Epistemological Principles of the Relationship Between Language and Culture in the Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer
The article analyses the philosophical ideas of E. Cassirer defining the epistemological principles of relationship between language and culture. Moreover, the author notes that E. Cassirer formed a new epistemological model, taking into account the traditions of the German classical philosophy of I. Kant. In his model, E. Cassirer considers intellectual concepts in relation to sensory cognition within a creative activity. In this case, on the one hand, the diversity is revealed from knowledge of the world, which is dictated by the vision of variable relations, on the other hand, from the integrity, which is determined by a number of correspondences. According to E. Cassirer, the sign-symbol should be considered as a sensuous reality of the unity of matter and spiritual form as an intermediary through which variable relations and correspondences between the objects are established. Such a sign-symbol becomes the only way to connect unified and diverse meaning; it acts as a synthetic source of culture and, accordingly, a way of learning it. In addition, the language plays a special role in various forms of expressing a creative determination of cultural meanings. The language helps to establish semantic “contexts” of cultural forms. The language, as a free expression of the spirit, brings order to the diversity of disparate sensory impressions, because of which the environment of experience gets integrity, which later becomes the object of rational knowledge. In addition, the author notes that understanding the relationship between logical-discursive thinking is important for E. Cassirer. Such understanding is based on the universality of concepts, and metaphorical thinking; the expression of individual uniqueness of separate elements of the world and the entire reality as a whole is realized. Moreover, only language with its creative activity can establish a connection between logical discursive and metaphorical thinking.