The two short essays included in this volume hold, despite their brief length, a distinctive place in Cassirer's philosophical work. Mainly because they shed light on the possibility of fruitful application of the theory of symbolic forms in the complex field of political theory and practice.

In the first essay, titled The Idea of the Republican Regime and based on a speech delivered by Cassirer on August 11, 1928, the German thinker passionately defends the Constitution of the Weimar Republic, emphasizing that its fundamental principles do not stem from the political philosophy of Hobbes and Rousseau but from the idealistic philosophy of Leibniz and Kant.

On the contrary, in the second essay, titled Enlightenment and published in 1931 in the fifth volume of the famous Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Cassirer goes much further than the rigid moralism characteristic of Kantian Enlightenment in order to ascribe a new and contemporary meaning to Bacon's well-known phrase: veritas est filia temporis, and to highlight the deeper significance of the fundamental right—explicitly defined by Renaissance Humanism—in safeguarding the integrity of the individual.

[Excerpt from the text of the preface]