Biography of Heinrich Walter Cassirer

Heinrich Walter Cassirer graduated PhD from the University in 1938 and was Lecturer in Moral Philosophy there from 1946-197.

Cassirer was born in Munich in 1903, son of German philosopher Professor Ernst Cassirer. In 1934, one year after the National Socialist Party had seized power in Germany, the Cassirer family, being Jewish, fled to the UK. Cassirer had obtained his PhD at Heidelberg University where he had studied Aristotle’s theory of the soul, and initially came to Glasgow as a research student of Philosophy in 1934. At the University of Glasgow, he taught in the Departments of Logic and Moral Philosophy.

It was under Professor Herbert James Paton, Professor of Logic and Rhetoric and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, who Cassirer was encouraged to write on Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Aided in his undertaking by Miss Sheila A Kerr of the Moral Philosophy department, and supported by his mentor Professor Paton, Cassirer spent another two years at the University after his original contract had expired, graduating PhD in 1938 with his thesis A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Judgement.

In 1937, Cassirer followed his mentor, Professor Paton, to Oxford, where Paton had been appointed White's Professor of Moral Philosophy. Cassirer taught there as a refugee scholar at Corpus Christi College.

Cassirer returned to the University of Glasgow in 1946, where he given a permanent appointment as Lecturer in Moral Philosophy under Professor William Maclagan.

Summary

Heinrich Walter Cassirer
Born 9 August 1903.
Died 20 February 1979.
University Link: Professor, Researcher
GU Degree: PhD, 1938; Arts,
Occupation categories: philosophers
Record last updated: 24th Jul 2013

University Connections

University Roles

• Professor
• Researcher

Images

Heinrich Walter Cassirer, matriculation slip 1935-36