卡西尔神话思维探析

On Mythical Thought of Cassirer

卡西尔认为,整个人类文化是反映人类心灵的无限连续的符号形式,神话作为人类最初的那些心智的想象,是人类把握世界和解释世界的方式。这种"心灵图像""符号形式"是与人类心灵某种"先验的"机制相关联,且最初级的阶段就表现为神话思维,而神话思维的独特地位在于,它作为一种法则,在本质上影响着人类精神的发展和演变,进而产生出宗教、艺术、历史、科学等人类精神领域的全部产品,因此卡西尔把神话奉为各种文化形式的母体。神话的起源,即世界和万物的起源,秩序和智慧的起源。伴随起源的发生,人类自我意识经历了一场持续的危机,通过神话思维的内部运动,人类从蒙昧混沌中逐渐获得对世界和自我的认识。神话是文化的,而不是原始的。

Cassirer believes that the entire culture of human beings is an infinite continuous symbolic form reflected in their mind. Myth,as the first mental imagination,is the way for human beings to grasp and interpret the world. This "spiritual image"and "symbolic form"is associated with a certain "transcendental"mechanism of the mind,and it was initially presented as mythical thought. However,as a rule,mythical thought essentially affects the development and evolution of the human spirit,and then creates all things in the fields,such as religion,art,history,and science. Therefore,Cassirer regards myth as the matrix of various cultural forms. The origin of myth is the origin of the world and all things,as well as the order and wisdom.With the occurrence of origin,human self-consciousness has experienced a continuous crisis. Through the internal movement of mythical thought,human beings gradually gain knowledge of the world and self from the ignorance and chaos by mythical thought. From this point of view,myth is cultural,not primitive.