Cassirer on mythic, aesthetic and theoretical space
Workshop
“All division of the manifold is held together by the form of the conceptual act of synthesizing and the conceptual act of separating, by a synopsis that is at the same time a diaeresis.”
Ernst Cassirer (“Mythic, Aesthetic and Theoretical Space,” 1969, pp. 8-9)
For several years now a variegated group of scholars interested in the thinking of the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) has met each year in Berlin to discuss one of Cassirer’s key texts. The annual Cassirer workshop is organized by Bernd Henningsen at the Nordeuropa-institut in collaboration with John Michael Krois, both at Humboldt University. I was invited to join this group last year, when the text to be subjected to scrutiny was “Form und Technik” (1930), a truly rich and thought-provoking essay where Cassirer deals explicitly with technology for the first time. The reason why I was invited was that a few years before, a colleague of mine in Trondheim, Ingvild Folkvord (Department of Modern Foreign Languages, NTNU), and I had edited a volume of texts by Cassirer in Norwegian, including the “Form und Technik” essay. (Ernst Cassirer: Form og teknikk – Utvalgte tekster. Oslo: Cappelen, 2006).
From the Spiegelsaal staircase.
The text this year was “Mythic, Aesthetic and Theoretical Space” (1931, English version published in Man and World, 2 (1969): 3-17), which, by the way, is also contained in our Norwegian volume. Apart from Henningsen, Krois, Folkvord and myself, the discussants included, among others, Jean Lassègue (Paris), Mats Rosengren (Södertörn), Frederik Stjernfelt (Aarhus), Marion Lauschke (Berlin), and Franz Engel (Berlin). The discussion covered a great many topics, but two issues figured prominently, namely if and how to draw the line between aesthetic and theoretical space and what one is to make of Cassirer’s idea of “pure significance” (reine Bedeutung). My presentation, entitled “Kant, Cassirer and the Privilege of Mathematics,” compared a transcendental model of cognition, exemplified by Immanuel Kant’s approach in Critique of pure Reason, with what I referred to as a “differential” model of cognition, exemplified by Cassirer’s mature philosophy of symbols and tools. My main point was that Cassirer’s expansion of Kant’s critique of reason to a critique of culture is transformational: After the expansion cognition is no longer the same. What I was saying, then, is that Cassirer’s mature thinking expounds a model of knowledge that is not merely relational but in fact differential. Whereas the traditional transcendental model assigns constitutive power to the subject, conceiving cognition, therefore, on a dyadic model where the constitutive power is unidirectional, Cassirer expounds a model that is triadic. Constitutive power is not ascribed to “cognition as such” (whatever that might be) but to the intervening and essentially “foreign” symbols and tools, leaving us with a multidimensional and multidirectional view of knowledge. The process of objectivation is, for Cassirer, a differential process (see quote above). I also made some critical comments as to Cassirer’s tendency, like Kant before him, to privilege mathematics, even after his philosophy had taken a “symbolic turn.”
In the years to come, the annual Cassirer workshop will be organized differently, due to Henningsen’s retirement. Next year, therefore, the workshop will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden.
This time in Berlin I had the opportunity to spend a whole week in this city that intrigues me so much, renting an apartment in Schöneberg together with my colleague and travel companion, Ingvild (mentioned above), who, of course, also took part in the Cassirer workshop. In between my work sessions with Ingvild (we are editing yet another volume on Cassirer, this time in English) and my meetings with German colleagues, I also found the time to go to a classical concert which took place in the Spiegelsaal in Clärchens Ballhaus with its irresistible run-down splendour. My trip also included some minor excesses, such as for instance buying a fabulous dress in one of the independent designer shops in the Nollendorf neighbourhood. I simply love it! (Have to be careful now, not wanting my research blog to degenerate into a fashion blog. But one has to admit that Berlin is a shopping paradise when it comes to alternative fashion. Turning now to a safer subject like, well, the weather.) As elsewhere in Europe, this year’s winter in Berlin has been extraordinary long and hard. When I was there in February the temperatures were still freezing.
Tags: Berlin, Cassirer, cognition, Kant, mathematics, symbolic forms, tools
