Symbol and Reality: Studies in the philosophy of Ernst by Carl H. Hamburg

in view that prefaces, for the main half, are written after a e-book is finished, but face the reader prior to he will get to it, it truly is probably now not incredible that we frequently locate ourselves addressed via a extra chastened and qualifying writer than we finally come upon within the resulting pages. it truly is, in any case, not just a few readers, however the author of a e-book himself who reads what he has performed and didn't do. If the above is the rule of thumb, i'm no exception to it. The discerning reader needn't learn that the next reviews vary, not just within the methods they make to their unifying subject-matter, but additionally of their precision and hence adequacy of presentation. as well as the standard purposes for this quite universal shortcoming, there's an one other one in terms of the current ebook. regardless of its comparative brevity, the time-span among its inception and termination covers a few 20 years. for that reason, a few (historical and epistemological) sections mirror my preoccupation with CASSI­ RER'S eady works in the course of pupil days in Germany and France. whilst, a few ten years later, CASSIRER in a letter expressed "great pleasure" and anticipation for a extra heavily supervised con­ tinuation of my efforts (which, as a result of his premature dying, by no means got here to pass), he gave me all of the encouragement had to visit paintings on a serious exposition of his "symbolic shape" con­ cept.