Review of Ernst Cassirer: An Essay on Man (1944)

This is a review I wrote for the SlateStarCodex / AstralCodexTen book review contest. For whatever reason, it never arrived in the pile of contestants, so I’m posting it here instead. This is OK for me: I mostly wrote this for myself and really did enjoy the process. Nonetheless, I’d like others to read it and get some feedback on it. A few more announcements:

• The essay was originally intended for readers in some proximity to the rationalist community (which explains a few references I make along the way)
• I’m not a native english speaker, so feedback on wording and writing style is highly appreciated
• I made some very minor edits (fixed wordings and links in a few places) in the first 24h after posting (including this line here)

You can find more reviews by ctrl+f “book review” on the SSC archive or the ACX archive (includes the 14+2 review finalists), find pdfs with 89 other contestant entries at point 3 here (I’ve read them all and they’re really good) and on the bactra review (one of the discoveries I made when doing research for this review). And if you liked this reviw, I have a post in a similar style called “how we discovered the universe”.