- Lived:
- 1874–1945 · Breslau, Berlin, Hamburg — then Oxford, Gothenburg, New Haven, New York
- Tradition:
- German neo-Kantianism, widened into a philosophy of culture
- The Big Idea:
- Human beings never touch raw reality; we live inside webs of symbols — language, myth, art, religion, science — each a complete way of building a world.
- In their words:
- "Animal symbolicum" — the symbol-making animal.
- If you remember one thing:
- He redefined the human being not as the rational animal but as the symbolic one — and then watched, and explained, how manufactured myth can burn a civilization down.