Myth and Language
the Limits of the Articulation of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and the Irruption of Myth in Enlightened Culture
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53000/xwn23t18Keywords:
Philosophy of symbolic forms, Language, Myth, Funcionalization, TotalitarianismAbstract
This paper aims to discuss the confrontation of fragmentation in the human sciences, as proposed by Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945). According to the philosopher, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the human sciences fragmented to such an extent that each area reduced human culture to its own object of study. He saw this disintegration as natural to science, including the natural sciences, which reduced the world to different perspectives: biology, physics, or chemistry, threatening the unity of knowledge. This work proposes to expose the symbolic forms of myth and language, as described by Cassirer in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and to investigate their articulations and limits. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms seeks to unite diverse orientations into a system with functional unity. However, in Essay on Man of 1944, influenced by totalitarianism, Cassirer revised his optimistic perception, including regarding the overcoming of myth. The central hypothesis is that the unity of the functionalization of knowledge can manifest itself as cultural and political totalitarianism.
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