Consciousness And Civilization

Merab Mamardashvili (1930-1990) – Georgian philosopher, doctor of sciences (1968), professor (1972).

The book - "Consciousness and Civilization" - is a set of lectures delivered by Merab Mamardashvili in different years, in which the author's thoughts ("concrete and living feeling") on the mentioned issue are arranged thematically.

The book is divided into two parts, the first part is devoted to what the author calls describable, i.e. normal situations, and the second, non-describable, i.e. situations not subject to description (in principle undefined).

The principle that regulates these two types of situations, the author calls the principle of three "K" - Cartesius (Descartes), Kant and Kafka.

"The first "K" (Descartes) - there is a place in the world and it becomes a kind of the simplest and immediately obvious existence "I am". It, questioning what else, not only reveals the definite dependence of the events in the world (including knowledge) from one's own actions, but also represents the starting point of absolute reliability and clarity for any intelligible knowledge. According to this opinion, a person is a being who can say "I think, I exist, I am capable" and is also a possibility and a condition of the world that he can understand, in which he is able to act as a human, to be responsible for something and to know something. Therefore, the world is created (according to the law of its formation), and now it is your turn. Because a world is being created that you are capable of, regardless of nature's visible counter-necessities, natural-natural compulsions and circumstances.

"The second "K" (Kant) - in the arrangement of the world, there are special intelligible (mind-accessible) objects (dimensions), which at the same time represent directly, ascertainable by experience, however, further indivisible images of totalities, a kind of conception, or projects of development. The power of this principle lies in the fact that it points to the conditions under which a being finite in time and space (for example, a human being) is capable of intelligently performing acts of experiential cognition, moral action, evaluation, seeking satisfaction, etc. Otherwise, nothing would make sense - there is infinity in front (and behind). In other words, it means that the conditions are realized in the world under which the said acts have meaning at all (always local and discrete), that is, it is allowed that the world could be such that they would have acted senselessly.

"Third "K" (Kafka) - without the same signs and subject nominations, and in the conditions of observability of their natural referents (subject correspondences), everything that is set by the two above-mentioned principles is not fulfilled. This is a degenerate, i.e. regressive variant of the implementation of the general K-principle - "zombie"-situations, perfectly human-like, but actually alien to humans, which only imitate what is actually dead. Their product, in contrast to Homo sapiens, that is, the knower of good and evil, is the "strange man", the "indescribable man".

The main chapters of the second part of the book are: "Philosophy is consciousness to be heard", "Philosophy of reality", "My experience is atypical", "The devil plays with us when we don't think straight", "Another heaven", "Meaning in culture", "Civil society" ", "Free thinking".

Also, the reader will come across many places in the book, where Merab Mamardashvili's Georgian, deeply Georgian position is clearly visible.