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The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science and History Since Hegel
"Cassirer employs his remarkable gift of lucidity to explain the major ideas and intellectual issues that emerged in the course of nineteenth century scientific and historical thinking. The translators have done an excellent job in reproducing his clarity in English. There is no better place for an intelligent reader to find out, with a minimum of technical language, what was really happening during the great intellectual movement between the age of Newton and our own."— New York Times.
- GenresPhilosophyHistoryScience
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Ernst Cassirer
414 books174 followersErnst Cassirer was one of the major figures in the development of philosophical idealism in the first half of the twentieth century, a German Jewish philosopher. Coming out of the Marburg tradition of neo-Kantianism, he developed a philosophy of culture as a theory of symbols founded in a phenomenology of knowledge.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 13, 2018
This book embodies an approach to philosophy that has all but gone extinct, to our detriment. The thesis of the book in a nutshell:
“Not until (the) purely human goal of all science has been recognized will science be capable (...) of a rigorous systematization. We cannot succeed in this as long as we stay within the realm of purely physical phenomena. The material world is infinite in time and space, so that all knowledge of it must have a merely provisional and inconclusive character. Here research can never hope to attain the goal, for after all it remains rudimentary and preparatory. The situation does not change until we assign to research another task and select another focal point for it. The true center of knowledge lies not in the world but in mankind; not in the universe but in humanity.”
The rest of the book seeks to demonstrate this thesis. It seeks to demonstrate that the current fragmentation of knowledge, which is the result of the increasing specialization of disciplines, has not sounded the death knell of philosophy as a synoptic endeavour. Cassirer shows that there is a way to formulate the problem of the unity and systematicity of knowledge, but he also shows that this demands that we rethink the relation between philosophy and the special sciences in a way contrary to the way we usually think it. He shows time and again that the special sciences are in no position to formulate this fundamental problem, even as their respective destinies are in large part determined by it. When they seek to do so, they merely reflect the fragment of the problem that is salient to their partial interests and methods, and so cannot help us conceive the problem in its most general import.
He defends the now hopelessly old-fashioned view that before any meaningful practical application must come a theoretical reorientation with regards to the foundational, perennial issues. We can fully answer the questions that we most care about in whatever special discipline we might happen to be in if we learn to see our partial problem in the light of the larger structure of human knowledge of which it is a part. Every specialized problem is best understood as a specific instance of a much more foundational problem. The ability to grasp one's particular domain in the light of the whole in this way is just it it means to have a philosophical grasp of it.
Moreover, Cassirer argues that conceiving the unity of knowledge in an age of specialization also demands that we recognize, like Descartes and Kant did, that the new center from which to conceive this unity is the theory of human nature. The idea of human nature is what provides the unifying thread that we need in order to structure the scattered heap of information into a system of knowledge. Each chapter shows how metaphysics, logic, mathematics, and natural science have each failed to serve as that philosophical center of gravity. Instead, each chapter shows how the many scattered strands of the problem of knowledge "lie, often deeply hidden, within the sciences.”
He further shows how they can be unearthed only from the point of view of a philosophical survey of the history of thought that reveals not the temporal origin of ideas, but their function in a systematic whole. The problem of knowledge lies deeper down than each of these special disciplines can reach, in the structure of reason, as Kant had shown. Thus, none of these disciplines is in any position to illuminate the entire structure of the larger system of knowledge of which it is a part. Rather, its basic methodological principles are a function of that structure. Nor is any special discipline in any position to understand its own significance. Instead, it receives that significance to the extent that it fulfils the function that it has as a part of this larger structural whole that determines its specific function.
Ultimately, the unity of knowledge "can be attained in full measure only if the the point of orientation is transferred from the object to the subject; if the problem of knowledge is viewed not from the standpoint of the universe but from that of man himself. Then everything at once falls into perfect unity. The sciences constitute a single, concordant, and hierarchically organized system, because each has its own definite function to fulfil in the construction of man’s intellectual cosmos and thus acquires its specific meaning.”
This kind of thinking is so alien compared to anything that is being done today. It seems like a breath of fresh air from a brighter time. Ironically, Cassirer wrote this just coming out of World War 2, but despite the darkness of the time, it was a sunnier time for thought nonetheless. This book is clear proof of that. It feels like circa 1950 was the last time that we really saw anything like the traditional ideal of philosophy as the unity of knowledge being unabashedly defended. Unfortunately, one gets the feeling that he was already fighting a losing battle. Ideology soon replaced philosophy in the 60s and beyond, all in the name of promoting social consciousness. Or else, philosophy capitulated in favour of just the kind of specialism and uncritical scientism that Cassirer warned about in this book. And then there's linguistic philosophy which doesn't even address the foundational questions, but is instead engaged in trying to persuade us to dodge the foundational questions that it lacks the resources to answer. In any case, these foundational questions stopped being asked because they were either ivory tower, socially-unengaged, useless speculation, or because the special sciences know best how to ask them from their myopic perspectives.
Cassirer was surely the last philosopher to argue that philosophy could be - and should be - a "queen of the sciences," despite the (limited) virtues of specialization. He thought that you could have the rigours that specialization is supposed to bring together with the subtler but no less real rigours that come from understanding where we're at as specialists in relation to the intellectual whole of which we're a part. Cassirer was also among the last to think that human life and human thought could achieve unity through sustained philosophical thought.
I will conclude with another quote from the priceless introduction he provides here:
“The special task of philosophy must always be to oppose the intellectual division of labour, no matter how useful and even indispensable it may be to the progress of science. Philosophy can never deny its own universal character, and if it yields to the spirit of mere facts, if it ceases to be systematic and “encyclopedic,” it will really have renounced itself.”
“Not until (the) purely human goal of all science has been recognized will science be capable (...) of a rigorous systematization. We cannot succeed in this as long as we stay within the realm of purely physical phenomena. The material world is infinite in time and space, so that all knowledge of it must have a merely provisional and inconclusive character. Here research can never hope to attain the goal, for after all it remains rudimentary and preparatory. The situation does not change until we assign to research another task and select another focal point for it. The true center of knowledge lies not in the world but in mankind; not in the universe but in humanity.”
The rest of the book seeks to demonstrate this thesis. It seeks to demonstrate that the current fragmentation of knowledge, which is the result of the increasing specialization of disciplines, has not sounded the death knell of philosophy as a synoptic endeavour. Cassirer shows that there is a way to formulate the problem of the unity and systematicity of knowledge, but he also shows that this demands that we rethink the relation between philosophy and the special sciences in a way contrary to the way we usually think it. He shows time and again that the special sciences are in no position to formulate this fundamental problem, even as their respective destinies are in large part determined by it. When they seek to do so, they merely reflect the fragment of the problem that is salient to their partial interests and methods, and so cannot help us conceive the problem in its most general import.
He defends the now hopelessly old-fashioned view that before any meaningful practical application must come a theoretical reorientation with regards to the foundational, perennial issues. We can fully answer the questions that we most care about in whatever special discipline we might happen to be in if we learn to see our partial problem in the light of the larger structure of human knowledge of which it is a part. Every specialized problem is best understood as a specific instance of a much more foundational problem. The ability to grasp one's particular domain in the light of the whole in this way is just it it means to have a philosophical grasp of it.
Moreover, Cassirer argues that conceiving the unity of knowledge in an age of specialization also demands that we recognize, like Descartes and Kant did, that the new center from which to conceive this unity is the theory of human nature. The idea of human nature is what provides the unifying thread that we need in order to structure the scattered heap of information into a system of knowledge. Each chapter shows how metaphysics, logic, mathematics, and natural science have each failed to serve as that philosophical center of gravity. Instead, each chapter shows how the many scattered strands of the problem of knowledge "lie, often deeply hidden, within the sciences.”
He further shows how they can be unearthed only from the point of view of a philosophical survey of the history of thought that reveals not the temporal origin of ideas, but their function in a systematic whole. The problem of knowledge lies deeper down than each of these special disciplines can reach, in the structure of reason, as Kant had shown. Thus, none of these disciplines is in any position to illuminate the entire structure of the larger system of knowledge of which it is a part. Rather, its basic methodological principles are a function of that structure. Nor is any special discipline in any position to understand its own significance. Instead, it receives that significance to the extent that it fulfils the function that it has as a part of this larger structural whole that determines its specific function.
Ultimately, the unity of knowledge "can be attained in full measure only if the the point of orientation is transferred from the object to the subject; if the problem of knowledge is viewed not from the standpoint of the universe but from that of man himself. Then everything at once falls into perfect unity. The sciences constitute a single, concordant, and hierarchically organized system, because each has its own definite function to fulfil in the construction of man’s intellectual cosmos and thus acquires its specific meaning.”
This kind of thinking is so alien compared to anything that is being done today. It seems like a breath of fresh air from a brighter time. Ironically, Cassirer wrote this just coming out of World War 2, but despite the darkness of the time, it was a sunnier time for thought nonetheless. This book is clear proof of that. It feels like circa 1950 was the last time that we really saw anything like the traditional ideal of philosophy as the unity of knowledge being unabashedly defended. Unfortunately, one gets the feeling that he was already fighting a losing battle. Ideology soon replaced philosophy in the 60s and beyond, all in the name of promoting social consciousness. Or else, philosophy capitulated in favour of just the kind of specialism and uncritical scientism that Cassirer warned about in this book. And then there's linguistic philosophy which doesn't even address the foundational questions, but is instead engaged in trying to persuade us to dodge the foundational questions that it lacks the resources to answer. In any case, these foundational questions stopped being asked because they were either ivory tower, socially-unengaged, useless speculation, or because the special sciences know best how to ask them from their myopic perspectives.
Cassirer was surely the last philosopher to argue that philosophy could be - and should be - a "queen of the sciences," despite the (limited) virtues of specialization. He thought that you could have the rigours that specialization is supposed to bring together with the subtler but no less real rigours that come from understanding where we're at as specialists in relation to the intellectual whole of which we're a part. Cassirer was also among the last to think that human life and human thought could achieve unity through sustained philosophical thought.
I will conclude with another quote from the priceless introduction he provides here:
“The special task of philosophy must always be to oppose the intellectual division of labour, no matter how useful and even indispensable it may be to the progress of science. Philosophy can never deny its own universal character, and if it yields to the spirit of mere facts, if it ceases to be systematic and “encyclopedic,” it will really have renounced itself.”
May 27, 2013
A superb book - Cassirer at his best - on the philosophy of science and realism and the philosophical revolution of the 19th/early 20th cen.
February 17, 2026
This work by Cassirer changed the way I did philosophy. He uses the use of “knowledge” in the development of the special sciences to characterize an account of knowledge more generally. In doing so, philosophy and science are integrated as forces in a shared project for conceptual clarity and solutions to longstanding philosophical questions.
June 25, 2021
(9/10)
December 11, 2012
As being Man, he would have been a kind of consciousness with superego but the 'Fall' of Man had eradicated all the hope of being superhuman with a more perfect knowledge on 'Cosmology'. Humanity, upon coming through a series of expriences on Science, especially, Mathematical expriences, has become a kind of entity with much more perfect knowledge.
Institution has been widen with a broader knowledge through centuries of Mathematical expriences. Many mathematicans were born of supreme knowledge in the realm of Psyche. Through the esblishment of present merit in the fields of various Sciences, the world has exprienced many srages of changes and modifications of consciousness in order to reach the goal of being-in-the-world.
An esblishment of present days' knowledge is consummated by coming throught much modifications by various great persons whose dedications were of unique wisdom. Existence is a plane or a 3D matrix functinal entity whose transcendental kno9wledge is to be established by the expansion of the psyche power of humanity. Psyche power of humanity had been better regarded as power of consciousness. This is to be expanded through centuries and centuries of extending process by instuition of various great scholars. The plane of existence is a kind of cycling functional entity regarded by the expansion of psyche power of humanity.
So that Humanity is the measurement of the cosmology.
Institution has been widen with a broader knowledge through centuries of Mathematical expriences. Many mathematicans were born of supreme knowledge in the realm of Psyche. Through the esblishment of present merit in the fields of various Sciences, the world has exprienced many srages of changes and modifications of consciousness in order to reach the goal of being-in-the-world.
An esblishment of present days' knowledge is consummated by coming throught much modifications by various great persons whose dedications were of unique wisdom. Existence is a plane or a 3D matrix functinal entity whose transcendental kno9wledge is to be established by the expansion of the psyche power of humanity. Psyche power of humanity had been better regarded as power of consciousness. This is to be expanded through centuries and centuries of extending process by instuition of various great scholars. The plane of existence is a kind of cycling functional entity regarded by the expansion of psyche power of humanity.
So that Humanity is the measurement of the cosmology.
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