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p In contrast to the other representatives of semantic philosophy of art Cassirer lacks a theory of value and hardly ever uses the term “value” (or “good”). However, an important role in his conception of art is accorded to such an aesthetic value as beauty, although it is not called a value. The point of departure for Cassirer’s analysis of beauty is his view of beauty as a quality or function of the symbol, or of symbolic form in art. “Beauty,” stated Cassirer in his paper to the 3rd German Congress on Aesthetics, “is necessarily and essentially a symbol" (6, 296), because it is connected with sensuous matter and at the same time is situated above it.

p The definition of art as symbolic form presupposes for Cassirer a certain extension of the concept of the symbol. Art is not limited to the expression of emotions or the representation of ideas. It is mainly a construction of beautiful form. But if we are to recognize the symbolic character of art, we have also to recognize a fourth dimension of the symbol: beauty. The perception of beautiful forms has to be joined to the distinction between the perception of things and of expressions. Consequently “aesthetic function”, or the function of the “revelation” of beautiful forms is added to the representative and expressive functions of symbols (15, 21).

p In accordance with the anti-metaphysical direction of the theory of symbolic forms the German philosopher is extremely sceptical of the metaphysical conceptions of beauty, 141 which connect it with the Infinite (Schelling), the Absolute Idea (Hegel), describing them as aesthetics from above. Beauty, he asserts, is a well-known phenomenon of human experience, its part and parcel, and it stands in no need of metaphysical theories for its explanation. It is palpable and can be identified infallibly. Instead of searching for the metaphysical essence of beauty we should simply analyse the direct experience of contact with works of art. In this approach to the analysis of beauty Cassirer sees, in particular, the advantage of psychological theories (by comparison with metaphysical theories), although he does not subscribe to them.

p Which properties of immanent symbolic forms in art make them “beautiful”, and experience aesthetic? Cassirer names the following as the principal ones: structural equilibrium and order, unique architectonics of the forms, which transforms every true work of art into an untranslatable idiom. Equilibrium in art has a dynamic character. Aesthetic experience is connected with the “dynamic aspect of form" (10, 152).

p This dynamism is particularly manifested in those works of art (e.g. drama) which in their forms show us the forms of our inner life and our emotions. Feelings are embodied in art with the help of the imagination. Lev Tolstoy, in Cassirer’s opinion, was right to point out the connection between aesthetic experience and an intense passion, but he overlooked the factor of form. In art emotions are transformed both according to their nature and to their meaning, acquiring aesthetic form. Emotion in art is, as it were, present, but we see it rather than feel (sense) it directly. We are not in the power of the emotions, but see through them in a way and try to penetrate into their very nature and essence, to cognize the “forms of our inner life" (10, 147). What we feel in art is not a simple and united emotional quality, it is the dynamic process of life itself, an incessant fluctuation between opposite poles: between joy and sadness, hope and fear, etc. This dialectic of form simultaneously creates tension and liberation, giving us an inner freedom which cannot be achieved any other way but in art. The feeling 142 of beauty must be susceptible to the dynamic life of forms, and this life cannot be perceived without the corresponding dynamic processes within ourselves.

p Reviewing the different forms of human culture as symbolic forms Cassirer took account above all of their cognitive aspect. Art, he argues, may also be described as a special kind of cognition. The artist is just as much a discoverer of beautiful forms as the scientist, the discoverer of the facts and laws of nature. Cassirer willingly subscribes to Shaftesbury’s observation that “all beauty is truth”. Beauty as truth may be described by the classic formula: “unity in variety”. However, the truth of beauty does not consist in the theoretical description or explanation of things, but rather in a sympathetic vision of things. The truth of beauty and the truth of science are opposites, but not mutually contradictory. The conceptual interpretation of the sciences does not exclude an intuitive interpretation of art.

p The truth of beauty is perceived intuitively, but Cassirer does not sharply oppose intuition to rational cognition. He admits that beauty is based not only on intuition but also on an act of judgment and contemplation.

p Cassirer’s conception of beauty, such as it is stated above, appears at first glance to be fully compatible with the objective theory of beauty. But this is only at first glance. “That beauty is not an immediate property of things, that it necessarily involves a relation to the human mind,” asserts Cassirer, “is a point which seems to be admitted by almost all aesthetic theories" (10, 150). Cassirer treats critically the various interpretations of the participation of the spirit in aesthetic experience: the associationist theory of Hume, Bergson’s theory of intuition, Nietzsche’s conception of artistic inspiration, Santayana’s hedonistic theory of pleasure, and the Freudian theory of the subconscious.

p The rational side of Cassirer’s criticism can be seen in his correctly noting the absence in these theories of a true understanding of activity, of the creative constructive function in aesthetic experience. Beauty, according to Cassirer, must be defined in terms of the activity of the mind. Only thanks to a constructive act by the mind can we discover 143 beauty. This act constitutes the precondition for the aesthetic enjoyment of beautiful forms. The process of the “ activity of the mind”, which results in the creation of beautiful forms, is not, maintains Cassirer, “subjective in character; on the contrary, it is one of the conditions of our intuition of an objective world" (10, 151).

It is correct that aesthetic experience presupposes the mental activity of the subject, that this activity does not necessarily mean subjective activity, and that it can have objective content. But correct only on one vital condition: the subject from the very start deals not with itself, but with the object, and if it divides the object, then along the lines along which it is itself divided internally. It is precisely this condition which is lacking in Cassirer’s neo-Kantian conception of the mind. In his epistemology there is no place for an object understood as an objectively existing reality, independent of the consciousness, the subject and the symbolic activity of this consciousness. Both the subject and the object are elements of the cognition. From such an epistemological premise it is only possible to proceed to a subjectivistic theory of beauty. Admittedly Cassirer’s theory of the area of pure forms opens up the possibility for an objective-idealistic interpretation in the spirit of Husserl’s phenomenology. The philosopher’s noble intentions to steer clear of “metaphysics” in his explanation of beauty proved futile.

p In assessing the value of Cassirer’s activity we must bear in mind his real place in modern western philosophy. In the opinion of a number of scholars (D. Cawronsky, S. Langer, C. Hamburg et al). Cassirer had all the attributes of a great philosopher in the latest period. Such evaluations are somewhat exaggerated, although we cannot but agree that Cassirer is a major phenomenon in 20th century European philosophy.

p Cassirer’s philosophy and aesthetics of symbolic forms was one of the main contributory factors to the fruitful 144 work of the Warburg Institute. The best illustration of Cassirer’s conception of symbol as interpreted by the Marburg group is provided by Erwin Panofsky’s study Perspective as Symbolic Form.  [144•1  The 3rd German Congress on Aesthetics and General Science of Art (1927), devoted to the problem of symbol and rhythm was an important landmark in the development of the semantic philosophy of art. The congress was conducted mainly in the form of discussions of Cassirer’s ideas, and Cassirer himself read a paper on the “ Problem of the Symbol and Its Place in the System of Philosophy".

p Cassirer’s aesthetics of symbolic forms had a serious influence on many philosophers and aestheticians of semantic orientation. First place amongst these belongs to Susanne Langer, who dedicated her major work on aesthetics. Feeling and Form, to Cassirer. We can also mention the American professor Nelson Goodman, who directly acknowledges Cassirer’s influence on him in his most popular book The Languages ot Art. An Approach to the Theory ot Symbols (1968).

p In recent years Cassirer’s philosophy and aesthetics have attained particular popularity in Europe and America, and are experiencing a “renaissance” of sorts. Evidence of this can be seen, in particular, in the republication of his main works and their translations into foreign languages ( English, Italian, Spanish, Japanese). The main reason for such popularity consists in the circumstance that, while remaining essentially and avowedly idealistic, Cassirer’s semantic philosophy of art at the same time possesses the prestige of a theory which expresses certain important tendencies (the structural functional approach, etc.) in scientific (and above all natural scientific) thought of our century. It is to the advantage of idealistic aesthetics, which is undergoing a crisis, to arm itself with such a theory, and all the more so 145 because this theory has proved very suitable for use as a justification of the aesthetics and practice of modernism. The latter is connected with the tact that there is a pronounced formalist tendency in Cassirer’s approach to tne analysis ot art.

Many western commentators write of the formalist tendency in Cassirer’s philosophy of art. L. Dittmann correctly points out that symbolic form, for all that it was originally connected with an aesthetics of content, leads to an aesthetics ot lorm, and K. Reichhardt, the author of the article “Ernst Cassirer’s Contribution to Literary Criticism" asserts that tor Cassirer “art’s main element is not the content; it is the creation of a torm which ... offers us the cognition of a content”, and that Cassirer also constructs his critical studies in accordance with this orientation. In the opinion of M. Rein, the main task of art, as construed by Cassirer, is the construction or intuiting ot beautiiul torm. H. Slochower in his article “Ernst Cassirer’s Functional Approach to Art and Literature" maintains that Cassirer analyses art purely in its tormal aspect, moreover separating torm from content and historical motivation, and regarding it as a thing in itself. This accent leads to a diminishing ot the most important side of art-its connection with actual things, or (to use n. Slochower’s term) denotation in art.

The tormaiism ot Cassirer’s aesthetic conception is greatly obliged to the influence of H. Wolfflin’s writings in art criticism, to which Cassirer trequently relers as a “model” of the structural analysis of art. Woltliin’s influence on Cassirer is also noted by a number of commentators (H. Slochower, F. Kautmann et al.). It is this tormaiism of the aesthetics of “symbolic torms" which leads the authors of many ot the aesthetic conceptions of modernism, as well as the theoreticians of the “new criticism" and the defenders of abstractionism, to see Cassirer as one of their inspirations.