Abstract

The paper provides an overview of the relationships between the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) and the Estonian-German biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1946). After a short biographical sketch of the personal contacts between the two authors, it discusses the textual references Cassirer makes to Uexküll. The discussion highlights a two-fold influence of Uexküll’s theoretical biology on Cassirer’s philosophy – or, differently said, the presence in Cassirer’s works of two separate hermeneutic approaches. The first has an anthropological-philosophical character and tries, in a problematic way, to use Uexküll’s Umweltlehre to support the thesis of the special position (Sonderstellung) of human beings compared to nonhuman animals. The second approach, an epistemological one, seeks to understand how Uexküll’s theoretical biology (a form of neovitalism) fits into the complex history of contemporary German philosophy of biology.