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10 - Enlightenment or Therapy

The Cosmopolitan Task of Philosophy

from Part III - The Task of Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

Simon Truwant
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
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Summary

Considers the implications of Cassirer and Heidegger’s respective conceptions of philosophy for their views on its existential task. Cassirer asserts a hierarchy among the cultural domains based on the self-understanding of symbolic consciousness (10.1). Heidegger navigates the dialectics between disowned, average, and owned selfhood (10.2). On this basis, I address the ultimate breaking point between Cassirer and Heidegger: their respective Enlightened and ‘therapeutic’ conception of the task of philosophy. While for Cassirer philosophy is the caretaker of our self-liberation through culture, for Heidegger it ought to help us reconcile with our ineradicable shortcomings ‒ the latter view is therapeutic in the psychoanalytic sense, it has no affinity with Wittgenstein's notion of philosophy as therapy.

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Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos
The Philosophical Arguments
, pp. 220 - 244
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Enlightenment or Therapy
  • Simon Truwant, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
  • Book: Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos
  • Online publication: 05 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009019569.014
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  • Enlightenment or Therapy
  • Simon Truwant, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
  • Book: Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos
  • Online publication: 05 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009019569.014
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Enlightenment or Therapy
  • Simon Truwant, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
  • Book: Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos
  • Online publication: 05 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009019569.014
Available formats
×