The method of culture. Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms

The recent renaissance in Cassirer scholarship warrants a careful investigation into the methodologies and the systematically significant aspects of his work. The contributions here assembled aim to cast light on how and to what extent his approach to identify and criticize the various symbolic functions and their interrelations and interactions represents a constitutive method of discovery and criticism of all symbolic forms: from language to myth and knowledge, from religion to art and science. Such cultural forms share a symbolic origin whose constitution Cassirer describes in normative terms: they are understood as the necessary expressions of the human spirit that result from the fundamental function of symbolic formation, exercised in different respects for the sake of self- and world-formation and, ultimately, self-liberation.