After having skimmed a couple of seemingly profound books, Elizabeth M Baeten The Magic Mirror: Myth's Abiding Power and Jon Krois' biography of Ernst Cassirer, I must say that what seems crucial for our discussion here is this philosopher's attempt to understand how the worse forms of barbaric political activity ("hero worship, highly ritualized activity, incantatory slogans, stylized images, and symbols evolking massive displays of raw emotion") would prove unassailable to reason. It is Cassirer's struggle over the return of seemingly anachronistic mythic thought, the structure of which he elaborated in the greatest detail, that seems to be a good stepping off point for this discussion.
Baeten also compares Cassirer to Roland Barthes. About the latter she writes:
"The mechanics of mythmaking are quite specific in Barthes' model. Myth is the elision of the historically determined and determinable character of the motivated signified in a second order semiological system or metalanguage." p.104
She walks the reader through Barthes' Mythologies before this pithy formulation (which I do not understand presently but it seems very interesting, no?), and then compares Barthes to Cassirer. But I only read the first 90 pages of the book when I was trying to get a handle on Cassirer's analysis of the mythic structure of race ideology as discussed in his book *The Myth of the State*.
I know Chuck G has read Cassirer based on some very stimulating messages he sent to LBO-Talk when it was still young. I have not done a study of Cassirer. Baeten's book is helpful--at least the first chapters that I read.
Yours, Rakesh
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Rakesh,
I am glad somebody looked up Cassirer. His dates are 1874-1945. He is classified as a neo-kantian philosopher which means he more or less subscribes to kant's system of knowledge and its categories of thought (critique of pure reason, practical reason, and judgment). These roughly correspond to logio-empirical thought in math, science, and logic; the theories of political and legal thought; and finally the aesthetic, moral, and ethical realm.
I of course agree that at least some contact with Cassirer would help a lot in understanding the socio-cultural fabric of our world and how it works. In my opinion, I think he made tremendous contributions, but even so, he represents a foundation or starting point in my mind. After all his ideas and writings all date from the first half of this century.
In any event below is a bibliography of his works in English. I bought most of these used, but some are still in print. BTW, if anybody is looking for used books you can try:
I found all of Arnold Hauser's works listed--he is another of those almost unknown writers who has a lot to contribute to ideas about society and culture.
Chuck Grimes
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from a search on Melvyl:
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. An essay on man; an introduction to a philosophy of human culture,, by Ernst Cassirer. New Haven, Yale University Press; London, H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1944. ix p., 1 ., 237, [1] p. 24 cm.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. The individual and the cosmos in Renaissance philosophy., Translated with an introd. by Mario Domandi. New York, Harper & Row [1964, c1963] 199 p. Series title: Harper torchbooks. Academy Library ; TB1097.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. Language and myth,, by Ernst Cassirer ... Translated by Susanne K. Langer. New York and London, Harper & brothers [1946] x p., 2 ., 103 p. 21 cm.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. The myth of the state., New Haven : Yale University Press, 196l, c1946. xii, 303 p. ; 21 cm. Series title: Yale paperbound ; Y-33
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. The philosophy of symbolic forms;, translated by Ralph Manheim. Pref. and introd. by Charles W. Hendel. New Haven, Yale University Press [1963-66, v. 1, 1964; c1996] 4 v. 24 cm.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. The philosophy of the enlightenment /, Translated by Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove. Boston : Beacon Press, [1965, c1955] xiii, 366 p. 21 cm.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. The Platonic renaissance in England., Translated by James P. Pettegrove. [Edinburgh] Nelson, 1953. vii, 207 p. 18 cm.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. The problem of knowledge; philosophy, science, and history since Hegel;, translated by William H. Woglom and Charles W. Hendel. With a pref. by Charles W. Hendel. New Haven, Yale University Press 1966, c1950] xviii, 334 p. 25 cm.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. The question of Jean Jacques Rousseau /, Ernest Cassirer ; translated and edited with an introd. and additional notes by Peter Gay. Midland book ed. Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, 1963. vii, 129 p. 20 cm. Series title: A Midland book ; MB 48
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. Rousseau, Kant, Goethe : two essays /, by Ernst Cassirer ; translated from the German by James Gutmann, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1963. xv, 98 p. ; 21 cm.
Cassirer, Ernst, 1874-1945. Symbol, myth, and culture : essays and lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935-1945 /, edited by Donald Phillip Verene. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1979. xii, 304 p. ; 25 cm.
Schilpp, Paul Arthur, 1897-. The philosophy of Ernst Cassirer., New York, Tudor [1949] 936 p. illus. 24 cm. Series title: The Library of living philosophers [v. 6]