I first examine the context that led me to write ‘The Root of all Evil.’ A second section rehearses my present understanding of the significance and the inadequacy of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. A third section turns to the way my thinking has evolved, including a brief account of the way it has moved from Heidegger to the 15th century cardinal and philosopher Nicolaus Cusanus. I conclude with some remarks about what I take to be my place in today’s philosophy world.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of philosophers introduced the idea of philosophical research on cognition that could enter into competition with psychology, which was developing into an autonomous discipline at that time. In view of the problems of the traditional but still prevailing associationist theory, Ernst Cassirer demanded a more sophisticated theory that could explain the human ability to concentrate one's thoughts on a topic, such as a problem or a task. He presented a representational theory (...) of mind to explain this ability. This paper explicates the scope of this theory and Cassirer's idea of interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophers and psychologists. (shrink)

This paper aims at focusing on Cassirer's relationship with Hegel during the crucial period when Cassirer is outlining and completing the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in the early 1920s. The main thesis is that Cassirer has never abandoned his original Neo-Kantian approach, despite the fact that it has been enriched within the perspective of a philosophy of culture indebted to some extent also to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. However, Cassirer maintains that Kant's critical idealism must be contrasted with Hegel's absolute (...) idealism, keeping thereby open the process of the spirit that cannot close itself in a definitive logical structure. This critical stance is shared by some contemporaries of Cassirer such as Dilthey, Windelband, and above all Natorp. We have thus to read Cassirer's project against the historical backdrop of the ‘Hegel-Renaissance’ in Germany, a circumstance that, according to the author, can contribute to a more adequate understanding of Cassirer's opus magnum. (shrink)