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New German Critique
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Myth and Modernity.
Cassirer Critique ofHeidegger
What is the relation between fascism and myth?l For the Frank
School, fascism was not a reversion to barbarism but a patholo
extremity of enlightenment itself. Following Weber's lead, Adorn
Horkheimer saw enlightenment as a transhistorical rather than a
cretely historical process, coordinating a host of distinct phenomen
disenchantment of the world, the secularization of human consci
ness, the "extirpation of animism," and the slow displacement of m
sis by symbolic and conceptual thought. While they acknowl
fascism's atavistic appearance - especially its calls for a return to
blood and soil - they denied it could be characterized in essenc
merely retrograde departure from civilization. Still bound, howe
weakly, to Marxian habits of thought, Adorno and Horkheimer sa
cism not as a lapse but as the crisis-stage in history's developmen
the apotheosis of bourgeois subjectivity and a dialectical conseque
"instrumental reason." Because myth is born from the desire to un
stand and thereby to achieve some mastery over one's environme
myth, in this sense at least, is "already" enlightenment. But in th
text of technological proficiency and social rationalization, enligh
ment devolves into a compulsive will to mastery without self-refl
127
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128 Myth and Modernity
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Peter Eli Gordon 129
spawn of instrumental reason may place too little trust in the eman
potential of human rationality and can quickly devolve into a to
polemic against reason as such. Indeed, the ceaseless critique of
gone wrong can easily encourage a mood of fatalistic and stylis
mism that sabotages the liberatory work of enlightenment befor
even begun.4 From another perspective, however, one might c
theory places not too little confidence in reason but too much. B
acterizing fascism as an outcome of modernity, the theory seems
resent modernity as having truly surpassed myth. Only a f
disbelieving subject, it seems, is sufficiently demythologized t
myth as an instrument of cynical control. The theory of fasci
"technique of myth," in other words, may presuppose a human
who has actually achieved thoroughgoing disenchantment.
My claim in this essay is that there may be no such thing as a mod
and rational subject who is entirely "disenchanted," in the sense t
would entail the capacity to achieve rational mastery over one's c
tive meaning. Considered broadly, "myth" might indicate a stru
social meaning that seems both independent of the subject's agen
not fully transparent to human reason - the mythical notion, fo
ple, that one's life-course is determined by the Fates rather th
own rational choices. A "demythologized" subject, then, is capa
rational self-transparency, and thus capable of governing itself i
dance with nothing besides its own rules. The typical source for
ular model of the self is Kant's epistemology and moral philosop
in this respect, my argument is directed against the conspicuo
tianism that underwrites the "modernist" theory of fascism.
The guiding insight of this essay is as follows: The modernist
tends to regard any and all departures from liberal-enlightenme
tics as manipulated - hence its frequent recourse to terms
"fake," or "jargon," or "technique," - and it thereby presuppos
only the liberal view is "true." Thus, all other modes of politic
must be explained by imagining that a liberal-enlightenment s
somehow stands behind those politics as their disbelieving creato
one might object, this view rests upon an implausible theory o
meaning. An enlightenment ontology of the self has a peculiar
credentializing status in that it dismisses any alternative politica
as unreal. Yet the challenge - indeed, the true horror - of fasc
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130 Myth and Modernity
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Peter Eli Gordon 131
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132 Myth and Modernity
manuscript form and has only recently been published. Cassirer also
wrote a shorter work, entitled Language and Myth (1925), which was
his first substantive contribution to the cultural history series published
by the Warburg Library, where he labored upon the PSF throughout the
1920s. In the midst of this work, Cassirer also wrote an historical
monograph, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy
(1927) that investigates renaissance theories of "ego and world" and
discerns the origins of the enlightenment ideal of spiritual creativity.
Nevertheless, vigorous attention to political or social thought remains
noticeably underdeveloped in Cassirer's scholarship, which, given his
adherence to enlightenment ideals, might appear surprising.l0 The vari-
ous essays collected in 1916 under the title, Freedom and Form, repre-
sent an exception to Cassirer's largely scientific and cultural but
unpolitical labors.1l Cassirer marshaled his intellectual resources only
once in defense of the precarious Weimar Republic.12 In 1928, he deliv-
ered a famous address on "The Idea of a Republican Constitution," in
which he attempted to prove an affinity between Kant's philosophy and
political democracy.13 His final work, The Myth of the State, represents
Cassirer's most sustained treatment of political matters, but it is also his
last statement on the broader, philosophical significance ofmyth.14
10. The absence of a pronounced ethical theory in Cassirer's work was first noted
by Leo Strauss, in a critical review of The Myth of the State, which is reprinted in Leo
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press,
1959) 292-96. For Strauss's earlier assessment, see Leo Strauss, "Religionsphilosophie:
Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der europiischen Wissenschaft," Der Jude VIII. 10 (1924):
613-617. Also see Birgit Recki, "Kultur ohne Moral? Warum Ernst Cassirer trotz der Ein-
sicht in dem Primat der praktischen Vemrnunft keine Ethik schreiben konnte," Ernst Cassir-
ers Werk und Wirkung, Kultur und Philosophie, eds. Dorothea Frede, Reinold Schmlicker
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997) 58-78.
11. Ernst Cassirer, Freiheit und Form: Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 2nd
ed. (1916; Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1918).
12. On Cassirer's political significance, see Lipton.
13. Cassirer, Die Idee der Republikanischen Verfassung, Rede zur Verfassungsfeier
am 11. August 1928 (Hamburg: Friedrichsen, de Gruyter & Co., 1929), hereafter, Die Idee.
14. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Volume I: Language, Volume
II: Mythical Thought, Volume III: The Phenomenology of Knowledge, trans. Ralph Man-
heim (New Haven: Yale UP, 1957), hereafter PSF, followed by volume number and page.
Sprache und Mythos was originally published in Studien der Bibliothek Warburg VI
(1925). The English edition is Language and Myth, trans. Susanne K. Langer (1946; New
York: Harper - Dover, 1953), hereafter, LM. Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in
der Philosophie der Renaissance (1927), in English as The Individual and the Cosmos in
Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). Ernst
Cassirer, Die Philosophie der Aufkliarung (Tiibingen: J.C.B. Mohr-Paul Siebeck, 1932),
in English, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C.A. Koelln and James P.
Pettegrove (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1951), hereafter, PE. Recently, John Michael
Krois has edited Cassirer's essay, "Spirit and Life," which contains an extensive response
to Heidegger, and was located in the previously unpublished manuscript for the projected
fourth volume of PSR, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms that was completed in 1929.
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Peter Eli Gordon 133
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134 Myth and Modernity
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Peter Eli Gordon 135
By "symbolic form" [is meant] that energy of the spirit [Energie des
Geistes] through which a mental meaning-content is attached to a sen-
sual sign and inwardly dedicated to this sign [. . .] [L]anguage, the
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136 Myth and Modernity
21. Ernst Cassirer, "Der Begriffder Symbolischen Form im Aufbau der Geisteswissen-
schaften," Bibliothek Warburg, Vortrage, 1921/22 (Leipzig: B.G Teubner, 1923) 11-39, 15.
22. PSF, II 12.
23. PSF, II 19; English 13.
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Peter Eli Gordon 137
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138 Myth and Modernity
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Peter Eli Gordon 139
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140 Myth and Modernity
For Cassirer this difference remained decisive. While granting that myth
is a spontaneous expression of human consciousness, he still insisted
that myth differs crucially from the disenchanted modes of expression
- from both science and art. Whereas the mythical mind cannot recog-
nize the world as its own thoroughly human creation, the secular mind
"knows that the symbols it employs are symbols and comprehends them
as such."31 This teleological premise, that assumes enlightened self-
transparency as the natural endpoint of human development, remained a
fundamental commitment in Cassirer's philosophy throughout his
career. It is crucial for Cassirer's diagnosis of fascism, as I will explain.
Before examining that diagnosis, Cassirer's investigations of mythic
consciousness must be considered more closely. In the same year as the
publication of PSF II: Mythical Thought, Cassirer also published a
shorter essay on Language and Myth (1925). As a sort of transitional
study in PSF - between the first volume on language and the second
volume on myth - it focuses on the original bond between these two
modes of symbolization. Indeed, Cassirer takes pains to show that lin-
guistic-theoretical expression is itself born from mythical conscious-
ness. "Theoretical, practical, and aesthetic consciousness, the world of
language and of morality, the basic forms of community and the state,"
all of these, he claims, are "originally tied up with mythico-religious
conceptions." The mythic world is, in Cassirer's view, a sort of primal
unity, which only broke apart into discrete spheres of expressive con-
sciousness over the course of the advancement civilization. Certainly,
Cassirer remained wedded to the view that spontaneity is an intrinsic
feature of human consciousness whatever its developmental stage. But,
he hastened to note, because mythical consciousness does not recognize
31. The same point is repeated forcefully in the closing passage of Cassirer's
shorter, transitional study from 1925, Language and Myth, esp. 98-99.
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Peter Eli Gordon 141
32. For a short list of exemplary scholarship on mana, see Cassirer, PSE II 76
33. LM66.
34. Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, "Esquisse d'une thdorie g6n6r
Ann&e sociologique 7 (1902-03): 1-146, my emphasis.
35. EM99-100.
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142 Myth and Modernity
36. LM49-51.
37. LM61. Cassirer emphasizes "community," the other emphasis is m
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Peter Eli Gordon 143
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144 Myth and Modernity
40. See esp. PSF II, Part IV, "The Dialectic of Mythical Consciousnes" 235-61.
41. PSF II 261, my emphasis.
42. PSE II, English 21.
43. Paul Ricoeur, "Symbole et temporaliti," Archivo di Filosofia 1-2 (1963): 24;
quoted in L6vi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, Introduction to a Science of Mythology,
trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: Octagon Books, 1979) 11, originally Le
Cru et le Cuit (Paris: Plon, 1964).
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Peter Eli Gordon 145
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146 Myth and Modernity
46. MS 355.
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Peter Eli Gordon 147
47. Indeed, Husserl suggested that working out a logic of the natural concepti
the world was a crucial task for phenomenology. See Ideas, I. General Introduction
Phenomenology, trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Macmillan, 1931), esp. 101-
48. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 11th ed. (Ttibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1
hereafter, SZ. Translations from Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John M
rie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), hereafter, BT. Qu
from SZ s 9, 67-71, esp. 70, translation modified.
49. SZ s 11, 76-77, 76, original emphasis.
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148 Myth and Modernity
50. SZ 5 1; BT 76.
51. Malinowski, "Myth in Primitive Psychology" 108.
52. Malinowski, "Myth in Primitive Psychology" 82.
53. SZ51;BT 76.
54. It is worth noting that Heidegger's attraction to primitive systems of meanin
that are "less concealed" in their ontological structure resembles Malinowski's argumen
and also those put forth by Emile Durkheim in his classic study, The Elementary Forms o
Religious Life (1912). For Durkheim, "all religion is true," and all cultures express som
variant of religion, just as Heidegger finds "everydayness" in all culture. More impor
tantly, both Heidegger and Durkheim believe that the focus on "primitive" belief is m
useful methodologically, that it discloses the structure of human meaning in "simpler" an
more vivid fashion. Primitive religion, he argues, is "crude and rudimentary," and not ye
"elaborated" to the point of obscuring their deeper structure. See Durkheim, The Elem
tary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen Fields (New York: The Free Press, 1995) 7.
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150 Myth and Modernity
the light of the problem of Being in general" was required. The analy-
sis of mana, for example, seemed to highlight the fact that mythic
human existence does not conceive of its meaning-systems as mere
"representations" that are simply "present" [vorhanden] to a conscious-
ness. Mana, in particular, was a powerful illustration of the fact that, for
"mythic Dasein," the meaningfulness of the world could not be por-
trayed as born from the sovereign capacities of an expressive subject.
Which is the mode of being of mythic "life" which enables the mana-
representation to function as the guiding [. . .] understanding of
Being? The possible answer to this question of course presupposes a
previous working out of the basic ontological constitution of Dasein.
If this basic constitution is to be found in "care," [.. .] then it becomes
clear that mythic Dasein is primarily determined by "thrownness"
[Geworfenheit].59
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Peter Eli Gordon 151
62. MH: Review of PSFII 45. The Heideggerian perspective implies that my
structure without transcendental anchor, and without a "center" or point of naturali
tact with the real - a view that closely anticipates Jacques Derrida's criticism of
Ldvi-Strauss's views in his address, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of th
Sciences," first published in Derrida, L'dcriture et la dfference (Paris: Editions d
1967); in English as Writing andDifference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: U Chicago
63. Habermas eloquently summarizes Cassirer's view: "The position of human
in the world is defined by a form-giving power which transforms sense impress
meaningful structures. Human beings master the forces of nature which rush in up
through symbols which spring from the productive imagination. Thus they gain a d
from the immediate pressure of nature. Of course, they pay for this emancipation w
mental dependence on a semanticized nature, which returns in the spellbindingforce o
ical images. That first act of distantiation must therefore be repeated in the course of
development." Jiirgen Habermas, "The Liberating Power of Symbols: Ernst C
Humanistic Legacy and the Warburg Library," The Liberating Power of Symbols: Ph
ical Essays, trans. Peter Dews (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001) 1-29, 24, my em
64. This view of dependency is summarized in Heidegger's almost "mythica
nouncement that humanity does not possess language, since language is the "
Being." See Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," Pathmarks, ed. William McNei
bridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998) 254.
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152 Myth and Modernity
65. Heinrich Rickert, Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur; ein geschichtsphil-
osophischer Versuch (Tilbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1924).
66. "Davos Disputation," cited in the original Davos transcript from Otto Friedrich
Bollnow and Joachim Ritter, Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,
GS, Band 3 (1973) 274-296, in English, in Heidegger, Kant and the Problem ofMetaphys-
ics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1990) 171-185; 171, translation
ammended. Hereafter cited as Davos. For documentation and interpretative esssays, see
most recently, Dominic Kaegi and Enno Rudolph, eds. Cassirer - Heidegger 70 Jahre
Davoser Debatte (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 2002).
67. Davos 171.
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154 Myth and Modernity
For Heidegger, the transcendental capacities of the self are severely lim-
ited by the constitutive features of "creatureliness." What Cassirer cele-
brates as the human ability to "live" in obedience to one's own rules is,
from another perspective, further evidence of the fact that mental
agency cannot achieve, as Cassirer contends, any true "breakthrough" to
a sphere of absolute objectivity. Heidegger's startling reference to an
"angel" demonstrates that his philosophical rejection of an enlighten-
ment model of mental spontaneity draws upon religious resources.
The Davos disputation has remained a reference point in the history
of philosophy, not least because it has afforded many commentators
with a dramatic illustration of the cultural rift which threatened Ger-
man culture in 1929.72 There is some evidence that the public confron-
tation between the two philosophers was not entirely amicable. One of
Cassirer's students has written that when Cassirer offered his hand to
his interlocutor at the end of the discussion, Heidegger refused to take it.
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158 Myth and Modernity
[F]or if we reduce the legal and social order to free individual acts, to
a voluntary contractual submission of the governed, all mystery is
gone. There is nothing less mysterious than a contract. A contract
must be made in full awareness of its meaning and consequences; it
presupposes the free consent of all the parties concerned.84
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90. MS 369.
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162 Myth and Modernity
gives way to a merely passive attitude, [...] it cannot teach man how
to develop his active faculties in order to form his individual and
social life. A philosophy that indulges in somber predications about
the decline and inevitable destruction of human culture, a philosophy
whose whole attention is focused on the Geworfenheit, the Being-
thrown of man, can no longer do its duty.91
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164 Myth and Modernity
Concluding Remarks
Whatever its limitations, The Myth of the State has made an impor-
tant contribution to a broader discussion concerning the relation
between secularization and reason in modern political life. Indeed, a
chief point of dissension in both the Anglo-American and continental
secularization debates is whether myth can be defined, with Cassirer, as
a mystified expression of human imagination that must yield to the
more "sophisticated" works of the self-transparent mind, or whether it is
salutary to admit myth, with Heidegger, as the constitutive background
of all human action and the name for a fundamental receptivity that
cannot be expunged. I have tried to reconstruct the debate between Cas-
sirer and Heidegger in order to illuminate some of their deeper assump-
tions. My aim is chiefly confined to exposition, but I also hope to
advance a certain measure of skepticism regarding Cassirer's basically
"Kantian" view that there can be such a thing as fully self-transparent
subjectivity, i.e., a human being which enjoys the capacity to direct its
action without reliance upon external meaning.
It is worth noting that this sort of skepticism is typically associated
with the conservative critique of liberal autonomy. It can be found, for
example, in such diverse works as Michael Oakeshott's 1947 essay,
"Rationalism in Politics," which is widely regarded as the paradigm of
conservative theory, as well as Alisdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981),
and even Charles Taylor's politically more progressive reflections in
Sources of the Self (1989). While divergent in many respects, these
works share an appeal to the necessity of inherited "frameworks,"
93. Michael Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics," Rationalism in Politics and other
essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991); Alasdair C. Maclntyre, After Virtue: A
Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: U Notre Dame P, 1981); Charles Taylor, Sources
of the Self The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989).
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166 Myth and Modernity
96. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP,
1989).
97. This anti-foundationalist view may also underwrite a charistmatic, yet stoic
"strength" in the face of nothingness. It is a feature of Weber's theory that Terry Maley has
called the "politics of disenchantment." See Maley, "The Politics of Time: Subjectivity and
Modernity in Max Weber," The Barbarism of Reason: Max Weber and the Twilight of
Enlightenment, eds. Asher Horowitz and Terry Maley (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1994) 139-166.
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168 Myth and Modernity
99. Adorno's comment is particularly revealing, that, "beside the demand thus
placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly mat-
ters." From Theodor W. Adorno, "Finale," Minima Moralia, Reflections from a Damaged
Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978) 247. Wellmer, perhaps controversially,
finds in Adorno the residues of a "theological motif." But Wellmer is right that the stance
is aporetic, in alliance with metaphysics but only "at the moment of its fall." On the diffi-
culties of this self-collapsing ideal, see Albrecht Wellmer, "Reason, Utopia, and the Dia-
lectic of Enlightenment," ed. Richard J. Bernstein, Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1985) 35-66, and Wellmer, "Metaphysics at the Moment of its Fall," End-
games, trans. David Midgley (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 'theological motif'
from the latter, 193. On the Habermasian attempt to rescue conceptual form itself as a non-
repressive ideal, see Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, I: Reason and the
Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), and "Die Moderne-ein unvol-
lendetes Projekt," Die Moderne ein unvollendetes Projekt, Philosophisch-politische Auf
sitze (Leipzig: Reclam, 1994) 32-54.
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