Turning Social

Art, according to Ernst Cassirer's symbol-theoretic concept of culture, is a form of cultural meaning production in the vehicle of sensory gestalts: a 'symbolic form' for which a work's character is exemplary in all cultural capacities. Art thus becomes the paradigm of the culture. The contributions to this volume situate Cassirer's aesthetic approach within the history of ideas and contemporary perspective, and document the art-theoretical potential of his philosophy, by examining the significance of art in various dimensions of representation and expression in analyses of specific works of art.