Abstract: This article claims that the philosophy of symbolic forms of Ernst Cassirer is an indispensable philosophical-anthropological partner of rhetoric. The author assumes that the rhetoric’s acquisition of Cassirer’s theory of symbolic forms will bring rhetoric outside its dominant interpretation as a theory oriented towards language expression and allow it to fully comply with the broad understanding of rhetoric as a doctrine that explains the creation, establishment and transformation of social meaning. To clarify the extensive understanding of the rhetorical-philosophical-anthropological approach, the author structured their discourse partially on the criticism of recent attempt of Thomas A. Discenna (Discenna, Rhetorica 32/3, 2014) to include E. Cassirer to the rhetorical tradition in the course of analysis of Davos Debates of 1929 between E. Cassirer and M. Heidegger; and partially on explanation of the aspects of Cassirer’s thought that are considered as crucial for the development of rhetorical-philosophical anthropology of social meaning. The main conclusion lies in the thesis that the philosophy of symbolic forms of Cassirer creates the theoretical bases for the modern rhetorical philosophical anthropology as the teaching about the formation of social meaning.