ABSTRACT
Each philosopher or scientist imagines he has found the mainspring. But their theories contradicted one another. They were determined empiricists: 'they would show us the facts and nothing but the facts'. In finding man to be the animal symbolicum, Cassirer has opened the door to solutions. Philosophical anthropology is anti-Cartesian: trying to put the mind back into the body, the ghost back into the machine, to restore unity out of dualism. This is of more than mere philosophical-academic interest, for many moral disasters have come from the effects of Cartesian dualism. Linked with the 'objectivity' of Galilean and Newtonian science, it has meant that the approach to man is full of nihilism and deadness. A person differs from an animal in being able to question the meaning of his existence. Because of this preoccupation with meaning, man is driven from infancy to develop his creativity, to employ on his existential problems his capacity for symbolism as his 'primary need'.
