Concept
Symbol
Overview
something that represents an idea, a process, or a physical entity due to convention or association
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The response of action to symbol may be so direct as to cut out any effective reference to the ultimate thing symbolized. This elimination of meaning is termed reflex action. Sometimes there does intervene some effective reference to the meaning of the symbol. But this meaning is not recalled with the particularity and definiteness which would yield any rational enlightenment as to the specific action required to…
Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism, its meaning and effect
Names Symbol several times; states what Symbol is.
There are limitations on both sides. It must be admitted that the idea of the symbol cannot be sharply delimited at all times--it mingles with the substitution, dramatization, etc., even approaches the allusion. In one series of symbols the basic comparison is apparent to the senses. On the other hand, there are other symbols which raise the question of where the similarity, the "something intermediate" of this…
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Names Symbol several times; states what Symbol is.
If there is absolutely no connection between the representation and the conception signified by it, founded on subsumption under the concept, or association of Ideas; but the signs and the things signified are combined in a purely conventional manner, by positive, accidentally introduced laws; then I call this degenerate kind of allegory _Symbolism_. Thus the rose is the symbol of secrecy, the laurel is the symbol…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
Names Symbol several times.
Philosophers who discussed Symbol
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Samson Raphael Hirsch
- Moritz Schlick
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Henry David Thoreau
- Paul Ricœur
- Ernst Cassirer
- Nicole Oresme
- Language of thought hypothesis
- Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi
- Jakob Sigismund Beck
Related ideas
- History
- Jesus
- Jungian archetypes
- Word
- Idea
- Formula
- Heinrich Zimmer
- Learning
- Number
- Linguistics
- Phoneme
- Denotation
- Sigmund Freud
- Semiotics
- Paul Tillich
- Carl Jung
- Abstract and concrete
- Communication
- Connotation
- The Interpretation of Dreams
- Sign (semiotics)
- Concept
- Cartography
- Kenneth Burke
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.