``Gombrich was a friend of Popper's and made it his duty to erase the evil Hegelian influence from the archives of english art history writing.'' CG
But Cassirer was a Kantian, not a Hegelian. You don't need to know that much about Continental philosophy to know the difference.
Leo Casey
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Hmm. Is it worth explaining? Maybe a little.
I think Gombrich considered Art History to be something like a narrative form of social science, that is, an objective and scholarly examination and explanation of historical materials and facts.
Gombrich's attack on Hegel, centered on Hegel's view that History wasn't just a written record of events and a collection of artifacts, but an active and dialectical process (of being) that formed and expressed society (Being). In effect, Gombrich's objection to Hegel, is roughly equivalent to the objections that an empiricist might make to various forms of vitalism in the natural sciences.
But Gombrich went after various historians and writers of cultural history, in a way that reminded me of an anti-communist witch hunt. What's up with this? Hence my comment, about erasing the evil hegelian influence. More accurately, it was probably his conception of dialectical materialism that was the real target.
In any event, I haven't found any mention of Cassirer in Gombrich, but then I only have two collections of his essays (Idols and Ideals, Meditations on a Hobbyhorse). It is in the latter collection you will find his attacks on Hauser and Malraux. In the former collection, Gombrich goes after Burckhardt, even though Gombo admits, Burckhardt had no idea he was being hegelian.
But all the above is just a long thin string that leads around the corner---where it is tied to the big toe of the first monster, who of course is tied to the toe of the next and the next, and the all the others lined up waiting. Who are these guys? Here's a hint.
Gombrich says in his Preface to Meditations:
``... Fry remarked on the significance of the fact `that we have no convenient word by which to designate that body of studies which the Germans call Kunstforschung---a body of studies of which actual history of Art is only a part'.
Terminology does not matter much here. It is hardly the German term Kunstforschung which fully applies, but another word, perhaps even less euphonious to English ears, Kunstwissenschaft (literally the science of art). Its very composition states the claim of its practitioners to operate on the same level of abstraction and precision as do the other scientists. It is for this reason that I chose to adopt the term `the theory of art' rather than aesthetics or criticism. For though this book happens to contain many passages in which I take issue with certain favorite tenets of German Kunstwissenschaft (including tenets about the nature of science) such criticism should not obscure my debt to this tradition. I still think that Roger Fry was right when he spoke of our `crying need for systematic study in the which scientific methods will be followed wherever possible, where at all events the scientific attitude may be fostered and the sentimental attitude discouraged'...''
Well there's a little something to pull on.
Chuck Grime