The problem of intuition and representation in Ernst Cassirer's Phenomenology of Knowledge

• Grant number: 23/00834-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: May 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Epistemology
• Principal Investigator: Rafael Rodrigues Garcia
• Grantee: Ítalo Santos Clemente
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/05999-0 - The Problem of Intuition for Ernst Cassirer in his Warburg Years(1919-1933), BE.EP.MS

Abstract

This project is a proposal for the analysis of volume III of Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis (1929) by Ernst Cassirer. This is about the primacy attributed to the concept of symbolic function through which the concretely substantiated need of the object of knowledge is eliminated. Such a step is necessary for the construction of a coherent unit of thought that solves the problems of intuition and its way of representing phenomena. Cassirer understands that the constant updating of sensitive data prevents an immediate apprehension of reality, as opposed to a receptivity that needs to be synthesized by understanding, it seeks to determine the meaning of things in the relational structure and in the systematic context of the most diverse symbolic forms of culture, this, in their different modes of objectivation. In view of this, we intend to clarify the thesis of Cassirerian symbolic idealism in defense of the premise that the attribution of meaning to phenomenal manifestations departs from a pure constructive spontaneity of symbolic pregnancy and sign mediation proper to cognition.