The Perception of the Divine: Myth, Art, and Religion in Ernst Cassirer

According to the philosophy of religion proposed by Ernst Cassirer, myth and religion are two symbolic forms whose goal of representation is the idea of the sacred; to achieve this, both use different aesthetic representations such as totem, ritual, or art to configure their own idea of the divine. Through a critical examination of the author’s work, both the structure and the form of mythical and religious thought are analyzed to describe the aesthetic function fulfilled in each form. To illustrate the contribution that art offers in the contemplation of the divine in both modalities, we will use Ratzinger’s sermon “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty.”