Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) - German philosopher, author of the monumental work “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms” (1923-1929). Cassirer, who came from a bourgeois Jewish family, studied in Berlin, Leipzig, Heidelberg and Marburg, after which he taught philosophy and studied the theory of language, primitive cultures, mythology, religion and literature at the universities of Berlin, and then Hamburg, where he became a professor (1919), and later (1930) - rector. When Hitler came to power, he was forced to resign and emigrated, first to England, Sweden, and then to the USA (1941), where until the end of his life he taught first at Yale and then at Columbia universities. In his last major work, “An Essay on Man. Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Culture" (1945) Cassirer dwells in detail on the practice of German Nazism, of which he himself became a victim.

His concept of culture is based on the human capacity for mass, systematic and constant symbolization, in other words, an approach to culture primarily from the standpoint of semiotics.

According to Cassirer, the logic of the surrounding world is inseparable from the logic of signs, for a sign or symbol is not just a shell of thought, but also its necessary tool. Verbal and other symbolic designations in Everyday life, science and art not only transmit this or that information in time and space, but give it a certain form and preserve it for centuries, forming a huge and selectively replenished world of human culture.

Cassirer seeks the origins of culture not in the depths of some divine spirit, like Kant and Hegel, not in the instincts of man, like Freud and ethologists, not in his needs, like Malinowski, and not in his social organization, like Parsons, but in his ability to create a certain the artificial world around us, denoting reality with certain symbols. Language, science, art, religion, myths are components of the symbolic circle in which man lives and suffers. The fact that he, unlike an animal, has a symbolic system surrounding him constitutes the specificity of his life. Compared to other living beings, man is, as it were, in a new dimension of reality, living not just in the physical, but in the symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, religion, all our spiritual manifestations are parts of this universe. They are woven like threads into a dense symbolic network, which, although it accumulates human experience, but sometimes reality obscures us. Our spiritual progress in thought and experience only serves to make this network more and more complex and impenetrable to common sense natural man. To the extent that his symbolic activity increases, physical reality fades into the background for him. Hence the huge difference in the perception of the world, say, between some European scientist and a modern South American savage. A “civilized” person can no longer deal directly with things, but interacts with them only through artificial means, linguistic forms, artistic images, mythical symbols, and religious rituals. Based on this, Cassirer proposes to call a person not a thinking animal, as has already become traditional, but a symbolic animal, bearing in mind the obvious fact that an animal, unlike a person, has no inner world, no imagination.

In response to a reality full of mysteries and dangers, a person seems to withdraw into himself, into his inner universe and lives there with his thoughts and ideas. But an animal cannot do this; it is tightly tied to the “here and now” and is always oriented only to the external and completely real world. An important cultural theme for Cassirer is the theme of myth as one of the most important unifying and at the same time illusory elements of any culture.

The philosopher especially dwells on the ideological myths of our time, which from a strictly anthropological point of view are no different from myths ancient world or primitive and primitive peoples. The view of man as an integral part of the animal world, possessing, however, sociocultural qualities characteristic only of humans, has always been decisive in classical anthropology. At the same time, according to natural scientists, in the course of long evolution, the relationship between “natural” and “human” within the biological species Homo sapiens has steadily changed in favor of the latter. Man, from a natural being, living by instincts and feelings, gradually turns into a kind of artificial structure, constrained by restrictions and rules, subordinated primarily to reason, or more precisely, to one divorced from reality. abstract thinking. As is known, many outstanding minds, including Rousseau, Nietzsche and Freud, spoke about the hidden dangers of such a transformation.

Analyzing the philosophy of E. Cassirer, we can come to the conclusion that this researcher can hardly be called a true neo-Kantian. Indeed, although Cassirer borrowed the transcendental method as a way of asking questions from his teacher G. Cohen (and he, in turn, from Kant), his transcendental philosophy acquired a completely new form, since it concentrated not on scientific knowledge, but on the much broader concept of “worldview” ”, which made it possible to push the traditional boundaries of rationality and move to an understanding of science as a form of culture.

Already Cassirer’s historical and philosophical works on the philosophy of the Renaissance and the philosophy of the Enlightenment, but especially his philosophy of symbolic forms and the study of the “myth of the state” indicate that he can only very conditionally, “by origin,” be classified as Marburg neo-Kantianism.

Kassirer believes that the concepts with which he operates modern science, are not reflections of reality, and their relationship to it is determined not by mutual similarity in content, but by logical similarity. Therefore, instead of demanding the unity of substance as the methodological basis of knowledge, Cassirer, following Kant and his immediate teachers, puts forward the demand for the functional unity of all cognitive processes.

Since being as an object of science is not initially given, a complete unity in itself, but has the meaning of a problem that needs to be solved, since knowledge does not simply describe its properties, but reveals in it all new, hitherto unknown aspects of it, then only functional unity cognitive processes is a guarantor of objectivity and reliability of knowledge. The concept of an object can only be reached through the concept of a relationship, Cassirer emphasizes. This means that since conceptual activity precedes perception and organizes sensory data, reality is not reflected by consciousness, but is constituted by it. Thus, the object turns into a “functional form” and is presented primarily as a meaning that is to be revealed and the content of which varies depending on the metaphysical and aesthetic coordinates in which it is formed. According to Cassirer, the real wealth of being develops only from the wealth of meanings. This phenomenological interpretation of being as a meaning that is revealed to a person in the course of his activities aimed at understanding the world allowed Cassirer to come to the recognition of the pluralism of the universe and the many alternative ways of comprehending it, the totality of which makes up the universe of culture.

Borrowing aesthetic principles descriptions of his phenomenology of spirit in Hegel, Cassirer decides to place logical concept, which is central to Hegel’s system, to install another element that would perform the same system-forming role and would allow us to establish an ideal connection between various forms of manifestation of the spirit, without threatening the individual originality of any of them. Cassirer chose a symbol as such an element. In his opinion, through a symbol, any formation of the spirit occurs in its individual directions while preserving the special nature and specific character of each of them.

Due to its nature as spiritual energy in signification, in imparting meaning to sensory representations, a symbol has universal significance, and as a special direction of signification it is capable of changing its meanings. Due to the combination of these two features - universality and variability - it becomes the central concept of Cassirer’s philosophy of culture.

Cassirer writes that culture is possible as a system of symbolic forms. There is no reality outside of forms, only they are real, and, therefore, forms do not cover or reveal anything other than themselves. Culture will exist and develop until the formative forces, which ultimately must come from us, are exhausted. This prediction is given by a German philosopher. The “tragedy of culture”, which has become a “talk of the town” in modern Western philosophy, turned out to be a tragedy of the inability to fluently read the signs of the times.

The pace of social events has far outpaced the literacy requirement of cultural philosophers, who read syllable by syllable text that requires quick reading. But at the same time, Cassirer avoids fatalistic pessimism with his terrible prophecies and visions of disasters. He believes that the way is being cleared for the creative activity of a person who is able to make decisions based on his strengths and his responsibility, and it is clear that what this decision will be will determine the direction of development and the future of culture. Cassirer calls not to look for meaning behind symbols, but to learn to read it in them themselves, since they are identical to meaning.

One of the most important merits of Cassirer’s cultural philosophy is the creation of a general theory of meaning, which makes it possible to provide a methodological justification for the humanities. According to this researcher, only after a general “doctrine on the forms of the spirit” has been created will it become possible to have a well-founded understanding of the connection between individual humanitarian disciplines and a correct interpretation of their functions. Cassirer considered his theory an attempt to adequately reflect the fullness of life, as well as a system that provides a method for studying the sciences of culture.

Understanding the phenomenon of culture is associated with a consistent analysis of various cultural forms, both in terms of genesis and structural-typological terms. Cassirer's merit lies in the fact that he was able to discover the principle of comprehending the cultural cosmos in an instantaneous act of holistic vision, without which the successful application of analytical procedures would hardly have been possible, and this principle is connected with the activity of consciousness, thereby making it possible to raise the question of the highest destiny of man , in which his own human essence is manifested.

Cassirer believes that human culture in its entirety can be described as a process of consistent self-liberation of a person. The spirit, initially associated with the sensory substrate, is gradually freed from its dependence on it and turns from a captive of nature into the creator of the world. At the same time, the motive of human emancipation through culture should be understood not as an assertion of domination, but as an assertion of the equality and independence of man in relation to nature.

Language, art, religion, science are different stages of this process of self-liberation. In each of them, a person manifests and experiences a new possibility - the possibility of building his own “ideal” world. Philosophy cannot help but take part in the search for fundamental unity in this ideal world. However, this unity should not be confused with simplicity.

One cannot ignore the tensions and frictions, the sharp differences and deep conflicts between these different human faculties. After all, they are not reducible to a common denominator: they are multidirectional and subject to different principles. But this multiplicity and incomparability do not mean inconsistency and disharmony: all these functions complement and complement each other, each of them opens a new horizon and shows a new face of humanity. The dissonant itself is in harmony with itself. Opposites are not mutually exclusive, but mutually condition each other.

Cassirer’s phenomenology of symbolic forms appears in the form of a “phenomenology of the subject,” which allows us to take into account the uniqueness of ethnic, social, cultural and other factors in the description of a single cultural cosmos while preserving the individuality of the elements and the integrity of the system. Recognition of the equality of multiple human technologies for mastering reality and, as a consequence, recognition of the pluralism of human existence is considered by many researchers (for example, Kroyce, Petzold) to be one of the advantages of Cassirer’s philosophy, which allows us to speak of it as a genuine philosophy of modernity. Since the truth can be revealed to a person in different ways, revealing its different meanings, the variety of paths equally leading to the truth constitutes the multidimensional being within which a person is localized. The activity of understanding the world, which is embodied in various symbolic practices, in the creation of new symbolic systems, in the constant rethinking of symbols, is characteristic feature the modern era, which is reflected in the philosophy of Cassirer.

Cassirer calls man a “symbolic animal.” The definition proposed by the philosopher is a clarification and expansion of the previous one, in addition, it receives a new ethical dimension, since the expansion of the definition of man from animal rationale to animal symbolicum asserts the equivalence of all types of human spiritual activity: science, myth, religion, art and others, and thereby deprives scientific knowledge world of its absolute priority over all other types of cultural creativity.

Recognition of the universality and unity of the symbolic function of consciousness throughout the historical path of human development, on the one hand, guarantees the possibility of mutual understanding of different types of cultures, and on the other hand, excludes the thesis about the cultural superiority of some peoples over others. The thesis about the hierarchy of cultures is replaced by the difference between cultures.

Man is the creator of symbols - the “ideal world” - and thanks to this he finds himself and comes to know the world around him.

The symbol represents the pure function of thought, pure spiritual expression, the comprehension of the sensory. The symbol precedes every experience; he is a dynamic principle - the principle of everything - that is, a pure phenomenon, a cause. All attempts at desymbolization are obviously doomed to failure, since we can overcome the symbol only symbolically.

According to Cassirer, cultural reality is present only in symbolic forms. The fact of culture is the fact of the presence of various symbolic forms with which we construct the world. Language, myth, religion, science, art are forms of symbol. In this regard, Cassirer never ceases to emphasize that the subject of scientific research is only form and that we are talking about finding the principle of form formation, or about constructing reality itself.

In the symbolic function, Cassirer believes, the essence itself is revealed human consciousness- his ability to exist through the synthesis of opposites. Firstly, in a symbol consciousness interrupts and fixes its continuous flow. Secondly, it can reveal to us its internal ideal content only through an external, sensually perceptible material substrate. At the same time, giving meaning itself is not just fixing a ready-made meaning, but its creation, co-creation. Thirdly, sensory individuality, without ceasing to be such, represents to consciousness in the unity of meaning the universal and diverse.

The symbolic function as a fundamental function of consciousness is realized in three main types, which in onto- and phylogenetic terms are stages of its evolution - in the “function of expression”, “function of image”, “function of meaning”.

Symbols are highest values human culture. By assimilating old and creating new symbols, a person expresses the spiritual - semantic in the material-sensual, the dynamic in the stable, the many in one, but thereby he achieves individual freedom and “immortality”, since such are conceivable only through the inclusion of culture through the assimilation and multiplication by man universally valid human values.

An essential aspect of human spiritual activity is that it all takes place within the framework of knowledge of the world, taking on a specific form of worldview. In this regard, an important feature of Cassirer’s epistemology should be recognized that the cognitive function is not the exclusive privilege of science, since, firstly, knowledge about the world existed before the advent of science, and secondly, with the advent of science, alternative types of knowledge are preserved. The function of cognition is inherent in all symbolic forms, since cognition is equivalent to comprehending the meanings of objects.

An important feature of symbolic forms is that they are living and developing systems that accumulate and transmit the historical experience of mankind. The phenomena of culture in Cassirer’s concept do not oppose man, alienating him, but represent life at the stage when natural history was transformed into the cultural history of mankind.

The symbols that a person produces and uses express his individuality. Therefore, culture appears as a way of life, as a sphere of human existence, as a constant process and result of creativity, in which a person finds his essence and affirms it.

One of the symbolic forms is myth. According to Cassirer, myth should not be viewed as a system of dogmatic beliefs. It comes more from actions than from images and ideas. Even if we manage to dissect a myth into its conceptual elements, we will not be able to grasp its static life principle, which is dynamic in nature.

Cassirer examines the specifics of myth in three directions, since myth is given as a form of thought, as a form of contemplation, and as a form of life. As a result of theoretical research, the philosopher comes to the conclusion that myth is a special phenomenon. It arises from a person’s existential need to come to terms with reality. The main source of myths is a person’s awareness of the finitude of his existence, which gives him an unbearable feeling of anxiety. Wanting to get rid of it, a person creates myths.

Mythical consciousness is undifferentiated, united, syncretic. Therefore, the separation of the ideal from the real, the separation between the world of immediate reality and the world of mediated meaning is alien to myth.

But at the same time, Cassirer believes that the myth still lives. Cassirer interprets the dominance of myth in the politics of the 20th century as an artificial return to the type of thinking that prevailed in the era before the modern era, as a victory of social atavism. The philosopher believes that myth acquires its age-old power at critical moments in socio-political life.

Only Cassirer’s original idea about the archaic nature of myth is outdated. Indeed, we are talking a lot about “politicization” now. mass consciousness, but it is most fruitful to imagine what is happening in Russia as, firstly, a change in the fundamental myths responsible for constructing reality, and, secondly, as a struggle between rival mythical systems. “Ideology” is rational, and myth is “existential.” It is he who is able to squeeze “into one syllable the whole gamut of human passions,” as Cassirer shows. It is not difficult to see that many printed publications and political parties today offer us more of a myth than an “ideology.” Therefore, Cassirer's works are interesting and relevant.

So, myth in Cassirer’s concept is nothing more than a product of the creation of the human spirit, but based on the fact that it is one of the cultural forms, it turns out that other cultural forms are the result of the activity of the same force. From this it follows that for Cassirer, culture represents a purely spiritual reality, the sphere where the development of human consciousness occurs. It is in no way connected with the conditions of people's material life.

Although Cassirer had few direct followers (E. Panofsky, K. Lorenz, in the USA - S. Langer), his philosophy had a great influence on all European (especially German) philosophy and sociology of culture, philosophical anthropology, and also found a response in Anglo-American environment. Views close to Cassirer’s ideas were developed in French structuralism. Based, in particular, on them, as well as on the works of Panofsky, Pierre Bourdieu put forward his “sociology of symbolic forms.”

Cassirer is one of the few thinkers of the 20th century whose views were formed into a system. His cultural philosophy became a kind of understanding of various fragments of the existence of human culture within the framework of a large-scale experiment in mastering reality. The connecting principle here is the multifunctionality of consciousness, which originates in a priori symbolic concepts.

However, thanks to this principle, symbolism has established itself not only as a method allowing for synthesis, but also as a method for analyzing various cultural phenomena and as a method on which particular humanities could be based.

Cassirer himself productively used this method not only in applying it to anthropology, but also for the analysis of myth, language, art, and science. In addition to him, his method was used by K. Lorenz in anthropology, P. Bourdieu when creating the sociology of symbolic forms, and M. Merleau-Ponty when writing “Phenomenology of Perception”.

Thanks to the universal nature of the theory of symbolic forms, philosophy was able, covering such areas as myth, technology and economics, to transform, as Kant demanded of it, from a school concept into an all-encompassing science, capable of serving the essential goals of humanity by expanding the traditional horizons of rationality and mastering the field , which has always lay beyond the boundaries of strictly scientific knowledge - life at the junction of the subjective and objective in all its concreteness, emotionality, fluidity and therefore elusiveness.

CASSIRER, ERNST(Cassirer, Ernst) (1874–1945), German philosopher and historian. Born in Breslau in Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on July 28, 1874. Having received his primary education in his hometown, in 1892 he entered the University of Berlin. In accordance with the European tradition, which encouraged training in several educational institutions, attended lectures at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg, Munich and Marburg. At first, Cassirer intended to study law, but became interested in literature and humanities; Later, while studying philosophy, he deeply studied physics and mathematics. In Marburg (where he received his PhD in 1899, presenting a dissertation on Descartes' analysis of mathematical and scientific knowledge), Cassirer studied with G. Cohen and P. Natorp, leading representatives of the so-called neo-Kantianism. the Marburg school, a movement that proclaimed a return to Kant as opposed to the then dominant Hegelianism. Cassirer was especially close to Cohen in his interpretation of Kant and interest in Judaism. The works written at the University of Berlin in 1906–1919 (where Cassirer taught as Privatdozent) develop the basic ideas of neo-Kantianism. At that time he was particularly interested in the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science, in particular the problems associated with Einstein's theory. Cassirer also studied history and literature, especially the German classics Lessing, Goethe and Schiller. During the same period, he wrote a biography of Kant and prepared an edition of the works of this great thinker.

From 1919 to 1933, Cassirer was professor of philosophy, and from 1930 to 1933, rector of the University of Hamburg; at the same time he headed the Warburg Institute, where research on cultural history was carried out. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Cassirer emigrated to England, where he continued teaching at All Souls College, Oxford University from 1933–1935, and was invited to the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) from 1935–1941. From 1941 to 1944, Cassirer taught at Yale University and then at Columbia University. Cassirer died in Princeton (New Jersey) on April 13, 1945.

Cassirer penned an extensive historical work The problem of knowledge in philosophy and science of modern times (Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, 1906–1957), in which a systematic presentation of the problem is followed by its history from antiquity to the 40s of the 20th century. Bringing together the results of his studies in cultural studies, science and history, he published another three-volume work - Philosophy of symbolic forms (Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 1923–1929).

In these and other works, Cassirer analyzed the functions of language, myth and religion, art and history as "symbolic forms" through which man gains understanding of himself and the world around him, so that man himself is defined as a "symbol-creating animal." In the same vein, he developed a philosophical discipline, which, following Kant, Cassirer called philosophical anthropology. It is presented, in particular, in the work Experience about a person (Essay on man. An introduction to a philosophy of human culture, 1945). Research into the spiritual culture of the Renaissance and Enlightenment (including: The individual and the cosmos in the philosophy of the Renaissance – Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, 1927; Philosophy of Enlightenment – ​​Die Philosophie der Aufklärung, 1932) allow us to consider him a pioneer in the field that was later called the “history of ideas.”

The philosophy of language occupied an important place in Cassirer's concept. Language, along with science, art, religion, and myth, is one of the “symbolic forms” of culture. From the chaos of impressions, language forms a picture of the world. Language is an autonomous creation of the spirit; with its help, a person creates (and not just reflects) reality. On the basis of linguistic signs, concepts are formed that are products of symbolic cognition. Cassirer studied the relationship between different "symbolic forms", in particular the connection between language, myth and art, mediated by metaphor; also dealt with issues of general patterns of development of linguistic meanings.

Consideration of the concept of “symbol” in the works of E. Cassirer “An Essay on Man”

E. Cassirer starts from the concept of man as an active being that produces certain meanings and symbols. The most main characteristic human - activity; it is labor that defines the human domain. Language, myth, science, history constitute the space of his activity; these are certain tools that are functionally used by man to generate a symbol.

Ernst Cassirer's work “Essay on Man” became one of the most widely read philosophical works of its time, remaining for several decades the main textbook on philosophical anthropology and a kind of philosophical bestseller. Why did this happen? Exploring the question “how is culture possible?”, within the framework of his theory of symbolic forms, Cassirer turns to the problems of philosophical anthropology. Cassirer places the current concept of symbol at the center of his research, seeing in it the root and main problem of human philosophy. The concept of “symbol” gradually entered the space of philosophy. Almost every major thinker of the past, one way or another, turned to the categories of symbol and symbolic, but not like Cassirer. Moreover, in most cases, the concept of symbol was interpreted in different ways. In my opinion, this is due to the extreme breadth and ambiguity of this category. The symbol is flexible and moving, like history itself. In this regard, each era required a rethinking of this concept. At different times, the symbol dominated myth, art, and technology. Throughout history, vastly different degrees of this concept have been emphasized in philosophical thought. The symbol constantly required and requires rethinking.

Thus, the work of E. Cassirer is an attempt to overcome the crisis of neo-Kantianism by bringing it into a new, cultural problem field.

E. Cassirer: culture as the production of symbols

In the history of philosophy, they tried to understand man with the help of psychological introspection. E. Cassirer proposed an alternative method in “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms”. He proceeds from the premise that if there is any definition of the nature or “essence” of man, then this definition can only be understood as functional, and not substantial.

A distinctive feature of a person is his activity. “Philosophy of man” is therefore a philosophy that should clarify for us the fundamental structures of each of the types of human activity and at the same time make it possible to understand it as an organic chain. Language, art, myth, religion are not random, isolated creations, they are connected by common ties. As for the philosophy of culture, Cassirer begins with the assertion that the world of human culture is not just an accumulation of vague and isolated facts.

From an empirical or historical point of view, it seems as if it is enough to collect the facts of human culture in order to unravel the phenomenon itself. Cassirer gives preference to the thesis about the fragmentation of human culture, its original heterogeneity.

Cassirer derives the phenomenon of culture from the fact of the imperfection of human biological nature. Man has lost his original nature. We can't say why this happened. Scientists talk about the influence of cosmic radiation or radioactivity, deposits of radioactive ores, which caused mutations in the mechanism of heredity. A similar regression - the extinction, weakening or loss of certain instincts - is not, generally speaking, completely unknown natural world.

Sociality and cultural standards dictate to a person patterns of behavior other than the biological program. Instincts in a person are weakened, supplanted by purely human needs and motives, in other words, “cultivated”. Is the dulling of instincts really a product of historical development? The latest research refutes this conclusion. It turns out that the weak expression of instincts is not caused by the development of sociality. There is no direct connection here.

Man has always, regardless of culture, possessed “muted” undeveloped instincts. The species as a whole had only the makings of an unconscious natural orientation that helped to listen to the voice of the earth. The idea that man is poorly equipped with instincts, that his forms of behavior are painfully arbitrary, has had an enormous influence on theoretical thought. Philosophical anthropologists of the 20th century drew attention to the well-known “inadequacy” of the human being, to some features of its biological nature.

The concept of symbolic, playful adaptation to the natural world was developed in the works of E. Cassirer. Let us also note that the sociocultural orientation of philosophy has sharpened interest in the category of symbol, symbolic. The symbolic has become a fundamental concept modern philosophy along with such as science, myth, telos, language, subject, etc.

Kassirer outlines approaches to a holistic view of human existence as occurring in symbolic forms. He turns to the works of the biologist I. Uksküll, a consistent supporter of vitalism. The scientist views life as an autonomous entity. Each biological species, Uexküll developed its own concept, lives in special world, inaccessible to all other types. So man comprehended the world by his own standards.

Kassirer notes the symbolic way of communication with the world in humans, which is different from the sign signaling systems inherent in animals. Signals are part of the physical world, while symbols, being devoid, according to the author, of natural or substantial existence, have, first of all, functional value. Animals are limited by the world of their sensory perceptions, which reduces their actions to direct reactions to external stimuli. Therefore animals are unable to form the idea of ​​the possible. On the other hand, for the superhuman intellect or for the divine spirit, as Cassirer notes, there is no difference between reality and possibility: everything mental becomes reality for him. And only in the human intellect is there both reality and possibility.

For primitive thinking, Cassirer believes, it is very difficult to distinguish between the spheres of being and meaning; they are constantly mixed, as a result of which the symbol is endowed with magical or physical power. However, as culture continues to develop, the relationships between things and symbols become clearer, as do the relationships between possibility and reality. On the other hand, in all those cases where any obstacles are identified on the path of symbolic thinking, the difference between reality and possibility also ceases to be clearly perceived.

This is where, it turns out, the social program was born! Initially, it arose from nature itself, from an attempt to survive by imitating animals more rooted in their natural environment. Then a person began to develop a special system. He became a creator and creator of symbols. They reflected an attempt to consolidate various standards of behavior suggested by other living beings.

Thus, we have every reason to consider man an “incomplete animal.” It was not through the inheritance of acquired characteristics that he broke away from the animal kingdom. For anthropology, the mind and everything that occupies it belongs to the realm of culture. Culture is not inherited genetically. From the above reasoning, a logical conclusion follows: the secret of cultural genesis is rooted in the formation of man as a symbolic animal.

Culturology: lecture notes by Enikeev Dilnara

LECTURE No. 17. Philosophy of symbolic forms by E. Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) - German Jew, neo-Kantian philosopher. E. Kassirer is a student Herman Cohen, representative of the Markburg school of neo-Kantianism. Basic philosophical works– “Philosophy of symbolic forms”, “Experience about man”, “Knowledge of reality”.

Neo-Kantianism is the most influential philosophical movement of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Representatives of neo-Kantianism initially conducted polemics with philosophers who revealed the concept of the philosophy of culture from the standpoint of the “philosophy of life” (Life, that is, the primary reality before any division, is self-limited through the forms emanating from it, forming “more-life” and “more-than” -life" or forms of culture). Gradually, mutual influence and rapprochement of these two schools occurs, explained by the common themes (the uniqueness of culture, contradictions, its crisis) and the unity of the original philosophical tradition. The influence of romanticism on neo-Kantianism was very significant. So, its early representative F. D. Lange argued that only individual parts of the world of phenomena are accessible to knowledge, while the whole is the subject of creative invention, which is a necessary product of the spirit, growing from the deepest vital roots of our species. The integration function in culture is performed by metaphysics, interpreted by F. D. Lange as the “poetry of concepts.”

In 1923–1929 E. Kassirer published his “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms”. By analogy with the questions of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” (“how is mathematical natural science possible?”), he poses the question “how is culture possible?” According to E. Cassirer, it is revealed to us as a variety of symbolic forms, connected and ordered in accordance with their functional roles into a system of modes and levels, each of which (language, myth, science) is not reducible to the other and exists equally in its world. The “symbolic form” itself is defined as an a priori (i.e., pre-experimental) ability that creates all the diversity of culture; symbolic forms are autonomous and self-sufficient. The task of the philosophy of culture, in the understanding of E. Cassirer, is to describe structural levels and “modality indices”, symbolic forms. This allows us to understand the uniqueness of, for example, space and time in the context of science, myth or language.

The main thesis of his main 4-volume work, “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,” is as follows: the analysis of mythological thinking is of main importance for the theory of knowledge. E. Cassirer builds his concept of myth from considering it as having its own internal structure. He writes: “The fact that myth is internally and necessarily connected with common task phenomenology, indirectly follows from Hegel’s own formulation and definition of this concept.” From this position it follows that myth occupies a certain place in the phenomenology of the spirit.

In his work, E. Cassirer refers to G. Hegel and accepts his formulations. In addition, there are references to I. Kant.

The first work related to his concept of the philosophy of symbolic forms is “The Concept of Symbolic Form in the Structure of the Sciences of the Spirit.” The main point is that the unity of any sphere can be established based on any function. E. Cassirer compares various spheres of cultural creativity - the mythological sphere and aesthetic activity. He says it is wrong to label myth as pseudoscience. Myth also has a cause-and-effect relationship. Only myth speaks about the connection of things, and science speaks about the nature of change within each thing.

Here the philosopher turns to the genesis of language. He believes that the scientific form is the highest form of language development (categorical, conceptual form).

The second work related to the concept of symbolic forms is “On the Question of the Logic of Symbolic Concepts.” E. Cassirer speaks of two types of logic: analytical (logic of identity) and synthetic (logic of relations).

The first logic, in his opinion, was discovered by the Hellenes. For example, Plato introduces a syncretic logic of difference.

Another article “Naturalistic and humanistic justifications for the philosophy of culture.” Philosophy of culture is an independent field. E. Cassirer identifies 3 approaches that exist in the history of the philosophy of culture, which do not fully reveal the meaning of the philosophy of culture:

1) physicalism (positivism);

2) psychologism (O. Spengler);

3) metaphysical foundations (G. Hegel).

If the first approach completely ignores the inner world of man, the creative subjectivity of the “I,” then O. Spengler, on the contrary, seeks the justification of culture through the intuitive characteristics of the soul. G. Hegel strives to present a creative, free personality, but his freedom is attributed to the transcendental sphere.

“The Logic of the Cultural Sciences” - here E. Cassirer turns to the traditional division of sciences into natural and cultural. There are two objects of perception - the natural and human world. The nature of the experience and perception of nature and man are different. There is an objective and emotional perception of a person. E. Cassirer gives preference to emotional perception. These two different streams of knowledge have different results - two different processes of concept formation - reflective and productive.

"An Experience about Man"

E. Cassirer starts from the concept of man as an active being that produces certain meanings and symbols. The most important characteristic of a person is activity; it is labor that defines the human domain. Language, myth, science, history constitute the space of his activity; these are certain tools that are functionally used by man to generate a symbol.

Basic forms of human activity

Myth. E. Cassirer compares myth with other types of activity:

1) myth and religion;

2) myth and art.

Myth as a system of depicting the surrounding world comes close to art in this sense. However, their significant difference lies in the object of knowledge. Mythological thinking makes its object come alive. As for the concept of the origin of myth, E. Cassirer is a supporter of the activity approach to the analysis of culture; in his opinion, first the ritual occurred, and then the word.

Religion and myth. Religion overcomes myth, but this overcoming is incomplete. Their difference lies in the taboo system: if in myth the taboo system is passively prohibitive in nature, then in religion the prohibition system is of a different nature. It does not exist to scare, but to lead to the gifts of God, to bright prospects.

Language, according to E. Cassirer, these are:

1) activity, energy, process (becoming);

2) result, product (what has become).

According to E. Cassirer, language is movement, development, therefore there is no original proto-language.

Art is either a purely naturalistic depiction of reality or an artistic fiction. Art and science describe the same reality in different ways. Science, as it were, reduces the object of reality, and in art there is intensification. The scientist discovers facts and laws, the artist discovers the forms of nature (“Works of art are a corner of nature seen through temperament,” asserted E. Zola).

Story. E. Cassirer compares historical knowledge with natural science. The difference is that a physical fact can be verified experimentally, but a historical fact is the past and cannot be measured. E. Cassirer believes that the difference between this knowledge is not in the logic of thinking, but in the object. According to the philosopher, history is no less objective than natural sciences.

The science. The specificity of science is that it fixes stable points, fixed poles, and number plays a special role in this process.

Thus, labor E. Kassirer is an attempt to overcome the crisis of neo-Kantianism by bringing it into a new, cultural problem field.