Columbia University
Who did Ernst Cassirer work for from 1944 to 1945?
Ernst Cassirer Ernst Alfred Cassirer ( ; ; July 28 , 1874 – April 13 , 1945 ) was a German philosopher . Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School , he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science . After Cohens death , Cassirer developed a theory of symbolism and used it to expand phenomenology of knowledge into a more general philosophy of culture . Cassirer was one of the leading 20th-century advocates of philosophical idealism . His most famous work is the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms ( 1923–1929 ) . Though his work received a mixed reception shortly after his death , more recent scholarship has remarked upon Cassirers role as a strident defender of the moral idealism of the Enlightenment era and the cause of liberal democracy at a time when the rise of fascism had made such advocacy unfashionable . Within the international Jewish community , Cassirers work has additionally been seen as part of a long tradition of thought on ethical philosophy . Biography . Born in Breslau in Silesia ( modern-day southwest Poland ) , into a Jewish family , Cassirer studied literature and philosophy at the University of Marburg ( where he completed his doctoral work in 1899 with a dissertation on René Descartess analysis of mathematical and natural scientific knowledge entitled [ Descartes Critique of Mathematical and Scientific Knowledge ] ) and at the University of Berlin ( where he completed his habilitation in 1906 with the dissertation [ The Problem of Knowledge in Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age : Volume I ] ) . Politically , Cassirer supported the liberal German Democratic Party ( DDP ) . After working for many years as a at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin , Cassirer was elected in 1919 to the philosophy chair at the newly founded University of Hamburg , where he lectured until 1933 , supervising amongst others the doctoral theses of Joachim Ritter and Leo Strauss . Because he was Jewish , he left Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933 . After leaving Germany he taught for a couple of years at the University of Oxford , before becoming a professor at Gothenburg University . When Cassirer considered Sweden too unsafe , he applied for a post at Harvard University , but was rejected because thirty years earlier he had rejected a job offer from them . In 1941 he became a visiting professor at Yale University , then moved to Columbia University in New York City , where he lectured from 1943 until his death in 1945 . Cassirer died of a heart attack in April 1945 in New York City . His grave is located in Westwood , New Jersey , on the Cedar Park Beth-El Cemeteries in the graves of the Congregation Habonim . His son , Heinz Cassirer , was also a Kantian scholar . Other members of his prominent family included the neurologist Richard Cassirer , the publisher and gallery owner Bruno Cassirer and the art dealer and editor Paul Cassirer . Influences . Donald Phillip Verene , who published some of Cassirers papers kept at Yale University , gave this overview of his ideas : Cassirer as a thinker became an embodiment of Kantian principles , but also of much more , of an overall movement of spirit stretching from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment , and on to Herder’s conception of history , Goethe’s poetry , Wilhelm von Humboldt’s study of the Kavi language , Schelling’s , Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit , and Vischer’s conception of the aesthetic symbol , among many others . Cassirer’s own position is born through a mastery of the whole development of this world of the humanistic understanding , which included the rise of the scientific world view — a mastery evident both in his historical works and in his systematic philosophy . Work . History of science . Cassirers first major published writings were a history of modern thought from the Renaissance to Kant . In accordance with his Marburg neo-Kantianism he concentrated upon epistemology . His reading of the scientific revolution , in books such as The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy ( 1927 ) , as a Platonic application of mathematics to nature , influenced historians such as E . A . Burtt , E . J . Dijksterhuis , and Alexandre Koyré . Philosophy of science . In Substance and Function ( 1910 ) , he writes about late nineteenth-century developments in physics including relativity theory and the foundations of mathematics . In Einsteins Theory of Relativity ( 1921 ) he defended the claim that modern physics supports a neo-Kantian conception of knowledge . He also wrote a book about Quantum mechanics called Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics ( 1936 ) . Philosophy of symbolic forms . At Hamburg Cassirer discovered the Library of the Cultural Sciences founded by Aby Warburg . Warburg was an art historian who was particularly interested in ritual and myth as sources of surviving forms of emotional expression . In Philosophy of Symbolic Forms ( 1923–29 ) Cassirer argues that man ( as he put it in his more popular 1944 book Essay on Man ) is a symbolic animal . Whereas animals perceive their world by instincts and direct sensory perception , humans create a universe of symbolic meanings . Cassirer is particularly interested in natural language and myth . He argues that science and mathematics developed from natural language , and religion and art from myth . The Cassirer–Heidegger debate . In 1929 Cassirer took part in a historically significant encounter with Martin Heidegger in Davos during the Second Davos Hochschulkurs ( the Cassirer–Heidegger debate ) . Cassirer argues that while Kants Critique of Pure Reason emphasizes human temporality and finitude , he also sought to situate human cognition within a broader conception of humanity . Cassirer challenges Heideggers relativism by invoking the universal validity of truths discovered by the exact and moral sciences . Philosophy of the Enlightenment . Cassirer believed that reasons self-realization leads to human liberation . Mazlish ( 2000 ) , however , notes that Cassirer in his The Philosophy of the Enlightenment ( 1932 ) focuses exclusively on ideas , ignoring the political and social context in which they were produced . The Logic of the Cultural Sciences . In The Logic of the Cultural Sciences ( 1942 ) Cassirer argues that objective and universal validity can be achieved not only in the sciences , but also in practical , cultural , moral , and aesthetic phenomena . Although inter-subjective objective validity in the natural sciences derives from universal laws of nature , Cassirer asserts that an analogous type of inter-subjective objective validity takes place in the cultural sciences . The Myth of the State . Cassirers last work , The Myth of the State ( 1946 ) , was published posthumously ; at one level it is an attempt to understand the intellectual origins of Nazi Germany . Cassirer sees Nazi Germany as a society in which the dangerous power of myth is not checked or subdued by superior forces . The book discusses the opposition of logos and mythos in Greek thought , Platos Republic , the medieval theory of the state , Machiavelli , Thomas Carlyles writings on hero worship , the racial theories of Arthur de Gobineau , and Hegel . Cassirer claimed that in 20th-century politics there was a return , with the passive acquiescence of Martin Heidegger , to the irrationality of myth , and in particular to a belief that there is such a thing as destiny . Of this passive acquiescence , Cassirer says that in departing from Husserls belief in an objective , logical basis for philosophy , Heidegger attenuated the ability of philosophy to oppose the resurgence of myth in German politics of the 1930s . Partial bibliography . - Leibniz System in seinem wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen ( 1902 ) - The Problem of Knowledge : Philosophy , Science , and History since Hegel [ Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit ] ( 1906–1920 ) , English translation 1950 ( online edition ) - Kant und die moderne Mathematik . Kant-Studien ( 1907 ) - Substance and Function [ Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff ] ( 1910 ) and Einsteins Theory of Relativity [ Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie ] ( 1921 ) , English translation 1923 ( online edition ) - Freedom and Form [ Freiheit und Form ] ( 1916 ) - Kants Life and Thought [ Kants Leben und Lehre ] ( 1918 ) , English translation 1981 - Philosophy of Symbolic Forms [ Philosophie der symbolischen Formen ] ( 1923–29 ) , English translation 1953–1957 - Volume One : Language [ Erster Teil : Die Sprache ] ( 1923 ) , English translation 1955 - Volume Two : Mythical Thought [ Zweiter Teil : Das mythische Denken ] ( 1925 ) , English translation 1955 - Volume Three : The Phenomenology of Knowledge [ Dritter Teil : Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis ] ( 1929 ) , English translation 1957 - Language and Myth [ Sprache und Mythos ] ( 1925 ) , English translation 1946 by Susanne K . Langer - The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy [ Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance ] ( 1927 ) , English translation 1963 by Mario Domandi - Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie . Jahrbücher der Philosophie 3 , 31-92 ( 1927 ) - Die Idee der republikanischen Verfassung ( 1929 ) - Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik . Bemerkungen zu Martin Heideggers Kantinterpretation . Kant-Studien 26 , 1-16 ( 1931 ) - Philosophy of the Enlightenment [ Die Philosophie der Aufklärung ] ( 1932 ) , English translation 1951 - Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics : Historical and Systematic Studies of the Problem of Causality [ Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik ] ( 1936 ) , English translation 1956 - The Logic of the Cultural Sciences [ Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften ] ( 1942 ) , English translation 2000 by Steve G . Lofts ( previously translated in 1961 as The Logic of the Humanities ) - An Essay on Man ( written and published in English ) ( 1944 ) ( books.google.com ) - The Myth of the State ( written and published in English ) ( posthumous ) ( 1946 ) ( books.google.com ) - Symbol , Myth , and Culture : Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer , 1935-1945 , ed . by Donald Phillip Verene ( March 11 , 1981 ) - Ernst Cassirer : Gesammelte Werke . Hamburger Ausgabe . Electronic Edition . ( 2016 ) – The electronic version of the definitive edition of Cassirers works , published in print by Felix Meiner Verlag , and electronically in the Past Masters series . - The Warburg Years ( 1919-1933 ) : Essays on Language , Art , Myth , and Technology . Translated and with an Introduction by S . G . Lofts with A . Calcagno . New Haven & London : Yale University Press . Further reading . - Aubenque , Pierre , et al . Philosophie und Politik : Die Davoser Disputation zwischen Ernst Cassirer und Martin Heidgger in der Retrospektive . Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie , 2 : 290-312 - Barash , Jeffrey Andrew . The Symbolic Construction of Reality : The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer ( 2008 ) ( excerpt and text search ) - Burtt , Edwin Arthur . The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science , London : Paul Trencher - Folkvord Ingvild & Hoel Aud Sissel ( eds. ) , Ernst Cassirer on Form and Technology : Contemporary Readings , ( 2012 ) , Basingstoke , Palgrave MacMillan ( ) . - Friedman , Michael . A Parting of the Ways : Carnap , Cassirer , and Heidegger ( 2000 ) ( excerpt and text search ) - Gordon , Peter Eli . Continental Divide : Heidegger , Cassirer , Davos ( 2010 ) - Krois , John Michael . Cassirer : Symbolic Forms and History ( Yale University Press 1987 ) - Lassègue , Jean . Cassirer’s Transformation : From a Transcendental to a Semiotic Philosophy of Forms . Springer , 2020 . ( Studies in Applied Philosophy , Epistemology and Rational Ethics book series . volume 55 ) Online - Lipton , David R . Ernst Cassirer : The Dilemma of a Liberal Intellectual in Germany , 1914-1933 ( 1978 ) - Lofts . Steve G . Ernst Cassirer : A Repetition of Modernity ( 2000 ) SUNY Press , : at Google Books - Magerski , Christine . Reaching Beyond the Supra-Historical Sphere : from Cassirers Philosophy of Symbolic Forms to Bourdieus Sociology of Symbolic Forms . ´´Pierre Bourdieu and the Field of Cultural Production.´´ Ed . J . Browitt . University of Delaware Press ( 2004 ) : 21-29 . - Schilpp , Paul Arthur ( ed. ) . The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer ( 1949 ) archive.org - Schultz , William . Cassirer & Langer on Myth ( 2nd ed . 2000 ) ( excerpt and text search ) - Skidelsky , Edward . Ernst Cassirer : The Last Philosopher of Culture ( Princeton University Press , 2008 ) , 288 pp . . - Hardy , Anton G . Symbol Philosophy and the Opening into Consciousness and Creativity ( 2014 ) External links . - History of the Cassirer Family - Ernst Cassirer in family context - Centre for Intercultural Studies - . General Collection , Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library . Yale University . - . General Collection , Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library , Yale University .