Ernst Cassirer on Form and Technology This page intentionally left blank Ernst Cassirer on Form and Technology Contemporary Readings Edited by Aud Sissel Hoel and Ingvild Folkvord Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Selection and editorial matter © Aud Sissel Hoel and Ingvild Folkvord 2012 Chapters © individual contributors 2012 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-34945-6 ISBN 978-1-137-00777-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137007773 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 In memory of John Michael Krois, whose dedication and scholarship inspired this volume This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Figures x Acknowledgements xi Notes on the Contributors xiii Introduction 1 Aud Sissel Hoel and Ingvild Folkvord PART I FORM AND TECHNOLOGY 1 Form and Technology 15 Ernst Cassirer (translated by Wilson McClelland Dunlavey and John Michael Krois) Section I 15 Section II 22 Section III 34 Section IV 42 2 The Age of Complete Mechanization 54 John Michael Krois PART II CONTEMPORARY READINGS 3 Technics of Thinking 65 Aud Sissel Hoel Reframing the problem of technology 67 Expanding and transforming logos 70 Bios and logos 71 Truth, distance and intervention 74 Poetic infinity 78 Technology and the possible 80 Science criticism 81 Extended mind 84 Transformational realism 85 4 The Struggle of Titans – Ernst Jünger and Ernst Cassirer: Vitalist and Enlightenment Philosophies of Technology in Weimar Germany 92 Frederik Stjernfelt Technics as Titanic destiny 93 vii viii Contents Technology as symbolic form 98 Cassirer versus vitalist criticism of technology 102 5 Technology as Destiny in Cassirer and Heidegger: Continuing the Davos Debate 113 Hans Ruin The Davos debate 114 The philosophical challenge of technology 117 Cassirer’s ‘Form and Technology’ 120 Heidegger’s initial approach to the problem of technology 125 Heidegger’s later approach to the question of technology 130 Concluding comparative remarks 132 6 Technical Activity as a Symbolic Form: Comparing Money and Language 139 Jean Lassègue A disparity in Cassirer’s philosophy 139 Three points to reconsider 143 The analogy between money and language 151 Conclusion 157 7 The Power of Voice: Ernst Cassirer and Bertolt Brecht on Technology, Expressivity and Democracy 161 Ingvild Folkvord Hardened scepticism 162 Brecht versus Cassirer 166 Brecht and Cassirer: addressing posterity? 176 8 ‘Representation’ and ‘Presence’ in the Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer 181 Marion Lauschke (translated by Wilson McClelland Dunlavey) Section I 182 Section II 186 Section III 188 9 Cultural Poetics and the Politics of Literature 199 Frederik Tygstrup and Isak Winkel Holm (translated by Lise Utne) Truth and facts 199 Symbolic forms 202 The politics of literature 206 Creation, exposition, transposition 208 10 Cave Art as Symbolic Form 214 Mats Rosengren Outside 214 Entrance: the study of cave art 214 Contents ix Hallway and passages: Cassirer on tools and technologies 219 Galleries: on the remaking of the horses in Pech Merle 222 Exit: on the way out of an impasse? 226 Outside again 228 11 Failures of Convergence 233 Dennis M. Weiss Section I 233 Section II 238 Section III 242 Section IV 249 Index 259 List of Figures 2.1 22 August 1930: Einstein speaks on the radio to open the Radio Exhibition in Berlin (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, http://www.dra.de/) 57 2.2 21 and 28 October 1931: Cassirer lectures on national radio on ‘The Unity of Science’ over the Deutschlandsender near Berlin in their broadcast ‘Hochschulfunk’ (RadioMuseum Köln, http://www.radiomuseum-koeln.de/) 58 7.1 Brecht’s radio experiment performed on stage, at the music festival in Baden-Baden, 1929 (Akademie der Künste, Bertolt Brecht-archiv, http://www.adk.de/) 171 10.1 The Panel of the Horses, Pech Merle, France. © Michel Lorblanchet (with permission from the author Michel Lorblanchet, Höhlenmalerei: Ein Handbuch (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke Verlag), 181) 223 10.2 The phases of construction of the Panel of the Horses. © Michel Lorblanchet (with permission from the author Michel Lorblanchet, ‘Rencontres avec le chamanisme’, in Michel Lorblanchet, Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, Paul Bahn and Henri-Paul Francfort (eds), Chamanisme et Arts Préhistoriques: Vision Critique (Paris: Errance, 2006), 105–36, 107) 225 x Acknowledgements This book is dedicated to our dear friend and colleague John Michael Krois, who was tremendously supportive of and served almost as a men- tor for our work on Ernst Cassirer’s ‘Form and Technology’. We came to know John in 2006 when we invited him to Trondheim to give a keynote presentation at our conference Form and Technics: Reading Ernst Cassirer from the Present. After that we met John on several occasions in Berlin and Paris. We fondly remember our trips to Berlin, where John spontaneously took on the role of the indigenous guide, eager to share the hidden attractions of the city that he loved so much. Until his sud- den illness and death in the autumn of 2010, John contributed to our scholarly work in many ways. With respect to this volume, John’s effort can be identified through his co-translation of the volume’s topical essay – Cassirer’s ‘Form and Technology’ – and through his own essay ‘The Age of Complete Mechanization’, which contextualizes Cassirer’s classic text. Far beyond that, John contributed with his acumen as a philosopher, his generous sharing of his vast knowledge of Cassirer’s life and work, his relentless support and, not the least, his various ways of bringing together people with shared intellectual interests. Our first thanks therefore go to John. We would also like to express our thanks to the other contributors to this volume, several of whom were present at a workshop that we organized at the Nordeuropa-Institut at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2008. Thank you for your patience! Thanks also to Bernd Henningsen, who hosted our 2008 workshop and who, together with John, invited us to participate in the annual Cassirer workshops at the Nordeuropa-Institut. We want to express our thanks to the Faculty of Humanities at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for financially supporting, among other things, our 2006 conference and our 2008 workshop, and to the NTNU Departments of Modern Foreign Languages and Art and Media Studies, for financially supporting translation and proofreading work. The repository of the Ernst Cassirer Papers, including the essay ‘Form und Technik’, is the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The editors and publishers are grateful to Yale University Press for the kind permission to use and translate this essay for this xi xii Acknowledgements volume; to Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, to the RadioMuseum Köln; to the Bertolt Brecht-Archiv at Akademie der Künste for permission for photographs; to Michel Lorblanchet for his photograph and drawings of the Panel of the Horses; and to Biblioteca Nacional de España for the drawing by Leonardo da Vinci on the front jacket of the book. Notes on the Contributors Wilson McClelland Dunlavey is a Friedrich Naumann Scholar at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He studied Ernst Cassirer with John Michael Krois for six years and is currently writing his doctoral disser- tation on the influence of German cultural programmes on American universities. He has written several articles on philosophy and history, including ‘Vivre c’est essayer: Montaignes Philosophie heißt Sterben lernen’ in Was ist Leben: Festgabe für Volker Gerhardt (2009) and ‘The Pilgrimage to Weimar: Goethe and the American Transcendentalists’ (forthcoming). Ingvild Folkvord is Associate Professor of German literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is the author of Sich ein Haus schreiben: Drei Texte aus Ingeborg Bachmanns Prosa (2003) and has written several articles on modern literature, radio culture and literacy. She