SOURCE: "The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer and Fictional Religion," in The Thomist, Vol. XXXIII, No. 4, October, 1969, pp. 737-54.

In the following excerpt, Campbell explores the limitations of Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms when the forms are applied to religion.

Anyone familiar with the history of philosophy in this century will know that some of the most influential philosophers have been those who have considered that the right knowledge and use of language will solve world problems; in fact, some even believe language to be the only reality, which "creates" the world which we think we see as "given." Even the logical (sometimes called mathematical) positivists may be included in this group, if we consider mathematical symbols as a kind of language: it is their conviction that ordinary language, though very important, is somewhat ambiguous and in need of extended supplementation by the more exact symbols of mathematics. The...