Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos
The Philosophical Arguments

The first comprehensive philosophical analysis of the 'Davos debate' between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger.

Simon Truwant (Author)

9781316519882, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 May 2022

288 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.54 kg

'Truwant's book should be the starting point for anyone interested in the philosophical meaning of the famous 'debate' between Heidegger and Cassirer in Davos. Going far beyond the debate itself, the book offers a lucid, meticulously researched account of the philosophical positions Heidegger and Cassirer brought to the debate, an astute analysis of their relation to Kant, and a thoughtful assessment of the implications for philosophy today. A first-rate achievement.' Steven Crowell, Rice University

The 1929 encounter between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in Davos, Switzerland is considered one of the most important intellectual debates of the twentieth century and a founding moment of continental philosophy. At the same time, many commentators have questioned the philosophical profundity and coherence of the actual debate. In this book, the first comprehensive philosophical analysis of the Davos debate, Simon Truwant challenges these critiques. He argues that Cassirer and Heidegger's disagreement about the meaning of Kant's philosophy is motivated by their different views about the human condition, which in turn are motivated by their opposing conceptions of what the task of philosophy ultimately should be. Truwant shows that Cassirer and Heidegger share a grand philosophical concern: to comprehend and aid the human being's capacity to orient itself in and towards the world.

Introduction: what is at stake in the Davos debate?
1. Reconstructing the Davos debate
Part I. The Lasting Meaning of Kant's Thoughts: 2. Cassirer's transformation of the critique of reason into a critique of culture
3. Heidegger's reading of transcendental philosophy as phenomenological ontology
4. Receptivity or spontaneity: two readings of the Critique of Pure Reason
Part II. 'What Is the Human Being?': 5. Cassirer's functional account of the 'animal symbolicum'
6. Heidegger's existential analytic of 'Dasein'
7. Infinity and finitude: the quest for existential orientation
Part III. The Task of Philosophy: 8. Cassirer's functional conception of philosophy
9. Heidegger's hermeneutic conception of philosophy
10. Enlightenment or therapy: the cosmopolitan task of philosophy
Conclusion: the terminus a quo and terminus ad quem of the Davos debate.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: aesthetics [HPN], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK], Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF]