Cassirer's Interpretation Of Man From The Perspective Of Cultural Philosophy

The problem of self-knowledge has always been a difficult philosophical problem. The unique of Cassirer's cultural philosophy is that he defined man as one kind of symbolic animal, and put forward that symbol, culture and man are the trinity. In Cassirer's theoretical framework, he treated the symbolic forms as a reminder of humanity, and thought that the fundamental difference between man and animals is that man can create and use symbols, the inner spirit of man is showed by creating the cultural forms of language, mythology, religion, art, science and the other. The overall development of human culture represents the course of man pursuit of self-liberation, self-improvement.This article makes carding and illumination to the cultural philosophy and theory of human nature of Cassirer. The first part is intended to demonstrate the works done by Cassirer to clear, analyze and criticize the traditional western theory of human nature as well as to analyze the respect and method taken by Cassirer. Cassirer doubts about the traditional views that human is rational or social animal and makes his own criticize to all kinds of theory of human nature and points out that the knowledge to human nature is in a state of anarchy right now. The second part analyzes on what's the nature of man in Cassirer and put emphasis on the idea that Cassirer considers man as an animal with symbol. The third part displays Cassirer's thinking on how to make man complete themselves. Cassirer puts forward that the open of symbol word is the circle of human nature, of which each part constituted by language, mythology, religion, history, art and science. The cultural form created by human being constitutes a road for man to realize completion. The fourth part analyzes the contribution and enlightened value that Cassirer makes in his cultural philosophy and evokes very important reference value that Cassirer considers man as an animal with culture for man realizing themselves in contemporary society, especially for the essence of cultural spirit for man.