Merab Mamardašvili : Kant, Descartes, and the History of Philosophy

Merab Mamardašvili's lectures on the history of philosophy captured the attention of the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1970s and 1980s. This presentation will look at Mamardašvili's work on the history of philosophy from the middle period of his career (1970s - early 1980s), with an emphasis on his lecture cycles on Kant and Descartes. The biographical-philosophical manner in which Mamardašvili takes the lives and psychological stances of these two philosophers as primary source material stands out dramatically against the backdrop of the official Soviet philosophical historiography on Kant and Descartes of the period during which Mamardašvili lived and worked. [Publishers' text].