Alexander Piatigorsky
Encyclopedia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n philosopher, scholar of South Asian philosophy and culture, historian, philologist, semiotician, and writer. Well-versed in the study of language, he knew Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali, Tibetan, German, Russian, French, Italian and English. In an obituary appearing in the English-language newspaper The Guardian, he was cited as "a man who was widely considered to be one of the more significant thinkers of the age and Russia's greatest philosopher." On Russian television stations he was mourned as "the greatest Russian philosopher."
Early years
Piatigorsky was born in Moscow. His father, Moshe, an engineer and lecturer at the Stalin metallurgical college was sent to a weapons production facility in the Urals (city of Nizhny TagilNizhny Tagil
Nizhny Tagil is a city in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, situated east of the virtual border between Europe and Asia. Population: -History:...
) at the outbreak of WW2, where he took up a post as chief engineer in weapons production. Alexander worked in the plant during the war. Alexander was very bad at mathematics, chemistry and physics so he was two times excluded from the school , but at this time he learned the latin and some other languages just because he was interested in, he had "a reading mania" and read everything he found.
Studying and work in USSR
At Moscow State University he studied philosophy, graduating in 1951. He moved to Stalingrad where he taught high-school history before returning to Moscow to join the Institute of Oriental Studies as "a specialist in Tamil languages and Hindu studies." He compiled the first Russian-Tamil dictionary in 1960. In 1963, influenced by Yuri LotmanYuri Lotman
Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman – a prominent Soviet literary scholar, semiotician, and cultural historian. Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences...
who was working in Tartu University, he was involved with Lotman, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov
Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov
Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov is a prominent Soviet/Russian philologist and Indo-Europeanist probably best known for his glottalic theory of Indo-European consonantism and for placing the Indo-European urheimat in the area of the Armenian Highlands and Lake Urmia.-Early life:Vyacheslav Ivanov's...
, Vladimir Toporov
Vladimir Toporov
Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov was a leading Russian philologist associated with the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. His wife was Tatyana Elizarenkova....
and others, in the establishment of Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School
Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School
Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School is a scientific school of thought in the field of semiotics that was formed since 1964 and led by Juri Lotman. Among the other members of this school were Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikhail Gasparov, Alexander Piatigorsky, Isaak...
. The School developed the theoretical foundations and nomenclature for a new approach in semiotics for the study of society, consciousness and culture.
In 1964, Piatigorsky's friend, poet Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...
, was handed down a five year sentence of internal exile. The following year, in support of the writers Yuli Daniel
Yuli Daniel
Yuli Markovich Daniel was a Soviet dissident writer, poet, translator and political prisoner.He frequently wrote under the pseudonyms Nikolay Arzhak and Yu. Petrov .-Early life and World War II:...
and Andrey Sinyavsky, Piatigorsky with other Russian intellectuals:
His investigations and theoretical observations of the role played by thinking and philosophy in ancient South Asian culture and society were viewed with suspicion by some as a subtly indirect way of attacking the Soviet system. Knowing themselves to be likely targets of KGB surveillance, he and his fellow Indologists would gather in a room of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies where they would enter into "fiery debates... in Sanskrit." He was expelled from the Oriental Institute in 1968.
Piatigorsky continued to lecture at the University of Moscow. He pursued his Indological investigations, increasingly dealing with Buddhist thought, and continued with more general work on the metatheory of consciousness, psychology, semiotics and philosophy in general, while collaborating with various Russian philosophers and thinkers outside of Indology. Chief among them was his close friend, philosopher Merab Mamardashvili
Merab Mamardashvili
Merab Mamardashvili was a Georgian philosopher, Doctor of Sciences , Professor . He was born in Gori . In 1955 he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Moscow State University...
. Influenced by German Idealism, Mamardashvili was a Deputy Editor of the leading journal, Voprosy Filosofii ("Problems of Philosophy"), and was also a principal representative of the so-called "Moscow School of Methodology." Participants in the Moscow School seminars included: Alexander Zinoviev, Evald Ilyenkov
Evald Ilyenkov
Evald Vassilievich Ilyenkov was a Marxist author and Soviet philosopher who did original work on the materialist development of Hegel's dialectics...
, Georgy Schedrovitsky, Boris Grushin, Lefebvre, and others. The School is believed by some to be the source of the most important developments in philosophy in the post-War period, rivaling anything done in the Western analytical tradition. The School remains virtually unknown in the West because its members were forced to operate behind the "Iron Curtain" in a context of severely reduced operational visibility and Soviet-style repression.
In 1972, Piatigorsky's Buddhist teacher Dandaron was arrested by Soviet authorities. A number of Dandaron's students were imprisoned. Dandaron was sent to a Soviet labor camp where he perished in 1974. During the same period, Mamardashvili and Piatigorsky co-authored: "Symbol and Consciousness: Metaphysical Discussion of Consciousness, Symbolism and Language" Jerusalem (1982), in Russian. This abstract and complex text, combining Western and Eastern terms, is considered by some to be the most significant philosophical work written in the Russian language. The text:
Written in the two years before Piatigorsky left the Soviet Union for Britain in 1974, the manuscript was spirited out of the country by the British-Czech social philosopher Ernest Gellner. It is worth noticing that the text was written in a deteriorating situation of renewed political repression of the Russian intelligentsia by the Soviet state. The 'tightening of restrictions' followed a brief period of relaxation of Soviet controls on intellectual activity which had taken place from the mid-1960s until the early 1970s.
Leaving
Departing the Soviet Union in 1974 for Israel, Piatigorsky made his way to Oxford University where he had been invited to give some lectures. But early times in London were severe for his family (at the moment of departure he has some children and pregnant wife). He arrived to London in the summer and had no normal job, he earned only 6.5 pounds a day. He accepted some invitations to lecture, but decided to stay in London . At Oxford he quickly became acquainted with Isaiah Berlin and Leszek Kolakowski. He joined the staff of the School of Oriental and African StudiesSchool of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...
, The University of London, as lecturer in 1975 with the commendation of Berlin who at one point is reported to have said: "Piatigorsky is quite simply a genius!" It is remarkable that Piatigorski didn't consider himself a dissident, he left Soviet Union just because he was bored, he felt that something was missing there.
While at SOAS, Piatigorsky wrote numerous journal articles and Introductions and chapters to books in various academic fields. He wrote several larger scholarly works including: The Buddhist Philosophy of Thought (1984), Mythological Deliberations (1993), and Who's Afraid of Freemasons? (1997). The work on Freemasonry was a bestselling book on the sociology and philosophy of religious belief. In 1991, he was made Professor of the Ancient History of South Asia, a position from which he retired in 2001 as Emeritus Professor.
During the final two decades of his life, Piatigorsky wrote a number of philosophical novels in Russian, one of which earned him the Andrei Bely prize in 2000. His first, The Philosophy of One Street, was published in Moscow in 1994. The book was well-received, further establishing his reputation in Russian intellectual circles, while placing him in the forefront of public consciousness. Remember the Strange Person (1999) and An Ancient Man in the City (2001) followed. As a novelist he joins the select company of those few philosophers who successfully managed to cross over into the world of literature, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Alexander Zinoviev. He also crossed over successfully into the world of cinema. He was made the subject of 'Philosopher Escaped' (2005) a documentary film directed by Uldis Tirons about the life of a philosopher, and he played "the part of an Indian merchant in his friend Otar Iosseliani's film Hunting Butterflies."
Piatigorsky disliked traditional academic jargon and for most of his life he upheld the principle that scholars should publish as little as possible on the grounds that publishing interrupts thinking. His lecture style was lively and distinctive: he was able to speak with considerable effect about the most abstruse and difficult concepts. Pacing back and forth, smoking, when it was still permitted, he sometimes stopped to observe his cigarette as it burned, pausing before making the next point. He was never known to consult notes. He was married four times and had five children; Galia, Max, Ilya, Veronica and Anna. He died suddenly on 25 October 2009.
Works
- Пятигорский А. М., Рудин С. Тамильско-русский словарь. — М.MoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, 1960 (In Russian) - Пятигорский А. М. Материалы по истории индийской философии. — М., 1962 (In Russian)
- A. Piatigorsky, D. ZilbermanDavid Zilberman-Early life:Zilberman is Jewish, and was born in Montreal, Quebec. He started wrestling when he was 14 years old. He attended McGill University and Concordia University.-Wrestling career:He wrestles in the Men's Freestyle, at 96 kg...
The Emergence of Semiotics in India (1976) - Пятигорский А. М., Мамардашвили М. К.Merab MamardashviliMerab Mamardashvili was a Georgian philosopher, Doctor of Sciences , Professor . He was born in Gori . In 1955 he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Moscow State University...
Символ и сознание. Метафизические рассуждения о сознании, символике и языке. — Иерусалим, 1982 (reprinted М., 1997) (In Russian) - A. Piatigorsky Buddhist Studies: Ancient and Modern (1983)
- A. Piatigorsky The Buddhist philosophy of thought. — TotowaTotowaTotowa may refer to the following in the U.S. state of New Jersey:*Totowa, New Jersey, a borough in Passaic County**Totowa Borough Public Schools, a school district in the above borough*Totowa section, a neighborhood of Paterson...
, N. J.New JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, 1984 - A. Piatigorsky Mythological Deliberations. — L.LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, 1993 - Пятигорский А. М. Избранные труды. — М., 1996 (In Russian)
- A. Piatigorsky Who’s Afraid of Freemasons? The Phenomenon of Freemasonry. — L., 1997
- A. Piatigorsky The Bhagavat Gita (Element Classic of World Spirituality Editions (1997)
- Пятигорский А. М. Мышление и наблюдение (РигаRigaRiga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, 2002) (In Russian) - Пятигорский А. М. Избранные труды. — М.: 2005 (In Russian)
Fiction and essays
- Пятигорский А. М. Философия одного переулка (London, 1989, М., 1994) (In Russian)
- Пятигорский А. М. Вспомнишь странного человека (М., 1999) (In Russian)
- Пятигорский А. М. Рассказы и сны. (М., 2001) (In Russian)
- Пятигорский А. М. Древний человек в городе (М., 2001) (In Russian)
- Пятигорский А. М. Непрекращаемый разговор (М., 2004) (In Russian)
For some in memoriam reflections in Russian, see http://www.nlobooks.ru/rus/magazines/nlo/199/.