Phenomenology as a Theory of Spiritual Forms of Expression

The article argues that Ernst Cassirer should be read as a phenomenologist and that The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms constitutes a sustained phenomenology– centrally, a phenomenology of perception. Against the standard view that treats Cassirer as a merely Neo-Kantian foil to Husserl, Heidegger, or Merleau-Ponty, here Cassirer's main work is reconstructed as a “theoryof spiritual forms of expression” that correlates subjective and objectivespirit in a phenomenological way. The key notion is symbolic pregnance: perceptual life is intrinsically meaningful and already organized by symbolicfunctions. This thesis both rebuts Merleau-Ponty's charge of intellectualism and resists Husserl's hylomorphic split between matter and form. Methodologically, Cassirer reactivates a Hegelian sense of “phenomenology” while rejecting the Logic's synthetic-general dialectic; instead, he adopts a reconstructive,transcendental analysis (with Natorp) that proceeds from the factaof culture.

The paper traces a genetic arc from expressive perception (myth) through thing perception (language) to pure thinking (science), showinghow symbolic functions (expression, presentation, pure signification) andcorresponding modes of pregnance articulate the path from perception toknowledge. Clinical cases of apraxia and agnosia illustrate how breakdownsin object use are losses of symbolic pregnance rather than merely motordeficits. Repositioned this way, Cassirer offers a pluralist, non-representationalaccount of perception and meaning that broadens phenomenology's self-understanding while preserving its descriptive rigor. [Publisher's text]

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