RECEPTION AND LEGACY OF ERNST CASSIRER'S THEORY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF WALTER BENJAMIN

This work reconstructs biographical, bibliographical and theoretical aspects of Walter Benjamin’s ideas in comparison to those of Ernst Cassirer. Its primary question asks: was Cassirer’s notion of symbol, as embedded in the philosophical context of his milieu, a primary element of Benjamin’s peculiar and lifelong investigation of the cultural and the perceptive, and of their mutual contamination? In answer, it constructs a historiographical survey of Benjamin’s Weltanschauung prior to encountering Professor Cassirer at the University of Berlin in the early 1910s. It investigates the impact and influence of Cassirer’s work on Benjamin, from his time as Cassirer’s student until the last years of Benjamin’s life. The form, role and development of the concept of symbol in Benjamin’s research is analysed from the early project of an epistemology to the academic failure of the Trauerspielbuch. It pays particular attention to the dimensions of the linguistic and the mythical, two main areas to which Cassirerian analysis was also addressed at the same time. In the last section, some key concepts of Benjamin’s philosophy are examined. Of particular interest is the relation between “choc”, the “medium of perception”. These are viewed through a theoretical analysis and comparison of several sources, and in the context of the configurative possibilities that Cassirer had previously ascribed to symbolization.