Ontology Of Consciousness In Cassirer’s Philosophy And It’s Implication For Psychology

As a particularly rare erudite thinker in contemporary world, Cassirerestablished his philosophy of symbolic forms as his own philosophical system, whichis uniquely outstanding in contemporary philosophical arena. His philosophy impliesa systematic understanding about psychology. The purpose of this paper is to clarifythe systematic psychological thought implied in Cassirer’s philosophy and explore itsimplications for psychology as a theoretical discipline.In the context of different arguments, Cassirer’s philosophy has different names,such as philosophy of culture, philosophy of symbolic forms, anthropologicalphilosophy. These different names highlight the different aspects of Cassirer thoughtfrom different angles. Among them, the philosophy of culture can be viewed as thegeneral term of his thought, and anthropological philosophy the inherent soul or logicof his thought, while the philosophy of symbolic forms is a specifically realizes formof of his ideas. From the point of view of the general structure of Cassirer’s writingsand thoughts, thinking and reasoning in his anthropological philosophy merelyfunctioned as the introduction to his philosophy of symbolic forms, and it lays thelogical foundation for the latter. If we carefully study Cassirer’s anthropologicalphilosophy, it will be found obviously that the completion of his anthropologicalphilosophy will depend on a deeper logical base of reasoning, that is the argument ofthe ontology of consciousness, which implies Cassirer’s own understanding aboutpsychology and shows a theoretical psychology of his philosophy.The core of Cassirer’s philosophy is how to define the nature of man, which isthe aimed question to be expected to be answered by his philosophy. According to theview in philosophy of anthropology, Cassirer defined man as "the symbolic animal"and "cultural animal", both of these two definitions of man emphasize the symbolicfunction of the man， and this function is viewed to be the essence of human nature inCassirer’s opinion. Although he has never studied psychology as his subject, and therefore has never discoursed his psychological thought in sense of psychology beingthe theme, Cassirer’s thought about the symbolic functions of human being reveals therich psychological insights. If we follow his idea and try realize the psychologyimplied in his thought, we will find that such a psychology is consistent with James’sradical empiricism and Husserl’s phenomenological psychology. They all stressed theontological status of "consciousness" and its logical priority, and also, all of themadvocated psychology to be a humanities while questioned,or even more, denied therationality of psychology being established as natural science, which is pursued bydomineering psychological currents in history.Gao Shenchun’s studies of Cassirer’s philosophy deeply demonstrated the valueand importance of the psychological thought in Cassirer’s philosophical system. Hisresearch is helpful for the understanding of what consciousness is, and then tounderstand what psychology is, as well as the understanding of the history ofmainstream psychology and its ill-founded foundation.