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Language and Myth
In this study Cassirer analyzes the non-rational thought processes that go to make up culture. He demonstrates that beneath both language & myth there lies an unconscious "grammar" of experience, whose categories & canons aren't those of logical thought. He shows that this prelogical "logic" is not merely an undeveloped state of rationality, but something basically different, & that this archaic mode of thought still has enormous Power over even our most rigorous thought, in language, poetry & myth. The author analyzes such seemingly diverse (yet related) phenomena as the metaphysics of the Bhagavat Gita, the Melanesian concept of Mana, the Naturphilosophie of Schelling, modern poetry, Ancient Egyptian religion & symbolic logic. He covers a vast range of material that is all too often neglected in studies of human thought.
These six essays are of great interest to the student of philosophy or the philosophy of science, the historian, or the anthropologist. They are also timely for students of literature, what with the enormous emphasis placed upon "myth" in modern literary speculation. This book isn't superficial speculation by a dabbler, but a penetrating study by one of the most profound & sensitive philosophic minds of our time.
These six essays are of great interest to the student of philosophy or the philosophy of science, the historian, or the anthropologist. They are also timely for students of literature, what with the enormous emphasis placed upon "myth" in modern literary speculation. This book isn't superficial speculation by a dabbler, but a penetrating study by one of the most profound & sensitive philosophic minds of our time.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1924
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About the author
Ernst Cassirer
374 books166 followersErnst Cassirer was one of the major figures in the development of philosophical idealism in the first half of the twentieth century, a German Jewish philosopher. Coming out of the Marburg tradition of neo-Kantianism, he developed a philosophy of culture as a theory of symbols founded in a phenomenology of knowledge.
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February 24, 2017
مقالي عن الكتاب، نُشر على إضاءات، وأنقله هنا
http://ida2at.com/language-and-myth/
كتبت الفليسوفة الأمريكية سوزان لانجر في مقدمة ترجمتها لكتاب أرنست كاسيرر «اللغة والأسطورة»، تقول:
أن الموجِّه المعرفي الذي قاد كاسيرر هو إدراكه أن اللغة بوصفها أداة العقل الأولى، تعكس ميل الإنسان لصنع الأسطورة أكثر من ميله للعقلنة والتفكير المنطقي، فاللغة التي هي ترميز للفكر، تعرض نمطين مختلفين تمامًا من الفكر، الذي هو في كلتا الحالتين فكر قوي وإبداعي. ويبدأ ذكاء الإنسان مع التصور، وتبلغ عملية التصور أوجها في التعبير الرمزي.
يقصد كاسيرر بالشكل أو التعبير الرمزي، الطاقة والقدرة الذهنية، التي تسمح بالتأليف بين محتوى دلالي ذهني مع علامة محسوسة متحققة، حيث ينسجم المحتوى الذهني – جوانيًا – مع هذه العلامة. وبهذا المعنى، فإن اللغة والنسق الأسطوري الديني والفن تتمظهر كلها في أعيننا بوصفها أشكالا رمزية خاصة.
ارتقاء الأفكار الدينية
يقوم الفيلسوف الألماني أرنست كاسيرر في كتابه «اللغة والأسطورة»؛ بتسليط الضوء على بعض الدراسات في تاريخ اللغة والدين، والتي تتبع ارتقاء المفاهيم اللاهوتية عن طريق متابعة أسماء الآلهة وألقابهم. وتُقسّم هذه الدراسات الأطوار الدينية إلى ثلاثة مراحل أساسية؛ تتّسم أول مرحلة من هذه المراحل وهي تُعدّ أقدم الأطوار الدينية، بخاصية توليد «آلهة مؤقتة»؛ وهي كائنات لا تُشخِّص أيّ قوة من قوى الطبيعة؛ بل هي شيء فوري خالص، سريع الزوال، يُولّد محتوى عقليًا ويخفيه. فكل انطباع يتلقاه الإنسان وكل رغبة تعتلج في داخله، وكل خطر يهدده؛ يمكن أن يؤثر فيه دينيًا، خالقًا إلهًا مؤقتًا، ليس بوصفه قوة تكشف عن نفسها هنا وهناك وفي كل مكان، بل بصفته شيئًا لا يوجد إلا هنا والآن!
على مستوى أعلى قليلا من هذه القوى الإلهية المؤقتة – الناشئة من انفعالات ذاتية – نجد سلسلة جديدة من الآلهة وهي لا تنشأ عن انفعالات تلقائية، بل من فاعليات منظمة، هذه «الآلهة الخاصة» ليست ذات دلالة عامة، فهي لا تتخلل الوجود في كامل عمقه ونطاقه؛ بل تتحدد في مقطع منه، ولكنها في عالمها الخاص تحظى بالدوام وبشيء من العمومية، كالإله “أوكاتور” مثلا، فهو إله تمهيد التربة، ليس لسنة محددة أو لحقل معين؛ بل على العموم، وتستدعيه الجماعة بأسرها سنويًا كمُعين لها وحامٍ.
هذا النوع من الألوهية الخاصة أو الوظيفية تطور تطورًا واسعًا ومتنوعًا في الديانة الرومانية، فلكل ممارسة إلهها الخاص، من أول حفر التربة للحراثة، وأفعال البذار وإزالة الأحراش… إلخ. وما من عمل من هذه الأعمال يمكن أن يُفلح ما لم يكن إلهه الخاص قد استُدعي على نحو مقرر وباسمه الصحيح. وهذه الآلهة تمثل طورًا ضروريًا لا بد أن يجتازه الوعي الديني لكي يصل إلى إنجازه النهائي؛ أي تصور الآلهة الشخصية، والشرط الضروري لتكوين الآلهة الشخصية هو عملية لغوية تاريخية.
فبعد تصور الإله الخاص الوظيفي، يتم تطويقه باسمه الخاص، ولا بدّ أن يُشتق هذا الاسم من الفاعلية التي تسببت في إحداث ذلك الإله، وما دام هذا الاسم يُفهم ويؤخذ بمعناه الأصلي الحرفي؛ فإن حدود معناه هي حدود قوى الإله. . والإله يظلّ محتفظًا من خلال اسمه بذلك الميدان الضيق الذي خُلق من أجله، أمّا إذا فُقد الاسم من خلال تغيرات صوتية أو هجران لجذره اللفظي، تصبح الكلمة اسم علم؛ لا توحي بفكرة الفاعلية المفردة التي كانت للإله الخاص، بل تُوحي بما يُوحي به أيّ اسم علم انساني، أيْ بتصوّر شخصية.
وهكذا يكون قد تم إنتاج كائنًا جديدًا، له قانونه الخاص، يبدو مكتسيًا باللحم والدم، إذا صحّ التعبير. . فيكون قابلًا للتصرف والمعاناة شأنه شأن المخلوق الإنساني. وأسماء الآلهة المتعددة التي كانت في الأصل تدل على آلهة خاصة مميزة، تنصهر حينئذ في شخصية واحدة، ويتلاقى بعضها مع بعض، فتصير ألقابًا لهذا الكائن؛ تعبر عن مظاهر مختلفة من طبيعته وسلطته ونطاقه.
اللغة والتصور
يُشكل العقل المفاهيم بأخذه عددًا معينًا من الموضوعات التي تمتلك خواصًا مشتركة، أي أنها تتطابق في بعض النواحي، ويجمعها معًا ويستخلص شيئًا من الفروق والاختلافات بينها وبالتالي يحتفظ بالمتشابهات ويتأمّل فيها، فتتشكل في الوعي فكرة عامة عن فئة معينة من الموضوعات، فالمفهوم هو فكرة تُمثل الخواص الجوهرية للموضوعات قيد الاهتمام. فصياغة مفهوم عام تفترض وجود خواص محددة، وبفضل تلك الخصائص الثابتة يمكننا معرفة؛ ما إذا كانت الأشياء متشابهة أم متباينة، متطابقة أم غير متطابقة؛ وهنا يتساءل كاسيرر: كيف تستطيع هذه الفروق أن توجد قبل اللغة، ألسنا بالأحرى لا ندركها إلا من خلال اللغة، عن طريق التسمية؟
يفترض كاسيرر أنه من دون تحديد لشكل المفاهيم اللغوية الأولية وميزتها، لا يمكننا تطوير نظرية منطقية خالصة عن التصور، لأن جميع مفاهيم المعرفة النظرية تُشكّل مجرد طبقة عليا من المنطق تقوم على طبقة سفلى؛ وهي مفاهيم منطق اللغة، فقبل الشروع بالعمل العقلي في إدراك الظواهر وفهمها، لا بدّ أن يكون عمل التسمية قد سبقه، لأن هذه العملية تُحوّل عالم الانطباع الحسي، والذي تمتلكه الحيوانات أيضًا، إلى عالم عقلي، أي عالم من الأفكار والمعاني.
وبدلًا من مقارنة الأشكال اللغوية الأساسية بأشكال التصور المنطقي، يتم مقارنتها بأشكال التخيّل الأسطوري، فالتصور اللغوي والأسطوري يُجمعان في مقولة واحدة تقابل شكل الفكر المنطقي، والذي هو على النقيض منهما. إذ أن التفكير النظري، يكمن بالأساس في تحرير محتويات التجربة الحسيّة من الانعزال الذي توجد فيه، ويجمعها مع تجارب حسية أخرى، ويقارن بينهم، ثم يسلسلهم في نسق محدد ضمن سياق يشمل الكل. . فالتفكير النظري يتقدم «استطراديًا»، بمعنى أنه يعامل المحتوى المباشر كنقطة انطلاق فحسب، ويُوثّق الانطباعات المتعددة في تصور واحد، ومنظومة واحدة مغلقة لا يوجد فيها نقاط منعزلة، بل جميع أعضائها تترابط تبادليًا، ويشير أحدها إلى الآخر ويوضحه.
أما النسق الأسطوري واللغوي فلا يعملان بهذا الشكل السابق، فوظيفتهما الأولى لا تكمن في مقارنة التجارب وانتقاء بعض الصفات المشتركة؛ كما يقوم التفكير النظري المنطقي، بل إن وظيفتهما تكمن في تكثيف تلك التجارب، واستقطارها ضمن نقطة واحدة، ويعتمد ذلك التكثيف أو التركيز على اتجاه اهتمام الذات، ومنظورها الغائي الذي تتصور منه تلك التجارب. . فكل ما يبدو مهمًا لرغباتنا وإرادتنا، يتلقى طابع «المعنى» اللفظي، والتمييزات في المعنى هي المطلب الأول لعملية التكثيف المشار إليها.
ومن خلال الرموز أو المفاهيم اللغوية لا يتم عقد التمييزات فحسب، ولكن يتم تثبيتها في الشعور والوعي أيضًا، فما خلقه الذهن وما اصطفاه من عالم الوعي، لا يتلاشى حين تَسِمه الكلمة المنطوقة وتُضفي عليه شكلًا محددًا. . فالتعرف على الوظيفة يسبق التعرف على الوجود، ويتم تمييز مظاهر الوجود وتنظيمها من خلال ما يوفره الفعل، فنجد في اللغات التي تُسمى بدائية؛ ما يدعم المبدأ القائل «إن نسق الألقاب لا يعتمد على المشابهات الخارجية بين الأشياء والأحداث»، فمن الممكن أن نجد أشياء مختلفة تحمل الاسم نفسه، وتُدرج تحت المفهوم نفسه، لأنها تتمتع بالدلالة «الوظيفية» نفسها. . فنجد عند بعض القبائل الهندية كلمة واحدة بعينها لـ «الرقص» و«العمل»، فما دام الرقص والعمل يؤديان في الجوهر الغرض نفسه؛ في توفير سبل العيش والرزق فإنهما ينصهران في مفهوم لغوي واحد.
وهنالك مثال آخر يوضح الدور الذي تلعبه «الدلالة الوظيفية»؛ ففي لغة «كاتي» المستعملة في غينيا الجديدة، توجد كلمة «بيلين»، والتي تدل على نوع من العشب بسيقان وجذور صلبة، تنحشر في الأرض بقوة كالمسامير، ويُعتقد أن هذه العشبة تثبت الأرض عند حدوث الزلازل! وحين أحضر الأوروبيون المسامير لأول مرّة وصار استخدامها معروفًا على نطاق واسع، استخدم السكان الأصليون تلك الكلمة -بيلين- لتسمية المسامير والتي تتشابه وظيفيًا مع عشبة بيلين!
يؤكد كاسيرر على أن الأسطورة والدين يؤديان أدوارًا متشابهة في ارتقاء الفكر من التجربة المؤقتة إلى التصورات الباقية، ومن الانطباع الحسي إلى الصياغة، وأن وظائفهما الخاصة مشروطة تبادليًا، فهما يجتمعان ويتعاونان لتهيئة التربة لتأليفات كبرى ينبع منها خلقنا العقلي ونظرتنا الموحدة للكون.
سحر الكلمة
في الوعي اللغوي والوعي الأسطوري تبدو البنى اللفظية ككيانات أسطورية، فالكلمة نوع من القوى الأولية التي يتولد فيها الوجود بأسره والفعل برمته. يمكننا أن نجد ذلك الموقف السامي للكلمة في جميع نشآت الكون الأسطورية، فنجد مثلًا ضمن النصوص التي جُمعت من هنود «ويتوتو»؛ نصًا يمثل النظير المباشر للفقرة الأفتتاحية من «أنجيل يوحنا»، يقول النص:
في البدء، أعطت الكلمةُ الأبَ أصله!
ويعرض تاريخ الأديان أمثلة عديدة لحالة توقير «الكلمة»، حيث تبدو «الكلمة» متحدّة بسيّد الخليقة الأسمى، إما بوصفها الأداة التي يستخدمها، وإما باعتبارها المصدر الرئيسي الذي اشتق منه هو نفسه ككل كائن آخر، فنجد في الديانة المصرية القديمة أنّ إله الخلق «بتاح» جاء بكل ما في الوجود؛ عن طريق الفكر الذي في قلبه والأمر على لسانه. وفي الهند، نجد أن قوة «الكلمة المنطوقة» (Vặc) تتعالى فوق قدرات الآلهة أنفسها.
على الكلمة المنطوقة تعتمد الآلهة جميعًا، والوحوش والناس جميعًا، ففي الكلمات تعيش المخلوقات كلها، لأن الكلمة لا تفنى، وهي أول وليد للقانون الأبدي، وأمّ الفيدات، وسرّ العالم الإلهي.
ففي النسق الأسطوري، تُعطي معرفة «الاسم» لم يعرفه سرًا يتجاوز حتى وجود الإله وإرادته؛ فنجد في الأسطورة المصرية القديمة، أن «إيزيس» خدعت الإله «رع» وأقنعته أن يُفشي لها اسمه الحقيقي، فاكتسبت من خلال امتلاك الاسم القوّة عليه وسيطرت على جميع الآلهة الأخرى. ويقول جوزيف فاندريس في كتابه الأشهر «اللغة»:
في الواقع أن معرفة الإنسان للأشياء بأسمائها؛ إمساكٌ لها في قبضته؛ وإذن فعلم المفردات علامة القوّة. لذلك كان سحرة الأثاردافيدا المطببون يقولون في رقاهم: أيتها الحمى! لن تفلتي منّي؛ فإني أعرفك باسمك!.
يكتسب الاسم في الوعي الأسطوري قوى سحريّة، تمكنه من أن يؤدي وظيفة ما نيابة عن حامله، ويُعدّ النطق به مساو لاستدعاء شخص ما إلى الوجود، والإله الخاص لا يعيش ولا يتصرف إلا في النطاق الجزئي الذي يمنحه له اسمه، والكلمة أو اللغة في النمط الأسطوري تمثل وجود وقوّة جوهرية قبل أن تكون آلة الذهن، فوظيفتها الأساسية تكمن في بناء وتطوير واقع روحي، وفي كتاب «الخروج إلى النهار»، المسمى كتاب «الموتى»، نجد الترنيمة ا��شهيرة التي تصف يوم البعث، فتقول:
انهضْ،
فلن تفنى،
لقد نوديت باسمك،
لقد بُعثت!
May 5, 2019
برخی قبایل سرخپوست برای «رقصیدن» و «کار کردن» واژهی واحدی را بهکار میبرند. بیگمان به این دلیل که تمایز میان این دو فعالیت برای آنها
هیچ آشکار نیست. چون که رقص و کشاورزی در طرح زندگی آنها اساساً به همان منظور فراهم آوردن وسایل زندگی بهکار گرفته میشود. به انگار آنها، رشد و فراوانی محصولات کشاورزی، به اجرای درست رقصها و تشریفات جادویی و دینی آنها بستگی دارد تا مراقبت شایسته از خاک.
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May 4, 2021Neo Kantian Cassirer has an excellent understanding of understanding as a cultural circularity. That is, the way in which myth and language form each other and are ever-present within one another. His employment of Hermann Usener's (have not read him...) idea of 'momentary gods' to illustrate the forming of ideas which eventually progress to serve as a piece within the arena of discursive language is fascinating. Cassirer's thesis is that myth embodies the tendrils of our entire understanding of the world. Cassirer insists that,
"Theoretical, practical, and aesthetic consciousness, the world of language and morality, the basic forms of community and the state—they are all originally tied up with mythico-religious conceptions. This connection is so strong that where it begins to dissolve the whole intellectual world seems threatened with disruption and collapse; so vital that as the separate forms emerge from the original whole and henceforth show specific characteristics against its undifferentiated background they seem to uproot themselves and lose some of their own proper nature."
And so follows from every rupture, a new way of seeing. This is certainly what Zizek harps on about—ideology, that which we are not aware which we already know. Discursive language has a sort of ambivalent relationship to the world (and myth, for that matter) as the system becomes more accommodating in terms of its ability to employ different concepts in an increasingly mobile fashion. In the discursive life of the mind, all events occur analogously, as they find their place within an expanding framework of ideas. In contrast, the simply mythic point of view does the opposite—all events are reduced to a single point towards the understanding of the moment, the event, and the object/event is the actual presence of spirit. This Divine eventually evolves into pure presence, a kind of unnamable ever-present being. There occurs a separation from the world... Cassirer mentions that in this stage of understanding,
"[...] every mere 'attribute' would limit its essence; *omnis determinatio est negatio*. It is especially the cult of mysticism in all ages and among all peoples, that grapples again and again with this intellectual double problem—the task of comprehending the Divine in its highest inward reality, and yet avoiding any particularity of name or image."
This intangibility eventually matures to a universe of mere 'relationships' where Being is completely liberated from a specific form of existence and is no longer a predicate for a 'thing'. Still, mythic and discursive conceptions, while undoubtedly distinct, share a similar creative impulse in that,
"Language and myth stand in an original and indissoluble correlation with one another, from which they both emerge but gradually as independent elements. They are two diverse shoots from the same parent stem, the same impulse of symbolic formulation, springing from the same basic mental activity, a concentration and heightening of simple sensory experience."
In the mythic conception, art and language are one, there is no distinction. In the discursive conception, we come to regard art as a separate arena from 'life'. Hell, even this silly 'life as art' crap comes off as parody.Yet poetry, for Cassirer, or anything which we may regard as a 'serious' work of art is successful insofar as it is able to cast aside the complacent regard of word and image, and thereby rejuvenates our way of seeing in its own self revelation. Beautiful! I'd like to read more of him, particularly his Theory of Symbolic Forms. We'll see.
"Theoretical, practical, and aesthetic consciousness, the world of language and morality, the basic forms of community and the state—they are all originally tied up with mythico-religious conceptions. This connection is so strong that where it begins to dissolve the whole intellectual world seems threatened with disruption and collapse; so vital that as the separate forms emerge from the original whole and henceforth show specific characteristics against its undifferentiated background they seem to uproot themselves and lose some of their own proper nature."
And so follows from every rupture, a new way of seeing. This is certainly what Zizek harps on about—ideology, that which we are not aware which we already know. Discursive language has a sort of ambivalent relationship to the world (and myth, for that matter) as the system becomes more accommodating in terms of its ability to employ different concepts in an increasingly mobile fashion. In the discursive life of the mind, all events occur analogously, as they find their place within an expanding framework of ideas. In contrast, the simply mythic point of view does the opposite—all events are reduced to a single point towards the understanding of the moment, the event, and the object/event is the actual presence of spirit. This Divine eventually evolves into pure presence, a kind of unnamable ever-present being. There occurs a separation from the world... Cassirer mentions that in this stage of understanding,
"[...] every mere 'attribute' would limit its essence; *omnis determinatio est negatio*. It is especially the cult of mysticism in all ages and among all peoples, that grapples again and again with this intellectual double problem—the task of comprehending the Divine in its highest inward reality, and yet avoiding any particularity of name or image."
This intangibility eventually matures to a universe of mere 'relationships' where Being is completely liberated from a specific form of existence and is no longer a predicate for a 'thing'. Still, mythic and discursive conceptions, while undoubtedly distinct, share a similar creative impulse in that,
"Language and myth stand in an original and indissoluble correlation with one another, from which they both emerge but gradually as independent elements. They are two diverse shoots from the same parent stem, the same impulse of symbolic formulation, springing from the same basic mental activity, a concentration and heightening of simple sensory experience."
In the mythic conception, art and language are one, there is no distinction. In the discursive conception, we come to regard art as a separate arena from 'life'. Hell, even this silly 'life as art' crap comes off as parody.Yet poetry, for Cassirer, or anything which we may regard as a 'serious' work of art is successful insofar as it is able to cast aside the complacent regard of word and image, and thereby rejuvenates our way of seeing in its own self revelation. Beautiful! I'd like to read more of him, particularly his Theory of Symbolic Forms. We'll see.
June 10, 2020
پیشنهاد من: به جای این کتاب، فلسفه صورتهای سمبلیک رو از همین نویسنده بخونید. وقت بیشتری ازتون می گیره، اما خیلی عمیق تر و کامل تر مباحث رو مطرح می کنه.
August 26, 2019
I love a book that shakes up my ideas of how the world works. Language and Myth did that. Cassirer’s short work takes on neo-Kantian, psychological, aesthetic, and artistic expressions of the inadequacies of forms, symbols, and myths—his argument that myths, rather than being inadequate substitutions of forms in reality instead represent the actual reality of the subject, went off like a flash grenade in my consciousness.
After the stunning revelation that the myth makers created the world as their reality, I had to rethink everything I thought I knew about language, writing, and symbolic expression. I’m still processing the ideas from this book and will undoubtedly read it many more times as well as Cassirer’s longer works.
This book is the creation of an extraordinary mind operating near a peak of experience and expression. Read it! Think about it. Share it.
After the stunning revelation that the myth makers created the world as their reality, I had to rethink everything I thought I knew about language, writing, and symbolic expression. I’m still processing the ideas from this book and will undoubtedly read it many more times as well as Cassirer’s longer works.
This book is the creation of an extraordinary mind operating near a peak of experience and expression. Read it! Think about it. Share it.
Read
February 25, 2018Küçük ama dolu dolu, okuyana bahsettiği şeyler hakkında farklı düşünme yolları sunabilecek bir kitap.
March 18, 2021
This short (126 pp.) work was originally published by Cassirer in his native Germany. The English translation was undertaken by fellow philosopher--and in some ways his successor in the aspect of his project--Susanne K. Langer. The English-language edition was published in 1953. It's not a quick or easy read, but well worthwhile if the reader has an interest in the roots of myth, language, religion, and thought.
This is my first book by Cassirer. His titles, An Essay on Man (1943), The Myth of the State (1946), and Language and Myth were found on many book store shelves and The Myth of the State (which I've now started reading) was included on political theory "additional reading" bibliographies. But Cassirer wasn't taught in any class that I took, and I never got around to reading any of his work. But my curiosity was renewed when I read The Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy (2020), in which Cassirer comes across as the most establishment and the most traditional of the four thinkers discussed in that book. However, he also came across as the most sensible and accessible. The climax of the book was a "debate" between Cassirer and Martin Heidegger that was held in Davos (yes, that Davos) in 1929. Some thought Heidegger received the greater approval of those present, but I came away with s greater appreciation of Cassirer. (N.B. Heidegger remained in Germany in 1933 after the Nazis came to power and accepted a Nazi-approved position; Cassirer, who was Jewish, fled Germany that year for Britain and eventually came to the U.S., where he finished his career.)
Thus my taking up Language and Myth.
This is a dense book, not a long read, but neither is it a quick, easy read. In fact, in order to write this review, I went back and read it a second time. But the additional effort was worth the time spent.
Cassirer wields serious credentials as a scholar and as a thinker. His mastery of the literature of myth and religion from the nineteenth-century up to the time of his original publication in 1924 reveals his bona fides as a scholar. Many of the fellow scholars whose works he cites are unfamiliar to me (and wrote in German), but a few, like Frazier, Tylor, and Max Muller, are familiar. Cassirer delves deeply into these sources in his attempt to understand the relationship between language, myth, religion, and later formal modes of thought (such as philosophy and science). That Cassirer relies on so many early explorations of mythology and religion makes me wonder how later developments in the field may alter the validity of his conclusions. In any event, these early European (and American?) scholars delved deeply and enthusiastically into other cultures and their ways, which is certainly one of the positive outcomes of the spread of Westerners around the world and their encounters with different civilizations and cultures. Cassirer seems quite well-acquainted with this pioneering literature. And what does he make of it?
In short, Cassirer argues that that language and myth share a common linage and that one doesn't pre-date the other. Myth and mythological (and magical) thinking pre-date later developments of what we've come to know as rational, logical thought. He spends the last chapter discussing metaphor as a key function of language. Put in the simplest terms, our logical-deductive, denotative language tends to abstraction and generalization, while our mythical, more metaphorical language tends toward specification. I come away with the feeling that Cassirer doesn't intend to crown one way of language and knowledge over the other, but he sees them as complementary. And don't be fooled by his sympathy for the archaic, the mythological, the metaphorical. This is a man who was a leading "neo-Kantian" and who wrote a book explaining Einstein's (then) new theory of relativity.
As I remarked above, I've just embarked on The Myth of the State, and I also have my eye on his An Essay on Man, both of which should take deeper into his project of "philosophical anthropology." After those two works, I'm looking forward to some of Susanne Langer's works. And, reading Myth and Language has me thinking about how his work compares to that of his peer, R.G. Collingwood, who served as a reader for an OUP book of essays dedicated to Cassirer, who was then living in the UK. So no doubt Collingwood had some acquaintance with Cassirer's project. Both of these thinkers were concerned with art and appreciated non-Western and archaic cultures and traditions. (And Collingwood made interesting observations about magic as well.) I also wonder how Cassirer compares to Owen Barfield, a younger contemporary concerned with the "evolution of thought" and origins and development of language. Finally, among our contemporaries, Iain McGilchrist cites Cassirer a few times in his masterwork, The Master and His Emissary, and I suspect that there are a good many more shared perspectives and potential influences than one might glean from McGilchrist's passing citations. (Perhaps McGilchrist's forthcoming book will shed some light on this topic.)
Cassirer is another thinker from the first half of the twentieth century and from Central Europe whose writing about philosophy, history, politics, religion, and art--and about their contemporary world--continues to fascinate me. A century ago they were dealing with the Great Influenza that ravaged the world in 1918-1919 while at the same time dealing with the destructiveness of the First World War and all the changes that it wrought. And it was a time of new mass media (radio and film), economic disruption (post-war and then the Great Depression), cultural change, and political extremism and violence. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and the rhymes I hear make me nervous and therefore eager to take advantage of the insights and wisdom of those who dealt with similar challenges a century ago.
This is my first book by Cassirer. His titles, An Essay on Man (1943), The Myth of the State (1946), and Language and Myth were found on many book store shelves and The Myth of the State (which I've now started reading) was included on political theory "additional reading" bibliographies. But Cassirer wasn't taught in any class that I took, and I never got around to reading any of his work. But my curiosity was renewed when I read The Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy (2020), in which Cassirer comes across as the most establishment and the most traditional of the four thinkers discussed in that book. However, he also came across as the most sensible and accessible. The climax of the book was a "debate" between Cassirer and Martin Heidegger that was held in Davos (yes, that Davos) in 1929. Some thought Heidegger received the greater approval of those present, but I came away with s greater appreciation of Cassirer. (N.B. Heidegger remained in Germany in 1933 after the Nazis came to power and accepted a Nazi-approved position; Cassirer, who was Jewish, fled Germany that year for Britain and eventually came to the U.S., where he finished his career.)
Thus my taking up Language and Myth.
This is a dense book, not a long read, but neither is it a quick, easy read. In fact, in order to write this review, I went back and read it a second time. But the additional effort was worth the time spent.
Cassirer wields serious credentials as a scholar and as a thinker. His mastery of the literature of myth and religion from the nineteenth-century up to the time of his original publication in 1924 reveals his bona fides as a scholar. Many of the fellow scholars whose works he cites are unfamiliar to me (and wrote in German), but a few, like Frazier, Tylor, and Max Muller, are familiar. Cassirer delves deeply into these sources in his attempt to understand the relationship between language, myth, religion, and later formal modes of thought (such as philosophy and science). That Cassirer relies on so many early explorations of mythology and religion makes me wonder how later developments in the field may alter the validity of his conclusions. In any event, these early European (and American?) scholars delved deeply and enthusiastically into other cultures and their ways, which is certainly one of the positive outcomes of the spread of Westerners around the world and their encounters with different civilizations and cultures. Cassirer seems quite well-acquainted with this pioneering literature. And what does he make of it?
In short, Cassirer argues that that language and myth share a common linage and that one doesn't pre-date the other. Myth and mythological (and magical) thinking pre-date later developments of what we've come to know as rational, logical thought. He spends the last chapter discussing metaphor as a key function of language. Put in the simplest terms, our logical-deductive, denotative language tends to abstraction and generalization, while our mythical, more metaphorical language tends toward specification. I come away with the feeling that Cassirer doesn't intend to crown one way of language and knowledge over the other, but he sees them as complementary. And don't be fooled by his sympathy for the archaic, the mythological, the metaphorical. This is a man who was a leading "neo-Kantian" and who wrote a book explaining Einstein's (then) new theory of relativity.
As I remarked above, I've just embarked on The Myth of the State, and I also have my eye on his An Essay on Man, both of which should take deeper into his project of "philosophical anthropology." After those two works, I'm looking forward to some of Susanne Langer's works. And, reading Myth and Language has me thinking about how his work compares to that of his peer, R.G. Collingwood, who served as a reader for an OUP book of essays dedicated to Cassirer, who was then living in the UK. So no doubt Collingwood had some acquaintance with Cassirer's project. Both of these thinkers were concerned with art and appreciated non-Western and archaic cultures and traditions. (And Collingwood made interesting observations about magic as well.) I also wonder how Cassirer compares to Owen Barfield, a younger contemporary concerned with the "evolution of thought" and origins and development of language. Finally, among our contemporaries, Iain McGilchrist cites Cassirer a few times in his masterwork, The Master and His Emissary, and I suspect that there are a good many more shared perspectives and potential influences than one might glean from McGilchrist's passing citations. (Perhaps McGilchrist's forthcoming book will shed some light on this topic.)
Cassirer is another thinker from the first half of the twentieth century and from Central Europe whose writing about philosophy, history, politics, religion, and art--and about their contemporary world--continues to fascinate me. A century ago they were dealing with the Great Influenza that ravaged the world in 1918-1919 while at the same time dealing with the destructiveness of the First World War and all the changes that it wrought. And it was a time of new mass media (radio and film), economic disruption (post-war and then the Great Depression), cultural change, and political extremism and violence. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and the rhymes I hear make me nervous and therefore eager to take advantage of the insights and wisdom of those who dealt with similar challenges a century ago.
August 28, 2016
أولا الترجمة السيئة وغير مترابطة وكنت أعود دائما للنص الإنجليزي لكي أفهم بعض المقاطع.
ثانيا بالنسبة لفكرة الكتاب فحين بحث كاسيرر الأطوار المتعاقبة للفكر الديني، وجد أن هذه الأطوار تستهدي باللغة وتتبع خطاها. فهو يعتمد على رأي أوسنر، في بحثه الفيلولوجي عن جذور اشتقاق أسماء الآلهة، أن الشرط الضروري لتكوين الهة شخصية هو عملية لغوية – تاريخية.
قبل الشروع بالعمل العقلي المنطقي في إدراك الظواهر وفهمها، لابد من أن يكون عمل التسميه قد سبقه، حتتي تتكون مفاهيم الموضوعات المنطقية التي تنقل عالم الحس إلى عالم الفكر. والتصور لا يثبت إلا بتجسده في الرمز. فالكلمة مثل إله أو شيطان لا تواجه الإنسان بصفتها شيئا موجودا ودالا في ذاته كواقع موضوعي. فالإنسان أمام التجربة (الحسية أمام الظواهر الطبيعية مثلا)، وحالما تندلع الشرارة وحالما يجد التوتر والانفعال باللحظة داخله، تفريغا لشحنته في الكلمة أو الصورة الأس��ورية، فتتلاشي الاستثارة الداخلية الذاتية وتتحول لواقع موضوعي للأسطورة أو للكلام. فما أن يتم تصوير إله خاص من البداية حتى يطوق باسم خاص وهذا الاسم لابد وأن يكون مشتقا من الفاعلية الخاصة التي تسببت بإحداث ذلك الإله (مضمون التجربة كالظواهر الطبيعية) ومادام هذا الاسم يفهم ويؤخذ بمعناه الأصلي فإن حدود معناه هي حدود قوى الإله. وإذا سلمنا بأنه "بمباشرة مطلقة، يتم تأليه الظاهرة"، فإن عملية التأليه تصبح لازمة عن تجربة وليس اعتقادا عقليا.
ومع تطور اللغة وهجران الجذر اللفظي القديم لاسم الإله، يتحول الاسم لاسم علم وكأي اسم علم انساني بتصور شخصية متجسدة وهكذا يكون قد أنتج كائن جديد منخرط في جميع أنواع الأفعال بدلا من وظيفته الواحدة الأصلية. وأسماء الآلهة المتعددة التي كانت تدل في الأصل على عدد مقابل من الآلهة الشخصية المميزة تمييزا حادا، تنصهر في شخصية واحدة وتتحول مجموعة الأسماء لألقاب متنوعة للكائن الواحد الجديد، تعبر عن مظاهر مختلفة من طبيعته وسلطته ونطاقه. وبالتالي فقد نمت الاستعارات اللغوية بنفس الطريقة التي نمت بها الآلهة عند الشعوب.
ولهذا نجد في الأساطير دائما سواء الخلق بالكلمة أو تماهي الإله مع أسمه حتى أن من يدرك اسمه يتحكم في قدرته. فتتلقى الأسطورة الحياة من اللغة كما تتلقى اللغة ذلك من الأسطورة، فهما تشكلان مجرد تعبيرات مختلفة عن المبدأ العقلي الذي صدرت عنه كلتاهما.
ثانيا بالنسبة لفكرة الكتاب فحين بحث كاسيرر الأطوار المتعاقبة للفكر الديني، وجد أن هذه الأطوار تستهدي باللغة وتتبع خطاها. فهو يعتمد على رأي أوسنر، في بحثه الفيلولوجي عن جذور اشتقاق أسماء الآلهة، أن الشرط الضروري لتكوين الهة شخصية هو عملية لغوية – تاريخية.
قبل الشروع بالعمل العقلي المنطقي في إدراك الظواهر وفهمها، لابد من أن يكون عمل التسميه قد سبقه، حتتي تتكون مفاهيم الموضوعات المنطقية التي تنقل عالم الحس إلى عالم الفكر. والتصور لا يثبت إلا بتجسده في الرمز. فالكلمة مثل إله أو شيطان لا تواجه الإنسان بصفتها شيئا موجودا ودالا في ذاته كواقع موضوعي. فالإنسان أمام التجربة (الحسية أمام الظواهر الطبيعية مثلا)، وحالما تندلع الشرارة وحالما يجد التوتر والانفعال باللحظة داخله، تفريغا لشحنته في الكلمة أو الصورة الأس��ورية، فتتلاشي الاستثارة الداخلية الذاتية وتتحول لواقع موضوعي للأسطورة أو للكلام. فما أن يتم تصوير إله خاص من البداية حتى يطوق باسم خاص وهذا الاسم لابد وأن يكون مشتقا من الفاعلية الخاصة التي تسببت بإحداث ذلك الإله (مضمون التجربة كالظواهر الطبيعية) ومادام هذا الاسم يفهم ويؤخذ بمعناه الأصلي فإن حدود معناه هي حدود قوى الإله. وإذا سلمنا بأنه "بمباشرة مطلقة، يتم تأليه الظاهرة"، فإن عملية التأليه تصبح لازمة عن تجربة وليس اعتقادا عقليا.
ومع تطور اللغة وهجران الجذر اللفظي القديم لاسم الإله، يتحول الاسم لاسم علم وكأي اسم علم انساني بتصور شخصية متجسدة وهكذا يكون قد أنتج كائن جديد منخرط في جميع أنواع الأفعال بدلا من وظيفته الواحدة الأصلية. وأسماء الآلهة المتعددة التي كانت تدل في الأصل على عدد مقابل من الآلهة الشخصية المميزة تمييزا حادا، تنصهر في شخصية واحدة وتتحول مجموعة الأسماء لألقاب متنوعة للكائن الواحد الجديد، تعبر عن مظاهر مختلفة من طبيعته وسلطته ونطاقه. وبالتالي فقد نمت الاستعارات اللغوية بنفس الطريقة التي نمت بها الآلهة عند الشعوب.
ولهذا نجد في الأساطير دائما سواء الخلق بالكلمة أو تماهي الإله مع أسمه حتى أن من يدرك اسمه يتحكم في قدرته. فتتلقى الأسطورة الحياة من اللغة كما تتلقى اللغة ذلك من الأسطورة، فهما تشكلان مجرد تعبيرات مختلفة عن المبدأ العقلي الذي صدرت عنه كلتاهما.
November 28, 2011
Its a pretty tough subject matter, if you really want to understand it. I read the whole book about 3 times and parts of it 10 times, and I still conflused. I did make one very important connection tough- words are gods. Doesn't the bible say: "In the beginning there was the word, and the word was God?" Anyways, I think its pretty cool how he derives the two from the same source- sensory impression. Even though I'm still trying to come to grips with its derivaiton and consequences. I would highly recommend this book if you're unhappy.
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March 4, 2013You know that colony of people in Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 who commit books to memory in order to save them from a culture of book burning? Well, if such a thing were to ever come about in reality and I was the one to get saddled with this thing, you can kiss it goodbye; what's more, I doubt anyone would notice its absence.
July 22, 2014
This is currently my bathroom reading.
June 16, 2023
الكلمات ونشأتها كثيراً ما أثارت فضولي منذ الصغر، وأول إجابة تلقيتها كانت هي الإجابة المعتادة ( وعلم آدم الأسماء كلها) هنا كانت تتوقف حدود تسآؤلاتي الصغيرة عند التفسير الحرفي لهذه الآية.. لاحقاً ومع الدراسة اتسعت مداركنا عن نظريات علم اللغة وموضوعاته ولكن ظلّ الشغف للمزيد من الفهم باقياً .
كتاب اللغة والأسطورة للفيلسوف إرنست كاسيرر يتناول شرح الكيفية التي نشأت فيها الكلمة جنباً إلى جنب مع الأسطورة والدين حيث لا يمكن عزل مفهوم ونشأة اللغة عن الأسطورة ويرى أن الحديث عن أسبقية إحداهما على الأخرى غير دقيق بتاتاً .. فالاثنان ينصهران معاً بحيث أن الكلمة في اللغة هي تعبير لمحتوى ما مشتقة ابتداءً من حاجة دينية ولدت شعوراً ثم انطباعاً تم تكثيفه حتى اُختصِر إلى رمز ( كملة) ثم توالت الكلمات .
كما أن فهم السياق البدائي الديني للمجتمعات يكشف عن المسار الكامل لعملية تشكل اللغة وكيف نشأ كل منهما مسانداً للآخر ..ويضرب على ذلك أمثلة من عدة ثقافات مختلفة .
الكتاب يحمل جانباً فلسفياً ولغوياً بطبيعة الحال وجانب من الإنثربولوجيا ولكن الأسلوب والترجمة الرائعة والشرح بإسهاب مع الأمثلة والشواهد جعلت القراءة ممتعة جداً و الكتاب مناسبًا حتى لمن يقرأ لأول مرة عن هذا الموضوع.
كتاب مهم جداً وأنصح به حتماً لكل مهتم بهذا المجال.
كتاب اللغة والأسطورة للفيلسوف إرنست كاسيرر يتناول شرح الكيفية التي نشأت فيها الكلمة جنباً إلى جنب مع الأسطورة والدين حيث لا يمكن عزل مفهوم ونشأة اللغة عن الأسطورة ويرى أن الحديث عن أسبقية إحداهما على الأخرى غير دقيق بتاتاً .. فالاثنان ينصهران معاً بحيث أن الكلمة في اللغة هي تعبير لمحتوى ما مشتقة ابتداءً من حاجة دينية ولدت شعوراً ثم انطباعاً تم تكثيفه حتى اُختصِر إلى رمز ( كملة) ثم توالت الكلمات .
كما أن فهم السياق البدائي الديني للمجتمعات يكشف عن المسار الكامل لعملية تشكل اللغة وكيف نشأ كل منهما مسانداً للآخر ..ويضرب على ذلك أمثلة من عدة ثقافات مختلفة .
الكتاب يحمل جانباً فلسفياً ولغوياً بطبيعة الحال وجانب من الإنثربولوجيا ولكن الأسلوب والترجمة الرائعة والشرح بإسهاب مع الأمثلة والشواهد جعلت القراءة ممتعة جداً و الكتاب مناسبًا حتى لمن يقرأ لأول مرة عن هذا الموضوع.
كتاب مهم جداً وأنصح به حتماً لكل مهتم بهذا المجال.
November 10, 2020
This book was assigned for one of my first courses at Union Theological Seminary: 'Philosophical Method & Its Relationship to Theological Inquiry', taught by Dr. Smith during the first semester of 1974/75.
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July 27, 2011This books is a compilation of six essays which explain what religion is at it's base level and the relationship between Metaphor and Language.
September 24, 2020
This book develops vital concepts encountered in others about religion, human history, and our mental evolution, including morality and science. The ideas seem foundational. However, as the study of language is new to me, I can’t gauge whether Ernst Cassirer’s ideas are dated or not. Written in 1946, it refers to others written in the late 1800s, early 1900s. For philosophy, fine, for neural psychology, not so much. As Frans de Waals clarifies (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are), Cassirer’s passing dismissals of animal cognition are wrong. At times this text was so remarkable it knocked me off my chair; at others, I felt I was reading a dissertation about the topology of knots.
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) was a neo-Kantian German philosopher, interested in knowledge and culture. Contrary to learning as an orderly development of facts, Cassirer claims just the opposite: knowledge and its engine, language, are born from a peculiar sort of “mythological imagination.” From conceptions of things and places come language as the symbolization of thought to communicate awe. Rational thought emerges later, resulting in two language modes: analytical and imaginative. Language reaches its mythological peak in religion, its analytical height in science, both hostile to the other. “Reason is not man’s primitive endowment, but his achievement,” says Cassirer.
Cassirer notes that language as a translation of thought comes with inherent ambiguity. “Just exactly what I’m trying to say” is hard. Some exaggerate this to claim language is “nothing but subjective misconception and falsification [while] all other processes of mental gestation involve the same sort of outrageous distortion,” sneers Cassirer. From here, it’s “but a single step to the complete dissolution of any alleged truth concept [which expresses] not the nature of things, but the nature of the mind.” And yet those billions of devices built by science work just as science designed. Today we call this relativity, postmodernism, long embraced by the Left, now by the Right as “alternative facts.” Cassirer masterfully dismantles it.
The awe that language first expresses appears as a side effect of consciousness, the ability to comprehend our nature separate from others and the world. Awe embodied first as a personality in everything from rocks to rivers, followed by magic in the names of things, to religion with many named gods, each its own power, eventually rolled into one who goes beyond names to no name at all. As the Egyptian god Ra, and the much later Hebrew deity say, call me “I am.” A final step in trying to make the language as incomprehensible as the god, like the awe that can never be entirely captured by symbols. Reminiscent of Marcel Gauchet’s notion (Disenchantment of the World) that religion is finally the illogical solution to our illogical condition. A thought-provoking book.
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) was a neo-Kantian German philosopher, interested in knowledge and culture. Contrary to learning as an orderly development of facts, Cassirer claims just the opposite: knowledge and its engine, language, are born from a peculiar sort of “mythological imagination.” From conceptions of things and places come language as the symbolization of thought to communicate awe. Rational thought emerges later, resulting in two language modes: analytical and imaginative. Language reaches its mythological peak in religion, its analytical height in science, both hostile to the other. “Reason is not man’s primitive endowment, but his achievement,” says Cassirer.
Cassirer notes that language as a translation of thought comes with inherent ambiguity. “Just exactly what I’m trying to say” is hard. Some exaggerate this to claim language is “nothing but subjective misconception and falsification [while] all other processes of mental gestation involve the same sort of outrageous distortion,” sneers Cassirer. From here, it’s “but a single step to the complete dissolution of any alleged truth concept [which expresses] not the nature of things, but the nature of the mind.” And yet those billions of devices built by science work just as science designed. Today we call this relativity, postmodernism, long embraced by the Left, now by the Right as “alternative facts.” Cassirer masterfully dismantles it.
The awe that language first expresses appears as a side effect of consciousness, the ability to comprehend our nature separate from others and the world. Awe embodied first as a personality in everything from rocks to rivers, followed by magic in the names of things, to religion with many named gods, each its own power, eventually rolled into one who goes beyond names to no name at all. As the Egyptian god Ra, and the much later Hebrew deity say, call me “I am.” A final step in trying to make the language as incomprehensible as the god, like the awe that can never be entirely captured by symbols. Reminiscent of Marcel Gauchet’s notion (Disenchantment of the World) that religion is finally the illogical solution to our illogical condition. A thought-provoking book.
February 18, 2021
Ernst Cassirer, altı yazısından oluşan bu kitapta dil ve mitin nasıl ortaya çıktığına dair çeşitli soruların cevabını bulmaya çalışıyor.
Cassirer, Max Müller'in savunduğu, mitin, dilin sahip olduğu bir zayıflık ürünü olduğu fikrine -benzer söyleniş ya da yazılışa sahip sözcüklerin farklı sözlük anlamlarıyla miti ortaya çıkarması- karşı çıkar.
Dilin miti doğurduğu, mitin dili doğurduğu gibi bütün fikirlere karşı çıkan Cassirer, dil ve mitin ortak bir kökene sahip olduğunu savunur. Bu fikrini Hermann Usener'in "anlık tanrılar" kavramıyla destekler. Usener'e göre "anlık tanrılar", herhangi bir mitsel-dinsel imgeye dönüşmeyen, ani bir şey, zihinsel bir içeriktir. "Anlık tanrılar", oluştukları âna ait duygudan ayrıldıklarında bağımsız bir varlık olurlar. Cassirer'e göre dilin oluşması, sözcüklerin kalıcılık işlevi kazanması aynı süreci takip eder. Anlık bir duyguyla ortaya çıkan sesler, ses birlikleri o anlık duygudan ayrılınca bir kalıcılık kazanır. Dil ve mitin ortaya çıkışındaki bu benzerlik onları birbirleriyle ilişkili kılar. Mecazın etkisiyle de mit ve dil birbiriyle sürekli anlam alışverişi içerisindedir.
Cassirer, dil ve mit arasındaki bağ sayesinde, sözcüklerin sahip olduğu mitsel gücün önemi üzerinde de durur. "Ad asla yalnızca bir simge değil, taşıyıcısının kişisel özelliğinin/mülkiyetinin bir parçasıdır(...)" Kimi inanışlarda, yapılan ayinlerin, edilen duaların "tanrıyla" değil "tanrının adıyla" yapılmasının sebebi adın, taşıyıcısının gücünü taşıdığına yönelik olan inançtır. Kimi kültürlerde yeni doğan bir çocuğa, ölen büyüklerinin adının verilmesi, ölen kişinin çocukta tekrar dirileceğine olan inançtan kaynaklanır. Ölen kişi, adı anılırsa geleceğinden dolayı farklı adlarla anılır. Aynı durum kutsal ad için de geçerlidir.
Cassirer, tanrılık kavramının ilk somut gelişimini dil aracılığıyla edindiğini söyler. Kişisel ilahların ne kadar çok adı olursa o kadar güçlü olduğuna inanılırdı. Lakin tanrısal olan her sıfattan arındırılır. Çünkü her sıfatın, onun saf özünü sınırlayacağı fikri gelişir. Kişi zamirlerinin ortaya çıkmasıyla tanrısal olanı ifade etmenin şekli de değişir.
Cassirer, dilin kökünde isimlerin mi yoksa fillerin mi bulunduğuna yönelik tartışmaya da bir yorum getirir. Cassirer, nesneler veya eylemlerin -yani isimler ve fillerin- dilin kökünü oluşturmadığını, dilin bu ayrımları oluşturduğunu savunur. Yani Cassirer'e göre bu ayrımı oluşturun şey dilin ta kendisi olduğu için böyle bir arayış boşunadır.
Az hacmine rağmen geniş bilgiler sunan bu kitap dil ve mitle ilgilenen kişilere şüphesiz fayda sağlayacaktır. Lakin felsefe terminolojisine alışkın olmayanlar için okuyup idrak etmesi biraz daha emek isteyebilir.
Cassirer, Max Müller'in savunduğu, mitin, dilin sahip olduğu bir zayıflık ürünü olduğu fikrine -benzer söyleniş ya da yazılışa sahip sözcüklerin farklı sözlük anlamlarıyla miti ortaya çıkarması- karşı çıkar.
Dilin miti doğurduğu, mitin dili doğurduğu gibi bütün fikirlere karşı çıkan Cassirer, dil ve mitin ortak bir kökene sahip olduğunu savunur. Bu fikrini Hermann Usener'in "anlık tanrılar" kavramıyla destekler. Usener'e göre "anlık tanrılar", herhangi bir mitsel-dinsel imgeye dönüşmeyen, ani bir şey, zihinsel bir içeriktir. "Anlık tanrılar", oluştukları âna ait duygudan ayrıldıklarında bağımsız bir varlık olurlar. Cassirer'e göre dilin oluşması, sözcüklerin kalıcılık işlevi kazanması aynı süreci takip eder. Anlık bir duyguyla ortaya çıkan sesler, ses birlikleri o anlık duygudan ayrılınca bir kalıcılık kazanır. Dil ve mitin ortaya çıkışındaki bu benzerlik onları birbirleriyle ilişkili kılar. Mecazın etkisiyle de mit ve dil birbiriyle sürekli anlam alışverişi içerisindedir.
Cassirer, dil ve mit arasındaki bağ sayesinde, sözcüklerin sahip olduğu mitsel gücün önemi üzerinde de durur. "Ad asla yalnızca bir simge değil, taşıyıcısının kişisel özelliğinin/mülkiyetinin bir parçasıdır(...)" Kimi inanışlarda, yapılan ayinlerin, edilen duaların "tanrıyla" değil "tanrının adıyla" yapılmasının sebebi adın, taşıyıcısının gücünü taşıdığına yönelik olan inançtır. Kimi kültürlerde yeni doğan bir çocuğa, ölen büyüklerinin adının verilmesi, ölen kişinin çocukta tekrar dirileceğine olan inançtan kaynaklanır. Ölen kişi, adı anılırsa geleceğinden dolayı farklı adlarla anılır. Aynı durum kutsal ad için de geçerlidir.
Cassirer, tanrılık kavramının ilk somut gelişimini dil aracılığıyla edindiğini söyler. Kişisel ilahların ne kadar çok adı olursa o kadar güçlü olduğuna inanılırdı. Lakin tanrısal olan her sıfattan arındırılır. Çünkü her sıfatın, onun saf özünü sınırlayacağı fikri gelişir. Kişi zamirlerinin ortaya çıkmasıyla tanrısal olanı ifade etmenin şekli de değişir.
Cassirer, dilin kökünde isimlerin mi yoksa fillerin mi bulunduğuna yönelik tartışmaya da bir yorum getirir. Cassirer, nesneler veya eylemlerin -yani isimler ve fillerin- dilin kökünü oluşturmadığını, dilin bu ayrımları oluşturduğunu savunur. Yani Cassirer'e göre bu ayrımı oluşturun şey dilin ta kendisi olduğu için böyle bir arayış boşunadır.
Az hacmine rağmen geniş bilgiler sunan bu kitap dil ve mitle ilgilenen kişilere şüphesiz fayda sağlayacaktır. Lakin felsefe terminolojisine alışkın olmayanlar için okuyup idrak etmesi biraz daha emek isteyebilir.
March 28, 2018
This book is an collection of six essays from Ernst Cassirer translated by Susanne Langer, originally published in 1946. It's a bit of a slog to read and certainly the mention of 'savages' rattles our more contemporary mores. That said, Cassirer is looking at what he sees as the common ancestor for language and myth as it relates to the non-rational processes behind the creation of culture.
The essays that stand out for me are "The Successive Phases of Religious Thought" which attempts to excavate just that and it really does feel a bit archeological as it moves toward the dawning of religious sentiment. In fact, as a religious naturalist, I found this chapter relevant for those of us who reject supernaturalism as Cassirer devotes much time to exploring the origination of the concept of "supernatural power."
The other chapter I found most interesting is "Word Magic" and it is here where his argument for the "original bond between the linguistic and the mythico-religious consciousness" is most clearly enunciated.
Definitely for those who already have a strong interest in this topic and as such a kind of "specialist" book.
The essays that stand out for me are "The Successive Phases of Religious Thought" which attempts to excavate just that and it really does feel a bit archeological as it moves toward the dawning of religious sentiment. In fact, as a religious naturalist, I found this chapter relevant for those of us who reject supernaturalism as Cassirer devotes much time to exploring the origination of the concept of "supernatural power."
The other chapter I found most interesting is "Word Magic" and it is here where his argument for the "original bond between the linguistic and the mythico-religious consciousness" is most clearly enunciated.
Definitely for those who already have a strong interest in this topic and as such a kind of "specialist" book.
Read
September 24, 2013I read this in college years ago, and was fascinated. I decided its's time to reread it, Still have the yellowing paperback, but just got the Kindle version for convenience.
July 27, 2024
I found this book to be remarkable. I'm surprised this is not more popular.
Cassirer explains the process of how myth and modern discursive language are fundamentally interwoven, shaping our understanding of the world and ourselves. He illustrates how myth, with its powerful act of naming and enchanting objects—this is a key understanding, the enchantment of objects through naming and the particular haecceity of the mythico-linguistic process—provided a rich, particularized experience of reality. This is contrasted with the shift to monotheistic frameworks, particularly in Christianity and Indian religions, where language and understanding became increasingly abstract and generalized, moving us away from the sensuous and material towards the intellectual, transcendental, and subjective.
I read this book as an outline of the profound consequences of this transition. Cassirer highlights the loss of immediate, sensuous engagement with the world (and an ontology of haecceity) as we embraced discursive logic. This shift, while advancing our intellectual grasp through an ontology of quiddity, has come at the cost of a richer, more embodied experience of reality.
You can see where Susanne Langer gets her inspiration from, as Cassirer focuses on the processes to effectuate a change to this impoverishment of language and experience through the reintegration of artistic forms. Art, particularly poetry, holds the potential to re-enchant the world, giving objective form to our subjective emotions and bridging the gap between the mythical and the intellectual. By reclaiming the creative and symbolic power of myth through art, we can transcend the limitations of modern discourse. This book pairs well with Susanne Langer's work, particularly Feeling and Form, as it offers a compelling formulation of how language and myth co-evolved, and how our current impoverished ontology can be saved through the recognition of the transformative power of art, offering a path to recover the fullness of life that has been lost in the process of intellectualization.
While reading this, I could not help but recognize this teleology of discursive reason Cassirer articulates as leading to the production of AI machines as they exist currently (2024). These AI machines are pure quiddity machines, essentially taking the intellectualization process of language that Cassirer describes and supercharging it. The serious danger in this process is the appropriation of artistic forms that these AI machines cannibalize. This could prevent any meaningful attempt for authentic art rooted in a haecceity to give objective form to our lived experiences.
Cassirer explains the process of how myth and modern discursive language are fundamentally interwoven, shaping our understanding of the world and ourselves. He illustrates how myth, with its powerful act of naming and enchanting objects—this is a key understanding, the enchantment of objects through naming and the particular haecceity of the mythico-linguistic process—provided a rich, particularized experience of reality. This is contrasted with the shift to monotheistic frameworks, particularly in Christianity and Indian religions, where language and understanding became increasingly abstract and generalized, moving us away from the sensuous and material towards the intellectual, transcendental, and subjective.
I read this book as an outline of the profound consequences of this transition. Cassirer highlights the loss of immediate, sensuous engagement with the world (and an ontology of haecceity) as we embraced discursive logic. This shift, while advancing our intellectual grasp through an ontology of quiddity, has come at the cost of a richer, more embodied experience of reality.
You can see where Susanne Langer gets her inspiration from, as Cassirer focuses on the processes to effectuate a change to this impoverishment of language and experience through the reintegration of artistic forms. Art, particularly poetry, holds the potential to re-enchant the world, giving objective form to our subjective emotions and bridging the gap between the mythical and the intellectual. By reclaiming the creative and symbolic power of myth through art, we can transcend the limitations of modern discourse. This book pairs well with Susanne Langer's work, particularly Feeling and Form, as it offers a compelling formulation of how language and myth co-evolved, and how our current impoverished ontology can be saved through the recognition of the transformative power of art, offering a path to recover the fullness of life that has been lost in the process of intellectualization.
While reading this, I could not help but recognize this teleology of discursive reason Cassirer articulates as leading to the production of AI machines as they exist currently (2024). These AI machines are pure quiddity machines, essentially taking the intellectualization process of language that Cassirer describes and supercharging it. The serious danger in this process is the appropriation of artistic forms that these AI machines cannibalize. This could prevent any meaningful attempt for authentic art rooted in a haecceity to give objective form to our lived experiences.
January 11, 2024
how could I resist reading a book with a chapter called “Word Magic”!! very interesting read but I have some problems with the more outdated aspects of this book — namely how Cassirer imposes hierarchies in assigning “primitive” and “civilized” labels to concepts and people. he seems almost to wrestle between modern and postmodern theories of mythicoreligious and linguistic development. I think I understand that his thesis is also fraught in this way ??? perhaps just because of the age we find ourselves in ??? as we are caught between these two philosophical perspectives. Cassirer does a good job of creating logical building blocks in his argument, working to establish a solid foundation before assuming that readers already ascribe to his philosophy. this is something I appreciate about his writing. I think that this text is fairly approachable for being so abstract, but he does name drop a lot without situating these other philosophers….which I do not like….
some very poignant reflections in here. very dialectical blah blahabaalahababahablahhhh but it’s true! and I am compelled by the idea that we create God in our image and can become aware of our own unity through this creation, perhaps just as God is The Word, is made through The Word, acts through it, and is summoned by it. excellent note to end on how poetry reinvigorates our more primal and immediate relationship to our surroundings by drawing on our myth-making human natures heheh. how beautiful to be aesthetically liberated in this way!
this book also introduced me to the idea of “momentary gods,” which in some ways I’m still wrapping my head around, perhaps because I was raised within a largely monotheistic culture. I like the idea (applied to religion) that the parts of the whole are the whole and the whole is also the whole. is this maybe a more “advanced” religious perspective than he gives it credit for through his denotation of its “primitive” roots? attempting to re-establish this hierarchy through my question is reductive but I do believe that there is great beauty worth acknowledging in this kind of pervasive holiness. this is also fairly aligned to my own religious beliefs so ofc I like this lmao. I can’t tell if I’m making any sense here lol but I think this is worth the read if you’re interested in language and religion.
some very poignant reflections in here. very dialectical blah blahabaalahababahablahhhh but it’s true! and I am compelled by the idea that we create God in our image and can become aware of our own unity through this creation, perhaps just as God is The Word, is made through The Word, acts through it, and is summoned by it. excellent note to end on how poetry reinvigorates our more primal and immediate relationship to our surroundings by drawing on our myth-making human natures heheh. how beautiful to be aesthetically liberated in this way!
this book also introduced me to the idea of “momentary gods,” which in some ways I’m still wrapping my head around, perhaps because I was raised within a largely monotheistic culture. I like the idea (applied to religion) that the parts of the whole are the whole and the whole is also the whole. is this maybe a more “advanced” religious perspective than he gives it credit for through his denotation of its “primitive” roots? attempting to re-establish this hierarchy through my question is reductive but I do believe that there is great beauty worth acknowledging in this kind of pervasive holiness. this is also fairly aligned to my own religious beliefs so ofc I like this lmao. I can’t tell if I’m making any sense here lol but I think this is worth the read if you’re interested in language and religion.
December 16, 2023
Very fun to read the work of a man who was clearly an intellectual predecessor of Paul Ricoeur, whose work I love so much. Here, Cassirer looks to Usener’s theories of the formation of religious deities, evidenced via philology, and maps it onto his theory of the formation of language.
Simply put, Cassirer argues that language and religion come from the same mythico-religious sensibilities. Rather than seeing language as a slowly expanding logical function by which names are given via deductive reasoning, he argues that language, like myth, is more of a condensation from a general sense-impression. The cosmos is unified, massive, and awe-inspiring, and the mythico-religious linguistic response is to let the sense of it wash over, eventually solidifying /condensing into a name which then takes on an expansive and generative life of its own, until it expands mythically to the point beyond language (here we see mystic thought come into play: language whose only purpose is to point beyond itself), which then hints at a unity and feeling that preceded language and its attempt to describe them.
This theory is built upon the assumption that metaphor is the ground of all language, that straightforward denotation follows rather than precedes artistic, metaphorical, and mythic meaning-making.
A lively and lovely little book that packs a lot into 100 pages while remaining fairly readable throughout (I think I just might be a fan of early and mid nineteenth century scholarship). While this book and theory can not account for too much in language and human cognition as it relates to speech, it does an excellent job of demonstrating the undeniably essential role of religious/mythic/magical/artistic speech and expression.
Simply put, Cassirer argues that language and religion come from the same mythico-religious sensibilities. Rather than seeing language as a slowly expanding logical function by which names are given via deductive reasoning, he argues that language, like myth, is more of a condensation from a general sense-impression. The cosmos is unified, massive, and awe-inspiring, and the mythico-religious linguistic response is to let the sense of it wash over, eventually solidifying /condensing into a name which then takes on an expansive and generative life of its own, until it expands mythically to the point beyond language (here we see mystic thought come into play: language whose only purpose is to point beyond itself), which then hints at a unity and feeling that preceded language and its attempt to describe them.
This theory is built upon the assumption that metaphor is the ground of all language, that straightforward denotation follows rather than precedes artistic, metaphorical, and mythic meaning-making.
A lively and lovely little book that packs a lot into 100 pages while remaining fairly readable throughout (I think I just might be a fan of early and mid nineteenth century scholarship). While this book and theory can not account for too much in language and human cognition as it relates to speech, it does an excellent job of demonstrating the undeniably essential role of religious/mythic/magical/artistic speech and expression.
February 4, 2022
This important short book was written by Cassirer as an accessible introduction to the core of his thought, which is essentially that language emerges simultaneously with myth, neither having anteriority over the other, and that language and myth then continue to be intertwined with one another through metaphor and, eventually, literary expression, particularly that of lyrical poetry. It is an intriguing and powerful thesis, although it is far from certain that even those first human utterances, which go back at least 150,000 years (perhaps even one million according to one recent study of the human brain), were raw and concentrated expressions of a kind of religious (or rather pre-religious) awe. That is to say that I think Cassirer is mostly right about the essential interconnection of language, from very early stages, with myth. But whether this is so from the first human word, whatever that may have been, will remain only one conjecture, I suspect, among many others.
July 21, 2020
Aquela série que dá medo no cérebro só de ver, mas vale muito a pena o esforço. Linguística é uma área que sinto que gostaria muito se pudesse me dedicar mais, mas tenho muita dificuldade para entender. O livro faz um paralelo muito interessante sobre o desenvolvimento do pensamento mítico e sua relação com o desenvolvimento da própria linguagem. Em geral tendemos a imaginar os mitos primitivos como uma adoração de fenômenos naturais ou de astros celestes, mas Cassirer argumenta que tais entes sequer tinham um nome no início da humanidade, e portanto seria impossível isolar essas entidades na natureza (por consequência, impossível adorá-los tão distintamente). Dessa forma, havia uma noção bem inicial de claro e escuro, mas não de um sol, nomeado, por exemplo. Ressalta que em encontros de ocidentais com tribos muitas vezes ocorreu a noção equivocada de que alguns povos reconheciam divindades em alguns objetos, quando na verdade eles somente tinham uma palavra que demonstrava espanto por algo inusitado ou fora do cotidiano (e a usavam tanto para uma árvore incomumente bela como para um objeto nunca visto antes mostrado por um inglês). Tal equívoco levou a muitas noções erradas sobre mitos de povos diversos. Enfim, muito interessante, mas naquela linguagem acadêmica tradicional que torna a coisa menos acessível do que seria ideal.
May 7, 2020
This must be one of the best theses about the origin of mythical thinking. I'm curious to follow up and read Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and to follow on the expansion of his theories through the lens of what the neurosciences are contributing.
February 25, 2025
Läsning 2: väldigt spännande bok. Jag förstod den inte sist jag läste. Viken söker förklaringen på mytologiska tankefigurer i språkliga egenheter som sedan reproducerar sig själva i konst och ritual och därmed, genom överförda associationer, reproducerar sig själva.
January 28, 2020
Years ago I read a book put out by the Dover imprint called "The Discovery of the Mind" by the German writer Bruno Snell. It was about the most brilliant work I'd read, not just that year, but in my life. Sounds hyperbolic, I know, but it really was a consciousness-altering experience from which my mind and spirit (let's just say "Geist" and merge the two) have not recovered.
"Language and Myth" is put out by the same imprint (Dover) and has an uncanny resemblance to "Discovery" in many respects, from the author's command of German and Greek (the latter is especially important) down to the more granular details like the blue cover of the paperback. Suffice it to say, having read "The Discovery of the Mind," and now "Language and Myth" I can only urge anyone with a hunger for knowledge to heed the following words: Buy any book with a blue cover put out by Dover!
"Language and Myth" sets itself to the task of trying to unravel or at least describe the mystery at the heart of thought itself, how and why these thoughts are articulated in sometimes different ways across cultures, and sometimes in eerily similar ways. Herr Cassirer notes, for instance, in the early going of his book that many religions assign an a priori significance to language, granting it primacy even over God, and that not only Abrahamic religions believe that "In the beginning, there was the Word."
It is very much a "Chicken/Egg" conundrum in trying to figure out how or why language came into being, or how it influenced our religious beliefs or was influenced them, but "Language and Myth" is not so much trying to solve an insoluble quandary as to take the reader on a horizon-expanding, discursive journey through time, history, philosophy, poetry, myth and religion to illuminate the demiurge that has driven human development from the first cave paintings in ocher and vermilion on to the Arecibo Message broadcast from a satellite into outer space in the hopes of establishing contact with alien lifeforms.
A lot of studies purport to be interdisciplinary, but the term is usually without much valence. "Language and Myth" really does take everything that is good and increases the store of human knowledge from various fields and uses it to explain the ineffable and define the indefinable, or darn-near die trying. The author accomplishes his task in prose that can be challenging (especially if read straight through) but which is never deliberately obscurantist or unnecessary. The book clocks in at under a hundred pages, in something like six compact essays, and yet, upon finishing, I had the feeling that I had poured through an entire library's worth of tomes. Highest recommendation.
"Language and Myth" is put out by the same imprint (Dover) and has an uncanny resemblance to "Discovery" in many respects, from the author's command of German and Greek (the latter is especially important) down to the more granular details like the blue cover of the paperback. Suffice it to say, having read "The Discovery of the Mind," and now "Language and Myth" I can only urge anyone with a hunger for knowledge to heed the following words: Buy any book with a blue cover put out by Dover!
"Language and Myth" sets itself to the task of trying to unravel or at least describe the mystery at the heart of thought itself, how and why these thoughts are articulated in sometimes different ways across cultures, and sometimes in eerily similar ways. Herr Cassirer notes, for instance, in the early going of his book that many religions assign an a priori significance to language, granting it primacy even over God, and that not only Abrahamic religions believe that "In the beginning, there was the Word."
It is very much a "Chicken/Egg" conundrum in trying to figure out how or why language came into being, or how it influenced our religious beliefs or was influenced them, but "Language and Myth" is not so much trying to solve an insoluble quandary as to take the reader on a horizon-expanding, discursive journey through time, history, philosophy, poetry, myth and religion to illuminate the demiurge that has driven human development from the first cave paintings in ocher and vermilion on to the Arecibo Message broadcast from a satellite into outer space in the hopes of establishing contact with alien lifeforms.
A lot of studies purport to be interdisciplinary, but the term is usually without much valence. "Language and Myth" really does take everything that is good and increases the store of human knowledge from various fields and uses it to explain the ineffable and define the indefinable, or darn-near die trying. The author accomplishes his task in prose that can be challenging (especially if read straight through) but which is never deliberately obscurantist or unnecessary. The book clocks in at under a hundred pages, in something like six compact essays, and yet, upon finishing, I had the feeling that I had poured through an entire library's worth of tomes. Highest recommendation.
November 17, 2023
Language and Myth is a very short book in which Cassirer attempts to apply thinking that is vaguely in the style of Kant to the study of mythology. I say vaguely because this work is actually inconsistent with Kant's philosophy: where Kant seeks to locate transcendence at the very limit of experience, Cassirer is content to locate it at the level of verbal behaviour such as naming. While criticizing overtly language oriented philosophy, Cassirer nonetheless somewhat brutalizes Kantian concepts like conditions of possibility to fit this level. It's nearly like interpreting Donald Hoffman as a Kantian or something: evolutionism, pattern seeking etc. This leads to the notion of the flux of experience that is then arrested by a word into a assimilated example of totality, or to a form. So, the very stuff Plato talks about constantly.
What remains obscure with Cassirer, however, is the source of mythico-religious appreciation. He ascribes this to the inherent potentiality of the mana-concept, which is something that allows a general divine force to appear anywhere, and hence makes everything a possible god. The problem is, do we really know which came first, the more intricate god systems of the tribes or this mana-concept? The pre-animist manaism phase is just a hypothesis: certainly, there might have been some such thing, but it seems a bit unsatisfactory to try to explain the rise of particularized spirituality(gods, forms) with an universal sense of spirituality(mana, field). Cassirer contends that it rose out of transfixation of men by ordinary objects and concurrent verbalization which postulated it as a particular of some general by the act of naming. Truly Kantian answer would of course run differently: the object was postulated much before the act of naming, already in the act of perception, which requires some discreteness to be comprehensible. The problem is, then, deeper. What is baffling that even after Kant's results so many dragged language and practical activity back in as if it would be the most ultimate problem. Certainly, there are many interesting issues to ponder with language philosophy: Cassirer himself addresses one when he makes a much-needed point about translation difficulties between religious terms of different cultures, or even of imposing a noun phrase-verb phrase structure to "primitive languages", as Chomskyans would like to do. However, limiting the investigations to this very restricted field does not seem very desirable, especially as it has been proven you can go farther.
Another idea that Cassirer relies in his naturalization of mythology is its connection with practice and tools; another idea emblematic of the times along with language philosophy, recalling the pragmatist philosophy of Heidegger in particular. Religion, then, is a practice that is used for utilitarian ends such as crop yield and for that reason objects associated with it transfix humans. This would explain the animal cults merely by their associating with the act of gaining food, or using them for ploughing, or whatever. Then the act of verbalization stimulated by the transfixion would create the generality of the particular animal. So far it's nice, but it leaves some other things unexplained. For example, why did the animal cults change according to the precession of the earth from the cult of the bull to the cult of the lamb? If the animal, or the particular object, was truly primary, wouldn't the main ritual have been moved, after the effects of precession, to a different time rather than Easter? However, if the notion of generality preceded the particular object of transfixion, it would be comprehensible why the object would vary based on the general conditions of the sun and the stars. Another thing that it leaves unexplained is the notion of the totem animal as the father or mother of the clan, found in the "most primitive" tribes: there is certainly nothing like that implicit in a mere association of a general word with a particular animal. I don't know, it seems like a stretch to think that people, after naming the animal, were like "Yeah, this is general, so of course we are subsumed under this generality!". It's fair to ask: what is ~practical~ about that? It seems more plausible to take into account the issues of sex, birth and death: all of which function at the limits of identity, and therefore stretch the structures of the mind, by its nature general rather than particular, to sublime heights of confusion and contemplation! Lastly, his examples are mostly from the realm of associative magic rather than sorcery: even though modern "esotericism" has confounded them, they are two separate things; the former dealing with metonymical identifications, the latter with spirit communication and manipulation.
Instead of searching for the explanation from evolutionary pattern seeking, as was fashionable, we should at least try for a much deeper explanation of why *this* formation in particular? Nobody can deny that usefulness is part of the story, but there's a lot to it that isn't explainable by mere usefulness, such as the idea of family lines. How can one deny the connection between eating animals and reproduction here, the boundaries of identity: animal becomes a part of you, while something else come out of you; little wonder that the myth of females possessing toothed vagina were common among northern tribes! There's also the fact that if the real Kantian interpretation were true, rather than this supposedly neo-Kantian interpretation, our experience would possess the form of generality at every moment: it's not like people lived in a mist and developed it because of evolution. The appearance of the word would just be downstream from there.
So, overall, it's an interesting relic from the era when everyone and their mother had their own take on primitive tribes. I'm not knocking it, though: even I couldn't resist coming up with my own! It is truly one of the most fascinating subject matters, but it is not nearly as obvious as this book tries to make it seem. The residual evolutionism, linguisticism and pragmatism brings this book down from what it could have been: now it's more like a strange misapplication of Kant's concepts to produce a bit of all too superficial mytho-babble.
What remains obscure with Cassirer, however, is the source of mythico-religious appreciation. He ascribes this to the inherent potentiality of the mana-concept, which is something that allows a general divine force to appear anywhere, and hence makes everything a possible god. The problem is, do we really know which came first, the more intricate god systems of the tribes or this mana-concept? The pre-animist manaism phase is just a hypothesis: certainly, there might have been some such thing, but it seems a bit unsatisfactory to try to explain the rise of particularized spirituality(gods, forms) with an universal sense of spirituality(mana, field). Cassirer contends that it rose out of transfixation of men by ordinary objects and concurrent verbalization which postulated it as a particular of some general by the act of naming. Truly Kantian answer would of course run differently: the object was postulated much before the act of naming, already in the act of perception, which requires some discreteness to be comprehensible. The problem is, then, deeper. What is baffling that even after Kant's results so many dragged language and practical activity back in as if it would be the most ultimate problem. Certainly, there are many interesting issues to ponder with language philosophy: Cassirer himself addresses one when he makes a much-needed point about translation difficulties between religious terms of different cultures, or even of imposing a noun phrase-verb phrase structure to "primitive languages", as Chomskyans would like to do. However, limiting the investigations to this very restricted field does not seem very desirable, especially as it has been proven you can go farther.
Another idea that Cassirer relies in his naturalization of mythology is its connection with practice and tools; another idea emblematic of the times along with language philosophy, recalling the pragmatist philosophy of Heidegger in particular. Religion, then, is a practice that is used for utilitarian ends such as crop yield and for that reason objects associated with it transfix humans. This would explain the animal cults merely by their associating with the act of gaining food, or using them for ploughing, or whatever. Then the act of verbalization stimulated by the transfixion would create the generality of the particular animal. So far it's nice, but it leaves some other things unexplained. For example, why did the animal cults change according to the precession of the earth from the cult of the bull to the cult of the lamb? If the animal, or the particular object, was truly primary, wouldn't the main ritual have been moved, after the effects of precession, to a different time rather than Easter? However, if the notion of generality preceded the particular object of transfixion, it would be comprehensible why the object would vary based on the general conditions of the sun and the stars. Another thing that it leaves unexplained is the notion of the totem animal as the father or mother of the clan, found in the "most primitive" tribes: there is certainly nothing like that implicit in a mere association of a general word with a particular animal. I don't know, it seems like a stretch to think that people, after naming the animal, were like "Yeah, this is general, so of course we are subsumed under this generality!". It's fair to ask: what is ~practical~ about that? It seems more plausible to take into account the issues of sex, birth and death: all of which function at the limits of identity, and therefore stretch the structures of the mind, by its nature general rather than particular, to sublime heights of confusion and contemplation! Lastly, his examples are mostly from the realm of associative magic rather than sorcery: even though modern "esotericism" has confounded them, they are two separate things; the former dealing with metonymical identifications, the latter with spirit communication and manipulation.
Instead of searching for the explanation from evolutionary pattern seeking, as was fashionable, we should at least try for a much deeper explanation of why *this* formation in particular? Nobody can deny that usefulness is part of the story, but there's a lot to it that isn't explainable by mere usefulness, such as the idea of family lines. How can one deny the connection between eating animals and reproduction here, the boundaries of identity: animal becomes a part of you, while something else come out of you; little wonder that the myth of females possessing toothed vagina were common among northern tribes! There's also the fact that if the real Kantian interpretation were true, rather than this supposedly neo-Kantian interpretation, our experience would possess the form of generality at every moment: it's not like people lived in a mist and developed it because of evolution. The appearance of the word would just be downstream from there.
So, overall, it's an interesting relic from the era when everyone and their mother had their own take on primitive tribes. I'm not knocking it, though: even I couldn't resist coming up with my own! It is truly one of the most fascinating subject matters, but it is not nearly as obvious as this book tries to make it seem. The residual evolutionism, linguisticism and pragmatism brings this book down from what it could have been: now it's more like a strange misapplication of Kant's concepts to produce a bit of all too superficial mytho-babble.
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May 29, 2021The argument of the book is that language and myth are two closely intertwined cultural processes that precede logical, or as it's called here, discursive thought. The question of what underlies logical thought in our minds is one that interests me but except for a few passages I didn't find the book very illuminating. It was written in the 1930s by a German philosopher and it uses the techniques of philology and ethnography to speculate about the nature of the "primitive" mind. This was an approach fairly common in German thought in that time and the century that preceded it. People from Max Mueller, Nietzsche, Spengler, Freud, Jung and probably many others I don't know, drew on it. Personally, I don't find this kind of argument compelling or even credible, and even if I did I'm not sure it would tell us anything about actual mental processes, the question that interests me.
May 9, 2020
ژرفا و قدرت روحی زبان با این واقعیت ثابت می شود که این خود گفتار است که راه را برای آخرین گامش هموار می سازد . این دشوارترین و شگفت انگیزترین دستاورد زبان به وسیله دو مفهوم بنیادی زبان شناختی نمایان می شود ، مفهوم " هستی " و مفهوم " خویشتن " .
November 12, 2007
این کتاب را محسن ثلاثی به فارسی برگردانده و توسط نشر نقره در 1366 چاپ و منتشر شده است
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