Search -
An Essay on Man : An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture
An Essay on Man An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture Author:Ernst Cassirer Cassier born in Breslau on July 28,1874 graduated from the University of Berlin and studied at Marburg. He taught at Berlin and Hamburg until the Nazis prompted his departure from Germany in 1932. He taught at Oxford and then at Yale , and finished his career at Columbia. — He began his work in the field of Epistemology , writing 'The Problem of ... more »Knowledge' and then 'Substance and Function' These preceded the work he is most known form the three-volume 'Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.'
The 'Essay on Man' was the major work of the last period of his life.It is in a sense a summary and precis of his earlier monumental work.
In it he asks the question which is first and fundamental to Philosophy as he sees it, the question of 'What is Man?'
His concluding words give the flavor of the whole.They show how he tries to comprehend all major areas of human endeavor in one unified philosophical structure.
"Human culture taken as a whole may be described as the process of man's progressive self- liberation. Language, art, religion, science , are various phases in the process.In all of them man discovers and proves a new power-the power to build up a world of his own, an "ideal"world. Philosophy cannot give up its search for a fundamental unity in this ideal world. But it does not confound this unity with simplicity. It does not overlook the tensions and frictions, the strong contrasts, and deep conflicts between the various powers of man.These cannot be reduced to a common denominator. They tend in different directions and obey different principles. But this multiplicity and disparateness do not denote discord or disharmony. All these functions complete and complement one another. Each one opens a new horizon and shows us a new aspect of humanity. The dissonant is in harmony with itself; the contraries are not mutually exclusive but interdependent: "harmony in contrariety, as in the case of the bow and the lyre".
Here is a philosophy pervaded by faith in Man and the human future, a future still to be shaped by our own creative symbol-making power.« less