Cassirer thinker of technology

Abstract

This article presents and analyzes the reflections of Ernst Cassirer on technology. First we study his philosophy of symbolic forms, showing their allegiance to the Kantian transcendental method, and we also consider German thought on technology, with its specific interest in the relations with culture. In the essay “Form and technique” (1930) Cassirer examines the specific essence of the technique as a symbolic form as well as its relations with other symbolic forms: myth, art, science and ethics. In the book The myth of the state (1946), Cassirer analyses the genealogy of the Aryan myth and the technology of propaganda used by the Nazis, and thereby explains the construction of totalitarian ideology by reference to the fusion of technology with myth. Cassirer’s view of the field of culture is dramatic, in opposition to the tragic vision of Simmel. For him, the mission of philosophy is to provide logical consciousness of culture, simultaneously being able to think against and beyond the present time