O animal simbólico: simbolismo em Ernest Cassirer e Susanne Langer

Abstract

This study analyzes the main developments of the theory of symbols, or philosophy of symbolic forms, pioneered in the work of the German philosopher Ernest Cassirer and later developed by the work of the North American philosopher Susanne Langer. We reflect on the basic character of symbolism in the human constitution of meanings that permeate the varied forms of culture. Furthermore, from a private or individual point of view, we consider the way in which symbols “configure” the apprehension of reality in cognitive and emotional nuances. Language, myth, religion, art and knowledge are the products of the capacity for symbolization, which in general constitutes culture. The use of symbols becomes a delimiter between the human and the animal condition, insofar as, through symbolism, human beings can postpone their responses to environmental stimuli, while animals react to them impulsively. Human beings have implicit ideas, underlying beliefs, never questioned, in a word, worldviews that permeate our behavior and thinking about things. These conceptual paths work as “rails” previously arranged through which the intellect that understands the phenomena of reality can move and follow certain directions. But reality is complex, that is, it has multiple aspects and dimensions. That is why our language, far from pointing to some absolutely true substrate in objects, limits itself to emphasizing particular aspects of things. Human experience with objects can never be reduced to some specific bias of symbolization, such as the abstraction of scientific formulas; for we can never separate the perception of the object from the qualities of feeling that accompany that perception. Each aspect of multiple human experiences has a claim to “reality”, and each form of symbolization guarantees human beings the possibility of “stabilizing” and “consolidating” our perceptions and thoughts, in the face of a constantly changing world.