Born in Breslau in Silesia (modern-day southwest Poland), into a Jewish family, Cassirer studied literature and philosophy at the University of Marburg (where he completed his doctoral work in 1899 with a dissertation on René Descartes's analysis of mathematical and natural scientific knowledge entitled ["Descartes' Critique of Mathematical and Scientific Knowledge"]) and at the University of Berlin (where he completed his habilitation in 1906 with the dissertation ["The Problem of Knowledge in Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age: Volume I"]).