Cassirer's Early Epistemology:Transcendental Method And Relation Theory

Cassirer's early epistemology has not attracted much attention in China all the time,in great contrast to the favored cultural philosophy in his later ages.Regarding this contrast,first of all,we regret the lack of integrity in Cassirer's philosophical researches for our ignorance of the exploration into the origin and characteristics of Cassirer's early thoughts.Secondly,there is indeed an underestimation of the significance of Cassirer for the development of Kant's epistemology.In addition,this lack shows that we have not yet completely understood the importance of Cassirer in the transformation of modern philosophy.Hence,we should try our best to make up for this lack due to time and cultural preference in the academic field.Against this background,in order to generalize the whole frame of Cassirer's early epistemology,in this thesis we first attempts to trace back to the philosophical background of his Neo-Kantian Marburg School through the path of Cassirer's early philosophy,and discusses the work done by Cassirer and others in the process of inheriting and reforming Kant's epistemology,thus revealing the transcendental logical characteristics of Cassirer's early epistemology and the fundamental task of explaining the possible conditions of scientific knowledge-to find out the structure of priori form behind the knowledge of mathematics and natural science by methods of transcendental analysis.And then,by introducing Cassirer's critical works on traditional logic and his acceptance on new concepts in mathematics,we further point out that Cassirer has attempted to provide a new explanation for the structure of priori form of scientific knowledge with the relation theory described by a new logic.Finally,we set up the overall framework of his "genetic" epistemology by grasping the whole of Cassirer's early epistemology.In a word,in order to complete the interpretation and clarification of Cassirer's early epistemology,in this thesis we attempt to start the discussion with the problems in Cassirer's philosophy,to find out the general methods used by him and to clarify the core concepts of its theoretical foundation.This work can also be seen as a summary and evaluation of the typical achievements of the philosophy of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism.It helps us to understand the significance of the modernization transformation which began in the second half of the nineteenth century and took place simultaneously in the fields of philosophy and science.