Aleksander Pyatigorskiy Russian philosopher, culturologist, Buddhist scholar Country: Great Britain

1. Russian Philosopher, Culturologist, Buddhist
2. Early Life and Education
3. Career
4. Life in the UK and Achievements
5. Personal Life and Legacy

Russian Philosopher, Culturologist, Buddhist

Alexander Pyatigorsky was a Russian philosopher, culturologist, and Buddhist. He was also a Soviet and British philosopher, orientalist, indologist, buddhistologist, writer, and candidate of philological sciences. He was one of the founders of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School and the author of a text model of communication.

Early Life and Education

Pyatigorsky was born in Moscow to Moisey Gdalievich Pyatigorsky (1898-1998), an engineer-metallurgist, and Sara Grigorievna Tsubina (1901-1988), from a family of timber merchants. He was of Jewish descent. During the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated to Nizhny Tagil. He studied at the 110th Moscow School but could not finish it due to its strong focus on mathematics. He received his diploma from the 43rd School. In 1951, he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow State University.

Career

After graduation, Pyatigorsky worked as a history teacher in a secondary school. In 1956, he started working at the Institute of Oriental Studies, where he became a student of Yu.N. Rerikh in 1957. In 1960, his first book was published (co-authored). In 1962, he defended his dissertation "From the History of Medieval Tamil Literature" at the Institute of Oriental Studies, earning a degree in philological sciences. In 1963, he participated in semiotics research conducted at Tartu University, invited by Yu.M. Lotman. From the early 1960s until 1973, Pyatigorsky was actively involved in human rights activities, including writing appeals to the USSR Prosecutor General's Office in defense of dissident Alexander Ginzburg and participating in a rally advocating for the arrested writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.

Life in the UK and Achievements

In 1974, Pyatigorsky moved to the United Kingdom. He became a professor at the University of London. He was awarded the Andrei Bely Prize in 2000 for his novel "Remembering a Strange Man". He co-authored the first Tamil-Russian dictionary with S.G. Rudin. Pyatigorsky was knowledgeable in Sanskrit and Tibetan and translated ancient Hindu and Buddhist sacred texts. He wrote dozens of works, including several novels, and delivered lectures in many countries around the world. In February 2006, he visited Moscow, where he gave a series of lectures on political philosophy, held a public lecture on "Mythology and the Consciousness of Modern Man", and gave several interviews to print media and television. He also spoke in Moscow at the memorial readings for his friend G.P. Shchedrovitsky.

Personal Life and Legacy

Pyatigorsky appeared in the role of a Maharaja in O.D. Ioseliani's film "Hunting Butterflies" and was the subject of Latvian documentary film "The Philosopher Escaped" by U. Tiron (2005) and V. Balaian's film "The Pure Air of Your Freedom" (2004). He also participated in the filming of a documentary film about G.I. Gurdjieff, titled "Hitler, Stalin, and Gurdjieff" (RTR, 2007). In October 2009, he participated in the filming of Otar Ioseliani's film "Shantropa". Pyatigorsky passed away from a heart attack on October 25, 2009, at the age of 81, in his home in London.

Pyatigorsky came from a family with a rich intellectual background. His maternal aunts included translator Esther (Esfir) Grigorievna Tsubina, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Higher Women's Courses, and psychiatrist and medical scientist Maria Grigorievna Tsubina, wife of geneticists N.P. Dubinin and V.P. Efroimson, and the scientific director of the Academy of Medical Sciences USSR nursery at the Stolbovoi station of the Kursk railway, author of the work "Disease and Creativity of Vrubel from a Psychopathological Perspective". His maternal grandmother's sister was Rose Shapiro (1874-1954), a British art historian and architectural historian, also known as a translator, model, and collector of contemporary art. There are portraits of her by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Walter Gramatte. Another sister of his maternal grandmother was Anna Shapiro (1877-1911), a translator of Russian, English, French, and Polish fiction into German, and an economist, wife of sociologist Otto Neurath.

Pyatigorsky was honored with several awards, including the first place in the nomination "Publication of Philosophical Classics" in the competition for the best book of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 2007 to 2009 for the book "Symbol and Consciousness: Metaphysical Reflections on Consciousness, Symbolism, and Language" by Merab Mamardashvili and Alexander Pyatigorsky.