Cassirer's Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms

This book—the first commentary on Ernst Cassirer’s Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms—provides an introduction to the metaphysical views that underlie the philosopher’s conceptions of symbolic form and human culture.

Thora Ilin Bayer focuses on the meaning of Cassirer’s claim that philosophy is not itself a symbolic form but the thought around which all aspects of human activity are seen as a whole. Underlying the symbolic forms are Cassirer’s two metaphysical principles, spirit (Geist) and life, which interact to produce the reality of the human world. Bayer shows how these two principles of Cassirer’s early philosophy are connected with the phenomenology of his later philosophy, which centers on his conception of “basis phenomena”—self, will, and work.