Hermann Usener and Ernst Cassirer in the historiographical interpretation by Giancarlo Magnano San Lio

Abstract

Magnano San Lio’s interpretative approach shows a theoretical core shared by Usener, Warburg and Cassirer, centred on a morphology of culture that integrates various disciplines —such as anthropology, philology, history and philosophy — into a holistic vision of «the human being in its wholeness». Fundamental is Usener’s contribution to the renewing of philology, understood as a tool for the historical understanding of humanity and cultural forms. This approach profoundly affects Cassirer’s thought, who, in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, interprets myth as an original mode of symbolic elaboration of reality, closely connected to other symbolic forms.
What comes to the light is the outline of a history of culture without breaks, based on the idea of continuity between the various manifestations of the human spirit, in which every symbolic form — while retaining its own singularity — keeps traces of its predecessors and contributes to the overall understanding of human experience.