Cassirer, Ernst (ĕrnst käsēr`ər), 1874–1945, German philosopher. He was a professor at the Univ. of Hamburg from 1919 until 1933, when he went to Oxford; he later taught at Yale and Columbia. A leading representative of the Marburg Neo-Kantian school, Cassirer at first devoted himself to a critical-historical study of the problem of knowledge. This work bore fruit in the monumental Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit (3 vol., 1906–20) and Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910, tr. Substance and Function, 1923). In his chief work, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (3 vol., 1923–29, tr. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 1953–57), he applied the principles of Kantian philosophy toward the formation of a critique of culture. His view that all cultural achievements (including language, myth, and science) are the results of man's symbolic activity led Cassirer to a new conception of man as the "symbolic animal." Cassirer wrote many other studies on science, myth, and various historical subjects. These include two written in English: An Essay on Man (1944) and Myth of the State (1946).

Bibliography

See P. A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1949, repr. 1973); studies by S. W. Itzkoff (1971), D. R. Lipton (1978), and J. M. Krois (1985).

Cassirer, Ernst

(born July 28, 1874, Breslau, Silesia, Ger.—died April 13, 1945, New York, N.Y., U.S.) German philosopher and educator. He taught at the University of Berlin (1905–19) and the University of Hamburg (1919–33) before the rise of Nazism forced him to flee to Sweden and the U.S. Cassirer's philosophy, based primarily on the work of Immanuel Kant, expanded that philosopher's doctrines concerning the ways in which human experience is structured by innately existing concepts. After examining various forms of cultural expression, Cassirer concluded that man is uniquely characterized by his ability to use the “symbolic forms” of myth, language, and science to structure his experience and thereby to understand both himself and the natural world. His most important original work is The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29); he also wrote works on Kant, G.W. Leibniz, Renaissance cosmology, and the Cambridge Platonists.