Merab Mamardashvili, on the way to a man

As you know, if talent hits a target that others do not hit, then genius is a target that others do not see. For Mamardashvili, philosophy was not a reflection on the most general and abstract things, as for most of his colleagues, but a special type of thinking about things that often seemed to be concrete and mundane. Most of his few lifetime publications were written in a very difficult language even for professionals. But targets invisible to others and a mind-turning view of the world found life in his legendary lectures, which he read in various audiences – philosophers, psychologists, filmmakers … Now the transcripts of his lecture courses are published in separate books (there are already about ten of them) – they are revealed the true scope of this thinker.

He died of a heart attack at the airport, while waiting for a flight from Moscow to Tbilisi, from one house to another. However, he liked to say that a philosopher is a citizen of an unknown country and a spy everywhere, because he questions everything that seems obvious and immutable to the bearers of this culture. Being critical of people and nations, he revealed the path of a man of the possible, along which there is a chance to go if you maintain consciousness, keep the effort, do not waste time and do what has no reasons, but has laws.

5 keys to understanding

Two layers of life

Along with everyday, habitual, routine life, there is another, genuine life. It opens up to us in separate brief moments in the form of glimpses of something important and real, and it is important not to miss these moments – to stop and do the work of extracting meaning, without postponing it for later. This complex spiritual work gives a chance to come to an understanding of the true structure of life, its laws and events that the surface (visible) level closes from us.

Understanding as a setting of consciousness

Understanding has nothing to do with the accumulation of knowledge and experience. Moreover, understanding cannot be conveyed – there is always an unresolvable gap between what is said or written and what is heard or read. Understanding is always insight, insight; we suddenly see the truth that was nearby, and we could see it for a long time, but for some reason we didn’t see it. To see it, our consciousness must come to a certain location, mood, acquire structure. This is facilitated by theater and poetry, works of art and other texts, sometimes even advertising – they carry a structure or form that tunes our consciousness and allows us to see what we did not notice before.

Lullabies to ourselves

Consciousness is inert, it is mostly filled with the waste products of our life: clichés, stereotypes, habits. We try to reduce everything incomprehensible to the familiar and, instead of stopping and thinking, we usually bring to light a ready-made explanation. “An explanation” is what Mamardashvili calls it by analogy with the words “reply”, “excuse”. Among the psychological mechanisms that prevent our penetration into the depths, to true life, laziness and … hope occupy a special place. They keep us from action, including from mental work, from the necessary internal changes. We hope that the problems will somehow be solved by themselves.

Reasons and efforts

Causes reign in everyday psychology. All our mental states, feelings, spiritual movements, actions are generated by a chain of events that can be traced and analyzed. But there are phenomena that cannot be deduced from any causes. For example, it is impossible to explain the good we do: it is not generated only by intention, for this special “moral muscles” are needed. Thought and freedom have no reasons. Mamardashvili talks about the effort that needs to be maintained in order for truly human events to take place – to keep because there are no mechanisms that could be launched for this process to start on its own.

Heroism of the classical soul

Discovering the fragments of true life and its laws, a person goes through the path of collecting himself. It is not predetermined, but is possible on the basis of consciousness and effort. Therefore, a person is, first of all, a possible person. Mamardashvili calls such a person a “classical soul” or a “hero” in the ancient sense – this is one who does not need conditions or instructions, who knows what he should do, turning to himself, and is ready to bear this “burden of labor and freedom” in alone. “We are never people in the abstract, but we are people in the way that we know how to be people.”