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The perhaps best known dimension of the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer is the “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms” – a philosophy of culture derived from and related to transcendental philosophy in the Neo-Kantian tradition. In recent years, Cassirer has generated a widespread interdisciplinary interest in many areas including philosophy of culture, philosophy of language and political philosophy. However, the significance of Cassirer for the philosophy of law is still largely unexplored. This paper develops two major dimensions of the philosophy of Cassirer that are of particular relevance in this regard. First, one could plausibly conceive of law as a symbolic expression of mankind. Law as symbolic form emerges as a novel category of the cultural study of law. Second, the extended oeuvre of Cassirer contains a variety of contributions to distinct issues of legal philosophy including social contract theory and the philosophy of human rights.
