SOURCE: "Ernst Cassirer and the Epistemological Values of Religion," in The Journal of Religion, Vol. XXXV, No. 3, July, 1955, pp. 160-67.

In the following essay, Arnett discusses Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms, especially as it relates to the study of religion.

The struggles of religions with the truth—their efforts, their claims, and their contradictions—are such as to baffle and frustrate all but the most persistent students of religions. Various religions have, on occasion, claimed to be, if not the only road, then certainly the high and privileged road to truth, while seekers of the truth in other areas, especially in recent years, have frequently denied that religion is a way to the truth at all. Thus philosophers interested in religion and in truth or knowledge of the truth find themselves confronted with a number of problems: What is the function of religion in regard to knowledge of...