Abstract

What is defective in his theory of thought is the belief in ideal relations or the belief that some ideas, especially scientific ones, are permanent in meaning throughout history. This belief is wrong, for it leaves Cassirer with the fundamental inability to unify the system of symbolic forms. ;What is proposed is a new orientation in epistemology: to view the meaning of any idea as defined through its relations with other ideas, whose roots are perceptual. Thus, the meaning of an idea is its "systematic value" in human life. ;The final chapter states a flaw which unites the problems previously discussed. The problems result from defective principles about the nature of thought. In opposition to these principles, there are other tendencies in Cassirer's theory of knowledge, but the faulty principles are predominant. The coexistence of the opposing tendencies constitutes a dialectic in the inner logic of Cassirer's thinking. Cassirer is not aware of this dialectic. As he could not be fully aware of the system's implications which emerged only after its unfolding, the flaw is a mistake only in the fundamental sense that thought is finite and not infinite or perfect. ;Chapter V compares Cassirer's work with that of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Two topics are discussed to show that Cassirer's interpretation of experience is too intellectualistic. The advantages of Merleau-Ponty's interpretation suggests that the difficulties of Cassirer's thought may be due to misplaced emphasis on the intellect. ;Chapter III shows that the concept of symbolic form is an inadequate genus of cultural activities. Since Cassirer views his philosophy as the philosophy of symbolic forms, the inability to unify them due to their different natures is a difficulty affecting his thought as a whole. ;Chapter IV also focuses on the unity of Cassirer's system but on a higher level of abstraction. Although Cassirer claims that the symbolic forms are permanent throughout the history of particular cultures, he cannot explain the structural coexistence of symbolic forms. He postulates three universal functions to unite the symbolic forms, but they have a twofold nature: they differ in degree, and they differ both in degree and in kind. ;Chapter I of this thesis establishes the above perspective. Chapter II discusses Cassirer's unique project: the problem of culture. This problem has its systematic and historical origin in Cassirer's rejection of the possibility of absolute knowledge on which Hegel grounded his theory of the nature of thought. Cassirer limits knowledge to particular cultural activities or "symbolic forms." This restriction on the extent of knowledge is violated by Cassirer himself when he postulates the concept of an ideal limit for scientific theories. ;The aim of this thesis is to show that there are fundamental problems concerning the unity of Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of culture. The aim is a criticism of Cassirer's ideas rather than their exposition. Most scholarship on Cassirer's thought is interpretive and expository. When such work is critical, it is often partial and does not stem from a comprehensive evaluation of Cassirer's viewpoint