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ERNST CASSIRER'S MOMENT: PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2013

UDI GREENBERG*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Dartmouth College E-mail: udi.greenberg@dartmouth.edu

Extract

The emergence of the German Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) as the object of scholarly attention has been both surprising and rapid. In the decades since his early death while in exile in the United States, Cassirer never fell into complete oblivion. His works remained known to specialists in German intellectual history; his participation in a famous 1929 debate with Martin Heidegger in Davos, Switzerland, one of the most iconic moments in modern Continental thought, made his name familiar to most students of modern philosophy. Yet Cassirer lacked the widespread recognition given to contemporaries such as Heidegger or Walter Benjamin, and his work never became the center of historical or philosophical study. This neglect stemmed, in part, from dismissal by his peers; as Edward Skidelsky explains in his new study, Rudolf Carnap found him “rather pastoral,” Isaiah Berlin dismissed him as “serenely innocent,” and Theodor Adorno thought he was “totally gaga” (125). The last few years, however, have seen the rise of a remarkable new interest in Cassirer in both Germany and the English-speaking world. Among this recent literature, Edward Skidelsky's and Peter Gordon's works lead the small “Cassirer renaissance” and offer the best English-language introduction to his thought. Both Gordon and Skidelsky ambitiously seek to relocate Cassirer at the forefront of modern German and European thought. Gordon goes as far as to call him “one of the greatest philosophers and intellectual historians to emerge from the cultural ferment of modern Germany” and one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century (11). In making such bold statements, Gordon and Skidelsky clearly set their sights beyond the person himself; they aspire to highlight a central strand of thought that enjoyed a powerful presence in early twentieth-century Germany but fell into neglect in the postwar era. In doing so, they seek to reevaluate the nature and legacy of Weimar thought, its complex relationship with the period's unstable politics, and its relevance today.

Type
Review Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 A considerable volume of Cassirer literature has accumulated in recent years. The most detailed biography available is Meyer, Thomas, Ernst Cassirer (Hamburg, 2007).Google Scholar For works in English see Barash, Jeffrey Andrew, ed., The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer (Chicago, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamlin, Cyrus and Michael Krois, John, eds., Symbolic Forms and Cultural Studies: Ernst Cassirer's Theory of Culture (New Haven, 2004).Google Scholar In German see Bevc, Tobias, Kulturgenese als Dialektik von Mythos und Vernunft: Ernst Cassirer und die Kritische Theorie (Wuerzburg, 2006).Google Scholar For a study that places the philosopher in a new context see Emily J. Levine's book about Warburg, Cassirer, and Panofsky in Weimar-era Hamburg (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press).

2 The most detailed source on Cassirer's personal life is the memoir written by his wife, Cassirer, Toni, Mein Leben mit Ernst Cassirer (Hildesheim, 1981).Google Scholar For further insights on these personal relationships, see Meyer, Ernst Cassirer.