Why humans are defined not by instinct, but by the symbols we create
In short: Ernst Cassirer argued that humans are symbolic animals, constructing a universe of meaning through language, myth, and science. While other creatures rely on instinct, we interpret reality through symbolic forms. This perspective offers a profound way to understand human culture, scientific progress, and the dangerous resurgence of irrational political myths.
Born in 1874, Ernst Cassirer was a leading 20th-century philosopher of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. His intellectual journey began with an attempt to provide a philosophical foundation for science, but his scope expanded significantly after 1918. In his seminal work, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929), he proposed that human cognition is fundamentally mediated by symbols. He argued that science and mathematics evolved from natural language, while religion and art emerged from myth, creating a distinctively human universe of meaning.
Cassirer’s influence extended into the history of science, where his interpretation of the Scientific Revolution as a 'Platonic' application of mathematics to nature shaped the work of historians like Alexandre Koyré. He was also a staunch defender of Enlightenment values and liberal democracy. In his final work, The Myth of the State (1946), published posthumously, he analyzed the intellectual origins of Nazi Germany. He argued that fascist propaganda succeeded by replacing rational logic with myth, providing simple answers to the anxieties of the modern age.
His career was marked by the political upheaval of his time. As a Jewish intellectual, he fled Nazi Germany in 1933, eventually finding refuge in the United States. His 1929 debate with Martin Heidegger in Davos remains a landmark encounter, where Cassirer challenged Heidegger’s relativism by asserting the universal validity of truths in the exact and moral sciences. While some critics, such as Mazlish, have noted that his earlier work on the Enlightenment focused too narrowly on ideas at the expense of social context, his legacy remains a testament to the power of human reason against the resurgence of irrationality.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Ernst Cassirer
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