Reading from _An Essay on Man_(Cassirer) 005

_An Essay on Man_, Cassirer. Bantam Books, NY, January 1970.

Part I: What is Man?

Chapter II: A Clue to the Nature of Man: the Symbol.

pp. 25 – 28.

As demonstrated by the biologist Johannes von Uexküll, life must be understood not in terms of physics and chemistry, but as a distinct and self-subsisting actuality which takes on innumerable forms, each of which constitutes a unique mode of experience and, therefore, possesses a unique reality. The circular operation and interaction of anatomically identifiable receptor (Recall Groß' “attention economy”) and effector systems, which determines and coordinates the environmental stimuli that affect the organism and its response to those stimuli, characterizes all life including human life. But, while this “functional circle” ( Uexküll) forms a direct and immediate type of experience for animals, the receptor and effector systems are separated by a symbolic system in human life. This interposition of the symbol delays the transition from stimulus to response and, thus, has a dubious survival value, but it creates space for the human idiosyncrasy of thought. And, of course, thought not only extends the scope of human life quantitatively, but also raises humanity to a qualitatively unique dimension of reality. Humans are no longer directly connected to their physical environment, but live to an ever increasing degree in a culturally (i.e., linguistically, scientifically, religiously, economically, aesthetically, technologically and politically) determined reality. (Thus, the constantly increasing concentration of potentially meaningful commodity artifacts both diverts attention from and threatens to disclose the leveraging of meaning that powers their production. We must relentlessly renew the experience of “palpable change”, of material progress, of a novel “more”, or we will be confronted with the fact that we are actually widening our separation from “the direct experience of value” (Fukuyama) that we desire so strongly and rightly fear to be impossible.) Because all human experience involves such symbolic mediation, man can be defined as an animal symbolicum . This designation supplements the old definition of man as an animal rationale

and extends the concept of humanity to include integral elements which have traditionally been dismissed or marginalized as irrational (such as myth and religion). Now the question of “What is man?” can be approached from this distinguishing feature - the symbol.