Philosopher Pyatigorsky Alexander Moiseevich: biography, contribution to science, books

Orientalist, philosopher, philologist, writer and founder of the semiotics school Pyatigorsky Alexander Moiseevich was born in Moscow in 1929. During the war, he was evacuated to Nizhny Tagil. He graduated from the Moscow State University (Faculty of Philosophy), taught for several years in Stalingrad in high school, and from 1956 he worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies under the direction of Yu. N. Roerich, where he defended his thesis on the history of Middle Ages literature. Further Pyatigorsky Alexander Moiseevich studied semiotics, participated in the research of Tartu University.

Biography, books

The native city for Alexander Pyatigorsky always remained Moscow, the city in which he was born on January 30, 1929. His family was educated and intelligent, the boy was given an excellent upbringing. His father, a prominent steelworker, for many years trained in Germany and England in the direction of the government of the USSR. The family spent the war in Nizhny Tagil, where at the age of eleven, Alexander Pyatigorsky began working at the plant.

In 1951 he graduated from the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University and was sent to Stalingrad, where he taught at the school. In 1973 he left the country, settling in England, where he lectured at the University of London and took part in all sorts of television and radio programs. He wrote several art books and published an incredible amount of collections of his own scientific articles. The main works of art are listed below.

• "Philosophy of one lane." London, 1989.
• "Remember a strange man." Moscow, 1999.
• "Stories and dreams." Moscow, 2001.
• "Ancient man in the city." Moscow, 2001.
• "Thinking and watching." Riga, 2002.
• "The incessant conversation." Moscow, 2004.
• "Free philosopher Pyatigorsky." SPb, 2015.

A family

The father of the philosopher Pyatigorsk is Moses Gdalievich, a Soviet promoter, a technician who knew everything about metals and steel, taught at a university, engaged in science and practice, taking over experience in factories in Germany and England. By the way, no one in the family, including Moses Pyatigorsky himself, was ever repressed, despite his origin, social status, nationality (Jews) and long stay abroad. This man was in the life of very good health, just six months did not live to a hundred years. In comparison with his father, Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky died young. Date of birth and date of death are eighty-one years apart. The mother was not a scientist, but a well-known wealthy family, but also, according to Alexander Moiseevich, "she died young" - she was only eighty-seven.

Social activity

Since 1960, his books began to be published, at first in co-authorship (however, co-authorship often arose during the rest of his life). Actively engaged in Pyatigorsk Alexander Moiseyevich and human rights activities, in the 70's participated in rallies supporting the dissident movement, including its participants - Ginzburg, Sinyavsky, Daniel. In 1973 he managed to emigrate to the FRG, then - to the UK. With the restructuring, Pyatigorsky Alexander Moiseyevich began to receive awards from the country he left about thirty years ago (A.Belya's award for the novel "Remember a Strange Man", Prize of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

He knew languages, especially rare ones, for example Sanskrit, as well as adverbs of Tibet, translated Buddhist and Hindu sacred texts. He wrote several novels and many scientific works in this field. He lectured on political philosophy almost all over the world, being a professor at the University of London. Was filmed in the movie - "Hunting for butterflies," "Philosopher escaped," "Clean air of your freedom," "Hitler, Stalin and Gurdjieff," "Chantrap." Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky died in London in 2009 from heart failure.

Buddhism

"Philosophy is of no use to anybody, that's its value," Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky thought, "which is why she deserves the most intimate and long-lasting human attachments." Two years before his death, the writer visited Moscow, where he spent two weeks reading a course of lectures on Buddhist philosophy at the New Economic School. The listeners learned a lot of new things. About how the Buddhist consciousness and natural sciences are whimsically combined.

Alexander Moiseevich devoted many lectures to India. It was here that mathematics was improved: they came up with the positional nature of the calculus, introduced zero into use. However, the Indians do not have their own schools of natural sciences, because the direction of their consciousness, deeply comprehending linguistics, psychology, mathematics, is very different from, for example, the same ancient Greeks of Aristotle's time. They were not so interested in studying the structure of the internal organs of man and animals. Also they were not much occupied by the components of mountains, marshes and jungles. Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky, whose philosophical views are very clearly outlined in these interesting lectures, believed that no culture should engage in one thing, since this would inevitably lead to the degeneration of the nation.

Down with inertia!

The philosopher Alexander Pyatigorsky, whose biography is closely connected with the study of the Tibetan teachings, considers in detail the system of scientific knowledge of the natural world in Buddhism. From the point of view of Tibetan lamas, widely educated, knowing a lot of adverbs of their language, as well as Sanskrit, Mongolian, Chinese, English, having read many scientific books, even Darwin, despite his genius, is extremely intellectually undeveloped. But the same English physicists and mathematicians turned out to be close to the lamas, and their intellect received the highest mark from their lips.

European philosophers and historians, despite the fact that they were all excellent scholars, were also recognized as mediocre personalities. Development, as the philosopher Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky understands, consists primarily in freedom: first, the ability to find his own version of the answer to the question or his own solution to the problem, and secondly, the ability to immediately abandon the found option in favor of the new. That is, to reject all the world communal and collective inertia. Modern genetics, mathematicians and physicists also began to gradually come to this worldview.

Specified conditions

Alexander Pyatigorsky, whose biography includes numerous trips with the study of various ontological postulates, believed that it was in the seventeenth century that all European, including natural, sciences entered a new and more favorable period for discoveries. A natural scientist, as a scientist, is initially unfree, his research is usually constrained by a huge number of things specified by nature, and therefore he most often begins to "dance from the stove."

And philosophers are free, nothing prescribes them, and they can begin knowledge from any point they want. In addition, the philosophers do not oppress centuries-old established axioms, since the subject as such has not even been studied in universities. Including ancient schools of philosophy.

Becoming

Under the philosophy of European thinkers meant law, theology, later biblical studies, Hebrew and Latin (as a real language, which was widely used until the Renaissance). Over time, medicine was added to this set. All these sciences are humanitarian, but there was no pure philosophy among them, it was formed in modern times. Only in the second half of the eighteenth century did the first chair of academic philosophy in Edinburgh. For a place on it fought D. Hume and A. Smith. And then went Kant, Fichte, Hegel, after which, at last, philosophy took shape as an object of study. But Buddhists always philosophized, as Alexander Pyatigorsky explained in his lectures. This was the basis of their education.

Not science

Pyatigorskiy Alexander Moiseevich, whose books are mostly devoted to philosophy, never tired of saying that she is not on the list of full-fledged sciences. He was sure that philosophy is not science at all. "In the pantheon of sciences," he wrote, "there is no hierarchical vertical, rather, it is a certain volume or space filled not with anything, but with culture, and that's where philosophy takes some place ..."

In the end, without philosophy, humanity can excellently survive. This can not be said, for example, about medicine.

And mathematics? And physics?

Even physics, the need for which arises only with a certain turn of consciousness, when the meaning and significance of what it brings to people is exaggerated, humanity is not so necessary as it is customary to believe. The final theory is also impossible in physics, since the process of thinking in man can not be final. Pyatigorskiy Alexander Moiseevich, whose biography consisted of "constant reflection and reflection on reflections," is sure that the final theory, which is so desired by many scientists, is foolishness, reminiscent of the creation of an absolutely fair, final and global society. For this utopian idea, humanity has repeatedly paid dearly (communism, for example), but people will never be able to achieve the idyll. The desire to reach the unattainable shows that humanity is not only not on top of its intellectual capabilities, but, conversely, closer to the beginning, as it continues to start deliberately impossible enterprises. According to the philosopher, this is not bad, but excellent, because the most important criterion of correctness is that there was where to go so that it would be interesting on this way.

Exposing postulates

An uneducated person, according to Pyatigorsky, may be a philosopher, but this is highly unlikely. No interesting thinking starts from scratch. And without his own philosophy, man can not engage in any philosophy. Pyatigorskiy Alexander Moiseyevich, whose wives all of him are extremely fond of worship, nevertheless denies the fine half in philosophical abilities.

As the hero of our article reasoned: for women, in his opinion, it is much more difficult to engage in a useless affair, and philosophy is absolutely useless. However, it is not peculiar to men either. This is generally a rare thing - and among women, and among men, and among crocodiles. To do this, you must be abnormal, as, for example, when the last money a person buys sweets, and not bread. Philosophy is the pursuit of a nonexistent, which is better than just good. And the fact that a person should be happy, an irresponsible phrase and extremely harmful. Perhaps one of the few real tasks of the philosopher is to destroy such a plan of general postulates.

Linguistics and Semiotics

Regarding scientific education Pyatigorskiy wrote and spoke extremely interesting. For example, so. The philosopher primarily reflects on the language, his and his interlocutor, so the philosophy is very closely in touch with both sociology and linguistics. Many speakers begin their speech with the words: "it is obvious that ..." or "everyone knows that ...". It's a lie. Nothing is obvious. Everything depends on the immediacy of our "I want, I do not want." It's normal for a person not to think and do not know anything. No one has died from this yet. Who, for example, now remembers the great linguists from the famous "Moscow Nest" in the whole world? Normal Russian people do not know a single surname: Starostin, Klimov, Yakovlev, Polivanov, Abaev ... And in the West they extol Russian linguists. Everyone knows Jakobson, Reformatsky, and Zaliznyak there. There are museums dedicated to these people who have rethought the Russian language. These problems are devoted to a lot of lectures that Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky read in Russian universities. Photos of some meetings with students are attached.

Semyotik Alexander Pyatigorsky was engaged exclusively as a philosopher. Although he did not have his own theory in this direction, he used it as a tool to help solve problems in neighboring sciences. Believed that, like philosophy, it is useless, since semiotics is a pure theory, but in science there is something more useful, applied: the rules of practical inference, prognosis, experiment. He immediately clarified that semiotics can help reflex in any field.

About language and leisure

Most of all, Pyatigorsk was upset by the abundance of jargon in the speech of both Russian and English students. And those who have parents - highly educated people, who were brought up on literary heroes. And it turns out that the language, say, in Russia is best preserved in children of semi-educated people - factory chief mechanics or artillery majors.

He sees the degeneration of the language, not from below, but from the very top, including from the university professors, and he gives numerous examples from his own experience. Philosophy is usually people who have leisure. The best thinkers come from those who had a lot of free time. The same applies to culture and science, which also can not be made true on the run. Need a coach of the past, not the modern superjet.

A little bit about personal

After emigrating to London in the early 1970s, he wrote that the oppression in the Soviet Union in relation to him is a myth, nonsense and untruth. He just wanted to live in the world, not in one country. And he did it. The philosopher with his son left the first marriage and the child from the second. A young wife, already pregnant again, was also near. After a short time and his parents joined the London family. Then he married for the third time and began to educate numerous grandchildren. That's what was Pyatigorsk Alexander Moiseyevich. Personal life passed in mutual love with all wives and distinguished itself by universal family well-being, despite repeated marriages. Probably, the reason for his prosperity was his love and love of life.