Beginning from Plato, there exists a philosophical tradition, which interprets philosophy as preparation for death. However, for Plato the death of a philosopher does not necessarily imply death in its ordinary meaning, but rather a spiritual way of life maximally free from corporeal affections. This kind of relationship between philosophy and death was intensively discussed in late antique philosophy, Patristics, medieval Byzantine philosophy, and also in medieval Georgian literature. Based on Plato’s and Plotinus’ philosophy, Porphyry presented definitions of three kinds (...) of death in his Sententiae : ‘death’ of a philosopher, natural death, ‘death’ of a soul. The aim of this paper is to provide a philosophical analysis of three concepts of death in the post-Porphyrian tradition, mainly in Byzantine and Georgian texts. The paper is based on the analysis of the above mentioned issues in the texts of Porphyry, Macrobius, Michael Psellos, as well as in the old Georgian versions of the works of Ammonios Hermiae, John of Damascus and John Sinaites. We also take into consideration the views on the relation between philosophy and death in the thought of the philosophers of Humanism and Renaissance, such as Georgios Gemistos Plethon, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Michel de Montaigne, whether or not and to what extent their views on the relation between philosophy and death are different from the theories of ancient and medieval Platonists. (shrink)

Although topics in social and political philosophy might not be the first to associate with Mamardašvili, it is argued in this paper that key concepts in his thought, viz. the concepts of form, thought, and culture come together, in the 1980s in particular, in a notion of civil society that goes deeper than that of many of his contemporaries. The relevance of his philosophy at this point is intensified by the specific nature of Soviet philosophical culture, but, it is argued, (...) extends well beyond that, fully justifying his honorary title of “Georgian Socrates”. (shrink)

The second volume of the German-Georgian Yearbook combines philosophical, historical and political perspectives on the social upheavels in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century and analyses, from both a theoretical and a historical point of view, the role that Marxist ideas played in the development of a new social order in Georgia.

Although topics in social and political philosophy might not be the first to associate with Mamardašvili, it is argued in this paper that key concepts in his thought, viz. the concepts of form, thought, and culture come together, in the 1980s in particular, in a notion of civil society that goes deeper than that of many of his contemporaries. The relevance of his philosophy at this point is intensified by the specific nature of Soviet philosophical culture, but, it is argued, (...) extends well beyond that, fully justifying his honorary title of “Georgian Socrates”. (shrink)

The present article deals with a comparative analysis between two paradigms advanced by the contemporary philosophy of education – one represented by the version of John Dewey’s and the other one inspired by work of the prominent Georgian philosopher and psychologist Dimitri Uznadze, based on a so called “set development” theory. The article discusses the reasons why an innovative idea, declared by Dewey, that school must provide equal opportunities to every student, projected and suggested by his followers, has not overstepped (...) boundaries of traditional paradigm of education. On the other hand, Uznadze’s version, suggesting a new epistemological paradigm of education, seems closer to solving the problem of reconstruction of traditional philosophy of education. Nevertheless, the problem is again still relevant and needs to be developed in future. (shrink)

This is an in-depth investigation into the life and work of one of the most prominent philosophers of Russian and Russian-Soviet history, Merab Mamardashvili, all of whose ideas are collected here in one book. However, each of his ideas leads much further - deep into philosophy itself, its cultural origins, and to the basis and roots of all human thought.

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The equivalent (symbol: eq or Eq), sometimes termed the molar equivalent, is a unit of amount of substance used in chemistry and the biological sciences.

World Philosophy mourns the loss of Professor Yegane Shayegan. Half Iranian and half Georgian, Professor Shayegan was destined to a cosmopolitan life from a young age. She studied Islamic philosophy in Geneva (Switzerland) and at Harvard University where she received her PhD degree with a dissertation entitled Avicenna on Time (1986). She was a research scholar at the University College in London, taught at the Sorbonne, Paris, and finally at the Iranian Institute of Philosophy, Tehran (2003-2007). She was a fine (...) translator of Aristotle, Alexandre of Aphrodisias, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Her scholarly work adorned some of the most important publications within the research on Islamic philosophy. She thus contributed to An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia (ed. by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazawi, 1999) and History of Islamic Philosophy (ed. by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, 1996. Her perhaps greatest gift was her ability to convey her passion for Greek philosophy and the history of its reception in Islamic sources to a great number of students. Not surprisingly, when Professor Shayegan left her comfortable position at the Sorbonne to teach in Tehran, she took her private philosophical library with her. Students could thus consult books not available in Iranian libraries in the privacy of her home. The author of these lines was privileged to be a guest in Professor Shayegans home in Tehran in May of 2004. Her home was a salon in the classical sense of the word. It welcomed Tehrans finest intellectuals and artists. Professor Shayegan died in Paris on June 5, 2007 at the age of seventy. (shrink)

The paper discusses a few tensions “crucifying” the works and even personality of the great Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili: East and West; human being and thought, symbol and consciousness, infinity and finiteness, similarity and differences. The observer can be involved as the correlative counterpart of the totality: An observer opposed to the totality externalizes an internal part outside. Thus the phenomena of an observer and the totality turn out to converge to each other or to be one and the same. (...) In other words, the phenomenon of an observer includes the singularity of the solipsistic Self, which (or “who”) is the same as that of the totality. Furthermore, observation can be thought as that primary and initial action underlain by the phenomenon of an observer. That action of observation consists in the externalization of the solipsistic Self outside as some external reality. It is both a zero action and the singularity of the phenomenon of action. The main conclusions are: Mamardashvili’s philosophy can be thought both as the suffering effort to be a human being again and again as well as the philosophical reflection on the genesis of thought from itself by the same effort. Thus it can be recognized as a powerful tension between signs and symbol, between conscious structures and consciousness, between the syncretism of the East and the discursiveness of the West crucifying spiritually Georgia. (shrink)

An undiscovered chapter in the history of architecture comes from the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia. Poetics of Architecture is the name given to the studioworkshop at the Georgian Technical University set up by the Georgian architect Shota Bostanashvili (1948–2013). From 1990 until his death he delivered insightful, playful and rather provocative lectures on architecture at this university. He preferred to call his architectural philosophy, critical discourse on architecture. Themes ranged from poetics to metapoetics of architecture. His philosophy of architecture is (...) illustrated by some of his designs and executed projects which demonstrate a drift from existentialism to the philosophy of play. This study includes reference to his last building, a project whose demolition Bostanashvili witnessed before passing away. Based on the concept of the return of the sacred, this edifice was a sort of counter movement to technogenic architecture. (shrink)

Translation into Ukrainian of several sections of the still unknown books of "Physics" by Teofan Prokopovich, who entered the course of Georgian Konissky's lectures and devoted to consideration of mind problem. The publication was prepared by Yaroslava Stratii.

A significant advance toward a more objective understanding of western philosophy in Soviet philosophical circles. Unlike the off-hand condemnations of western philosophers which so often fill the pages of Voprosy Filosofii, this Georgian philosopher presents a well documented historical development of twentieth century analytic philosophy from Russell's atomism, through Wittgenstein's Tractatus, logical positivism, and recent trends in English analysis. The "moral" of the story is that western thinkers are gradually coming to see the poverty of their philosophical perspective; linguistic analysis (...) must give way to the "precise vision of historical materialism."--K. R. D. (shrink)

The philosophical works of Merab Mamardashvili are part of the emergence of phenomenological thought on the “margins” of the Eastern European sphere, appropriating and mediating a version of French poststructuralism in the “Soviet” 1980s, in which deconstruction constitutes both method and content. More specifically, Mamardashvili uses Descartes as the point de repère for his investigations into the phenomenology of the object of knowledge and the structure of consciousness, which come to model Mamardashvili's phenomenological Self, anticipating a modern, post-ideological Subject. Mamardashvili's (...) paradigm of the object constitutes the “linguistic” turn in late Soviet Georgian philosophy. Mamardashvili's phenomenon or “fact” makes its appearance in an ideologically determined regime, like a “Centaur,” as a melange of myth, belief and “physical” event, as something unseen, not as an unmediated experience of the world, yet neither as pure “thought from outside.”. (shrink)

In the prologue to his Commentary on Proclus’ Elements of theology Ioane Petritsi, Georgian Neoplatonist of the twelfth century, argues that the main subject of Proclus’ Elements is the theory of the supreme One. In Petritsi’s opinion, Proclus’ merit was to elaborate the philosophy of the ‘pure’, absolutely transcendent One which is unperceivable even for the Intellect. On the other hand, the supreme One is, in Petritsi’s interpretation, the cause of everything, including matter, and It has some positive characteristics which (...) cannot be separated from Its hyper-essence. These are, mainly, Its causality and productivity, Its will and providential activity. The aim of this article is to analyse, what the supreme One is in Petritsi’s Commentary and to answer the following question: Do the absolute transcendence of the supreme One and Its positive characteristics contradict each other or are they in a certain way compatible with each other? I argue that for making the transition from the first aspect of the supreme One to another one more coherent, Petritsi made an attempt to introduce in the ontological hierarchy one more one after the supreme One and before the Henads. In my opinion, this ‘second one’, which is almost inseparable from the supreme transcendent One, is Its another aspect, representing Its productive activity. For the same purpose, as I think, Petritsi identified the creative aspect of the One with the Logos/the Son of God and, in certain cases, also with Plato’s Demiurge. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the concept of dianoia (discursive mode of thinking) as soul’s activity, and related issues, in the twelfth century work by Ioane Petritsi : his Georgian translation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology and his Commentary on this text, including his prologue to it. The themes related to the discursive mode of cognition are also discussed in the 129th proposition of the Georgian version of the Elements (which is absent in the Greek manuscripts) and (...) in Petritsi’s commentary on it. While analyzing the issues related to dianoia in Petritsi’s work, we focus our attention on the inter‑relationship of ontological, epistemological, linguistic and also existential aspects of this concept as they were interpreted by Petritsi in his Commentary. (shrink)

This article challenges the critical view that Godwin's association with the theatre is limited to the ill-fated Antonio (1800), and argues that the theatrical world was extremely important to Godwin the writer and political reformer. It considers Caleb Williams (1794) in this theatrical context and suggests a reading of it as a ‘theatrical novel’ in the light of St. Dunstan (1790), Godwin's historical tragedy. It argues that the novel is structured in such a manner that it reflects contemporary dramatic technique, (...) especially in its incorporation of the practice peculiar to the Georgian stage known as ‘pointing’. I will suggest that this deliberate attempt to ‘narrativize’ this performative technique in fictional prose has profound implications in terms of explaining how Godwin saw his novel interact with its reader and is consistent with the philosophy of Political Justice. (shrink)