Varmt välkomna till 2019 års föreläsning till Ernst Cassirers minne! Fredagen den 1 november har vi glädjen att välkomna Esther Oluffa Pedersen, verksam vid universitetet i Roskilde och en av Danmarks ledande Cassirer-kännare. Vi bad henne att ge sin syn på hur filosofens verk är relevant för oss idag, och hon svarade med rubriken:
ERNST CASSIRER – A MODERN HUMANIST
The life and work of Ernst Cassirer are uniformly tied together. As Cassirer after the First World War took up a professorship at the newly founded Hamburg University, he not only worked to establish the history of philosophy as a key part of the study of philosophy and thus to enforce the proud humanist tradition of classical philosophy studies at the young university. Just as much, Cassirer embarked on his grand project of writing the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in which he was in a lively exchange of ideas with the contemporary sciences reaching from Einstein’s physics over modern linguistics to psychopathology. The breadth of Cassirer’s undertakings as a philosopher are in themselves impressing. But what reveals him as a true modern humanist is his insistence on dialogue with history as much as with contemporary science, culture and politics. Furthermore, Cassirer’s humanist world view made him keenly aware of the threats stemming from the political change in 1933 as the National Socialists seized power. Engaging in the study of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy is not only rewarding as a role model of how to do philosophy. It is just as much an invitation to continue the philosophical conversations with history and contemporary science, culture and politics. I will try to convince you all that the philosophy of Cassirer offers important lessons for us as his epistemology and ontology are relational, his outlook is universal and his political philosophy is liberal.
Alltså: fredagen den 1 november kl. 16–18 i Torgny Segerstedt-salen, Vasaparken (ingen föranmälan krävs). Adeste, fideles!
