Modern Political Myths (1922-2022) – Cassirer Studies (XV-2022)

November 28th, 2023 by editor

Modern Political Myths (1922-2022) is the title of the new volume (XV, 2022, pp. 104, € 20) of the journal «Cassirer Studies», published in Naples by Bibliopolis.
The volume, edited by Giulio Raio, deals with the question of the survival and rediscovery of right-wing political myths, myths and ideologies that are rising again one hundred years after the gloomy March on Rome, the symbolic episode of the advent of Fascism.
Ernst Cassirer, in his famous book The Myth of the State, published posthumously in 1946, a year after his death, and intended to stigmatise the propaganda and ideological apparatus of National Socialism, had discovered the key to modern political myth in its being an artificial myth, a technique at the service of politics and power.
Paul Cortois, Esther O. Pedersen, Giulio Raio, Enno Rudolph and Marc Tassier discuss Cassirer’s theory and the philosophical debate on political myths up to Blumenberg and beyond.

Ernst Cassirer’s Post-War Afterlife (XIII-XIV/2020-2021)

February 22nd, 2022 by editor

In April 2018 the Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris was host for the workshop Ernst Cassirer’s Post-War Afterlife. «The idea of arranging an international conference on the reception of Cassirer came up to show both the impact and the relevance of Cassirer’s today», as Ingmar Meland writes in his introduction to the proceedings of the conference. Meland had been long discussing this opportunity with his colleagues Mats Rosengren and Andrej Slavik, before Prof. Johannes Hjellbrekke at that time director of the Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris, and Prof. Rasmus Slaattelid of The University of Bergen followed up and suggested to meet in Paris. Purpose of this initiative was to bring so called “Cassirer Renaissance” to bear on «a more thorough understanding of the historical conditions for the reception of Cassirer’s works» and «of the history of their effects» (Wirkungsgeschichte). «Cassirer Studies» is pleased to serve as a means for achieving this purpose. Please find the abstracts below.

copertina-cassirer-studies-20-21-small

Norbert Andersch, Ernst Cassirer’s Afterlife: Reinventing Consciuosness as Finctional Matrix

As a brilliant philosopher but very modest man Ernst Cassirer never trained disciples, he did not create a ‘Cassirer-school’, nor was he keen in having admiring ‘followers’. But for the Head (‘Rektor’) of Hamburg University (1929/30) it was hard to be forced into exile in 1933. Saving his family from racist persecution, reinventing himself three times in three different countries (England, Sweden and the US), creating a livelihood, having to think and write in foreign languages proved challenging for a man close to his 60s. In these dangerous times Cassirer did not ask for help but generously supported others instead. Coming back from exile to the post- WWII European scientific discourse might have been difficult for him, but as we know: he never made it back in the first place. He died in 1945 in New York, from a heart attack, most likely caused by exhaustion. So in post-war Germany there were only few persons left trying to save Cassirer’s legacy. Many more obedient followers of Hitler-fascism were unrepentant, untouched and still in power − happy to keep Cassirer’s challenging philosophy out; especially Martin Heidegger (Cassirer’s challenger in the 1931 Davos dispute) who never renounced his fascist mindset. Cassirer’s inventive ideas instead ‘took the long way home’. His philosophy exerci- sed a hidden but consistent impact on thinkers and researchers in the second half of the 20th century. As a medical doctor I cannot judge Cassirer in the same terms as present philosophers do. Today’s ongoing comparison of his writings to the works of Husserl, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty for the umpteen’s time has − sorry to say − never been too inspiring to me. What I found fascinating though, was to − finally − detect Ernst Cassirer’s paradigm changing impact as a philosopher of consciousness. And this is the subject of my talk today.

Keywords: Cassirer – exile – post WWII impact – philosopher of consciousness – psychopathology

Katharina Blühm, Cassirer, Heidegger and the Cognitive Sciences

In this paper I ask, how an approach with self-asserted incompatibility to any biological research program whatsoever, and heavy ethical contaminations, the Heidegger approach, received a positive role in the development of the Cognitive Sciences, while Cassirer’s work is absent – absent in such a way that it partially got newly invented, in the partial (and comparably problematic) reinvention of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms under the name of the Extended Mind. Heidegger denies animality, he accuses biological research to be reifying and charges the reference to the body of being Cartesian. Cassirer in contrast, has not only a mature account of biological self-organization, his work is anchored in close transdisciplinary structures of co-operation and communication in Hamburg and beyond. Nonetheless, Heidegger-based considerations got a positive role in overcoming the overintellectualistic and disembodied account of the early Cognitive Sciences.

Keywords: exile – cognitive science – embodiment – enactive approach – kinaesthetic dimension

Fabien Capeillères, Cassirer in France: 1903-1948. Mapping Cassirer’s Influences and Receptions

This article examines Cassirer’s reception and possible influence in France, from 1903 to 1948. It contrasts a reasonably good factual information regarding Cassirer’s publications with an apparent lack of intellectual integration, not only in philosophy, but also in the nascent fields of linguistics, sociology, psychology.

Keywords: Cassirer’s reception – Leibniz’s reception – Couturat – Mauss – Durkheim – Meyerson – Davos – Geistesgeschichte – philosophy of symbolic forms.

Tobias Endres, Ernst Cassirer’s Influence on the Philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars

The aim of the paper is to highlight a hidden reception of Ernst Cas- sirer’s works in the writings of Wilfrid Sellars. To set out such reception, I will begin with defining criteria that allow us to point out a possible influence from one thinker on another. In a second step, I will present several links between the set-out criteria and the constellation Sellars-Cassirer. Fi- nally, the Cassirer Lectures Series at Yale, Sellars’ review of Language and Myth as well as Sellars’ lecture Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man will serve as at the basis for an analysis of historical and systematic connections between Cassirer and Sellars. The conclusion will show that we actually can speak of a hidden influence from Cassirer on Sellars’ thought and that philosophical desiderata remain in this context which are worth to explore even today.

Keywords: Cassirer – Sellars – influence – reception – analitic-continental divide

Karolina Enquist Källgren, System or Form. Cassirer and Ortega’s Debate on the Nature of Knowledge and History

In this article I examine the different views on structure or form in history found within the works of José Ortega y Gasset and Ernst Cassirer. I ask on what grounds both took turns in presenting a respectful critique of each other’s ideas of structures in history, not the least because they sometimes employed the same or similar concepts to the discuss the issue. I show how Ortega criticized what he perceived to be the all too ideal interpretation of Cassirer’s functional lawfullness, and instead postulated that any valid historical form had to include the experience of a living individual. Cassirer on the other hand felt that this was not systematic enough. I propose that their differences lay in the way they perceived of the validity of form in history, as well as in the extend and way in which these historical forms were material as well as forms of cognition. Finally, they also disagreed on the temporality of history, and in what way it developed towards the future.

Keywords: Cassirer – Ortega y Gasset – history – system – form – historic reason

Jennifer Marra Henrigillis, Normativity of Symbolic Forms as Objective Moral Standards in Culture

In a time when morality itself has been undermined by rampant subjectivism and relativism on the one hand, and callous indifference on the other, we find ourselves in search of some universal guiding principle for moral decision making. But there is a danger, of course. Cultures that value individualism over all praise subjectivism and relativism for its tolerance and acceptance, dismissing strict objectivity as fascist. I argue that it is possible to have an objective ethic that respects humanity in all its variety and diversity while simultaneously providing, indeed insisting upon, an objective, foundational standard for normative judgment. I believe Cassirer provides us with such an ethic – it is laced within his philosophy of symbolic forms and the driving force of his later works. In this study, I will argue that normativity is built into the philosophy of symbolic forms at two levels: on the level of individual objects in relation to their appropriate symbolic form, and on the level of forms in their relation to other forms. Such normativity is objective, not relative, and cannot be reduced to mere subjective taste. The implications for this study are vast, both for Cassirer studies and moral investigations into contemporary issues.

Keywords: Cassirer – symbolic forms – ethics – objectivity – normativity

Carmen Metta, Notes on Recent Rethinking of Cassirer’s Philosophy

The concept of structure that Cassirer and Lévi-Strauss borrow from linguistic structuralism can be considered in both authors as the evolution of Cassirer’s concept of symbolic form (Christian Möckel). This interesting reading hypothesis, assuming Lévi-Strauss’ debit towards Cassirer, can be further developed if we look at the texts of the authors in a more precise way. Firstly, this contribution argues that: the precarious balance between structure and event by Lévi-Strauss echoes the one between thing and expression by Cassirer; it is just surviving as a symbolic form among the others that science runs no risk to change into a phantasmagoria (the “myth” of progress); the functional priority of the event is at the origin of the paradigmatic cultural value of the mythical form. Secondly, taking inspiration from a Paul Cortois’ study on the proper name, this contribution deepens it by elaborating on an example of classification of the proper name offered by Lévi-Strauss. The concept of structure thus revealing itself in a new complexity, and the primacy of the event in the structuring of mythi- cal thought proving to be the link between Cassirer and Lévi-Strauss.

Keywords: structure – event – proper name – Überreste – afterlife

Gregory Moynahan, “Not to Give Up Anything of What is Human”. The “History of Problems” [Problemgeschichte] and the Phenomenology of History in Hans Blumenberg and Ernst Cassirer

Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996) wove commentary of Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) through a number of his key philosophical texts, ranging from those on myth and science to a reading of the parallel of Cassirer’s Davos debate with Heidegger to the reformation colloquy of Luther and Zwingli. Although Blumenberg frequently adopted positions critical of Cassirer, the style of Blumenberg’s work was deeply indebted to his predecessor. The debt is apparent not only in the manner in which Blumenberg used broad intellectual histories as a vehicle for redefining philosophical and social problems, but also in the deeper foundations of Cassirer’s philosophy. Here Blumenberg often adopted Cassirer’s basic methodology and discoveries but transformed their valence, in the process often redefining philosophical themes within the tradition of rhetoric. Thus Blumenberg’s “theory of reoccupations” can be read as an adaptation of Cassirer’s use of set theory as a model for epistemological change – a topic that Cassirer argued was his most original philosophical contribution – yet one which shifts debates from the development of concepts to that of metaphors. Although a number of authors have noted that Blumenberg’s work can be seen as squaring the circle of the diverging positions of Cassirer and Heidegger, his approach to these problems can be read as doing so from a common inheritance and critique of the earlier neo-Kantian work of Hermann Cohen.

Keywords: Blumenberg – Cassirer – Problemgeschichte – metaphorology – symbolic forms

Mats Rosengren, Castoriadis, an unconscious follower of Cassirer?

What is an afterlife? It may take many forms, more or less spectral, more or less haunting. And it may also be quite concrete, as in explicit references. But how do you establish an afterlife without explicit connections? This short text investigates the case of Cornelius Castoriadis as a potential custodian of Ernst Cassirer’s legacy. It highlights five themes, common to the two thinkers, and argues that Castoriadis can indeed be read as someone who deepened and expanded the thoughts of Cassirer.

Keywords: Castoriadis – Cassirer – body – technology – process – Radical metaphor/ Radical imagination – creation

Arno Schubbach, Differences in symbolic representation. Goodman’s signification and Cassirer’s Darstellung

It is well known that Nelson Goodman referred affirmatively to Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture several times in his writings. However, a closer look reveals not only hardly any traces of an extensive confrontation. It also becomes apparent that Goodman and Cassirer conceive of symbolic representation in a fundamentally different way: Whereas Goodman assumes an instrumental use of symbols or signs that reference individual objects, Cassirer focuses on how elements of experience acquire a general meaning through their relations to one another and to the whole nexus of consciousness. Cassirer’s approach has little affinity with Goodman’s signification and 20th century semiotics in general, but rather adopts the concept of Darstellung from philosophy around 1800, which lends it a renewed relevance.

Keywords: Cassirer – Goodman – Kant – philosophy of culture – sign theory – semiotics

Laïla Souid, Metaphysical considerations of Cassirer’s philosophy. An unexplored heritage

Admittedly Cassirer didn’t address metaphysics directly as a subject in itself and he has never been known as a metaphysician or even as a logician. Nevertheless, there are logical and metaphysical considerations that led him to the fundamental work of philosophical history and anthropological philosophy which made him famous. My purpose here is to take seriously this logical and metaphysical considerations and to ask for their significations in an erkenntnistheoretische perspective. I’m not going to read between the lines in order to find a metaphysical theory by Cassirer in the literal sense but I would try to reconstruct the concept of metaphysics itself through Cassirer’s philosophy when the word metaphysics itself still holds a pejorative connotation and this is, I think, the major reason why this part of Cassirer’s heritage remains, so far I see, unexplored.

Keywords: metaphysics – logics – form – categories – scholastic – symbolic idealism

Muriel van Vliet, Michel Foucault, lecteur de Cassirer

The article shows how Foucault’s ethics can be understood as carrying forth Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. On the basis of Kant, both authors conceive ethics as a liberation from minority and determinism. Convergences between Cassirer and Foucault can also be pointed out in their views of logic and politics, notably in their approach to the question of modernity and the paradigms of humanities, on the one hand, and that of the complexity of politics, on the other. Background differences of philosophical style remain between the two, specifically between eternally renewed creative interpretation in Cassirer and constant dépassement of the terms of the discours in Foucault.

Keywords: Cassirer – Foucault – modernity – ethics – politics

Ernst Cassirer. Vorarbeiten: Ausdrucksfunktion/ Studi preparatori: funzione espressiva

December 21st, 2021 by editor

We are happy to announce the second volume of «Supplementa», Vorarbeiten: Ausdrucksfunktion/ Studi preparatori: funzione espressiva (XI/XII-2018/2019) which follows closely the first issue of The Manuscript of Expression, Zur Objektivität der Ausdrucksfunktion.
As Giulio Raio observes in his introduction to the volume, espousing Christian Möckel thesis that the Ms is a «Vorarbeit» of the Ms Zur Obkektivität der Ausdrucksfunktion, the “material contiguity” of the Blättern is a strong argument for the interconnection of the two Manuscripts of Expression. This interconnection bearing on the question of the dating of each Ms, the years 1935-1936 or earlier for the Vorarbeiten, the years 1937-1938 for Zur Objektivität.
The redactional title Ausdrucksphänomen und >Wiener Kreis< confirms the general impression that the Vorarbeiten stand as «a radical moment in Cassirer’s “recovery” […] of the objectivity of the expressive function», along with Krois and Möckel’s thesis that it is part of the preparatory work for Schlick’s planned and never completed essay.

ABSTRACTS: Cassirer Studies (VII-VIII/2014/2015)

October 20th, 2020 by editor

PIERRE KELLER, Kant’s “Proud Name of Ontology” Between Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and Heidegger’s Being and Time

Cassirer anticipates Heidegger’s question of being in its unity and in its diversity. The connection between the unity and diversity of being is crucial to the pluralism that both Cassirer and Heidegger inherit from Kant. Cassirer anticipates Heidegger’s conception of dwelling as being-in-the-world and can effectively rebut Heidegger’s charge that he and Kant work with a worldless epistemic subject. Dwelling is key to the natural concept of the world, but not for Cassirer key to understanding being itself. Pure being is manifest in the being of the copula as an expression of what Kant calls pure apperception. Heidegger takes event to be that through which everything comes into its own proper significance in our dwelling as being-in-the-world. The process by which Cassirer’s seemingly much more abstract pure being as functional-sequential unity institutes significance betrays their common origin in Kant’s apperception of our world from within the world.

Keywords: Cassirer – Heidegger – ontology – temporality – Ereignis

 

SEBASTIAN LUFT, Cohen’s Idea of a Philosophy of Culture and the Question of the Human Subject

The paper treats the human subject in the context of Cohen’s philosophy of culture. In addition to his Logic of Pure Cognition, Ethics of Pure Willing and Aesthetics of Pure Feeling, Cohen’s planned System of Philosophy was to be completed by a fourth volume, intended to be a Psychology and to deal with the “unity of cultural consciousness” (Einheit of Kulturbewusstein). His Ethics – in the Introduction and the final chapter 16 “Humanity” – contain some interesting remarks and passages on the nature of the human subject, testifying to Cohen’s peculiar treatment of the individual. The key term for his consideration of the human being is thus the “unity of cultural consciousness”, the unity of human being and culture, the alleged unity of theory of consciousness and theory of culture. Ethics itself «as the doctrine of the human being» is the «doctrine of the concept of the human being».

Keywords: Hermann Cohen – neo-kantianism – ethics – philosophical anthropology

 

LYDIA PATTON, Cassirer and Steinthal on Expression and the Science of Language

Ernst Cassirer distinguished between the expressive and representative forms of thought and language, one reason Cassirer is read as a mediator between Heidegger and Carnap. This essay finds a source of Cassirer’s expressive function in Heymann Steinthal’s 1871 work Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, one thesis of which is that language, «independently of logic, establishes its forms in complete autonomy». While the thesis appears to be in conflict with Carnap’s later views on the «language of science», I urge that we should not draw that conclusion too hastily. Cassirer’s and Steinthal’s positions are consistent with the claim that once linguistic forms are established they can be represented in an inferential system. Instead, Cassirer and Steinthal wanted to emphasize, against Humboldt and Mill, that the expressive form of any one natural language shouldn’t be identified with the capacity for rational thought.

Keywords: Cassirer – Carnap – Steinthal – language – logic

 

SIMON TRUWANT, Cassirer’s Enlightened View on the Hierarchy of the Symbolic Forms and the Task of Philosophy

This paper aims to clarify an apparent inconsistency in Cassirer’s view on the relation between the different domains of human culture. On the one hand, Cassirer insists that there is no shared criterion by means of which we could establish a hierarchy among these domains. Yet, on the other hand he also holds that mythical thought needs to be overcome, while calling language the most important, and science the highest attainment of culture. In order to reconcile these claims, I first demonstrate that Cassirer’s relativistic and hierarchical accounts of the symbolic forms originate in his respective transcendental and critical views of human culture. While the former perspective explains our generically distinct worldviews, the latter discerns a progressive self-understanding of symbolic consciousness. Next, I argue that these perspectives complement each other in so far as they both promote an Enlightened conception of human culture and an ethical view on he task of philosophy.

Keywords: hierarchy of cultural domains – critical-transcendental philosophy – self-understanding – enlightenment

Ernst Cassirer. Zur Objektivität der Ausdrucksfunktion/ Sull’oggettività della funzione espressiva (IX-X/2016-2017)

September 8th, 2020 by editor

Dear readers,

a new section of Cassirer Studies, called «Supplementa», was inaugurated in December 2019. We are sorry to be late in updating our website, but the precarious circumstances diverted our attention.

«Supplementa» provides parallel texts containing the transcription of posthumous works in the original language and their translation into Italian. The first issue Zur Objektivität der Ausdrucksfunktion/ Sull’oggettività della funzione espressiva is a fragmentary text by Ernst Cassirer, accompanied by a critical apparatus containing essential notes, and an introduction to the story of the manuscript and the editor’s project.

The topic “Objektivität der Ausdrucksfunktion” is addressed also elsewhere in Cassirer’s Nachlass and fits the journal’s interests perfectly, as far as it aims at bringing Cassirer to life again and gaining new respect for his thought.

The reference to a number of author’s theories, from Hume to the Vienna Circle, gives the text a systematic character and Cassirer’s conclusions strong determination, in that the question about the other’s mind unfolds gradually, as it turns from logic to phenomenology and philosophy of symbolic forms.

Copertina CS IX-X:2016:2017

An der Schwelle einer neuen geistigen Welt (VII-VIII/2014-2015)

December 1st, 2018 by editor

Dear colleagues,

we have been working hard for the publication of this issue of «Cassirer Studies», which came out with a considerable delay last July 2018. Accordingly the volume bears a double numeration: it follows the previous issue (VI/2013), with no reference to the current year (VII-VIII/2014-2015).

The title “An der Schwelle einer neuen geistigen Welt” quotes Cassirer’s words to say the passage from expression to representation and a new constellation of Ausdruck, in which that of Aby Warburg can be inscribed.

Thanks to the contribution of the American Philosophical Association the section SEMINAR edited by Fabien Capeillères gathers the proceedings of the conference “On Cassirer and the Neo-Kantian Legacy”, held in St. Louis, Missouri, in February 2015.

The section NACHLASS edited by Maurizio Ghelardi presents Aby Warburg’s text “Die Wanderungen der antiken Götterwelt vor ihrem Eintritt in die italienische Hochrenaissance”, from a conference held in Göttingen in November 1913 which is in close relation both to the study “Italienische Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Ferrara” (1913) and to the conference on the history of astrology held in Hamburg in August 1913 by Warburg, Franz Boll and Carl Bezold.

We are thankful to our publisher Bibliopolis who made this publication possible and are happy to announce that the journal has become its property.

 cop.cassirer-VII-VIII_NEW_An der Schwelle

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NACHLAß

ABY WARBURG, Die Wanderungen der antike Götterwelt vor
ihrem Eintritt in die italienische Hochrenaissance, Maurizio Ghelardi

SEMINAR
On Cassirer and the Neo-Kantian Legacy, edited by Fabien Capeillères

PIERRE KELLER, Kant’s “Proud Name of Ontology” Between
Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and Heidegger’s
Being and Time

SEBASTIAN LUFT, Cohen’s Idea of a Philosophy of Culture
and the Question of the Human Subject

LIDIA PATTON, Cassirer and Steinthal on Expression and
the Science of Language

SIMON TRUWANT, Cassirer’s Enlightened View on the Hierar-
chy of the Symbolic Forms and the Task of Philosophyiv

ABSTRACTS

ABSTRACTS, Cassirer Studies V/VI (2012-2013)

July 1st, 2015 by editor

F. CAPEILLÈRES, Artistic Intuition within Cassirer’s System of Symbolic Forms. A Brief Reassessment
The Cassirer Renaissance initiated in the 80’s has focused, in the last decade, on
art as a symbolic form. It may hence be time to reiterate a fundamental assessment
of the principles of Cassirer’s philosophy in order to take good measure
of its actual achievements and its present fruitfulness regarding art and aesthetics.
The present article tries to examine Cassirer’s doctrine of symbolic
forms in order to assess precise and palpable consequences regarding not so
much the field of Cassirer’s studies as a historiographical enterprise, but,
rather, regarding what the actual doctrine of art, produced by the philosophy
of the symbolic forms, allows us to conceive of in the world of culture.
Keywords: Cassirer Renaissance – art – aesthetics – symbolic form – function

A.S. HOEL, Images and Measurements across Arts and Sciences
This paper explores the inner connections between images and their traditional
“others”, such as concepts, words, and numbers. Instead of inquiring into images
as static entities, it focuses on what images do, that is, on their operational
functioning. The aim is to develop a notion of images as «differential tools» that
play an integral role in exploration, knowledge, and discovery, no matter
whether they are used for artistic or scientific purposes. What I argue is that the
development of such a bridging notion requires a rethinking and broadening of
the notion of image, and perhaps more surprisingly, of the notion of measurement.
Further, what I argue is that Cassirer’s notion of symbolic function is a
promising candidate for a bridging notion of mediation that brings to the fore
the inner connections between the sensible and the intelligible, the presentational
and the discursive, the visual and the logical – and, by extension, between
images and measurements. As Cassirer conceives it, mediation amounts to a
kind of «seeing», and simultaneously, to a kind of «measuring». Drawing on this
idea, I argue that media and technologies operate by a «differential logic», and
further, that the differential mode of operation is the inner link between imaging
methods, usually classified as qualitative and observational, and measurement
methods, commonly considered as quantitative and calculative.
Keywords: symbolic function – images – measurement – technological mediation – differential tools

M. LAUSCHKE, Presymbolic Formation. Reflections on Bodily Communication
between Humans and Artefacts
This paper tries to show that it can be fruitful to trace aesthetic experience
back to its bodily origins, or at least to consider bodily felt processes as a part
of aesthetic experience that cannot be ignored. “Presymbolic formation”, that
is the thesis advanced here, is a phase that precedes symbolic formation and
accompanies it continuously. The focus of the reflections about aesthetic experience,
therefore, will lie on a part of the process of symbolic formation hypothetically
called “presymbolic” or “subsymbolic”. This part, it will be argued,
is determined by the bodily communication between an artefact and a
recipient. Therefore, the meaning of the term “bodily communication” will be
explained and, in a second step, clarified by analysing the aesthetic perception
of space in the concrete example of Mark Rothko’s image-bodies. The reason
why it could be helpful to talk about bodily communication and presymbolic
formation with reference to Cassirer will be presented in the last step.
Keywords: presymbolic formation – bodily communication – aesthetic experience – resonance – aesthetic perception of space

I. MELAND, The Doctrine of Basis Phenomena. A Phenomenological Foundation for the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms?
Even if the doctrine of basis phenomena adds something new to Cassirer’s philosophy, it is not foreign to Cassirer’s philosophy and does not signify a break with Cassirer’s philosophical project as a whole. At the base of this argument
lies the view that the originary phenomena of “life”, “language” and “the symbolic
function” are crucial for Cassirer’s critique and revision of Cartesian dualism:
man is symbolical through and through. If it is the primacy of relation
that constitutes the true a priori of Cassirer’s semiotic theory of meaning, then
the doctrine of basis phenomena constitutes the phenomenological grounding
for this theory of meaning. Thus the doctrine of basis phenomena can be characterized as a “fundamental phenomenology”, i.e. a doctrine about what allows reality to appear to us at all. The basis phenomena are brought into view
through a “return” to the originary phenomena of “life” and “spirit”, which reveals
that the process of generating and transforming forms corresponds to the
basis phenomenon of the symbolic function. This “adequation” of the processual
and the relational means that we cannot really separate “life” and “spirit”
and that there is no access to “Being”, except through symbolic forms. In turn,
this means that the only possible type of metaphysics is a cultural metaphysics
and that Cassirer’s philosophy of culture implies a hermeneutical transformation
of philosophy itself. The basis phenomena’s place is at the base of this
hermeneutics, which is a cultural hermeneutics of freedom.
Keywords: philosophy of culture – theory of meaning – symbolic function –
basis phenomena – hermeneutics

CARMEN METTA, Ausdruck-Ausdrucksloses: A Critique of the Work-Phenomenon
The “Work-Phenomenon” as Urphänomen is the object of a metaphysics of
experience.Whereas for Kant experience is the knowledge of appearances, in
so far as the intellect spells them out, in this paper appearances are regarded
as the object of expression, which allows of a tertium non datur between intuition
and intellect. The acknowledgment of the expressive function of experience
allows in turn to conceive the semblance inherent in every work as constitutive
of the work’s non-derivable and thus originary character. Given that
it is Cassirer metaphysics’ task to give a “reading” of the phenomenon, in that
it presupposes a hermeneutical intuitability of the phenomena, metaphysics
interprets the work not just as a medium and a symbol, but as an irreducible
phenomenon of the duration of life. Such interpretation of a metaphysics of
the work seems to point out the possibility for the I not to estrange itself irremediably,
but to a reversible extent, whereby to experience a caesura in the
phantasmagory of the pure symbolic and to face the expressionless, like it is
adumbrated in Benjamin’s critique of the symbolic.
Keywords: Ausdrucksloses – experience – loss of experience – form ofthought – form of life

S. MÜLLER, Aby Warburgs “Grundlegende Bruchstücke zu einer pragmatischen Ausdruckskunde”
The paper briefly outlines the complex genesis of “fragments”, a collection of
Warburg’s records, which on the one hand anticipates the author’s working
process, on the other many issues and ideas of his later texts. A particular attention
is paid to the use of the term “expression”, used by the author for linguistic,
physical and artistic manifestations.
Keywords: impression – expression – association – awareness – fine arts

 

 

Ausdruck/Ausdrucksloses, Cassirer Studies V/VI (2012/2013)

June 18th, 2015 by editor

We are pleased to present volume V/VI,  Ausdruck/Ausdrucksloses, of «Cassirer Studies». The double issue is the result of a variety of insights concerning the role that expression (Ausdruck) plays in the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. The use of the term “expressionless” (Ausdrucksloses) is borrowed from Walter Benjamin. As the title of this issue, the juxtaposition of expression and expressionless invites the authors to explore the antinomic perspectives of expression that underlie the nature of symbolism.

Ausdruck-Ausdruckloses

The table of contents is to be found below:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NACHLAß p. 9
ABY WARBURG, Ghiberti und Lessings Laokoon, edited by Maurizio Ghelardi p. 11

ARTICLES p. 29
INGMAR MELAND, The Doctrine of Basis Phenomena. A Phenomenological Foundation for the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms? p. 31
SUSANNE MÜLLER, Aby Warburgs “Grundlegende Bruchstücke zu einer pragmatischen Ausdruckskunde” p. 65

SEMINAR p. 77
INGMAR MELAND, Cassirer and the Aesthetic: Expression, Representation and Significance. An Introduction p. 81
FABIEN CAPEILLÈRES, Artistic Intuition within Cassirer’s System of Symbolic Forms. A Brief Reassessment p. 91
CARMEN METTA, Ausdruck-Ausdrucksloses: A Critique of the Work-Phenomenon p. 125
MARION LAUSCHKE, Presymbolic Formation. Reflections on Bodily Communication between Humans and Artefacts p. 139
AUD SISSEL HOEL, Images and Measurements across Arts and Sciences p. 157

ABSTRACTS p. 187

Kunstkritik (IV-2012)

March 6th, 2013 by editor

We are happy to announce the publication of «Cassirer Studies», IV: Kunstkritik. This issue bears the title of the Seminar held in Naples in November 2011, the proceedings of which are collected in the section “Seminar”.

KUNSTKRITIK

Shown below is the table of contents of the volume:

NACHLAß
HEINRICH WÖLFFLIN, Die Persönlichkeit Jacob Burckhardts,
ed. by Maurizio Ghelardi

ARTICLES
ANDRÉ STANGUENNEC, Le cinéma et la peinture comme formes
symboliques: autour d’Erwin Panofsky et d’Ernst Cassirer

SEMINAR
FABIEN CAPEILLÈRES, Art Critique as a Philosophical Science?
From Assessing Aesthetic Values to the Constitution of a World

STEVE G. LOFTS, Cassirer and Heidegger: Art, Language, and
the Thinking of the Textual-Event

CARMEN METTA, A Critique of the Work: Cassirer and Benjamin

GIULIO RAIO, Transition to the Work

STEPHEN H. WATSON, Focus Imaginarius: Cassirer, Heidegger,
the Narratives of Art and the Art of Narrative

ABSTRACTS

Kunstkritik (IV-2012) – abstracts

March 5th, 2013 by editor

A. Stanguennec, Le cinéma et la peinture comme formes symboliques: autour d’Erwin Panofsky et d’Ernst Cassirer

This paper explores Panofsky’s and Cassirer’s theories of movies and painting as symbolic forms in comparison with Kracauer, Cavell, Della Volpe, Merleau-Ponty, Robbe-Grillet. In the first part, it argues that Panofsky’s theory gives a paradoxical sense to the «motion pictures», particularly discussed by Cavell. In part two, on the basis of Cassirer’s theory of transition from the expressive to the conceptual function of art, the paper examines the history of movies and painting in modern and postmodern times. It emphasizes the revival of a realistic and critical function of art in photography, movies and painting brought about after the skeptical postmodern period of conceptual art.

Key-words: iconography – iconology – cinematography – structure – sense

 

F. Capeillères, Art Critique as a Philosophical Science? From Assessing Aesthetic Values to the Constitution of a World

In this short paper I investigate the following problem: How can there be a philosophical critique of the works of art in a transcendental perspective? It seems that we are confronted to a structural dilemma: either the “critique” is transcendental and it then addresses the forms of the work (its spatiality, temporality, etc.) but can neither analyse nor legitimate the claim of beauty, or it addresses this claim but then has to give up a transcendental analysis in favor of psychology, sociology, etc. I try to show that even if the transcendental analysis can neither explain nor legitimize the beauty of a given work of art, it offers a discipline that constitutes the only path to a possible legitimate feeling of beauty.

Key-words: critique – transcendental – beauty – work of art

 

S.G. Lofts, Cassirer and Heidegger: Art, Language, and the Thinking of the Textual-Event

This essay proposes a reading of Cassirer and Heidegger that aims to bring out a number of curious parallels in their language and similarities in the images they employ as a way of demonstrating a certain rapprochement between their works without, at the same time, losing sight of the very real differences between them. The paper is divided into three sections. The first two sections set out the basic lines of Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s thought in general, focusing on their respective accounts of language and art in particular. The objective in these sections is to provide prima facie evidence for the need to pursue a line of interpretation that goes beyond the framework of Davos. By way of conclusion, section three ventures some tentative suggestions for rethinking the belonging-together of Cassirer’s philosophy of culture and Heidegger’s thinking of being.

Key-words: Heidegger – Auseinandersetzung – Davos – language – art

 

C. Metta, A Critique of the Work: Benjamin and Cassirer

Walter Benjamin’s concern with Ausdruck/Expression, as it unfolds in his essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities, finds an echo in the development of Cassirer’s thought as the focus of it shifts from the Ausdrucksfunktion to the Ausdrucksphänomen in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and, then, from these to a culturological conception of Ausdruckswahrnehmung and the originary phenomenon of Expression in his late works. It is precisely this originary acceptation of the phenomenon of Ausdruck that sheds light on the philosophical relationship between Cassirer and Benjamin. In the Orphic word Elpìs, as the ultimate originary phenomenon that Benjamin takes up from Goethe, is an anticipation of and perhaps a move beyond Cassirer’s account of Werk. Accordingly, the ideal transition from his Basisphänomene to the Logic is clarified, in that the irreducibility of the work as originary phenomenon alludes to das Ausdruckslose/the Expressionless, the critical power of the truth concealed in the work, and in the beauty of the work of art. It is this power that determines the symbolic world as semblance, and the works as torsos of truth, «plant-like» muteness and still life.

Key-words:  Ausdrucksfunktion – AusdrucksphänomenWerkdas Ausdruckslose

 

G. Raio, Transition to the Work

This article interprets Expression (Expression-Ausdruck) as reverberation, a latent theme, the aura of representation (Darstellung). This originary ground (Urgrund) forms an inert and unconceptual core that has not yet differentiated into the originary phenomena (Urphänomena), being devoid of visibility. In this stratification Expression is represented as expressive phenomenon (Ausdrucksphänomen), as the relationship Ich-Du, irreducible to the relationship with the Es. Expression lacks objectuality, lacks work. The “transition to the Work” (Übergang zum Werk) and the tool (Werkzeug-vorhandenes Zeug) is introduced in the midst of the debate between Cassirer and Heidegger. Transition to the Work opens up the “sphere of things”, objectuality. The work conceptology models itself on the conceptology of Kunstkritik. This is the transition from Sinnkritik to Werkkritik.

Key-words: AusdruckWerkKunstwerkWerkkritik

 

S.H. Watson, Focus Imaginarius: Cassirer, Heidegger, the Narrative of Art and the Art of Narrative

This paper examines the role of imagination, intuition and narrative in the work of Cassirer and Heidegger. In so doing it contests standard analyses that view Heidegger at the time of their Davos exchange to have denied objectivity and scientific rationality (and Cassirer to be exclusively defending both). To contest this view, I treat these thinkers’ significant relation to (and transformations of) Hermann Weyl’s philosophy of science and its emphasis on transcendental temporality. I further investigate the status of the narratives that support Heidegger and Cassirer’s ensuing accounts and their reinterpretations of phenomenology – both the classical (Husserlian) position and the phenomenologies of German Idealism (Hegel, Schelling). Finally, I focus upon the pivotal and dialectical implications of imagination with respect to the rational and the reciprocal relationships between science and art.

Key-words: imagination – intuition – narrative – Weyl – temporality