We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The article proceeds from the general assumption that in an anomic society, such as the Bulgarian society in course of transformation, eight basic patterns of economic behavior can be identified, only one of which can be classified as normal, while the other seven models are burdened with different components of deviance. The deviance of individuals is specific, depending both on their attitude towards the goals set by culture in society and on the preferred means of achieving these goals (legitimate or illegitimate). While normal behavior is marked by the category of social conformism, we refer to deviant behavioral patterns of innovators, ritualists, retreaters, rebels, maximizers, neutralizers and alternators. The author employs abundant empirical material regarding the presence of these eight behavioral models in contemporary Bulgarian society.
More...
The Presidential institution is comparatively new in the Bulgarian tradition of state administration. In the historical aspect, it is essentially a democratic version of the figure of the Chairman of the State Council and of the monarch. Since its inception, the new institution has been called upon to respond to the expectations of society and to adopt standards familiar to traditional democracies.Fluctuations in confidence reflect a change in attitude, contribution, presence, and behavior of the holder of the position in times of social or political crisis.Envisaged as equally distanced from, and with different functions than, the three levels of government (legislative, executive and judicial), while not representing a branch of power, the presidential institution is the highest and only state body that derives its legal status and powers directly from the Constitution; it embodies the unity of the nation and the dignity of the state. The fact that the President is directly elected by all eligible voters gives the institution additional legitimacy. This enables it to serve as the foundation of forms of direct democracy, such as referendums on important national issues. This legitimacy allows the President to form cabinets in times of political crisis, as he/she is an institutional figure holding a mandate that embodies the sovereign, i.e., the people. In this sense, it is of interest to trace the behavior of the presidential institution, which is recognized as being one of the factors maintaining public order and democracy, preventing chaos and violence in Bulgaria. This study is focused on how, and why, public perceptions of the figure and activity of the President change over time.
More...
In the article, a comparison is made between the journalism and writing styles of Simeon Radev and Ernest Hemingway. Their journalism is a point of reference for their work. For both authors, books were their personal destiny. Radev the journalist, a master of “the art of conversation”, helped Radev the historiographer; similarly, Hemingway the correspondent helped Hemingway the novelist.Hemingway's compass had one direction - from journalism to literature, while Radev’s went from journalism through diplomacy to history. Their style of writing was drawn from their journalistic experience. The compass of these “feverish slaves of the moment” was the same during their travels through Europe, even though Hemingway lingers in the memory of readers with his cap and sailor’s T-shirt, while Radev, with his diplomat’s top hat and walking stick.
More...
Sharing François Laruelle's thesis on heterogeneity in the use of the concept of difference, which imparts a specific color to philosophy in the twentieth century, the author examines Rosie Braidotti’s specific interpretation of difference, which, being inspired by differentialism and the nomadic project, creates one of the most interesting contemporary philosophical conceptions. The various roles of difference are sought – first, in the context of Braidotti's understanding of the stages of the feminist project as a set of degrees of difference; second, by viewing difference as a defining element in her theory, the construction of the nomadic subject and his or her becomings in a posthuman and postanthropocentric context; third, in the political projections of the feminist brand of nomadism, based on the politics of location. The article argues the conclusion about the positive structure of the nomadic posthuman subject as opposed to the classical subject on the one hand and the deconstructed subject on the other.
More...
In this paper, I turn my attention to two main topics: first, the French Revolution of 1789, which began 230 years, and second, a brief history of the pamphlet. A study of the relationship between these topics sheds light on the intellectual history of modern political thought. On the one hand, we thus discover some leading directions in the development of the media of the written word, which may give rise to divergent and contradictory ideas in the impartial observer. On the other, we stand before the imposing view of the modern political revolution as an epoch-making event involving complete denial of the past system of religious, moral, and juridical values in the name of the people’s all-embracing liberty, defined as the most important value by the radical Enlightenment philosophers in the second half of the eighteenth century.
More...
The paper offers a discourse and approach to Kant’s and Schelling’s vision of imagination and fantasy and attempts to illuminate the construction of the fantastic image. Kant separates fantasy as a spontaneous play of productive imagination, even though he admits its ability to create objects that “are not given in the experience”. According to Schelling, the total human activity in art is already a separate research object. This activity unfolds in the universe as a form of the absolute, in which the first images of ideas form the ideal world and determine each specific artistic image. The deduced conditions of the construction of the fantastic image (the pure continuum of intuition and a possible apperception of the image) establish the framework of a new thematic field – the philosophy of the fantastic.
More...
The article is a comment on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of the work of art presented in his most significant work, Truth and Method. Gadamer’s view of the being of the artwork is consistently deduced from the broader context of the problem of truth in the humanities compared with truth in the natural sciences; and from the immanent positioning of the idea of aesthetic consciousness in the field of the humanities alongside historical, philosophical and hermeneutic consciousness, so that it attains the receptive-aesthetic interpretation of the artwork as playing that has gained an increase of being in terms of a “transformation into a figure”.
More...
The article considers different plans of symbolic cognition and being, examined in Losev’s earliest works. Throughout all of Losev`s works, myth is consistently established as a symbolic representation of being. Every usual thing becomes a symbol of an absolute individuality when it takes part in a dialectics of part and whole. This dialectics is just a skeleton of the intuitively grasped body of the vital being of the symbol. The genuine symbol overcomes the decomposing antinomies and restores the unity between image and word, present and absence.
More...
Essentially important for the adequate understanding of Bakhtin’s multi-layered aesthetics is his great work Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity, written in the early 1920s and dealing with the correlation between author and character in aesthetic activity, in the act of artistic creativity and in the work of art. The book, for its part, belongs to its time, which is reflected in its difficult, complex and multi-faceted terminology. But it assumes the topical significance that the problem of the author acquires not only for Bakhtin, but also for contemporary aesthetics and poetics in general. Bakhtin's scientific position in the 1920s can be defined as a withdrawal and repulsion from those fields of art and poetics that he generally defines as "material aesthetics". The work in question also provides a thorough and precise critique of the author's attitude towards the hero – philosophically developed here as a critique of the reduction of vital values to material ones. Another object of fundamental critique is the concept of "feeling"(Einfuhlung), which was highly influential in aesthetics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, Bakhtin defines his own field of study as "the aesthetics of verbal creativity", and this too broad and multi-layered in its meaning formula was justifiably chosen by the publishers as the title of the manuscript book.
More...
This study focuses on an essential aspect of dance that is often neglected or rejected in dance research. The being of dance is viewed and considered as an aesthetic and social phenomenon. At the same time, the study postulates that dance – as an art form and as a social phenomenon – is a way of communication, of non-verbal expression, and a miscellaneous means for interchange of thoughts, feelings, perceptions and ideas between the participants in dance reality, an invitation to the outside world to enter within. The article holds the view that dance necessarily carries some kind of message and content. The means of expression involved in dance reveal their potential to transcend, transmit, to imply or hint, and sometimes even to hide meaning within the realized dance reality. In addition, the detailed analysis of the ballet-mime scene in Swan Lake traces a conversation, a “silent dialogue” between the two main characters, which is probably one of the best illustrations of the direct act of communication through art in general, and dance in particular.
More...
The text offers a formal and meaningful analysis of the ritual dance-prayer Sema; on this basis, the author: 1) briefly presents Sufism as a specific mystical movement in Islam, and 2) introduces expository concepts and terminology specific to Sufism. The text proceeds from the premise that Sema is a visual demonstration of Rumi's ideas, expressed in his poetry, regarding the Path, Love, and the Beloved as symbols of the relation of the human being (as created) to the Creator. Thus, the dance Sema becomes a visual-figurative cipher for the adequate reading and understanding of Rumi's mystical poetry.
More...
This text deals with the dynamics and dialectics of the street as a special space of multifaceted impacts and transformations, which are in many cases of a borderline and ecstatic kind. From the viewpoint of the authors under consideration, the street is seen and experienced as a topos of crisis, of revelations, but also of secrets, of apocalyptic visions revealed primarily in the depths of affect, but also through morbid expressionistic reflection; visions that seem to come together and unite within hypnotic prophecies...
More...
The article presents new facts and original analyses of the donation activities and the Wills of Dr. Petar Beron. A number of confirmed opinions about specific donations, teacher support, etc., are found to contain serious omissions and inaccuracies. Many important, but hitherto supressed or unknown, data about abuses involved in the donations are pointed out and analyzed in detail ford the first time in the article. The author reveals so far unknown, or barely touched upon, aspects of the social, political, and economic context of the Wills.
More...
The article argues the historical relevance of a non-trivial Enlightenment view – that of Marko Balabanov regarding higher education in Bulgaria as an urgent historical necessity even under the conditions of lack of political freedom, and regarding the creation of a Bulgarian higher school as a public institution within the boundaries of the Turkish Empire. The author claims that Marko Balabanov's view attests to an enlightened and sound reasoning in the context of his socially responsible political philosophy; the idea in question was much more adequate to the historical needs of Bulgarian society in the second half of the 19th century than was the revolutionary and democratic ideal of political independence, an ideal that assigned a subordinate place to education. The article dwells in particular 1) on Balabanov’s more general view about education as the vital component of human development and 2) as the unavoidable precondition of political freedom; on 3) his idea regarding the catch-up role of a “purely“ Bulgarian higher school in the context of the rather low educational level of the mass of people; and on 4) his understanding of the autonomous value of scientific knowledge.
More...
The text highlights the problematic presence of Nietzsche on the “Island” Slaveykov. Why do we say problematic? Yes, “the voice Nietzsche” is very clear and easily traceable not only to Pencho Slaveykov's creative activity but also to his life / existence. The use of “voice” is as metaphorical as it is symptomatic of our effort to be heard, or rather “eavesdropped” on, through the various ranges in which the ideas of the Sils-Maria loner sound in the works and personal biography of Slaveykov.
More...
If what is revealed to man and his native world in Haitov’s essay “A Meeting with the Song” is viewed in terms of the question “What is song and whistle with a soul?”, then would it make sense to look at philosophy in terms of a similar question, and what could we discover thereby? Is it possible to use the example of a query in Haitov's story about a whistle and a song in order to raise, and expand, the question “What is Philosophy with a Soul?” This essay starts by drawing a distinction between the “creative basis” of the philosophical work and its “theoretical role”; in this way, it is a preparatory attempt to elaborate and answer this question.Philosophy with a soul is the philosophy that, in the depths of everyday life and simplicity, discovers a gap in the authentic rhythm of being – the rhythm that is unexpected in terms of logic, surprisingly bizarre, unequal. This is exactly the Rhythm that fundamentally posits, and acts as, the Meaning of all meanings in our homeworld.
More...
Renaissance Platonism is linked to the revival of the interest in the deities of the Ancient pantheon. The present text traces back some of the origins of this process (the tradition of the Dolce stilnovo in Tuscan language and Dante Alighieri’s commentaries on his own works), arguing that the genre of the allegorical commentary on poetic texts is one of the main instruments facilitating the return of Ancient gods in the Christian context of 15th-century Florence. The key moments of the analysis regard Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s commentary practice.
More...
The advent and development of kitsch is genetically related to the specific sociocultural context of 19th-century second half, when art became an autonomous and independent reality. It can no more rely on mythology, religion, philosophy, and politics, and pretends to be only and solely a ‘pure art’. Art narrows, and in the vacuum opened, the new aesthetic phenomenon of kitsch ensconces. Kitsch has become an intrinsic, aesthetically immanent element of the system of art as a totality. An infinite internal transition between these two so cognate and so different, opposite spheres has emerged. The dialectics of these relations shows that kitsch is not only a waste of art.
More...