The Lonely Sceptic. Bulgarian culture in the trap of its neo-Manichaean tradition
The Lonely Sceptic. Bulgarian culture in the trap of its neo-Manichaean tradition

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to synthesize how the Bulgarian national medieval heresy is adapted to the needs of the Bulgarian national discourse. Advocates of the Enlightenment utopia of progress made it one of the foundation myths of Bulgarian national ideology, seeing Bogomils as precursors to progressive movements across Europe. Over two centuries, the semantic flexibility of Bogomilism led to multiple ideological appropriations from such diverse or contradictory schools of thought as Marxism, freemasonry, occultism or Theosophic spiritualism. In relying on the Bogomil heritage, all those schools were invisibly tied together by the idea of progress, an idea which they shared (even if they all interpreted it in different ways). At the same time, fascination with Bogomilsm on the Bulgarian ground seems to be a sign of the longings for transcendence, and a proof of an unfinished modernization. Modernization with its attendant phenomenon of secularization remains very much an incomplete project as exemplified by the “semi-modern man.” Further research will discover the strategies as to how to endow life with a meaning—in such a sense as Horkheimer and Adorno see it, as well as a role of the post-colonial complex in this reality.

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