The Symbolic Form of Art in the Philosophical System of Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is one of the theories that offers a new possibility to rethink how human knowledge has evolved, especially in primitive human minds and mythical thought. The stages of knowledge, according to this philosophy, start from mythical thinking, and pass through religion and mysticism into art and science and reach Kant's transcendental perspective. But despite his emphasis on the importance of art in his works, Cassirer had no specific explanation of artistic knowledge. For this reason, the present article seeks to examine the characteristics of mythical thought, including its categories and perceptual forms and by focusing on Cassirer's disputed views on art, defines art as one of the symbolic forms. This paper is written in a descriptive-analytical method and with a library-attribute checklist in the theoretical framework of philosophy of symbolic forms. By trying to explain or compare the data, it examines the possibility of the continuity of mythical categories and forms of perception in artistic thought or the possibility of reconstructing them. Finally, based on the results, the work of art is introduced as a concrete emergence of mythical thought which, with the need to make such a transformation, extends the categories and perceptual forms of mythical thought in artistic thought with necessary modifications.