The Genesis of the Symbolic : On the Beginnings of Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Culture

Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture has been much discussed in recent years. However, it remains unclear how it evolved from his older theory of knowledge. This study deals with this question on the basis of Cassirer’s ‘disposition’ of a ‘philosophy of the symbolic’, reconstructed here for the first time. This text shows that the ‘symbolic’ refers to culture as a whole and to its inherent diversity. Therefore, ‘the symbolic’ includes the relationship between the general transcendental conditions of culture and its empirical specificities in language and languages, art and the arts, myth and myths, science and disciplines. Cassirer does not comprehend this empirical and specific reality of symbolization depending on pre-existing transcendental conditions. Instead, he proceeds from the empirical diversity of the symbolisations and reflects on their simultaneously general and specific conditions. Thus, Cassirer embarks on a path that he finds paved in Kant’s "Critique of Judgement": He consequently defines ‘the symbolic’ as the horizon for a reflective approach based on empirical findings – and not as the foundation of a systematic derivation of the diversity of culture in the style of the idealistic tradition.

Editorial Board: Karl P. Ameriks (Notre Dame University, West Bend, USA), Margaret Atherton (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA), Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA), Fabien Capeillères (Université de Caen, France), Faustino Fabbianelli (Universitá di Parma, Italia), Daniel Garber (Princeton University, Princeton, USA), Rudolf A. Makkreel (Emory University, Atlanta, USA), Steven Nadler (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA), Alan Nelson (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA), Christof Rapp (LMU München, D), Ursula Renz (Universität Klagenfurt, Österreich), Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (FU Berlin, D), Denis Thouard (HU Berlin, D), Paul Ziche (Universiteit Utrecht, NL), Günter Zöller (LMU München, D)

The series publishes monographs and essay collections devoted to the history of philosophy as well as studies in the theory of writing the history of philosophy. A special emphasis is placed on the contextualization of philosophical historiography into the areas of the history of science, culture, and the wider scope of intellectual history.

Contents List of Abbreviations Introduction The Beginnings of a Work The Empirical Transformation of the Transcendental The Genesis of the Symbolic and Cassirer’s Engagement with the Cultural Sciences Concluding Remarks Appendix Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects