ABSTRACT
Early Life Ernst Cassirer was born in Breslau, a region called Silesia in Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), to a large middle-class Jewish family. His extended family was engaged in both publishing and commercial enterprises, with the result that Cassirer enjoyed financial independence throughout his life. He entered the German university system in 1892 and, over the next seven years, attended universities in Berlin, Leipzig, Heidelberg, and Marburg. At first, Cassirer lacked a clear direction for his intellectual pursuits; he sampled a number of subjects. In 1894, however, he took a course from Georg Simmel that set the direction for his future career. Simmel taught that conflicts between the individual and society are inevitable and unavoidable: Tension results from the conflict between the individual's desire for freedom and society's need to limit the individual through institutions, laws, and other encumbrances. Cassirer retained and refined these lessons throughout much of his productive life. While studying with Simmel, Cassirer found that his teacher admired the philosophical works of Hermann Cohen. Because of his high regard for Simmel, Cassirer went to the University of Marburg in 1896 to study under Cohen.
