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Metta, Carmen

Notes on recent rethinking of Cassirer's philosophy

2021 - Bibliopolis

P. 185-199

  • The concept of structure that Cassirer and Lévi-Strauss borrow from linguistic structuralism can be considered in both authors as the evolution of Cassirer's concept of symbolic form (Christian Möckel). This interesting reading hypothesis, assuming Lévi-Strauss' debit towards Cassirer, can be further developed if we look at the texts of the authors in a more precise way. Firstly, this contribution argues that: the precarious balance between structure and event by Lévi-Strauss echoes the one between thing and expression by Cassirer; it is just surviving as a symbolic form among the others that science runs no risk to change into a phantasmagoria (the “myth” of progress); the functional priority of the event is at the origin of the paradigmatic cultural value of the mythical form.
  • Secondly, taking inspiration from a Paul Cortois' study on the proper name, this contribution deepens it by elaborating on an example of classification of the proper name offered by Lévi-Strauss. The concept of structure thus revealing itself in a new complexity, and the primacy of the event in the structuring of mythical thought proving to be the link between Cassirer and Lévi-Strauss. [Publisher's text]

Is part of

Cassirer studies : XIII/XIV, 2020/2021