Bagrationi, Ioann

Born May 16, 1768; died Feb. 15, 1830. Georgian writer and enlightener; son of the last Georgian tsar, Georgii XII.

After Georgia’s annexation to Russia in 1801, Bagrationi lived in St. Petersburg. His major work is the original three-volume encyclopedia Kalmasoba (1813–28; Russian translation, Kalmasoba, or Harvesting,1945). Written as a travelogue in an elegant and simple language, Kalmasoba contains information from various fields of knowledge, including broad historical and philosophical material. The sociopolitical ideas are concentrated on the basic theme of Georgia’s independence and the need to improve existing class relations. Bagrationi ridiculed the ignorance and despotism of the clerical and secular feudal lords who were chiefly responsible for the country’s sufferings. He considered the reeducation of the nobility in the spirit of the Enlightenment to be the chief means to Georgian prosperity. On the whole adhering to the Neoplatonism of I. Petritsi, Bagrationi leaned toward empiricism, materialistically interpreting separate questions of logic. His social and philosophic views were also set forth in the unpublished treatises On the Regulation of State Rule (1799) and The Powers of the Spirit (1824) and in the introduction and notes to his translation from the Russian of E. Condillac’s Logic.