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Abstract
I argue that understanding Ernst Cassirer's Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen Vol. 1 Die Sprache requires grasping how he predicates "autonomy" to language, and I argue that his discussion contains valuable insights regarding the autonomy of language as a distinct cultural form. I defend an interpretation of Cassirer through a close reading of the primary text and by arguing that language is autonomous in three senses, qua logical possibility, independence, and as a vehicle of human self-determination. Cassirer's philosophy offers a refreshing rebuttal to modern behaviorism and postmodernism. For Cassirer, the language activity makes the empirical world possible, and this transcendental function of world- making is the clue to discovering the freedom of the language act, which renders language a vehicle of self-determination and of knowing what is. Towards the end of this thesis, I defend Cassirer against criticisms that were and could have been leveled against him by his contemporaries, show why his research moves us beyond the limits of postmodernism and behaviorism, advances our understanding of language, and why it is therefore very relevant in contemporary discussions in the philosophy of language.