A Study Of Cassirer’s Cultural Metaphysics

Cassirer’s Culture Philosophy is called cultural metaphysics, which is thehuman’s self-consciousness serving as the token of theoretical forms of the pursuit tothe transcendence and creativity of human integrity instead of a mode of thoughtcontradictory to dialectic.On this level, philosophy is metaphysics. Cassirer explainedhuman and human’s cultural world with symbols just the way as Marx annotatedhuman and human world with practice. Far from the defection, Cassirer’s theoryendowed practical philosophy with a more reasonable connotation. Thus, I attempt tostart to understand Cassirer’s philosophy with the concept of symbols, and through theconnection of Cassirer and the schools of philosophy which give a profound influenceto the modern philosophy we can intensify the comprehension to his culturephilosophy under the contemporary society and through which is the livinggeneration’s self-consciousness intensified.Cassirer’s cultural metaphysics is, in part, the continuity of Kant’s criticalphilosophy, the Copernican Revolution of which changed the concerning system ofphilosophy and brought the ontology’s privilege in philosophy, establishing thefoundation of the reflection from epistemology and anthropological stand forCassirer’s theory. This continuity switched the critical philosophy’s concern to thereflection of consciousness to one of symbolic convention, which managed the changefrom theoretical criticism to cultural criticism. And which is more important, thisswitch progressed the level of the reflection instead of merely enlarged the scale of it.Kant’s reflection of consciousness is attributed to the awareness of the priority ofreflection to the objects and installs human integrity into its function progress.Cassirer’s symbolic reflection, however, is because of the witness of the reflection’s superior status to ideology and the world, thus, he combined the human integrity withsymbolic convention’s function progress.Cassirer also points out that on the level of the reflection from epistemology, theonly reliable foundation for consciousness is based on the symbolic convention’sprogress. Rather than the tool to connection names and objects, symbolic is the basismaking the connection between ideology and objects possible. The ration of humanintegrity is not the governor of self-evident ideology to the objects independent fromconsciousness. For philosophy, the ideological logics and objects superior thensymbolic do not exist. Ideology is no more than chaos without symbolic, thus,reflection cannot be achieved. The progress of ration runs on the level of symbolicinstead of consciousness. So, as the rational pursuit of human integrity does not stay onconscious but on the reflection of symbolic. So as Cassirer said: Human are more ofanimals of symbolic rather than ones of ration.Cassirer is intended to find the justification of human integrity. This culturalmetaphysics continues the revolution of the metaphysics’form of existence from Kant.The metaphysicalness of human’s ration does not exist as the acquisition of thetranscendent knowledge to being of the substance and ideological system, but theemerged functional energy in the practice. For Kant, this metaphysicalness appears asthe pure practical ration itself, bringing human from potential rational existents torealistic ones, which makes human real. For Cassirer, it does not only exist in moralprogress but all symbolic progress. Seen from him, human existence form consists ofthe various symbolic convention progresses. Every symbolic convention carriesmeanings in its one form and mode, which contributes to our meaningful world.Various kinds of symbolic functions illuminate one another and each of them shows usa new aspect. It is the progress of human to the objectivity from different directions.The symbolic for language, mythology, religion, art, science and so on containshuman integrity in their own ways. They do not rely on sense-predictable characters, or in other words, the physical world, to create the universal necessity of itself. Theinherent quality of symbolic is not a replicate of nature, nor a tool of consciousness butto represent the essence of culture superior than nature.In the world created by all kinds of symbolic, the meanings are scattered.Philosophy uses reflection to find its intrinsic overall power by the study of symbolicconventions (from language to art, mythology, religion, science and so on), to findtheir functional unity the creation of this meaningful world with various methods.The comprehensibility and objectivity emitted from the center of the same humanration are various but also combined and united. And through this, we discover thehuman integrity.Here we can see that Cassirer’s cultural philosophy is not the carding of thevarious symbolic conventions and make an abstract of structural and disciplinarycultural science, nor it is a contraposition of economic philosophy and politicalphilosophy. It is an annotation of human being and human world by symbolic and tofocus the various symbolic conventions. Then we find the cultural metaphysics ofhuman integrity.Through the reevaluation of Cassirer’s cultural philosophy in the history ofphilosophy, we find that Cassirer took part in the veer of modern philosophy andstarted a new way for modern language philosophy and establish the communicationbetween philosophy and other symbolic conventions during the collapse of traditionalphilosophy, the controversy of modern scientific philosophy trend and humanism trend,and the dilemma of the choice between the scientific and literal philosophy. There itmade and led the time spirit and achieved the theory consciousness of culturalphilosophy.Cassirer established the unity theory of cogitation and existence, human and theworld by cultural practice and truly managed the cultural veer of modern philosophy.On the level of the intermediation of noumenon or improve the reflection of the issuebetween cogitation and existence on a higher level, Cassirer’s cultural philosophy andMarx’s practical philosophy share a intrinsic and profound consistency. Cassirer’s cultural philosophy tries to remark the functions of the methods used by human tograsp the world. Seen from this, the concept of symbolic is a part of practicalphilosophy and a necessary supplement for it. Cassirer treats culture as the form ofhuman existence, which highlights the civilized nature of the practical concept ofMarx.