ERNST CASS1RER

T H E P R O B L E M OF T H E S Y M B O L A N D ITS P L A C E
I N T H E S Y S T E M OF P H I L O S O P H Y (1927)

About forty years ago, in philosophical essays written for the occasion of
Eduard Zellers' fiftieth doctoral anniversary, Friedrich Theodor Vischer
focused attention again on the concept of the symbol, which he had pre-
viously treated extensively in his aesthetics.* On that occasion he charac-
terized this concept as a changing Proceus that is difficult to come to grips
with and confine. In fact there is probably no other concept in aesthetics
that has proven to be so rich, so fruitful, and to have so many applications
as this one. But there is also hardly another one that is so difficult to
contain within the limits of a fixed definition or to unequivocally restrict
in its use and meaning. This difficulty increases and intensifies if one
takes the problem of symbolism so broadly that it does not belong ex-
clusively to any single province of thought but, as will be done in this
paper, as a systematic focal point towards which all the basic disciplines
of philosophy are directed--logic no less than aesthetics and the philosophy
of language as well as the philosophy of religion.
It is not difficult to show the importance of the concept and problem of
the symbol for the internal conceptual development of these fields. We
need only to turn to the historical advance of their basic problems to see
it stand out clearly and distinctly. But every new area seems, along with the
enrichment of the problem, to repeatedly bring a shift of problems--an
actual /z~zdfiaot; eir ~;~2o y{vo~. When we look from the philosophy of
religion to the philosophy of art and from there to logic and the philosophy
of science we find the problem of the symbol as an important concern in
all of them. Ye~: the universality of this importance must unmistakably be
paid for with a constant change of meaning. The symbol differs depending
upon each new context of thought in which it stands.
In the religious sphere where the concept of the symbolic is originaliy
rooted, it appears above all to be taken in a purely thinglike and thoroughly
"objective" sense. Here the symbol bears nothing of the merely mediated
comparison, metaphor, or emblem; it stands as an immediate reality before
us because it is immediately efficacious. In the first epoch of the Christian

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faith, according to Harnack, symbolism was not considered the opposite of
the objective or real but was rather the mysterious and sacred--the W/js-
terium to which the natural, clear, and profane was opposed. 2
However, symbolism fails in another light as soon as we leave the sphere
of religious meaning and look at aesthetic meaning. Here its actuality and
reality as a thing now seems more and more to fade while a new aspect
that is genuinely ideal appears all the more distinctly. In the whole of
speculative aesthetics from Plotinus to Hegel the notion and problem of
the symbol arises exactly at that point where the relationship between the
world of the senses arid the intelligible world, i.e., beween appearance and
reality, is to be determined. The beautiful is essentially and necessarily a
symbol because, to an extent, it is d e f t within itself. It is always both a
unity and double. The internal division of the beautiful between adherence
to and transcendence of the sensory, not only expresses the tension which
pervades the world of our consciousness but also expresses the original and
fundamental polarity of being itself~the dialectic that maintains between
the finite and the infinite or between the absolute idea and its represen-
tation and embodiment within the world of particular beings.
Another situation confronts us again within the area of purely logical
problems. Here too the order and development of these problems shows
that the coherence of the logical world of form cannot be adequately
grasped or exactly represented unless we use certain concrete material
signs for this representation. Through them as representatives of logical
meaning, its inner structure is truly opened up to us for the first time.
In modern philosophy it was most of all Leibniz who first realized this
fundamental relationship and pursued it in every direction. It is well known
how this, his basic view, like his demand for a "universal characteristic"
that should always accompany logic, proved itself in his work and showed
its productive capacity in the creation of the algorithm of the infinitesimal
calculus. However, it has been effective far beyond these quarters. In fact
it is not saying too much to maintain that the entire scientific development
of logic and mathematics as it was carried out in the nineteenth century
stood under its influence. The continuing development of Leibniz' leading
idea has led, on the one hand, to Hermann Grassman's calculus of ex-
tension just as, on the other hand, the effort to found symbolic logic with
Boole, Peano, and Russell has depended on it. And today the princeps
mathernaticorum, a thinker like Hilbert, sees the sole salvation of mathe-
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 THE PROBLEM OF THE SYMBOL IN PHILOSOPHY
matics along these lines. His only hope for securing its foundations and a
consistent proof of the absence of contradictions is from a general 'fformal-
ization" of mathematics that is carried out to full completion,a
This trend is so strong and dominant that under its influence a complete
transformation in the understanding of the object of mathematics has begun
to assert itself. Now the actual object of mathematics is no longer numbers
or quantities but rather the perceived sensory signs themselves. "Because I
assume this attitude," Hilbert emphasizes, "the objects of the theory of
numbers for me, in direct opposition to Frege and Dedekind, are the signs
themselves... Herein lies the firm philosophical attitude which I hold to
be requisite to the foundation of pure mathematics as well as to atl scien-
tific thinking, understanding, and communication; in the beginning--we
must say--was the sign. ''~
Certainly we may not overlook or ignore the fact that this radical con-
clusion is still quite contested today. A dangerous opponent to Hilbert's
attempt at a reduction of all mathematics to a "theory of signs" has arisen
in the "intuitionist mathematics" reprensented by Brouwer and Weyl. But
the attempt itself to fit the entire contents of mathematics into a "theory of
signs" in his way is characteristic of a typical and fundamental directio.n of
modern mathematical thought. We need only to indicate briefly how much
this way of thinking has influenced the understanding of scientific concepts
and their epistemological foundations.
As early as with Helmholtz the concept of the sign becomes central to
the epistemology of science. It is responsible for the unique form of his
entire theory of perception and his presentation of physiological optics. In
addition, Heinrich Hertz has pursued this direction of thought further and
given it precise and explicit formulation in his Principles of Mechanics.
According to Hertz all scientific thinking and all concept and theory for-
mation in physics consists in a fundamental symbolic activity. "We form
for ourselves images or symbols of external objects; and the form which
we give them is such that the necessary consequents of the images are
always the images of the necessary consequents in nature of the things
pictured."5
Now we must ask ourselves, however, if the very abundance of appli-
cations to which the concept of ~he symbol has proven to lend itself has not
progressively eroded and destroyed its clear and definite content. Do we
realIy still have a unified systematic problem to deal with here, which

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extends to all areas of knowledge and all provinces of culture ? Or do we
not, on the contrary, have a question possessing merely an apparent unity
that dissolves into a mere word as soon as we try to grasp and define it
more closely ? Does the term "symbol" as it is used today in the philosophy
of religion, aesthetics, logic, and the philosophy of science conceal some
kind of unified content ? Does it refer to an all-embracing function of
thought that remains the same in its basic characteristics even though it takes
on a new and unique form in each of its outgrowths ? But if this is so,
where do we find the unifying bond that connects the profusion and
variety of meanings which the concept of the symbol has gradually as-
sumed in its immanent development ?
In the closely measured time that is available to me here I cannot think
of answering this question with real exactitude and precision, let alone
attempt to give a truly systematic foundation for the answer that I have in
mind. I can only try to present a few guidelines that should serve more to
suggest the course for inquiry than provide you with any positive findings.
In accordance with this let me begin with a simple example that should
place us in the center of the question. We start with a particular perceptual
experience, with a line drawing that we see before us and which we take
in some way as an optical structure and as a connected whole. ~ Here we
can direct ourselves to the purely sensory "impression" of this drawing and
take it perhaps as a simple drawn line which differs and stands out from
others through certain visible qualities and basic characteristics of its spatial
form. 7 We do not need to concern ourselves for the time being with
whether spatial form is thereby already included and imparted in this
simple sensory impression or if this organization itself only results through
the cooperation of higher mental functions. Nor need it concern us now
if perhaps what we usually refer to as the immediate "perception" of space
already embraces definite intellectual processes such as "unconscious infer-
ences." The experience of perception itself as a purely phenomenal actual-
ity in any case exhibits no such division. It is only subsequently introduced
through epistemological or psychological analysis.
But while devoting myself to this simple experience of perception, while
I follow the individual lines of the drawing in their visible proportion, in
their lightness and darkness, in their contrast against the background, and
their upward and downward design the drawn line suddenly begins, as it
were, to animate itself from within as a whole. The spatial image becomes

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 THE PROBLEM OF THE SYMBOL IN P H I L O S O P H Y
an aesthetic image. In it I see the character of a particular ornament that
combines for me a certain artistic meaning with a particular artistic signifi-
cance. I can be engrossed in the pure contemplation of this ornament. I can
represent it to myself, so to speak, as something timeless. Or, instead, I see
in it something else; it presents itself to me as an excerpt and expression of
an artistic language in which I recognize the language of a certain time
and the style of an historical epoch. This style and the entire artistic aim
of the time stands all at once pregnant and alive before me in the concrete
experience of the line drawing.
And once again the form of consideration can change so that what at
first presented itself to me as a pure ornament discloses itself as the carrier
of a mythic-religious meaning. As soon as I do not merely grasp this
meaning outwardly with reflection but am rather seized inwardly by it so
that I live in it and am consumed by it, then the shape which I see before
me is as though saturated and impregnated with a new meaning. It is
surrounded by a tinge of magical enchantment. It no longer acts as a
mere aesthetic form but is like a primeval revelation from another world,
from the world of the "sacred. ''s Here; in the middle of sensory phenomena,
it overwhelms whoever is open to it with mystery and awe.
FinalIy, we can deliberately draw a sharp contrast between this form of
interpretation and inner assimilation and another one which is diametrically
opposed to it. Where the aesthetic observer and connoisseur devotes him-
self to the perception of pure form and where the form reveals a mystical
meaning to the religious person, the form which is visible to the eye can
aIso offer itself to thought as an example of a purely logical conceptual
structure. As Plato said, the constellations themselves mean nothing to the
calculating astronomer but serve him only as "paradigms" through which he
becomes conscious of the purely mathematical nature of their movement and
the timeless ideal essences of "faster" and "slower." Thus for the mathe-
matical mind the line drawing becomes nothing but a visible graphic
representation of a certain functional development. He perceives something
in its immediately given form that is completely beyond perception as such.
He sees in it the illustration of a law, a form of ideal relation, which is
the last foundation of all mathematical thought.
And here too it is the whole of the presented form, not merely a part
or fragment of it, that appears from this point of view and is accordingly
imbued with a certain content of meaning. Where the attitude of aesthetic

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contemplation perhaps sees a beautiful line in the style of Hogarth, the
mathematician's view sees the illustration of a certain trigonometrical func-
tion such as the illustration of a sine curve, while the mathematical
physicist perhaps recognizes in just this same curve the law of a certain
natural process such as the law of periodic oscillation.
We attempt to express this systematic relationship by considering the
fundamental sensory experience with which we are dealing in this case as
received into, determined, and given form by various "symbolic forms. ''~
However, this way of speaking should not and may not be understood as
though we were dealing here with a case of the separation or temporal
succession of "form" and "matter." If we may distinguish these in the
manner of Husserl's terminology, between the sensory material and ani-
mating acts, between the sensual ~2~ and intentional # o 9 ~ , then this
abstract separation can never mean that these may be separated in the
phenomenon or that in i~self formless matter were something given that is
gradually taken up into various modes of interpretation and subsequently
given shape by then. 1'~ Whoever in this way converts the Kantian "dualism"
of form and matter, which is a difference of meaning and transcendental
"validity," into a separation of things actually existing next to and apart
from each other has thereby already missed the decisive point of view
needed for the profound understanding of this difference.
For us, in any case, it is certain that phenomenologically sensation and
meaning are only given as in indivisible unity. 1~ We can never completely
separate the sensory as such, as some naked "raw material" of sensation,
from the whole complex of meaning relationships. Yet we can indicate the
different ways it appears and how it signifies and refers, according to the
perspective of meaning under which it comes.
Philosophy is not permitted to settle for establishing one of these points
of view no matter how comprehensive it may nonetheless appear to be.
Instead, it must attempt to encompass them all in a higher synopsis and
understand each of them in its constituive principle, for it is precisely the
totality of these prindples which constitutes the objective unity and total-
ity of mind. 12 A strictly "critical" philosophy cannot direct its attention
towards schematically simplifying the wealth and profusion that is offered
here in the fundamental attitudes of cultural consciousness by trying to
force them together into a general form. We must rather try to grasp in
concreto the particular manner in which the sensory becomes the carrier of

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 THE PROBLEM OF THE SYMBOL IN P H I L O S O P H Y
meaning within each of these areas. And we must show what the funda-
mental laws are under which all these various processes stand.
In all of these particular worlds of form, no matter how they differ in
principle and structure, there is nonetheless a certain directionality in their
order and a certain manner in which they develop from elementary to more
complex forms. By trying briefly and therefore, of course, only in an
abstract and schematic way to indicate the guidelines of this development
we can introduce a very broad relational system of thought according to
which we want do describe and ascertain the "orientation" of each symbolic
form.
Just as we can completely render the shape of a spatial curve by intro-
ducing three vertical axes one after another and measuring the distance of
every point of the curve from these axes, so it is permissible to distinguish
three various dimensions of symbolic formation from each other, la The
simplest and in a sense the most original and primitive type of this relation
is found wherever a sensory experience of some sort confronts us, pos-
sessing a certain content of meaning such that a kind of expressive value
adheres to it with which it seems to be saturated. Even here we are in a
fundamental way beyond the abstraction of a "mere" sensation as dogmatic
sensationalism understands it. This is because the sensory content stands
before us, as Spinoza says, not like a mute picture on a tablet but rather
immediately manifests an inner life as something that appears through its
objective nature. This transparence of the sensory is inherent in every
aesthetic perception but it is by no means restricted to the area of the
aesthetic. It can be recognized nonetheless in every instance of spoken
language and in every elementary form of myth.
Our inquiry here is not directed to the possibility of this state of affairs,
nor are we trying to recognize the fundamental psychological or metaphys-
ical characteristic that gives something external and sensory the power to
express something mental in this way and immediately reveal it to us. The
answers that have been proposed to this question either misinterpret the
problem that we are dealing with here by substituting another situation for
it, such as the logical content of an analogical inference, or, at best, they
merely create another name for the phenomenon by speaking of a symbolic
empathy of the internal into the external. Yet the more problematic that
all theories of the primary phenomenon of expression prove themselves to
be the deeper we examine them, expression still remains clearly and defi-

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nitely before us as a phenomenon. ~4
On the other hand, however, a look at language and especially the lin-
guistic sentence, which can more rightly be termed the actual elementary
linguistic structure than can the word, shows that languages does not remain
in this first sphere, the sphere of expression. Instead, it must necessarily
transcend it in order to fulfill its actual task. For in every sentence there
is always a certain positing which aims at an objective state of affairs that
language seeks to contain and describe in some way. Here we do not just
have to do with the mere communication of states of the speaker. Rather,
a relationship in being is asserted which is supposed to maintain "in itself"
and is conceived to be accessible and essentially understandable in the same
way to every sensitive, perceiving, and thinking subject. The "is" of the
copula is the purest and most pregnant mark of this new dimension of
language. It can be signified with the term that Bikbler introduced with
reference to Husserl as the Darstellungsfunktion (representative function).
But beyond this function of representation yet another and third sphere
appears which we want to term of reine Bedeutung (pure significance). It
is distinguished from the sphere of representation by the fact that it has
separated itself from the basis of observational configurations in which
representation is rooted and out of which it continuously draws its strength.
It is suspended, so to speak, in the free ether of pure thought. The sign in
the sense of pure signification serves to be expressive nor representative. It
is a sign in the sense of an abstract coordination. It presents a reciprocal
relationship and correspondence that is grasped as a general law. But we
muse refrain from thinking of the elements which enter into this relation-
ship as independent entities and contents that can exist and have meaning
outside of this relation.
This relationship is perhaps most clearly seen in the modern foundations
of geometry introduced by Pasch and brought to completion by Hilbert. In
the system of Pasch and Hilbert points, lines, and planes, which we are
accustomed to view in terms of the older interpretations as perceptual
structures, have now lost all of their representative meaning. Now they
only function as signs for a certain purely significant content for that
mathematical content of meaning that is formulated in the axioms of geom-
etry. Whatever fulfills these axioms can be chosen as representative of this
content. The important thing in every genuine geometric proposition is the
constitutive law of this content, not the perceptual character of the elements.

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Thus the points and straight lines in this abstract geometry can be re-
placed in a certain manner by structures of a completely different perceptual
nature. The variety of perceptual interpretations does not change anything
of the character of the logical content of the particular geometry in question
because this is based solely upon the pure form of the axioms themselves,
that is, on general principles of coordination and not on particular forms
and structures.
If we take this general differentiation of the expressive, representative,
and significative functions as our basis, which I can, of course, no more than
sketch for you, then we have a general plan of ideal orientation within
which we can now indicate to a certain extent the position of each symbolic
form. Of course this position cannot be indicated in the sense of something
fixed for all time so that it could be referred to within this basic plan by
a stationary point. On the contrary, it is characteristic for each form that in
the various stages of its development and formation in thought it has a
dffferent relationship to the three basic poles that we have tried to distin-
guish here. ~5 It shifts positions in this development and in virtue of this
movement is able to attain its own area of being and meaning. Thereby it
reaches its completion and internal limits.
Let us try to make this clear once more with the example of language.
There can be no doubt how very much language is founded on the purely
expressive and how strongly it is rooted in it from its most primitive
forms to its highest stages. As one-sided and insufficient as it is to attempt
to understand language, merely as expressive movement, as did Wundt, and
to attempt to determine its essential intellectual character from that per-
spective, there can still be no doubt that a certain expressive or "physiog-
nomic" character still adheres in highly developed language. The modern
psychology of expression has called attention to these features of language.
Heinz Werner has recently undertaken experiments in the Hamburg psycho-
logical laboratory to try to shed light on this physiognomic side of linguistic
experiences. On the other hand, however, there is no question that only a
single stage or dimension of linguistic expression is thereby of concern and
that language as a whole is truly constituted and perfected only when it
goes beyond this stage.
In order to make the nature and continuity of this process clear to us one
needs only to observe the procedure that is usually employed in language to
coin the first designations for spatial relationships. Language has a new

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task wherever such relationships are signified linguistically, where '!here" is
distinguished from "there," where the location of the speaker is distin-
guished from the one spoken to, or where greater nearness or distance is
rendered by various indicative particles. Here the merely subjective sensation
and stimulus is transformed into an objective perception and sounds that
express feeling become sounds with representational meaning.
The continuity of development that is manifested here consists in the
fact that the new form to which language is now elevated still uses the
older material means. The old characteristically expressive components are
not discarded. Rather these are preserved while at the same time they are
given a new meaning and, as it were, a new life.
This two-sided relationship or bipolar character is clearly recognizable
in the basic indicative words, the demonstrative pronouns of primitive
languages. They come from a purely "physignomic" determination,
shading, and coloration of the vowel. But in this sensory tone color-
ation they contain certain basic distinctions of the objective world
view. The sharper vowel, for instance, signifies nearness to the speaker,
the duller, greater distance. And in a similar manner the direction from
the ego to the other, that is, the centrifugal direction, is distinguished from
the opposite centripetal direction.
Temporal directions can also be differentiated in this way solely by
sound. In the Somali languages, for example, the vowel "a" serves as a
suffix to a noun in order to signify it as present temporally while the
vowel %" indicates the temporally absent past or future. Thus language
proceeds from expressive meaning to pure representative meaning and
from this it is constantly directed towards the third realm of pure signifi-
cance.
Language is not confined to the sphere of the observable and tangible
but attempts to grasp what is ultimate and highest in the realm of thought.
But of course the limits of language become visible in this attempt. For
even where language is elevated to the expression of pure relations, sensory
coloration still adheres to it. The attempt has been repeatedly made to
contain the expression of purely logical distinctions and relations in lan-
guage using images taken from the sphere of immediate observation. This
is perhaps most clearly seen in the most universal expression o f relation,
the copula of the predicative sentence. The pure "is" of the predicative
statement is signified in the majority of languages, including highly de-

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veloped and refined ones, in such a way that a secondary perceptual conno-
tation adheres to it so that logical "being" is replaced by the spatial being
of "here" or "there." Thereby the holding of a relation is replaced by a
statament about existence, a proposition about a certain entity and its
nature. A basic characteristic of language shows itself in this kind of
substitution, which it cannot abandon without forfeiting its own nature.
Thinkers in the tradition of philosophical sensationalism frequently liked
to refer to this fact in order to conclude from language's inability to
break through the sensory perceptual sphere that the same inability holds
for thought as a whole. Locke makes use of the theory of language in
order to utilize it as one of the foremost pieces of evidence for his theory
of knowledge. But the most essential aspect is thereby overlooked because
although pure cognition can in no way dispense with language as a genuine
Organon of thought, it changes this instrument in this very employment. It
is not bound by the limits of spoken natural language. Instead, thought
extends this beyond its original nature by making it serviceable for its own
ends. Now, that universal language or Lingua universalis is developing, as
already foreseen by Descartes and Leibniz, as a necessary organ for the
progress of scientific thought. Only today in modern mathematics and
symbdic Iogic, which serves as its foundation, has it reached its true
cultivation and consummation. With this, language has completely left
the area in which it is originally rooted. It has resolutely cast aside every-
thing that is merely expressive. Nothing adheres to the signs of the
symbolic language of mathematics and logic that in any way includes a
relationship to the "subject" or to the individual world of feeling and
sensation. They serve exclusively to represent the most general, objective,
and necessary states of affairs.
But also the world of observation to which the representative function
of language is always directed now begins more and more to recede. It
finally disappears completely in the new worId that comes into view here.
As our awareness of this world grows it impresses its unique characteristics
upon us more and more. Russell has given a well-known humorous defini-
tion of pure mathematics, which says that it is an area in which one
never knows what one is talking about or if that which one says is true.
Naturally this definition seeks in no way to deny the specific significance
of pure mathematics or, what is synonymous with it for Russell, pure logic.
But it does deny that this significance still requires any observational basis

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or object. Here the final radical step has been taken; the realm of pure
relations and meanings has become independent and absolved itself from
every bond to observational existence. The specific nature and tendency
of this separation is particularly prominent where it is not confined to the
sphere of pure mathematics as a theory of abstract formal relations but
extends to the cognition of reality and defines it in accordance with this
new ideal.
It can be said that it is precisely this new methodological approach and
revision in the basic view of the meaning and means at the disposal of the
,cognition of nature that is responsible for the crisis in modern mathematical
physics. What principally differentiates the world of classical mechanics
from the world view of the general theory of relativity is the different
roles and importance which they assign to observation in the construction
and constitution of the scientific object, the object of experience. Of course
the classical Newtonian system is also based upon concepts that are prin-
cipally of a non-observational nature. Newton's absolute space and time,
which flows evenly according to its own nature separately from all relations
to an outer object, are n o t observational concepts. However, when one
considers their structure more closely it turns out that they refer throughout
to the field of observational being and that they are derived from it by a
continual process of progressive idealization. They merely follow to: the end
the path which perception points out. They subjugate physical being to a
fixed geometric observational scheme within which all natural processes are
to be ordered. Space and time appear here at least as analogies of empirical
perceivable entities. Even in their absoluteness they are still understood as
thinglike concrete structures.
The concept of mass in Newtonian physics also has this concrete sub-
-stantial character. A piece of matter can be fixed as a self-identical thing
and recognized in various locations in space as being one and the same. It
,can to an extent be followed by our gaze in all phases of its movement.
'The infinite number of positions which it can occupy in space at different
times form nonetheless a surveyable totality insofar as they steadily emerge
:from each other and are all bound to the same observational substratum.
But precisely this substantiality of space, time, and mass has been pro-
gressively abandoned by modern physics. Already Maxwell's theory of light
and electricity forms here an important and methodologically essential be-
.ginning. The mechanical theory of light had to attempt to explain optical

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phenomena by thinking of them in the image of a certain movement
modeled on that of rigid bodies. Even after it had progressed from the
theory o,f undulation, the light waves were still considered as something
concrete, as a movement of particles, which propagated themselves in the
medium of ether in the same manner that a wave spreads out in water or
the vibration of an elastic string spreads through the air. Maxwe11's theory,
on the other hand, breaks through this manner of explanation. In place of
this kind of description of physical processes, which is like a transcription
into known observational circumstances, there is a purely mathematical
definition. Every single position of the ether is associated with a certain
state of affairs. The periodic changes of these states as it is expressed by
certain equations replaces the metaphorical figurative expression of the
"light wave." The character of the ether is restricted to the face that for
every one of its points two directed quantities are given, the magnetic and
electrical vector. It is well-known how modern theory has progressed in this
direction and has become the pure physics of fields. But it could only
complete this transformation by freeing itself more and more from the
restrictive demands of o bservability upon which older theory was based.
I do not need to enter any further into all of these matters; here they
should only serve as a confirmation of how the "symbols" in which the
modern physicist describes the process of nature have in fact taken the last
decisive step and left the area of observation and representation for the
province of pure signification. The newer mathematics and physics have
not gone this way by chance. They have been led to it by the peculiar
character of their methods and their objects. Of this there can be no
serious doubt. But the kind of intellectual symbolic formation that is effec-
ted here now stands out all the more sharply from the basic attitudes of
other areas of thought.
In this regard and before this audience I do not need to enter into the
particularity of aesthetic form. x6 One thing is immediately clear. The aes-
thetic object is rooted in the world of perception and its conditions in a
wholly other and far deeper sense than is the case with the empirical
physical object. No matter how far or how high aesthetic representation
reaches beyond the sensory givenness of appearances or how much it strives
towards the ideal--the area of vor]zdv xd~,~o;---it remains restricted to
perceptual being and must closely cling to it.
It appears to have become more difficult for aesthetic theory to under-

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stand the relationships which maintain within aesthetic apprehension and
formation, between the world of pure expression and the world of pure
representation. Not infrequently the attempt has been made to. relate the
aesthetic exclusively or at least chiefly to one of these two poles and thereby
to give it a foundation. There are aesthetic systems that try so much to
restrict art to the emotional and have it so fully absorbed by purely
expressive experiences that, as a result, that which is characteristic of the
aesthetic object is almost lost. On the other hand, there are others that
try to separate the aesthetic in the strict and actual sense from its roots in
subjective "feeling" so that to them it becomes nothing but a certain basic
form of understanding and knowing objects which as such stands on the
same level as the theoretical knowledge of nature.
But the specific form of the aesthetic is unmistakably negated rather
than recognized through this isolation and abstract opposition of the "sub-
jective" and the "objective." What is unique about the basic character of
the aesthetic form of meaning is that in it these two motifs, which prove
to be separable and relatively independent of each other in other forms of
meaning, no longer are separated and stand instead in a purely correlative
kind of relationship. Here we can no longer ask which of these two aspects,
the aspect of expression or the aspect of representation, is the azOdzeOov z~
9),5ore, the earliest or the later according to nature. For the nature of the
aesthetic itself excludes every such anterior and posterior relationship of
dependence of the one on the other. It is the merger of the one in the other,
the ideal balance which presents itself between them that constitutes the
aesthetic stance as well as the aesthetic object. Here I would like to appeal
to what Herr Prinzhorn presented yesterday on the problem of rhythm. 17
The gist of his characterization of rhythm was precisely that it is the
equalization of the tension between the poles of expression and represen-
tation. Glancing once more at language, the language of poetry is distin-
guished from that of ordinary life and from that of science by the fact
that for it there is no opposition and no separation of representative mean-
ing. It aims at pure representation in the power of pure expression and vice-
versa. Every perfected poem by Goethe, for instance, presents us with both
in an indissoluable unity and totality. It is completely submerged in a
par{icular mood and saturated with it in every tone .and in its entire rhyth-
mical movement. But precisely in this melodic-rhythmic expressive content a
new shape of the world is constructed for us which then stands before us

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 THE PROBLEM OF THE SYMBOL IN PHILOSOPHY
objectively. The various art forms, poetry, music, and spatial arts, including
painting and sculpture, may attain this unity in various ways and by
different means but it is absent in none of them because it belongs to the
essence of artistic formation as such.
I cannot enter more closely into the host of interesting specific questions
which a treatment of the topic that has been given to me demands, t have
only attempted here to sketch a general outline. I just wanted to create a
framework for a treatment of the problem of the symbol, realizing that I
cannot fill it out in any fashion. Filling out this framework must be left
to the individual lectures, each of which will illuminate the problem from a
particular angle.
By way of conclusion I may at least say a few words about a very general
basic question that arises with the analysis of every symbolic form. One
cannot even use the term "symbol" without raising the general question
which we may call the question of truth. A symbol would not be a symbol
if it did not lay claim to a kind of truth. A mere sign that is detached
from every relationship to something that is to be signified or to a meaning
that it seeks to contain and bring to expression would thereby no longer be
a sign. It would be reduced to a mere presence in which the characteristic
sign function was extinguished. The difference, therefore, between our
idealistic interpretation of symbolic forms and a realistic view does not lie
in any denial of the objective nature of these forms. On the contrary, the
attempt here is to establish this objective nature and to understand it by
means of a general principle.
Kant saw the basic character of Platonic idealism in the fact that Plato
did not stop with the "copy view of the physical world order" but elevates
himself instead to a view of its "architectonic connection." In this sense
the standpoint of the mere "copy view" must be exchanged for that of
"architectonic connection" in every sphere of objectivity, no matter what
kind or type it is. Such a sphere cannot, by the simple imitation and
rendering of some given being, evidence the truth and objectivity which
characteristically belongs to it, but accomplishes this rather in the meaning-
ful order of the construction that it carries out by virtue of an original
formative principle.
It is well known how this basic thought has proven itself in the
"Copernican revolution" that Kant executed in his attempt to lay the
foundations of cognition. Nature, the object of knowledge, stands under

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 ERNST CASSIRER
the pure concepts of the understanding because it is these alone which
allow us to spell out appearances so that we can read them as experiences---
that is, so that we can unite them to objective wholes. But we also have
to realize that besides in purely theoretical cognition the respective form
of synthesis, the synopsis, does not imitate the object that is seen in this
synthesis, but constitutes it. To be sure, aesthetics like the critique of
knowledge has also taken centuries until it learned to understand and define
the concept of "natural truth" in this sense. Again and again it was
forgotten that nature as "beautiful" nature is not given nor set before the
sculptor or painter as the goal of imitation. Instead it is the character and
course of artistic creativity out of which the modes of viewing nature
typical of the individual arts originally come. The stylistic law and hence
the immanent law of truth cannot be taken from some fixed "nature of
things." It is rather the independent originality and autonomy of this law
which itself determines this truth. The agreement with this inner no~m,
which is a norm of productive activity, gives the work its basis. In this
sense the aesthetic of the eighteenth century, the aesthetics of Mendelssohn
and Lessing, already pronounced this thought by asserting that we must
begin with the kind of signs that each art uses in order to reach a certain
demarcation of its area and possibilities. 1. The definition of an art lies in
what it is capable of by virtue of its specific signs, not in what other arts
are just as much or more capable of accomplishing. In the end this principle
of Lessing's informs us that it is none other than the style of each art that
is decisive in determining its immanent truth and its objects--not the other
way around.
If we conceive this basic thought in general terms then we are thereby
required, as in the case of the individual arts, to inquire after the law of
formation in all areas of thought and through this law to understand the
objective structures that become visible in them. Let us recall once again
our example of the line drawing that could be first taken as an aesthetic
ornament, then as a magic-mythic insignia, and then again as a mathematical
curve which served to indicate a functional development. This drawing
had a completely different character as an object in each instance. In this
way it now becomes clear how that which we call the object is not to
be understood in the manner of a fixed and rigid forma substantialis but
rather as a functional form. At the same time it can be seen how the
richness of being originally unfolds out of the richness of meaning and

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how the manifold character of the meanings of being do not stand in
contradiction to the demand for the unity of being. It is this manifoldness
that actually fulfills the demand for this unity.

Translated by John Michael Krois

NOTES

1 Friedrich T h e o d o r e Vischer, " D a s S y m b o l " in Philosophische Aufsiitze : Eduard ZeIler zu

selnem fiin/zigjiihrigen Doktor-.lubiliium gewidmet ( L e i p z i g : F u e s ' s V e r l a g , 1887, pp. 153-193.
- Trans.
A d o l p h yon H a r n a c k , Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2nd ed. ( F r e i b u r g : J. C. B. M o h r ,
1894), I, 198. - Cassirer.
3 F o r C a s s i r e r ' s v i e w of m a t h e m a t i c s see The Problem o] Knowledge : Philosophy, Science,
and History since Hegel, trans. W . H . W o g l o m and C. W . H e n d e l ( N e w H a v e n : Ya!e
University Press, 1950), pp. 47-80 a n d The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, trans. R a l p h
M a n h e i m ( N e w H a v e n : Yale U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1957), I I I , 357-405. The latter w o r k is
hereinafter cited as pSI: with the a p p r o p r i a t e v o l u m e n u m b e r . - Trans.
4 D a v i d Hilbert, " N e u b e g r i l n d u n g der M a t h e m a t i k , " Abhandlungen aus dem Mathematischen
Seminar der Hamburgerschen Universitiit, 1 (1922), 163. - Cassirer.
5 H e i n r i c h HertZ, The Principles o/ Mechanics Presented in a New Forum, trans. D. E.
J o n e s and J.-T. W a l l e y ( N e w Y o r k : D o v e r Publications, 1956), p. 1. - Trans.
6 C a s s i r e r employs this s a m e e x a m p l e in two other publications to illustrate and explain his
theory of the n a t u r e of symbolism. Cf. the c h a p t e r on " S y m b o l i c P r e g n a n c e " in PSF, I I I ,
191-204 and ' i Z u r L o g i k des S y m b o l b e g r i f f s , " reprinted in Wesen und Wirkung des Symbol-
begri]/s ( D a r m s t a d t : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1956), pp. 211-18. T o g e t h e r these
discussions o f f e r C a s s l r e r ' s m o s t explicit statements on his theory of symbolism. Wesen und
Wirkung des Symbolbegri/ls is h e r e i n a f t e r cited as W W . - Trans.
7 F o r further details of C a s s i r e r ' s v i e w of perception see PSF, I I I , 58-91 a n d 105-90. -
Trans.
s F o r a detailed s t a t e m e n t of the role of the concept of the sacred in m y t h see PSF, II,
73-82. - T r a n s .
9 C a s s i r e r first uses the t e r m " s y m b o l i c f o r m " in print in 1921 in the G e r m a n edition of
Einstein's Theory o] Relativity, reprinted in Zur modernen Physik ( D a r m s t a d t : Wissensehaft-
licho Buchgesellschaft, 1964), p. 110. Cf. Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory o/
Relativity, trans. W . C. S w a b e y and M. C. Swabey (1923; rpt. N e w Y o r k : D o v e r Pub~.ications,
1953), p. 447. - T r a n s .
lo F o r C a s s i r e r ' s criticism of H u s s e r l in this r e g a r d see the c h a p t e r on " S y m b o l i c P r e g n a n c e , "
PSF, I I I , 191-204. - T r a n s .
11 A detailed explanation of this point can be f o u n d in the essay, " Z u r L o g i k des Symbol-
b e g r i f f s , " reprinted in W W . - T r a n s .
12 F o r details see the general introduction in PSF, I, 73-114. - Trans.
13 T h e three functions of expression, representation, and pure signification m e n t i o n e d in
this lecture are elaborated in the third v o l u m e of The Philosophy o/ Symbolic Forms ~eoere
they f o r m the basis f o r C a s s i r e r ' s v i e w of " p h e n o m e n o l o g y . " - T r a n s .
14 F o r other discussions of the " p r i m a r y p h e n o m e n o n " (Urphiinomen) m e n t i o n e d here see
PSF, I I I , 92-93, 123, 144, 176, 323 and The Logic o/ the Humanities, trans. Clarence H o w e
( N e w H a v e n : Yale U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1960), p. 176. - T r a n s .

427
 ERNST CASSIRER
t5 See in this regard Cassirer's view of the development of symbolic forms from a mimetic
stage to an analogical and purely symbolic form, PSF, I, 186-197; " D e r Bcgriff der sym-
bolischen F o r m im Aufbau der Geisteswissenschaften," WW, pp. 186-97; and " F o r m und
Technik," in Kunst und Technik, ed. Leo Kestenberg (Berlin: Volksverband der Biicher-
freunde, 1930), pp. 46-50. - Trans.
16 F o r more o~a Cassirer's views of aestaaeties see the chapter on art in A n Essay on Man
(New Haven : Yale University Press, 1944). - Trans.
l r Hans Prinzhorn, "Rhythmus im Tanz," Zeitschri/t fi~r Aesthetik und allgerneine Kunst-
wissenscha]t, 21 (1927), 276-87, esp. 286-287. - Trans.
r8 For a related discussion see Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy o/ the Enlightenment, trans.
F. C . A . Koeller and .I.P. Pettegrove (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), alaapter
7. - Trans.

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