Cassirer and Practical Reason

The primary accomplishment of Cassirer's Philosophy is the definition of Humanity as 'animal symbolicum', for, what, to him, distinguishes Humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom is its creation and use of symbols--language, myth, religious rites, art. The importance of the Kantian System to Cassirer is that it explains the genesis of symbols--they are generated by the 'productive imagination', with its archetypal 'Schematism'. The Philosophical originality of the Schematism, for Cassirer, is that it provides a basis for a Constructionist theory of Knowledge, the highest achievement of which is Science, which, facilitated by the use of variables, can present universally-valid intellectual formulas. One way that Cassirer breaks from Kant is expressed in his expansion of 'animal rationale' to 'animal symbolicum', because he believes that Reason is only one Symbolic Form, and hence, insufficient as a characterization of the specific Human difference amongst animals. However, some of his followers believe that Cassirer has gone further, by transcending the constraints of the Critique of Theoretical Reason--i. e. since Reason plays a constructive role in the presentation of the objects of Knowledge, Theoretical Reason is indeed constitutive, not merely regulative, of those objects. But, if Cassirer agrees with that assessment, he misses the main point of that Critique, which is to define the limits of Knowledge to its own products. In Cassirerian terms, the Critique means that Knowledge can never extend beyond what can be symbolized, i. e. it is not adequate to the nature that it does not create. Furthermore, that symbols are determinative within their own realm does mean that they can be constitutive in one sphere of nature, namely Human behavior, insofar as Humans can voluntarily use symbols to construct their conduct. In other words, Cassirer's analyses do not override the demonstration of the Kantian System that Pure Practical Reason, not Theoretical Reason, is the highest achievement of animal symbolicum, thereby accomplishing a transition to Homo Faber.