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Language and Myth

But the structure of language is just what modern scientific thought finds uncongenial. It embodies a metaphysic of substance and attribute; whereas science operates more and more with the concept of function, which is articulated in mathematics. At this point Cassirer, reflecting on the shift from substantive to functional thinking, found the key to the methodological problem: And so the Kantian principle, fructified by a wholly new problem of science, led beyond the Kantian doctrine to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.


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The very plan of this work departs from all previous approaches to epistemology by not assuming either that the mind is concerned essentially with facts, or that its prime talent is discursive reason. Language is born of the need for emotional expression. Yet it is not exclamatory. It is essentially hypostatic, seeking to distinguish, emphasize, and hold the object of feeling rather than to communicate the feeling itself. To fix the object as a permanent focus point in experience is the function of the name.

This hypostasis, entailed by the primitive office of language, really lies deeper even than nomenclature, which merely reflects it: An image is only an aspect of the actual thing it represents. It may be not even a completely or carefully abstracted aspect. Its importance lies in the fact that it symbolizes the whole—the thing, person, occasion, or what-not—from which it is an abstract. A thing have a history, an event passes irrevocably away, actual experience is transient and would exhaust itself in a series of unique occasions, were it not for the permanence of the symbol whereby it may be recalled and possessed.

Imagination is the primary talent of the human mind, the activity in whose service language was evolved.

Language and myth / by Ernst Cassirer Translated by Susanne K. Langer - Details - Trove

It has a logic of its own, a definite pattern of identifications and concentrations which bring a very deluge of ideas, all charged with intense and often widely diverse feelings, together in one symbol. Symbols are the indispensable instruments of conception. By virtue of this hypostatization it may be referred to , much as an object may be pointed at ; and therefore the mind can think about it without its actual recurrence.

In its symbolic image the experience is conceived , instead of just physiologically remembered. His reflections on science had taught him that all conception is intimately bound to expression; and the forms of expression, which determine those of conception, are symbolic forms. So he was led to his central problem, the diversity of symbolic forms and their interrelation in the edifice of human culture.

He distinguished, as so many autonomous forms, language, myth, art, and science. They are like dream elements—objects endowed with daemonic import, haunted places, and accidental shapes in nature resembling something ominous—all manner of shifting, fantastic images which speak of Good and Evil, of Life and Death, to the impressionable and creative mind of man.

Their common trait is a quality that characterizes everything in the sphere of myth, magic, and religion, and also the earliest ethical conceptions—the quality of holiness. All mythic constructions are symbols of value—of life and power, or of violence, evil, and death. They are charged with feeling, and have a way of absorbing into themselves more and more intensive meanings, sometimes even logically conflicting imports.

Therefore mythic symbols do not give rise to discursive understanding; they do beget a kind of understanding, but not by sorting out concepts and relating them in a distinct, pattern; they tend, on the contrary, merely to bring together great complexes of cognate ideas, in which all distinctive features are merged and swallowed.

Just as specific differences of meaning are obliterated in nondiscursive symbolization, the very distinction between form and content, between the entity thing, image, gesture, or natural event which is the symbol, and the idea or feeling which is its meaning, is lost, or rather: This is a momentous fact, for it is the basis of all superstition and strange cosmogony, as well as of religious belief.

To believe in the existence of improbable or quite fantastic things and beings would be inexplicable folly if beliefs were dictated essentially by practical experience. But the mythic interpretation of reality rests on the principle that the veneration appropriate to the meaning of a symbol is focussed on the symbol itself, which is simply identified with its import.

This is the hypostatic mechanism of the mind by which the world is filled with magical things—fetishes and talismans, sacred trees, rocks, caves, and the vague, protean ghosts that inhabit them—and finally the world is peopled with a pantheon of permanent, more or less anthropomorphic gods. In the realm of discursive conception there reigns a sort of diffuse light—and the further logical analysis proceeds, the further does this even clarity and luminosity extend. But in the ideational realm of myth and language there are always, besides those locations from which the strongest light proceeds, others that appear wrapped in profoundest darkness.

While certain contents of perception become verbal-mythical centers of force, centers of significance, there are others which remain, one might say, beneath the threshold of meaning. His coupling of myth and language in this passage brings us back to the intimate connection between these two great symbolic forms which he traces to a common origin.

The dawn of language was the dawn of the truly human mind, which meets us first of all as a rather highly developed organ of practical response and of imagination , or symbolic rendering of impressions. In savage societies, names are treated not as conventional appellations, but as though they were physical proxies for their bearers.

To call an object by an inappropriate name is to confound its very nature. In some cultures practically all language serves mystic purposes and is subject to the most impractical taboos and regulations.

Ernst Cassirer Language And Myth

It is clearly of a piece with magic, religion and the whole pattern of intensive emotional symbolism which governs the pre-scientific mind. Names are the very essence of mythic symbols; nothing on earth is a more concentrated point of sheer meaning than the little, transient, invisible breath that constitutes a spoken word. Physically it is almost nothing.

Yet it carries more definite and momentous import than any permanent holy object. So, as long as meaning is felt as an indwelling potency of certain physical objects, words must certainly rank high in the order of holy things. But language has more than a purely denotative function. Of course, the length of the span varies greatly with different mentalities. But as soon as two or more words are thus taken together in the mind of an interpretant, language has acquired its second function: Henceforth, the history of thought consists chiefly in the gradual achievement of factual, literal, and logical conception and expression.

Obviously the only means to this end is language. But this instrument, it must be remembered, has a double nature. Its syntactical tendencies bestow the laws of logic on us; yet the primacy of names in its make-up holds it to the hypostatic way of thinking which belongs to its twin-phenomenon, myth. We have come so far along the difficult road of discursive thinking that the laws of logic seem to be the very frame of the mind, and rationality its essence. Yet, from primitive apprehension to even the simplest rational construction is probably a far cry. Its objects are not self-identical, consistent, universally related; they condense many characters in one, have conflicting attributes and intermittent existence, the whole is contained in its parts, and the parts in each other.

By this departure, the Kantian doctrine that identified all conception with discursive reason, making reason appear as an aboriginal human gift, is saved from its most serious fallacy, an unhistorical view of mind. For many years the metaphysic of mind has been entirely divorced from the scientific study of mental phenomena; whether mind be an eternal essence or a transient epiphenomenon, a world substance or a biological instrument, makes little difference to our understanding of observed human or animal behavior.

And that is the pragmatic measure of any speculative approach. A really cogent doctrine of mind cannot be irrelevant to psychology, any more than a good cosmological system can be meaningless for physics, or a theory of ethics inapplicable to jurisprudence and law. The psychiatric phenomena which illustrate the existence of a mythic mode of thought, and point to its ancient and primitive nature, are striking and persuasive.

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In more aggravated cases the imagination, too, is impaired; and here we have a reversion almost to animal mentality. One symptom of this state which is significant for the philosophy of symbolism is that the sufferer is unable to tell a lie, feign any action, or do anything his actual situation does not dictate, though he may still find his way with immediate realities.

If he is thirsty, he can recognize and take a glass of water, and drink; but he cannot pick up an empty glass and demonstrate the act of drinking as though there were water in it, or even lift a full glass to his lips, if he is not thirsty. At this point, pathology furnishes a striking testimony of the real nature of language: To a person thus afflicted, words have connotation, but experience does not readily correspond to the conceptual scheme of language, which makes names the preeminent points of rest, and requires things as the fundamental relata in reality.

The connoted concepts are apt to be adjectival rather than substantive. It is, indeed, only in regard to the forms of thought that a parallel obtains between these systems; but that parallel is close and vital, none the less. Such expression is effortless and therefore unexhausting; its products are images charged with meanings, but the meanings remain implicit, so that the emotions they command seem to be centered on the image rather than on anything it merely conveys; in the image, which may be a vision, a gesture, a sound-form musical image or a word as readily as an external object, many meanings may be concentrated, many ideas telescoped and interfused, and incompatible emotions simultaneously expressed.

The mythic mind never perceives passively, never merely contemplates things; all its observations spring from some act of participation, some act of emotion and will. Only where this vital feeling is stirred from within, where it expresses itself as love or hate, fear or hope, joy or sorrow, mythic imagination is roused to the pitch of excitement at which it begets a definite world of representations.

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Philosophie der symbolischen Formen , II, For a person whose apprehension is under the spell of this mythico-religious attitude, it is as though the whole world were simply annihilated; the immediate content, whatever it be, that commands his religious interest so completely fills his consciousness that nothing else can exist beside and apart from it.

The ego is spending all its energy on this single object, lives in it, loses itself in it. Instead of a widening of intuitive experience, we find here its extreme limitation; instead of expansion. This focussing of all forces on a single point is the prerequisite for all mythical thinking and mythical formulation. Language and Myth , At this point, the word which denotes that thought content is not a mere conventional symbol, but is merged with its object in an indissoluble unity. Every form is capable of changing, on the spur of the moment, even into its very opposite.

Yet poetry, for Cassirer, or anything which we may regard as a 'serious' work of art is successful insofar as it is able to cast aside the complacent regard of word and image, and thereby rejuvenates our way of seeing in its own self revelation. I'd like to read more of him, particularly his Theory of Symbolic Forms. Mar 27, Frank Jude rated it it was ok Shelves: This book is an collection of six essays from Ernst Cassirer translated by Susanne Langer, originally published in It's a bit of a slog to read and certainly the mention of 'savages' rattles our more contemporary mores.

That said, Cassirer is looking at what he sees as the common ancestor for language and myth as it relates to the non-rational processes behind the creation of culture. The essays that stand out for me are "The Successive Phases of Religious Thought" which attempts to excava This book is an collection of six essays from Ernst Cassirer translated by Susanne Langer, originally published in The essays that stand out for me are "The Successive Phases of Religious Thought" which attempts to excavate just that and it really does feel a bit archeological as it moves toward the dawning of religious sentiment.


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  • In fact, as a religious naturalist, I found this chapter relevant for those of us who reject supernaturalism as Cassirer devotes much time to exploring the origination of the concept of "supernatural power. Definitely for those who already have a strong interest in this topic and as such a kind of "specialist" book. Jan 12, Erik Graff rated it liked it Recommends it for: This book was assigned for one of my first courses at Union Theological Seminary: Jun 22, Brian Beakley rated it liked it.

    A little overview translated by aesthetician Suzanne K. Langer of the position Cassirer works out in his multi-volume "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms". May 08, Jenni rated it liked it Shelves: Dec 05, Avinesh Shankar rated it it was ok. For Agnostic atheist sense of spirituality and enlightenment from Buddhist, Hindu perspective, this book is not very relevant. It is beyond Cassirer to imagine God as a experience rather than just a belief, and he certainly does not mention the mystic tradition and their view of spirituality. It is also a drag to read.

    May 15, Holly rated it really liked it. Cassirer caught my attention when I was in my thirties because of his theories of language and religion. I collected his essays for a while than deemed them for a sale-off in unemployed times. Now I pick up an essay here and there and re-read him. This piece feels a little like the translator was a bit exuberant but it does put forth is ideas about the flaws and holes of the symbols in language that also produce meaning.

    That strikes me very contemplative. Sep 24, Suzie added it.

    I read this in college years ago, and was fascinated. I decided its's time to reread it, Still have the yellowing paperback, but just got the Kindle version for convenience. Nov 12, Ali rated it liked it Shelves: Jul 04, Alexander rated it it was amazing Shelves: Dec 01, Adriaan Krabbendam rated it it was amazing Shelves: One of thos eyeopeners.

    Dec 19, Gabriel is currently reading it. Nov 21, Alexander rated it it was amazing Shelves: If you are a writer, I think you should read this book. Dec 10, Gregory rated it really liked it Shelves: Perceptive, though Cassirer was not a Christian as far as I know. Ned Booth rated it really liked it Sep 07, Chris rated it really liked it Sep 01, Edward rated it liked it Jun 29, Messiah rated it liked it Jan 11, Christian Labansky rated it it was amazing May 04, Ryan rated it it was amazing Jan 16, John rated it liked it Mar 08, Josh Anderson rated it really liked it Feb 13, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.

    Ernst Cassirer was one of the major figures in the development of philosophical idealism in the first half of the twentieth century, a German Jewish philosopher. Coming out of the Marburg tradition of neo-Kantianism, he developed a philosophy of culture as a theory of symbols founded in a phenomenology of knowledge. Books by Ernst Cassirer. Trivia About Language and Myth. No trivia or quizzes yet. Quotes from Language and Myth. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.