Article

Name: Substantiation of the cultural-semiotic approach to history in Ernst Kassirer’s philosophy

Authors: I. V. Demin

Samara State University

Abstract: In the article Ernst Kassirer’s views on the nature of the historiography and the specifics of historical knowledge are analyzed. General philosophical prerequisites of the cultural-semiotic approach to history are revealed. Parallels with the interpretation of history in the philosophical concepts of Rickert and Gadamer are held. Historiography and storytelling in Cassirer’s concept is a tool for studying human nature and a form of self-knowledge. The notion of a historical fact in Cassirer’s philosophy of culture is understood in a new way. The historical fact, unlike the fact of the natural sciences, is not the starting point, but the result of the cognitive activity of the historian. The historical fact in the process of interpretation and reinterpretation of historical sources is constructed. The historical fact is always the answer to the historian’s question. The activity of a historian with the activities of a philologist and linguist, rather than a naturalist, has similarities. The fundamental difference between historical knowledge and the natural sciences, according to Cassirer, is not in the way of the formation of scientific concepts, but in the very nature of historical fact is revealed. Ernst Cassirer the thesis about the symbolic nature of historical reality substantiated, he also the significant ideas of the post-metaphysical philosophy of history of the second half of the 20th century anticipated.

Keywords: semiotics, history, semiotics of history, philosophy of history, philosophy of symbolic forms, Cassirer

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