Ernst Cassirer

Born in Germany on July 28, 1874, Cassirer trained in the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism and initially worked under Hermann Cohen to construct an idealistic philosophy of science. After Cohen's death in 1918, he pivoted: he developed a theory of symbolism and expanded his focus from the logic of thought to a broader logic of culture itself. That shift produced the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, published between 1923 and 1929, which became his most famous work and established him as a leading advocate of philosophical idealism in the twentieth century. His defense of Enlightenment moral ideals and liberal democracy grew sharper as fascism rose around him. He died on April 13, 1945, and though his reception was mixed in the years that followed, later scholars recognized him as a thinker who held the line for reason when the moment demanded it.