So concludes Hans Sluga (Berkeley) at the end of this informative review of a recent work of intellectual history. Thoughts from readers? Signed comments will be strongly preferred.
Sorry, in the *20* years since it was published.
Regarding Cassirer: “Attempts to revive his fortunes are, I am afraid, doomed to failure”
10 responses to “Regarding Cassirer: “Attempts to revive his fortunes are, I am afraid, doomed to failure””
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Sluga, of course, might be right. Then again, he did once insist on the crucial significance of Mauthner, and that renaissance is still to bloom. Cassirer is worth exploring, in part due to his remarkable erudition and ability to synthesize, in part due to him leading those interested on to others, e.g. Hermann Cohen, and his valuable interpretation of Kant. Michael Friedman is worth reading on Cassirer, as well.
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As mentioned by kurt, Friedman's book on this topic is well worth reading. I can't comment on Cassirer's status as a philosopher, though Friedman is very positive about Cassirer's contributions as a philosopher, but he was/is a major figure as an intellectual historian. The books that are widely available in English translations, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment and The Individual and the Cosmos…, are durable contributions. His major early work on history of science and philosophy was never, to my knowledge, translated into English but is considered groundbreaking.
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No doubt that Cassirer is worth reading as a philosopher, even if he is far from clear and/or correct on many issues. Especially interesting is Cassirer's rather nasty debate with Leonard Nelson.
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I think Cassirer may be remembered most as a historian of ideas. (The only work of his I ever read– decades ago, as a student– was "The Myth of the State," which I suspect should be seen as a document of the times: a debunking of all forms of totalitarianism, published at the time of the titanic three-way war between fascism, communism and … us good people.)
My response, to Sluga's review of the book, is that it is all a disheartening case study of how sterile and trivial the academically fashionable philosophy of a time is likely to be: the "GREAT DEBATE" is between two footnotes (the etiolated scholarly side of Neo-Kantianism and the mystagoguery of Heidegger), and what, in retrospect, was the only progressive tendency in Germanophone philosophy at the time– the science-oriented philosophy of the Vienna Circle and likeminded groups elsewhere– hardly gets mentioned! (Not that it was entirely isolated: that stream within Neo-Kantianism which looked for an "epistemology of science" influenced Carnap & co, and phenomenology– particularly through Weyl– had some impact on the other enduringly important philosophical growth of the time, the methodological studies of mathematics and logic: Hilbert and his school are of much greater philosophical interest than the academic philosophy of the period, even though they were in the mathematical faculty). -
I guess that what keeps the “fortunes” of a philosopher alive is some balance between one’s sense of the credibility of the position that s/he advances and one’s appreciation of the rigour, depth and insight with which s/he puts it across.
My sense is that there are a few talented philosophers (Michael Friedman, of course, is the most obvious) who find Cassirer’s general position (call it extended and historicized neo-Kantianism) strongly appealing. But that that has to be balanced against the (to me) unquestionable fact that his presentation of it is somewhat dull and unincisive. In my opinion, the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is the best of his non-historical writings, but I get far less out of it than I do from *The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau*. Still, the person who inspired “Die Perspektive als Symbolische Form” deserves eternal gratitude.
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Cassirer is a philosopher of the highest order, and his emphasis on the symbolic dimension of human thought has few parallels in the fullness of its achievement save perhaps in the work of C.S. Peirce.
Cassirer's great humanism, his polymathic erudition of both of Snow's "two cultures," his cosmopolitan sensibility, and his penetrating knowledge of the breadth of philosophical history all place him among the great minds of the 20th century.
But what truly makes his genius so distinct is his commitment to an anthropological philosophy; far from being merely "a neo-Kantian," Cassirer forged a genuinely incisive philosophical model based on his notion of man as symbolic animal (while Wittgenstein and Heidegger both saw this symbolic dimension as key to understanding humankind, Cassirer among the three of them followed through on what such symbol-making entails).
Unlike the methodological formalisms of Husserl, Frege or Carnap, and unlike the lapse into mysticism of Heidegger or Wittgenstein, Cassirer's philosophy (along with that of Jaspers, Scheler, Bloch, Hans Jonas, Blumenberg, Simmel, Langer, Irving Singer and a few others) articulates the cultural dimension of human life (like Vico and Hegel, Cassirer's view of history and the role of mytho-poetic imagination is complex and rich) as the critical psycho-ontic laboratory for philosophical investigation. In short, his vision of philosophy is much closer to the fullness of the Greeks than the knotted, hermetic onto-theology of Heidegger. Incidentally, I think Gadamer, despite his debt to Heidegger, shares a great deal with Cassirer.
I would venture that in 50 or 100 years, once the rage for Dasein and deconstructing the Enlightenment has truly passed, that Cassirer (along with the humanistic philosophers I have just mentioned), will be read far more than Heidegger (for what it's worth, I think Voegelin's criticisms of Hedeigger's gnosiology are essentially correct).
For a good recent book on Cassirer, see Edward Skidelsky's "Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture."
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Given Cassirer's breadth, I think that one would have to be much more specific about which area of his work might become the focus of attention for philosophical scholars. Perhaps his work on symbolic forms will someday become of great interest to a new generation of philosophers (it would be a welcome improvement over the approaches to human culture influenced by Heidegger), but it would take a shift in the interest of a large segment of philosophers.
I do think, however, that Cassirer provides one of the best models for a study of the history of philosophy that is both sensitive to context and alive to the issues of the power and truth of the ideas studied. I think that 'Freiheit und Form' is Cassirer's best example of philosophically rich history of philosophy, and will serve as an inspiration for students of the history of philosophy who are fortunate enough to encounter it.
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Rich Booher:
A number of fairly recent books about Cassirer might be of interest:
–The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer (Chicago, 2008), edited by Jefferey Andrew Barash
–Cassirer's Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms:
A Philosophical Commentary (Yale, 2000) by Thora Ilin Bayer
–Ernst Cassirer: A "Repetition" of Modernity (SUNY, 2000) by S.G. Lofts
–Cultural Studies and the Symbolic: Occasional papers in cassirer and cultural Theory
Paul Bishop (Editor), R.H. Stephenson (Editor)To answer your question, there are any number of areas that might make sense to explore, such as: Cassirer's contribution to the post-Dilthey philosophy of Bildung, his concept of the unity of function in scientific theory, his concept of the state and myth (contrasted with such thinkers as Ricoeur, Hegel, Blumenberg, etc.), symbolic form as semiotic, the role of allegory in thought, the notion of anthropological philosophy (see Scheler, etc), etc.
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Philosophy often runs in fashions, and cassirer is no longer in fashion. this may in part be because of his lack of pretense, sensitivity to history, effort to connect his work with others and not overstate his own originality, and his interest in being more a teacher than an charismatic figure per se. heidegger is an obvious contrast because of his overriding interest in being original even if he needed to mystify and obfuscate in order to claim such. dont get me wrong. heidegger is perhaps one of the most radical of thinkers of the last century, and perhaps cassirer wasn't, but cassirer was definitely a better teacher, one who the reading of which brings more clarity and breadth of understanding, and one who indirectly and without having been given credit may have been more influential in progress in language studies, the appreciation of general symbolic systems in anthropology, psychology and literature, and even in philosophy of science than heidegger was in the end. The best in heidegger was better said by gadamer, merleau-ponty, and ricoeur. The notoriety of derrida and foucault have by contrast become less and less meaningful as time passes. and the radicalness of heidegger seems to pale today before the return to neitszche or the emergence of buddhism asa philosophical foil. Cassirer, like Kant before him, brings light. And we can never have too much of that.
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I'll echo Leslie's point here – philosophy runs in fashions and so-called "realism" is in right now while so-called "idealism" is out. But Cassirer's work is still as good as it ever was, and people will still read him. When the new wave of "realisms" goes too far, as it surely must, Cassirer's fortunes are likely to be revived when the pendulum swings back the other way.
I just finished his (short) "Language and Myth" and personally I was quite taken with it. Taking into account the fact it was first published in 1925 I believe it to be an exceptional piece of work, and one that I have been happy to make reference in my own work quite recently. But then, I was never much of a fan of "realisms" – always seemed like a big stick for people to hit other people with. 😉
Best wishes!
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