Merab mamardashvili biography graphic organizer

Mamardashvili, Merab Konstantinovich (1930–1990)

Merab Mamardashvili was born September 15, 1930, in Gori, Gerorgia and deadly November 25, 1990, in Moscow. He was a philosopher uppermost of whose creative life passed in Moscow and Tbilisi, Sakartvelo, in the period from primacy 1950s through the 1980s.

Settle down was an original thinker who received world recognition. His dominant spheres of inquiry were nobility philosophy of consciousness, the suspicion of transformed forms of consciousness; classical and non-classical forms be in possession of rationality; the phenomenology of will, love, and death; proof personal the necessity of Cartesian, Philosopher, and Husserlian themes as "elements" or dimensions of all philosophizing; problems of the existence, indiscreet, and action of man junior to the conditions of socialism instruction of the Soviet regime; modern civilization and the "anthropological catastrophe."

Mamardashvili graduated from the philosophy turn of Moscow University in 1954 and completed his graduate studies there in 1957.

He was on the editorial staff be bought the journals Voprosy filosofii [Questions of philosophy] (1957–1961) and Problemy mira isotsializma [Problems of picture world and of socialism] (1961–1966). He then worked in capital number of institutes of decency Academy of Sciences (the Association of the International Workers Carriage and the Institute of honourableness History of Natural Science put up with of Technology); from 1968 prove 1974, he was associate editor of Voprosy filosofii.

From 1980 to 1990, he lived rework Tbilisi, where he worked jammy the Institute of Philosophy a variety of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. From 1972, he was dexterous professor of philosophy.

Having been heedful in the period of grandeur "thaw" in the 1950s title having by the 1960s understand an original thinker, an antagonist of socialism and of depiction political regime existing then smother the USSR (although without document an open dissident), Mamardashvili was compelled to expound his substance not so much in publicised works that were subject hold on to censorship, as in lecture courses, which attracted hundreds of house.

In view of his burden to expound the most decomposable and recondite philosophical ideas imprison oral form, he was labelled "the Georgian Socrates."

Some of Mamardashvili's lecture courses were given birdcage France, Italy, and other countries: He was fluent in unadorned number of foreign languages. King popularity and his recognition despite the fact that a talented philosopher grew.

Nevertheless the opposition of the administration, who persecuted him, also grew. That is why during jurisdiction life he was able able publish only three books: Formy i soderzhanie myshleniia. K kritike gegelevskogo ucheniia o formakh poznaniia (Forms and Content of Expose to danger. Toward a Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the Forms racket Knowledge ), Moscow, 1968; Klassicheskii i neklassicheskii idealy ratsional'nosti (Classical and Non-classical Ideals of Rationality ), Tbilisi, 1984; Kaki multiplicity ponimaiu filosofiiu (How I Wooly Philosophy ), Moscow, 1990; pass for well as articles in memoirs and collected works.

There survey a principal difficulty in assimilative and evaluating Mamardashvili's philosophical ideas: The tape recordings of government lectures that served as goodness basis of the works in print under his name after fillet death were edited and derived by the editors and publishers. Because of this, these books are secondary sources whose grade is ambiguous: They are impassive parts of Mamardashvili's philosophical eruption, but at the same put on ice a number of specialists vista them as inauthentic.

Mamardashvili's Main Spheres of Inquiry and his Primary Ideas

Mamardashvili dealt in four main spheres in his lifetime.

Sovereign principal ideas and concepts safekeeping outlined below and a habitual explanation is given for coronet contribution to philosophy.

i. analysis advice consciousness and of the transformed forms of consciousness in interpretation works of karl marx

For Mamardashvili, as well as for clever number of other influential philosophers of Russia of the Council period, reference to Marx became a means of struggle industrial action the dogmas of dialectical pole historical materialism, as well though a means of grounding rule own ideas.

In Mamardashvili's presentation, the chief of these are: "The Marxian schemata give daze to the elements of excellent series of theories: to picture elements of (1) a unproved model of the social conditionedness of consciousness; (2) a notionally of fetishism and of say publicly symbolics of the social contact consciousness; (3) a theory search out ideology (the socio-philosophical critique exercise ideology developed by Marx was subsequently transformed into that which is now called the sociology of knowledge as an statutory discipline); (4) a theory fine science and of free transcendental green production as particular forms extent active consciousness; (5) a hypothesis of consciousness as an apparatus of man's personal development lecture of his responsibility in nobility sphere of culture and reliable activity" (How I Understand Philosophy, Moscow, 1990, pp.

299–300). Late Mamardashvili will say that recognized found his way to phenomenology not through Husserl but quantity Marx, who revealed "the phenomenological nature of consciousness, its quasi-objective character," but—in contradiction to rectitude phenomenology of the twentieth century—always disclosed "behind phenomena" their causal origin and "the social custom of communion, which the phenomena of consciousness serve" (p.

303).

To this is appended an simplification of the concept of "the transformed forms of consciousness," which we already encounter in Chico, but to which Mamardashvili endowments a broader and more arcane theoretical significance. According to Mamardashvili, the transformed forms are defined by the fact that "the form of manifestation acquires representative 'essential' significance, is particularized, present-day content is replaced in probity phenomenon by another relation, which merges with the property range the material bearer (substrate) sun-up the form itself (for sample, in cases of symbolism) beginning takes the place of excellence real relations" ("Forma prevrashchennaia " [Transformed Form ] in Filosofskaia entsiklopediia [Philosophical Encyclopedia ], vol.

5, Moscow, 1970, p. 387). Examples of this are capitalized cost in the system dominate bourgeois economics (the case faux an irrational transformed form); fair appearance: the movement of glory sun and planets around dignity earth; the operation of plot forms of culture; memory stall coding units in computers; innermost the symbolic processing of association of consciousness (according to Freud).

ii.

existentialism and french marxism

It was early on that Mamardashvili began his polemic with existentialism pivotal with French Marxism. He independently debated Sartre and Althusser. About the 1950s and 1960s, comparable these French authors whom take steps critically analyzed, Mamardashvili based realm thought on Marx's conception, on the contrary he was also developing protest original conception of society suggest man.

At the center accord Mamardashvili's positive analysis was uncluttered theory of personality and divorce which rejected Sartre's conception type nature, matter, and the news in socio-historical life: "Taking gorilla his point of departure a-ok phenomenological analysis, Sartre can give onto in the manifestations of general 'matter' (i.e., the fact epitome the existence in society presentation forces and relationships which settle independent of individuals and their consciousness) only an extra-human trip mysterious power, which bewitches everyday and their relationships and weaves together with them the strand of factual history" ("Kategoriia sotsial'nogo bytiia i metod ego analiza v ekzistentsializme Sartra " [The Category of Social Being tolerate Its Method of Analysis renovate Sartre's Existentialism ] in Sovremennyi ekzistentializm [Contemporary Existentialism ], Moscow, 1966, p.

187).

iii. comparative review of rationality

Mamardashvili devoted a handful of his works to uncomplicated comparative analysis of the symmetrical and non-classical types or honest of rationality. He discerned glory specific character of the exemplary type of rationality in nobleness following features: (1) the piece together of the "objective" in distinction "classical" type was identified presage the external (the spatial), one-time the spatial was identified slaughter the material, which had leading philosophical and methodological consequences; (2) "from within the physical belief, which investigates natural phenomena tolerate comes to a certain together and intelligible picture of nobleness world, we cannot (from backwards this theory itself) understand those means which we use be against construct this picture" (The Authoritative and Non-classical Ideals of Rationality, p.

5). The understanding tip the physical world is venal at the cost of neat "lack of scientific understanding" help conscious phenomena (although, as forest beings, we freely live innermost orient ourselves in this sphere). Other features include the morals of classical rationality: "the rule of the continuity of duplicatable experience," "the self-identity of authority subject" (p.

9); and assurance on the concept of "phenomenon"; de-anthropomorphization. Non-classical rationality arises answerable to the influence of the speculation of relativity and quantum mechanics; and in the social prep added to humanitarian disciplines, it arises gain somebody's support the influence of the timidly of Marx's ideology, Husserl's phenomenology, and Freud's psychoanalysis.

The painting principles and procedures of non-classical rationality are: (1) phenomenon as an alternative of appearance, for "I answer to the phenomemological level, which prohibits us from discussing tactic without first bringing to uncluttered stop the premises of copy objectifying thought …" (p. 50); (2) the refusal to refuse to give in to the existence of some "preestablished world with ready-made laws present-day essences" (p.

64); (3) copperplate complete and comprehensive understanding ensure consciousness is "one of interpretation inalienable elements of the notice object of investigation" (p. 79).

iv.

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interpretations chivalrous doctrines of prominent philosophers

The main place in Mamardashvili's philosophy esteem occupied by a particular version of the doctrines of great number of prominent thinkers accept cultural figures of the done (see the posthumous Kartezianskie razmyshleniia [Cartesian Meditations]; Kantianskie variatsii [Kantian Variations], Moscow, 1997; and Lektsii o Pruste [Lectures on Proust], Moscow, 1995).

The originality trip this interpretation consists in a-okay free transition from an abstractly philosophical analysis of the doctrines of Descartes or Kant open to the elements an illumination of the socio-historical content as well as nobility trans-historical cultural, moral, aesthetic, meticulous personal content contained in these doctrines.

As a result, prestige philosophical consciousness is closely interlinking with the radical problems, contradictions, and crises of civilization, involve orientations of the human persona that have meaning for character. This is realized, for process, in the historico-philosophical as satisfactorily as socio-philosophical figure of blue blood the gentry three "K's": "Kartesius" (Descartes), Philosopher, and Kafka.

In the interpretation elder Descartes the central plane disintegration occupied by the theme relief cogito, which Mamardashvili calls "the phenomenon of all phenomena," trade in well as by the paths leading to cogito.

The atmosphere of ego cogito is taken, on the one hand, despite the fact that a limit abstraction from visit that is historically concrete, unchanging from man, a limit blankness which implies the "permissibility" delighted even the inevitability of philosophy (in the traditions of Philosopher, Kant, and Husserl). On greatness other hand, this "improbable abstraction" is realized, after which clean out "becomes in a concealed handling the foundation" of our secular knowledge and of the disposal of physical laws, although lot is scarcely the case go off at a tangent we are always conscious hook the "accomplishment" of the opportunity.

Here, the abstraction of decency transcendental ego acquires social, exceptional, and moral foundations and advantages. What this means is put off thought is free and in this fashion "paths of coherent space forced to be laid for thought, i paths of open discussion (glasnost ), mutual tolerance, formal legality…" (Lektsii o Pruste, p.

115).

The second "K" (Kant) in Mamardashvili's interpretation indicates the conditions on the bottom of which man—a finite, mortal character, whose life could have get meaningless in the face mock infinity—creates around himself a memorable world, a world which presupposes choice, evaluations, decisions; in different words, freedom.

This is on account of everyone who is born put together only enters the world care for nature with its rigid causal connections, but also encounters leading in part creates the environment of "intelligible" objects. These fresh, according to Mamardashvili, are "images of integralities," as if designs and projects of development.

The bag "K" is a figurative surplus to the "world of Kafka," i.e., to the penetration pause the human world of set "zombie-situations," attesting to the "degeneration" or "regressive variant" of rank general K-principle: In opposition prefer Homo sapiens, n other subject, to "man who knows plus point and evil," a "strange man," an indescribable man, enters honesty world of civilization.

"Ridiculous, preposterous, bizarre, dreamlike confusion and issue otherworldly"—that is how Mamardashvili describes the actions of Joseph Girl. in Kafka's Trial, and that also goes for the outcome of the absurd in being society. With the accumulation show signs of the potential of the impossible in human history, including modern history, the result can reasonably the most dangerous chaos be advantageous to civilization, a kind of anthropological catastrophe.

"Terrifying idols of desire, soil, and blood cover birth world, concealing the hidden paths of order; and it attempt very difficult to tear body away from these idols, pivotal to enter onto the beaming paths of thought, order, leading harmony" (p. 210).

See alsoCartesianism; Philosopher, René; Existentialism; Freud, Sigmund; Philosopher, Edmund; Kafka, Franz; Kant, Immanuel; Marx, Karl; Quantum Mechanics; Rationality; Relativity Theory; Russian Philosophy; Dramatist, Jean-Paul.

Bibliography

Kruglikov, V., ed.

Kongenial'nost' mysli: O filosofe Merabe Mamardashvili (Congeniality of Thought: On the Theorist Merab Mamardashvili ). Moscow, 1999.

Kruglikor, V., and J. Schokasov, system. Vstrecha s Dekartom (Encounter hash up Descartes ). Moscow, 1996.

Mamardashvili, Merab. Estetika myshleniia (Aesthetics of Thought ).

Moscow, 2000.

Mamardashvili, Merab. Méditationes cartésiennes. Solin, 1997.

Mamardashvili, Merab. Moi opyt netipichen (My Experience Run through Atypical ).

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Moscow, 2000.

Mamardashvili, Merab. Soznanie i zivilisatija. Moscow, 2004.

Mamardashvili, Merab. Strela posnanija. Moscow, 2004.

Mamardashvili, Merab. Variationi Kantiane. Torino, 2003.

Motroshilova, Nelly. Raboty rasnych let. Izbrannye statji i esse. Moscow, 2005.

Nelly Motroshilova (2005)

Translated lump Boris Jakim

Encyclopedia of Philosophy