The Study On Ernst Cassirer’s Symbol Forms Thoughts

Ernst Cassirer(1874-1945)was a German thinker with broad and profound thoughts.His cultural philosophy is an important achievement of thought history in the 20th century.In Cassirer’s works,philosophy is the starting point,culture is the keynote,and symbol is the focus,but human nature and human’s free existence are the ultimate destination.From his early book Substance and Function and Einslein’s Theory of Relativity to middle book Enlightenment Philosophy,until the latest work Philosophy of Symbolic Form and An Essay on man etc.,Cassirer’s most concerned point has always been the basic forms of human understanding the world and each other.He repeatedly stressed that the center of philosophy and thought should be Man and man’s real life,but not just abstract metaphysical speculations.The uniqueness of human can only be defined from the subjective aspect,because Kant’s "Copernicus" revolution has declared that human reason can only understand the object constructed by reason.Then,the natural object is accidental,and perhaps human reason can never fully obtain the understanding of the whole nature.But Kant also tells us that there are ultimate universal elements in human subjectivity,such as "space","time" and "quantity",which are indispensable formal premises in any empirical judgment.Therefore,Cassirer thinks that instead of arguing about the existence of essence,the possibility of cognition and the merits and demerits of various disciplines,it is better to establish a kind of "spirit morphology" and fundamentally study how cognition can be different and what the essence of difference is.According to such a way of thinking,Cassirer set up the philosophy of symbolic forms with the goal of "spiritual morphology",thak the object of culture as a whole,the function view as main line,the "symbolic form" as core concept,and human’s freedom value as orientation.The establishment of a system is not so much to solve a problem as to raise a problem.The problem raised by the philosophy of symbolic forms is:how to understand the human world from the perspective of semiotics and how to understand human cultural creation from the perspective of symbolic construction activities.This paper attempts to cut in from this question,to do a comprehensive grasp and study of Cassirer’s thought.As an introduction,the first chapter takes "symbol","form" and "philosophy" in Cassirer’s book philosophy of symbolic form as key words to solve three problems:what kind of philosophy is Cassirer’s philosophy,what does Cassirer’s symbol mean and what is the uniqueness of this concept?The second,third and fourth chapters respectively study Cassirer’s mythological thought,linguistic thought and scientific view.At the same time,taking the development of "time","space" and "number" as clues,clarified the relationships between subject and object in thoes three kind of symbol forms and the presentation of these relations.This parts intends to solve three problems:why is myth a symbol form of expression,why language(and Art)is a symbol form of expressive,and why mathematical logic is an pure form symbol?The fifth chapter is the conclusion,which summarizes the value dimension of Cassirer’s Semiotics with the concept of"freedom".The problems to be solved are:what is the purpose of the symbol,in what form,and whether it has been realized in the end?The first chapter is about Cassirer’s philosophy.Cassirer thinks that although the individual person is full of contingency,the foundation on which all knowledge is established and formed will not be changed by one person.This universal and essential foundation should be the problem of philosophical thinking.It is only from the perspective of philosophy that we can complete the task.Because only philosophy can get rid of the addiction to specific contents of general disciplines and study knowledge from a holistic perspective.In other words,the philosophical method does not pay attention to the specific content,but finds the transcendental "form" of knowledge by thinking about the function of knowledge.The second chapter is the study of Cassirer’s mythology.Myth is the symbol form of expression,which reflects the strong emotion when cave people meet the world for the first time.Its seemingly absurd plot or accidental factors all come from "emotional unity".In mythology,the "image" symbol does not represent "the thing" in some way,it is "the thing",which directly replaces the existence of things.For example,primitive people think that rain god exists in every raindrop.According to Cassirer,mythology lacks any means that can be extended beyond itself,lacks perspective or review,division between individual and whole,and myth only has instant impression.However,the emergence of objective categories such as space and time,as well as the initial differentiation between self and the world,implies the potential development for language,art and even science.Therefore,Cassirer regards mythology as the initial source and underlying foundation of human culture.The third chapter is the study of Cassirer’s language thought.Cassirer thinks that the traditional language studies,such as referential theory,conceptual theory and reflection theory,both ignore the relationship between language and other disciplines in the whole culture.However,it is not enough for modern linguistics to study language problems from the perspective of psychology or logic,so none of the above can reveal the essence of language.In his opinion,the meaning of language is the core issue.In the philosophy of symbolic forms,language is defined as the symbol of expressive,which is the representation,symbol,embodiment,expression and description of meaning.In language,meaning flows in reference,so language is repeatable and depends on specific language behavior.The two sides are its unique advantages:the highlight of ambiguity makes it have artistic expression,and the pursuit of accuracy leads to the universality of scientific concepts.Therefore,language is the main line running through the development of all formal symbols.On the one hand,it is rooted in myth,and it is also an emotional expression in its early stage.On the other hand,driven by the need of scientific development,it gradually gets rid of its perceptual part and abstracts into pure form.The first mock exam of language itself is divided into three stage:imitation,analogy and symbolism.The fourth chapter is Cassirer’s natural science thought research.Natural science is a key point of Cassirer’s research.He called it pure form symbol form,that is,it simply expresses meaning and no longer has any similarity with reality.With the development of the two dimensions of "detachability" and "certainty",the scientific concept does not contain any intuitive subsidiary meaning and perceptual color.It only exists relative to the system that produces it.The difference and connection with other symbols in the system is its purpose of existence.According to Cassirer,the generation of a system is similar to the establishment of a function formula,among which the most important thing is the relation term R.the validity of the concept lies in the universal validity of the relation term.The system is complete,just as "Fa" is meaningless without chemistry.No item in the system can exist alone,and each item represents the structure and"production" principle of the whole sequence.As long as this function formula still holds,then new terms can be continuously "produced".This is a production different from induction and analogy.For it,real elements and fictional elements are essentially the same.More and more refined concept system is an important reason to promote the rapid development of modern natural science.Pure form symbols are more real than reality.They are not attached to anything,but can also be the "embodiment" of anything,which makes people can think highly abstract and predictable.The fifth chapter is the value dimension of Cassirer’s Semiotics.The value dimension of Cassirer’s semiotics is embodied in the concept of "freedom".Cassirer said that symbols are the road to the liberation of human nature and can bring real freedom.What kind of freedom is he talking about and who is the subject of freedom?Cassirer believes that the pursuit of freedom is the essence of human beings.Any wrong and one-sided definition of human nature will lead to non freedom.The first is the antinomy between freedom and necessity.Human beings inevitably have the natural attributes of animals.However,if they are only subject to animal attributes and live according to instinct,there is no free will.The second is the paradox of freedom and existence.Cassirer take symbol as the infinite extension of subject,by which man can break through the limitation of limited existence and finally realize freedom.The second is the confrontation between freedom and nature.Cassirer believes that nature can only be nature for human beings,and any content in human perception has been attached to it at present.Meaning is further sorted and created in symbolic activities.Only through the appearance of form can the objective world and subjective spirit become clear and transparent.In a word,it is the symbolic activities that liberate human beings from the instinctive existence without self-consciousness,and liberate people from the single subject dimension by the diversity of forms.By thinking about the problem of freedom,Cassirer leads the most important and difficult question of "what is man " to the answer of "man is the animal of symbols".He thinks that only the culture composed of all symbolic forms is the necessary premise and ultimate guarantee of freedom.Cassirer himself believes that "symbolic form" is not a self-evident concept for readers.In fact,since the 1920s and 1930s,the complexity and ambiguity of this concept has been a barrier for readers to read and accept him.Therefore,after the publication of philosophy of symbolic forms,Cassirer wrote several articles to explain his thoughts.The most concise and important one of them is the The problem of the symbol and its place in the system of philosophy.The purpose of this paper is to clarify the extension and connotation of this concept,so as to promote the in-depth understanding of Cassirer’s thought in China.