In the first two sections of the following remarks, I will establish a working definition of Cassirer's concept of a symbolic form. Symbolic forms are primarily forms of expression (1). Furthermore, ...they must be conceived as forms of world‐disclosure and forms of mind and spirit (2). Finally, I will highlight the key elements of Cassirer's analysis of the practical dimension of symbolic forms (3). I argue that a reconsideration of the concept of a symbolic form will naturally let the philosophy of symbolic forms adopt the shape of a critical theory of society.
Ernst Cassirer Skidelsky, Edward
2009., 20111024, 2011, 2008, 2009-01-01
eBook
This is the first English-language intellectual biography of the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), a leading figure on the Weimar intellectual scene and one of the last and finest ...representatives of the liberal-idealist tradition. Edward Skidelsky traces the development of Cassirer's thought in its historical and intellectual setting. He presents Cassirer, the author of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, as a defender of the liberal ideal of culture in an increasingly fragmented world, and as someone who grappled with the opposing forces of scientific positivism and romantic vitalism. Cassirer's work can be seen, Skidelsky argues, as offering a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict between the "two cultures" of science and the humanities--and between the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy. The first comprehensive study of Cassirer in English in two decades, this book will be of great interest to analytic and continental philosophers, intellectual historians, political and cultural theorists, and historians of twentieth-century Germany.
Comparing the liberal Jewish ethics of the German-Jewish philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that both espoused a diasporic, worldly conception of Jewish identity that was ...anchored in a pluralist and politically engaged interpretation of Jewish history and an abiding interest in the complex lived reality of modern Jews. Arendt's indebtedness to liberal Jewish thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer has been obscured by her modernist posture and caustic critique of the assimilationism of her German-Jewish forebears. By reorienting our conception of Arendt as a profoundly secular thinker anchored in twentieth century political debates, we are led to rethink the philosophical, political, and ethical legacy of liberal Jewish discourse.
The focus of this paper is Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian reading of Kant’s conception of unity of space. Cassirer’s neo-Kantian reading is largely in conformity with the mainstream of intellectualist ...Kant-scholars, which is unsurprising, given his own intellectualist view of space and perception and his rejection of the existence of a ‘merely sensory consciousness’ as a ‘formless mass of impression’. I argue against Cassirer’s reading by relying on a Kantian distinction first recognized by Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian from the Southwest school, between
(roughly knowledge by acquaintance) and
(roughly propositional knowledge). Correspondingly, I claim that concepts and categories are conditions for
of objects as such, namely for thinking of and apprehending the pre-existing unity as an object, rather than for the ‘constitution’ of this very unity.
This paper compares Cohen’s
and Cassirer’s
in order to evaluate how in these works Cohen and Cassirer go beyond the limits established by Kantian philosophy. In his
, Cohen seeks to ground in pure ...thought all the elements which Kant distinguishes in empirical intuition: its matter (sensation) as well as its form (time and space). In this way, Cohen tries to provide an account of knowledge without appealing to any receptivity. In accordance with Cohen’s project of reformulating the Kantian theory of sensibility, Cassirer undertakes in
the task of developing an alternative doctrine of pure and empirical manifolds. But whereas Cohen analyzes the laws of pure thought, Cassirer aims to highlight the functional character of concepts in the development of modern mathematics and physics. I will discuss these two different approaches to the problems raised by Kantian philosophy and I will argue that Cassirer went further than Cohen in the project of critical idealism.
The book's readability is further enhanced by the way the text is broken up into short sections with eye-catching titles ("A Hut of One's Own," "Existential Health Check," "Self-Fashioning through ...Openness"). The opening pages center on June 1929, when Ludwig Wittgenstein, having previously renounced his portion of his family's fortune and taught for several years at primary schools in rural Austria, undertook an oral defense of his doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge at age forty. Apropos the evolving nature of Wittgenstein's ideas, one of the funniest parts of the book describes the philosopher's meetings with members of the Vienna Circle, a group that, in seeking to reorient philosophy around the natural sciences, had come to see the Tractatus as a touchstone for their work.
Debating Neoconcretism Renato Rodrigues da Silva
Third text,
09/2022, Letnik:
36, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Neoconcretism was an international pioneer of ‘interdisciplinarity’, since its crossings of mediums and disciplines created original versions of participatory art, performance, installation art, ...process art, institutional critique, body art and environmental art. However, we must question whether this statement is valid throughout its history. Thus, this article investigates the First Neoconcrete Exhibition – through the detailed analysis of the works presented in the exhibition, the positions taken in the catalogue and in the Neoconcrete Manifesto, and the debates in the national press – revealing the preponderant defence of art’s autonomy, which formalises an early modernist identity for the movement that contrasts with its legacy to contemporary Brazilian art. Eventually, the transition from this ideological position to the contemporary practice of interdisciplinarity was made possible by Ferreira Gullar’s art criticism, which was based on Ernst Cassirer’s notion of ‘symbol’, whose intrinsic relativism liberated him to positively receive new proposals.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In dialogue with afro-caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and political issues of our time. For ...Cassirer, what makes humans unique is that we are symbolizing creatures destined to come into a world through varied symbolicforms; we pluralistically work with and develop these forms as we struggle to come to terms with who we are and our place in the universe.This approach can be used as a powerful challenge to hegemonic modes of study that mistakenly place the Western world at the center of intellectual and political life. Indeed, the authors argue that the symbolic dimension of Cassirer's thinking of possibility can be linked to a symbolic dimension in revolution via the ideas of Frantz Fanon, who argued that revolution must be a thoroughgoing cultural process, in which what isat stake is nothing less than how we symbolize a new humanity and bring into being a new set of social institutions worthy of that new humanity.
According to Ernst Cassirer, the transition from the concept of substance to that of mathematical function as a guide of knowledge coincided with the end of ancient and the beginning of modern ...theoretical thought. In the first part of this article we argue that a similar transition has also taken place in the practical sphere, where mathematical function occurs in one of its specific forms, which is that of the algorithm concept. In the second part we argue that with the rise of modernity the idea of substance and the related concepts of category and classification, which are deeply embedded in western culture, have not been totally supplanted by that of function. The intertwining of the concepts of substance and function has generated contradictory hybrids. These hybrids are used as a key for the understanding of the different repercussions of algorithmic logic on society in terms of social integration.
This essay argues that Ernst Cassirer’s thinking about the spontaneity of form-giving in the creation of art, which he allies to the ethical dimension of Judaism, informs his critique of fascism in ...The Myth of the State. Aesthetics, for Cassirer, is not divorced from politics but one of its conditions of possibility.
