The Persistence of Myth as Symbolic Form

Cultural Studies and the Symbolic, Volume 3

‘Myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity’ Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State

As a central part of his philosophy of symbolic forms as a form of religious expression, and as a political problematic the question of myth belongs at the heart of Ernst Cassirer’s intellectual enterprise. Using a variety of methodological and conceptual approaches, these papers examine the persistence of myth as a symbolic form from a variety of perspectives: philosophical, anthropological, psychological, political, and historico-cultural. In its way each paper attempts, in Cassirer’s phrase, to ‘see the adversary face to face’.

The contributors to this volume are Paul Bishop, Alan Cardew, Milad Doueihi, Dina Gusejnova, Cyrus Hamlin, Stefanie Hölscher, Kai Kresse, John Michael Krois, Barbara Naumann, Detlev Pätzold, Martine Prange, Birgit Recki, Edward Skidelsky, Roger Stephenson and Jonathan Westwood.

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