The Philosophic Path Of Merab Mamardashvili

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.

Soviet-era philosopher Merab Mamardashvili developed an original and subtle philosophical system distinct from both his orthodox and dissident colleagues. This volume provides English-speaking audiences with a range of his lectures and writings on ancient philosophy, civil society, the European project, and literature. After many decades hiding in plain sight, he emerges as a Soviet thinker who writes in the double-voiced manner of an ideologically surveilled academic and a potent literary and theoretical innovator independent of his context.

Known as the 'Georgian Socrates' of Soviet philosophy, Merab Mamardashvili was a defining personality of the late-Soviet intelligentsia. In the 1970s and 1980s, he taught required courses in philosophy at Russia's two leading film schools, helping to educate a generation of internationally prolific directors. Exploring Mamardashvili's extensive philosophical output, as well as a range of recent Russian films, Alyssa DeBlasio reveals the intellectual affinities amongst directors of the Mamardashvili generation - including Alexander Sokurov, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Alexei Balabanov. This multidisciplinary study offers an innovative way to think about film, philosophy and the philosophical potential of the moving image.

This book intends to present Mamardashvili’s philosophical perspective on modern society by exemplifying in different ways its distinctive contribution to the greater philosophical landscape. The authors aim to define both Mamardashvili’s place in the history of philosophy—among the currents of twentieth-century European thought and, in particular, phenomenology—and his relations with authors like Hegel, Proust, Deleuze, and Wittgenstein, while identifying the basic methodological instruments and substantive concepts of his thought—language, migration, citizenship, or “the freedom of complaint.” The volume will be useful both for preparatory courses (by supplying an introduction to Mamardashvili’s thought and forming the key necessary concepts) and for advanced research exigencies, allowing a professional audience to discover the remarkable insights of Mamardashvili’s philosophy.

Philosophy in Reality offers a new vision of the relation between science and philosophy in the framework of a non-propositional logic of real processes, grounded in the physics of the real world. This logical system is based on the work of the Franco-Romanian thinker Stéphane Lupasco (1900-1988), previously presented by Joseph Brenner in the book Logic in Reality (Springer, 2008). The present book was inspired in part by the ancient Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching) and its scientific-philosophical discussion of change. The emphasis in Philosophy in Reality is on the recovery of dialectics and semantics from reductionist applications and their incorporation into a new synthetic paradigm for knowledge. Through an original re-interpretation of both classical and modern Western thought, this book addresses philosophical issues in scientific fields as well as long-standing conceptual problems such as the origin, nature and role of meaning, the unity of knowledge and the origin of morality. In a rigorous transdisciplinary manner, it discusses foundational and current issues in the physical sciences - mathematics, information, communication and systems theory and their implications for philosophy. The same framework is applied to problems of the origins of society, the transformation of reality by human subjects, and the emergence of a global, sustainable information society. In summary, Philosophy in Reality provides a wealth of new perspectives and references, supporting research by both philosophers and physical and social scientists concerned with the many facets of reality.

Augenblick, meaning literally 'In the blink of an eye', describes a 'decisive moment' in time that is both fleeting yet momentously eventful, even epoch-makingly significant. In this book Koral Ward investigates the development of the concept into one of the core ideas in Western existential philosophy alongside such concepts as anxiety and individual freedom. Ward examines the whole extent of the idea of the 'decisive moment', in which an individual's entire life-project is open to a radical reorientation. From its inception in Kierkegaard's works to the writings of Jaspers and Heidegger, she draws on a vast array of sources beyond just the standard figures of 19th and 20th century Continental philosophy, finding ideas and examples in photography, cinema, music, art, and the modern novel.

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) was among the most accomplished Jewish philosophers of modern times--if not the single most significant. But his work has not yet received the attention it deserves. This newly translated collection of his writings--most of which are appearing in English for the first time--illuminates his achievements for student readers and rectifies lapses in his intellectual reception by prior generations. It presents chapters from Cohen's Ethics of Pure Will, conflicting interpretations of Cohen by Franz Rosenzweig and Alexander Altmann, and finally the eulogy to Cohen delivered at graveside by Ernst Cassirer. Containing full annotations and selections that concentrate both on the philosophical core of Cohen's writings and the politics of interpretation of his work at the time of his death and after, Hermann Cohen truly brings to light all of Cohen's accomplishments.

Selfhood and Appearing explores how, as embodied subjects, we are in the very world that we consciously internalize. Employing the insights of Merleau-Ponty and Patočka, this volume examines how the intertwining of both senses of “being-in” (physical and conscious) constitutes our reality.