Modern European Philosophy of Symbolic Forms of Religious and Artistic Consciousness

The article deals with the philosophical issues in the field of religious art. The re­vision of the theories of secularization in the late 20th – early 21st centuries al­lowed philosophers speak not only about the autonomy of art in relation to reli­gion, but also about the dialogue between these two “symbolic forms of consciousness” (according to E. Cassirer) and the fields of culture. The aim of this article is to offer an analysis of the corpus of selected texts of both Russian and foreign specialists of the last quarter of the 20th – early 21st centuries who worked in related fields (iconology, spatialization, semiotics of culture and art, philosophy of culture, and theology). The subject matters of the article is the philosophical, religious, cultural, art history, semiotic, theological, and anthropo­logical theories of authors whose works were in the representative sample of this study. The literature can be divided into several categories: 1) publications that discuss the relationship between the “secular” and “sacred” in modern culture; 2) publications that describe the essential features of modern temple construction and give a broad interpretation of the concept of “sacred spaces”; 3) publications that describe and analyse specific manifestations of the dialogue between art and religion. The main methods are the method of description and the method of com­plex philosophical and religiological analysis. The originality of the research lies in the attempt to systematize various points of view on the place and role of reli­gion and art in a post-secular society. The goal is to offer a wide panorama of modern theories of the interaction of religion, architecture, and fine art. Tthe main tasks are complex analysis, classification and qualification of research approaches of the authors under consideration.

The missing piece in E. Cassirer’s theory of symbolic forms: the economy

Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (PSF) primarily reflects on culture as a system of normative domains that are path-dependently configured. PSF elaborates on the domains of myth/religion, language, and science, but misses a discussion of the economy. By sketching a corresponding exposition, we contribute to the ongoing discussion of how economic science may investigate the world beyond utility functions. Our argument proceeds along historical and comparative lines with a ‘reciprocal comparison’ of the medieval economies of Europe and Japan. We thus approach the normative essence of economic thought and behaviour and test its variability in socio-cultural contexts diverging from ‘now’ and ‘here’. Our sketch of the economy as a symbolic form has important implications for the theoretical understanding of change in social systems. We argue that existing factors of change recognised in the economics discipline, such as fluctuations in supply and demand, and institutional innovation, critically require a superposition with patterns of cognition as they guide agents in their grasp of economic problems and, consequently, in their responses that shape material economies. We suggest that conceiving of the economy as a symbolic form makes these patterns of cognition accessible.

The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Xici and Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

This paper, unlike scholars who ascribe to it a copy theory of meaning, argues that the logic of the Xici is best described through “philosophy’s linguistic turn,” specifically Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms. Cassirer’s concept of the symbol as a pluralistic, constitutive, and functional yet concrete and observable form, is comparable to the symbolic system in the Xici 系辭: xiang 象, gua 卦, yao 爻, and yi 易. Their similarity is due to a shared philosophical orientation: humanism. The characteristics of the Xici—the part-whole (structuralist) relationship typical of correlative cosmology, the simultaneously sensuous and conceptual nature of its symbols, the stress on order as opposed to unity, and the importance of symbols per se—for Cassirer are characteristics that were only possible in European intellectual history after a substance ontology was replaced by a functional one. For Cassirer, a functional ontology is closely associated with a humanism that celebrates creations (i.e., language) of the human mind in determining reality. This humanism is coherent with the intellectual context—Confucian humanism—contemporary with the period of the Xici’s composition. It would thus be inconsistent to concede this humanism to the Xici without also conceding that its understanding of the symbols is akin to that of the linguistic turn. Finally, even regardless of this comparative framework, the Xici runs into a paradox if we read it through a copy theory of meaning, paradoxes that immediately dissolve if we read it through the paradigm of the linguistic turn.

Morphologie und Humanismus oder: wie man zur Katze wird

Though the relationship between Goethe, Cassirer and Levi-Strauss has been explored extensively, the focus usually lies on questions of genealogy. This article aims for a different course: Building on the notable similarities between Goethe’s discussion of morphology, Levi-Strauss’ structuralistic approach and Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms we will investigate the epistemological similarities between the three authors. They can be found in a specific form of humanism (or anti-humanism) which connects questions on the conditions of the world and its accessibility with the more global question of humankind and its place within the natural world, thus, by virtue of a specific interpretation of the concept of transformation, opening the door for new approaches which have recently been discussed as ontological turn