Technics of thinking

Aud Sissel Hoel

pp. 65-91

in: Aud Sissel Hoel, Ingvild Folkvord (eds), Ernst Cassirer on form and technology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

What is thinking? An ambitious question, to be sure. Yet this precise question was tackled by Ernst Cassirer in a highly suggestive and thought-provoking way in his essay "Form and Technology' from 1930. This essay, delivered as a supplement to his three-volume magnum opus on the philosophy of symbolic forms (1923–29), sets out to determine the "being' of technology. Cassirer poses the question concerning technology on the grounds that the philosophical depth and significance of this question has not been sufficiently acknowledged in the existing literature on the topic. So what, then, has technology to do with thinking? Viewed through the optics of the essay under discussion: everything.

Cited authors

Cassirer Ernst