Проблемът за същността на философията в творчеството на българските философи през ХХ век
The problem of the essence of philosophy in the works of Bulgarian philosophers during the twentieth century

Summary/Abstract: The study presents, analyzes and assesses the views of Bulgarian philosophers on the essence of philosophy. It covers the period from the late 19th to the early 21st century. The issue of „what is philosophy” became the focus of disputes during 19th century when it turned out that different notions of philosophy coexist in the cultural space. The first Bulgarian professors of philosophy - Ivan Georgov and Krustyo Krustev drew the attention to this problem at the end of the century. Hence a topic emerged in the Bulgarian philosophical literature linked with the names of other prominent Bulgarian philosophers of the fi rst half of the 20th century namely Dimitar Mihalchev, Spiridon Kazandjiev and Dimitar Penov. The views of the Bulgarian philosophers on philosophy over that period are discussed in Part I of this study. Part II of the study covers the post World War II period. At the outset of the communist dictatorship in this country the concept of philosophy lost its profound meaning and was practically replaced by the concept of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Thereby the problem of the essence of philosophy was rendered meaningless and the course of a semicentennial tradition was cut off. The interest of the Bulgarian philosophers in this topic was gradually renewed on a historico-philosophical basis. (Mihail Buchvarov). Numerous publications were released during the 1980s whereby some of them (those of Lyuben Sivilov and Valentin Stanoev) contain comprehensive concepts of the essence of philosophy. After the fall of the authoritarian regime in Bulgaria the Bulgarian philosophers have expressed their opinion on philosophy in articles published in our philosophy journals. These are dwelt upon at the end of Part II of this study.

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