Ernst Cassirer
1 + 1 = 2. This mathematical statement can be
understood as an instruction, an appropriation,
or as a declaration of ownership that reduces
objects, such as apples, people, and machines,
to numerals. The numerals are used to represent
something else, which then comes under the
control of numbers and calculation. That would
have been the view of Martin Heidegger. Ernst
Cassirer, who had a discussion with Heidegger
during the Davoser Hochschulwochen [International
Davos Conference] in 1929, understood
mathematical statements not as statements
about what exists, which is thereby formalized,
but as expressions of constructive competence.
A sign is applied to itself and results in a new
sign. This can be expanded into a law for forming
natural numbers, and hence into a precise
description of infinity. This is one formal possibility
for criticizing the medieval concept of God
– that is how Cassirer interprets the history of
modern science. It is one way of thinking about
and questioning the self-empowerment of modern
humans.
Vilém Flusser participates in different aspects of this project. He agrees with Heidegger’s fear that modern mathematics has formally installed techniques of domination by means of numbers and measurements, by means of quantification. This corresponds with Flusser’s interpretation of the information society – and of the computer that advances it – as a hierarchical, discursive structure. In Flusser’s idea of dialogic structures, a utopian element recurs which Flusser identifies in Cassirer’s philosophy of culture and which he associates with Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue: that numbers can be understood as “media of freely becoming” as long as they are not comprehended as denoting substances but as factors of creative activity. This creative activity produces, for instance, the continuum of real numbers, which are subject to innite differentiations. This is dialogic to the extent that a mathematical interval can be produced between two numbers which cannot be definitively derived. This underivability to be derived can be interpreted as indomitability. It thus corresponds to the ethical model of dialogue: There the distance between I and Thou is immeasurable and thus noncontrollable. Flusser’s philosophy makes it possible to conceive relationships in radical ways against the backdrop of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy.
Original article by Nils Röller in Flusseriana