The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring of Bachelard’s study L’eau et les rêves: essai sur l’imagination de la matière, Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige and Thaulow’s La Rivière Simoa en hiver

Author(s): Marija Simonowić / Language(s): English Issue: 03 (30)/2016

This paper examines the relationship between Bachelard’s (Gaston Bachelard, 1884–1962) philosophical comprehension of the water element, Debussy’s (Claude Debussy, 1862–1918) musical interpretation of the water phenomenon and Thaulow’s (Frits Thaulow, 1847–1906) intellection of the same element in painting. More precisely, having in mind the snow as one of aggregate states of water, I will explore via examples of Bachelard’s study on water and dreams – L’eau et les rêves essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Water and Dreams. An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, 1942), Debussy’s composition Des pas sur la neige (Footprints in the snow, Book I, 1909–1910) and Thaulow’s piece La Rivière Simoa en hiver (Winter at Simoa river – from a series of images of the Simoa river, unknown date), the reciprocal relationship of their artistic perception, as well as their interpretation of the water phenomenon. These three authors have devoted a significant “expanse” of their oeuvres to their interpretation of the phenomenon of water. In the mentioned “expanse”, their creative interpretations encounter, intertwine, and interrelate. In other words, in this “expanse” of interpretation of the water psyche, we can detect the correspondence between Bachelard’s, Debussy’s and Thaluow’s poetics of the water vastness. Therefore, through the analytical and comparative approaches, my aim is to emphasize the correspondence among Bachelard’s (philosophical), Debussy’s (musical) and Thaulow’s (painterly) representations of the water element and to demonstrate which compositional and expressive methods Debussy employs to embody his understanding of the phenomenon in question.

Феномен и схема. Подстъпи към една възможна критическа феноменология

Author(s): Kristiyan Enchev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2017

This article elucidates why the Kant’s transcendental scheme in its orthodox type is not a functionally reliable bridge in the transition from pure cognitive forms to real experiental “crystallizations”, and how this can be compensated by its transformation into a phenomenal structure including as its own elements regionally relevant kinaesthetic organization and “encoded ideas”. Ideas undergo deformalization – from “purely regulatory” schemes of reason, they go to constitutive structures that comprise regional figurative adhesions and as such receive regional “encoding” – contentful concretization. This type of rethinking of the transcendental scheme also leads to a significant change in the way in which local phenomena should be understood (such as, for example, socialization and education) so as to guarantee their rethinking in the transition from the empirical (but hermeneutically grasped manifold) to the phenomenal integrity in the encoded ideas as a regionally relevant, concrete “figurative kinship”.

На границата на интердисциплинарния подход към историята – насилието и някои ключови моменти от европейското минало през приз­мата на един опит за историко-психологически анализ

Author(s): Dimitar Petkov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2018

The methods of the historical analysis are not sufficient to explain the past, because there is no history without psychology and there is no psychology without history. That is the main thesis of the present article. From that point of view, the author proposes an interdisciplinary explanation of the key moments from the European history, which combine the historical with psychological, as well as the philosophical analysis. These moments are: the rise of European civilization / the domination of European civilization over the rest of the world, the war and the violence that this civilization produces as a destructive force. The author tries to explain the destructive moments in the European history by means of the archetype “shadow”, which Carl Gustav Jung uses as а part of his theory for the collective unconscious. In the analyses some of Sigmund Freud’s opinions for the violence of the Human nature are used. On the base of the interdisciplinary analysis the author tries to explain the co-existence of creative and destructive principles in the course of the development of European society.

Перформативи и метаконстативи

Author(s): Atanas Anov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2018

Studying speech acts is an interesting method in the study of language. This article adopts J. L. Austin’s understanding of speech acts and it aims to present his ideas for performatives and to introduce new notion “meta-constatives”. To accomplish this goal first we will briefly introduce analytic philosophy’s context, with which we can explicate philosophy of ordinary language, speech acts and in particular performatives. In the second part of the article meta-constatives will be presented. The later are utterances, with which we can show how things in the world must be. In the second part of the article we will also turn our attention towards imperative sentences, through which we build meta-constatives. Also, a relation between performatives and meta-constatives will be created. Finally, the article points out differences between meta-constatives and imperatives.

„Бесове“: психиатрия, антропология, метафизика

Author(s): Nina Ivanova Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2018

The proposed text discusses the adequacy of the psychiatric interpretation of Dostoevsky’s works, and especially of his novel “The Devils”. The author analyses the views of the most popular literary critics insisting on the psychopathological characters as an expression of the inner life of Dostoevsky himself, as well as some Russian psychiatric texts on the same topic. The main idea of the article is that the pathology of Dostoevsky’s fictional characters is rooted in the spiritual – and not in the psychological – sphere and despite the close resemblance between some clinical cases and the behavior of these characters, the latter is due to the conception of the demonic mangodhood and its different incarnations.

“Everyone Says I-Love-You” An Analysis of the Declaration of Love

Author(s): Rafał Nahirny / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and John L. Austin’s studies have offered a new concept of language. Should one, in the light of The Philosophical Investigations and How to Do Things With Words, limit himself or herself exclusively to investigating the manner in which feelings are spoken about, whilst remaining tacit as to the very nature of feelings? Can love be talked about using the language of analytic philosophy? The Author’s quest is one forgiving replies to those queries; to this particular end, declaration of love is made subject to detailed analysis from the standpoint of Wittgenstein’s concept of linguistic games and Austin’s speech act theory.

Paradigm Shift in the Understanding of the Creative Abilities of Consciousness

Author(s): Helena Knyazeva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The understanding of human consciousness as a kind of computer is insufficient and even irrelevant, taking into account the modern advances in the development of cognitive science. The author argues that a certain paradigm shift in the understanding of human consciousness and its creative abilities takes place. Consciousness is rather dynamic and autopoietic entity that is embedded into environment and intimately related with the human body. Consciousness is embodied, situated and enactive. A great contribution to this conception of human consciousness (mind) is made by Francisco Varela and his followers. Autopoiesis of consciousness means that it is able to maintain its integrity in the processes of self-organization in the permanently changing environment. An autopoietic activity of consciousness it directed to the search of elements that are missed, it longs for completing integral structures. For these reasons, it is possible to create a new, fresh view on the creative activities of consciousness, if we base our notions on the modern theories of complexity, dynamic chaos and self-organization. In the theoretical frames, chaos acquires a creative image; it is not simply a destroying force. Complex structures emerge in chaos and out of chaos. Chaos is organized and it organizes. When destroying, it builds. Chaos has many facets. Chaos is a way of renovation of complex organizations. A periodical immersion of human consciousness into chaos is a way of stimulation of its cognitive and creative activities.

War and Peace: the Interpenetration (WWI in a New Anthropological Perspective)

Author(s): Lazar Koprinarov / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The paper seeks to investigate some of the anthropological consequences of the First World War, which was not simply just another but the first total war. It was without a clear dividing line between the front and the rear; it was with long duration, involving the mobilization of millions of people, most of whom not specialized in conducting military actions. In this perspective, the paper analyses some specific modes of the interpenetrations of peacetime’ attitudes and frontline’ experiences. Special attention is paid to the rearrangement of the human sensorium of the soldiers in the trenches of the First World War. Another subject is the correspondence between soldiers and their families in the rear. The letters contain both the experience from the front and the peacetime attitudes of the soldiers. Their language is shaped by the tension between the two worlds – of the war and of the peace.

Epistemology in the context of social construction of reality

Author(s): Angel Tsvetkov / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

Contemporary cognition theory claims to be a separate branch, separate from philosophy. Would that mean that the other major pillar ontology would also become independent? What will be left of the philosophical body in that case? This, however, will not be a topic to be dealt with here, but only with this side of epistemology that is relevant to anthropology and the social sciences. The context of anthropology will give another status of knowledge theory to the human world, which is socially constructed. The problem of reality and truth will be related to what people believe and adhere to.

Пост-индустриален капитализъм, колективна идеология и обществото на алтернативната истина

Author(s): Alain Klein / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2019

The aspirations of post-colonial political elites in Africa can be summed up as the quest for development. This quest since independence, involves, in part, the pursuit of a common citizenship, shared nationality and common interests and values, the evolution of which provide the bedrock for mutual co-existence and the commitment of all to the common good. It also involves the establishment of institutions that will guarantee peace, justice, and fairness. However, the process of realizing these goals of broadening the scope of socio-political interactions have been vitiated by our colonial experiences and consequently unleashed certain centrifugal forces that have made the quest for community development in most African states a daunting task.The divisive tendencies of the colonialists created communal identities, which provided a new symbolic and ethnocentric focus for each group where none existed and thus complicated the task of welding diverse elements in each colony into a coherent whole. This became the source of the proliferation of many life threatening conflicts which has impeded the process of community development in Africa. But why has these conflicts persist in spite of the several attempts to meet them? This paper argues that the above account fails because it ignores the values Africans place on human worth given expression in their communal context. The attempt here is to explore South Africa`s indigenous unifying social ethic of Ubuntu in arriving at a humane society that has a participatory value; founded on co-operation, charity, reconciliation and justice rather than the individualism of the West. This paper will, therefore, employ the analytic descriptive method to examine the above in a manner many scholars have ignored in an attempt to develop a viable sense of community in Africa. Hence, it is expected that this paper will initiate a perspective that will challenge extant interpretation of this discourse.

Кант и развитието на геометрията

Author(s): Anguel S. Stefanov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2020

The aim of the paper is to show that the standard criticism directed to Kant that he allegedly accepted the uniqueness and objectivity of the three dimensional Euclidean geometry is irrelevant. Long before the birth of non-Euclidean geometries it occurred to Kant that extensions could exist with other properties and dimensions, which describe other possible worlds. And long before Hilary Putnam to explain the differentiation of the notion of straight line that obeys two types of laws – geometrical and physical, Kant has presented the possibility of this differentiation in his first Critique.

Естествени видове и емергентни характеристики. Натуралистки опит за консолидиране на двата концепта

Author(s): Kaloyan Nechev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2020

The specialized understanding of natural kinds (NK) has a theoretical impact on the concept of emergent properties (EP) in particular, as well as on the understanding of the phenomenon of emergence as a whole. The problem is closely related to the tendencies towards their essentialization and theoretical demarcation. The theoretical tension is inevitably manifested in the attempts to consolidate the two concepts, which are generally considered in essentialist terms. A naturalistic, non-essentialist, approach could integrate them into a unified theoretical method, avoiding the problems of their traditional analysis. In the article, NK will be considered as reaction clusters, and EP as complexes of reaction clusters. Both will be directly related to the introduced concepts of reaction potential and stability. The relationship between these concepts will be defined and operationalized, thus explicating the result, considering the phenomenon of emergence as enhancing the reaction potential of a given structure or a complex system, which is in a proportional relation to its net stability.

Българската политическа култура: пластове на формиране

Author(s): Dimitar Ganev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2023

In the article, I outline the main layers that are fundamental to the construction of Bulgarian political culture. At the beginning of the text, I clarify the concept of political culture. The examined layers are four: geographical, Balkan, Orthodox, and national. These layers, in particular, have a determining influence on the character of Bulgarian political culture in the modern history of Bulgaria.

Gaston Bachelard’s Psychoanalysis of Reason and Its Practical Dimension

Author(s): Marta Ples-Bęben / Language(s): English Issue: 48/2024

The aim of the article is to analyze Gaston Bachelard’s psychoanalysis of the scientific mind in its practical dimension. Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, Bachelard deployed his own method to analyze the scientific unconscious, populated by epistemological obstacles inhibiting scientific cognition. As this article seeks to demonstrate, Bachelard’s psychoanalysis aims to purify, and thereby streamline the cognitive mind on two levels: individual and historical. Bachelard’s methodological experiment, transferring psychoanalysis into the spheres of the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, turns out to be, at the same time, an instance of the architecture of a scientific mind, a polemic with cognitive realism and empiricism, and a postulate of analytical therapy in the field of cognition.

Zoroastrianism. Innovative and Transformative Religion in the Ancient World

Author(s): Masoud Afzadi / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2024

This article seeks to cast a new light on an ancient religion, one that stands as one of the most innovative and oldest religions in the world. It has introduced profound concepts such as human rights, eschatology, life, light and fire, humanity, free will, love, and many other valuable notions to various religions. Major religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have also been influenced by these concepts. The article posits that Zoroastrianism and the religious heritage of ancient Iran essentially constitute a global legacy for all of humanity.

Съдържание на свитъци I–XXX

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English,Bulgarian,French,Macedonian,German Issue: 30/2024

Ретроспективен анализ на изследователската методология

Author(s): Vesselin Panov Loulanski / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2024

The object of the present study is the theory of knowledge in respect to economics. The subject of the study is the organization of the process of scientific knowledge as resources, activities and results, with a specific emphasis on its rational technological form, which received scientific recognition as a methodology. The attempt to transition from philosophical knowledge about methodology to concrete algorithms on the way to creating new knowledge is not new in methodological literature. In the present study, however, a retrospective analysis of the evolution of scientific methodology is carried out, pleading for greater rigor in handling the inherited methodological tools. It reveals not only the methodology of scientific research, but also scientific policy (especially in teaching and in the entrepreneurial application of science), as a connecting link between the needs of practice and the development of cutting-edge science. Even if the decision on the normativity of the methodology is not fully accepted, it is enough to create a desire among researchers in economics to organize and observe the necessary order in the process of scientific knowledge.

THE ARTISTIC EXPRESSION OF THE ROBBE-GRILLETIAN FANTASY: LES ROMANESQUES

Author(s): Alina-Cornelia Muşat / Language(s): French Issue: 40/2025

According to the narrator of Romanesques, the symbolic appropriation of fantasies could be achieved within the framework of creative work by only one possible means: the telling of these fantasies. Convinced of the cathartic force of writing, one of the objectives for his autobiographical cycle is the staging of the narrator's fantasy. The Robbe-Grilletian body, always described through the narrator's obsessions and labile memory, is a fantasized body, subject to the vagaries of his imagination and the virulence of his desires.

POSTURES OF THE BODY IN MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, TRAVEL JOURNAL TO ITALY THROUGH SWITZERLAND AND GERMANY

Author(s): Elena Jebelean / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 40/2025

A traveler of the late Renaissance, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne was also an avant la lettre anthropologist, deeply concerned with all that is human. Accompanied by close companions and servants, he travelled through northern Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, reaching Rome, where he submitted the first two volumes of his Essays, recently completed, for Vatican censorship. His journey also had therapeutic purposes – crenotherapy and balneotherapy—prescribed for the kidney stones that tormented him. No longer a young man – he was already 47, only 11 years left to live – he experienced additional health issues along the way, such as migraines and toothaches, yet they did not diminish his intellectual vitality. Among many other observations, his travel journal not only records his reflections on his own body and its reactions to various treatments but also mentions the customs of the countries he traveled through regarding the body as a biological, ritualistic, aesthetic, political, and economic entity. A researcher of various aspects of reality, this uomo universale maintained a perpetually fresh perspective on the world, further enriched by the experience of travel. Rejecting the well-trodden paths of prejudice, he remained open to an active life, profoundly engaged in the pursuit of a full existence.Following his journey, which lasted one year and seven months (June 22, 1580 – November 30, 1581), Montaigne revisited and expanded the first two volumes of his Essays and wrote the third, reinforced in his belief that body and soul deserve equal consideration and care. He consistently emphasized that, regardless of the trials we face – many of which are beyond our control – our response to them, our state of mind, remains within our power. The most significant is the attitude we choose to endure what life brings. The ability to know ourselves as much as possible, in order to align our decisions with our nature, helps us live properly and face death at peace with ourselves.

Прокурорът, който спря да чете: правосъдието между буквата на закона и звука в съдебната зала

Author(s): Stoyan Stavru / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2025

This study examines the shift in the prosecutorial strategy of Ernest Pinard in the cases against Gustave Flaubert (“Madame Bovary”) and Charles Baudelaire (“Les Fleurs du mal”), offering an interpretation that explores the ways in which legal professionals read literary works. Using examples such as the poet-detective Gabriel Syme, a character in G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday”, and the investigating monk William, a character in Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”, the article investigates potential connections between poetry and law. These connections create legal spaces where both laughter and music become possible. Particular attention is given to the relationship between text and music within the framework of court proceedings (the so-called “courtroom acoustics”) as well as in the formation of judicial practice (understood as a harmonious performance).