【第二章 マールブルク学派】 Natorp and the young Cassirer both rebelled against this [Cohen's] mathematical dogmatism; both tried, as we shall see in the next chapter, to extend the critical method to nonscientific experience. But they nonetheless viewed such experience as a mere "first stage" in the process of objectivization, culminating eventually in physics. Their sights remained fixed on the universal, intersubjective realm of science. The Marburg school thus never fully overcame what we identified in the last chapter as the alienation of scientific reason. Although it struggled mightily against the detachment of science from morality, it could not solve—indeed, it could hardly acknowledge—the more fundamental problem of its divorce from what Husserl was later to call the Lebenswelt—the world of life. (p.45)
Radicalism—as the career of Heidegger amply illustrates—is an ambiguous virtue. Revolutions in thought have an unhappy tendency to be realized in action. Cassirer's refusal, as he put it, to hurl his ideas into empty space, his effort to relate them to those of his Kantian precursors, was fundamentally an attempt to preserve a link with the civilization that his more original contemporaries were busily dismantling. (pp.48-49)
【第三章 新しい論理学】
"The analytic function of thought, with which all these logicians appear to be exclusively concerned, has indeed a good logical claim and practical significance. But we hold fast to the conviction to which Kant has given almost classic expression: 'Where the understanding has not previously united, it cannot dissolve.' Thus ... it is synthesis that is necessarily primary for the logical understanding of knowledge, and the analysis of meaning is required only as its pure corollary." (Paul Natorp, Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften p.9)
Cassirer rejected both attitudes outlined above. He did not share Carnap's view of logic as the framework of all meaningful discourse. Neither did he view it [as Heidegger did] as something to be dissolved "in the turbulence of a more original questioning." His position represents a characteristic refusal to take sides in the debate between a narrow, scientistic rationalism and a virulent irrationalism. By recasting the new logic as transcendental logic, Cassirer was able to register both its achievement and limitation. (p.56)
The historical Kant regarded the concepts of Aristotelian formal logic as constituting an independent "form of thought" which must be "schematised in intuition" in order to yield the categories of transcendental logic. In the Marburg interpretation, this relationship is reversed. Kant may have used formal logic as a "clue" to transcendental logic, explains Cassirer, but this was done not "with the aim of basing the transcendental concepts on the formal ones, but conversely, with the aim of basing the latter on the former, and in that way yielding a more profound understanding of the ultimate ground of their validity." (Kant's Life and Thought p.173) In other words, formal logic is just an abstraction from transcendental logic, with no independent philosophical significance. This revision reflects what I described in the last chapter as the Marburg school's historicization of the transcedental subject. Kant's timeless "form of thought" is dissolved into the ongoing movement of scientific objectivization, which casts off, like dead skins, the structures of pure mathematics and logic. Cassirer's logic of objective knowledge is not to be regarded as founded on symbolic logic, then, but as revealing its true foundation. (p.58)
Science is always looking forward to future consummation; it is, to borrow Cassirer's favorite phrase from Leibniz, gros de l'avenir—pregnant with the future. We must therefore reject the binary view of scientific theories as either true or false. The movement of science is not from false to true but from less comprehensive to more comprehensive. (p.62)
From the standpoint of conventional formal logic, according to which all propositions are either true or false, they [Cassirer's passages] are almost unintelligible. But from Cassirer's standpoint, it is formal logic that ultimately renders unintelligible the dynamic process of scientific discovery. (pp.62-63)
His real objection is to Cohen's more fundamental philosophical claim that the relation "is a category only insofar as it is a function [関数]." And here Russell's calculus of relations comes to his assistance. It enables Cassirer to transfer priority from the specifically mathematical notion of function to the general logical notion of relation. The former now appears as a special case of the latter, with no uniquely "categorical" significance. The possibility of categorical yet nonetheless nonmathematical relations—and thus of nonmathematical objectivization—is opened up. (p.65)
【第四章 イロニーと悲劇の間で】
"for the genius one case counts for a thousand" (Goethe)
Particularly interesting, from our point of view, is a 1932 essay by the art historian Edgar Wind, a former doctoral student of Cassirer and a member of his intellectual circle. Although personally on good terms with Cassirer, Wind was critical, from an empiricist standpoint, of his philosophy of symbolic forms. His portrait of Goethe throws some light on their differences. Wind looks askance at the very thing Cassirer so admired in the poet—namely, his irony, his capacity to treat every interpretation of reality symbolically. Where Cassirer sees only breadth and flexibility of mind, Wind discerns a subtle form of evasion. "Goethe said of himself that he viewed everything symbolically. This is an admission that in his case imagination served to transform things into images, to divest them of their substantiality, enabling him to escape the claims they might have had on him as things." It was only by renouncing reality, with its harsh, conflicting demands, that Goethe was able to achieve his celebrated inner harmony. His entire career can be seen as "a flight from life to image." It is possible that Wind formulated these remarks with his former teacher in mind. They certainly apply as well to Cassirer as they do to Goethe. (p.86)
One of the very few persons who read it [Habilitationsschrift, Experiment and Metaphysics] was the late Ernst Cassirer, and I am sorry to say it made that amiable man extremely angry. In honour of his memory I must protest against the suggestion that we held the same view about the nature of symbols. My thesis was that symbols are "real" only to the extent in which they can be embodied in an experimentum crucis whose outcome is directly observable—in his view a deplorable lapse into "empiricism." (Edgar Wind, letter to the Times Literary Supplement)
Opposition to the positivist instrumentalization of science was, as we have seen, a central part of the program of Marburg neo-Kantianism and Substance and Function. But it was only later that Cassirer began to attack positivism and instrumentalism not simply as theories in the philosophy of science but as cultural and political phenomena. Like Warburg, he viewed them as expressions of the hubris of a civilization that has forgotten or suppressed its own mythical origins, thereby opening the door to their revival. Cassirer cites as an example the degeneration of Comtean positivism into a pseudoreligion, complete with priests and temples of science. And in The Myth of the State he shows how the instrumentalization of political reason, initially undertaken in a spirit of enlightenment, eventually gives rise to the myths of modern totalitarianism. Cassirer explicitly conceived his own philosophy as an antidote to the "forgetfulness" of positivism. Like the Warburg Library, it is an attempt on the part of reason at mnemosyne or recollection. It is based on the conviction that reason can understand and feel "at home" with itself only when it has succeeded in reconstructing its own ascent from the sphere of myth. (p.98)
【第五章 象徴形式の哲学】
For all his phenomenological flirtations, Cassirer remained faithful to Cohen and Natorp's conception of philosophy as "bound to the fact of science as this constitutes itself, and therewith to the whole of human culture." Philosophy has no empire of its own; it can do no more than clarify and draw together the tendencies implicit in the arts and sciences. It is, so to speak, the self-consciousness of culture. (p.102)
[Ernst's wife] Toni Cassirer's memoir contains the following revealing story. When Cassirer's son Heinz expressed a wish to study philosophy directly after leaving school, Cassirer demurred. "It was Ernst's unshakable opinion," adds Toni, "that philosophy should never stand isolated but should rather spring spontaneously from the study of other sciences." (Toni Cassirer, Mein Leben mit Ernst Cassirer p.134)
The mythical origins of human culture cannot be eliminated altogether, but they can be confined to what Warburg called "the distant shadowy realm of the explicit metaphor." The myths we need are the spiritualized ones of religion and the playful ones of art. These absorb, discipline, and refine the energies that would otherwise find expression in the brutally literal myths of totalitarian politics. (p.109)
Expressive phenomena are not to be viewed, insists Cassirer, as a "projection" of inner states onto a neutral physical substratum. On the contrary, it is this "neutral substratum" that is itself derivative, a product of scientific analysis. "We arrive at the data of mere sensation—such as light or dark, warm or cold, rough or smooth—only by setting away a fundamental stratum of perception, by doing away with it, so to speak, for a definite theoretical purpose. (...) This disregard is perfectly justified from the point of view of the purely theoretical intention, the intention of building an objective order of nature and apprehending its laws; but it cannot do away with the world of expressive phenomena as such." (The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms 3.37). Myth is therefore not, as commonly presented, a spiritualization of a neutral physical reality but a state prior to the very distinction between the spiritual and the physical. (...) All nature is imbued with spirit, yet spirit, by the same token, belongs entirely to nature. (p.116)
【第六章 論理実証主義】
"I would allow as 'a priori' in the strict sense, really only the thought of the 'unity of nature,' that is to say the lawfulness of experience in general (...): but how this thought is made specific in particular principles and presuppositions—this comes to light only in the progress of scientific experience." (Ernst Cassirer, letter to Schlick)
"This transition [from one form of physical theory to another] never means that the fundamental form absolutely disappears, and another absolutely new form arises in its place. The new form must contain the answers to questions proposed within the older form; this one feature establishes a logical connection between them, and points to a common forum of judgement to which both are subjected." (Substance and Function p.268)
"For a purely descriptive ethics that remains strictly within its own boundaries, there clearly exists no ground for such a rejection [of fanaticism]. In every age, fanaticism has not merely proved its power in human affairs, it has also been advocated and preached as an ideal; and today it is lauded on many sides almost as 'the' moral ideal per se. A moral philosophy that wishes to be nothing more than a science of factual moral evaluations, in their historical actuality and development, must therefore be content to record this fact alongside other facts." (The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms 3.xv)
"Cassirer trusts religious far more than scientific enlightenment as a counter-force to the violence of political myths—he relies on the confinement of myth within its own proper sphere, which was long ago achieved by monotheism."(Jürgen Habermas, The Liberating Power of Symbols p.26)
If we, the enlightened, are to prevail, we cannot shut ourselves up within the closed circle of reason. The formulas of science and economics are not enough. We must learn the language of unreason, the better to master and subdue it. (p.158)
Ritual denunciations of the "genetic fallacy" will convince only those who have already lost faith in tradition as a source of norms. (p.159)
【第七章 生の哲学】
Symbolism is not a dark glass separating us from reality as it is "in itself"; it is the medium within which any possible reality appears. There is, then, no conceivable extrasymbolic reality in contrast to which it can be denigrated as "artificial." Culture is not a garment thrown over the bareness of nature; it is our nature. The mask is the face, the face the mask. (pp.162-163)
[For Bergson, i]f we want the object itself, in all its concrete glory, we must do away with concepts and adopt the standpoint of pure intuition. This is the method of metaphysics, a science that—in a phrase pinpointing Cassirer's disagreement with Lebensphilosophie—"claims to dispense with symbols." (Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics p.24) (p.166)
【第八章 ハイデガー】
Through the efforts of Scheler and and others, motifs from Bergson, Dilthey, and Nietzsche were translated into the rigorously "presuppositionless" idiom of Husserl—a process paralleling the transformation of positivism into logical positivism. Thus was born that strange monster: a rigorous irrationalism, a system against systems. This monster came to maturity in Heidegger's masterpiece, Being and Time. (pp.195-196)
Heidegger's philosophy—and this is of course a serious worry—contains nothing to rule out a fascist interpretation. But neither should it simply be identified with fascism or with any other political stance. Philosophical theories are not just sublimated ideologies; they have a dynamic of their own, cutting across ideological boundaries. (p.197)
The truth of a philosophical proposition is not dependent on its political implications. Whoever has philosophy at heart must treat its problems on their own terms, dealing as best he can, through irony, esotericism, or simple silence, with any unpalatable consequences. What he cannot do is change his metaphysics to suit his politics. I am therefore skeptical of recent attempts to revise the verdict of Davos in line with current political sensibilities. Many scholars, especially in Germany, regard Cassirer's rout and subsequent neglect as an injustice, a national disgrace, for which amends must now be made. "The question remains pertinent, indeed overdue," writes Enno Rudolph, "why so constructive and rigorous an anti-nihilistic critique of European modernity as that developed by Cassirer had to lose out, in German philosophy since Heidegger, to the destructive type of anti-modernism." Cassirer lost out not just in Germany, though, but all over Europe, and for reasons that are not just political but authentically philosophical. As we have seen, his vision of philosophy as the critique of culture gave way to the aprioristic conceptions of Wittgenstein and Husserl—a shift whose ultimate explanation lies in the First World War and the accompanying loss of faith in history. Lost faith is not easily recovered. We cannot just "go back" to Cassirer; we cannot pretend that the twentieth century didn't happen. (pp.218-219)
Analytic philosophy has withstood the influence of Heidegger, but only by transforming itself into a purely technical discipline, indifferent to questions of culture and politics. Russell was a free-thinking progressivist, Frege an anti-Semitic reactionary, yet they could converse with perfect amicability on the subject of symbolic logic. Whether this marks the advent of philosophy as "rigorous science" or its final descent into triviality is another question. Our contemporary situation is, then, a torn one. We are inheritors of two histories—the one political, in which liberalism triumphed over its fascist and communist rivals, the other philosophical, in which it lost out to the Existenzphilosophie of Heidegger and the technicism of the analytic tradition. Cassirer's liberalism was all of a piece; it was at once political, cultural, and philosophical. Such unity of vision is impossible for us. Our political principles find no support in our cultural tastes, religious beliefs, or metaphysical insights. We pay tribute to Cassirer, but Heidegger remains the secret master of our thought. (p.219)
【第九章 政治】
Cassirer's appeal lies in his promise to ground political liberalism in a broader vision of human culture. He epitomizes that attitude of mind—dispassionate, ironic, and optimistic—without which liberalism in the narrow [legal or economic] sense cannot hope to survive. (p.222)
Contemporary liberals are faced, whether they like it or not, with the unpromising task of erecting a philosophy of political hope on a foundation of cultural despair. (p.222)
His criticism of Rousseau is at the same time a criticism of the so-called German concept of freedom through the state. His own preference is for the Anglo-Saxon liberal conception of freedom from the state. Yet he avoids the utilitarianism usually associated with this conception, appealing instead to the idealist notions of "humanity" and "personality." Cassirer has, one might say, married a negative conception of political freedom to a positive conception of spiritual freedom. This union is not original; its prototype can be found in Leibniz, Kant, and Humboldt. But in an era when liberalism of any kind was viewed as an excrescence of the English commercial spirit, as a "philosophy of life from which German youth now turns with nausea, with wrath, with quite peculiar scorn," Cassirer's reminder of a distinctively German form of liberalism was apt and timely. (p.229)
We have inherited liberal political institutions from our past, but not the surrounding climate of ideas that once nourished them. Gone are the certainties of the Christian era; gone, too, the cultural optimism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Our predecessors believed that political liberty would lead not only to greater material prosperity but also to the spread of knowledge, the weakening of prejudice, and the flowering of the arts. Who would dare to assert that now? (p.236)
Under these conditions, liberalism has become a purely official creed, publicly upheld rather than deeply felt, the province of lawyers and academic specialists. Economists can explain the role of law in stimulating growth, but not the point of growth itself. Political philosophers elaborate theories of justice, yet have nothing to say about their historical or metaphysical foundations. The expansive vision of Humboldt, Tocqueville, and Acton has hardened into a set of peremptory legal claims, advanced in shrill, dogmatic tones or at the point of a gun. No wonder we look back with nostalgia to a liberal such as Cassirer, whose interests were not confined solely, or even principally, to politics but spanned the breadth of human civilization. His was a humane and happy dream, and even if it was only a dream, it casts a reproachful shadow on our present age. (pp.236-237)
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