The SYMBOLIC FORMS has long been considered by many who knew it in the original German as the greatest of Ernst Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science-the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to his experience.

Volume 1 Language
Volume 2 Mythical Thought
Volume 3 The Phenomenology of Knowledge

Translated by Ralph Manheim; introductions by Charles W. Hendel «These three volumes alone (apart from Cassirer’s other papers and books) make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical rather than in historical terms.»-F. I. G. Rawlins, NATURE.
«Cassirer has been considered in this country to be primarily a philosopher of the physical sciences. We are now able to understand that he was also a philosopher of the cultural sciences and, with the language barrier removed, can begin to appreciate his towering stature in both fields of endeavor.»-AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW.