1929 Davos Disputation

By Gary R. Brown, Ph.D.

Ernst Cassirer versus Martin Heidegger

Is this a Ripple in the History of Philosophy?
A Regression to Metaphysics?
A Leap Forward to a New Meaning of Man and Being?
Or the incompatibilities of two legitimate domains of
thought?

The Disagreement That Still

Fascinates
Aside from the many references to the 1929 Davos debate in studies of
either Cassirer or Heidegger, and the many standalone articles and
dissertations, below are some of the most prominent recent accounts:
1997: Davos Disputation Between Ernst Cassirer and Martin
Heidegger, in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger.
2000: A Parting of Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Michael
Friedman.
2008: Ernst Cassirer, The Last Philosopher of Culture. Edward
Skidelsky.
2010: Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Peter
Gordon.
The two positions at Davos may uncover an archetypal tension in
philosophical thought.

What was the Occasion?

The Second Annual Meeting of the International Davos
Conference
Internationale Davoser Hochschulkurse
Where: The famous spa, resort, and conference center a mile high in the
Swiss Alps.
Famous Location of the mountaintop tuberculosis sanatorium in
Thomas Manns
novel of hermetic transformation and intellectual
conflict, Magic Mountain.
Present meeting place the World Economic Forum.
Purpose:
A colloquy of intellectuals from across Europe to promote
peace and mutual understanding after the devastation and residual
enmities of WWI.
Attendees: Over 50 Dozenten and Professors.
232 Students from 20 countries, many of them veterans of WWI
950 inhabitants of the village of Davos
Sampling of those Present:

The Participants: Cassirer

Partial List:
Ernst Cassirer may be best known in the U.S. for:
Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932)
Essay on Man (1944)
Myth of the State (1945)
In Germany before 1929
Substance and Function (1910)
Complete Edition of Kants works (1912, 10 vols.)
Kants Life and Work (1918)
Einsteins Theory of Relativity (1921)
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
Vol. I. Language (1923)
Vol. II. Mythical Thought (1925)
Vol. III. Phenomenology of Knowledge (1929)
The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1927)
Biographical: From a prominent Jewish family. After WWI, named
professor at Univ. of
Hamburg and elected rector, the first Jew to
attain that rank in Germany:
Tall, urbane, elegant. In 1929 he had bushy white hair, but was
under the
weather and even bedridden for part of the conference.
Philosophy: Began as a neo-Kantian, became more Kantian, influenced by

The Participants: Heidegger

Best known: Being and Time, a powerful rethinking of the meaning of
truth, temporality,
being, human being, and human existence.
Because of its unusual language and obvious originality, the book
made quite a stir but people were uncertain what to make of it.
He was first thought to be an existentialist, a term he rejected. His
analytic of human being was not in service of an anthropology or an
ethics, but in order to gain access to the primordial meaning of being
rather than as the being of beings.
He wanted to cross the ontological difference between being and
beings.
For the first time since Aristotle, Heidegger, drawing on Kant,
countered the notion of being as eternal and unchanging. This was, he
argued, a false understanding of time, a mistaken fixation on presence at
the expense of the other
modes of standing outside oneself, i.e., past
and future. Human essence is time.
The being of things objectively present, in contrast, dominates Western
ontology
and logic, concealing other forms of being. Objective presence
(objectivity) is an abstraction founded upon primordial awareness and
cannot grasp human Dasein.

Conference Agenda
The Conference hosted morning and afternoon classes and evening
events, and lasted three weeks. Cassirer taught 4 of the many classes
offered, Heidegger 3.

Cassirer, despite his strength in philosophy of science, offered a

course on philosophical anthropology, probably in preparation for
his encounter with Heidegger, whom he associated with the
recent philosophy of life tradition of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard,
Bergson, and Dilthey.
Heidegger, to Cassirers surprise, lectured on the rethinking of
Kants Critique of Pure Reason as a grounding of metaphysics, a
topic that grew out of the winter semester course Heidegger had
just given and was also to have been the focus of the next
uncompleted section of Being and Time, the first of his
deconstructions.
As Cassirer and Heidegger were the two most famous
philosophers then in Germany, a major attraction of the
conference was this face-to-face (diese Arbeitsgemeinschaft)
between the two of them, just as Einsteins talk had been the

Format of the Encounter

It was billed as Eine Arbeitsgemeinscaft, or study group, to keep it
informal, but it nonetheless exposed a major rift between two
fundamentally different viewpoints, one an evolution of, the other a
revolution against, the philosophical tradition. Both thinkers could be
regarded in advance of their own era and, perhaps, in some ways, even
ours. Cassirer confidently extended the rationalist tradition into new
domains of language, myth, art, and religion, while Heidegger, agreeing
with Nietzsche, traced the rise of modern nihilism back to the deficiencies
of this rationalist tradition and sought to recover its lost abyssal depths.
The encounter was brief: 10:00 AM until Noon. Unlike modern political
debates with pre-formulated questions, this event was unscripted and
unmoderated.
Each philosopher made a statement then posed questions to the other
who responded and raised his own questions. There were only four
complete exchanges, but each contained multiple explicit and implicit
issues that are still being unpacked.
Cassirer, older by 15 years, an established author, began with the
apparent intent of gaining a better understanding of Heideggers recent
and difficult book. Although they had previous conversations, Heidegger

More on their Differences

Although the two men were less than a generation apart, their
respective comings of age were separated by WWI, which terminated
the Age of Enlightenment with the Age of Anxiety and Crisis. Cassirer
had written his dissertation on Descartes, his first book on Leibniz,
and his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms celebrated the liberation of
mankind from primitive bondage to modern freedom through the
progressive unfolding of infinite reason. Even the Great War brought
a republic to Germany and allowed Cassirer, a Jew, to be appointed
professor at the new University of Hamburg and elected rector. Cassirers
mode of speaking was described as polite, formal, elegant, and
pastoral. His tall Olympian bearing was accentuated by his bushy
white hair. He seemed to represent the old, discredited, rational
order.
Heidegger, by contrast, was small, dark, intense, and, as Cassirers wife
described him, socially uneasy and looking like a workman or peasant.
Heidegger cultivated this rustic impression by wearing his ski clothes
to formal events, bragging In a letter that this was unheard of. He was
described as energetic, resolutely serious to the point of rudeness, and
standoffish. But he appealed to the younger generation, some of
whom skied with him. It was a generation marked by war, uncertainty,
and economic deprivation, and drawn to nature, hiking and camping.

The First Round

Cassirer began the encounter quite confidently by asking Heidegger-whom he seemed to regarded as a less experienced younger colleague-why he attacked neo-Kantianism, especially since Cassirers own work
had expanded beyond his neo-Kantian mentors at Marburg. He even
doubted Heideggers grasp of the term, and claimed surprise at seeing neoKantianism in Heidegger. Cassirer, understandably, had not yet recognized
Heideggers stature as an original thinker of the first rank, and that he
might be poking a bear.
Heidegger, despite condescension in the question, gave a measured
response. Because the topic is significant, I quote his answer at length:
Since about 1850 it is been the case that both the human and the natural
sciences have taken possession of the totality of what is knowable, so the
question arises: what still remains of philosophy if the totality of beings has been
divided up under the sciences? It remains [for neo-Kantians] just knowledge of
science, not of beings. And it is from this perspective that the regression to Kant
is then determined. Consequently, Kant was seen as a theoretician of the
mathematical-physical theory of knowledge. . .

What Heidegger is describing here is precisely the neo-Kantianism of

Cassirers mentors.
For me, what matters is to show that what came to be extracted here as theory

Neo-Kantian Background of Both

Heidegger did not need to mention that the period before 1850 was
dominated by Hegels idealism. Hegel's predecessor, Kant, had
included sensibility as one of two stems of knowledge. Hegel rejected
this inclusion of sensibility with the claim that reason was selfsufficient. After Hegel's death, the cry: "Back to Kant!" arose, but its
participants, leading to the neo-Kantian domination of early 20th century
thought, retained against Kant Hegel's rejection of sensibility. For
example, Paul Natorp, one of Cassirers neo-Kantian mentors at Marburg,
declared that their intention was never
to revive orthodox Kantianism but to advance from his position to one more in accord
with modern science.
. . . psychologist may speak of sense impressions. . . but so far as logic is concerned,
we can speak only of contents and content relations that are . . . defined in and
through thinking.

Hence, the Neo-Kantians appropriated Hegels view of the absoluteness

of reason and saw their task as correcting Kant and purifying scientific
theory through epistemology.
Although Heidegger was trained in the rival Southwest branch of neoKantianism under Windleband and Rickert, who focused on psychology,
culture, and history (Geisteswissenschaften), rather than natural science

From Exchange to Disputation

Second Round: Cassirer briefly defended Cohen and his own commitment
to mathematical natural science, then proceeded to attack positions
Heidegger presented in Being and Time:
Cassirer denounced Heideggers description of human finitude,
arguing that symbolic imagination and Kants Categorical Imperative
both provide breakthroughs to the infinite, making possible freedom
from the constrictions of concrete life. Heidegger, Cassirer asserts,
must provide a similar breakthrough to the mundus intelligibilis
[intelligible world], where appearances fall away and freedom reigns.
How, Cassirer asks, can Heideggers finite creature have
absolute knowledge? Heidegger could not possibly mean to reject
the objectivity and universality of truth by making truth depend on
human Dasein, as claimed. It would follow that a finite creature
can possess no eternal truths, no necessity. Kant uses
mathematics as an example that universal necessity exists.
Cassirer boldly suggests that if Heidegger would only pose these
problems to himself, he will have to give up these claims.
The condescension here, based on Cassirers complacent acceptance of

Pause to Define Dasein

Da means both here and there, but we need to stress Here: Da bin
ich = Here I am. It also suggests time: Da und Dort, here and there, can
also mean now and then.
Sein means being
As a noun Dasein is an everyday German word that means existence or
life.
Das Dasein erleichtern: make life easier for oneself.
As a verb it means being here.
Ist Herr Olsen da? Ja, er ist schon da. Is Mr. Olsen here? Yes, he is
already here.
Heidegger gives Dasein a special meaning that relies on paying attention
to its structure, i.e., Da and Sein. Dasein is the fundamental structure of
human existence, our being (sein), our existing here in space and time
(da).
For Heidegger, we are not encapsulated in our bodies, but are outside of
ourselves in the site of our experience as beings-in-the-world.
By referring to human being as Dasein, as being-in-the-world, Heidegger

Heideggers Counterattack
To Heidegger, Cassirers notion of escape from finitude through symbolic
reason was an inauthentic avoidance of mortality. As Skidelsky puts it, for
Heidegger
True freedom is not freedom from Dasein but rather becoming free for the finitude of
Dasein. The task of philosophy is not to console man with thoughts of eternity but to
awaken him to his own nothingness.

Heidegger indicated that eternity is a false interpretation of the essence of

time. Meta- physical claims about the aion depend on an inner
transcendence within the essence of time that makes possible a horizon
with respect to future, present, and past. Implied here is Heideggers
critique of the static quality of eternal being as posited by the Greeks, his
overthrow of the fundamental assumption buttressing over two millennia
of Western thought. If being itself is temporal, becoming disappears, and
everything dependent on the vanished polarity must be rethought. This
will require an other beginning to master the first.
Heidegger concedes that being has something infinite about it, but what
about man himself? Is he infinite or finite? God, as an infinite being, does
not need a Categorical Imperative. Its use confirms mans finitude. And
Truth? Although nature does not depend on man, without Dasein, or man,

Cassirer loses his bearings

My task tonight is not to give a blow by blow account of the disputation as
a whole but to differentiate the standpoints of the disputants in
order to show how these differences guide and derive from their
interpretations of Kant and their understanding of human being.
Strangely blindsided by the question into his own assumption, Cassirer
responds that man reaches infinity through form. But something seems
awry here since form would seem finite. He then speaks of an immanent
infinitude reached by going in all directions, referencing Goethe. But this
seems to border on incoherence. Leo Strauss, his grad student, reported
that the learned professor and great man of culture had suddenly
seemed completely lost.
Another student of Cassirers, Heinrich Pos, interrupted the event to
defend Cassirer, saying that the two men spoke a completely different
language and that they needed a glossary.
Heidegger took over for the flummoxed Cassirer and gave a clear
exposition of the main outline of Cassirers Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,
then pointed out their differences. Cassirer sought to explain culture
without asking who or what man is. Heideggers own philosophy focused
on who man is but is in no position yet to found culture. What basis did

But What Does This Mean to Us?

I would like to pull back from the fray and elucidate what I see as the
most significant underlying issue that all the other treatments I have
seen of the debate overlook. We have to go below the surface and
compare the respective readings of Kant from Cassirers Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms and from early lectures of Heidegger that are now
available.
Michael Friedman argues that Heideggers fundamental ontology and his
reopening of the question of being, his claim of human finitude,
the revelatory power of death and nothingness, and his attempt
to identify propositional truth as dependent upon prior levels of
non-rational cognition went counter to the positivism of logical
analysis and analytical philosophy. He thereby created a bifurcation
in Western thought that was solidified by the separation of Europe by
WWII so that Analytical thinking in England and America rejected
European Continental thinking led by Heidegger, and vice versa.
Wittgenstein, members of the Vienna Circle, Cassirer, and others fled
West, while Heidegger joined the Nazis and heavily influenced the
subsequent Continental tradition, including existentialism, ethics,
hermeneutics, theology, Classics, literary theory, and psychoanalysis.

So, Which is It Fundamentally?

At stake in our understanding of the issues in the disputation is nothing
less than what constitutes human being, how we understand our relation
to the world, and how we should register importance in our lives. This
issues depend upon how we see these basic terms. Are things
As Cassirer assumes?
As Heidegger claims?
Is being eternal and unchanging?
Or is being temporal and epochal?
Is truth objective and universal?
Or is truth perspectival, historical, Dasein
dependent?
Is freedom transcendence from world?
Or is freedom authentically being-in-the-world?
Do we spontaneously create our worlds?
Or do we find ourselves within already existing
worlds?
Are we primarily thinking beings?
Or does care for our own being underlie all
disclosure?
Do we find liberation through timeless symbol systems? Or do we find liberation by anticipating
our mortality?

Must we take these differences simply as matters of opinion?

Or can we elucidate the meaning of these alternatives by
considering the ways Cassirer and Heidegger interpret Kant?

Different Takes on Shared

Background
Kants resolution of a problem inherited from Descartes
Descartes: I can deny everything, even that I am awake and not dreaming, even
that I have
a body, but I cannot deny that I am thinking: Cogito ergo sum.
I am a thinking substance and differ from the extended substances around
me.
How can I be sure that things are as I see them? Would God deceive me?
Kant: The scandal of philosophy is doubt about the existence of the external
world.
1772 letter to Markus Herz: What is the ground of the relationship
between what is called in us representation and the object?
This is the central problem of The Critique of Pure Reason.
Solution:
Deduction of the Pure concepts of the Understanding (A84-130):
a priori grounds for the possibility of experience
Synthesis of Apprehension of the Intuition (manifold in space and time)
Synthesis of Reproduction of the Imagination (recognition, memory)
Synthesis of Recognition through spontaneous conceptualization
(consciousness)
Kant refers to these processes as spontaneous.
And they have both a priori and a posteriori functions (doubling).
Misunderstood: The idealist (mis)reading of Kants subjectivity as an
encapsulated Cartesian
consciousness began immediately with Reinhold and

Partial Agreement on Externality

In Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. III, 50, Cassirer writes For [Kant]
the meaning of subjectivity has undergone a corresponding
transformation. . .[it] no longer pertained to the to the individual and
empirically accidental. . . It had become the source and origin of all true
universality. . . [H]e eliminates the antithesis between subject and object
by disclosing their necessary relation in building and constituting the
object of experience [bold mine].
Cassirer modeled each of his three volumes of his Symbolic Forms on a
structural analogy of Kants three-fold deduction, understood a posteriori
& as stages of historical development.
This is an advance over traditional Kant scholarship, But Cassirer
understands the externality of subjectivity as a conscious
creation by a pre-existing subject who synthetizes a culturally based
object.
Heidegger, focuses instead on the deep structure of Kants argument.
The three stages of synthesis: intuition, imagination, and
concept, are prior conditions of the possibility of consciousness,
hence precognitive. The a priori within us of space and time
means not only that subjectivity encompasses the externality of
empirical experience, but that world is part of Dasein. This means

Cassirer and Heidegger:

Different Stances
Cassirers Cartesian-Hegelian-neo-Kantian rationalism found its ultimate confirmation, Cassirer believed,
in Quantum Theory. He argued this in his book Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (1936),
where the necessity of speaking of both particles and waves means that a single symbol system is inadequate
to describe physical reality, and presumably even more so full reality, which will require all the functions of the
spirit working together.
Cassirers dream is the complete liberation of the human spirit from the primitive participation mystique to
the total objectivity of the Theory of Everything. But this dream is an abstraction of consciousness. It is
a view from nowhere by nobody, a divine snapshot from outside of existence. Yet this view is still
implicitly dominant in the twenty-first century.
This is the historically evolved destiny of Aristotles identification of human being with the rationality
attached to an animal zoon logikon. This total deracination of human consciousness, produced
through a collusion of post-Platonic philosophy, Christianity, and modern technology is manifested here as the
Western form of nihilism already diagnosed by Nietzsche. But this emptying out of human being and
meaning has unlocked simultaneously a powerful increase in control over the material environment. The
paradox is that the very capabilities that have enabled this achievement are ultimately negated by the last step
of objectivity, which means the destined erasure of the last trace of the subject.
Arising out of the ashes of a destroyed Europe, taking seriously Nietzsches, Kierkegaards, and Bergsons
diagnosis of the Wests mistaken honoring of reason over life, but going further than Nietzsches reversal of
Platonism, which preserves the false polarities, Heidegger reopens the question of being, left
unchallenged by Christian thought where Aristotle had left it to reappear in Hegel. Being and Time was the first
stage in a lifelong effort by Heidegger to initiate another beginning of Western thought, a beginning that
would interweave itself with the greatness of the first beginning in order to master it properly for the first time
without losing sight of the abyssal nature of being.
Davos fascinates because of its potentiality to split Western philosophical history into two

By the Fourth Exchange Cassirer

Recovered
Cassirer lamented that according to Heidegger, the bridges between them
had been destroyed.
He claimed that after Kants so-called Copernican revolution, a unified
sense of being was no longer possible. Since each discipline was its
own symbolic world, each required its own notion of being as it took
shape between subjectivity and its intentional object.
Heidegger countered that human Dasein, being-here, was prior to both
subject and object as well as all conscious disciplines, and that there was
no counterpart in Cassirers work to describe this precognitive sphere of
primordial experience, which Cassirer thought primitive.
Peter Gordon, in his 2013 Book, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer,
Davos, reported that the debate split along archetypal lines that could not
be resolved.
There may be a parallel here to Socrates exhorting Athenians to care
more for the health of their soul than their wealth in the world around
them.
Heidegger stresses recovering the proper relation to being to escape