[German] Ernst Cassirer: An Essay on Man

[German] Ernst Cassirer: An Essay on Man, translated by Gan Yang, Xiyuan Publishing House, 2nd edition, July 2004

It seems I read this book a very long time ago, and it was the Shanghai Translation Publishing House edition; but I have forgotten almost everything I read. Now I happened to pick up a discounted copy bought somewhere for 30 percent of the original price, and I don’t even know whether it is genuine or pirated, a good edition or a bad one. In any case, I just picked it up and gave it another quick read.

This book is also introductory in nature. In a not very long span of pages, Cassirer ranges quite widely: besides discussing the nature of human beings, he also touches on language, myth, religion, art, history, science, and many other things. In short, whether one wants to discuss “studies of man” or “philosophy of culture” or the like, Cassirer’s An Essay on Man is an indispensable primer.

It happened to be the first day of the Lunar New Year, and I spent the whole day at relatives’ houses, so I had not much time left for reading. For that reason, this book was still only read in haste. I do not plan to add many annotations or reflections either. But I just happened to find an electronic version of the book online: http://hep.physics.sc.edu/~liu/Library/5/2/19/renlun.htm, so I excerpted a few passages from there and checked them against the page numbers in the book. At the same time, however, I discovered that although the electronic version was obviously also translated by Gan Yang, in some places it contains a few things more than the copy I have in hand… It seems the discount on a bargain book always has its reasons…

Pages 36–41

Chapter Two Symbol: A Hint Toward Human Nature

The biologist Johannes von Uexküll wrote a book in which he set out to carry out a critical revision of biological principles. In his view, biology is indeed a natural science and should be developed according to the ordinary empirical methods, that is, the methods of observation and experiment. But on the other hand, the mode of thought of biology does not belong to the same kind of mode of thought as physics or chemistry. Uexküll was a staunch advocate of vitalism and a defender of the principle of the autonomy of life: life is an ultimate and self-determining reality, which cannot be described or explained on the basis of physics or chemistry. From this standpoint, Uexküll derived a whole new general plan for biological research. As a philosopher, he was an idealist or phenomenologist. But his phenomenology was not based on metaphysical or epistemological considerations; it was built upon empirical principles. As (page break) he pointed out, to assume the existence of some absolutely real thing that is identical and unchanging for all living beings would be a very naive dogmatism. Reality is not something single and homogeneous, but infinitely varied. As many different organisms as there are, so many different compositions and forms does reality possess. One may say that each organism is a monadic being: it has its own world, because it has its own experience. Phenomena observable in the life of some species cannot simply be transferred to any other species. The experiences of two different forms of life—and therefore their realities—are incommensurable. Uexküll says that in the world of the fly there are only “fly-things,” and in the world of the sea urchin there are only “sea-urchin-things.”

Starting from this general assumption, Uexküll developed a highly novel and distinctive system of biological worlds. In order to avoid all psychological explanation, he followed an utterly objectivist, that is, behaviorist method. He maintained that the only clue to understanding animal life is the facts provided by comparative anatomy. If we know the anatomical structure of a given species, then we also have all the materials needed to reconstruct its special mode of experience. A careful study of the animal’s bodily structure, of the number, nature, and distribution of its various sense organs, and of the condition of its nervous system, can give us an exact picture of the organism’s inner and outer worlds. Uexküll began his research with the lowest forms of life and then gradually extended it to all forms of organic life. In a certain sense he did not wish to speak of lower or higher forms of life. [For in his view] life is perfect everywhere, whether within the smallest scope or the largest, it is the same. Every organism, even the lowest, is not merely adapted to its environment in some vague sense, angepasst, but is completely fitted into its environment, eingepasst. With differences in their anatomical structures, these organisms each have a net of perception, Merknetz, and a net of action, Wirknetz—a system of receptors and a system of effectors. Without the mutual cooperation and balance of these two systems, the organism (page break) cannot survive. Through the receptor system, the organism receives external stimuli; through the effector system, it responds to those stimuli. In any case, the two systems are tightly interwoven and inseparable. They are linked together in one and the same series—a series Uexküll calls the animal’s functional circle, Funktionskreis.

It is impossible here to undertake a discussion of Uexküll’s biological principles. I mention his concepts and terminology only in order to raise a general question: can the schema proposed by Uexküll be used to describe and adequately represent the characteristics of the human world? Clearly, insofar as biological laws govern the life of all other organisms, the human world does not constitute any exception. Yet in the human world we discover what seems to be a new feature, a special mark of human life. [Compared with the animal functional circle] the human functional circle is not only expanded in quantity, but undergoes a qualitative change. In adapting itself to the environment, man seems to have discovered a new method. In addition to the receptor system and the effector system found in all animal species, in human beings there is also a third link, which may be called the symbolic system; it lies between the other two systems. This new acquisition alters the whole of human life. Compared with other animals, man not only lives in a broader reality; one may say that he lives in a new dimension of reality. There is an unbridgeable difference between the organism’s reaction and man’s response. In the former case, the answer to external stimulation is given directly and immediately; in the latter case, however, this answer is delayed—it is interrupted and postponed by the slow and complex process of thought. At first sight, such a delay seems a rather doubtful advance. Many philosophers have already warned people (page break) against this apparent progress. Rousseau said: “The contemplative man is a depraved animal.” To go beyond the bounds of organic life is not an improvement of human nature but a degeneration.

And yet there is no panacea that can prevent this reversal of the natural order. Man cannot escape his own achievements; he can only accept his own condition. He no longer lives in a merely physical universe, but in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this symbolic universe; they are the different threads that weave the symbolic net, the interlaced net of human experience. All progress that man makes in thought and experience only makes this symbolic net more refined and more firmly woven. Man can no longer confront reality directly; he cannot intuit reality as though face to face. To the extent that man’s symbolic activity grows, physical reality seems correspondingly to recede. In a sense, man is constantly dealing with himself rather than coping with things themselves. He so envelops himself in the forms of language, the imaginations of art, the symbols of myth, and the rituals of religion that, without the mediation of these man-made intermediaries, he cannot see or know anything. This condition of man in the theoretical sphere is equally manifested in the practical sphere. Even in the practical sphere, man does not live in a world of hard facts, nor does he live according to his immediate needs and desires; he lives in the passions of imagination, in hope and fear, illusion and enlightenment, fancy and dream. As Epictetus said: “What disturbs and frightens man is not things, but man’s opinions and fantasies about things.”

In sum, we can fully revise and expand the classical definition of man. Despite all the efforts of modern irrationalism, the definition of man as a rational animal has by no means lost its force. The capacity for reason is indeed an intrinsic characteristic of all human activity. Myth itself is not merely a mass of primitive superstition and crude delusion; it is by no means just a jumble, because (page break) it possesses a systematic or conceptual form. But on the other hand, one must not attribute rational characteristics to mythic structure. Language is often regarded as identical with reason, or even with the source of reason. But it is easy to see that this definition does not cover the whole field. It is a pars pro toto; it takes a part for the whole. For alongside conceptual language there is also emotional language, and alongside logical or scientific language there is also the language of poetic imagination. Language originally did not express thought or ideas, but emotion and affection. Even the kind of religion Kant envisaged and described as being “within the bounds of pure reason” is only a pure abstraction; it expresses only an ideal form, only the phantom of a truly concrete religious life. The great thinkers who defined man as a rational animal were not empiricists, nor did they intend to make an empirical statement about human nature. What they expressed through this definition was rather a fundamental moral imperative. For understanding the richness and diversity of human cultural life forms, “reason” is a very inadequate name. Yet all these cultural forms are symbolic forms. Therefore, we should replace the definition of man as rational animal with the definition of man as animal symbolicum. Only in this way can we indicate man’s distinctiveness, and also understand the new road open to man—the road toward culture.

Pages 92–94

The lesson we gain from the history of mathematical thought can be supplemented and further confirmed by other reflections that at first sight seem to belong to different fields. Mathematics is not the only discipline in which one can study the general function of symbolic thought. If we examine the development of ethical ideas and ideals, the true nature and full power of symbolic thinking become even more evident. Kant’s insight—that for the human intellect, distinguishing between the actuality and the possibility of things is both necessary and unavoidable—not only expresses the general character of theoretical reason, but likewise expresses the truth of practical reason. The striking feature of all great ethical philosophers lies precisely in the fact that they do not think on the basis of sheer actuality. Their thought cannot move a single step unless it enlarges, or even transcends, the boundaries of the real world. In addition to possessing great wisdom and moral force, the ethical teachers of mankind are also richly endowed with imagination. Their imaginative insight permeates their claims and makes them alive.

The works of Plato and his successors have always been criticized as applicable only to a wholly unreal world. But the great ethical thinkers are not afraid of this criticism. They accept it and openly despise it. Kant wrote in the Critique of Pure Reason:

“Plato’s Republic has always been regarded as a conspicuous example of an imaginary utopia. It has become a byword for the notions nurtured in the minds of fanciful thinkers. … However, it is better that we strive to understand it, to ascertain for ourselves its true meaning, than dismiss it as useless on the pretext that it cannot be realized, and cast it aside like refuse; such a pretext is base and extremely harmful. … For for a philosopher, nothing is more harmful and less worthwhile than the vulgar appeal to so-called experience as opposed to ideals. For if institutions were established according to those ideas rather than according to crude notions derived merely from experience, then these so-called contrary experiences would for the most part simply not exist at all.”

After Plato’s Republic, all the formed modern ethical and political theories expressed the same intention of thought. When Thomas More wrote his Utopia, he expressed this view in the title itself. A utopia is not a representation of the real world, that is, of the existing political and social order; it does not exist at any instant of time or any point in space, but is a nowhere. Yet it was precisely such a concept of nowhere that was tested and proved its power in the development of the modern world. It shows that the nature and character of ethical thought are by no means to humbly accept what is “given.” The ethical world is not given; it is forever in the making. Goethe said: “To live in the ideal world means to treat the impossible as though it were possible.” Great political and social reformers have indeed always had to treat the impossible as though it were possible. Rousseau, in his earliest political writings, seems to speak as a determined naturalist. He wants to restore man’s natural rights and bring man back to his original state—the state of nature. Natural man is to replace the traditional social man. But if we trace the further development of Rousseau’s thought, it becomes quite clear: even this “natural man” is far from being a physical concept; in fact, it is precisely a symbolic concept. Rousseau himself could not help admitting this fact. In the introduction to his Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, he says:

“Let us begin by putting aside facts, since facts do not affect the question. The investigations we may conduct here should not be regarded as historical truth, but merely as hypothetical and conditional inferences; they are better suited to clarifying the nature of things than to revealing their true origins, just as the systems taken by our naturalists every day to be the structure of the world are.”

Here Rousseau is trying to introduce into moral science the hypothetical method Galileo adopted in the study of natural phenomena. He firmly believed that only through this method of “hypothetical and conditional inference” can we arrive at a true understanding of human nature. Rousseau’s description of the state of nature does not intend to serve as a historical record of the past; it is a symbolic construction meant to sketch and bring into being a new future for humankind. In the history of civilization, it is always utopia that performs this task. In the philosophy of the Renaissance, it naturally became a literary genre and proved to be one of the most powerful weapons against the existing political and social order. Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Swift used it precisely for this purpose. In the nineteenth century, Samuel Butler likewise used this weapon. The great mission of utopia lies in opening up a domain for possibility against the passive acceptance of the present state of affairs. It is symbolic thought that overcomes man’s natural inertia and endows him with a new capacity, a capacity for incessantly renewing the human world.

Pages 104–109

After this brief review of the various different methods that have been used so far in answering the question, “What is man?”, we can turn to our central problem. Are these methods sufficient and exhaustive? Or is there another route leading to philosophical anthropology? Besides psychological introspection, biological observation and experiment, and historical research, is there any other path? In my *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* I have already tried to bring to light such an alternative method. The method of that book is by no means a radical innovation. It does not intend to abolish previous viewpoints, but to supplement them. *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* proceeds from the premise that if there is any definition of human nature or “essence,” then that definition can only be understood as a functional definition, not as a substantial one. We cannot define man by any inner principle that constitutes his metaphysical essence; nor can we define man by inborn capacities or instincts that can be determined by empirical observation. The distinguishing feature of man, the mark that sets him apart, is neither his metaphysical nature nor his physical nature, but Work, human labor. It is this labor, this system of human activity, that determines and delineates the circle of “humanity.” Language, myth, religion, art, science, history—all are constituent parts and sectors of this circle. Thus a “philosophy of man” must be a philosophy that enables us to perceive the basic structure of each of these human activities, while at the same time allowing us to understand these activities as an organic whole. Language, art, myth, and religion are by no means arbitrary creations unrelated to one another. They are bound together by a common bond. But this bond is not a substantial bond, as imagined and described in scholastic philosophy; it is a functional bond. What we must seek, by penetrating beneath the countless forms and manifestations of these activities, is precisely this basic function of speech, myth, art, and religion. And in the final analysis we must strive to trace it back to a common origin.

It is obvious that in carrying out this task we cannot ignore any possible source of information. We must examine all available empirical evidence and make use of all methods of introspection, biological observation, and historical inquiry. These old methods are not to be excluded but to be redirected toward a new intellectual center, and henceforth to be viewed from a new perspective（分页）. — When describing the structure of language, myth, religion, and science, we always feel the frequent need for technical psychological terminology: we speak of the “feeling” of religion, the “imagination” of art or myth, and the “thinking” of logic or reason. Without a solid foundation in scientific psychology, we cannot enter any of these domains. Child psychology provides extremely valuable clues for our study of the general development of human speech. Even more valuable, it seems, is the help we obtain from ordinary sociological research: without taking the forms of primitive society into account, we cannot understand the forms of primitive mythical thought. Most urgent of all remains the use of the historical method: the question of what language, myth, and religion “are” cannot be answered without a thorough study of their historical development.

But even if it were possible to answer all these psychological, sociological, and historical questions, we would still be only on the outer edge of the strictly “human” world; we would still not have crossed its threshold. All human labor arises under specific historical and social conditions. But unless we can grasp the universal structural principles underlying these forms of labor, we can never understand those specific conditions. In our study of language, art, and myth, the question of meaning is more important than the question of historical development. And here, too, we can make clear a slow but steady change in the methodological concepts and ideas of the empirical sciences. For example, in linguistics, the view that the history of language is identical with the whole domain of linguistic study was for a long time a generally accepted doctrine. This doctrine left its mark on the entire development of nineteenth-century linguistics. Yet today this one-sidedness seems to have been explicitly overcome.

The necessity of an independent method of descriptive analysis is now generally recognized. （分页）If descriptive analysis does not first provide some standard, we cannot expect to measure the depth of a particular branch of human culture. A cultural view of this structural kind must precede a merely historical view. History itself, if it lacks a universal structural framework, will be at a loss before an infinite mass of disorderly facts; only with the help of such a universal structural framework can it classify, arrange, and organize those facts. In the field of art history, such a framework was developed by Heinrich Wo１fflin and others. As Wölfflin firmly held, the art historian cannot possibly characterize the artistic personality of different eras or different artists unless he possesses certain basic categories of artistic description. Wölfflin discovered these categories by studying and analyzing the different styles and different possibilities of artistic expression. These possibilities are not infinite; in fact, they can be reduced to a very small number. From this viewpoint Wölfflin produced his famous descriptions of the classical and the baroque. Here the terms “classical” and “baroque” do not stand for the names of definite historical periods; they indicate certain universal structural paradigms not confined to any particular epoch. Wölfflin writes at the end of his *Principles of Art History*:

“What should be analyzed is not the art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but only the possibilities in both these cases [i.e., the classical and the baroque. — Translator] that constitute the framework of art and figurative creation. To explain these things, we can of course only start from individual works of art, but any commentary on Raphael and Titian, Rembrandt and Velázquez is only meant to illuminate the general process of things. … All things are changing, and it is difficult to respond to the man who regards history as an endless flow. For us, the intellectual self-preservation （分页） demands that we classify the infinite event according to very few effects.”

If linguists and art historians need basic structural categories for the sake of their “intellectual self-preservation,” then such categories are all the more indispensable for a philosophical description of human civilization. Philosophy cannot be satisfied with analyzing the individual forms of human culture; it seeks a universal synthetic overview embracing all the individual forms. But is not such an all-embracing overview an impossible task, a pure delusion? In human experience, we can never find the various activities that constitute the cultural world in harmonious accord. On the contrary, we see a ceaseless struggle of conflicting forces. Scientific thought refutes and suppresses mythical thought. Religion, in its highest theoretical and ethical development, must defend the purity of its own ideals against the unchecked fantasy of myth or art. Thus the unity and harmony of human culture seem at most to be nothing more than a *pium desiderium*—a pious wish—constantly frustrated by the actual course of events.

But here we must draw a clear distinction between the standpoint of material and that of form. Undoubtedly, human culture is divided into various different activities, which advance along different paths and pursue different ends. If we content ourselves with looking at the results of these activities—the creations of myth, the rites and doctrines of religion, the works of art, the theories of science—then it seems impossible to reduce them to a common denominator. But philosophical synthesis means something entirely different. Here we seek not the unity of results but the unity of activity; not the unity of products but the unity of the creative process. If the word “humanity” means anything at all, then it means this: that, despite every difference and opposition among its various forms, these forms are all striving toward a common goal. From a long-range perspective, one must be able to discover a striking feature, a universal characteristic—in which all these forms cohere and harmonize with one another. If we can determine this characteristic, then the diverging rays can be gathered into a focal point of thought. As has already been noted, this work of organizing the facts of human culture has already begun in the various special sciences—linguistics, comparative studies of myth and religion, art history. All these sciences are striving to seek certain principles, definite categories, by means of which religious phenomena, artistic phenomena, and linguistic phenomena can be brought into a systematic order. Without this synthetic work already undertaken by the sciences themselves, philosophy would have no starting point. On the other hand, philosophy cannot stop there. It must strive to achieve a greater degree of cohesion and centripetal force. In the infinitely complex and diverse phenomena of mythical imagination, religious doctrine, linguistic form, and works of art, philosophical thought reveals a universal functional unity by which all these creations are linked together. Myth, religion, art, language, and even science are now seen as numerous variations on the same main theme, and the task of philosophy is precisely to make that main theme audible and intelligible.

Pages 176–177

To define historical truth as “agreement with facts” — to make things agree with the understanding — is in no way a satisfactory answer to the question. It evades the problem rather than solving it. Undoubtedly, history must begin with facts, and in a certain sense these facts are not only a beginning but also an end, the starting point and the endpoint of our historical knowledge. But what are historical facts? The truth of all facts contains theoretical truth. When we speak of facts, we do not merely mean the data of immediate sensation; we are thinking of empirical, that is, objective facts. This objectivity is not given; it always contains an activity and a complex process of judgment. Therefore, if we want to recognize the difference between the facts of the various sciences—physical facts, biological facts, historical facts—we must begin with an analysis of judgment. We must study the forms of knowledge on which these facts depend for their intelligibility.

What is the difference between physical facts and historical facts? Both are regarded as components of the same empirical reality; both may be said to possess objective truth. But if we want to clarify the nature of this truth, we must proceed from different angles. A physical fact is established by observation and experiment. If we succeed in describing the given phenomenon in the language of mathematics, in the language of numbers, then the process of objectification has reached its （分页） end. A phenomenon that cannot be described by this method, a phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a process of measurement, is not part of our physical world. Max Planck, in defining the task of physics, said that the physicist must measure everything measurable and make everything immeasurable measurable. Not all physical things or processes are directly measurable; in many cases we depend on indirect confirmation or methods of measurement. But physical facts are always connected by causality with other phenomena that can be directly observed or directly measured. If a physicist has doubts about the result of an experiment, he can repeat it and correct it. He will find his object there from moment to moment, ready to answer his questions. But for a historian the situation is different. His facts belong to the past, and the past is gone forever. We cannot reconstruct it, cannot make it reappear in a purely physical, objective sense. All we can do is “remember” it—give it a new ideal existence. Ideal reconstruction, not empirical observation—this is the first step in historical knowledge. What we call scientific facts are always answers to a scientific question we have posed in advance. But what is the question to which the historian can address himself? He cannot face the event itself, nor can he enter into the forms of life that have passed away. He can deal with his subject only indirectly: he must consult the original sources. But these original sources are not physical things in the usual sense; all of them contain a new and special element. The historian, like the physicist, lives in the material world, yet at the beginning of his study he does not find a world of physical objects, but a symbolic universe—a world composed of symbols. He must first learn to read these symbols. All historical facts, no matter how simple they may seem, can be determined and understood only through this prior analysis of symbols. Apart from documents or remains, nothing can become the direct, firsthand object of our historical knowledge. Only through the medium and mediation of this symbolic material can we grasp the true historical material—the events and persons of the past.

Page 203

Human culture as a whole may be called the process of man’s continual self-liberation. Language, art, religion, and science are different stages in this process. At all these stages, man discovers and confirms a new power—the power to build his own world, an “ideal” world. Philosophy cannot renounce its search for the basic unity of this ideal world, but it does not confuse this unity with uniformity, nor does it overlook the tension and friction, the intense opposition and profound conflict, that exist among these different human powers. These powers cannot be reduced to a common denominator. They tend in different directions and follow different principles. But this diversity and difference do not mean inconsistency or disharmony. All these functions complement one another. Each function opens up a new horizon and shows us a new aspect of humanity. That which is in discord is in accord with itself; opposites do not exclude one another but depend on one another: “Opposition brings harmony, as in the bow and the lyre.”

January 29, 2006

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.