The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

The Symbolic Forms has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works.  Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience.

“These three volumes alone (apart from Cassirer’s other papers and books) make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction.  It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, Nature

'The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms' has long been considered by many who knew it in the original German as the greatest of Ernst Cassirer's works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art and science-the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to his experience.