Claus Rosenkranz Book order (chronological)

In this classic work of intellectual history, Ernst Cassirer provides both a cogent synthesis & a penetrating analysis of one of history's greatest intellectual epochs: the Enlightenment. Arguing that there was a common foundation beneath the diverse strands of thought of this period, he shows how Enlightenment philosophers drew upon the ideas of preceding centuries even while radically transforming them to fit the modern world. In Cassirer's view, the Enlightenment liberated philosophy from the realm of pure thought & restored it to its true place as an active & creative force thru which knowledge of the world is achieved.

The Symbolic Forms has long been considered by many who knew it in the original German as the greatest of Ernst Cassirer's works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art and science-the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to his experience.