Abstract

With vast erudition, especially in German and French scholarship of the last century, Cassirer applies his theory of symbolic forms to problems of methodology in "culture-philosophy," including the interpretation of "things" versus "expression," the difference between "nature-concepts" and "culture-concepts," and the various meanings of "form" and "causality." Concluding with a chapter on the "Tragedy of Culture," he maintains that the dialectical tension between completed form and free expression can never be overcome, but that culture's vitality rests in the continual coping with that tension.--R. C. N.