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About Cassirer's Way of Thinking and Its Concepts in Myth and Art as Symbolic Form
The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
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‘Symbolic form’ is the concept of representing the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer(1874-1945). He used this concept to study the culture. To grasp the meaning of the concept makes possible total approach to culture, that is, its own form, its own way of understanding, further more its spiritual values. We need to understand symbolic forms and Cassirer's way of thinking that appears in them. This thesis notes that previous studies have the least consideration the his way of thinking and ‘symbolic form’ as a his characteristic concept has been understood abstractly, not concretely. So noting on his philosophical methodolgy, this thesis tries to keep an eye out for concrete concepts of myth and art in that Cassirer's way of thinking was expressed. First of all, along with influences of many different ways, Kant and Hegel have a great effect on Cassirer's way of thinking. From Kant, it accepts that each symbolic form as language, myth, art, religion takes its own rule, its own form, and its own direction. From Hegel, it holds wholeheartedly phenomenology of spirit, namely, self-development way of consciousness. For this, trying to obtain all the totality of spiritual forms and individuality of each special province, Cassirer seeks a factor which recurs in each basic spiritual form but in no two of them takes exactly the same shape. This factor is the symbolic form, further on, the special individual components of it as for example artistic and mythic image that the forming ability of mind has converged. This thesis suggests ‘Aperçu’ as the special individual components in the art, ‘Krisis’ in the myth. Searching ‘Aperçu’ and ‘Krisis’, it demonstrates that the symbolic form shows the self-development way of consciousness and at same time Cassirer looked the totality of mind through the symbolic form. The understanding of human mind and the anticipating of the better future in always full of life and changing life are facilitated through insights into cultures. Above all, concretely and systematically to insight into cultures needs to look at these special individual components, that is, the single focal on that the nature of mind and its whole state were imprinted. In further work, the study of his way of thinking and these special individual components must go side by side of clarifying meaning of Cassirer's symbolic form.
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