Cassirer, Ernst (1874-1945)

German philosopher of the neo-Kantian school (see neo-Kantianism). Immanuel Kant had taught that human experience was conditioned by the categories or forms of thought to which all human experience was limited. Cassirer held that, in addition to Kant's list of categories, there are also forms of thought conditioning mythical, historical, and practical thinking. These forms of thought could be discovered by the study of language.

Cassirer was born in Breslau. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, he fled to the USA 1932. He became a professor at Yale 1941.

His main work is the three-volume Die Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen/Philosophy of Symbolic Forms 1923-29.