Symbolic Stack

Ernst Cassirer magnum opus on The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Language, Mythical Thought, & The Phenomenology of Knowledge—with—Jungian Paul Bishop, editor on "Cultural Studies & the Symbolic Vol 1-4."

It’s wise to get rooted in a historical understanding of our creature. Meaning-making and symbolic language are the very root of cultural humanity. We see in myth an evolution of this meta-narrative which concrete language cannot explicate and yet is ripe with symbol and archetypal meaning which conditionally and characterologically still persist today. Here is Jonathan Westwood of University of Glasgow on The Importance of Mythical Thought For the Development of Cassirer’s Phenomenology:

“Cassirer states, ‘Although myth, language and art interpenetrate one another in their concrete historical manifestations, the relation between them reveals a definite systematic gradation, an ideal progression toward a point where the spirit not only is and lives in its own creations, its self-created symbols, but also knows them for what they are. Or, as Hegel sets out to show in his Phänomenologie des Geistes: the aim of Spiritual Development is that cultural reality be apprehended and expressed not merely as substance, but 'equally as subject.’ The sort of 'concrete historical manifestations' that Cassirer refers to here are most commonly identified as magical words. These occur in situations where a particular written, or phonetic, symbol is apprehended as a magical entity which bears certain mythical powers and meanings “beyond that which it immediately is or designates.” Actually, they are symbols which are not understood to designate anything further than what they immediately are, and are regarded instead as forces in themselves. Further illustration comes from the mythical use of names. In some primitive cultures, the name of a person is a sacred thing, an embodiment of the person himself or herself, as opposed to a symbolic representation of him or her. Yet in all these cases, the mythical symbols also seem to permit of a linguistic usage. Similarly, in examples of tribal dance ceremonies or cave paintings, it seems that what was mythical in origin can also...”

"In reference to the correspondences between language and myth, Cassirer asserts: “All writing begins as a mimetic sign, an image and at first the image has no significatory, communicative character. It rather replaces and 'stands for' the object… It IS a magical instrument by which to gain possession of certain things and ward off hostile powers… The more writing resembles what it is intended to represent —the more purely objective it is—the better it fulfills its purpose. [Which begs the question, how self-objective can we be in the expression of our own message in-dialogue within?] On this point Cassirer invokes a three-level categorization of the sort of relationship that can exist between the sign, and that which it signifies: mimetic, analogical, or purely symbolic. Accordingly, Cassirer asserts, the way in which the human mind relates to its —symbolic—experience will be in one of three distinct modes: expressive, representative or purely significative. Returning to his classification of mimetic sign/signified relationship, Cassirer develops the idea that, while the same concrete historical signs might well occur in different symbolic forms, they evoke such different meanings, that they cannot then be regarded as the same thing. This is because the sense of any given symbol is categorized by the mode in which it is experienced: expressively, representatively, or significatively. For Cassirer, the mode of thought that characterizes mythical thinking is the expressive, where there is no perceived separation between a sign and what it designates. Meaning, at this level of consciousness, is very much a tangible thing, since it is physically materialized. As soon as the same sign is adopted as a linguistic object, the sense in which it is perceived switches to the representative. Only there does it receive its 'communicative' character, and become a mediator of meaning, as opposed to meaning pure and simple. This move is so decisive because it dramatically alters the way in which a person relates to their own experience. And, we are not capable of opting out of this process without severe consequences.”