Critical Idealism as Method: Ernst Cassirer and the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

To commemorate the centenary of Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy
of Symbolic Forms this essay focuses on how Cassirer in the
development of a distinctive philosophical method analyzed
the newest development within philosophy and science.
Discussing Einstein's theory of relativity and Russell's formal
logic Cassirer found tools to expand the critique of reason
into a critique of culture. The course of argumentation is as
follows. At the outset Cassirer's outline of the idea of The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in the 1920 book Einstein's
Theory of Relativity is presented as a reaction to the increasing
distance between theoretical physics and ordinary experience.
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms can be read as an
answer to an inner methodological demand within critical
idealism. I encircle this motif in Cassirer's comment that
Plato's idealism, understood as the dianoia of thought, is
reiterated in Kant's transcendental philosophy and Herman
Cohen's reception of Kant. This leads to a discussion of
how Cassirer breaks away from Cohen by the positive
reception of Russell's symbolic logic. Finally, I present the
theory of functional concepts developed by Cassirer (1910)
in the book Substance and Function as a prerequisite for the
conception of a plural but systematic philosophy of symbolic
forms.