Post by superman on Nov 21, 2007 1:22:27 GMT -5
I think I will work in the next months for this:
Tell me your opinion which is very, very important for me!!!! ;D ;D
Next to Byzantium, medieval Bulgaria represented the second
major foundation for the development of the Eastern Orthodox
philosophical tradition. It not only played an important role as
a mediator in the dissemination of Byzantine thought among
Central and East-European peoples; it also parented philosophical
ideas that later found resonance in the cultural life of Continental
Europe. St. Constantine-Cyril the Philosopher and St. Clement
of Ochrid, Constantine of Preslav, and Johan Exarch, the socalled
‘Bulgarian Heresy’ or Bogomil movement as well as its
opponent Presbyter Cozma, Varlaamite Gregorius Akindin, and
the hesychastes Theodosius of Turnovo, Patriarch Euthemius, and
Gregorius Tsamblak all made their way into the European cultural
landscape of the Middle Ages. After decades of resistance, at the
end of 14th century Bulgaria fell under Ottoman rule. The cultural
centers were destroyed, and Bulgarian thinkers who survived were
either silenced by exile or used their talents while abroad for the
benefit of other countries and peoples – Russians, Serbs, etc. Forcefully
incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria was cut off
from European civilization for almost five centuries. During its
belated Cultural Revival of the 18th and 19th centuries, Bulgaria
was burdened by problems already overcome in other parts of
Europe. The only possible way to merge the pantheistic, materialistic,
folklorist, and theological-philosophical culture of medieval
Bulgarian society with the modern philosophical thinking of
Western Europe was by a migration of ideas. Bulgaria’s intellectual
community therefore experienced many of these ideas ‘embryonically’.
This gave rise to a number of peculiarities concerning the
choice of approaches and ideas by the Bulgarian philosophical
community between the liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule in
1878 and the establishment of the Communist regime in 1944. In
this paper, I will attempt to outline a number of paradoxical features
found in the reception of foreign philosophical ideas in Bulgaria
during this period.
A prerequisite for the reception of modern European philosophical
ideas in Bulgaria was the formation of national educational
and cultural institutions; these institutions were a product
of Bulgaria’s nascent civil society. During the 1870s, Bulgarians
had already developed an educational system parallel to its official
state system. This comprised approximately 1500 schools: fifty
elementary schools; secondary schools in Bolgrad (1859), Plovdiv
(1860) and Gabrovo (1872–1873); pedagogical schools in Shtip
and Prilep; theological schools at the Petropavlov Monastery, Rila
Monastery and Samokov; and a commercial school in Svishtov.
Also, 131 reading-clubs were founded, as well as the Bulgarian
Literary Society (Braila, 1869), which later was to become the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. During 1870–1872, the Exarchate
held the functions of an all-Bulgarian national religious and culturaleducational
institution. If to all this we add the extant system
of scholarship, it becomes clear how as early as the concluding
phase of its Cultural Revival Bulgaria managed to institutionalize
European values, albeit of lesser educational standard, in a wide
range of activities.
The development of a new intellectual culture in Bulgaria was
influenced first of all by Greece. Bulgaria’s educational system
was founded on three principles: the religious doctrines of Eastern
Orthodoxy; the attempt to revive the glory and traditions of classical
antiquity; and the introduction of academic disciplines oriented
towards society’s practical demands for technical knowledge. After
the 1830s, Greek influence on Bulgaria’s cultural life gradually
receded; Greece was reduced to a mediator of French culture in
Bulgaria. And after the foundation of French educational institutions
on the Balkans, Greek education lost its importance altogether.
By means of these schools, France strategically made cultural and
educational inroads into the Orient, redirecting the interest of the
local populations to its own ideals.
A second typical example of foreign cultural influence was
demonstrated by Russia. After its defeat in the Crimean War,
Russia forfeited its role as a protector of the Southern Slavs.
In consequence, the Russian Emperor issued a special decree as
early as December 21, 1856, which introduced measures to facilitate
in Russia the education of Christians under Ottoman rule.
The measures of the French and Russians proved to be effective.
Between 1840 and 1870, 191 Bulgarians known to have attained
higher educational degrees, 41% were found to have studied in
Russia; 31% attended French educational institutions, of which
18.3% were in France and the rest in French schools on the
Balkans; 6.5% in Austria; 4.3% in Czech schools and the same
percentage in Greek schools. As a rule, theologians and pedagogues
were educated in Russia, and physicians were educated in France.
This is one reason – together with other social factors – why the
first modern Bulgarian authors concerned with philosophical issues
were almost without exception physicians or theologians, either by
education or profession. After the Liberation from Ottoman Rule
in 1878 and especially after the Unification of the two Bulgarian
states in 1885, the influence of German culture became more
pronounced. For example, from 118 students studying abroad with
scholarships during the academic year of 1895/96, fifty-four were
educated in German-speaking nations, either in Germany, Austria
or Switzerland. Among them, sixteen students studied philosophy
and pedagogy. Even more revealing is the data concerning dissertations
in philosophy completed abroad between 1878 and 1948.
Thirty-nine of the sixty-seven dissertations (58%) were completed at
fourteen different universities in Germany. Leipzig is first with ten
dissertations, followed by Jena and Munich with five dissertations
each. In second place is Switzerland, with twenty-one dissertations
(31%), of which seventeen were completed in the German and four
in the French language. France, the United States, Austria, Italy,
Hungary, Croatia, and Russia each hosted one dissertation. German
predominance is even more impressive if the works are classified
according to the language, which determines the real parameters
of a philosophical tradition. Fifty seven dissertations (85%) were
defended in German, five in French (7.5%), and one each in English,
Italian, Hungarian, Croatian, and Russian – (1.5%) dissertation
per language. Approximately 92% of the philosophy professors at
Sofia University before 1944, as well as teachers at philosophical
preparatory high schools in Sofia, studied or specialized in Germany, Switzerland or Austria. We need little more evidence to
prove that during this period German influence on the philosophical
life of contemporary Bulgaria bordered on a monopoly. Here, it is
perhaps appropriate to note that despite the overriding influence of
German philosophy, thinkers in Bulgaria followed with interest the
philosophical developments in France, England, Italy, Russia and
other European countries. Leading Bulgarian philosophers did not
hesitate to explore philosophical movements outside of the German
philosophical tradition.
These socio-cultural circumstances imply a certain pre-given
orientation in Bulgaria’s reception of foreign philosophical ideas.
They also partially predetermine the development of the national
philosophical culture. Modern Bulgarian philosophy was greatly
influenced by the Enlightenment, which struck firm roots in
Bulgaria during the second half of 19th century; this was at a
time, however, when the positivistic-naturalistic style of philosophy
was predominate in Western Europe. Due to diverse influences,
Bulgaria’s philosophical culture lacked a firm grounding in naturalscientific
thought. Instead, it was mainly oriented toward a general
world-view and elaborated through intellectual intuitions, existential
in nature. When institutionalized as a scientific method, the
prevailing intellectual culture remained within the boundaries of
classical rationality. A brief look at the biography of the first scholar
representative of Bulgaria’s modern culture will suffice to convince
us of this fact.
One of the leading thinkers of modern Bulgarian intellectual
history was Petar Beron (1799–1871).1 He studied philosophy in
Heidelberg, and completed his doctoral degree in medicine in
Munich, where he attended the lectures of Schelling. He was
familiar with Hegel’s grandiose system of philosophy. He mastered
ancient and modern Greek, Latin, German, and French. During
the 1840s he worked in Paris – the cultural center of Europe.
Although schooled in a European milieu, Beron’s erudition was
resistant to mere imitation. Albeit often with anachronistic tendencies,
Beron forged a bridge between Bulgaria’s intellectual revival
and the scientific values of modern Europe; this led to independent
and original work, which aimed at creating a philosophical
system. We can mark here the first paradox in the Bulgarian recep tion of European philosophical thought. While in Western Europe
post-Hegelian philosophy rejected the idea of an all-encompassing
system of thought, Petar Beron constructed a grandiose philosophical
system of nature he called Panépistème. Beron believed that
such an all-encompassing system would unite the different scientific
disciplines, and overcome the shortcomings found both in speculative
philosophy and empiricism as embodied in positivism.2 In his
attempts to unite the ‘empirical’ and the ‘theoretical’, Beron turned
to the French Encyclopedists. Beron also followed the classical
tradition of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz in adhering to the
mathematical model. ‘All-Science’, as he termed it, captured its
subject, that is the laws of being and cognition, within the norms of
the correspondence theory of truth. According to Beron, the world
of ideas was “nothing else but the material world photographed
in every individual’s sensory organs.” Images caused by an object
were its ideal copies; the conformity of an image to an object
reflected the degree of truthfulness inherent in our knowledge. There
is one more curious detail. Asked to name his ideal philosopher, this
Bulgarian, who had been taught during his youth in Greek schools,
compared his work to the universalism of Aristotle. Beron’s own
monumental philosophical treatises, however, were not the flame
which ignited Bulgaria’s cultural development. Beron achieved this
with his famous Fish ABC Book of 1824 which introduced the
Bulgarian language into pedagogical teaching practice.
Although during the next decades the notion of philosophy as
‘All-Science’ quickly faded, the image of philosophy as a basic
science called upon to epistemologically guarantee the truthfulness
and practical validity of individual scientific endeavors was
preserved. Epistemology thus took central stage in Bulgarian philosophy.
Here, we confront the second paradox in the Bulgarian
reception of European philosophical thought. After the Liberation
of Bulgaria in 1878, intellectuals studying abroad returned from
Germany and Switzerland with degrees in philosophy. Many of the
scholars were adherents of neo-Kantianism and the ‘psychological
parallelism’ of W. Wundt. The intellectual circle around the
poet Pencho Slaveykov tried to adopt certain Nietzschean ideas.
The authors of these Western European philosophical movements,
however, were rarely translated. At the same time, there appeared at least 25 translations of excerpts and works written by John Stuart
Mill and Herbert Spencer. Between 1881 and 1906 they were the
most translated philosophers in Bulgaria. Furthermore, Bulgaria
was not unaware of the fashionable trends in philosophy prevalent
elsewhere in Europe, such as naturalism and positivism which
during the second half of 19th century dominated the European
philosophical scene.
Why is it that the representatives of classical British empiricism
were translated in Bulgaria, rather than authors from France, with
which Bulgaria had more intense socio-cultural contacts? I will offer
two explanations. In spite of the powerful reorientation of Bulgarian
philosophical thought away from Russia toward Germany, Russia
retained it role as anmediator of ideas between Bulgaria and Europe.
Comte was partially translated in Russia, while Spencer was fully
translated, as was John Stuart Mill, with the sole exception being
his writings on socialism. The second, more important reason is
found in the formula ‘religion – philosophy – science’, which was
related not only conceptually to positivism, but also socially to
Bulgarian reality of the time. At first glance, positivism may be
understood as a continuation of the tradition of the Enlightenment.
In this sense, Bulgarian interest in it is only natural. By flirting
with science and living parasitically off its achievements, positivism
became an authority. Positivism promised much; it was taken to be
the vanguard of European science, for it offered rigorous scientific
knowledge without having to account for its neglect of the philosophical
content of natural scientific inquiry. This, however, is only
one side of the story. Bulgarians were attracted to English classical
positivism also because of its attitude towards religion; its representatives
differentiate themselves from the later Comte and his positive
religion with its final goal to be the basis of a future theocracy.
Last but not least, Spencer won followers in Bulgaria thanks to his
evolutionary approach.
Although positivism had impact on the broad public in Bulgaria,
there emerged no substantial followers other than A. Nedyalkov. He
tried to ‘merge’ positivism with neo-Kantian teleological thought
in the social sciences. One more feature of English influence in
Bulgaria is worth mentioning here. Ivan Gyuzelev (1844–1916)3
was considered by D. Mikhalchev as “no doubt the most distinguished exponent of idealistic philosophy in Bulgaria, the scholar
who produced the first accomplished philosophical system in the
Bulgarian language.” Gyuzelev’s writings reveal great knowledge
of the tradition of British empiricism from George Berkeley to
John Stuart Mill. Standing in this tradition, Gyuzelev formulated
his own views. Although Gyuzelev writes: “I have to confess that
the theory I stand by is not a new one. The basis of this theory
is laid out as early as the beginning of the 18th century by the
renown Irish philosopher George Berkeley,” he had an independent
mind. For example, Gyuzelev called to question three fundamental
ideas of Berkeley: he found fault in Berkeley’s interpretation of the
way the outside world exists; he considered that it did not stem
from the very logic of the statement, but by necessity Berkeley
presumed the existence of God, which discredited him theoretically
because he abandoned the original principle of philosophy; lastly,
the nominalist theory of abstraction needed correction. To remove
these deficits, Gyuzelev made use of ideas from Hume, Spencer,
John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, Ernst Mach, P.G. Tait, and
others. As the initial cause of all existence, he posited the idea
of one Absolute Objective Consciousness, whose product was an
individual human consciousness that itself has two modes of existence.
Absolute Consciousness first forms sensations in individual
consciousness, from which individual consciousness forms ideas.
Tell me your opinion which is very, very important for me!!!! ;D ;D
Next to Byzantium, medieval Bulgaria represented the second
major foundation for the development of the Eastern Orthodox
philosophical tradition. It not only played an important role as
a mediator in the dissemination of Byzantine thought among
Central and East-European peoples; it also parented philosophical
ideas that later found resonance in the cultural life of Continental
Europe. St. Constantine-Cyril the Philosopher and St. Clement
of Ochrid, Constantine of Preslav, and Johan Exarch, the socalled
‘Bulgarian Heresy’ or Bogomil movement as well as its
opponent Presbyter Cozma, Varlaamite Gregorius Akindin, and
the hesychastes Theodosius of Turnovo, Patriarch Euthemius, and
Gregorius Tsamblak all made their way into the European cultural
landscape of the Middle Ages. After decades of resistance, at the
end of 14th century Bulgaria fell under Ottoman rule. The cultural
centers were destroyed, and Bulgarian thinkers who survived were
either silenced by exile or used their talents while abroad for the
benefit of other countries and peoples – Russians, Serbs, etc. Forcefully
incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria was cut off
from European civilization for almost five centuries. During its
belated Cultural Revival of the 18th and 19th centuries, Bulgaria
was burdened by problems already overcome in other parts of
Europe. The only possible way to merge the pantheistic, materialistic,
folklorist, and theological-philosophical culture of medieval
Bulgarian society with the modern philosophical thinking of
Western Europe was by a migration of ideas. Bulgaria’s intellectual
community therefore experienced many of these ideas ‘embryonically’.
This gave rise to a number of peculiarities concerning the
choice of approaches and ideas by the Bulgarian philosophical
community between the liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule in
1878 and the establishment of the Communist regime in 1944. In
this paper, I will attempt to outline a number of paradoxical features
found in the reception of foreign philosophical ideas in Bulgaria
during this period.
A prerequisite for the reception of modern European philosophical
ideas in Bulgaria was the formation of national educational
and cultural institutions; these institutions were a product
of Bulgaria’s nascent civil society. During the 1870s, Bulgarians
had already developed an educational system parallel to its official
state system. This comprised approximately 1500 schools: fifty
elementary schools; secondary schools in Bolgrad (1859), Plovdiv
(1860) and Gabrovo (1872–1873); pedagogical schools in Shtip
and Prilep; theological schools at the Petropavlov Monastery, Rila
Monastery and Samokov; and a commercial school in Svishtov.
Also, 131 reading-clubs were founded, as well as the Bulgarian
Literary Society (Braila, 1869), which later was to become the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. During 1870–1872, the Exarchate
held the functions of an all-Bulgarian national religious and culturaleducational
institution. If to all this we add the extant system
of scholarship, it becomes clear how as early as the concluding
phase of its Cultural Revival Bulgaria managed to institutionalize
European values, albeit of lesser educational standard, in a wide
range of activities.
The development of a new intellectual culture in Bulgaria was
influenced first of all by Greece. Bulgaria’s educational system
was founded on three principles: the religious doctrines of Eastern
Orthodoxy; the attempt to revive the glory and traditions of classical
antiquity; and the introduction of academic disciplines oriented
towards society’s practical demands for technical knowledge. After
the 1830s, Greek influence on Bulgaria’s cultural life gradually
receded; Greece was reduced to a mediator of French culture in
Bulgaria. And after the foundation of French educational institutions
on the Balkans, Greek education lost its importance altogether.
By means of these schools, France strategically made cultural and
educational inroads into the Orient, redirecting the interest of the
local populations to its own ideals.
A second typical example of foreign cultural influence was
demonstrated by Russia. After its defeat in the Crimean War,
Russia forfeited its role as a protector of the Southern Slavs.
In consequence, the Russian Emperor issued a special decree as
early as December 21, 1856, which introduced measures to facilitate
in Russia the education of Christians under Ottoman rule.
The measures of the French and Russians proved to be effective.
Between 1840 and 1870, 191 Bulgarians known to have attained
higher educational degrees, 41% were found to have studied in
Russia; 31% attended French educational institutions, of which
18.3% were in France and the rest in French schools on the
Balkans; 6.5% in Austria; 4.3% in Czech schools and the same
percentage in Greek schools. As a rule, theologians and pedagogues
were educated in Russia, and physicians were educated in France.
This is one reason – together with other social factors – why the
first modern Bulgarian authors concerned with philosophical issues
were almost without exception physicians or theologians, either by
education or profession. After the Liberation from Ottoman Rule
in 1878 and especially after the Unification of the two Bulgarian
states in 1885, the influence of German culture became more
pronounced. For example, from 118 students studying abroad with
scholarships during the academic year of 1895/96, fifty-four were
educated in German-speaking nations, either in Germany, Austria
or Switzerland. Among them, sixteen students studied philosophy
and pedagogy. Even more revealing is the data concerning dissertations
in philosophy completed abroad between 1878 and 1948.
Thirty-nine of the sixty-seven dissertations (58%) were completed at
fourteen different universities in Germany. Leipzig is first with ten
dissertations, followed by Jena and Munich with five dissertations
each. In second place is Switzerland, with twenty-one dissertations
(31%), of which seventeen were completed in the German and four
in the French language. France, the United States, Austria, Italy,
Hungary, Croatia, and Russia each hosted one dissertation. German
predominance is even more impressive if the works are classified
according to the language, which determines the real parameters
of a philosophical tradition. Fifty seven dissertations (85%) were
defended in German, five in French (7.5%), and one each in English,
Italian, Hungarian, Croatian, and Russian – (1.5%) dissertation
per language. Approximately 92% of the philosophy professors at
Sofia University before 1944, as well as teachers at philosophical
preparatory high schools in Sofia, studied or specialized in Germany, Switzerland or Austria. We need little more evidence to
prove that during this period German influence on the philosophical
life of contemporary Bulgaria bordered on a monopoly. Here, it is
perhaps appropriate to note that despite the overriding influence of
German philosophy, thinkers in Bulgaria followed with interest the
philosophical developments in France, England, Italy, Russia and
other European countries. Leading Bulgarian philosophers did not
hesitate to explore philosophical movements outside of the German
philosophical tradition.
These socio-cultural circumstances imply a certain pre-given
orientation in Bulgaria’s reception of foreign philosophical ideas.
They also partially predetermine the development of the national
philosophical culture. Modern Bulgarian philosophy was greatly
influenced by the Enlightenment, which struck firm roots in
Bulgaria during the second half of 19th century; this was at a
time, however, when the positivistic-naturalistic style of philosophy
was predominate in Western Europe. Due to diverse influences,
Bulgaria’s philosophical culture lacked a firm grounding in naturalscientific
thought. Instead, it was mainly oriented toward a general
world-view and elaborated through intellectual intuitions, existential
in nature. When institutionalized as a scientific method, the
prevailing intellectual culture remained within the boundaries of
classical rationality. A brief look at the biography of the first scholar
representative of Bulgaria’s modern culture will suffice to convince
us of this fact.
One of the leading thinkers of modern Bulgarian intellectual
history was Petar Beron (1799–1871).1 He studied philosophy in
Heidelberg, and completed his doctoral degree in medicine in
Munich, where he attended the lectures of Schelling. He was
familiar with Hegel’s grandiose system of philosophy. He mastered
ancient and modern Greek, Latin, German, and French. During
the 1840s he worked in Paris – the cultural center of Europe.
Although schooled in a European milieu, Beron’s erudition was
resistant to mere imitation. Albeit often with anachronistic tendencies,
Beron forged a bridge between Bulgaria’s intellectual revival
and the scientific values of modern Europe; this led to independent
and original work, which aimed at creating a philosophical
system. We can mark here the first paradox in the Bulgarian recep tion of European philosophical thought. While in Western Europe
post-Hegelian philosophy rejected the idea of an all-encompassing
system of thought, Petar Beron constructed a grandiose philosophical
system of nature he called Panépistème. Beron believed that
such an all-encompassing system would unite the different scientific
disciplines, and overcome the shortcomings found both in speculative
philosophy and empiricism as embodied in positivism.2 In his
attempts to unite the ‘empirical’ and the ‘theoretical’, Beron turned
to the French Encyclopedists. Beron also followed the classical
tradition of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz in adhering to the
mathematical model. ‘All-Science’, as he termed it, captured its
subject, that is the laws of being and cognition, within the norms of
the correspondence theory of truth. According to Beron, the world
of ideas was “nothing else but the material world photographed
in every individual’s sensory organs.” Images caused by an object
were its ideal copies; the conformity of an image to an object
reflected the degree of truthfulness inherent in our knowledge. There
is one more curious detail. Asked to name his ideal philosopher, this
Bulgarian, who had been taught during his youth in Greek schools,
compared his work to the universalism of Aristotle. Beron’s own
monumental philosophical treatises, however, were not the flame
which ignited Bulgaria’s cultural development. Beron achieved this
with his famous Fish ABC Book of 1824 which introduced the
Bulgarian language into pedagogical teaching practice.
Although during the next decades the notion of philosophy as
‘All-Science’ quickly faded, the image of philosophy as a basic
science called upon to epistemologically guarantee the truthfulness
and practical validity of individual scientific endeavors was
preserved. Epistemology thus took central stage in Bulgarian philosophy.
Here, we confront the second paradox in the Bulgarian
reception of European philosophical thought. After the Liberation
of Bulgaria in 1878, intellectuals studying abroad returned from
Germany and Switzerland with degrees in philosophy. Many of the
scholars were adherents of neo-Kantianism and the ‘psychological
parallelism’ of W. Wundt. The intellectual circle around the
poet Pencho Slaveykov tried to adopt certain Nietzschean ideas.
The authors of these Western European philosophical movements,
however, were rarely translated. At the same time, there appeared at least 25 translations of excerpts and works written by John Stuart
Mill and Herbert Spencer. Between 1881 and 1906 they were the
most translated philosophers in Bulgaria. Furthermore, Bulgaria
was not unaware of the fashionable trends in philosophy prevalent
elsewhere in Europe, such as naturalism and positivism which
during the second half of 19th century dominated the European
philosophical scene.
Why is it that the representatives of classical British empiricism
were translated in Bulgaria, rather than authors from France, with
which Bulgaria had more intense socio-cultural contacts? I will offer
two explanations. In spite of the powerful reorientation of Bulgarian
philosophical thought away from Russia toward Germany, Russia
retained it role as anmediator of ideas between Bulgaria and Europe.
Comte was partially translated in Russia, while Spencer was fully
translated, as was John Stuart Mill, with the sole exception being
his writings on socialism. The second, more important reason is
found in the formula ‘religion – philosophy – science’, which was
related not only conceptually to positivism, but also socially to
Bulgarian reality of the time. At first glance, positivism may be
understood as a continuation of the tradition of the Enlightenment.
In this sense, Bulgarian interest in it is only natural. By flirting
with science and living parasitically off its achievements, positivism
became an authority. Positivism promised much; it was taken to be
the vanguard of European science, for it offered rigorous scientific
knowledge without having to account for its neglect of the philosophical
content of natural scientific inquiry. This, however, is only
one side of the story. Bulgarians were attracted to English classical
positivism also because of its attitude towards religion; its representatives
differentiate themselves from the later Comte and his positive
religion with its final goal to be the basis of a future theocracy.
Last but not least, Spencer won followers in Bulgaria thanks to his
evolutionary approach.
Although positivism had impact on the broad public in Bulgaria,
there emerged no substantial followers other than A. Nedyalkov. He
tried to ‘merge’ positivism with neo-Kantian teleological thought
in the social sciences. One more feature of English influence in
Bulgaria is worth mentioning here. Ivan Gyuzelev (1844–1916)3
was considered by D. Mikhalchev as “no doubt the most distinguished exponent of idealistic philosophy in Bulgaria, the scholar
who produced the first accomplished philosophical system in the
Bulgarian language.” Gyuzelev’s writings reveal great knowledge
of the tradition of British empiricism from George Berkeley to
John Stuart Mill. Standing in this tradition, Gyuzelev formulated
his own views. Although Gyuzelev writes: “I have to confess that
the theory I stand by is not a new one. The basis of this theory
is laid out as early as the beginning of the 18th century by the
renown Irish philosopher George Berkeley,” he had an independent
mind. For example, Gyuzelev called to question three fundamental
ideas of Berkeley: he found fault in Berkeley’s interpretation of the
way the outside world exists; he considered that it did not stem
from the very logic of the statement, but by necessity Berkeley
presumed the existence of God, which discredited him theoretically
because he abandoned the original principle of philosophy; lastly,
the nominalist theory of abstraction needed correction. To remove
these deficits, Gyuzelev made use of ideas from Hume, Spencer,
John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, Ernst Mach, P.G. Tait, and
others. As the initial cause of all existence, he posited the idea
of one Absolute Objective Consciousness, whose product was an
individual human consciousness that itself has two modes of existence.
Absolute Consciousness first forms sensations in individual
consciousness, from which individual consciousness forms ideas.