Cassirer, Ernst

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Ernst Cassirer

born July 28, 1874, Breslau, Silesia, Ger.

died April 13, 1945, New York, N.Y., U.S.

German philosopher and educator.

He taught at the University of Berlin (1905–19) and the University of Hamburg (1919–33) before the rise of Nazism forced him to flee to Sweden and the U.S. Cassirer's philosophy, based primarily on the work of Immanuel Kant, expanded that philosopher's doctrines concerning the ways in which human experience is structured by innately existing concepts. After examining various forms of cultural expression, Cassirer concluded that man is uniquely characterized by his ability to use the “symbolic forms” of myth, language, and science to structure his experience and thereby to understand both himself and the natural world. His most important original work is The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29); he also wrote works on Kant, G.W. Leibniz, Renaissance cosmology, and the Cambridge Platonists.

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