (Giambatttsta 
Vico, Hamann, Herder, Die Romantik) ^V. Wilhelm von HumboldtVl. 
August von SMeicher und der Fortgang zur "naturwissenschaftlichen" 
Sprachansicht VII. Die Begrundung der modernen Sprachwissenschaft und 
das Problem der "Lautgesetze" CH. //. DIE SPRACHE IN DER PHASE 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 895 
DES SINN LICHEN AUSDRUCKSl. Die Sprache als Ausdrucksbewegung 
GebSrdensprache und Wortsprache II. Mimischer, analogischer und 
symbolischer Ausdruck CH. III. DIE SPRACHE IN DER PHASE DES 
ANSCHAULICHEN AUSDRVCKSl. Der Ausdruck des Raumes und der 
raumlichen Beziehungen II. Die Zeitvorstellung III. Die sprachliche Ent- 
wicklung des Zahlbegriffs IV. Die Sprache und das Gebiet der "inneren 
Anschauung" Die Phasen des Ichbegriffs - CH. IV. DIE SPRACHE ALS 
AUSDRUCK DES BEGRIFFLICHEN DENKENSDIE FORM DER 
SPRACHLICHEN BEGRIFFS- UND KLASSENBILDUNGl. Die qualifi- 
zierende Begriffsbildung II. Grundrichtungen der sprachlichen Klassen- 
bildung CH. V. DIE SPRACHE ALS AUSDRUCK DER LOGISCHEN 
BEZIEHUNGSFORMENDIE RELA TIONSBEGRIFFE. 
2. DER BEGRIFF DER SYMBOLISCHEN FORM IM AUFBAU DER 
GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN. Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg. Leip- 
zig, B. G. Teubner, 1923, I. Vortrage 1921-1922, pp. 11-39. 
5. DIE KANTISCHEN ELEMENTS IN WILHELM VON HUMBOLDTS 
SPRACHPHILOSOPHIE. Festschrift ]ur Paul Hensel. Greiz i.V., 
Ohag, 1923, pp. 105-127. 
1924 
jr. ZUR "PHILOSOPHIE DER MYTHOLOGIE." Festschrift fur Paul 
Natorp, zum 70. Geburtstage. Berlin, W. de Gruyter, 1924, pp. 
23-54. From: Philosophic der symbolischen Formen y II. (Ein- 
leitung) (see 1925, i) 
2. EIDOS UND EIDOLON. 
DAS PROBLEM DES SCHONEN UND DER KUNST IN PLATONS DIALOGEN 
Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg. Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 1924. 
II. Vortrage 1922-1923, Pt. I, pp. 1-27. 
1925 
/. PHILOSOPHIE DER SYMBOLISCHEN FORMEN: BOOK Two. DAS 
MYTHISCHE DENKEN. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1925. xvi, 320 pp. 
(see 1923, l; 1929, I; 1931, I.) 
Contents: EINLEITUNG. Das Problem einer "Philosophic der Mythologie." 
PART onE. DER MYTHOS ALS DENKFORM. CH. /. CHARACTER UND 
GRUNDRICHTUNG DES MYTHISCHEN GEGENSTANDSBEWUSST- 
SEINS.CH. II. EINZELKATEGOR1EN DES MYTHISCHEN DEN- 
KENS. PART Two. DER MYTHOS ALS ANSCHAUUNGSFORM. AUFBAU UND 
GLIEDERUNG DER RAUMLICH-ZEITLICHEN WELT IM MYTHISCHEN BEWUSST- 
SEIN. CH. I. DER GRUNDGEGENSATZ.CH. II. GRUNDZOGE EINER 
FORMENLEHRE DES MYTHOS. RAUM, ZEIT UND ZAHL.l. Die 
Gliederung des Raumes im mythischen Bewusstsein. II. Raum und Licht. 
Das Problem der "Orientierung." III. Der mythische Zeitbegriff. IV. Die 
896 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
Gestaltung der Zeit im mythischen und religiosen Bewusstsein. V. Die 
mythische Zahl und das System der "heiligen Zahlen." PART THREE. DER 
MYTHOS ALS LEBENSFORM. ENTDECKUNG UND BESTIMMUNG DER SUBJEK- 
TIVEN WlRKLICHKEIT IM MYTHISCHEN BEWUSSTSEIN. CH. /. DAS ICH 
UND DIE SEELE.CH. II. DIE HERAUSB1LDVNG DES SELBSTGE- 
FOHLS AUS DEM MYTHISCHEN EINHEITS- UND LEBENSGEFOHL. 
I. Die Gemeinschaft des Lebendigen und die mythische Klassenbildung. 
Der Totemismus. II. Der Personlichkeitsbegriff und die personlichen 
Cotter. Die Phasen des mythischen Ichbegriffs. CH. III. KULTUS UND 
OFFER. PART FOUR. DIE DIALEKTIK DES MYTHISCHEN BEWUSSTSEINS. 
2. SPRACHE UND MYTHOS. 
EIN BEITRAG ZUM PROBLEM DER GOTTERNAMEN. 
Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, VI, Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 
1925. 87 pp. 
English translation: LANGUAGE AND MYTH. Translated by Susanne 
K. Longer. New York, Harper & Brothers. 1946. x, 103 pp. 
Contents: I. The Place of Language and Myth in the Pattern of Human 
Culture. II. The Evolution of Religious Ideas. III. Language and Concep- 
tion. IV. Word Magic. V. The Successive Phases of Religious Thought. VI. 
The Power of Metaphor. 
3. DIE PHILOSOPHIE DER GRIECHEN VON DEN ANFANGEN BIS 
PLATON. Lehrbuch der Philosophic, hrsg. von M. Dessoir. Vol. I. 
Die Geschichte der Philosophic. Berlin, Ullstein, 1925. 139 pp. 
Contents: Einleitung. Die Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophic als 
Geschichte des Sich-selbst-Findens des "Logos." PART onE. DIE VORAT- 
T1SCHE PHILOSOPHIE.l. Die Jonische Naturphilosophie. -II. Heraklit 
und die Pythagoreer. III. Die Eleaten. IV. Die Jungere Naturphilosophie. 
PART Two. DIE ATTISCHE PHILOSOPHIE.l. Die Sophistik. II. 
Sokrates. III. Platon. 
4. PAUL NATORP. Kant-Studien. Vol. XXX, 1925, pp. 273-298. 
1927 
/. INDIVIDUUM UND KOSMOS IN DER PHILOSOPHIE DER RENAIS- 
SANCE. Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, X. Leipzig, B. G. 
Teubner, 1927. ix, 458 pp. 
Italian translation: INDIVIDUO E COSMO NELLA FILOSOFIA DEL RINASCIMENTO. 
Translated by F. Federici. Firenze, "La Nuova Italia," 1935. 
Spanish Translation : (In preparation) . 
Contents: Einleitung. I. Nikolaus Cusanus. II. Cusanus und I (alien. III. 
Freiheit und Notwendigkeit in der Philosophic der Renaissance. IV. Das 
Subjekt-Objekt Problem in der Philosophic der Renaissance. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 897 
2. ERKENNTNISTHEORIE NEBST DEN GRENZFRAGEN DER LOGIK UND 
DENKPSYCHOLOGIE. Jahrbiicher der Philosophic. Vol. Ill, Berlin, 
E. S. Mittler, 1927, pp. 31-92. 
3. DAS SYMBOLPROBLEM UND SEINE STELLUNG IM SYSTEM DER 
PHILOSOPHIE. Zeitschrift fur Asthetik und allgemeine Kunstwis- 
senschajt. Vol. XXI, Stuttgart, Enke, 1927, pp. 191-208. 
4. DIE BEDEUTUNG DES SPRACHPROBLEMS FUR DIE ENTSTEHUNG 
DER NEUREN PHILOSOPHIE. Festschrift fiir Carl Meinhofj 1927, 
pp. 507-14- 
1928 
1. DIE IDEE DER REPUBLIKANISCHEN VERFASSUNG: Rede zur Ver- 
fassungsfeier am n. August 1928. Hamburg, Friederichsen, 1929. 
33 PP- 
2. HERMANN COHEN'S SCHRIFTEN ZUR PHILOSOPHIE UND ZEIT- 
GESCHICHTE. Edited by Albert Gorland and Ernst Casstrer. 2 vols. 
Veroffentlichungen der Hermann Cohen-Stiftung bel der Akademte 
far die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1928. 
3. ZUR THEORIE DES BEGRIFFS. 
BEMERKUNGEN zu DEM AUFSATZ VON G. HEYMANS. 
Kant-Studien. Vol. XXXIII. Berlin, Reuther & Reichard, 1928, 
pp. 129-36. 
4. NEOKANTIANISM. RATIONALISM. SUBSTANCE. TRANSCEN- 
DENTALISM. TRUTH. Articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannic^ 
1 4th ed. 1928. 
1929 
/. PHILOSOPHIE DER SYMBOLISCHEN FORMEN: BOOK THREE. 
PHANOMENOLOGIE DER ERKENNTNIS. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 
1929. xii, 559 pp. (see 1923, I; 1925, I; 1931, l) 
Contents: EINLEITUNG. I. Materie und Form der Erkenntnis. II. "Die 
Symbolische Erkenntnis und ihre Bedeutung fiir den Aufbau der Gegen- 
standswelt. III. Das "Unmittelbare" der inneren Erfahrung. Der Gegen- 
stand der Psychologic. IV. Intuitive und symbolische Erkenntnis in der 
modernen Metaphysik. PART onE: AUSDRUCKSFUNKTION UND AUSDRUCKS- 
WELT. CH. I. SUBJEKTIVE UND OBJEKTIVE ANALYSE. CH. II. 
DAS AUSDRUCKSPHANOMEN ALS GRUNDMOMENT DES WAHR- 
NEHMUNGSBEWUSSTSEINS.CH. III. DIE AUSDRUCKSFUNK- 
TIQN UND PA$ L&B-$PEIEN-PROBIEM,PA*T Two; DAS PROBLEM 
898 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
DER REPRESENTATION UND DER AUFBAU DER ANSCHAULICHEN WELT. CH. 
I. DER BEGRIFF UND DAS PROBLEM DER REPRESENTATION. 
CH. II. DING UND EIGENSCHAFT.CH. III. DER RAUM.CH. IV. 
DIE ZEITJNSCHAUUNG.CH. V. SYMBOLISCHE PRAGNANZ. 
CH. VI. ZUR PATHOLOGIE DES SYMBOLBEWUSSTSEINS.l. Das 
Symbolproblem in der Geschichte der Aphasielehre. II. Die Veranderung 
der Wahrnehmungswelt im Krankheitsbild der Aphasic. III. Zur Pathologic 
der Dingwahrnehmung. IV. Raum, Zeit und Zahl. V. Die pathologischen 
Storungen des Handelns. PART THREE: DIE BEDEUTUNGSFUNKTION UND 
DER AUFBAU DER WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN ERKENNTNIS. CH. I. ZUR 
THEORIE DES BEGRlFFSl. Die Grenzen des "naturlichen Wclt- 
begriffs." II. Begriff und Gesetz. Die Stellung des Begriffs in der mathe- 
matischen Logik. Klassenbegriff und Relationsbegriff. Der Begriff als 
Satzfunktion.Begriff und Vorstellung. CH. II. BEGRIFF UND GEGEN- 
STAND.CH. III. SPRACHE UND WISSENSCHAFT.D1NGZEICHEN 
UND ORDNUNGSZEICHEN. CH. IV. DER GEGENSTAND DER 
MATHEMATIK. I. Formalistische und intuitionistische Begriindung der 
Mathematik. II. Der Aufbau der Mengenlehre und die "Grundlagenkrise" 
der Mathematik. III. Die Stellung des Zeichens in der Theorie der Mathe- 
matik. IV. Die "idealen Elemente" und ihre Bedeutung fur den Aufbau 
der Mathematik.- CH. V. DIE GRUNDLAGEN DER NATURWISSEN- 
SCH A FT LICHEN ERKENNTNIS. I. Empirische und konstruktive Man- 
nigfaltigkeiten. II. Prinzip und Methode der physikalischen Reihenbildung. 
III. "Symbol" und "Schema" im System der modernen Physik. 
2. FORMEN UND VERWANDLUNGEN DES PHILOSOPHISCHEN WAHR- 
HEITSBEGRIFFS, In: Hamburger Universitats-Reden gehalten beim 
Rektoratswechsel 1929. Hamburg, 1931, pp. 17-36. 
Translated into Japanese in 1930 by Dr. T. Yura. 
3. TUDES SUR LA PATHOLOGIE DE LA CONSCIENCE SYMBOLIQUE. 
Traduit par A. Koyre. Journal de Psychologie Normale et Patholo- 
gique. Vol. XXV, No. 5-8. Paris, Alcan, pp. 289-336; 523-566. 
4. LEIBNIZ UND JUNGIUS. Bettrage zur Jungiusforschung. Festschrift 
der Hamburgischen Universitat, 1929, pp. 21-26. 
5. DIE IDEE DER RELIGION BEI LESSING UND MENDELSSOHN. Fest- 
gabe zum 10 jahrigen Bestehen der Akademie fur die Wissenschaft 
des Judentums. Berlin, Akademie- Verlag, 1929, pp. 22-41. 
6. DIE PHILOSOPHIE MOSES MENDELSSOHNS. In: "Moses Mendels- 
sohn" Zur 200 jahrigen Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages. Pub- 
lished by the "Encyclopedia Judaica," Berlin, Schneider, 1929, pp. 
40-60. 
7. REDE BEIM BEGRABNIS VON ABY WARBURG. Aby Warburg zum 
Gedachtnis. Printed for private circulation. 1929. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 899 
8. NACHRUF AUF ABY WARBURG. In: Hamburger Universitats- 
Reden gehalten beim Rektoratswechsel 1929. Hamburg, 1931, pp. 
48-56. 
1930 
/. "GEIST" UND "LEBEN" IN DER PHILOSOPHIE DER GEGENWART. 
Die Neue Rundschau. Vol. XLI, No. I. Berlin, S. Fischer, 1930, 
pp. 244-264. 
Translated into English in 1947 by Robert Walter Bretall and Paul Arthur 
SMlpp and reprinted in the present volume as Part III (pp. 855-880) under 
the title: " 'Spirit' and 'Life' in Contemporary Philosophy." 
2. FORM UND TECHNIK. In: Kunst und Technik. Aufsatze hrsg. von 
Leo Kestenberg. Berlin, Wegweiser Verlag, 1930, pp. 15-61. 
3. KEPLERS STELLUNG IN DER EUROPAISCHEN GEISTESGESCHICHTE. 
Verhandlungen des naturwissenschajtlichen Vereins, Hamburg, Vol. 
IV, 1930, No. 3-4. 
1931 
/. PHILOSOPHIE DER SYMBOLISCHEN FORMEN: INDEX. Bearbeitet von 
Dr. Hermann Noack. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1931. 92 pp. 
Contents: Subject- and Author-Index j Bibliography. 
2. MYTHISCHER, ASTHETISCHER UND THEORETISCHER RAUM. 
Vierter Congress fur Asthetik und allgemeine Kunsttvissenschajt. 
Bericht hrsg. von H. Noack. Stuttgart, 1931, pp. 21-36. 
3. ENLIGHTENMENT. Article in the "Encyclopedia of the Social Sci- 
ences" New York, 1931. 
4. DEUTSCHLAND UND WESTEUROPA IM SPIEGEL DER GEISTES- 
GESCHICHTE. In: Inter-Nationes; Zeitschrift fur die kulturellen Be- 
ziehungen Deutschlands zum Ausland. Vol. I, No. 3 and 4. Berlin, 
deGruyter, 1931. 
5. KANT UND DAS PROBLEM DER METAPHYSIK. 
BEMERKUNGEN zu MARTIN HEIDEGGER'S KAMI-INTERPRETATION. 
Kant-Studien, Vol. XXXVI, 1931, pp. 1-26. 
1932 
r. DIE PLATONISCHE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND UND DIE SCHULE 
VON CAMBRIDGE. Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, XXIV. Leip- 
zig, B. G. Teubner, 1932. 143 pp. 
Contents: Einleitung. Die gcschichtliche Stellung und die geschichtliche 
900 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
Mission der Schule von Cambridge. I. Die Platonische Akademie in Florenz 
und ihre Wirkung auf den Englischen Humanismus. II. Die Idee der Re- 
ligion in der Schule von Cambridge. III. Die Stellung der Schule von 
Cambridge in der Englischen Geistesgeschichte. IV. Die Bedeutung der 
Schule von Cambridge fur die allgemeine Religionsgeschichte. V. Die 
Naturphilospphie der Schule von Cambridge. VI. Ausgang und Fortwirkung 
der Schule von Cambridge. Shaftesbury. Index. 
2. DIE PHILOSOPHIC DER AUFKLARUNG. Tubingen, Mohr, 1932. 
xviii, 491 pp. 
Italian translation: LA FILOSOFIA DELL'ILLUMINISMO. Translated by E. Pocar, 
Firenze, "La Nuova Italia," 1935. 
Spanish translation: FILOSOFIA DE LA ILLUSTRACION. Mexico, Fondo de 
Cultura Economica, 1943. Translated by Eugenio Imaz. 
English translation: THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT. Translated 
by F. C. A. Koelln. Princeton University Press. (In preparation.) 
Contents: CH. I. DIE DENKFORM DES ZE1TALTERS DER AUF- 
KLARUNG. CH. II. NATUR- UND NATURERKENNTNIS IM DEN- 
KEN DER AUFKLARUNGSPHILOSOPHIE.CH. HI. PSYCHOLOGIE 
UND ERKENNTNISLEHRE.CH. IV. DIE IDEE DER RELIGION. 
I. Das Dogma der Erbsunde und das Problem der Theodizee. II. Die Idee 
der Toleranz und die Grundlegung der natiirlichen Religion. III. Religion 
und Geschichte. CH. V. DIE EROBERUNG DER GESCHICHT LICHEN 
WELT.CH. VI. RECHT, STAAT UND GESELLSCHAFT.l. Die Idee 
des Rechts und das Prinzip der unverausserlichen Rechte. II. Der Vertrags- 
gedanke und die Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften. CH. VII. DIE 
GRUNDPROBLEME DER ASTHETIK. I. Das "Zeitalter der Kritik . 
II. Die klassizistische Asthetik und das Problem der Objektivitat des Schonen. 
III. Das Geschmacksproblem und die Wendung zum Subjektivismus. IV. 
Die Asthetik der Intuition und das Genieproblem. V. Verstand und Ein- 
bildungskraft. Gottsched und die Schweizer. VI. Die Grundlegung der 
systematischen Asthetik. Baumgarten. Index. 
3. GOETHE UND DIE GESCHICHTLICHE WELT. 
DREI AUFSATZE. 
Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1932. 148 pp. 
Content: I. Goethe und die geschichtliche Welt. II. Goethe und das 18. 
Jahrhundert. III. Goethe und Platon. (see 1922, i) 
4. GOETHE UND DAS 18. JAHRHUNDERT. Zeitschrift filr Asthetik und 
allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. Vol. XXVI, 1932, pp. 113-48 (see 
1932, 3: II) 
5. GOETHES IDEE DER BILDUNG UND ERZIEHUNG. Padagogisches 
Zentralblatt. Vol. XII, 1932, pp. 340-58. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 901 
6. DER NATURFORSCHER GOETHE. Hamburger Fremdenblatt, March 
19, 1932. 
7. DIE SPRACHE UND DER AUFBAU DER GEGENSTANDSWELT. 
Bericht uber den XII. Kongress der deutschen Gesellschaft fur 
Psychologie. Hamburg. Jena, G. Fischer, 1932. 
French translation: LE LANGUAGE ET LA CONSTRUCTION DU MONDE DES 
OBJETS. By P. Guillaunte. Journal He Psychology Normale et Pathologique, 
Vol. XXX, pp. 18-44. 
Reprint in: PSYCHOLOGIE DU LANGUAGE, par H. Delacroix, E. Cassirer y etc. 
Bibliotheque de Philosophic contemporaine. Paris, Alcan, 1933, pp. 18-44. 
8. VOM WESEN UND WERDEN DES NATURRECHTS. Zeitsckrtft ]ur 
Rechtsphilosofhie. Vol. VI, No. I. Leipzig, Meiner, 1932. 
9. DIE ANTIKE UND DIE ENTSTEHUNG DER EXAKTEN WISSEN- 
SCHAFT. Die Antike, Vol. VIII. Berlin, deGruyter, 1932, pp. 276- 
300. 
70. SPINOZA'S STELLUNG IN DER ALLGEMEINEN GEISTESGESCHICHTE. 
Der Morgen. Vol. VIII, No. 5. Berlin, Philo-Verlag, 1932, pp. 
325-348. 
n. SHAFTESBURY UND DIE RENAISSANCE DES PLATONISMUS IN 
ENGLAND. Vortrage der Bibltothek Warburg, Vol. IX, 1930-31, 
pp. 136-55. 
12. DAS PROBLEM J. J. ROUSSEAU. Archiv fur Geschichte der Philo- 
sophte. Vol. XLI, 1932, pp. 177-213; 479-5!3- 
Italian translation: IL PROBLEMA GIAN GIACOMO ROUSSEAU. Translated by 
Maria Albanese, Firenze, "La Nuova Italia", 1938. 
/^. KANT. Article in the "Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences" New 
York, 1932. 
1933 
/. L'UNITE DANS L'OEUVRE DE J. J. ROUSSEAU. (X. Leon, E. Cas- 
sirer, etc.) Bulletin de la Soclete Frangaise de Philosophie. Vol. 
XXXII, 1933, pp. 45-85. 
2. HENRI BERGSON'S ETHIK UND RELIGIONSPHILOSOPHIE. Der Mor- 
gen,Vol. IX, No. I. Berlin, Philo-Verlag, 1933. 
Swedish translation: Judisk Tidskrift. Vol. XIV, June 1941, pp, 13-18. 
902 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
1935 
/. SCHILLER UND SHAFTESBURY. The Publications of the English 
Goethe Society. New Series, Vol. XI, Cambridge, The University 
Press, 1935, pp. 37-59. 
1936 
/. DETERMINISMUS UND INDETERMINISMUS IN DER MODERNEN 
PHYSIK. 
HlSTORISCHE UND SYSTEMATISCHE STUDIEN ZUM KAUSALPROBLEM. 
Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift XLII, 1936: 3. ix, 265 pp. 
Contents: PART onE. HlSTORISCHE VORBETRACHTUNGEN.l. Der 
"Lcrplacesche Geist." II. Metaphysischer und kritischer Determinismus. 
PART Two. DAS KAUSALPRINZ1P DER KLASSISCHEN PHYSIK. 
I. Die Grundtypen physikalischer Aussagen. Die Massaussagen. II. Die 
Gesetzes-Aussagen. III. Die Prinzipien-Aussagen. IV. Der allgemeine 
Kausalsatz. PART THREE. KAUSALITAT UND WAHRSCHEINLICH- 
KEIT. I. Dynamische und statistische Gesetzmassigkeit. II. Der logische 
Charakter statistischer Aussagen. PART FOUR. DAS KAUSALPROBLEM 
DER QUANTENTHEORIE. I. Die Grundlagen der Quantentheorie und 
die Unbestimmtheits-Relationen. II. Zur Geschichte und Erkenntnistheorie 
des Atombegriffs. PART FIVE. KAUSALITAT UND KONTINUITJ'T. 
I. Das Kontinuitatsprinzip in der klassischen Physik. II. Zum Problem des 
"materiellen Punktes."SCHLUSSBETRACHTUNGEN UND ETHISCHE 
SCHLUSSFOLGERUNGEN. 
2. INHALT UND UMFANG DES BEGRIFFS. 
BEMERKUNGEN zu KONRAD MARC-WOGAU'S GLEICHNAMIGER SCHRIFT. 
Theoria, Goteborg, Vol. II. 1936, pp. 207-232. 
1937 
/. DESCARTES ET L'IDEE DE L'UNITE DE LA SCIENCE. Revue de 
Synthese. Vol. XIV, No. I. Paris, 1937, pp. 7-28. (see 1939, I, 
Part one, Ch. II) 
2. DESCARTES' WAHRHEITSBEGRIFF. Theoria, Goteborg, Vol. Ill, 
*937> PP- 161-87. (see 1939, i, Part one, Ch. II) 
3. WAHRHEITSBEGRIFF UND WAHRHEITSPROBLEM BEI GALILEI. 
Scientia, Milano, Sept.-Oct. 1937, pp. 121-130; 185-193. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 903 
1938 
/. ZUR LOGIK DBS SYMBOLBEGRIFFS. Theoria, GSteborg, Vol. IV, 
1938, pp. 145-75- 
2. LE CONCEPT DE GROUPE ET LA THEORIE DE LA PERCEPTION. 
Journal de Psychologic, Juillet-Decembre 1938, pp. 368-414. 
English translation: THE CONCEPT OF GROUP AND THE THEORY OF PER- 
CEPTION. Philosophy and Phaenomenological Research , Vol. V. 1944, pp. 
1-35- 
3. REVIEW OF A. C. BENJAMIN'S AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. (New York, 1937.) Lychnos, Upsala, 
1 938, pp. 456-461. 
4. OBER BEDEUTUNG UNO * ~SSUNGSZEIT VON DESCARTES' "RE- 
CHERCHE DE LA VERITE PAR LA LUMIERE NATURELLE." 
Theoria, Goteborg, Vol. IV, 1938, pp. 193-234. 
5. DESCARTES' DIALOG "RECHERCHE DE LA VERITE PAR LA LU- 
MIERE NATURELLE" UND SEINE STELLUNG IM GANZEN DER 
CARTESISCHEN PHILOSOPHIE. 
EIN INTERPRETATIONSVERSUCH. 
Lardomshistorlska Samjundets Arsbok, Lychnos, Upsala, 1938, 
PP- 139-I79- 
French translation: LA PLACE DE LA "RECHERCHE DE LA VRIT PAR LA 
LUMIERE NATURELLE" DANS L'OEUVRE DE DESCARTES. Revue Philosofhique, 
I 939> PP- 161-300. 
Reprinted in: DESCARTES. Lehre-Personlichkeit-Wirkung. 1939, 15 Part 
Two, Ch. II. 
6. REVIEW OF OEUVRES COMPLETES DE MALEBRANCHE, publ. par 
D. Roustan et Paul Schrecker. (Vol. I, 1939.) Theoria, Goteborg 
Vol. IV, 1938, pp. 287-300. 
1939 
/. DESCARTES. 
Lehre Personlichkeit Wirkung. 
Stockholm, Bermann-Fischer Verlag, 1939. 308 pp. 
Swedish translation (Ch. Ill only) : DROTTNINC CHRISTINA OCH DESCARTES, 
Stockholm, Bonniers, 1940$ 140 pp. 
French translation: DESCARTES, CORNEILLE, CHRISTINE DE SUDE. Trans- 
lated by Madeleine Frances et Paul Schrecker. Paris, Vrin, 1942. 
9 o 4 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
Contents: PART onE. GRUNDPROBLEME DES CARTESIANISMUS. CH. I. DES- 
CARTES 9 WAHRHEITSBEGRIFF.CH. II. DIE IDEE DER "EINHEIT 
DER WISSENSCHAFT" IN DER PHILOSOPHIE DESCARTES'. PART 
Two. DESCARTES UND SEIN JAHRHUNDERT. CH. I. DESCARTES UND 
CORNEILLE.CH. II. DESCARTES 9 "RECHERCHE DE LA V&RIT& 
PAR LA LVMI&RE NATURELLE."CH. III. DESCARTES UND DIE 
KdNlGIN VON SCHWEDEN. EINE STUDIE ZUR GEISTESGE- 
SCHICHTE DES 17. JAHRHUNDERTS.l. Das Verhaltnis von Descartes 
und Konigin Christina als geistesgeschichtliches Problem. II. Der "uni- 
versale Theismus" und das Problem der natiirlichen Religion im 17. Jahr- 
hundert. III. Die Renaissance des Stoizismus in der Ethik des 16. und 
17. Jahrhunderts. IV. Descartes' Affcktenlehre und ihre geistesgeschichtliche 
Bedeutung. V. Konigin Christina und das heroische Ideal des 17. Jahr- 
hunderts, 
2. AXEL HAGERSTROM. 
EINE STUDIE ZUR SCHWEDISCHEN PHILOSOPHIE DER GEGENWART. 
Gbteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrijt, XLV, 1939: I. 1 19 pp. 
Contents: I. Der Kampf gegen die Metaphysik. II. Die Kritik des Subjek- 
tivismus. III. Die Moralphilosophie. IV. Recht und Mythos. V. Zur Logik 
der Geisteswissenschaften. 
j. NATURALISTISCHE UND HUMANISTISCHE BEGRUNDUNG DER 
KULTUR-PHILOSOPHIE. Goteborg Kungl. Vetenskap och Vitter- 
hets-Samhalles Handlmgar. 5 foldjer, Ser. A, Bil. 7, No. 3. 1939, 
pp. 1-28. 
Reprinted in: Der Bogen, Scholz Verlag, Wiesbaden, Germany, Vol. 2, No. 
4, April 1947. 
4. DIE PHILOSOPHIE IM 17. UND 18. JAHRHUNDERT. Paris, Her- 
mann & Cie, 1939, 94 pp. Published in Chrontque Annuelle^ publ. 
par I'lnstitut International de Collaboration Philosophique. 
5. WAS IST "SUBJEKTIVISMUS"? Theorla y Goteborg, Vol. V, 1939, 
pp. 111-140. 
. 6. LA PLACE DE LA "RECHERCHE DE LA VERITE PAR LA LUMIERE 
NATURELLE" DANS L'OEUVRE DE DESCARTES. Revue Philoso- 
fhique, 1939, pp. 261-300. (see 1938, 5) 
1940 
i. MATHEMATISCHE MYSTIK UND MATHEMATISCHE NATURWISSEN- 
SCHAFT. 
BETRACHTUNGEN ZUR ENTSTEHUNGSGESCHICHTE DER EXAKTEN WISSEN- 
SCHAFT. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 905 
Lychnos, Upsala, 1940, pp. 248-265. 
2. NEUERE KANT-LITTERATUR. Theoria, Goteborg, Vol. VI. 1940, 
pp. 87-100. 
5. WILLIAM STERN. 
ZUR WlEDERKEHR SEINES TODESTAGES. 
A eta Psychologica, Vol. V, pp. 1-15. 
1941 
/. LOGOS, DIKE, KOSMOS IN DER ENTWICKLUNG DER GRIECHISCHEN 
PHILOSOPHIE. Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift, Vol. XLVII, 1941: 
6. 31 pp. 
2. THORILDS STELLUNG IN DER GEISTESGESCHICHTE DES 18. JAHR- 
HUNDERTS. Svenska Historic Vitterhetens-och Antikvitet-Akade- 
miens Handling ar, 1941. 
5. THORILD UND HERDER. Theoria, Goteborg, Vol. VII. 1941, pp. 
75-92. 
1942 
/. ZUR LOGIK DER KULTURWISSENSCHAFTEN. 
Funf Studien. 
Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrijt, Vol. XLVII. 1942: I. Goteborg, 
Wettergren & Kerbers Forlag. 139 pp. 
Contents: I. Der Gegenstand der Kulturwissenschaft. II. Dingwahrnehmung 
und Ausdruckswahrnehmung. III. Naturbegriffe und Kulturbegriffe. IV. 
Formproblem und Kausalproblem. V. Die "Tragodie der Kultur." 
2. THE INFLUENCE OF LANGUAGE UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXIX, 
No. 12. June 4, 1942, pp. 309-327. 
French translation in Journal de Psychologic Normale et Pathologique Vol. 
XXXIX, 1946, pp. 129-152. 
3. GIOVANNI Pico DELLA MIRANDOLA. 
A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF RENAISSANCE IDEAS. 
Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol. Ill, No. 2, April 1942, pp. 
123-144 and 319-346. 
4. GALILEO. 
A NEW SCIENCE AND A NEW SPIRIT. 
American Scholar y Vol. XII, 1942, pp. 5-19. 
906 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
1943 
/. SOME REMARKS on THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGINALITY OF THE 
RENAISSANCE. Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol. IV. 1943, 
pp. 49-56. 
2. THE PLACE OF VESALIUS IN THE CULTURE OF THE RENAIS- 
SANCE. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. Vol. XVI, No. 
2, December 1942, pp. 109-119. 
5. NEWTON AND LEIBNIZ. Philosophical Review, Vol. LII, 1943, 
pp. 366-391. 
4. HERMANN COHEN, 1842-1918. Social Research, Vol. X, No. 2, 
May 1943, pp. 219-232. 
1944 
/. AN ESSAY on MAN. 
AN INTRODUCTION TO A PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN CULTURE. 
New Haven. Yale University Press. London, H. Milford, Oxford 
University Press, 1944, IX. 237 pp. 
Second and Third Printing: 1945. Fourth Printing: 1947. 
Translated into Spanish as: ANTHROPOLOGIA FILOSOFICA. Introduction a una 
filosofia de la cultura. Version Espanola de Eugenio Imaz. Mexico, Fondo de 
Cultura Economica, 194.5. IX, 419 pp. 
German translation: in preparation. 
Contents: Preface. PART onE. WHAT IS MAN? I. The Crisis in Man's 
Knowledge of Himself. II. A Clue to the Nature of Man: The Symbol. III. 
From Animal Reactions to Human Responses. IV. The Human World of 
Space and Time. V. Facts and Ideals. PART Two. MAN AND CUL- 
TURE. VI. The Definition of Man in Terms of Human Culture. VII. 
Myth and Religion. VIII. Language. IX. Art. X. History. XI. Science. 
XII. Summary and Conclusion. Index. 
2. FORCE AND FREEDOM. 
REMARKS on THE ENGLISH EDITION OF JACOB BURCKHARDT'S "REFLECTION 
on HISTORY." 
American Scholar, Vol. XIII, Autumn 1944, pp. 407-417. 
3. THE MYTH OF THE STATE. Fortune, Vol. XXIX, No. 6, June 
1944, pp. 165-167, 198, 201, 202, 204, 206. 
4. JUDAISM AND THE MODERN POLITICAL MYTHS. Contemporary 
Jewish Record, Vol. VII, 1944, pp. 115-126. 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 907 
Swedish translation: JUDENDOMEN OCH DE MODERNA POLITISKA MYTERNA. 
Judisk Tidskrift, No. 9, Sept. 1946, pp. 266-274. 
POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS 
1. ROUSSEAU KANT GOETHE. Translated from the German by 
James Gutmann y Paul Oscar Kristeller and John Herman Randall, 
Jr. History of Ideas Series No. I. Princeton University Press, 1945, 
98pp. 
Two ESSAYS. 
Contents: KANT AND ROUSSEAU. I. Personal influences. II. Rousseau 
and the doctrine of human nature. III. Law and the state. IV. The prob- 
lem of optimism. V. "Religion within the limits of mere reason." VI. 
Conclusion. GOETHE AND THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. Sources 
and literature. 
2. THOMAS MANNS GOETHEBILD. 
EINE STUDIE OBER LOTTE IN WEIMAR. 
Germanic Review, Vol. XX, No. 3, October 1945, pp. 166-194. 
1946 
i. THE MYTH OF THE STATE. New Haven, Yale University Press. 
London, G. Cumberledge, Oxford University Press, 1946. xii, 
303 pp. Foreword by Charles W. Hendel. 
Spanish translation: EL MITO DEL ESTADO. Translated by E. Nicol, Mexico, 
Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1947, 362 pp. 
Partial German translation (Ch. XVIII) : "DER MYTHOS ALS POLITISCHE 
WAFFE" in: Die Amerikanische Rundschau t 194.3, No. n, pp. 30-41. 
Complete German translation : in preparation. 
Swedish translation : in preparation. 
Contents: PART onE. WHAT IS MYTH? I. The Structure of Mythical 
Thought. II. Myth and Language. III. Myth and the Psychology of 
Emotions. IV. The Function of Myth in Man's Social Life. PART Two. 
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MYTH IN THE HISTORY OF POLITI- 
CAL THEORY. V. "Logos" and "Mythos" in Early Greek Philosophy. 
VI. Plato*s Republic. VII. The Religious and Metaphysical Background of 
the Medieval Theory of the State. VIII. The Theory of the Legal State in 
Medieval Philosophy. IX. Nature and Grace in Medieval Philosophy.X. 
Machiavelli's New Science of Politics. XL The Triumph of Machiavellian 
and its Consequences. XII. Implications of the New Theory of State. 
XIII. The Renaissance of Stoicism and "Natural Right" Theories of State, 
XIV. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment and its Romantic Critics. 
PART THREE. THE MYTH OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. XV. 
The preparation: Carlyle. XVI. From Hero Worship to Race Worship, 
908 WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
XVII. Hegel. XVIII. The Technique of the Modern Political Myths. 
Conclusion. Index. 
2. GALILEO'S PLATONISM. In: Studies and Essays m the History of 
Science. Offered in homage to George Sarton. Edited by M. F. 
Ashley Montagu. New York, H. Schumann, 1946, pp. 276-297. 
3. ALBERT SCHWEITZER AS CRITIC OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY 
ETHICS. The Albert Schweitzer Jubilee Book. Edited by A. A. 
Robacky Sci-Art Publishers, Cambridge, Mass., March 1946, pp. 
239-258. 
4. STRUCTURALISM IN MODERN LINGUISTICS. Word. Journal of the 
Linguistic Circle of New York, Vol. I, No. n, August 1946, 
pp. 99-120. 
IN PREPARATION 
IN GERMAN: Kleinere Schriften. (A collection of previously published 
essays.) Artemis Verlag, Zurich, Switzerland 
Das Erkenntnis'problem in der Philosophie und Wissenschajt der 
neueren Zeit 
Vol. IV. Artemis Verlag, Zurich, Switzerland. 
(Cf. 1906, 3; 1907, i; 1920, I.) 
Contents: Einleitung und Problemstellung Book one: Die 
Exakte Wissenschaft Ch. I. Das Raumproblem und die Ent- 
wicklung der nicht-Euklidischen Geometric II. Erfahrung und 
Denken im Aufbau der Geometric III. Ordnungsbegriff und 
Massbegriff in der Geometric IV. Der Zahlbegriff und seine 
logische Begriindung V. Ziel und Methode der theoretischen 
Physik Book Two: Das Erkenntnisideal der Biologie und seine 
Wandlungen Ch, I. Das Problem der Klassifikation und die 
Systematik der Naturformen II. Die Idee der Metamorphose 
und die "idealistische Morphologic" III. Die Entwicklungsge- 
schichte als Problem und als Maxime IV. Der Darwinismus als 
Dogma und als Erkenntnisprinzip V. Die Entwicklungs- 
Mechanik und das Kausalproblem der Biologie VI. Der Vitalis- 
mus-Streit und die "Autonomie des Organischen" Book Three: 
Grundjormen und Grundrichtungen der historischen Erkenntnis 
Ch. I. Der Durchbruch des Historismus. Herder II. Die 
Romantik und die Anfange der kritischen Geschichtswissenschaft. 
Die "historische Ideenlehre" Niebuhr Ranke W. v. Hum- 
boldt III. Der Positivismus und sein historisches Erkenntnisideal 
Hippolyte Taine IV. Staatslehre und Verfassungslehre als 
WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 909 
Grundlagen der Geschichtsschreibung Theodor Mommsen V. 
Politische Geschichtsschreibung und Kulturgeschichte Jacob 
Burckhardt VI. Die psychologische Typisierung der Geschichte 
Kurt Lamprecht VII. Der Einfluss der Religionsgeschichte 
auf das historische Erkenntnisideal David Friedr. Strauss, Renan, 
Fustel de Coulanges 
Der Mythos vom Staate, Translated from the English. 
Artemis Verlag, Zurich, Switzerland. (See: 1946, i) 
Philosophische Anthrofologie. (Tentative title.) Translated from the 
English. 
Artemis Verlag, Zurich, Switzerland. See: 1944, I 
IN ENGLISH: Das Erkenntnisfroblem. Vol. IV. (English title not yet 
established.) Translated from the German by Paul Schrecker, Yale 
University Press 
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Translated from the German 
by F. C. A. Koelln, Princeton University Press. See: 1932, 2 
Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (place of publi- 
cation not yet determined). See: 1936, I 
IN ITALIAN: Essay on Man. (Italian title not yet established.) Trans- 
lated from the English. Longanesi, Turino, Italy. See: 1944, I 
IN SPANISH : Kants Leben und Lehre. (Spanish title not yet established.) 
Translated from the German. Fondo de Cultura Economica, 
Mexico. See: 1918, I 
Das Erkenntnisp-oblem. Vol. IV. (Spanish title not yet established.) 
Translated from the German. Fondo de Cultura Economica, 
Mexico. 
Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophic der Renaissance. (Spanish 
title not yet established.) Translated from the German. Fondo de 
Cultura Economica, Mexico. See: 1927, i 
IN SWEDISH: The Myth of the State. (Swedish title not yet established.) 
Translated from the English. Natur och Kultur, Stockholm, 
Sweden. See: 1946, I 
9io WRITINGS OF ERNST CASSIRER 
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS 
1902 Leibniz' System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen. 
1906 Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophic und Wissenschaft 
der neueren Zeit. Vol. I. (Cusanus to Bayle) 
1907 Das Erkenntnisproblem, etc. Vol. II. (Bacon to Kant) 
1910 Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff. Untersuchungen iiber die 
Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik. 
1916 Freiheit und Form. Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte. 
1918 Kants Leben und Lehre. 
1920 Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophic und Wissenschaft 
der neueren Zeit. Vol. III. (Die Nachkantischen Systeme) 
192 1 Zur Einstein'schen Relativitatstheorie. Erkenntnistheoretische 
Betrachtungen. 
1921 Idee und Gestalt. Fiinf Aufsatze. Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, 
Kleist. (Erganzungsstudien zu "Freiheit und Form") 
1922 Die BegrifFsform im mythischen Denken. 
1923 Die Philosophic der symbolischen Formen. Vol. I. Die Sprache. 
1925 Die Philosophic der symbolischen Formen. Vol. II. Das 
mythische Denken. 
1925 Sprache und Mythos. 
1925 Die Philosophic der Griechen von den Anfangen bis Platon. 
1927 Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophic der Renaissance. 
1929 Die Philosophic der symbolischen Formen. Vol. III. Phano- 
menologie der Erkenntnis. 
1932 Die Platonische Renaissance in England und die Schule von 
Cambridge. 
1932 Die Philosophic der Aufklarung. 
1 932 Goethe und die geschichtliche Welt. 
1936 Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Phvsik. 
1 939 Descartes. Lehre-Personlichkeit-Wirkung. 
1942 Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. 
1944 An Essay on Man. 
1945 Rousseau Kant Goethe. 
1946 The Myth of the State. 
INDEX 
Arranged by 
ROBERT S. HARTMAN AND ROBERT W. BROWNING 
INDEX 
Abbott, Thomas K., 481, 485, 578 
Absolute, 93 
Absolute being, 293 
Absolute ideal, 674 
Absolute mind, 598 
Abstraction, 394 
Act of creation, subconscious, 320 
Activity, 375 
Actus purus of Aristotle, 866 
Aesthetic, 328 
Aesthetic and ethical judgment, 368 
Aesthetic attitude, 340 
Aesthetic experience, 734.5 as absorption in 
living form, 613 
Aesthetic fancy, 373 
Aesthetic form, 44, 349 
Aesthetic logic, 318 
Aesthetic theory, 329, 339, 645!?, 871 j of 
the Renaissance, 735 
Affinities 341 
Affinitive geometry, 203 
Albert!, use of perspective, 626 
Alchemy, 60 1 
Alhambra of Granada, 301 
(Das) Allgemeine im Aujbau der geisteswis- 
s ens chaf (lichen Erkenntnis, 355 
Allegorical, 371 
Altdorfer, experiments with oblique space, 
627 
Amor intellectualis, 823 
Amphiboly of the concept of reflection, 321 
Analogic level of concept, 299) level of 
language, 298 
Analogue, art as, servant of reason, 610, 
6x5-616 
Analogues of experience, 195 
Analogy, 254, 260 
Analysts, 307) infinitesimal, 2851 of 
culture, 1x8) of experience, 197, 371) 
of myth, 37 1 j situs, 203 
Analytical a priori, 192 
Analytical or tautological propositions, 255 
Anaxagoras, 281 
Anderson, F. H., 474 
Animal rationale , 201 
Animal symbolicum t man as, 201, 448, 461, 
493, 5<>5) 536 
Animals, 363, 869; and environment, 861 
Animism, 509, 5x7 
Anthropocentrism, 484 
Anthropological philosophy, 446, 449, 451, 
457, 458, 461, 463, 464 
Anthropology, cultural, 494.} Kant's, 484- 
486) phenomenological, 492 j philosoph- 
ical, 278, 399, 446, 449, 457, 459, 461, 
463, 464, 817, 821, 824, 829, 842, 843, 
846; spiritual, 491, 500, 541 
Anthropomorphism of the child, 366 
Anthropomorphism, objective, 663 
Antinomies of the culture-concept, 92 
Antinomy of all cultural life, 320 
Antithesis of nature and spirit, 858 
Antithesis between real powers of Being, 
872 
Anxiety, 67f 
Aphasia, 369 
A priori, 135, 1521!, 158, 191, 210, 7371!) 
"basic mental function," 161 ; develop- 
ment of symbolic forms, 165; diversity, 
1 63; "formal structure of the mind," 
173$ invariant element of form, 1555 
Kant's vs. Leibniz', 249} pragmatic 
criticism of, I75x?> result of mental at- 
titude, 1791 rule, 161 
Archimedes, 282 
Architecture, 348 
Ariosto, 350 
Aristotle, 85, xxo, 190, 210, 281, 306, 
32X, 548, 551*. 555, 569, 573, 6*5*, 
839, 840, 844, 865f j actus purus of, 866} 
on causes, 753) on definition of man, 
493 j on slavery, 478} on supreme Form, 
866) teleology of, 866 
Art, 48, 84, 1x5, 161, 298, 308, 309, 
3X5, 341, 345, 375, 387, 393, 395, 39*, 
446, 461, 463, 464, 480, 558, 565, 566, 
569, 571, 633, 6421!, 832, 850, 851 ) an 
analogue, 6xo, 615-6x6} autonomy of, 
6xo, 6x6, 621, 625, 627, 629) forms of, 
5<>6, 5x3, 542) as imaginative penetration 
913 
914 
INDEX 
into the nature of things, 610, 619} as imi- 
tation, 610; variant doctrines of, 613-6151 
individual rights of, 667) law in, 644$ 
like and dislike in, 68$fj as microcosm 
of the age, 610, 627-628} part of man's 
total functioning, 609, 6xo, 627, 629) 
museum idea of, 348} pietism hostile to, 
607 j and philosophy, 607-608, 734, 756 j 
placement of, shown in diagram, 6xi} 
plastic, origin of, and conceptions of im- 
mortality, 607$ realism in, 643) and 
science, 735, 756} self-subsistence of, 
origin in gradual freeing from substantial 
nature, 6ioj symbol, relation to, 609, 
621) as symbolic form, 608, 610, 6x8, 
624, 628) two-fold movement in, 609- 
610, 629 
Art as Experiencc t by John Dewey, 346 
Art in Painting by Albert C. Barnes, 3$6f 
Artist, 347) his imagination and reflection, 
68ij his creative world, 6821?) his ra- 
tionality, 6821? 
Artistic creation, 339; essence, 670$ media, 
348 
A see sis, 863 
Asceticism, 873 
Aspects of symbolism, 117 
Associative law, 203 
Astral mythology, 369 
Astrology, 49 
Astronomy, Ptolemaic, 601, 602 
Atmosphere, group, 279 
Atom, 280$ bomb, 279 
Atomism, 206 
Attraction and repulsion, 870 
Aujbau der Farbwelt, by Katz, xo8 
Auden, W. H., 629 
Augustine, 807 
Ausdrvck, 298 
Ausdrucks-Charakter, 114 
Ausdrucksfunktion, 95 
Auseinandersetzung, between World and 
Ego, 322 
Autonomy of force, 190 
Axel Haegerstroem, by Cassirer, 116, 206, 
208, 578f, 586, 591, 
Aiom, 105, 135 
Ayer, A. J., 596, 597 
Baader, Franz von, 582 
Babbitt, Irving, 350 
Babylonian culture, 370 
Bach, 608 
Bacon, 261, 281, 737-740 
Bain, Alexander, 578 
Baldwin, Lord, 588 
Barnes, Albert C., 356! 
Barth, Karl, 846 
Basic law of synthetic unity, 767 
Bashan, 371 
Baumgardt, David, essay by, 577-603$ 594 
Baumgarten, Alexander, 318, 345, 346, 
645, 832 
Beauty, as harmony, 6xo^ as symbol, 609 
Becker, Oskar, 199, 843 
Becoming, 326 
Bedeutung, 78, 298} see meaning 
Bedeutungsjunktion t 95 
Bedeutungzusammenhdnge, 163 
Beethoven, 350 
Beethoven-Gauss, 332 
Begrifserklarung t 871 
Behaviorism, 271, 273) its approach to 
signs and symbols, 83 j radical, 208 
Being, 125, 144, 548, 550-551, 554-556, 
558, 562-563, 737, 743, 747, 753, 754*, 
872$ antithesis between real powers of, 
872$ Being-for-itself, 872$ Being and 
Nothingness, 822f 
Belief, practical, 553 
Bell, E. T., Men of Mathematics, 332 
Benedict, Ruth, 516, 517, 529 
Benfey, 370 
Bentham, Jeremy, 599, 6o2f 
Bergson, Henri, 3x0, 328, 399, 435^, 49*, 
492, 510, 639 
Berkeley, George, 406 
Betuusstsein y 88) see Mind 
'Bewusstheit? 808, 822 
Bidney, David, essay by, 467-544 
Bild, 375 
Biographical data as science, 272 
Blanshard, Brand, 472 
Bloomfield, Leonard, 502 
Boas, Franz, 504, 5x6 
Bodmer, 6x4 
Body and soul, 303 
Body, physical, 775 
Boehm, W., 670 
Boileau, 617 
Boltzman, L., 197, 281, 787 
Bolyai, 192 
Boscovich, 281 
Bradley, F. H., 206 
Breitinger, 6x4 
Brentano, Franz, 803, 807 
INDEX 
Broad, C. D., 577, 57$, $80, 595 
Bronze, age of, 299 
Brouwer, 1991", 434) see Intuitionism, 
Formalism 
Brunschvicg, L6on, 65 
Buber, Martin, 846 
Buckle, 664 
Buehler, Karl, 108, 830 
Bundle of sense-impressions, 202 
Burckhardt, Jacob, 803 
Buxton, Charles Roden, 329 
Caird, Edward, 843 
Calculus, 246} of classes, 249$ of relations, 
244, 266 
Cambridge Platonists, 464 
Canto rian set theory, 195, 199 
Cantor's transfinite numbers, 779 
Carnap, Rudolf, 79ff, 208, 322, 596 
Cardinal and ordinal numbers as compli- 
mentary, 245 
Cardinal number, ordinal number as logi- 
cally prior to, 245 
Cartesian notion of mind, 478 
Case, Edward Murray, poem, 405 essay, 
S2-S4 
Cassirer, Ernst: for works, consult Biblio- 
graphy j for reference to works, consult 
individual titles ) for topics, consult the 
remainder of the Index as well as below ; 
for his essay, 855-880 } aesthetic and sci- 
entific thought synthesized by, 734, 756} 
his a-historical ways of thought, 732, 
741 f, 755f) ambiguities as multiple 
meanings in, 756) antitheses as used by, 
733f J * priori, doctrine of, I5if j apriori- 
zation of empirical distinction, 351} 
balance, 44$ brightness of discourse, 731, 
754ffi cheerfulness, 59 ) conceptualism of, 
2o8f) convictions and motives, 759} 
cultural definition of man, 492-495 [see 
Animal symbolicum] \ cultural reality, 
concept of, 496-498} cultural symbolism, 
506-512) cultural unity, 541-544) culture 
and myth, 527-535) dialectical agreement 
and disagreement at the same time, 737, 
745> 747, 749, 7531 dialectical context 
as giving meaning to individual state- 
ments, 7315, 735, 755ffj as editor, 44$ 
as exile, 56, 59ff) as European, 45) 
Galileo as criticized by, 737, 746f, 750, 
755) Galileo as object of historical in- 
vestigation by, 731-736) Galileo as 
witness to views of, 736f, 744f, 750, 
755 J generosity of, 72) as German, 45) 
as historian, 44, 689ff, 731-735, 748f, 
755f) historical transplanting of past 
thinkers, 732, 734) historical understand- 
ing, 749 i history, theory of, 749, 756 
[see History] j humanism of, 443 ff> 
535-541) irony of, 756) as Jew, 45) 
as Kantian, 367, 446f, 457f, 498-5<>M 
73*f, 745, 75<>f, 756, 757^, 799 [see 
Kant, Neo-Kantianism] ) language, phi- 
losophy of, 379ff, 40 iff [see Language]) 
liberalism, 755f) literary interests, 447, 
454, 462, 66 iff) man, definition of, 492- 
495 [see Animal symbolicum] } as man of 
letters, 458, 6siff, 66iffj mathematical 
concepts, theory of, 239ff [see Mathe- 
matics] j memory, 50) metaphor, use by, 
751 f) mind, theory of, 395) movement 
of thought, 732ff, 742, 751, 756, 883f$ 
on myth, 359*?, 379 ff , 5 I 5 ff i optimism, 
749, 84offj paradoxes used by, 736, 742, 
753) as phenomenologist, 367, 823!!) 
philosophical style, 73 iff, 755ff) and 
philosophical tradition, 92) philosophy, 
conception of, 73ff) philosophy as frame 
of reference, 180) philosophy of science 
and the social sciences, 2698 > and Plato, 
74off, 752, 756) Plato, comparison with, 
754ff) on the psychological function of 
symbolic forms, 512-515) quotations, use 
by, 732, 74of, 742f, 745, 755* radiance, 
755, 840) radicalism, 742 f 5 rationalism, 
535-541, 732) reconciliation, sense of, 
749f, 753) relativism of, 756) rhythm 
of prose of, 732, 755) scholarship, 50, 
53) science, philosophy of, x83ff, 2i5ff, 
2695", 757ffj scope of work, 94) self- 
restraint, 48} serenity, 53) social science, 
philosophy of, 2698 [see Culture]) 
sophistry, Platonic, 754ff j sources, use of, 
732, 755? pell, 756, 840) his studies, 
42} symbolism, theory of, 289:? [see 
Art, Language, Myth, etc.] ) as synthesiz- 
ing art and science, 735, 756) as 
synthesizing empiricism and rationalism, 
735f) as synthesizing history and phi- 
losophy, 732ff, 755f) as teacher, 44, 
52ff, 56ff, 756} his teachers [see Cohen, 
Natorp, Simmel] j and teaching curricula, 
76} Ideological ｅxpressions used as meta- 
phors, 752) transcendental orientation, 
88) transparence, 752, 840} understand- 
916 
1JND&X 
ing, concept of, 748*", 753, 755f} on 
unitary function of myth, 5 15-51 7 j on 
unity, cultural problem of, 541-544 j 
universal liberal, 756} urbanity, 749; 
way of thought of, 73 iff 5 and Whitehead, 
749$ world crisis, reaction to, $8f, 464, 
838 
Categorial constitution, 8iof, 852 
Categorical imperative, 473, 481, 487, 578 
Categories, 115, 156, 161, 251, 385, 397, 
766, 8765 a priori, 4875 axiological, 488} 
doctrine of, 248 
Category of creativity, 292 
Catharsis, 620 
Catholics, 535 
Cause, 77, 84, 94, 117, 303; Aristotle on, 
753} Kant on, 75of 
Causality, 166, 293, 455, 761, 767, 784, 
789, 790, 791} law of, 768f, 784^? 
Causal relations, 780 
Centers, points of reference, 323 
Certainty of knowledge, 15 if, 159, 778 
Chance, 743, 753 
Change, 277, 768 
Character, 79, 96, 341 
Characteristica generalis> 316 
Characteristic a universalis, 849 
Chemistry, 275 
Child, anthropomorphism of, 366$ language 
of, 363*!} play of, 366 
Christianity, 425, 479 
Christians, the early, 479 
Christina, Queen of Sweden, 675 
Cicero, 480 
Circle, 258 
Civilization, fact of, 486 
Class and classification, 129, 250 
Classical mechanics, 776, 789 [see Newton] 
Classicism, German, 666 
Cognition, context of, 762 , object of, 7651", 
778, 793 [see Neo-Kantianism] } process 
of, 762, 771 j progress of, 7655 "x" of, 
7*>5f, 778, 793 [see Neo-Kantianism] 
Cognitive functions, negative prefix in, 861 
Cohen, Hermann, 42, 185, 384, 549, 554, 
557, 567, 638, 759, 76o, 761, 763, 764, 
801, 802, 804, 805, 806, 809, 815, 818, 
822, 823, 830, 831, 833, 835. 837, 8 * 6 ' 
848, 849 
Cohen, Morris R., 104, 447, 659 
Coleridge, Samuel T., 839 
Collecting facts, 278 
Collective representations, 5i8f, 523fj 
wishes, 529 
Collingwood, Cassirer's criticism of his 
view of art, 617-618 
Color, 109, 191 
Combination of deduction and induction, 
579* 
Commercialism, 332 
Common sense, 113, 381, 389 
Comparative theory of the sciences, 273, 
276 
Comprehensive aesthetics, 328 
Comte, Auguste, 455, 469, 488, 494, 498, 
5'5> 564, 572 
Comtean sociology, 474, 477 
Conative views of art. See ｅxpressionism 
Concentration, 304, 323 
Concept, 99, 3405 logic of the generic 
or class, 250 
"Concept of Group and Theory of Per- 
ception," by Cassirer, 98, 8261", 829, 839 
Conception (s), 381, 391, 398* ethical, 388, 
577ff} mythic, 392, 395, 396 [see myth, 
etc.]} primitive, 387; scientific, 383, 384, 
392 
Concepts, 130, 276, 2845 class, 250} form- 
ation of, 272} generic, 2505 levels of, 
275} mathematical, 239ff, 281} rela- 
tional, 250 
Conceptual-function, 95 
Conceptual thinking, 313 
Conceptualism of Cassirer, 2o8f 
Concrescence, 567, 570-571 
Conditions, initial, 788 
Conic sections, 308 
"Connection of meaning," 163 
Conrad, Joseph, 844 
Conrad-Martius, Hedwig, 829 
Consciousness, dialectics of, 825, 834, 850} 
dialectic of the mythical, 376} mythic, 
558, 564ff, 57of, 573} natural function 
of, 305} nature and, 857} pure, 808, 
8 10, 811, 842, 853} synthesizing func- 
tion of, 300 [see Neo-Kantianism] 
Conservation of energy, 196 
Constancy, 2775 of relations, 281 
Constitutive forms, 94 [see Neo-Kantian- 
ism] 
Constitution, categorial, 810, 811, 852 
Construction 815, 816, 818} of matter, 
256} of series, 277} theoretical, 156 
Contemplation, 553 
Content, 372, 7651 of a science, 274 
Context, 79, 80, 84, 85, 94, 109, 113, 117, 
266, 764, 765, 794} of cognition, 762} 
dynamic, 785} of experience, 763, 766} 
logical, 764$ no objectivity outside the, 
86} of symbolic forms, 306} systematic, 
INDEX 
917 
7635 of thought, 765 j unity of, 765 
Contingency of necessity, 750, 752ff 
Continuity, 263 j law of, 297$ pattern of 
morality between soul of man and his 
creation, 320 
Coordination, 307 
Coordinate systems, Gaussian, 783 
Coordinates, space-time, 783 
Copernican revolution, 186, 321, 473, 484, 
536} Kant's, 90, 743, 794f 
Copernicus, 186, 274, 747 
Copula level of language, 298 
Copy theory of knowledge, 258, 551, 571 
Corneille, 6725 
Correlativity of sense and senses, 101 
Correspondence theories, 210 
Creation, $$7-$$%, 5&O, 562, 563, 564, 
572 j logic of, 310$ process of, 293 
Creative civilization, 43 
Creative energy, 65 
Creative force, 362 
Creative principle, 363 
Creative process, 118 
Creative synthesis, 259 
Creative thought, 291 
Creativity, category of, 292 
Creativity of the mathematical method, 264 
Creativity of mathematical thought, 254^ 
Creativity of thought, 262 
Crisis, 57, 326, 507, 528, 872? in philo- 
sophical anthropology, 467-470 
Criteria of verification, 213 
Critical analysis, 294 
Critical idealism, 145, 246 
Critical philosophy, 191, 303, 407, 551, 
557, 573 [ee Kant] 
Criticism, literary, 63 iff, 66 iff 
Critique of culture, 77, 160, 181, 296, 303, 
795 
Critique of Judgment, by Kant, 205, 346, 
617, 817 
Critique of knowledge, 125!?, 160 
Critique of Practical Reason, by Kant, 489 
Critique of Pure Reason, by Kant, 69, 86f, 
91, 168, 185, 205, 243, 251, 492, 549f> 
55* 595, 727, 737, 7$6, 812, 814, 815, 
871 
Critique of reason, 77, 160, 296 
Croce, Benedetto, 45, 355, 6171", 643^ 671$ 
Cassirer's criticism of his view of art, 
Cultural forms, 289ff, 379ff, 545 ff, 642, 
835ffj periodic system of, 314 
Cultural functionalists, 538 
Cultural history, 495 
Cultural matrix of inquiry, 211 
Cultural process, 495 
Cultural reality, 4966*, 8356* 
Cultural reason, 501 
Cultural social science, 63 
Cultural unity, problem of, 54 iff 
Culture, 77, 175, 452f, 455*?, 461 f, 547- 
574 j anthropocentric critique of, 484- 
488; category of, 4941 concept of, 470$ 
as creation of the mind, 175, 488} 
critique of, 326, 499, 795; freedom as 
sphere of, 488, 536-5395 functionalistic 
concept of, 51 1 } as human creation, 329$ 
as language of human spirit, 541 j myth's 
role in, 527-535$ nature and, 472, 486$ 
as organic phenomenon, 5i4f} phenom- 
enology of human, 500, 833^ philoso- 
phy's mission in, 92$ polaristic concep- 
tion of, 494 $ as the process of man's 
progressive self-liberation, 321; as super- 
organic, 5i4f} tragedy of, 573 fj world 
of, 806, 833, 835, 836, 841, 845, 852 
Culturologists, 536, 537, 538 
Culturology, 494 
Dance, 348 
Dante, 343 
Darstellung, 298 
Darwin, Charles, 210, 456 
Data of immediate experience, 188, 298, 
Cultural critique, 326, 4845, 499, 795 
Cultural determinists, 538 
Cultural evolution, 304 
Cultural existentialists, 538 
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 649 
Death, 843 
Dedekind, 134 
Deduction, I58fj and induction, 260, <J79f 
Definition, genetic, 258) operational, 282 
Definitive article level of language, 298 
Democritus, 141, 600, 625 
Dematerialization, 318 
Demonstrative pronouns level of language, 
298 
Descartes, Rene, 71, 244, 313, 353, 4<>6> 
445, 626, 808, 843, 867 j and Corneille, 
6728" j life in Stockholm, 71 
"Descartes Wahrheitsbegriff," by Cassirer, 
693> 706, 709 
Descriptive analysis, 803 
Designation of the sign, 8if 
Determinism, 753 
Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der 
mode men Physik, by Cassirer, 75, 185, 
9i8 
I94ff, 196, 208, 737, 74<>ff, 
759f, 774ff, 786ff 
Determinists, cultural, 538$ historical, 538 
Detour, art of, 870 
Development of space, 322 
Development of relational thought, 322 
Dewey, John, 81, g6 y 2ogS t 342, 349, 
358, 440, 635 
Dialectic, 6405, 653, 659, 753, 75$} Cas- 
sirer's, 737, 745, 747ff, 756 j of all 
cultural life, 320$ Hegel's, 210 j of 
mythical consciousness, 3765 of symbol 
relation, 102 
Diderot, Denis, 654$ his recognition of 
importance of individuality in style, 615 
Differential of symbolic forms, 306 
Differentiation, 297, 301, 323 
Diffuse energies, 323 
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 42, 452, 467, 488-492, 
494, 498, 500, 549, 6$4f, 663, 667, 803, 
804, 807 
Dimensions of space, 779 j of symbolic 
forms, 297 
Diotima, 755 
Diplomat, 283 
Ding-an-sich, 8 12, 814 
Disintegration between man and culture, 
320 
Distance, between man and reality, 874$ 
between symbol and phenomenon, 307 
Distinctions, empirical and real, 339 
Diversity, 7525 of form, 163!?) of world 
pictures, 168 
Dogmatic empiricism, 197 
Dogmatic realism, 202 
Dogmatic sensualism, 298 
Dogmatism, 65, 325 
Double universal, 415 
Dream, 387, 392, 395, 397, 398 
Dualism, 128, 2105 epistemological, 500 
Dualistic realism, 124, 136, 141 
Duerer, naturalistic perspective of, 626 
Duhem, Pierre, 169 
Durkheim, mile, 498, 524, 594 
Duties, prima facie, 577-582 
Dynamic context, 785 
Dynamic of form, 664 
Dynamic function of language, 878} of 
metaphors, 879 
Dynamic unity, 190 
Dynamics of social events, 284 
Eaton, Ralph, 246 
Ebner, Ferdinand, 846 
INDEX 
Economic equilibria, 288 
Economics, 279, 283, 838 
Eddington, A. S., 207, 428, 434 
Education, 43 
Effect, 303 
Effects, system of, 775 
Efficient energy, 868 
Ego, 810, 811, 823, 84iff, 853 j birth of the, 
291 
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 326 
Ehrenfels, C., 827 
Einheitsmotnente, 827 
Einleitung in die Philosophic, by Litt, Theo- 
dor, 355 
Einstein, Albert, 42, 282, 745 
Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, 
192, 194, 200, 782 
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, 191, 
194, 200, 781 
(Zur) Einsteinschen Relativitatstheorie, by 
Cassirer, 191, 193, 759 [see Substance 
and Function and Einstein's Theory of 
Relativity] 
Electron, 198, 280 j as material point, 198 
Eliot, T. S., 629 
Ellipse, 308 
Emotion, 278, 364 
Emotive meaning, 589, 593 
Empathy, 96, 841 f 
Emphasis, law of new, 297 
Empirical epistemology, 98 
Empirical knowledge, 178, 273 [see 
Science] 
Empirical sciences, philosophy and the, 273 
Empirical space, 115 
Empiricism, 243, 263, 406, 733f, 736 j of 
Cassirer's philosophy, 88, io6fj logical, 
200, 209, 353 
Empty space and empty time, 86 1 
Energies of order, 873 
Energy, 284, 316, 8635 forms of, 770$ of 
spirit, 301, 304 
Enlightenment, 445, 652, 654, 666 
Entelechy, 210 
Entities, 775 
Entropy, 775 
Environment, 363 
Environmental correction in the case of 
signals, 83 
Envisagement, 394 
Epimetheus, in Goethe's Pandora^ 623 
Epistemology, 43, 77, 78, 98, 106, 251, 
262, 338, 385, 393, 398, 399> 494, 733 
737ff, 761, 762, 871$ empirical, 98$ 
INDEX 
919 
idealistic, 506) and logic, 98, 251$ 
realistic, 505 
Equality, 287$ of all men, 480 
Equations, 284. 
Equilibria of forces, 288 
Erasmus, 451 
Erkenntnis problem, 44, 64, 153, l86ff, 
29if, 7095, 7i8f, 723, 725, 736 
Erkenntniswert dfr Sprache, 405, 406, 419 
Erlanger program, 203 
Essay on Man, (An), 53, 76, 117*", 201, 
303, 3*5, 3'9 332, 387, 392, 397, 400, 
445*, 450, 458f, 4^3, 4M, 475, 493*, 
497, 499#, 507, 5*2, 538, 542, 607, 613, 
6i6ff, 629, 633, 6355, 653, 658, 663f, 
671, 682ff, 691, 695f, 698^, 704, 707, 
710, 805, 807, 813, 823, 826, 831, 835ff, 
845f, Ssoffj (Alexander Pope's), 449, 
459 
Essays in Experimental Logic, by Dewey, 
342 
Essence, 131, 375, 8i8f, 827, 829$ artistic, 
670 
Estrangement of the symbolic forms from 
their creator, 325 
Ethical relativity, 593*f, 595, 597f, 600 
Ethics, pluralistic, 577, 5905 empirical and 
relational, 4855 objective validity in, 599 
Eucken, Rudolf, 843 
Euclid, 85 
Euclidean geometry, iQzf, 203 
Euclidean space, 780 
Euclidicity of physical space, 780 
Euler, 313 
Events, 786 
Evil and error, 652 
Evolution, cultural, 309 \ of cultural sym- 
bolism, 506-512) of language, 541} 
psychological, $!3f 
Evolution, Darwinian theory of, 503) by 
mutation, 503 
Evolutionists, 488, 534 
Exact sensuous imagination, 302 
Excluded middle, principle of, 199 
Existence, 2765, 298, 743, 774* 77* 
Existential disengagement, 361 
Existentialism, 492, 807, 843$ theological, 
540 
L'Existentialisme, by J.-P.-Sartre, 492 
Existentialists, 537 
Exner, F., 741 ff 
Experience, I26f, 148, 262, 266, 307, 383^, 
389, 392ff, 39**, 550, 553, 743, 75**, 
8o5f, 810, 852$ analysis of, 371$ context 
of, 763, 766) immediate, 138} integra- 
tion of, 763$ intentional, 810, 817, 819, 
820^ intuitive elaboration of, 340 $ in- 
tuitive mastery of, 341 $ and mathematics, 
262, 264) metaphysical, 836^ order of, 
784) pan-aesthetic conception of, 348} 
religious, 847, 848-854$ as science, 85} 
totality of, 281 j "x" of, 769, 771, 779 
Experience and Nature, by John Dewey, 96 
Experiment, 284, 73 3 f, 736fj question and 
answer in, 737 
Experimental procedure, 282 
Explanatory myth, 797 
Explication, 99 
ｅxpression, 165, 298, 373, 407, 4i2ff, 4'9i 
and conception, 387, 381, 3975 emotion- 
al, 385$ function, 95 
ｅxpressionism, and genius, 616-617$ as 
inception of art, 619; undisciplined, false 
excess, 610 
ｅxpressions, intellectual and spiritual, 306 
Expressive sense, 113 
Expressive space, 115 
Fact of science, 194, 76 if 
Facts, 79, 278, 388f, 39ifj interdependence 
of facts and theory, 277$ in terms of 
knowledge, 210 
Faguet, 672 
Faith, 521, 522, 540 
Fanaticism, 599 
Farber, Marvin, 802 
Fatalism, 538, 539 
Faust, 867f 
Fear, 341 
Feeling, 322, 385, 386, 389, 395, 397 
Fichte, J. G., 384, 447, 4^0, 561, 633, 
646, 667/1*, 678f, 831 
"Ficino's Place in Intellectual History," 
by Cassirer, 715, 717, 724 
Field theory, 271, 283f, 775$ of forces, 
775} social and physical, 280 
Finitude of man, 551, 553, 554*555 
Fink, Eugen, 802 
Fixed centers, 97 
Folklore, 368 
Fontane, Th., 687 
Forces, 769 
Form, 321, 251, 6435, 648, 805, 812-822, 
825, 827, 830, 831^ beauty one aspect 
of total life of, 6245 a dynamic principle, 
306, 664$ in Goethe's Pandora, 623 j 
living, 613, 620$ and material, 337, 
346, 388) in painting, 685 [see Cultural, 
920 
INDEX 
Culture, Forms, Myth, Symbolic forms] 
Formal logic, 158, 241 f, 265 
Formalism, 430 
Formalists, 199, 249 [see Hilbert, Weyl] 
Formalization of mathematics, 199 
Forman, Henry James, 332 
Formative energy, 868 
Form-qualities, 133 
Forms, 94, 100, 352$ cultural, 642 [see 
Cultural, Culture]} of energy, 770$ of 
intuition and understanding, 86, 384 
[see Kant]} of order, 86 ij space and 
time, 779} symbolic, 289-333, 337**, 385, 
387, 39<>, 392, 395, 400, 794, 805, 812, 
825, 830, 831-845, 848, 852 j trans- 
cendental, 385 [see Kant] 
Fortschritt (progress), 376 
Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, by 
R. Carnap, 8of 
Foundations of Theory of Signs, by C. W. 
Morris, 8if 
Francesca, Piero della, use of perspective, 
626 
Frank, Philipp, 2o8f 
Frankena, William K., 584 
Frazer, Sir James, 515, 517, 520 
Freedom, 479, '487, 490, 553, 570, 571, 
84of, 852, 86i} in the development of 
culture, 5365 and form, 644*1", 648} 
natural and cultural, 539$ of the spirit, 
3045 of will, 373 
Frege, 132, 134 
Freiheit und Form, 355, 447, 608 f, 6i4f, 
62off, 633, 639, 645, 648ff, 654, 69if, 
709, 725, 832, 851 
Freud, Sigmund, 395, 398, 594, 867 
"Freud and the Future," 331 
Freud, Goethe, Wagner > 331 
Function, 188, 302, 385, 501, 634, 750} 
concept of, 501 j development from 
mythical to logical function of linguis- 
tic symbols, 508} of ego, 542 j of myth, 
515-528} poetic, 533} psychological, of 
symbolic forms, 512-515} and structure, 
91} subjective and objective, of symbolic 
forms, 5<>5f, 51 if} teleological unity of, 
543} theoretical, of symbols, 5<Hf} 
transcendental, 483} unitary, of myth, 
512-517} unity of, 506, 637f 
Functional character of pure Form, 870 
Functional laws, 789, 791 
Functional relations, 766 
Functional unity, 506, 637*", 645, 658 
Functionalizing of object, 553, 557-558, 
562 [see Substance] 
Functions, 157, 795 
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics 
of Ethics, by Kant (ed. by Abbott), 481, 
485, 578 
Fundamentum relationis, 767 
Gadamer, 803 
Galileo, 190, 284, 299, 309**, 313, 58if, 
7Hf, 731-756, 787* vs. Bacon, 73iff} 
on Being, 743} and the church, 749} on 
determination, 753} empiricism of, 733f} 
on eternal and necessary things, 731} on 
existence, 743} vs. Exner, 74iff} experi- 
ments of, 736, 742} on experiment, 
733ff} on hypothesis, 734, 745} on in- 
duction, 737, 739} on inertia, 746} on 
knowledge, 73 iff } on laws of nature, 
731, 733, 736ff, 739, 74^} mathematical 
metaphysics of, 746} on mathematical 
reasoning, 731} on mechanism, 746} 
metaphysical basis of, 739, 744, 746, 
748f} vs. Mill, 737ff> on mind, 731} 
on motion, 746, 753} on necessity, 731} 
ontological motives of, 739, 744, 746f} 
on phenomena, 731} phoronomics of, 
746} quoted, 739, 742} rationalism of, 
732} on sensory perception, 731} on 
scientific knowledge, 73 iff 
"Galileo: A New Science and a New 
Spirit," by Cassirer, 714!?, 736ff 
Gate of Hell, 297, 325 
Gauss, 192 
Gaussian co-ordinate systems, 783 
Gawronsky, Dimitry, essays, 1-37} an( * 
215-238 
Geiger, Max, 845 
Geist, 78, 81, 342, 368 
" *Geh? und 'Leben* in der Philosophic 
der Gegenwart," by Cassirer, 825, 836, 
839, 840 
Geistestvissenschaften, 432, 488, 549, 567, 
761, 792, 798 
General Logic, by Eaton, R., 246 
General Theory of Relativity, 19 iff, 200, 
782 
Genetic definition, 256, 258 
Genius, 315 
'Genius' theory of art. See ｅxpressionism 
Geometry, 192, 203, 247, 277, 322} non- 
Euclidean, 779f 
George, Stefan, 803 
Germany, 68 
INDEX 
921 
German, 45, 326} aesthetics, 6455$ en- 
lightenment, 666) idealism, 41, 669, 
672 [see Neo-Kantianism] 5 romanticism, 
446 
Geschichte der griechischen Philosophic, 
by Cassirer, 754 
Gesefalichkeit, 790 
Gestalt, 322, 327, 342, 417 
Gestalt psychology, 202, 205, 271, 638 
Gestalten, of the symbolic forms, 295, 300 
Gestalt en, 301, 325 
Gestaltqualitaten, 827 
Gesture, 300 
Gibbs, 197 
Gilbert, Katharine, essay, 605-630 
Gilson, E., 484 
"Giovanni Pico della Mirandola," by Cas- 
sirer, 717 
God, 553, 563, 846-853? His word writ- 
ten in nature, 737 
Gods, 387, 389, 390, 396 
Goethe, 43, 46, 67, 295, 302, 304, 350, 
384, 447, 457ff, 633, 635, 639, 
646, 647fF, 654, 659, 680, 83 if, 870, 
877, 8845 on Bacon, 74of; demonstra- 
tion of Cassirer's theory of art as sym- 
bol, 620-624; early assurance about for- 
mative function of art, 612-613$ early 
work, 621} Farbenlehre, 7405 Faust, 
621-622; on induction, 74Ofj and Kan- 
tian philosophy, 3325 Pandora, 622-624-, 
and Rousseau, 621 } transiency of beau- 
tiful forms, 622-623} Urfaust, 621 
"Goethe und die geschichtliche Welt," by 
Cassirer, 635, 649^ 652f, 680 
"Goethe's Pandora," by Cassirer, 622ff 
Goldstein, Kurt, 394, 831 
Good, idea of the, 471, 473, 756} man- 
ners, 348 
Goodness, intrinsic, 582, 584, 588, 599 
Goodness, moral, 589, 593 
Gorgias, 562 
Grammar of the symbolic function, 329 
Greek language, the influence of the, on 
philosophy, 71 
Greek tragedy, 648 
Greek philosophy, 639, 648 
Greeks, the, 470, 471, 478 
Grimm, Jakob, 448 
Groethuysen, Bernard, 450 
Group, atmosphere, 279} concept, 203} ob- 
servation, 282} structure, 2855 tension, 
285 
"Group Concept and Perception Theory," 
by Cassirer, 98, 826, 827, 829, 839 
Groups, 280, 282 
Growth of symbolic forms, 297 
Grundlagen der Geometric, by Hilbert, 104 
Grundzuge einer Lehre vom Lichtsinn, by 
Katz, 1 08 
Gundolf, F., 667, 676 
Gurwitch, Dr. A., 202 
Gutmann, James, essay, 443-464 
Habit, 351 
Haeberlin, Paul, 850 
Haecker, Theodor, 853 
Haegerstroem, Axelj see Axel Haegerstrom 
Hamann, 615, 646 
Hamburg, Carl H., essay, 73-119} 88iff 
Hamilton's principle of energy, 770 
Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, by 
Hering, 108 
Happiness, 540, 553 
Harmonization, 316 
Harmony, 169 
Harnack, A., 42 
Hartmann, Nicolai, 584, 595, 844 
Hartman, Robert S., essay, 289-333 
Hebrew-Christian tradition, 544 
Hegel, 41, 188, 200, 206, 210, 306, 310, 
355, 376, 421, 435, 447, 4$6f, 460, 
561, 563, 57'> 582, 633, 642, 667, 669, 
756, 825, 863, 868, 8755 on history, 
312*, on symbol, 609; teachings, 209} 
tradition, 210 
Heidegger, Martin, 802, 807, 82off, 824, 
832, 842^} Cassirer's encounter with, 
6 7 f 
Heine, Heinrich, 45 
Heisenberg, W., 198, 7895 his indetermi- 
nacy principle, 197 
Helena, in Faust, various meanings of, 621- 
622 
Hellenic influence, 653 
Helmholtz, 42, 88, io8f, 147, 202, 207, 
447 
Hendel, Charles W., essay, 55-59} 71 
Henning, 109 
Heraclitean flux, 492 
Herder, 88, 338, 347, 447, 457, 45^, 460, 
615, 646 
Hering, 108, 202 
Hermeneutic method, 807, 835, 844 
Hermencutics, history a branch of, 663 
Herodotus, 595 
Hertz, Heinrich, 87, 2o6f, 559, 814 
Heyman, Gerard, 154 
922 
INDEX 
Hierarchy of types of physical statements, 
195 
Hierarchy of law, 190 
Hilbert, D., 88, 1041", I99f 
Hildebrandt, K., 670 
Hiroshima, 279 
Historian, aspiration of, 663} individual 
tact of, 664 
Historical method (process), 634, 6385 
Historical research, Idealistic philosophy 
and, 43$ field of culture, 369 j methods, 
Historicism, 49 if 
Historicity, of symbol, 6ioj of style, 620 
History, 42, 356, 446, 453, 455, 457, 461, 
464, 633, 732, 756} and art, 664? cul- 
tural, 495; ecclesiastical, 42; Hegel's 
theory of, 312 [see Hegel]} as herme- 
neutics, 663} of ideas, 445, 460} of 
mathematics, 245} and philosophy, 734$ 
755*> 875} of science, 275, 313, 6896*, 
729ff} as self-knowledge, 663} as se- 
mantics, 663 
History and Philosophy, ed. by Klibansky 
and Paton, 46, 70, 450, 883 
Hobbes, Thomas, 257, 809 
Hodges, H. A., 467f 
Hoelderlin, F., 447$ 457, 633, 635, 643, 
646, 666ff, 731 
Hoelderlin und der deutsche Idealismus, by 
Cassirer, 666 
Hogarth's line of beauty, 619 
Holborn, Ha jo, essay by, 41-46 
Holiness, 388f 
Holy objects, 390 
Homer, 574 
Hooch, De, 626 
Horizontal dimensions of symbolic forms, 
301 
How We Thtnky by Dewey, 342 
Human activities, 316 
Human nature, 497-537} ego, 513} [see 
Man] 
Human studies, 48 8f, 495 
Human universe, 315 
Humanism, Cassirer's, 445f, 457, 46of, 
4"3f, 535-541 
Humanism of the Renaissance, 544 
Humanity, concept of, 478, 480-482$ and 
cultural achievements, 494$ higher ra- 
tionality of, 544 
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 66, 88, 351, 362, 
372, 447f, 457, 460, 879 
Hume, David, 137, 142, 151, 168, I94f, 
394, 469, 485, 578, 596, 638, 839 
Husserl, Edmund, 68f, 82, 213, 421, 557, 
802-854 
Huygens, C., 427 
Hyperbola, 308 
Hypostatization, 93, 257, 387, 397 
Hypothesis, 80, 156, 369, 376, 733f, 740, 
744f, 749ff$ vs. "suspicion," 740 
Hypothetical character of empirical knowl- 
edge, 178 
Hypothetical method, 284 
I and Thou, 300, 845 
Idea, 863 j or image, 3725 logic of think- 
ing the, 355; power of the, 863 
Ideal, 187, 674 j and the actual, 4775 form, 
8ij formative activity, 875? of knowl- 
edge, 751$ mathematical points, 198} 
progress, 376$ relative and absolute, 6745 
truth, 664, 688 
Idealism, 43, 142, 146, 160$ anthropo- 
logical, 488} critical, 145, 529, 801, 
80$, 844 [see Kant, Neo-Kantianism] ; 
cultural, 538 j German, 41, 669, 672 
[see Hegel, Kant]} historical 488, 494, 
498 537 [see Neo-Kantianism] j ob- 
jective, 817$ transcendental, 55of, 558, 
562} Utopian, 483 
Idealistic theory of language, 4o8ff 
Ideas, agreement or disagreement of our, 
I5i 
Ideation, 827f 
Idee und Gestalt, by Cassirer, 4471", 633, 
635, 642f, 647, 6486*, 656, 666, 670, 
677, 692, 737, 756 
Identity element, 203 
Identity philosophy, 859 
Idols of the Tribe, 261 
"Influence of Language upon the Develop- 
ment of Scientific Thought," by Cassirer, 
826, 830 
Image, 384, 386$ 395$ 4<>o, 7^5, 77* 
Imagination, 43, 302, 366, 386, 389^ 393*!, 
399*, 735 J productive, 322, 871 
Imitation, art as, 610$ variants of doctrine 
of, 613-615) individual style in, 6155 
insufficiency of art as, 613, 618} omis- 
sion with, 614$ selection of pregnant 
moment, 6141 relation to artistic vision, 
619 
Immanence and transcendence of symbol, 
103 
Immediate experience, 138, 189, 201 
INDEX 
923 
Imperatives, categorical for certain persons, 
S7 
Implications, 177 
Implicit definition, 104 
Impressions, 306, 373, 772 j immediate, 
765, 773 j to Being, 163 
Incarnation of meaning, 94 
Independent variability of the two symbol 
moments, I x I 
Index of refraction of reality, 297 
Indicative function of signs, 82 
Individual, 196) and civilization 431 fac- 
tum, 762 
Individuality, importance of, in art, 615 
Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophic 
der Renaissance, by Cassirer, 607, 649*", 
7i3f, 716, 726, 731 
Induction, 158, 254, 284, 737ffj and de- 
duction, 260, 579f 
Inertia, law of, 746, 749, 769 
Inference, mathematical, 2615 from particu- 
lars, 739 
Infinitesimal analysis, 285 
Initial conditions, 788 
Inquiry, cultural matrix of, 21 1 
Instrumentalism, Dewey's, 209 
Intangibles, 283, 
Integrating functions, 795 
Integration, 362 j cultural, 468, 495) of 
experience, 7635 intellectual center of, 
541} of man, 319} of nature, 319} of 
social sciences, 383 
Intellect, Divine, 7375 Divine and human, 
747 
Intellection, myth as, 371 
Intellektualmythologie, by F. Langer, 371 
Intelligibility of reality, 81 
Intensivierung, 340 
Intention and fulfillment, 816, 819 
Interdependence, 2841 of fact-finding and 
theory, 277 
Internal tension, 772 
Interpersonal life, 845, 846, 847, 849 
Interpretant, 8of 
Interpretation, 712 
Intervening variables, 284! 
Interview techniques, 282 
Intrinsic goodness, 582, 584, 588, 599 
Intrinsic qualifications, 343 
Introduction to Logic and Scientific 
Method, by Cohen and Nagel, 104 
Intuition, 283, 322, 339, 346, 407, 4121?, 
419, 81 5f, 8x8f, 821, 827) function, 95$ 
mode, 98 
Intuitionism, 243, 430, 434 
Intuitionists, 199, 434 
Intuitive elaboration of experience, 340 
Intuitive Logos, 344 
Intuitive mastery of experience, 341 
Intuitive sight, 98 
Invariance, of a priori, 174$ of laws of 
nature, 781, 783 
Invariants, of experience, 157, 191, 247; 
of knowledge, I72ffj [see Kant, Neo- 
Kantianism] 
Irony, Cassirer's, 756 
Jaeger, W., 533 
James, William, 399, 522, 803, 839 
Jaspers, Karl, 841, 843f 
Jeans, Sir James, 207, 428 
Jefferson, Thomas, 482 
Jew, Cassirer as, 45 
Jewish, Christian, Buddhist ethics, 580 
Jews, 535 
Joseph, of Thomas Mann, 291, 300, 323, 
331 
July revolution, 68of 
Kafka, Franz, 844 
Kant, Immanuel, 4iff, 64, 67, 77, 84, 86, 
90, xo6, i35f, i42f, i52ff, i86f, xgif, 
i94f, 205, 210, 212, 243, 248, 256, 
264, 266, 272, 296, 303, 3ixf f 315, 32x, 
323*> 338, 362, 368, 385, 392, 404, 435, 
438, 440, 445ff, 452, 455, 457f, 459f, 
462, 469, 473, 48if, 536, 539, 549^, 
552ff, 565, 577ff, 603, 633f, 646f, 655*", 
667, 677ff, 736f, 743, 745, 75of, 759, 
763, 766, 781, 783, 785, 794, 806, 8o8ff, 
812, 8i4ff, 831, 839f, 842, 871$ Cas- 
sirer's critique of, 498-501) categorical 
imperative of, 578 j on causation, 75ofj 
on contingency of necessity, 750 j "Co- 
pernican Revolution" of, 90, 743, 794f; 
critique of human culture, 484-488; 
Critiques, see titles; diary of, 185; on 
genius and nature in art, 617; interac- 
tion, his principle of, 785$ logic, 2415 
on number, 243; on necessity, contin- 
gency of, 750; on regulative principles, 
211} schematism of, 69 j on time, 243$ 
transcendental deductions of, 745, 751$ 
transcendental method of, 85, 195; un- 
derstanding in, 243 
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, by 
Heidegger, 67 
(Von) Kant bis Hegel, by Kroner, 355 
924 
INDEX 
"Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik," 
by Cassirer, 839!, 842f 
"Kant und die moderne Mathematik," by 
Cassirer, 253 
Kant und Herder, by Theodor Litt, 338, 
347 
Kantianism, 45, 206, 793, 7955 orthodox, 
759 
1C ants Leben und Lehre, by Cassirer, 75, 
457*, 810, 817, 851 
Karl Gustaf, of Sweden, 675 
Katz, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, 109 
Kaufmann, Felix, essay by, 183-213; 824 
Kaufmann, Fritz, essay by, 799-854 
Kepes, G., 645 
Kepler, 50, 299, 312, 445 cosmic har- 
mony of, 747 
KerSnyi, Karl, 326, 328! 
Kierkegaard, S., 807, 843 f, 852 
Kinetic theory of gases, 741 
Klages, Ludwig, 840, 859, 874 
Klein, F., 203 
Kleist, H. von, 67, 447, 633fT, 643, 655, 
6 7 6ff, 857 
Klibansky and Paton, Philosophy and His- 
tory, 46, 70, 450, 883 
Knowledge, 125, 55<>-558, 564* 5*7, 
57of, 732f, 744} a priori, 1915 of artist, 
347^ copy theory of, 551, 571$ as de- 
termination, 8i2f, 8i6f, 824} as dis- 
covery and explication, 8i6ff, 824 \ of 
empirical objects, 159; factual truth in 
terms of, 2iOj ideal of, 743; as mediate, 
7 
Koch, F., 672 
Koehler, W., 870 
Krantz, G., 672 
Kraft der Verdichtung, 304 
Krise der Psychologie, by Buehler, 1 08 
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, see Critique 
of Pure Reason 
Kroner, Richard, 355 
Krueger, 803 
Kuehnemann, E., 679 
Kuhn, Helmut, essay by, 545-574 ^57 
Lamprecht, Karl, 634, 664, 831 
Landscape, aesthetic perception of, 613 
Langer, Fritz, 371 
Langer, Susanne K., essay by, 3 79-400 j 
83, 3<>9, 5, 525 
Language, 43, 66, 97, 114, 161, 298, 
322, 338f, 362, 374, 382f, 3851", 394, 
446ff, 454, 461, 463, 558, 5645, 568ff, 
633, 748, 756, 832f, 837, 845$ as an 
aesthetic activity, 344$ and art and myth, 
as triad, 368) and the arts, myth and 
theoretical knowledge, 874) as basic to 
cultural activity, 504} Cassirer's philos- 
ophy of, 3511 as a category of Cassirer, 
748, 756) and the child, 363^$ devel- 
opment of, 41 6f) double nature of, 3901", 
400$ as dynamic, 878^ as energy, 879$ 
intellectual, 381) as interjection, 612, 
6165 and logic, 415* logical element of, 
341 i of myth, 328, 383, 387, 389, 396, 
404, 507; origin of, 363$ relation of 
speech to, 3775 representational, 364} 
and scepticism, 877} of science, 404; so- 
cial task of, 505} of the spirit, 497) 
spiritual employment of, 878} structure 
of t 385, 399; as symbolic form, 607} 
symbolic function of, 503; of symbolic 
logic, 100 j transparency of, 878 j Vice's 
theory of, 616 
Language and Myth, by Cassirer, 76, 115, 
339ff, 344, 3855, 39of, 396, 445, 496, 
507, 510, 522, 523 
Language and Reality, by Urban, 432, 
Language, Signs and Behavior, by Morris, 
8if 
Lanz, Henry, 597 
Laplace, 324, 455 
Lask, Emil, 355, 815 
Law(s), 283, 340, 770, 774, 778, 787, 
795 j in art, 644; of causality, 76 8 f, 
784ff, 789f, 794, 798} concept of, 774; 
of continuity, 2975 dynamical and 
phoronomical, 746fj dynamical and sta- 
tistical, 741, 743f* functional, 789, 7915 
of inertia, 746, 749; moral, 487, of mo- 
tion, 769, 783, 785fj of nature, 487, 
73*> 733i 73*ff, 74*ff 781, 783$ of 
new emphasis, 297 j Newton's, 769, 786} 
physical, 787 \ and principles, difference 
between, 196} of social world, 540; sta- 
tistical, 741, 787; of synthetic unity, 
767 
Leadership, 275, 28*, 282 
Least action, principle of, 196 
Leander, Folke, essay by, 335-357 
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 42, 210, 245, 
249, 256ff, 309f, 313, 316, 345, 406, 
445, 596, 633, 646, 745, 747, 803, 807, 
814, 832, 849, 861, 867; on art as ana- 
logue of reason, 615) functionalism of, 
629; on importance of individuality in 
INDEX 
925 
art, 615$ and individual vision, 614} 
revaluation of reality in terms of force, 
619 
Leibniz* System, by Cassirer, 257, 803 
Lenzen, Victor, 80 
Leonardo da Vinci, on art, 619, 725 
Leasing, 447, 554, 633, 646, 654* and 
the pregnant moment in art, 614 
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man- 
kind, by Schiller, 871 
Leucippus, 600 
Level(s), 343} of cognition, 99* of con- 
cepts, 275$ f language, 298) meanings 
on the intuitive, 341 5 of scientific ma- 
turity, 275; of symbolic forms, 167 [see 
Modality] 
Levy-Bruhl, Lucien, 498, 518-520, 522-527, 
5*8, 594, 796 
Lewin, Kurt, essay by, 269-288} xvif, 271, 
285, 286 
Leyendecker, Herbert, 829 
Liberalism, 755f 
Liberation through symbolic forms, 67 
Libido, 395, 39& 
Lichterlebnisse, no 
Lie, definition of group by, 203 
Liebmann, Otto, 447, 455 
Life, 563^ 566, 573, 817, 840, 843, 855ff} 
as the form of spirit, 295} as more than 
impulse, 866} as pure functional ac- 
tivity, 875 
Litt, Thcodor, 346, 353, 828, 845 
Like and dislike, in art, 68$f 
Linear style, 351 
Lingua universalis, 406 
Linguistic symbols, 201 [see Language] 
Llnienzugy mf 
Lipps, Theodor, 803 
Literature, 447, 454, 462, 642*1", 6635$ 
as linguistic art, 684} and philosophy, 
663^} sociological aspect of, 616 
Lobachevski, 192 
Locke, John, 151, 406, 469, 482, 596 
Loewith, Karl, 803, 845 
Logic, 342; of artistic imagination, 318; 
of creation, 310} of the generic or class 
concept, 250? of history, 337, 352} of 
invention, mathematics as, 309; and 
mathematics, 259, 262 j of philosophical 
thought, 353ff } of philosophy, 337, 352} 
of power, 540} of the relational con- 
cept, 250} of signs, 316} symbolic, 241} 
of symbolic forms, 309} and theory of 
science, 272$ of things, 316) of think- 
ing the Idea, 355) transcendental, 5 5 of, 
554* 557, 565 
Logic: the Theory of Inquiry, by Dewey, 
353 
Logica come scienza del concetto puro, by 
Croce, 355 
Logical context, 764 
Logical determination, 298 
Logical element of language, 341 
Logical empiricism, 209} cf. 200, 353 
Logical exaggeration, 308 
Logical invariants, 158, 164, 191 
Logical j udgment, 313 
Logical order, 66 
Logical positivism, 200, 209, 353 
Logical unity of the context, 764 
Logicists, 199 
(Zur) Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, by 
Cassirer, 119, 345, 349, 35*f, 456, 550, 
554, 694, 698, 70if, 722, 816, 845 
Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorien- 
lehre, by Lask, 355 
Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, by Cohen, 
761, 8o 9 f, 814, 822, 837 
"(Zur) Logik des Symbolbegriffs," 754 
Logische Untersuchungen, by Husserl, 82, 
8o2ff, 8o8f, 8i8f, 825f 
(Die)logischen Grundlagen der exakten 
Wissenschajten, by Natorp, 761, 782, 
784, 792 
Logistik, 241 
Logos, 66, 92, 299, 342ff, 365, 406, 846} 
intuitive, 344} mythos and, 328} phi- 
losophy of the self-consciousness of, 355} 
scientific, 344 
Logos Dike Kosmos in der Entwicklung 
der griechischen Philosophie, by Cas- 
sirer, 633, 639f, 648, 653 
Lorentz transformation equations, 782 
Lotze, Hermann, 42, 189, 415, 864 
Lowie, R. H., 511 
Lunar mythology, 369 
Lyric poet, artistic character of, 6 7 off 
Lyricism, see ｅxpressionism 
Mach, Ernst, 2O7f 
Machinery, 303 
Magic, 377, 387} early connection with art, 
6o9f} and myth, 520 
Magnitude, 157 
Mahnke, 803 
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 511, 517, 52of, 
525, 5*7* 
Man, 315, 445f, 448, 45 *> 457 459*i 
926 
INDEX 
4^553, 556, 573*, 833ff, 8371?, 843*?, 
8 5 of, 854, 877$ of affairs, or social 
practitioner, 283; as agent of the Idea, 
877$ as animal rationale, 201, 493; as 
animal symbolicum, 201, 448, 461, 493, 
55> 53^> civilized, 486$ conventional 
vs. real, 6645 as creator of moral laws, 
487$ cultural, 537; cultural definition of, 
492-495 J finitude of, 551, $35ffj hu- 
manity, defined by, 514$ and humanity, 
494 j knowledge of, 473 j literature, de- 
scription in, 686) as measure, 4725 nat- 
ural, 486; of primal times, 299} psy- 
chological function of civilized and na- 
tive, 517-527; ontological nature of, 
474f} science of, 495$ self-disintegra- 
tion of, 877} substantial nature of, 495} 
as symbol-making animal, 503-505 } sym- 
bolic form of, 316} universal rationality 
of, 478$ in the universe, 743 
Mann, Thomas, 291, 300, 323, 326, 328f, 
331, 648, 664f, 829 
Marburg School, 65, 123, i85f, 206, 209, 
2Xi, 588, 553, 567> 635, 759ff, 781, 
792, 798} see Cohen, Natorp 
Marcus Aurelius, 479ff 
Marc-Wogau, Konrad, 88, 102, 105, no 
Marionette Theater, by von Kleist, 858 
Maritain, Jacques, 208 
Marx, Karl, 347, 594, 599$ and Freud, 
656 
Mass, 770, 775$ ponderable, 770 
Mass-points, 770 
Massaussagen, 195 
Material bodies, 775 
Material form, 349 
Materialism, 41 
Mathematical concepts, 239fF 
Mathematical economics, 286 
Mathematical induction and deduction, 260 
Mathematical inference, 259, 261} as pro- 
ductive of new knowledge, 253 
Mathematical knowledge, 747 
Mathematical logic, 241, 273^ 
Mathematical metaphysics, 748, 75 3 f 
Mathematical method, 264 
Mathematical objects, 257f 
Mathematical and physical formulations, 
99 
Mathematical and physical space, 115 
Mathematical rationalism, 732, 748 
Mathematical reasoning, 731 
Mathematical symbols, 266, 324 
Mathematical thinking, 762} continuity of, 
263) creative advance of, 254 
Mathematics, 129, 133, 177, 2416*, 245, 
275> 328, 331, 382, 385, 746, 762, 
8261", 829, 843} and experience, 262) 
history of, 264} and logic, 241, 258, 
262) as logic of invention, 309} and 
nature, 747} philosophy of, 429^} pos- 
sibility of, 259} as progressive, 259} 
value of, 154 
"Mathematische Mystik und mathematische 
Naturwissenschaft," by Cassirer, 715 
Mathematization and integration of the 
social sciences, 286 
Mathesis universalis, 244 
Matter, 770} in relation to form, 321 
Maturity, levels of scientific, 275 
Mayer, Robert, 740 
McTaggart, J. M. E., 593 
Meaning, 78, 83, 95, 98, 101, 171, 201, 
212, 265f, 298, 30if, 375, 388ff, 395, 
864} behavioristic theory of, 5O2f} con- 
centration of, 396} emotive, 589, 593} 
incarnation of, 94} intuitive, 341 } of 
mathematical concept, 281} multiplicity 
of, 756} positivistic theory of, 41 of} 
primacy of, 499 f} relation of sound to, 
377} universal, 504 
Measurement, 274, 277, 285 
Mechanics and mysticism, 328 
Mechanics, Newtonian, 156, 200, 338, 745, 
747, 769, 774*, 783, 787 
Mechanics, quantum, 774, 776f, 7895, 798 
Mechanics, statistical, 741, 788 
Mechanism, 745 f, 749 
Media of knowledge, 78 
Mediated world, 773 
Mediating function of the symbol-concept, 
8? 
Medieval thought, character of, according 
to Cassirer, 705 f. 
Meinecke, 42 
Mendelssohn, Felix, 45 
Mendelssohn, Moses, 447 
Mental development, 503 
Mentalists, 503 
Mentality, cultural, 5x9, 523} prelogical 
and mythical, $z6f 
Metamorphoses of symbolic forms, 164 
Metaphor, 752 
Metaphorical thinking, 338 
Metaphysical approach, 477, 484 
Metaphysical controversy, xoi 
INDEX 
927 
Metaphysical crisis, 326 
Metaphysical problem of symbolic forms, 
317 
Metaphysical realities, 486, 753 
Metaphysical statements, 747, 749ff 
Metaphysical world-ground, 865 
Metaphysics, 77, 93, 116, 124, 126, 137, 
206, 293, 296, 3i2f, 324, 326, 384^ 
393) 4$8, 490, 551, 564, 744, 749f, 867, 
874$ dualistic, 505 j language of, 438ffj 
and language, 508} mathematical, 747ff, 
7535 mythical, 509$ organic, 524 
Metaphysik der Siuen t Kant's, 578 
Mcta-psychological theory, 476 
Method, geisteswissenschaftlich in literature, 
673, 681$ historical, 43, 634, 638ffj of 
a science, 274 
Methodology, 272, 732 
Metrical geometry, 203 
Meyer, Eduard, 837 
Michelangelo, 301 
Michelson, A. A., 78 ij Michelson-Morley 
experiment, 781 
Microcosm of the age, art as, 610, 627f 
Middle Ages, 705, 865 
Military strategy, 283 
Mill, John Stuart, 142, 1961", 602$ theory 
of induction of, 737-739 
Milton, 350 
Mimic level, of concepts, 299 j of lan- 
guage, 298 
Mind, 78, 88, 146, 384, 387ff, 392f, 
395*> 73i, 735fi absolute, 598 j objec- 
tive, 598 
Miracle, 316 
Misconceptions, positive significance of, 
383, 385 
Modality (-ies), 114, i66ff, 297 
Mode, discursive, 391; of experiencing, 
384-, imaginative, 391$ mythic, 389, 
393> 39 8 i of perceiving, 384$ of order, 
7785 of thinking, 383, 387 
Modern art, appropriateness of Cassirer's 
views to, 629f j perspective in, 627 j sub- 
jectivism in, 627 
Molecules, 280 
Moliere, 587 
Moments, of symbolic forms, 297 
Monads, 210, 306 
Montagu, M. F. Ashley, essay by, 359-377 
Moore, G. E., 582-595, 603 
Moral goodness, 589, 593 
Moral obligation, self evident, 577 
Moral self, 365 
Morality, 320, 3335 symbolism, vehicle of 
man's, 327 
Morally fit, 583 
Morley, E. W., 781 
Morphology, 803, 82$f, 828, 831 
Morris, Charles W., 8 if, 5O2f 
Mosaic, 348 
Motion, 285, 746, 753} laws of, 7835$ 
Newton's laws of, 769, 786 
Motivation, 271 
Mozart-Dirichlet, 332 
Mueller, Max, 338, 507, 516 
Museum conception of art, 346ff 
Music, 167, 328, 331, 348 
Musicality of the mathematician, 332 
Mysterium des Wirkens> 301 f 
Mystical thinking, 796 
Mysticism, 328, 331 j of the artist, 332? 
mechanics and, 328 
Myth, 84, 115, 161, 1 66, 298, 309, 338f, 
356, 366, 383, 387, 389f, 393, 397, 
399f, 4ff, 439, 446ff, 454, 461, 633$ 
analysis of, 371, compatibility with phi- 
losophy, 532; concept of, 517-527$ as 
ethnocentric, 535 j explanatory, 797$ in 
Hoelderlin, 668 j as intellection, 371) 
irrational powers of, 540} and language, 
379-400, 5<>7fj as mystical ethnocentric 
truth, 53 5 j origin of, 5i6f, 520? and 
philosophy, 367, 3821", 393^, 532* and 
poetry, 5*9-533 * political, 534fj role in 
history of human culture, 527-535$ as 
symbolic form, 607$ symbolism of, 612$ 
unitary function of, 515-517 
Myth of the State, by Cassirer, 33, 75, 472f, 
475, 48iff, 513, 515, 5235, 533f, 536, 
538ff, 706, 7o8, 719, 724, 838 
Mythic consciousness, 388ff, 558, 564, 
5655, 57of, 573 
Mythical thought, 832f, 836f 
Mythische Begriffe, 341 
(Das) mythische Denken, 821, 833$ see 
Philosophic der symbolischen Formen 
Mythology, 43, 328, 369 
Mythos, and language, 328 
Mythos, as thought-form, 399 
Nagasaki, 279 
Naive realism, 198 
Name(s), 323, 364, 386, 390!", 394, 397 
Natorp, Paul, 42, 185, 759ff, 764-789, 
928 
INDEX 
794, 80 iff, 8ogff, 8i6ff, 821, 824, 
83of, 834, 84', 8 4 8ff 
Natural History and Theory of the Heav- 
ens, by Kant, 323 
Natural rights, theory of, 483 
Natural science, 63, 272} [see Science] 
Naturalism, 41, 209, 211 
Naturalistic fallacy, 589 
"Naturalistische und humanistische Be- 
gruendung der Kulturphilosophie," by 
Cassirer, 452, 454, 456, 46off, 536, 692, 
704 
Nature, 125, 455, 73$, 742f, ?66ff, 773, 
785^ and consciousness, 857 } and his- 
tory, 495$ Hoelderlin's conception of, 
668} invariance of laws of, 781, 783} 
life in harmony with, 480, literature, de- 
scription of, 686} and mathematics, 
747 fj as self-existent, 148) as sphere of 
scientific law, 487} uniformity of, 472 
Necessity, 750, 752ffj of knowledge, 151, 
159, I72ff 
Neo-classicists, 64.^ 
Neo-deontologism, 577, 583 
Neo-Hegelians, 206, 355 
Neo-Kantian axiologists, 488, 501 
Neo-Kantianism, 446, 448, 462, 470, 478, 
494, 498, 508, 543, 652, 757-797, 801- 
854$ [see Marburg School] 
Neo-Platonists, 368 
New Laokoon, by Babbitt, 350 
Newton, Isaac, 85, 190, 194, 299, 313, 
315, 427, 455, 459, 633, 651, 745, 747, 
769, 781, 783, 785*, 79i 
Newtonian laws of motion, 769, 786 
Newtonian mechanics, 156, 769, 774f, 783, 
787 
Newtonian physics, 200, 338, 483, 485, 
745, 747 
Nexus, 263 
Nicol, Eduardo, 495 
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 210, 399, 447, 594, 
639, 648, 803 
Nihilism, 147 
No Voice is Wholly Lost, by Slochower, 
323 
Noema, 808 
Noesis, 8o8f, 841 f 
Nominalism, 208, 212, 257 
Non-being, 562f, 754 
Non-Euclidean geometry, i8lf, 779f 
Non-natural characteristics, 584, 
Nordic man, 535 
Northrop, F. S. C, 471, 4 8 3 
Nostrand, Howard Lee, 489 
Novel, analysis of, 686fT 
Novelist, 347 
Number, 77, 84, 94, 117, 134, 166, 169, 
176, 241 ff, 277, 293, 300} Kant's the- 
ory of, 243} as primary and original act 
of thought, 244} and scheme of serial 
order in general, 244 
Object, 79, 84, 87, 159, 313, 372, 735, 
76iff, 768ff, 774f, 7775, 793ff, 797} 
of cognition, 765; functionalizing of, 
553 557f 5^2} mathematical, 257 
Objectification, 107, 169, 198, 2Oof, 206, 
794, 804, 8o9ff 834ff, 841 f, 844, 846f, 
873 
Objectify, 167 
Objectivation, 297 
Objective anthropomorphism, 663 
Objective idealism, 875 
Objective mind, 598 
Objective spirit, 292 
Objective universe, 362 
Objective validity of the conceptual order 
of the mind, 151 
Objectivity, 83, 8sf, 91, 107, 157, 193, 
295, 356, 733, 743f, 74$, 815 
Objektivitaet ueberhaupt, 91 
Obligations, self-evident, 577 
Observation, 80, 278, 284, 73 iff 
Ogden and Richards, The Meaning of 
Meaning, 511 

onomatopoetic level of language, 298 
ontological, argument, 213} knowledge of 
man, 493-506} metaphysics, 90} priority 
of individual, 477, problems, 187} 
theory, ^.6g( 
ontologies, 806 
ontologism, 64 
ontology, 296, 468, 473, 486, 494, 744ff} 
[see Being] 
Order, mode of, 778; and number, 245} 
serial, 129, 131, 288} totality of, 785 
Ordinal number, as logically prior to car- 
dinal, 245 
Organic creativity, 875 
Organic wholes, 590 
Organization, category as general form of, 
251 
Origin, principle and sphere of, 821 f, 846 
Origin of Species, by Darwin, 210 
Ortega y Gasset, Jose, 45, 489-492, 53$, 
539 
INDEX 
929 
Paine, Thomas, 482 
Painting, 348) analysis of form in, 685 
Pan-aesthetic conception of experience, 348 
Pan-Babylonianism, 370 
Pandora, Goethe's, symbolism of, 6zzfF 
Pan-logistic tendency, 344 j of Hegel's sys- 
tem, 875 
Pan of sky, Erwin, art as condensed symptom 
of an age, 628} history of spatial treat- 
ment, 624-628) use of Cassirer's con- 
ception of art-symbol, 624, 627f 
Pap, A., 91 
Parabola, 308 
Parallel postulate, 191 
Pareto, V., 210, 286 
Parmenides, 212, 549*552, 554 f i 5^2f, 806, 
872 
Participation, principle of, 769, 796 
Particle, 776 
Particulars, 100, 263$ induction from, 
737ff 
Parts, 280 
Pascal, Blaise, 807 
Pasch, 104 
Passions, psycho-physical interpretation of, 
674 
Pathos of the spirit, 876 
Paton, H. J., 46, 70, 450, 491, 584, 587, 
639, 883 
Peirce, C. S., 21 1 
Perception, 202, 298, 302, 313, 374, 772$ 
selectivity of, 975 sensationalist's theory 
of, 202 
Perceptive manifold, the matter of the 
symbolic function, 101 
Perceptual constancy, 202 
Perceptual space, 322 
Permanence, 768 
Permanent properties, 277 
Personal style, 348 
Personalism, 846 
Personality, 271, 275$ type, 474 
Perspective, adaptation of, 626fj modern 
treatment of, 627$ relation to gen- 
eral world-outlook, 624^ Renaissance 
achievement of, 626 
Petzaell, Ake, 71 
Pfaender, Alexander, 845f 
Phaenomenologie der Erkenntnis, 99, 343, 
813, 8i5f, 818, 821, 825f, 829, 831 j 
[see Philosophic der symbolischen Fontten, 
Vol. Ill] 
Phantasy, 322 
Phenomenalism, 142 
Phenomenology, 67, 213, 421, 557, 801- 
854} of cognition, 306, 3iofj genetic, 
82if, 825 
Phenomenological method, 421, 435, 8o2ff 
Phenomenology of Spirit, by Hegel, 376, 
*7* 
Phenotypical data, 284 
Phidias, 350 
Philosophic der Aujklaerung, by Cassirer, 
75* 633, 636ff, 64if, 652, 654, 657, 
665 
Philosophic der symbolischen Formen, by 
Cassirer, 44, 48f, 65, 7$f, 78, 82, 87, 
95ff, 1 1 of, ii4f, 1 1 8, 154, 1 60, 1 6 iff, 
188, 20of, 257, 263, 289-333, 361, 388, 
392, 394-, 396f, 399, 404*, 4<>9ff> 4*8f, 
42 iff, 426, 431, 436, 4385, 445, 448, 
461, 55of, 564, 567, 572, 607, 6ioff, 
6i3f, 616, 619, 6366% 64if, 657, 759f, 
77off, 792ff, 8o5ff, 801, 814, 8251, 8325, 
838, 842, 8465 
Philosopher, vs. Sophist, 754ff 
Philosophical anthropology, 446, 449, 457, 
459, 461, 463f 
Philosophical style, Cassirer's, 73 iff, 755f 
Philosophical systems, as hypostatizations, 
93 
Philosophical universality, 92 
Philosophy, 353ff, 356, 392f, 339f, 7546** 
anthropological, 446, 449, 451, 457f, 
461, 463fj and art, 6o7f [see Art]} 
critical, 382, 407, 551, 557, 573, [see 
Kant, Nee-Kantianism]} of culture, 117, 
545-574, 8o5f, 8331, 843, 854 [see Cul- 
ture]) Greek, 634, 648$ and history, 
734ff, 755, 875$ of history, 312, 
837i 875 j of language, 351, 607, 616, 
748, 802, 830, 8741", 878f [see Lan- 
guage] j and literature, 663 ffj periods of, 
381 fj preparation for, 367) of religion, 
805, 845-854, 875 j and science, 90, 273 
[see Science] 
Philosophy and History, ed. by Klibansky 
and Paton, 46, 70, 450, 491, 639, 883 
Philosophy in a New Key t by Langer, 83, 
309 
Phoronomics, 746 
Physical body, 775 
Physical field, 280 
Physical laws, 787 
Physical objectivity, 192 
Physical science, 307 
Physicalism, 208 
Physici, 274f, 277, 282, 368, 741, 746$ 
930 
INDEX 
classical and modern, 7455 quantum, 195, 
198, 208 
Physiognomic experiences, 298 
Picasso, 629 
Pico della Mirandola, 451, 715, 717 
Picture magic, 373 
Planck, Max, 42, 463, 743 
Planck's constant, 198 
Plato, 81, 185, 306, 322f, 367, 445, 4471", 
555, 563, 573, 649, 653, 667*, 74ff, 
761, 818} art and sophistry of, 756} 
humanistic insight of, 539, idea of the 
Good, 756} irony, 756) man and culture, 
theory of, 470-478} metaphors, use of, 
75 2 j myth, theory of, 5 3 off j Phttedrus, 
755} Sophist, 754f} space, conception of, 
6255 Symposium, 623, 755 
(Die) Plato nische Renaissance in England 
und die Schule von Cambridge, by 
Cassirer, 464, 646, 718, 723 
Platonism, 445, 448, 464$ Cassirer's 752, 
756 
Plotinus, 672$ on symbol, 609 
Plastic imagination, 324 
Play, 871) of the child, 366) instinct in 
art, one-sidedness of, 617 
Pluralistic ethics, 577, 590 
Poet, vs. liar, 755 
Poetic essence, 666, 684ff 
Poetry, 383, 398} and myth, 529-533 
Poincare", 207 
Points of view, 100, 162, 164, 167 
Polarity, 100} in art-symbols, 6o9f, 626 j 
basic in Being, 609$ of life and knowl- 
edge, 858} overcome, 609, 6295 of sense 
and senses, 95$ within symbolic form, 
880 
Polysynthetic languages, 351 
Pope, Alexander, 449, 459 
Pos, Hendrik J., essay by, 61-72 
Positing, 163, 768f, 77*, 777 
Positivism, 81, 200, 209, 263, 353, 455f j 
cultural, 206, 470, 538$ sociological, 470, 
494, 498, 536 
Possible, the, 319, 862, 871 
Potencies and forms of the soul, 371 
Potentiality, 327 
Power, 388ff, 397, 868} of symbolization, 
304 
Pragmatism, 209, 63 5 j criticism of a 
priori by, I75ffj logic of, 353 j [see 
Dewey, James) 
Praegnanz, 301} symbolic, 330, 41 3f, 422 
Praegungen xum Sein, 163 
Pre-established harmony, 317 
Pregnant moment, selection of, in art, 614 
Pre-scientific symbolism, 336, 340 
Presentation, 298 
Presentative and representative moments, 
97 
Prichard, H. A., 577, 579 
Primary datum, 293 
Primitive people, 364 
Principia Mathematics, 246 
Principle(s), 100, 156} of concatenation, 
399} of inertia, 769} Kant's regulative, 
2ii} of participation, 796} of relevancy, 
798 
Probability, 743, 787f 
Process, 311, 326} of cognition, 762, 771$ 
of creation, 293} endless self-correcting, 
212} historical, 634, 6385"} of removal, 
320 
Productive imagination, 871 
Progress, 274, 490} of cognition, 765} of 
knowledge, 1885 linear, 534} of mathe- 
matics, 259} systemic, 762 
Projection, 765 
Projective geometry, 203 
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic, by 
Kant, 84, 115, 486 
Prometheus, in early lyrics of Goethe, 621$ 
in Pandora, 623 
Prophet, 304, 347, 844, 85iff } Virgil, 
Dante, Milton, Goethe, as, 329 
Prepositional function, 100, 113 
Prepositional meaning, 213 
Protagorean maxim, 472 
Pseudo-problems, 187 
Psychoanalysis, 271 } [see Freud] 
Psychological force, 288, 5151*, 540 
Psychologic reference, 65 5f 
Psychologism, 803 f, 807 
Psychology, 293, 328, 362, 371, 382, 393 J 
descriptive, 804, 842} dynamic, 395, 
398ff} history of, 271} reconstructive, 
804, 809, 814, 821$ [see Man] 
Psycho-pathology, 821, 829 
Psycho-physics, 271 
Ptolemaic astronomy, 60 if 
Pure essence, 375 
Pure forms of order, 86 1 
Pure imagination, 366 
Pure meaning, 171 
Pure space, 782, 861 
Pure tautology, 255 
Pure time, 782, 86 1 
INDEX 
Qualities, 114, 272, 303, 341 
Quantity, 272ff 
Quantum physics, 195, 198, 208 
Quantum mechanics, 774, 776f, 789ff, 798 
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 517 
Randall, John Herman, Jr., essay by, 689- 
728 
Ranke, F., 663 
Ranke, Leopold, 837 
Rationalism, 98, 180, 249, 263, 406, 530, 
734, 736, 748} Cassirer's, 535'54', 73*i 
and empiricism, synthesized by Cassirer, 
Realism, 148} in art, 643$ dualistic, 24, 
136, 141 j metaphysical, 143 
Reality, 96, 167, 294, 297f, 373, 3841", 389, 
397, 745*, 7^7, 774> 77$, 785, 835*, 837, 
852} absolute, 747} becoming, 314} 
cultural, 496-498} intelligibility of, 8ij 
meta-cultural, 538, 543$ mirror of, 496 j 
new dimension of, 497, 503; objective, 
509 j ponderable, 775 j pre-cultural, 498, 
538) 543) and the symbol, 526) symbolic, 
^39, 656 j as symbolically mediate, 87 
Reason, 386!", 39if, 395, 398f, 737$ Cassirer 
on, 7365 cultural, 5015 dictates of, 479 j 
historical, 488-490} practical, 487 j rule 
of, 530} surrender of, 539 
Reconciliation of opposites, by Cassirer, 
749ff, 756 
Reconstruction, of western civilization, 43 
Reconstructive analysis, 327 
Reference, psychologic, 655fj social, 6$3ff, 
659 
Regulae philosophandi, 791 
Regulative principles of inquiry, 187, 197 
Regulative principles, Kant's, 211 
Reichardt, Konstantin, essay by, 661-688 
Reichenbach, Hans, 180 
Reification, 312 
Reinach, Adolf, 808, 84$f 
Relation-concept, 190 
Relation (s), 128, 147, 190, 246, 248, 281, 
284, 8i5f, 826, 845ffj calculus of, 266} 
between concepts and fact-finding, 2845 
constancy of, 281; functional, 766} of 
sound to meaning, 377; of speech to lan- 
guage, 377} subject-object, $5$f} un- 
certainty, 775, 7895 
Relative ideal, 674 
Relativism, 141, 147, 472} historical, 490, 
756 
Relativity, of cultural conceptualization, 5x2 
Relativity, Einstein's, 65, iQif, 194, 200, 
300, 74Si 749i 78iff 
Relativity, ethical, 593^, 595, 597*, 600 
Relativity of postulates, 180 
Relevancy, principle of, 798 
Religion, 84, 115, 162, 301, 387, 395 398, 
400, 446, 454, 461, 513, 565, 57if, 633, 
832f, 845-854 j 875 j positive, 424^ 
symbolism of, 424, 609, 612 
Rembrandt, experiments with near space, 
627 
Removal, dialectic process of, 309 
Renaissance, 296, 4455, 457, 464, 673, 
689ff, 735, 865 
"Renaissance or Prenaissance?" by Thorn- 
dike, 693 
Representation, 78, 95, 97, 103, 113, 298, 
304, 825*, 83 if 
Representational language, 364 
Repression, 863 
Research, 274 
Richards, I. A., 640 
Rickert, Heinrich, 42, 501, 549, 640, 802, 
815, 837 
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 852 
Riemann, 192 
Riemannian geometry, 191 
Riezler, Kurt, 828 
Rodin, A., 291, 295ff, 299, 303*", 310, 314, 
320, 324, 333 
Romandichtung und Mythologie, Ein Brief' 
wechsel mil Thomas Mann, by Kere*nyi, 
326 
Romanticism, 44*6ff, 454#, 530, 858$ Ger- 
man, 6661? 
Romanticists, 488, 529f, 644, 655 
Rosenberg, Alfred, 535 
Rosenzweig, F., 669, 802 
Ross, Sir W. D., 577, 579, 594 
Rossetti, 350 
Rousseau, J. J. 447, 457#, 486f, 633, 635, 
646, 656} and the youthful Goethe, 621 
Rousseau Kant Goethe, by Cassirer, 332, 
458f, 484, 486, 633, 635, 647, 654ff, 
682, 851 
Russell, Bertrand, 132, 200, 208, 211, 246, 
252, 261 f, 266, 596} his Principles of 
Mathematics, 102, 1995 his theory of 
types, 195 
Sainte-Beuve, 456 
St. Hilaire, Geoffroy, 68 1 
St. Thomas Aquinas, 102, 626 
Sakulin, P. N., 676 
932 
INDEX 
Sapir, Edward, 502 
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 492, 536 
Saxl, F., essay by, 47-51 ) xvi 
Schapp, Wilhelm, 829 
Scheler, Max, 584, 817, 821, 823, 826, 
8 4 of, 845*, 859f 865, 867, 872 
Schelling, Friedrich, 41, 368, 371, 447ff, 
453f, 456!, 46of, 561, 646, 6676*) on 
art as ｅxpression of genius, 6175 meta- 
physics of, kinship with Goethe's Pandora, 
627 
Schema, space-time, 7671 
Schemata, 300, 86ij [see Kant] 
Schiller, Friedrich, 324, 349, 447, 63 3f, 
646ff, 654, 665, 668, 831; his play 
theory of art, 617 
Schiller, F. C. S., 213 
Schilpp, Paul A., 582, 585, 592f 
Schlegels, the, on art as ｅxpression of 
genius, 617 
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 832, 849 
Schmidt, Raymund, 596 
Scholasticism, 79 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 310, 447 
Science, 42, 114, 162, 276, 318, 340, 357, 
383, 385> 387, 395, 400, 446, 457, 461, 
463, 633, 642, 832, 834, 8385 and 
aesthetics, 735, 7565 Cassirer on, 732f) 
definition of, 265$ and development, 156; 
experience as, for Kant, 85$ jactum of, 
76if) Galilean, 483; logic and theory of, 
2725 of mind, 398 j natural, 4875 [see 
Physics, Newton, Newtonian] 5 of order, 
245) possibility of, 86) Renaissance, 482, 
484 [see Galileo, Renaissance] ; as self- 
developing historical fact, 156} social, 
469 [see Culture, Social] j stages of, 275 ; 
symbolism in, 106, 340, 404, 41 8f, 423, 
426ff, 508 
Scientia generalis, 31 off, 316 
Scientific abstraction, 287} analysis, 2835 
cognition, 761 \ development, 2751 facts, 
284} logos, 344) method, 2751 research, 
41} sense, 1135 syntax, 1065 thought, 
continuity of, 263 
Scientism, 65 
Scientists, reflecting, as philosophers, 89 
Script magic, 373 
Sculpture, 301, 308, 324, 34-8f 
Seinsebenen (planes of reality), 301 
Self, 822) concern, 807; knowledge, 138, 
354, 357, 471, 877 j liberation, 305, 321) 
presentation, 836 
Self-evident moral obligations, 577 
Semantics, history a branch of, 663 
Semiotics, 81 
Seneca, 479* 
Sensation, 313, 322, 374 
Sensationalism, 202, 206, 208 
Sense data, no, 765, 772f 
Sense perception, 97, 202, 733, 8i3f> 819, 
826f, 829) selectivity of, 97 
Sense perspective, 101 
Sensibility, 243 
Sensualism, dogmatic, 298 
Sentence, 298 
Sentiments, 278 
Separation, of I and world, 870; of man 
and culture, 32 iff 
Serial order, 99, 131, 6365, 648 
Series, construction of, 277 
Shaftesbury, 46, 447, 633, 646) and preg- 
nant moment in art, 614 
Shakespeare, 350, 643 
Sheldon, W. H., 469 
Sidgwick, Henry, 578, 593 
Sign(s), 78, 98, 344, 372f, 5025 analysis, 
8ij behavioristic approach to, 83) lin- 
guistic, 201 j process, 8i; and signified, 
103; vs. symbols, 83) vehicle, 82 
Similarity of forms, 308 
Sinn, see Meaning 
Situations, social, 2698, 287 
Sketch, as imitation with omissions, 614 
Slochower, Harry, essay by, 631-659$ 323 
Smart, Harold, essay by, 239-267; 154 
Smith, Norman Kemp, 595$ see Critique of 
Pure Reason 
Social field, 280, 283, 287 
Social forces, 285 j measurement of, 274, 
282 
Social psychology, 2698 
Social reality and concepts, 283, 496ff 
Social reference, 6535, 659 
Social science, 269ff, 492ffj integration of, 
283) world of, 365 
Sociometric techniques, 282 
Socrates, 450, 47*ffj 531, 573 
Solmitz, Walter M., essay by, 729-756) 
88iff 
"Some Remarks on the Question of the 
Originality of the Renaissance," by 
Cassirer, 706, 708, 720, 725 
Sophist, vs. Philosopher, 754 
Sophists, 367, 47if, 484 
Sorel, 210 
Soret, 680 
Soul, 371) dualism of body and, 479) free- 
INDEX 
933 
dom of, 479} irrational functions of, 
478; rational activity of, 479 
Space, 77, 84, 94, 117, 157, 166, 191, 
24$, 299, 300, 322ff, 362, 5651, 768, 
776ff, 782, 861, 874$ conceptual, 322} 
Euclidean, 779fj as order of coexistence, 
24.7; perceptual, 322; physical, Euclidicity 
of, 780$ pure, 7825 and time, forms of, 
779 i unitary, 783 
Space-time, 761, 776} continuum, 1935 
co-ordinates, 783$ schema, 767f 
Spatial demonstration, 298 
Spatial dimensions, 779 
Spatiality, 322$ of thought, 324 
Speech, 345, 504 
Spencer, 456 
Spengler, 456 
Spinoza, 46, 331, 453, 482, 578, 667, 851, 
869 
Spirit, 368, 817, 840, 847, 852, 855-880} 
creativity of, 339, 500} ｅxpressions of, 
505} as functional activity, 875} human, 
499} life, construction of, 860 ; as ob- 
ject! fkati on, 86i} pathos of, 876} phe- 
nomenology of, 875 
Spiritual employment and language, 878 
Spiritual liberty, 366 
Spiritualization, 316, 570 
Spontaneity, 316, 325} of the mind, 190 
(Die) Sprache, by Cassirer, 338} [see 
Philosophic der symbolischen Fortnen, 
Vol. I] 
Sprache und MytAos, by Cassirer, 338 
Stace, W. T., 128 
State, the, 474, 4765 concept of, 53 if} 
cultural priority of, 477} historical, 532? 
ideal, 532f; mythical conception of, 533 
State, of soul, 320 
State, of a thing, 776 
Statements, 196 
Static conception of deduction, 259 
Statistical averages, 197 
Statistical laws, 741, 787 
Statistical mechanics, 197, 788} [see Quan- 
tum physics, Quantum mechanics] 
Statistical procedure, 286 
Stavenhagen, Kurt, 846 
Stebbing, L. S., 588 
Stellar mythology, 369 
(Die) Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, 
by Scheler, 859 
Stein, Edith, 842, 845 
Stephens, I. K., essay by, 149-181 
Stilbe griff , 351 
Stoicism, 6745 on living in harmony with 
nature, 4805 on man and kumanitas, 
478-484} political philosophy of, 479 
Stravinsky, 629 
Structural properties, 281 
Structure of experience, 187, 298} [see a 
priori, Kant, Neo-Kantianism] 
Rtujengang (systematic progression), 376 
Style, Cassirer's, 731-756 
Sublimation, 863 
Subject, Hegel's substance and, 875 
Subjectification, 804, 810 
Subjective and objective, 140 
Subjectivism, modern, 627 
Subjectivity, 805 ff 
Subject-object relation, 555f 
Subject-predicate logic, 234 
Subjectum, Aristotelian, 767 
Substance, 302, 562, 636, 750, 768} and 
attribute, 385, 388 
Substance and Function, by Cassirer, 63, 
79. 99*, 105, 116, 129, I36f, 153, !$$#> 
191, 199, 243ff, 252, 254f, 2$9f, 262, 
277f, 284f, 288, 361, 404, 6361, 641, 
737, 746f, 750, 782f, 785, 809, 826 
Substanzbegriff und Funklions be griff, 99, 
153, i55> 404> 76o, 809, 815, 826 
Successor, 246 
Sumner, W. G., 485 
Sun mythology, 369 
Superstition, 389 
Suspicion, vs. hypothesis, 740 
Swabey, William C., essay by, 121-148 
Sylvester, James Joseph, 332 
Symbol(s), 48, 66, 301, 307, 376, 386, 
388ff, 396, 498, 500, 794, 796} aesthetic 
vs. scientific, religious, 6095 the beautiful 
as, 609$ category of, 505} concept, 78, 
102} definition of, 502} formula, 113} 
historicity of, 6ioj mathematical, 266} 
polarity of, 609, 626 } relation to art, 609, 
621} situation, 79) as source of reality, 
541 } as ultimate element of culture, 
5025 Vischer on, 608 
Symbolic forms, 76ff, 164, 289-333, 385, 
387, 390, 392, 395, 4o> 445> 448, 461!, 
558ff, 5635, 572ff, 7941 805, 812, 825, 
830, 831-845, 848, 852 [see Art, Knowl- 
edge, Language, Religion, Myth] ; ex- 
pression, 164} language as, 607$ meta- 
physics of experience as, 115; myth as, 
607} as organs of reality, 83$ and 
philosophy of culture, 115} planes of 
reality of, 301 } polarity within, 880 } 
934 
INDEX 
as progressive states of the emergence of 
consciousness, 291 j and "pure meaning/ 1 
164$ and "representation," 164$ as reve- 
lation, 619$ as symptoms of an age, 628} 
as systematic of the spirit, 314 
Symbolic function, 314; fundamental, 92) 
between logic and mathematics, 319) be- 
tween logic and morality, 3195 primacy 
of, 302 
Symbolic level, of the concept, 299) of 
language, 298 
Symbolic logic, 199, 241} language of, lOOj 
tautological character of, 2$$ff 
Symbolic Praegnanz, 330, 41 3f, 422 
Symbolic reality, 639, 656 
Symbolic relation, 113 
Symbolical universe, 497 
Symbolism, 332; Cassirer on, 502-506} 
evolution of cultural, 506-512) pre- 
artistic, 6ioff; religious, 424$ Rodin's, 
308) in science, 41 8f, 423, 426ffj as 
vehicle of man's morality, 327 
Symbolists, French, 672 
"(Das) Symbol problem und seine Stellung 
im System der Philosophic," by Cassirer, 
331, 608, 620, 812, 831 
Symptoms, 284, 628 
Synoptic view of philosophy, 292 
Syntheses, passive, 8nf, 816 
Synthesis, 86, 106, 307, 734!, 756} of 
opposites, 170$ of scientific and historical 
understanding, 756 
Synthetic judgment a priori, 86, 187, 192, 
199, 75! 
Synthetic unity, basic law of, 767 
Synthetizing function of consciousness, 300 
System, 330, 750, 775$ of effects, 775$ 
of experience 7$2fj of thought, 752f 
Systematic nexus, 263 
Systematic progression, 376 
Systemic context, 763 
Systemic progress, 762 
System of Transcendental Idealism, by 
Schelling, 859 
Taboos, methodological, 275, 282 
Taboos, scientific, 279 
Taine, H., 456, 658, 66 3 f 
Tau, M., 687 
Tautology, 255 
Teaching curricula, 76 
Technology, 303 
Teleology of Aristotle, 366 
Temperature, 284f 
Tempering of Russia, by Ehrenburg, 326 
Tension, 288) in art-symbols, 610, 626) 
in Goethe's Pandora symbol, 622f be- 
tween the I and its environment, 870) 
internal, 772) in modern art, 6305 and 
release, 618} in world of consciousness, 
609} [see Polarity] 
Tertiary qualities, 341 
Theoretical cognition, 301 
Theoretical mode of the symbol function, 98 
"(Zur) Theorie des Begriffs," 154 
Theory, 6411 field, 775$ interdependence 
of fact finding and, 2775 of knowledge, 
4*, 551, 57* J of relativity, 65, I9if, 
194, 200, 300, 638, 745. 748, 78iff 
Thing(s), 281, 298, 303, 325, 386, 388, 
394, 397 767f> 774#> 7*6 
Thing-concepts, 190 
Thing-in-itself, 196!?, 294, 376, 553, 561, 
765, 775, 793* 
Thorild, Thomas, 337 
Thought, context of, 765$ development of, 
253) discursive, 391$ forms of, 381, 385$ 
image of, 384$ logical vs. pre-logical, 
524) mythic, 391, 397, 517-527* process 
of objectifying, 154$ organ of, 505; 
philosophical, 3825 post-scientific, 52ifj 
pre-logical, 5i8f) productivity of, 257; 
scientific, 385 
Thucydides, 664 
Tillich, Paul, 425 
Timaeus, 323 
Time, 77, 84, 94, "7, *57> 166, *93, 3<>o 
768, 776ff, 782, 808, 82of) beauty sub- 
ject to, 624* Kant's theory, 243$ possible 
successiveness, 862} possible together- 
ness, 862$ primitive perception of, 6125 
pure, 782} unitary, 783 
Timclessness, 756 
Tolstoy, Leo, 332, 653 
Topology, 203 
Totality of experience, 281 
Totality of forms, 313 
Totality of order, 785 
To turn est ante partes, 579 
Town-planning, 348 
Tradition, 351, s8if, 393 
Tragedy of culture, 573f 
Tragedy, Greek, 648 
Transcendence, 85 3 f 
Transcendent aesthetics, 185, 242, 346 
Transcendental, analytic, 86) idealism, 
55of, 558, 562 [see Kant]* logic, 158, 
241, 264, 55of, 554f> 557. 5*5$ method, 
INDEX 
935 
90, 185, 187, 805 j question, 77$ syn- 
thesis, 555, 5575 relativization, 321 j use 
of the categories, 187 
Transfinite numbers, 779 
Treitschke, H., 663 
Transformability, 205 
Transformation (s), 203, 277 > of symbolic 
forms, 1 64 
Transvaluation of traditional values, 210 
Troeltsch, E., 42 
Truth, 93, 167, 211, 294* 36ff, 33<>, 35$, 
375, 732, 756, 8i4f, 8i8f, 820, 871? 
conditions, 213} empirical, 664} ideal, 
664, 684$ theory of, 258 
Two Sources of Morality and Religion, by 
Bergson, 328 
Tylor, E. B., 515, 517, 520 
Tyrant, vs. philosopher-king, 755 
Ueberzeugung, by Hoelderlin, 731 
Uncertainty relations, 775, 789*? 
Uncritical realism, 205 
Understanding, and idiographic insight, 
494} native endowment of, 499; theo- 
retical, 487* Verstehen, 357, 753, 756 
Unification of the p re-scientific symbolic 
forms, 337f 
Unitary function of myth, 5i$ff 
Unitary origin (Ursprungseinheit), 763 
Unitary space and time, 783 
Unity, Cassirer on, 752, 755f j of the con- 
text, logical, 764^ cultural, problem of, 
54lffj in diversity, 163, 752$ of function, 
513) of the fundamental mythical ideas, 
370} of knowledge, 161, 163, i88j ac- 
cording to law, 773) in the manifold, 
541? of meaning, 163$ of practical 
reason, 501} of science, 190$ of the 
soul, 371} of system, 163$ two sources 
of, 542f 
Universal (s) xoof, 130, 189, 196, 2o8f 
Universal mind, 146, 598 
Universality, in art, 620 
Unknown, progressing into the, 274 
Urban, Wilbur M., essay by, 401-441) 488, 
508, 584 
Urphaenomene, 96 
Ursprungseinheit, 763 
Usener, H., 345 
Ushenko, Andrew P., 85 
Utilitarianism, 579, 598^ 
Validity, 738, 741 fj in ethics, 599) of a 
principle of serial order, 288 
Value(s), 388, 392) cultural, 489$ and 
strength, 862) in themselves, 584) in the 
totality of strength, 862) transvaluation 
of traditional, 210 
Varieties of Religious Experience, by James, 
839 
Verites de fait and verites de rats on, 212 
Verstehen, 357, 753, 756 
Vicious circle principle, 195 
Vico, Giambattista, 368, 448) on language, 
616 
Virgil, 350 
Vischer, Friedrich Theodor, 48, 608 
Vision, artistic, 347, 6i3f) relation to 
imitation, 619 
Vitalism, historical, 49off 
Vives, L., 451 
Voelkergedanken, 371 
Volition, 278 
Volksgeisf, 454 
Von Huegel, 425 
Von Humboldt, 66, 88, 351, 362, 372, 
447f, 457, 460, 879 
Vossler, Karl, 407, 411, 433 
"Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitsproblem 
bei Galilei," by Cassirer, 706 
Walzel, O., 679 
Warburg, 47ff 
Warranted assertability, 212 
Wave, 777 
Werkmeister, William H., essay by, 757- 
798 
Werthegriffe, 351 
Wesenheit, 375 
Western civilization, 43 
Weyl, H., 104, 193, 431, 434 
White, L. A., 536f 
Whitehead, A. N., 171, 195, 199, 207, 
357, 437, 473, 5*5, 749 
Whole and parts, 280 
Will to live as will to logic, 175 
Will to power, 510 
Winckelmann, 646) opposition to theory of 
individuality, 615 
Wind, Edgar, 4$2f 
Windelband, Wilhelm, 42, 567, 640 
Wirksamkeit, 375 
Wissenschaft, humanities as in, 42 
"Wissenschaft Bildung Weltanschauung," 
639 
Woelfflin, Heinrich, 351, 638, 831 
Wogau, see Marc-Wogau 
Word magic, 373 
936 
INDEX 
Words, 3445 magical powers of, 509} sym- 
bolic function of, 508 
Wordsworth, William, 175, 350, 839 
Wundt, Wilhclm, 66, 480 
X of cognition, 765^ 778, 793? [see Thing- 
in-itself] 
X of experience, 769, 771, 779 
Yale University, 3 if, 511 
Yang and Yin, 324 
"Young Man of Sals," of Schiller, 324 
Zcno, 562 
Zero, 246 
Zinkernagel, 667, 669 
Znaniccki, Florian, 498 
Zunis, New Mexico, 48 
Zur Einsteimchen Relativitaetstheorie, by 
Cassirer, 191, 193, 759, 782$ [see Sub- 
stance and Function^ etc.] 
Zur Logik der Kulturtvissenschajten, by 
Cassirer, 347, 349 35 > 45*> 45$, 458 
"Zur Theorie des Begriffs," by Cassirer, 849