Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Alfred Cassirer
Ernst Alfred Cassirer
	Cassirer in about 1935
Born	Ernst Alfred Cassirer; July 28, 1874; Breslau, Prussia, German Empire; (now Wrocław, Poland)
Died	April 13, 1945 (aged 70); New York City, U.S.
Education	University of Marburg; (PhD, 1899); University of Berlin; (Dr. phil. habil., 1906)
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Neo-Kantianism (Marburg School); Phenomenology;
Theses	Descartes' Kritik der mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis (Descartes' Critique of Mathematical and Scientific Knowledge) (1899); Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit: Erster Band (The Problem of Knowledge in Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age: Volume I) (1906);
Academic advisors	Hermann Cohen; Paul Natorp
Main interests	Epistemology, aesthetics
Notable ideas	Philosophy of symbolic forms; Animal symbolicum;

Ernst Alfred Cassirer (/kɑːˈsɪərər, kəˈ-/ kah-SEER-ər, kə-, German: [ˈɛʁnst kaˈsiːʁɐ]; July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science.

After Cohen's death in 1918, Cassirer developed a theory of symbolism and used it to expand phenomenology of knowledge into a more general philosophy of culture. Cassirer was one of the leading 20th-century advocates of philosophical idealism. His most famous work is the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929).

Though his work received a mixed reception shortly after his death, more recent scholarship has remarked upon Cassirer's role as a strident defender of the moral idealism of the Enlightenment era and the cause of liberal democracy at a time when the rise of fascism had made such advocacy unfashionable. Within the international Jewish community, Cassirer's work has additionally been seen as part of a long tradition of thought on ethical philosophy.

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