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Ernst Cassirer (1874--1945) was a Jewish German intellectual historian and philosopher, the originator of the ``philosophy of symbolic forms.'' After a distinguished teaching career in Germany, he fled the Nazis, first to Oxford, then Goteborg, then finally Yale, which gives an annual series of lectures in philosophy in his honor; he died as a visiting professor at Columbia. Having read and admired his historical works, particularly The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, I was curious …

…learned a hell of a lot. (Since then my subjects have over-lapped with Cassirer's more than I'd suspected.) Cassirer's erudition was profound, and he is always exceptional at explaining what other people thought, and both acute and generous about their merits and defects. The problem is, I learnt very little about Cassirer's ideas, and I still don't know whether this is because he's bad at self-exposition, or whether I'm just too dumb to twig him.