«Un elemento vivente necessario». Note su pensiero mitico, astrologia e filosofia simbolica in Ernst Cassirer

Focusing on the main steps of Ernst Cassirer's reflection on symbolic form and mythical thought, this contribution aims to clarify the nature and the consequences of the contact, subsequent to his move to Hamburg in 1919, with Aby Warburg and his Library. By means of a joint analysis of published texts and epistolary exchanges, it will emerge how Cassirer, on the one hand, laid the foundations of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms independently of his relationship with Warburg, but, on the other, as a result of his contact with Warburg and his circle, came to identify astrology and the Renaissance as a privileged field for investigating the complex relationships between mythical thought and the modern scientific mentality. It is precisely in the analysis of the Renaissance, moreover, that it will be possible to trace Warburg's influence on Cassirer's research approach, with particular reference to the pursuit of a "methodological unification of all areas and directions of spiritual history".