Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) was a German philosopher and a major representative of the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism. He studied, among other subjects, in Berlin and received his doctorate from Paul Natorp in 1899 with a dissertation on Descartes. After completing his habilitation, he taught in Berlin and in 1919 was appointed to the newly founded University of Hamburg. There he worked closely with the Warburg Library for Cultural Studies. His major work, the three-volume “The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms” (1923–1929), developed a systematic philosophy of culture and examined language, art, myth, and science as forms of human meaning-making. His other important works include “The Problem of Knowledge,” “The Myth of the State,” and “The Philosophy of the Enlightenment.” In 1933, Cassirer emigrated first to England and later to Sweden, where he became a Swedish citizen; in 1941 he moved to the United States.