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Ernst Cassirer

28 May 1874-13 April 1945

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Myth is a symbolic and pre-logical mode of expression (2) a story which serves political functions (3) held together by the single principle of emotional unity.

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Myth is a mode of thinking and conceptualizing the cosmos. For mythical thought there is no sense of history, of the passage of time, or the sequence of events.

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Myth is not representative or symbolic of some phenomenon, it is itself that phenomenon. The ''image' does not represent the ''thing''... it does not merely stand for the object, but has the same actuality, so that it replaces the thing's immediate presence.

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Rational thinking cannot 'coerce' someone to start out from a new position (pace heidegger who warned against 'adjusting to the diversity of positions found among 'philosophizing people').

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Ritual is not sympathetic magic, nor is it merely ''functional'. In ritual, history and myth, image and object become merged into a single identity.