The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol 3: The Phenomenology of Knowledge

by Ernst Cassirer, Ralph Manheim (Translator), Charles W. Hendel (Introduction)

The Symbolic Forms has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science―the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience.
“These three volumes alone (apart from Cassirer’s other papers and books) make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical rather than in historical terms.”―F.I.G. Rawlins, Nature

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Semiotics, Nonfiction

521 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Ernst 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.

Reviews

[Andrew Noselli]

This book, the third volume of Ernst Cassirer's heady "The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms", touched on Einstein in the beginning and on Plato in the middle, which corresponded perfectly with the two graphic guides ("Introducing Stephen Hawking" and "Introducing Plato") I was reading immediately before and after those two sections, which served as the perfect bookends for Cassirer's book. I found the book to be more readable than the first two volumes in the series, especially the latter sections which dwelt on the philosophy of mathematics and the breakthroughs in modern physical theory by Maxwell and Planck, all of which I was prepared for by reading introductory graphic guides made available by the team of authors and illustrators at Comixology; I have been reading for the last six months for free thru Amazon.com.

[Marco Sán Sán]

No lo logré, ni siquiera lo debí leer. Cuando acabé el vol. 2 pensé en ver el indice del vol. 3 para darme una idea de cómo acababa y vi temas de interés, entonces lo inicié.

...pues nada, es un libro que envejeció mal. Con los aportes de los cibernéticos en neurociencias queda muy bien documentado y expuesto el tema cognitivo. Aquí tal vez por ser uno de los primeros intentos en abordar este tema, diverge demasiado entre compilación, reflexión y constatación, sin saber muy bien donde empieza uno y donde acaba el otro.

Sigo creyendo que el esfuerzo en el que se mete Cassirer es loable pero ambicioso por tanto irregular y atiborrado, confuso y pesado.

[Yalaxie Vanilam]

neo kantian, categories of symbol making. shows how the main symbolic functions unfold from one another. Systematic bridge that explains how myth, language and science fit together.