Symbolicum

The term was coined by Ernst Cassirer symbolicum animal. The term emphasizes the typical human capacity to create symbols and to think in a world of symbols and live. The term is particularly common in the philosophical anthropology. He belongs with other terms such as animal rationale, homo ludens, political animal to the topoi of anthropological discussion.

In his major work philosophy of symbolic forms, and especially in his late work anthropological experiment on humans, he explains the term, Man shall not live in a purely physical environment, but in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, religion, and all other areas of cultural activity form the threads of the symbolic fabric. Every advance of human thought and human experience reinforced and expanded this tissue.

The man understood as a rational animal, accounts for only a part of this symbolic universe. Apart from the language of the terms, there is a language of feeling, in addition to the language of logic or science is the language of the poetic imagination. In the original language expresses not thoughts and ideas, but feelings and emotions. The term animal symbolicum therefore covers all areas of human culture. Although the symbolic ability of humans develops mainly with and in language that is not only a means of communication but also a way of thinking, but it is a special power of the symbol philosophy Cassirer, that his concept of symbolization - as opposed to language-oriented more Kant's theory of knowledge - is not limited to the language. Man is distinguished rather by the fact that it gives the world via the symbol both individual and collective connoted meaning.

Swell

• Cassirer, Ernst: The philosophy of symbolic forms.

• Philosophical Anthropology