The symbolism of Ernst Cassirer in the Essay on man

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to present in a compact way the questions involved in Ernst Cassirer’s last work published in life, namely, An essay on man (1944). Cassirer wrote his essay in a context where he felt compelled to condense in a single work the whole of his philosophy, the latter being originally exposed in full in his three-volume work entitled Philosophy of symbolic forms. In the present paper, I tried to approach Cassirer’s conclusions on the subject. Known for his contributions to the History of Philosophy and his numerous references, Cassirer comes off to his readers as a difficult author. My goal was to take answers out of Cassirer’s notorious erudition in order to understand how his philosophy determines the common factor that qualitatively distinguishes man from other animals; and how it directly impacts human endeavors.