Ernst Cassirer, in An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture, paints a grand cultural portrait of man's search for and celebration of himself in religion, language, art, history, science, and other realms. The emphasis of the book, and of this study, is the author's emphasis on the autonomy of the individual human being. His analysis seeks out those aspects of culture which make possible and encourage such individual autonomy. Cassirer's earnestness and intellectual enthusiasm for humanity and for its search for richer and more meaningful life is contagious.
The book is divided into twelve chapters, which are themselves divided into two sections of five and seven chapters each, under the headings "What Is Man?" and "Man and Culture." The first section can be seen as preparation for the second section, which seems to this reader the heart of the book and certainly the most compelling, partly because Cassirer is able to focus his laser-like mind on one subject at a time.
The first section explains what the author believes to be the problem facing an age which has more "facts" about human existence than ever before, but no method for organizing or understanding those facts or their deeper meaning or relationship. His book is an effort to right that situation.
He then explains the role of the symbol in human development. One such symbol is Utopia, which to him is not a mere fantasy, but a crucial tool for the race:
The great mission of the Utopia is to make room for the possible as opposed to a passive acquiescence in the present actual state of affairs. It is symbolic thought which overcomes the natural inertia of man and endows him with a new ability, the ability constantly to reshape his human universe (62).
The second section delves more deeply in concentrated fashion into the various fields in which human beings seek not only to discover reality but to expand that reality with greater and ri...