Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

Abstract

The main topic of this article is an analysis of Cassirer’s concept of “symbolic forms”. Cassirer, in his famous trilogy The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923– 29), outlines this “polydimensional” concept with several contextual descriptions (somehow by analogy with implicit definitions of “primitive concepts” in axiomatic systems). Nevertheless, in this article a tentative definition of symbolic forms is presented, having in mind especially their connective function between the natural and cultural sciences. In the second part of the article, two more special topics are discussed: 1. the influence of Einstein’s (and F. Klein’s) concept of invariance on Cassirer’s symbolic forms; 2. the influence of Hegel’s dialectical Wissenschaft on Cassirer’s historical variant of Neo-Kantism; in spite of the fact that Cassirer does not accept Hegel’s logicism and his concept of the “absolute science”, he still remains within the epistemological paradigm of the “gradual”, hierarchical cognitive process, which culminates, otherwise than as in Hegel, in exact sciences and mathematics – i.e., in a modern version of Leibniz’s mathesis universalis.