Abstract

For any reader with knowledge of the works of Ernst Cassirer, the question that will come to mind on approaching Raji C. Steineck’s Kritik der symbolischen Formen I: Symbolische Form und Funktion is: Why Japan? Cassirer’s great range of writings on the history of thought, culture, and symbol involves no sustained attention to Japanese culture. Cassirer also never addresses problems of East-West philosophy, nor did he, unlike some other German thinkers in the twentieth century, engage in correspondence with Japanese thinkers. In the first volume of Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Cassirer does make reference in several places to the Japanese language based on Johann Joseph Hoffmann’s Japanische Sprachlehre...