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Presence or Meaning in 
Architecture
Pau Pedragosa

 

1. The Davos Debate

Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger met in 
1929 for a public debate in the town of  Davos in 
the Swiss Alps.1 Over time the debate took on a 
legendary character and has become a key episode 
in the European history of  ideas. Cassirer and 
Heidegger defended two antithetical images of  the 
human being, which are also two antithetical images 
of  culture and hence of  architecture. 

The Davos debate was a great cultural 
antagonism of  the Weimar Republic. On the one 
side Cassirer, heir of  Kant and Goethe, a humanist 
of  the Enlightenment and a cosmopolitan 
Jew. On the other side the anti-humanist and 
provincial Heidegger. Four years later, Heidegger 
embraced the Nazi revolution and Cassirer was 
forced into exile.2 It is tempting to draw political 
conclusions from both philosophies (and we will 
draw some conclusions at the end of  this paper), 
but to contemporaries of  the 1929 debate, the 
confrontation was philosophical, not political.3 
Heidegger’s thinking implied a radical break with 
and destruction of  the past, but this break had not 
yet received the political form he gave it in 1933.4 

In general terms the Davos debate involved the 
clash of  two different conceptions of  philosophy: 
between humanist philosophy and the existentialist, 
non-humanistic philosophy of  the new era. What 
Heidegger criticized during the 1920s were the 



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humanist ideas of  progress and freedom. In a direct encounter with 
Cassirer, the most eminent representative of  neo-Kantian “rationalism,” 
Heidegger presented himself  as the author of  a fundamentally new kind 
of  philosophy destined to replace the remaining “rationalist” tendencies 
in Husserlian phenomenology as well.5 

Heidegger in fact “won” the debate against Cassirer and the young 
students at Davos agreed with his revolt against the “rationalism” of  the 
neo-Kantian tradition.6 Heidegger gave voice to the generation struck by 
the violence of  the First World War, which was seen as a huge break with 
tradition.7 This perspective of  a new generation led some toward fascism 
and others toward communism, while others, like Cassirer, stood for the 
democratic parliamentarian politics of  the Weimer Republic. 

Cassirer was not only one of  the most eminent representatives 
of  the classical liberal intellectual tradition in Germany, he was also a 
representative of  modern political republicanism. He owed his academic 
career to the Weimar Republic, because he was offered a professorship at 
the newly founded university in Hamburg in 1919. He defended Weimar 
in the university on the occasion of  the tenth anniversary celebration of  
the Republic in August 1928. Against the popular view that the Weimar 
Republic was “un-German,”8 he argued that the idea of  a republican 
constitution had its origin in the German philosophical tradition.9 

The confrontation in Davos turned on the interpretation of  Kant’s 
philosophy. Yet the debate was more enduring and broader than the 
technical matters of  philosophical interpretation, and touched on the 
central issue of  what it is to be human. Their essential disagreement was 
that, for Cassirer, the human being is essentially a being endowed with a 
capacity for creation. For Heidegger, the essence of  the human being is 
a special kind of  receptivity by virtue of  which the human stands within 
the “openness of  Being.” Where Cassirer puts activity, creativity and 
freedom, Heidegger proposes passivity and receptivity.10 The disagreement 
between them defines two opposing anthropological conceptions: the 
human capacity for world-construction against the human receptivity for 
world-interpretation.

2. Ernst Cassirer

From 1919 until his exile in 1933 (the whole period of  the Weimar 
Republic), Cassirer held a chair in philosophy at the newly founded 
University of  Hamburg, located in one of  the most liberal towns in 
Germany. It was during this period that he brought out the three volumes 



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of  The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms: Volume One: 
Language, 1923; Volume Two: Mythical Thought, 1925; 
Volume Three: The Phenomenology of  Knowledge, 1929. 

With this mature work, Cassirer distances 
himself  from the neo-Kantian Marburg school 
to which he belonged. This is not to deny the 
continuities between Cassirer and neo-Kantianism. 
The essential philosophical position of  the entire 
neo-Kantian tradition, also shared by Cassirer, is 
transcendental idealism, which states that we only 
understand of  the world what we put into it through 
our own reason, concretized by Kant as applying 
concepts spontaneously to what is passively received 
by the senses. It requires the dualism of  intuitions 
and concepts. Kant’s Copernican turn means that 
nature is not something we experience passively, 
but something to which we ascribe concepts in 
order to understand it. We understand what we put 
in nature, rather than what nature gives us. Cassirer 
points this out: what is true for us is only what we 
ourselves have created.11 

Both the neo-Kantian Marburg school and 
Cassirer reclaim science as an essential transcendental 
creation of  human reason. But Cassirer distances 
himself  from Kant and neo-Kantianism by relaxing 
the scientism of  the Marburg school in favour of  
a more pluralistic theory of  cultural expression, 
including a historical variation to the fixed Kantian 
a priori. Cassirer takes a new and original step from 
the Critique of  Reason to a critique of  culture.

Cassirer defines the human being by his special 
capacity to create, in complete freedom, worlds 
of  meaning. These worlds become the objective 
culture of  myth, religion, art, language, and science. 
He terms these objective cultural worlds “symbolic 
forms.”12 

For Cassirer, to be human is to be an animal 
symbolicum, an animal distinguished by the 
spontaneous capacity for symbolic expression. This 

the Davos 
debate involved 

the clash of 
two different 

conceptions of 
philosophy

“

”



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capacity has developed historically: as the human being passes from the 
mythic to the modern-scientific understanding of  the world, it undergoes 
a process of  enlightenment, an emancipatory awakening to its role as 
creator of  its own symbolic reality: the history of  human culture is “the 
process of  man’s progressive self-liberation.”13 Even though Cassirer 
understood the sequence of  symbolic forms as a historical narrative from 
myth to science, during the 1920s and by the time of  the Davos debate he 
defended a pluralistic approach and tended to see mythical thinking and 
rational thinking as co-existing forms of  reflection and of  approaching 
reality. It was only after the Third Reich that he became much more 
critical about mythical approaches (mainly in his last book, The Myth of  the 
State.) He then argued that the mythic symbolization of  reality had to be 
overcome by scientific reason in order to prevent philosophical and, much 
more dangerous, political irrationalism. As we will see at the end of  this 
paper, Cassirer interpreted Heidegger’s philosophy and Nazism as such 
irrationality. Both were made possible the irruption of  myth in modern 
times.

2.1 From Substance to Function

This narrative of  human beings’ historical emancipation was already 
in place in Cassirer’s previous work of  1910, Substance and Function,14 in 
which Cassirer explains two ways of  concept formation: the traditional 
and the modern one.

Cassirer begins by discussing the problem of  concept formation and 
by criticizing, in particular, the “abstractionist” theory on which concepts 
are arrived at by ascending inductively from sensory particulars. This is the 
traditional manner of  concept formation, the Aristotelian logic of  genus 
and species. Any science based on this theory of  concept formation can 
only be descriptive and classificatory, and proceeds by abstraction, forming 
ever-higher generic concepts (ascending from the sensory particulars 
to ever higher species and genera). This theory is also an expression of  
realism, where reality is thought to exist in itself, and the concepts “mirror” 
or “copy” nature as the realm of  things conceived as substances. The 
substance is the fixed and ultimate substratum of  changeable qualities. 
From this results a metaphysical “copy” or mimetic theory of  knowledge, 
according to which the truth of  our sensory representations consists in 
a relation of  pictorial similarity between them and the ultimate things or 
substances lying behind our representations.15

Cassirer is concerned to replace this mimetic theory with the 



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“constructivist” theory:

In opposition to the logic of  the generic concept, which, 
as we saw, represents the point of  view and influence 
of  the concept of  substance, there now appears 
the logic of  the mathematical concept of  function. 
However, the field of  application of  this form of  logic 
is not confined to mathematics alone. On the contrary, 
it extends over into the field of  the knowledge of  
nature; for the concept of  function constitutes the 
general schema and model according to which the 
modern concept of  nature has been moulded in its 
progressive historical development.16

With the new concept of  function, we achieve 
the truth of  an object, not by picturing a realm of  
metaphysical substances constituting the enduring 
substrate of  the empirical phenomena, but rather 
in virtue of  an embedding of  the empirical 
phenomena into an ideal formal structure of  
mathematical relations.17

This is the modern manner of  concept 
formation, which is not descriptive and mirroring 
but constructive. This type of  concept formation 
constructs concepts and thereby things. What are 
constructed in this method are relations of  things. 
The relations are not in the world, but constructed by 
pure thinking. They are logical relations and nothing 
existing in nature. This concept-formation defines 
the logic of  scientific knowledge in modernity: the 
new symbolic language of  mathematics and physics, 
which is totally formal.18

Metaphysics of  substance implies a mind-
independent reality, which imposes its conditions 
on conceptualization. The theory of  function, on 
the contrary, is totally a conceptual abstraction or 
symbolization to which reality adapts. 

2.2 Symbolic Forms

Cassirer’s theory of  scientific development therefore 



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presupposes the gradual desubstantialization of  reality and its replacement 
by a symbolized, purely conceptual theory of  relations. Science gradually 
breaks free from a substantive conception of  reality. Just as the functional 
theory replaces the “copy” theory of  knowledge, so does the more 
general theory of  meaningful representation developed in the philosophy 
of  symbolic forms. We overcome the mimetic theory of  knowledge by 
the insight that science must work up our sensory impressions into freely 
created theoretical structures. Similarly, all symbolic forms must subject 
the mere sensory given to the free creative activities of  the transcendental 
subject.19

In the third volume of  The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms, The Phenomenology 
of  Knowledge, Cassirer explains the plurality and historically evolving 
symbolic forms according to three main symbolic capacities or functions of  
the transcendental subject: the expressive function20 (Ausdrucksfunktion), 
the representative function21  (Darstellungsfunktion) and the significative 
or meaning function22  (Bedeutungsfunktion.). These functions give rise 
to three main world-presentations: the mythical world, the intuitive world, 
and the theoretical world. The more primitive ones give birth to the 
more sophisticated ones.The most basic and primitive type of  symbolic 
meaning is expressive meaning, which is the product of  the expressive 
function. The experience of  events in the world around us is charged with 
affective and emotional significance, as desirable or hateful, comforting or 
threatening:

[T]he world of  mythical experience is not grounded in either representative 
or significance-giving acts, but in pure experiences of  expression. What is 
here present as ‘reality’ is not a complex of  things provided with determinate 
‘marks’ and ‘characteristics’, on the basis of  which they can be recognized 
and distinguished from one another; rather, it is a manifold and profusion of  
originally ‘physiognomic’ characters.23

The following symbolic meaning, the representative meaning, is the 
product of  the representative function of  thought that takes us out of  
the original mythical world and into the stable and enduring world of  
substances, identifiable and distinguishable as such. It is in natural language 
that this symbolic meaning of  representation is most clearly visible.24 
Through natural language we construct the intuitive world of  ordinary 
sense perception. We distinguish the enduring substance, on the one side, 
from its variable manifestations from a different point of  view and on 
different occasions on the other, and we thereby arrive at the fundamental 
distinction between appearance and reality.25 



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The third and final meaning of  the symbolic 
forms is the product of  the significative or 
meaning function of  thought and consists in the 
pure relational concepts characteristic of  modern 
mathematics, logic, and mathematical physics 
that are finally freed from the bounds of  sensible 
intuition.26 The language of  mathematical-physical 
theory transcends all expressive and representative 
meaning exhibited in the mythical and intuitive 
worlds, and we thereby finally attain the stage of  
pure signification of  the theoretical world. The 
purely logical relations replacing all “picturing” of  a 
substantial reality finds their most precise and exact 
fulfilment in modern mathematical logic.27

3 Meaning or Presence in Architecture 

3.1 Function or Substance: Hans Blumenberg’s Interpretation of 
the Davos Debate

In order to draw some consequences from 
Cassirer’s as well as Heidegger’s philosophy for 
architecture we will follow the suggestive and, for 
our purposes, very fruitful interpretation of  the 
Davos confrontation given by the great German 
historian of  philosophy Hans Blumenberg. This 
philosopher interprets the debate using Cassirer’s 
categories of  “substance” and “function”: “Against 
the distinction between the concepts of  ‘substance’ 
and ‘function’ which had already been introduced 
by Cassirer in 1910, Heidegger decided, with 
Luther, in favour of  substance as the first and the 
unique category, against the functional propagation 
of  categories into ‘symbolic forms’ – and in favour 
of  […] the conventions of  the realists.”28 

According to Blumenberg, Cassirer sides in 
favour of  “function,” “meaning,” and “idealism” 
whereas Heidegger favours “substance,” “Being,” 
and “realism.” For Cassirer, modern science has 
transformed reality into a symbolic order, which is 
not the reality in itself, but only its signifier. Our 

For Cassirer 
to be human is 

to be an animal 
symbolicum, 

an animal 
distinguished by 

the spontaneous 
capacity 

for symbolic 
expression.

“

”



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capacity to create symbols consists in creating meanings or signs that point 
to reality but they are not reality itself.  Heidegger, by contrast, understood 
philosophy not as the study of  our capacity to create meaning, but as the 
phenomenological description of  that which “shows itself.” What shows 
itself  is reality,29 not just a symbol or a sign of  it. Cassirer’s preference 
for the “functional propagation of  categories into symbolic forms” 
presupposes the primacy of  human agency, whereas Heidegger’s decision 
“in favour of  substance as the first and the unique category” and his study 
of  what shows itself  presupposes the primacy of  human receptivity. 

Following this thread of  interpretation we can distinguish two types of  
architecture that, together with both images of  the human being, underlie 
either creativity, meaning, function and abstraction or receptivity, reality, 
substance and presence. The first one, in Cassirer’s guise, is internationalist 
and trusts in the human capacity for world-construction. Architecture 
is conceived as a materialization of  new and creative meanings and the 
architect is a free agent for the construction of  new worlds. The second, 
more Heideggerian, conceives architecture as environment-interpretation. 
Architecture is here understood as world disclosing, a world that is 
always already there, and the architect as the interpreter of  that world 
or environment as it shows itself. In the first case architecture proposes 
new ways of  living, buildings are the bearers of  new meanings, and the 
emphasis is in the meaning that buildings convey. In the second case the 
building just shows itself; it is an irreducible presence of  itself  that opens 
up the environment.

 Where Cassirer emphasizes the creation of  new meanings oriented 
toward the future, Heidegger opposes with the priority of  the origin; the 
interpretation of  what is already there. He emphasizes paying attention 
to the presence of  what is there and shows itself  before proposing new 
constructions.

3.2 Architecture as Meaning 

     We now try to draw some consequences of  Cassirer’s philosophy for 
architecture. Our task is to apply Cassirer’s philosophy to architecture, 
beyond what he in fact said about this kind of  art. The reason for this 
application is that Cassirer includes architecture in the symbolic form of  
art:

[W]e can interpret certain spatial forms, certain complexes of  lines and figures, 
in one case as an artistic ornament and in another as a geometrical figure, so 
endowing one and the same material with entirely different meanings. The spatial 
unity, which we build in aesthetic vision and creation, in painting, sculpture 



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and architecture, belongs to an entirely different 
sphere from the spatial unity, which is represented in 
geometrical theorems and axioms. In the one case we 
have the modality of  the logical-geometric concept, in 
the other the modality of  artistic imagination –in the 
one case, space is conceived as an aggregate of  mutually 
independent relations, as a system of  “causes” and 
“consequences”; in the other, it is conceived as a whole 
whose particular factors are dynamically interlocked, 
a perceptual, emotional unity.30 

But our claim is that, when dealing with modern 
architecture, we have to take into consideration 
technology as well. Modern architecture seems to 
require a convergence of  the symbolic forms of  art 
and technology. As far as we know, Cassirer himself  
did not study this convergence but he prepared the 
theoretical ground for such study. In that sense 
Cassirer’s philosophy has much in common with 
modern architectural theory and, in particular, 
with the Bauhaus, the great school of  design and 
architecture whose history and final fate of  exile 
runs parallel to that of  Cassirer and to the Weimar 
Republic itself. Cassirer’s philosophical orientation 
is best expressed by the neue Sachlichkeit (the 
New Objectivity), a social, cultural, and artistic 
movement committed to internationalism and to 
a more objective and scientific organization of  
architecture and the social life through the project 
of  uniting art and technology.31 This convergence 
of  both symbolic forms, art and technology 
could be termed “functional aesthetics”32 or 
described by the familiar motto “form follows 
function.” That form follows function means that 
forms are not based on imitations or on mimetic 
qualities of  a substantial reality as produced in 
traditional paintings, sculptures, and architectural 
ornamentation, but rather that form is the result 
of  constructing relations, that is, form is the result 
of  function in Cassirer’s sense of  “function,” as 
opposed to “substance”: functional forms are an 

”

The spatial 
unity, which 

we build in 
aesthetic 
vision and 
creation, 

in painting, 
sculpture and  
architecture, 

belongs to 
an entirely 

different 
sphere from 
the spatial 

unity, which is 
represented 

in geometrical 
theorems and 

axioms. 

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aggregate of  different elements mutually related.  

The works of  the artists, designers, and architects of  the Bauhaus 
are above all a realisation of  the functional aesthetic approach. As an 
example, consider Marcel Breuer’s furniture and Walter Gropius’s lights in 
the Bauhaus’ Dessau building. Both Breuer’s and Gropius’ designs show 
modular pieces of  furniture and lamps as industrially produced series that 
create what we might call a functional space. A functional space is based 
on relations among parts according to repetition and variation. This kind 
of  design allows the construction of  furniture (tables, chairs, lamps) and 
the arrangement of  space by fitting together the pieces in different ways. 
There is not only one way—say one substantial, “real,” way to relate the 
pieces—but rather different users have many equall valid possibilities 
for combining the pieces and creating their own spaces by sliding the 
modular elements. Design is not mimetic of  a “real being” because the 
same elements (tables, chairs, or lamps) related otherwise would create a 
different space.

We can understand this kind of  industrial design (or, more generally,  
functional aesthetics, and the slogans “form follows function,” “art and 
technology: a new unity,” “new objectivity”) as a functionalized symbol or 
as a sign without a real signified. It is a sign in the sense of  Cassirer’s citing 
of  Helmholtz’s theory of  signs to explain scientific theories:

This tendency [explaining objectivity in terms of  “pure formal relations”] 
appears especially pregnantly in Helmholtz’s theory of  signs […]. Our 
sensations and representations are signs, not copies [Abbilder] of  objects. For 
one requires of  pictures [Bilder] some or another kind of  similarity with the 
pictured object […]. The sign, by contrast, requires no substantial [sachlich] 
similarity in the elements, but solely a functional correspondence in the two-sided 
structure. What is established in this structure is not the particular intrinsic 
character of  the designated thing, but rather the objective relations in which it 
stands to other similar [things].33

Philosophically considered we cannot interpret the production of  such 
designed objects within the framework of  the metaphysics of  substance 
or the mimetic or pictorial theory of  knowledge because the object and 
the space are the result of  relations and combinations, and they open up 
the possibility of  freedom to change, improve, and transform the space. 
The space is thus constructed rather than determined by conditions 
already existing. Functional space is the result of  first bringing together 
independent parts. The space designed is therefore not holistic but rather 
mechanic—functional—because the part (the modular piece) is prior to 



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the whole. 

Before considering the second type of  
architecture, let’s take a brief  look at Heidegger’s 
philosophy.

 4. Martin Heidegger 

     In 1927, two years after Cassirer published the 
second volume of  The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms, 
dedicated to myth, Heidegger published his first 
important work, Being and Time. For Heidegger, 
to be human is to be gifted with a special sort of  
receptivity or openness to the world that Heidegger 
calls the “disclosedness” or “unveiling” of  Being. 
The phenomenon of  disclosedness is deeper than 
our rationality and practical action. Heidegger 
calls “Dasein” the human being as capable of  this 
opening capacity. 

For Heidegger, human beings are defined by 
finitude, which is to say we discover ourselves in the 
midst of  conditions we have not created and cannot 

Figure 1: Bauhaus, Dessau



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hope to control. My having been born in a particular year, in a particular 
land, to particular parents—everything that Heidegger designates as the 
“thrownness” (Geworfenheit)34—is no mere accident that can be overcome. 
The contingencies of  history and the everyday cannot be transcended in such 
a way as to reveal some underlying essence—like the transcendental symbolic 
capacity of  Cassirer’s subject—but rather constitute me from the ground up. 

4.1Pragmatic World and Existential Space 

     Heidegger begins his philosophizing with the analysis of  the everyday 
situations in which the human being is involved.35 In such situations the 
world disclosed to human beings is not the world of  scientific explanation 
(the symbolic form of  modern science, in Cassirer’s terms) but instead the 
“environment” (Umwelt). The environment shows itself  in our practical 
involvement or dealing (Umgang) with the things. In such involvements 
the things of  the environment appear not as objects but rather as things-
in-use, as equipment or tools (Zeug).

Heidegger’s basic thought is that the human relation with worldly 
things is primarily a relation of  practice and concern, and not a theoretical 
one. We understand things not as objects of  theoretical analysis, but rather 
as they first appear within a context of  practice. To reinforce this idea, 
Heidegger introduces the famous distinction between the “ready-to-hand” 
(Zuhanden) statuses of  things as understood in an equipmental fashion 
versus the “present-at-hand” (Vorhanden) manner of  being of  entities 
as they are disclosed for perceptual cognition, theoretical inspection, and 
consideration.36 The ready-to-hand is our everyday understanding, and that 
understanding is the primordial way things appear to us, while the present-
at-hand is a consequence of  theoretical dissociation from the more basic 
relation. The theoretical cognition of  the merely “present-at-hand” is a 
derivative mode of  Dasein, a modification of  the more basic, essentially 
pragmatic mode of  involvement with the “ready-to-hand.” 

Equipment appears always in a context of  interconnections. This 
context is a totality within which each tool has a sense. The totality thereby 
assumes a transcendental status in that the whole is a condition for the 
possibility of  understanding any one of  its parts. The environment is a 
holistic structure of  concern, in which objects are always understood in a 
context, before the explicit knowledge of  any discrete item we may pick 
out for inspection.37 For Heidegger the whole is prior to the part. The 
functional designs of  Breuer and Gropius mentioned earlier run counter 
to this holistic space of  the everyday since the part (the modular furniture) 



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exists prior to its arrangement.

The holistic character is of  great importance 
for understanding the kind of  space that belongs 
to our everyday, or, as Heidegger puts it, our 
“existential spatiality.”38 This existential spatiality 
is a series of  environmental regions where Dasein 
realizes its concerns, plans, and expectations, and 
it is fundamentally different from and prior to, 
its scientific understanding as functional space. 
Existential spatiality is fundamentally different 
from the Cartesian notion of  extension or its 
more developed scientific-functional version. This 
conception of  space does not apply to a being 
whose primary relation to the world is one of  
involvement because Cartesian space always places 
things at a measurable distance, whereas existential 
spatiality determines distances in terms of  Dasein’s 
context of  significance.39 Existential spatiality is the 
precondition for our understanding of  Cartesian 
space, because the former is an existential condition 
for understanding at all. Whatever formalized 
structures of  measurement we might create, 
such structures were themselves merely a way of  
“thematizing” the spatiality of  Dasein’s everyday 
existence. There can be, therefore, no breakthrough 
from existential spatiality to space, because an 
existential condition is by definition constitutive 
and could not be abandoned. Of  course Heidegger 
does not deny the possibility that one could develop 
a purely mental representation of  formalized space. 
But this representation is not something more real 
than the existential spatiality. Heidegger saw the 
existential structure of  human understanding as 
constitutive rather than, as with Cassirer, evolving 
toward scientific abstraction.

4.2 Authentic and Inauthentic Existence: Existential Time

If  we conceive Dasein not as primarily 
theoretical or cognitive but rather as oriented 

For Heidegger, 
human beings 

are defined by 
finitude

“
”



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towards pragmatic engagement and projects, then our conception of  time 
(of  “existential time” as well as the conception of  “existential space”) 
is not just the thought of  the line of  time, and temporal finitude is not 
just the thought of  an eventual limit to this line of  time. Finitude is 
rather  Dasein’s concern with its own death, the radical possibility that 
the on-going pragmatic projects will cease to be.40 In facing existentially 
such possibility, the pragmatic subject is removed from the context of  
pragmatic involvement that defines the everyday understanding of  
himself. In “being-towards-death,” Dasein is revealed to him for what he 
is: as thrown into the world.

In the normal course of  events, Dasein takes the context of  its projects 
and practical activities for granted, a framework that is fixed and simply 
given. In “being-towards-death,” Dasein steps out of  this given context, 
which is then recognized as neither fixed nor given. Dasein recognizes that 
its normal or everyday context is simply one possibility among others, one 
that is thereby subject to his own free choice. Facing death thus opens up 
the possibility of  an “authentic” existence in which Dasein’s own choices 
rest on no taken for granted context at all. In “inauthentic” existence, by 
contrast, Dasein operates unquestioningly in its everydayness as a context 
of  projects taken as given. Heidegger describes the inauthenticity of  
everydayness in terms of  the “others” as “they” (das Man):

In utilizing public transportation, in the use of  information services such as the 
newspaper, every other is like the next. This being-with-one-another dissolves 
one’s own Dasein completely into the kind of  being of  “the others” in such 
a way that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, disappear more and 
more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the they unfolds its true 
dictatorship. We enjoy ourselves and have fun the way they enjoy themselves. We 
read, see, and judge literature and art the way they see and judge. But we also 
withdraw from the “great mass” the way they withdraw, we find “shocking” 
what they find shocking. The they, which is nothing definite and which all are, 
though not as a sum, prescribes the kind of  being of  everydayness.41

Facing death singles out my existence as my own and makes possible the 
withdrawal from the uniformity of  the “they,” from the “great mass.” It is 
thus on the basis of  “being-towards-death” that the distinction between 
“authentic” and “inauthentic” existence is defined.42 

5 Architecture as Presence 

     We can now distinguish a second type of  architecture, inspired by 



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Heidegger; this kind of  architecture goes against 
its modern conception as the construction of  
functional spaces or as the fusion of  art and 
technology; it is less concerned with construction 
and more with the origin and the questioning of  
building. Heidegger wrote about architecture in 
the essays “The Origin of  the Work of  Art” and 
“Building Dwelling Thinking.” But our purpose 
is not to follow this or that work but the essential 
core of  his thought that we find relevant for 
architecture, as it is expressed in Being and Time in 
the terms we have just explained. The main points 
relevant for architecture are the difference between 
a holistic and a functional space; and the difference 
between authentic and inauthentic existence, where 
authenticity means questioning the taken-for-
granted assumptions and contexts of  our everyday 
projects. 

If  the kind of  architecture that exemplifies 
Cassirer’s position was the Bauhaus-inspired 
modernist design, then we can propose a more 
recent architectural project, one critical of  
modernity, as an example to illustrate Heidegger’s 
thought: Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal’s 
1996 project for the Place Léon Aucoc in the city 
of  Bordeaux, France. 

The Place Léon Aucoc is a triangular village 
space lined with trees, benches and a place to play. 
The house facades lining the Place were a good 
example of  sober collective housing. Lacaton and 
Vassal said: 

The question was: how is it possible to make an 
embellishment of  the square? And the answer after 
three or four months of  working research was to 
say: there is nothing to do. And our project is to do 
nothing. It’s our project and please, you have to do it 
like we want. And it has been done like that.43   

The architects decided to exclusively carry out 
simple maintenance tasks: changing gravel, cleaning 

Facing 
death singles 

out my 
existence as 

my own

“
”



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more often, taking care of  the trees, slightly modifying the circulation, 
and so on, with the aim of  improving the way people meet. This kind of  
passivity is not indifference but rather an active non-intervention. Lacaton 
and Vassal say: 

What does the idea of  “embellishment” boil down to? Does it involve replacing 
one groundcover with another? A wooden bench with a more-up-to-date design 
in stone? Or a lamp standard with another, more fashionable, one? Nothing 
calls for too great a set of  changes. Quality, charm, life exist. The square is 
already beautiful.44

The architects’ choice of  non-intervention is existentially “authentic” 
in the sense that this decision rested on not taking for granted the 
architect’s professional context at all. In “inauthentic” existence, the 
architect operates unquestioningly in the everyday professional work in 
which the construction of  “something” is taken for granted. This project 
both shakes and radically subverts architecture’s customary state of  affairs 
by implying a step backwards towards questioning before constructing. We 
can understand this architectural project as a questioning of  what building 
is and of  what architecture is. These radical questions depended on a fresh 
interpretation of  the place: what the place requires rather than what the 
architect’s freedom wants. Of  course, the place and the programme may 
require the construction of  a building but it just as easily may not.

This radical project by Lacaton & Vassal exemplifies a broader attitude 
in architecture, one which consists in opening up to a given environment, 
in listening to place, to its sheer presence, and responding to it. The holistic 
character of  the environment is of  great importance for understanding 
this kind of  architecture. The whole of  the environment is a condition 
for the possibility of  understanding any one of  its parts that the architect 
might build. And these parts open up this whole through different ways 
and architectural strategies. This totality should not be understood just in 
terms of  physical environment but in a much broader sense, which includes 
culture and the existential human situation as such. Architecture “mimics” 
this whole. Whereas for Cassirer architecture as functional space is a new 
construction rather than determined by conditions already existing, for 
Heidegger, on the opposite extreme, architecture is determined by these 
preconditions; that is, it “mimics” or responds to the priority of  the 
whole or of  “reality.” Heidegger expresses this whole and its architectural 
response in these terms:

The sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use, has its own places – sunrise, 
midday, sunset, midnight; these are discovered in circumspection and treated 



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distinctively in terms of  changes in the usability of  what 
the sun bestows. […] The house has its sunny side and 
its shady side; the way it is divided up into “rooms” 
is oriented towards these, and so is the “arrangement” 
within them, according to their character as equipment. 
Churches and graves, for instance, are laid out according 
to the rising and the setting of  the sun – the regions of  
life and death, which are determinative for Dasein itself  
with regard to its own most possibilities of  Being in the 
world.45

 

6 Cassirer versus Heidegger on Myth 

     Heidegger’s description of  the holistic character 
of  the environment, of  our everyday space, is 
shockingly similar to Cassirer’s description of  
mythical space:

There is no cosmology, however primitive, in which the 
contrast of  the four main directions does not in some 
way emerge as the cardinal point of  its understanding 
and explanation of  the world. […] The east as the 
origin of  light is also the source of  life – the west as 
the place of  the setting sun is filled with all the terrors 
of  death. And this opposition of  night and day, light 
and darkness, birth and death, is also reflected in 
countless ways in the mythical interpretation of  the 
concrete events of  life.46

Despite their surface similarities,47 the use of  these 
conceptions is radically different. In these radically 
different conceptions of  myth resides the final 
explanation of  the philosophers’ opposing visions 
of  architecture and of  human culture in general. 

Figure 2: Place Léon Aucoc



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The description of  myth is very important for Cassirer since it reveals 
not only the primitive stage that was reached many centuries ago but also 
the unmediated experience of  perception. Myth embodies the concreteness 
of  life before the categorization of  theoretical consciousness. Myth is the 
lowest and most primary form of  symbolic existence and it is the ground 
of  any other form of  culture. All other symbolic forms only come into 
existence by working through myth. Cassirer is convinced that in the history 
of  human culture the rise of  conceptual abstraction is a welcome progress. 
He is committed to philosophical modernism and understands modernity, 
and thus modern architecture, as the triumph over, and a displacement of, 
myth. As we said before, Cassirer holds this view during the 1920s but in a 
moderate way, accepting the plurality of  symbolic forms. It was only after 
the Nazi seizure of  power that he became critical of  mythical thought: to 
move from myth to higher forms of  symbolic consciousness is a demand 
placed upon human beings; it is the call to work oneself—as an individual, 
as a civilization—out of  myth and to come to light, to enlightenment, as 
living a life in culture.48 It is a demand to keep the forces of  myth at bay.  

Heidegger’s primordial space, by contrast, cannot be overcome but 
only concealed or forgotten. Such forgetting is symptomatic of  what 
Heidegger calls the “fallenness” of  Dasein. The scientific calculation and 
objectification of  space robs the world of  its “worldhood” and transforms 
the existential space into functional space. Heidegger wishes to return us 
to a purer and more authentic state of  being, one located not in some 
mythic past but under the surface of  everyday life. For Heidegger mythical 
existence is a simplified model of  the human existential structure but 
essentially remains the same.

Whereas for Cassirer the path from myth to science is an inevitable 
and welcome progress of  mind, and the culmination of  the human 
capacity to create worlds, for Heidegger this process is rather more like 
a lapse, a regrettable breakdown in the otherwise constitutive structures 
of  human being. The functionalist symbolization of  reality that Cassirer 
sees as a high achievement is, for Heidegger, a historical impoverishment 
in human understanding. In fact, Heidegger says that such a break from 
existential space to a modern scientific one is not progress but a loss 
and an alienation from both the world and individual existence. What 
Heidegger calls thrownness and passivity is for Cassirer a primitive and 
mythical conception of  humanity that denies both its responsibility and 
emancipation. What Cassirer calls freedom and creativity is for Heidegger 
an old metaphysical misconception that hides the essential human finitude.



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7 Final Consideration on Politics 

     We have seen the antagonistic understandings 
of  Cassirer and Heidegger on both architecture 
and on culture broadly considered. It is not our 
intention to decide which one is preferable because 
only together do they define the complete image 
of  the human being and how it shapes its place in 
the world. If  we compare metaphorically human 
beings’ life and history as a play in two acts, the 
night from which culture springs and the day that 
overcomes the night, we can say that Cassirer 
draws attention to the second, the day of  culture, 
and Heidegger to the first, the night from which it 
springs. One looks at what has flourished, the other 
at its roots.49 Human culture involves both.

That said we would not like to finish this paper 
without a last commentary on politics. Cassirer’s 
continuous confrontation with Heidegger, in 
the context of  the weak parliamentarian politics 
of  the Weimar Republic, had more than purely 
philosophical motivations; they were at opposite 
ends in social and political terms as well. In his last 
work, The Myth of  the State, written in his American 
exile, Cassirer writes:

In all critical moments of  man’s social life, the rational 
forces that resist the rise of  the old mythical conceptions 
are no longer sure of  themselves. In these moments the 
time for myth has come again. For myth has not been really 
vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, lurking 
in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity.50

From his exile Cassirer interpreted the irruption 
of  Nazism as the irruption of  myth in modern times 
and judged Heidegger’s philosophy as encouraging 
myth’s staying power. Cassirer’s philosophy helps us 
to prevent political radicalisms such as xenophobia 
and radical nationalism that today, when Europe is 
again in crisis, threaten our societies. 

I would like to conclude by saying that Cassirer 
was overall a moderate humanist and defender 

In these 
moments the 

time for myth 
has come again.  

For myth has 
not been really 
vanquished and 

subjugated. 
It is always 

there, lurking 
in the dark and 

waiting for 
its hour and 
opportunity

“

”



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of  the Enlightenment, and even though he thought that science is the 
highest stage in human consciousness, he rejected the reductionist views 
of  scientism on the one side and of  myth’s irrationalism on the other. 
In the early twentieth century, these two reductionisms appeared in the 
guise of  positivism and Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of  life). Cassirer 
condemned both because they elevated a single symbolic form into an 
absolute conception of  the world, presenting a partial truth as though it 
were total. 

This is something we can learn today at the beginning of  the twenty-
first century from the debate that took place early in the twentieth.

Endnotes 

[1] For a thorough understanding of  the Davos debate see the excellent 
book by Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide. Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos 
(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2010.) See also Michael 
Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways. Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago 
and La Salle: Open Court, 2000), 1. Friedman writes: “Davos, Switzerland; 
March 17–April 6, 1929. An intensive “International University Course,” 
having the express purpose of  effecting a reconciliation between French-
speaking and German-speaking intellectuals, was sponsored by the Swiss, 
French, and German governments. The high point of  the occasion was 
a series of  lectures presented by Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, 
followed by a disputation between the two men.”

[2] Edward Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of  Culture 
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 196.

[3] See Deniz Coskun, “Cassirer in Davos: An Intermezzo on Magic 
Mountain (1929),” Law and Critique 17 (2006): 1-26.

[4] Skidelsky, The Last Philosopher of  Culture, 196-197.

[5] Friedman. The Parting of  the Ways, 3.

[6] Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York and 
London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1968). Gay explains that one of  the 
main tensions during the Weimar Republic was the generational conflict 
between fathers and sons. This conflict was represented in Davos by the 
figures of  the old philosopher Cassirer and the young Heidegger.

[7] Skidelsky, The Last Philosopher of  Culture, 196-197.

[8] Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in 
Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 



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The author explains how the right-wing intellectuals of  this period, the so 
called “reactionary modernists,” argued that the Enlightenment tradition was 
un-German. The Enlightenment belongs to “civilization,” a term used to 
characterize the tradition of  nations such as France and the United Kingdom 
while German is defined by Kultur, term understood as the opposite of  
Zivilisation.

[9] Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 4.

[10] Gordon, Continental Divide, 7.

[11] Sebastian Luft, The Space of  Culture: Towards a Neo-Kantian Philosophy of  
Culture (Cohen, Natorp, and Cassirer) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
2015), 45. See also Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 99.

[12] Gordon, Continental Divide, 13. Gordon writes: “The Philosophy of  
Symbolic Forms represents the effort to interpret all of  human creativity 
after the transcendental model. Culture is an ever-expanding and pluralistic 
field of  symbolic expression, which obeys certain laws of  formation, the a 
priori principles of  human spirit.”

[13] Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of  Human 
Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), 228.

[14] Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function & Einstein’s Theory of  Relativity 
(Chicago: Open Court, 1923). For a commentary on this work see Friedman, 
The Parting of  the Ways, 94. See also Luft, The Space of  Culture, 157-161.

[15] Cassirer, Substance and Function. For Cassirer’s treatment of  substance and 
the realist position see Part I, “The Concept of  Thing and the Concept of  
Relation” and Chapter I, “On the Theory of  the Formation of  Concepts,” 
3-9.

[16] Ibid. 21.

[17] Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 95. 

[18] Luft, The Space of  Culture, 157-161. For example, the atom, as a concept, 
is not a name for a thing, which one could identify in nature, no matter if  one 
had the most powerful microscope. The atom is a name for an idea, a theory, 
for the relation of  different elements that make up reality. The thing “atom” 
is a construction in the framework of  a theory.

[19] Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 103-109.

[20] Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms: Volume Three: The 
Phenomenology of  Knowledge. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957). 
See Part I, “The Expressive Function and the World of  Expression.”



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[21] Ibid. See Part II, “The Problem of  Representation and the Building 
of  the Intuitive World.”

[22] Ibid. See Part III, “The Function of  Signification and the Building Up 
of  Scientific Knowledge.”

[23] Ibid. 68.

[24] Ibid. 119. See also Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 104, 105.

[25] Cassirer, The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms, 142.

[26] Ibid. 284.

[27] Ibid. 46.

[28] Hans Blumenberg. “Afinitäten und Dominanzen” in Ein mögliches 
Selbst-verständnis: Aus dem Nachlass (Stuttgart: Philip Reclam, 1996), 161-
168. See Gordon, Continental Divide, 349:

Blumenberg reprises and old theological controversy that took place 400 years 
earlier between Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, over the character of  Christ’s 
presence in the Eucharist. The confrontation was between the orthodox view that 
the body of  Christ is really present in the bread and wine, and the unorthodox view 
according to which Christs’s embodiment is merely an illusion, that the bread and 
wine only signify his body and blood though they are not literally so.

[29] For a discussion of  the realism of  Heidegger see the crucial §44 of  
Heidegger, “Dasein, Disclosedness, and Truth,” in Being and Time (New 
York: Harper and Row, 1962). See also the arguments given by Friedman, 
The Parting of  the Ways, 54-58. Friedman says that Heidegger “rejects 
(in §44) the “Copernican Revolution” in favor of  an apparently “direct 
realist” conception of  truth.” From Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 
54. Friedman also writes that “Heidegger is a “direct realist” in so far as 
he begins with the idea of  “being-in-the-world.” We do not start with a 
cognitive subject together with its contents of  consciousness, but rather 
with a living practical subject necessarily engaged with its environment.” 
From Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 55.

[30] Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms: Volume One: Language 
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 96. See also Ernst Cassirer, 
The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms: Volume Two: Mythical Thought (New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1955), 166. Here Cassirer directly links art and 
architecture together.

[31] We can also find a close bond between the modernist architect 
Adolf  Loos and Cassirer. In Ornament and Crime, (Adolf  Loos, Ornament 
and Crime: Selected Essays. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1997). Loos writes: “I 



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have discovered and given to the world the following notion: The evolution 
of  civilization is synonymous with the elimination of  ornament from the 
utilitarian object.” We find a parallelism between the historical narrative of  
the elimination of  the ornamental with Cassirer’s historical emancipation 
from myth and religion in order to achieve the enlightenment of  reason 
and science. According to this interpretation, architecture should be freed 
form ornamentation in the same way that philosophy should be emancipated 
from myth. See Peter Galison, “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and 
Architectural Modernism,” Critical Inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 726. The author 
compares in this article the Bauhaus theory of  design and architecture 
with the philosophy of  logical positivism. Even though Cassirer criticised 
the scientism of  the logical positivists, there are some points in common 
between both.

[32] Birgit Leitner, “Ernst Cassirer and (?) the Bauhaus: The Question of  
Functional Aesthetics,” Proceedings of  the European Society for Aesthetics 3 (2011): 
167.

[33] Cassirer, Substance and Function, 304.

[34] Heidegger, Being and Time, §29.

[35] For the following discussion of  the everyday pragmatic situations in 
which Dasein is involved see Heidegger, Being and Time, §15-16.

[36] For the conversion of  the “ready-to-hand” to the “present-at-hand,” see 
Heidegger, Being and Time, §16

[37] Gordon, Continental Divide, 221-224.

[38] Heidegger, Being and Time, §§22-24.

[39] Ibid. §18.

[40] Ibid. §§46-60. For the analysis of  “being-towards-death” and the 
possibilty of  “aunthentc” existence.

[41] Ibid. §27, 119.

[42] Friedman, The Parting of  the Ways, 50-51.

[43] https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=37#

[44] Ibid.

[45] Heidegger. Being and Time, §22.

[46] Cassirer, The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms: Volume Two: Mythical Thought, 98.

[47] In 1925, while Heidegger was working on the manuscript of  Being and 
Time, the Deutsche Literaturzeitung sent him a copy of  the second volume 



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of  The Philosophy of  Symbolic Forms dedicated to myth. It is certainly a 
possibility that Cassirer influenced Heidegger. See Skidelsky, The Last 
Philosopher of  Culture, 205.

[48] Luft, The Space of  Culture, 164.

[49] Rudiger Safranski, Un maestro de Alemania: Martin Heidegger y su tiempo 
(Barcelona: Tusquets, 1997), 226-227.

[50] Cassirer, The Myth of  the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 
1944), 280.


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