Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer born the July 28th 1874 in Breslau, Silesia (today Wrocław, Poland) and dead the April 13rd 1945 with New York. German Philosopher , representative of a variety of Neo-Kantianism, current founded by Paul Natorp and Hermann Cohen, developed in what is called today the school of Marburg.

Biography

Wire of a Jewish tradesman of Breslau, it made studies in right, German literature and philosophy at the university of Berlin and, as from 1896, at the university of Marbourg. It was strongly influenced by Hermann Cohen and obtained in 1899 its doctorate with a thesis on Descartes.

Of return to Berlin, it supported in 1906 its thesis of enabling, or thesis of State, and remains at the university during thirteen years as an assistant. As from 1919 it occupied a pulpit of philosophy at the university of Hamburg.

At the time of the rise of national-socialisme and the seizure of power in 1933, it had to leave Germany because of its Jewish origins, taught initially in Oxford, England (1933-35), then in Gothenburg, Sweden (1935-41). Become Swedish citizen in 1939, it settled in the United States as from 1941, where it worked at the universities Yale (1941-44) and Columbia (1944-45).

Philosophy

Cassirer left the deepening of the theory of Kantian knowledge, such as it was worked out by the Néo-kantisme. It is of use to regard it as a member of the school of Marbourg. Originality of its work, and the orientations which it took in make an original thinker and not a simple Neo-Kantian. Its greater originality undoubtedly lies in its dynamic vision of the human thought, as well in its historico-temporal component as constructivist.

The spirit like temporal process of construction

In 1929, there took part in a seminar in Davos, remained famous from the confrontation which there took place between him and Heidegger. Whereas Heidegger founded an ontology, while carrying out a radical second reading of Kant (and in particular of the first edition of the “Criticism of the Pure Reason”, where imagination transcendantale is seen allotting the role of a faculty of synthesis, likely to be able to be regarded as the " commune" root; understanding and sensitivity, in short: of being able to be regarded as the heart of the subject), in order to explore it in-on this side representation. Cassirer opened a way aiming at defining the way in which the subject builds its representation. In other words, their work is not strictly antagonistic because their directions were not the same ones.

What was concerned, on the other hand, was the orientations to be given to the philosophy of the 20th century: to explore the existential bases to be it or the way in which the reason is built and develops? There resides the deep originality and the interest of Cassirer. It anticipates in a certain manner, work of Piaget, the structuralist ones and modern knowledge engineers. Indeed, it sticks, in its philosophy, to include/understand and describe how the man builds his representations towards always more objectivity and modern science. The directing wire is the human development of symbols, whether those are mythical, linguistic, artistic or scientific. The man is not born with representations of the Kantian type, but it builds them. It is there its principal contribution with the Kantian theory of knowledge.

From this point of view, it can be regarded as one of the precursors of the modern constructivism and also had a major influence on Maurice Merleau-Ponty and in particular its work " Phenomenology of the perception".

The symbol like founder of direction for the human one

Its philosophy can be described as philosophy of the culture . The human spirit produces representations which one can write the history. These representations constitute the human culture, forms objective of the spirit. The language, the myth but also sciences is developments of the human spirit, which enable him to better include/understand the world and to act on him.

This one aims at unifying the various aspects of the human spirit by defining the man, following Wilhelm von Humboldt, like an animal symbolic system . For him, the human spirit develops by symbolization increasingly more precise and sophisticated. It provided the foundations of its philosophy in an article of 1910 Forme and function , which it included and packed in Philosophie of the forms symbolic systems , its major work. The symbol produced by the spirit makes it possible the human being to always better know the world which surrounds it. This symbolization leaves rough perception such as it is given by the directions, for then structuring it by means of concepts and ideas increasingly more exact. Thus, for Cassirer, modern science constitutes the result of the development of the human spirit, such as the history of knowledge and of the thought show it. For him, without that being explicitly expressed, science is the higher mode of knowledge.

It summarized its philosophy in the Test on the man , who constitutes the synthesis of his vision of the man, more accessible than his Philosophie from the forms symbolic systems .

Its last work tries to analyze the phenomenon of the state Nazi the myth of the State . With this intention, he proposes a philosophy which integrates an elementary principle of strategy: " to start to carefully study the origin, the structure and the technique of the myths politiques" will contribute to " to look at the adversary opposite in order to knowing how the combattre".

Work

Its main thing and more known work are Philosophie of the shapes symbolic systems in 3 volumes:

T1 - the language (1923);
T2 - the mythical thought (1925);
T3 - phenomenology of knowledge (1929).

Among its other major French works available let us mention:

Substance and function: Elements for a theory of the concept
the problem of knowledge in the philosophy and the science of modern times
the test on the man
the problem Jean-Jacques Rousseau , (appeared in German in 1932 in Archiv für Geschichte DER Philosophy
Theory of relativity of Einstein ; " Academics of France, Paris, 1991.
" The philosophy of Lumières" , ED.: Beech, 1990, ISBN 2213026033

External bonds

History of the family of Cassirer (in English)
bibliography, photographs and sources Internet (in German and English)

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