At his death in 1945, the influential German philosopher Ernst Cassirer left manuscripts for the fourth and final volume of his magnum opus, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene have edited these writings and translated them into English for the first time, bringing to completion Cassirer's major treatment of the concept of symbolic form. Ernst Cassirer believed that all the forms of representation that human beings use-language, myth, art, religion, history, science-are symbolic, and the concept of symbolic forms was the basis of his thinking on these subjects. In this volume, which contains one text written in 1928 and another in about 1940, Cassirer presents the metaphysics that is implicit in his epistemology and phenomenology of culture. The earlier text grounds the philosopher's conception of symbolic forms on a notion of human nature that makes a general distinction between Geist (mind) and life. In the later text, he discusses Basis Phenomena, an original concept not mentioned in any of his previous works, and he compares his own viewpoint with those of other modern philosophers, notably Bergson and Heidegger.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The 1st Volume of Ernst Cassirer's Opus,
By
This review is from: The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 1: Language (Paperback)
Ernst Cassirer is one of the foremost Neo-Kantian philosophers of the 20th century. This semi-easy to read book is the 1st of 4 volumes of his Opus about the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The 1st volume deals with language, the 2nd with Mythical Thought, the 3rd with the Phenomenology of Knowledge, & the 4th with the Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms. As most people understand western philosophical history, Plato was the 1st to make a systematic philosophical system which made the Ideal or "Form" of thought an Axiom of reality. This way of understanding reality created more problems than answers until Descartes came up with his Rational Axiom: "I think therefore I am", which many felt was an overstatement lacking Empirical experience. Immanuel Kant solved this problem with a Synthesis (Union) of the Rational & the Empirical. In other words, the human mind functions & understands reality in a certain rational way by uniting with common experience. Immanuel Kant came up with 12 different "Categories of Thought" which was based on Aristotle's Categories from an abstraction of language. Ernst Cassirier goes a step further in stating that the mind abstracts reality by use of symbols which are taught from certain historical cultural groups & as with the philosopher Michel Foucault, both reveal the disunity of modern science's methods & terminology. Unlike Michel Focault difficult book "The Order of Things, An Archaeology of the Human Sciences", Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is easier to read & focuses on the main issue of the human mind's use of symbols. This book requires a certain knowledge of philosophical history & terms, & is not for a philosophy beginner. For a start on Ernst Cassirier, try his smaller, easy to read, & to the point book "Language & Myth" for a taste of this mind opening philosophy.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
(learn more)
basis phenomena, functional circle, primary phenomena, primary phenomenon, quid juris Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Critique of Pure Reason, Collected Dialogues, Sämtliche Werke, Goethe's Collected Works, Sämmtliche Werke, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, The Ethics, Cambridge Univ, The Hague, Bruno Cassirer, New Haven, Yale Univ, Renaissance Philosophy, Martinus Nijhoff, The Transcendent Character of Life, Clarendon Press, Dover Books, Treatise of Human Nature, Creative Evolution, Die Krise, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Walter de Gruyter, Ein Beitrag Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
basis phenomena, functional circle, primary phenomena, primary phenomenon, quid juris Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Critique of Pure Reason, Collected Dialogues, Sämtliche Werke, Goethe's Collected Works, Sämmtliche Werke, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, The Ethics, Cambridge Univ, The Hague, Bruno Cassirer, New Haven, Yale Univ, Renaissance Philosophy, Martinus Nijhoff, The Transcendent Character of Life, Clarendon Press, Dover Books, Treatise of Human Nature, Creative Evolution, Die Krise, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Walter de Gruyter, Ein Beitrag Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
