From the Editor of the Russian Edition
The book now being submitted for readers’ attention is the posthumous publication of a work by Konstantin (Kita) Romanovich Megrelidze, Fundamental Problems of the Sociology of Thinking.
Megrelidze was born in 1900, in the village of Khrialeti in the uyezd of Ozurgetskii. He received his secondary education at the preparatory school in Poti.
Having graduated from Tblisi State University in 1923, Megrelidze was sent to Germany by the Central Committee of the RKP(b) and the Georgian People’s Commissariat for Education to advance his knowledge.
By the time of his return to the Soviet Union in 1927, having already established the range of questions that would occupy him for the rest of his life, he began working on the problems of the development of thought while giving lectures in universities and working in the Central Committee of the Georgian KP(b); in 1929 he became the head of the Board of the Central Administration for Scientific, Scholarly-Artistic, and Museum Institutions of the Georgian SSR.
From 1932, he continued his work in Leningrad, at the Institute for Language and Thinking in the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was also director of the National Office of the Leningrad Public Library (now the Russian National Library). During these years, his articles on scientific and political questions were published in our periodicals in Russian and in Georgian, and sometimes in German in foreign periodicals.
In Leningrad, Megrelidze worked primarily on the questions of the psychology and sociology of thought, and the philosophy of language. His research was printed in academic periodicals from 1935 to 1937, and in the special periodical press. Much of the work of this period is lost; only the articles ‘On popular superstitions and “ur-logical” means of thought (a reply to Lévy-Bruhl)’ and ‘From animal consciousness to human’ are preserved. The latter article is one of the chapters of Fundamental Problems of the Sociology of Thinking, on which the author worked for many years.
This work was published in February 1938 by the publishing house of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the editorship of I.I. Meschaninov, but before its release the author became a political prisoner and the print run was withdrawn. Iosif Megrelidze, who at that time was working at the Institute of Language and Thinking, managed to save and preserve the copy that had been signed off for printing.
At the end of 1939, the spurious charges against Konstantin were dropped; he was freed and restored to his former posts in Leningrad, but his broken health necessitated his return to Georgia where he continued his scientific work in the Georgian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In Tblisi, he began elaborating new problems. Having familiarised themselves from Megrelidze’s reports with chapters of his work, Fundamental Problems of the Sociology of Thinking, academician I.A. Djavakhishvili, active member of the USSR Academy of Sciences D.N. Uzdnadze, and academician S.N. Djanashia considered publication of this book in Tblisi to be desirable, but publication of the book was not carried through owing to the start of the war. Megrelidze died in 1943 at the age of 43, having been unsuccessful in realising and developing his extensive scientific projects. A new endeavour, on which he had been working at the end of his life, has also been lost.
In 1956, the question of publishing the book arose again. A special commission had been created at the USSR Academy of Sciences consisting of Professors Sh. Dzidziguri, S. Narikashvili, S. Tsereteli, G. Chitaia, T. Sharadzenidze and the author of these lines, to whom the book had been handed over for reference. The commission found that the endeavour had not lost its scientific significance and topicality. We polished the text, factoring in all the reviewers’ fundamental remarks.
Megrelidze’s work draws attention first and foremost through the topicality of its theme and the importance of the point of view employed by its author. The sociological study of thought is a relatively new field. If we have a great deal of valuable research in the area of the psychology and logic of thought, this cannot be said about the sociology of thought. In bourgeois science, thought was examined in a two-fold manner: as a purely subjective phenomenon or as a fact of a completely objective, supraindividual nature. Correspondingly, it was considered to be a subject of study for psychology or metaphysics; moreover, the social factor in the origin and development of thought was ignored in both cases. Only recently has serious, systematic philosophical research of this problem begun from the point of view of ‘pure idealism’ (Scheler et al.). It is unlikely that there is any work in Marxist-Leninist literature that explores the sociology of thought in this aspect with such completeness as does the present work. It goes without saying that no single human mental phenomenon can be correctly explained and understood without including the social factor. This pertains first and foremost to thought. Given this premise, the topicality of the theme of this work is completely self-evident.
What the author did for a solution to this problem is no less significant. Broad erudition, a profound knowledge of the scientific disciplines called up to have their say on the question, and the synthetic point of view they employ give the author the resources to ensure the necessary comprehensiveness in examining the question and to achieve persuasive results.
Resting only on the most important merits of this work, we wish to point out the following:
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Megrelidze’s work has indisputably brought about a revival of interest in similar research. It must be said that at one time this interest among us was stronger than it is now – which, of course, should not be welcomed.
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The fact that not one of the fundamental questions of this problem that have thus far been brought to light has escaped the author’s field of vision must be classed among the merits of his work. And this is one of the necessary conditions for a correct solution to the problem.
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It must also be noted that the principle of sociological research in the work is constructed with logical consistency from beginning to end. If the impression sometimes arises that this principle is being carried to extremes, it is only because the habit towards the psychological examination of thought, and towards ignoring the social factor in the process of its study, is too great.
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The merit of the author must be seen in that his work not only does not restrict the possibility of examining thought from other points of view, in terms of other sciences, but – on the contrary – defines their place in a unifying, general philosophical construct.
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The defining attribute of the book is also the fact that in examining individual questions, the author expresses completely original propositions and critically re-examines several common tenets (e.g. Spinoza’s attributes).
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At this juncture, it is difficult to name a work that embraces such broad-ranging scientific data and uses it so systematically.
All of us who promoted the printing of this book are certain that it will provide the benefit that we expect of it.
A. Bochorishvili