Ernst Cassirer > Quotes

“Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.”
― Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

“There is no remedy against this reversal of the natural order. Man cannot escape from his own achievement. He cannot but adopt the conditions of his own life. No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress in thought and experience refines and strengthens this net. No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were, face to face. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself.

He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium. His situation is the same in the theoretical as in the practical sphere. Even here man does not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate needs and desires. He lives rather in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in his fantasies and dreams. 'What disturbs and alarms man,' said Epictetus, 'are not the things, but his opinions and fantasies about the things.”
― Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

“...it would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homogeneous thing; it is immensely diversified, having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different organisms. Every organism is, so to speak, a monadic being. It has a world of its own because it has an experience of its own. The phenomena that we find in the life of a certain biological species are not transferable to any other species. The experiences - and therefore the realities - of two different organisms are incommensurable with one another. In the world of a fly, says Uexkull, we find only "fly things"; in the world of a sea urchin we find only "sea urchin things.”
― Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

“Absolute trust in the reality of things begins to be shaken as the problem of truth enters upon the scene. The moment man ceases merely to live in and with reality and demands a knowledge of this reality, he moves into a new and fundamentally different relation to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to particular parts and not to the whole of reality. Within this whole different strata of validity begin to be marked off, reality seems to separate sharply from appearance. But it lies in the very nature of the problem of truth that once it arises it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals an immanent dialectic that drives it inexorably forward, forever extending its limits.”
― Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms 3: The Phenomenology of Knowledge

“Knowledge of the name gives him who knows it mastery even over the being and will of the god.”
― Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth

“Such is the strange situation in which modern philosophy finds itself. No former age was ever in such a favourable position with regard to the sources of our knowledge of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have become sharper and more penetrating.

We appear, nonetheless, not yet to have found a method for the mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own abundance the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all conceptual unity.”
― Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

“The course of the world constantly and inevitably frustrates our moral demands.”
― Ernst Cassirer

“It is necessary, first of all, to find a correct logical starting point, one which can lead us to a natural and sound interpretation of the empirical facts.”
― Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

“The form of observation , which underlines all speech and language development, always expresses a peculiar spiritual character , a special way of conceiving and apprehending. The difference between the several languages, therefore, is not a matter of different sounds and marks, but of different world conceptions.”
― Ernst Cassirer

“Omul nu mai trăieşte într-un univers pur fizic, ci trăieşte într-un univers simbolic. Limbajul, mitul, arta şi religia sunt părţi ale acestui univers. Ele sunt firele diferite care ţes reţeaua simbolică, ţesătura încâlcită a experienţei umane. […]. Omul nu mai înfruntă realitatea în mod nemijlocit, el nu o poate vedea, cum se spune, faţa în faţă. Realitatea fizică pare să se retragă în măsura în care avansează activitatea simbolică a omului. În loc să aibă de a face cu lucrurile înseşi, omul conversează, într-un sens, în mod constant cu sine însuşi. El s-a închis în aşa fel în forme limgvistice, imagini artistice, simboluri mitice sau rituri religioase încât el nu mai poate vedea sau cunoaşte nimic decât prin intermediul acestui mediu artificial. Situaţia lui este aceeaşi în sfera teoretică şi în cea practică. Chiar şi aici, omul nu trăieşte într-o lume de fapte brute, sau confiorm nevoilor şi dorinţelor lui imediate. El trăieşte mai curând în mijlocul unor emoţii imaginare, în speranţe şi temeri, în iluzii şi deziluzii, în fanteziile şi visurile sale.”
― Ernst Cassirer, Eseu despre om - O introducere în filosofia culturii umane

“Rousseau created a new responsibility for evil; neither God nor man but human society.”
― Ernst Cassirer

“Prior to the studies by Renan and Straus, historians thought myth was an obstacle to be removed in the search for the actual truth of history. But these new writers treated myth as a source of insight into the ways people viewed themselves and their universe. What if instead of treating myth as an illusion and a falsification, we saw it as an expression of people's deepest dreams?”
― Ernst Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science and History Since Hegel

“The past is preserved only in darkness, the future is not raised to the level of an image, as something which can be anticipated. It is the symbolic expression which first creates the possibility of looking backward and looking forward... What occurred in the past, now separated out from the totality of representations, no longer passes away, once the sounds of language have placed their seals on it and given it a certain stamp.”
― Ernst Cassirer

“ظهرت النظرية العقلانية في الدولة إلى عالم النور فى الفلسفة اليونانية. وكان اليونانيون رواد الفكر العقلاني، إذ كان ثوكوديديس أول من هاجم التصور الأسطوري للتاريخ، وكان العمل على الخلاص من كل ما هو خرافي من المهام الأساسية التي عُني بها.”
― أرنست كاسيرر, التفكير الفلسفي

“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.”
― Ernst Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science and History Since Hegel

“In the course of discussing the inevitable disconnection between signifier and signified, Lévi-Strauss again takes up and develops in a new way the theory of Max Müller, who was in mythology a sort of 'disease' of consciousness caused by language. According to Müller, the origin of mythological and religious concepts is to be found in the influence that language, in which paronyms, polysemy, and ambiguity of every kind are necessarily present, exercises on thought. Mythology, he writes, 'is in fact the dark shadow which language throws upon thought, and which can never disappear till language becomes entirely commensurate with thought, which it never will.”
― Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth

“Thực tế vật chất dường như đang trở nên mờ nhạt khi những hoạt động mang tính tượng trưng của con người tăng lên. Thay vì tự mình đối phó với những sự việc, con người lại liên tục đối thoại với chính mình. Anh ta tự bao bọc mình trong các hình thức ngôn ngữ, các hình ảnh nghệ thuật, các biểu tượng thần thoại hoặc các nghi thức tôn giáo mà anh ta không thể nhìn thấy hoặc hiểu rõ”
― Ernst Cassirer

“The facts of science always imply a theoretical, which means a symbolic, element.”
― Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

“It was a long evolutionary course which the human mind had to traverse, to pass from the belief in a physico-magical power comprised in the Word to a realization of its spiritual power. Indeed, it is the Word, it is language, that really reveals to man that world which is closer to him than any world of natural objects and touches his weal and woe more directly than physical nature. For it is language that makes his existence in a community possible; and only in society, in relation to a "Thee", can his subjectivity assert itself as a "Me.”
― Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth

“It is, as it were, the fundamental principle of cognition that the universal can be perceived only in the particular, while the particular can be thought only in reference to the universal.”
― Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 1: Language

“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.”
― Ernst Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science and History Since Hegel

“All cultural work, be it technical or purely intellectual, proceeds by the gradual shift from the direct relation between man and his environment to an indirect relation. In the beginning, sensual impulse is followed immediately by its gratification; but gradually more and more mediating terms intervene between the will and its object. It is as though the will, in order to gain its end, had to move away from the goal instead of toward it; instead of a simple reaction, almost in the nature of a reflex, to bring the object into reach, it requires a differentiation of behavior, covering a wider class of objects, so that finally the sum total of all these acts, by the use of various "means", may realize the desired end.”
― Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth

“The past is preserved only in darkness, the future is not raised to the level of an image, as something which can be anticipated. It is the symbolic expression which first creates the possibility of looking backward and looking forward... What occurred in the past, now separated out from the totality of representations, no longer passes away, once the sounds of language have placed their seals on it and given it a certain stamp (Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs).”
― Ernst Cassirer