Symbolic Pregnance and the Historical Mobility of the Aesthetic Sense

Ernst Cassirer adumbrated his theory of aesthetics during the 1920s, above all in a lecture he presented in 1927 entitled The Problem of the Symbol and its Place in the System of Philosophy. He continued to pursue this theme over the years that followed during his emigration to England in 1933 and then to Göteborg, Sweden, and to the United States. His approach to aesthetics in this period comes to light not only in his published works, such as in the essays included in The Logic of the Cultural Sciences or An Essay on Man, but also in the recently published Nachlass volumes. Drawing on his later theory, this article interprets Cassirer's concept of symbolic configuration, above all his notion of “symbolic pregnance”, inorder to account for transformations in the function and significance of art over the course of its history.

In analyzing Cassirer's conception of this mobility,the broader purpose of my analysis will be to set in relief the ways inwhich the work of symbolic configuration in the field of aesthetics pointstoward a fundamental level of historicity in the perceptual modes throughwhich aesthetics draws its meaning. [Publisher's text]

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