The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

Cassirer, Ernst

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Description: The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

BOOKThe Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

Ernst Cassirer

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14991

Jewish German philosopher Ernst Cassirer was a leading proponent of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. The essays in this volume provide a window into Cassirer’s discovery of the symbolic nature of human existence—that our entire emotional and intellectual life is configured and formed through the originary expressive power of word and image, that it is in and through the symbolic cultural systems of language, art, myth, religion, science, and technology that human life realizes itself and attains not only its form, its visibility, but also its reality. Thought and being are set in opposition and united in genuine correspondence by the symbolic strife between them that Cassirer calls Auseinandersetzung, which determines the ethical relationship of the self to the other.

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date January 2014 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300108194

EISBN 9780300232578

Illustrations 0

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Google Books

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Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

Contents

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14992

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Translators' Introduction

S. G. Lofts and A. Calcagno

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

The initial impetus for this collection of essays by Ernst Cassirer was provided by the enthusiastic encouragement of John Michael Krois, to whom the volume is dedicated. Initially assisting with the selection of essays to be included here, Professor Krois was very generous with his time and knowledge of Cassirer’s philosophy throughout the manuscript’s preparation. All of the translations have benefited from discussions with him over the years about Cassirer’s philosophy and technical …

Author

S. G. Lofts and A. Calcagno

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.ix-xxxiii

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14993

Chapter subject tags:Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945SymbolismHitler, Adolf, 1889-1945Exile

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The Form of the Concept in Mythical Thinking (1922)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

The following study is an extended version of a paper given at the Society ·2· for Religious Studies in Hamburg in July 1921. A separate publication of this lecture was not originally intended, as I was fully aware that the problem it addresses belongs to a larger network of issues from which it would be difficult to detach it. If I have now decided to write this paper, I implore the reader to view the following merely as a first draft and sketch, which can achieve a more detailed implementation …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-71

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14994

Chapter subject tags:LogicGrammarTotemismMathematicsMysticism

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The Concept of Symbolic Form in the Construction of the Human Sciences (1923)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

If I dare to attempt in the purview of these lectures to deal with a topic ·171· that is neither historical nor specific to the sciences of culture, but is of a systematic-philosophical nature and therefore would appear to go beyond the sphere of problems that the Warburg Library sets for itself, then such an attempt needs to be accounted for and justified. I believe I can provide this justification in no better way than to speak of the personal impression that I received in my first true …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.72-100

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14995

Chapter subject tags:Human sciencesSymbolismGrammarLogicMathematics

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The Kantian Elements in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Philosophy of Language (1923)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

The groundwork of critical philosophy includes not only an altered determination ·236· of the relationship of knowledge [Wissen] toward the object but also a new conceptual determination of knowing. Both essential moments of knowledge [Wissen] can themselves be combined in the demand for its objectivity and its encompassing unity. Its unity, like its objectivity, however, is now enriched and grounded in a completely new way in opposition to a dogmatic way of thinking. Just as the object is based …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.101-129

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14996

Chapter subject tags:Kant, Emanuel, 1724-1804SymbolismGrammarLogicSpinoza, Baruch, 1632-1677

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Language and Myth: A Contribution to the Problem of the Names of the Gods (1924)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

·73· The beginning of Plato’s Phaedrus depicts how Socrates is lured into conversation by Phaedrus, whom he encounters outside the gates of the city on the banks of the Ilissus. The landscape that Plato lays out in this scene is depicted in the finest detail—this presentation emits a radiance and fragrance that we rarely see in the usual classical portrayals of nature. Socrates and Phaedrus sit down under the shade of a tall plane tree, at the edge of a cool spring; the summer breeze is mild and …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.130-213

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14997

Chapter subject tags:PlatoSymbolismGrammar

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Eidos and Eidolon: The Problem of Beauty and Art in the Dialogues of Plato (1924)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

If we can measure the greatness of a thinker by the vast opposition that ·1· envelops his thinking, forcing it into a unity, then certainly Plato belongs to a clearly unique phenomenon in the history of spirit. All the problems with which Greek philosophy had up until then wrestled are organized by Plato into a completely new tension and seen with a very different intensity. If we compare Plato’s world with the image of the cosmos sketched out by Pre-Socratic philosophy, we sense that the …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.214-243

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14998

Chapter subject tags:PlatoSymbolismHuman sciencesLogicPhilosophy

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The Meaning of the Problem of Language for the Emergence of Modern Philosophy (1927)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

If we take as fixed and generally valid the traditional claim that the ·274· history of modern philosophy begins with Descartes, if we see in his seminal methodological works the first characteristic expression of the modern mode of philosophical thought, then this beginning exists and indeed this mode of thought embodies itself here for the first time in a closed system. This system, as well as the fundamental philosophical theory of Descartes, stands before us without historical …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.244-271

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.008

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14999

Chapter subject tags:GrammarSymbolismHuman sciencesPhilosophy

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The Problem of the Symbol and Its Place in the System of Philosophy (1927)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

In philosophical essays written for the occasion of Eduard Zellers’s fiftieth doctoral anniversary about forty years ago, Friedrich Theodor Vischer focused attention on the concept of the symbol, which he had previously treated extensively in his aesthetics. On that occasion, he described this concept as a mutating Proteus, difficult to come to grips with and confine. In fact, there is probably no other concept in aesthetics that has proven to be so rich, so fruitful, and to have had so many …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.244-271

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.009

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15000

Chapter subject tags:SymbolismMathematicsLogicGrammarPhilosophy

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Form and Technology (1930)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

·39· If we judge the signification of the individual subdomains of human culture primarily by their actual effectiveness, if we determine the value of these domains according to the magnitude of their direct accomplishments, there can hardly be any doubt that by this measure technology claims first place in the construction of our contemporary culture. Likewise, no matter whether we reproach or praise, exalt or damn this “primacy of technology,” its pure factuality seems to be beyond question. …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.272-316

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.010

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15001

Chapter subject tags:TechnologyGrammarSymbolismHuman sciencesPhilosophy

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Mythic, Aesthetic, and Theoretical Space (1931)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

When we consider the position that the problem of space and time occupies ·93· in the whole of theoretical knowledge, and when we look back at the role that this problem has played in the historical and systematic development of the fundamental questions of knowledge, a characteristic and decisively essential element immediately emerges. When we grasp them solely as objects [Objekte] of knowledge, space and time occupy a special and outstanding position; they form within the architectonic …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.317-333

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.011

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15002

Chapter subject tags:SymbolismLogicAestheticsPhilosophy

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Language and the Construction of the World of Objects (1932)

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

If we consider all the functions, which in their union and mutual penetration ·121· construct the figure of our psychological and spiritual reality, a twofold way of theoretically interpreting these functions presents itself. We can see in them an essentially imitative and, thus, secondary achievement or an archetypical and, thus, original achievement. In the first case, we assume that the world, the “reality” to which these functions refer as their object [Objekt], is already given as completed …

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.334-362

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.012

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15003

Chapter subject tags:SymbolismGrammarPsychologyFantasyMysticism

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Glossary of German Terms

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

Glossary of German Terms

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.013

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15004

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Index

Ernst Cassirer

The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology

Index

Author

Ernst Cassirer

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00165.014

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15005

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