Dimitur Mihalchev - philosopher and social scientist  Cover Image
  • Price 5.90 €

Философът-обществовед Димитър Михалчев
Dimitur Mihalchev - philosopher and social scientist

Author(s): Atanas Stamatov
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Институт за българска философска култура

Summary/Abstract: Throughout his life-work as a researcher and author, Dimitur Mihalchev was permanently focused on social issues and social history. He was acquainted with Marx’s materialistic interpretation of history and embraced his ideas long before accepting Johannes Rehmke’s views as his own philosophical creed. He believed that existential and axiological issues should not be included in the subject of philosophy so that philosophy could have the statute of a science and not merely of an ideology. This concept placed his own philosophical views at a disadvantage compared to the sociological views in terms of defining, interpreting and solving problems in the sphere of social sciences. Consciously or not, between the two world wars, D. Mihalchev was a tacit ally to the Bulgarian Marxists when it came to asserting the scientific validity and prognostic reliability of the historic and materialistic outlook of society. His written work was one representation of the left social project in this country. D. Mihalchev’s presence in public life was so weighty and competent that it demotivated the Bulgarian Marxists of the time from dealing with theoretical issues of historical materialism. Prof. Mihalchev’s commitment to the materialistic understanding of history can be registered in any of his prolific contributions as a social scientist. In the long run, however, this fact was used as a “theoretical mask” by the idolaters of Marxism in controlling the mass conscience in this country. In those years, quite tangibly, the representatives of the non-Marxist social sciences in Bulgaria felt betrayed by their ideological leader. The Marxist understanding of society dominated the Bulgarian public life almost all through the 20th century. D. Mihalchev’ performance as a social scientist further contributed to that. For obvious reasons, they had a far greater social response than his dispute with the author of Theory of the Reflection, a discussion around which the intellectual portrait of D. Mihalchev was ideologically “canonised” for decades on end by the Marxist critics. Time has come to break free from that “canon” and to analyse, dispassionately and thoroughly, his theoretical heritage if we are willing to comprehend our recent past and, to a certain extent, our gloomy present.

  • Issue Year: 2011
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 41-68
  • Page Count: 28
  • Language: Bulgarian