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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

handout on Epinomis


Tbilisi State University Ivane Javakhishvili

International Conference
Plato’s Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Context
Souls and bodies in the Epinomis[1]
Dimka Gicheva-Gocheva
Sofia University “Saint Kliment Ohridsky”
dimka.gocheva@gmail.com; gichevagoc@phls.uni-sofia.bg
29 May 2018

(handout)

Some conjectures about the context: the problem of phronesis

   In the very first lines of the late Platonic dialogue the Epinomis there is one word, mentioned twice. The word is phronesis – once it is in the genitive, and once in the accusative case (973 a 1-5): ΚΛ. Πρὸς μὲν  τὸ τῆς ὁμολογίας ἥκομεν ἅπαντες ὀρθῶς, ὦ ξένε, τρεῖς ὄντες, ἐγὼ καὶ σὺ καὶ Μέγιλλος ὅδε, τὸ τῆς φρονήσεως ἐπισκεψόμενοι τίνι ποτὲ χρὴ λόγῳ διεξελθεῖν, ὃ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ἕξιν φαμέν, ὅταν διανοηθῇ, κάλλιστ’ ἔχειν ποιεῖν πρὸς φρόνησιν ὅσην δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ σχεῖν. 
   The hidden focus of the dialogue: not only wisdom and moderation, but also understanding: understanding, understood not only and solely in the strict epistemological sense, but also and primarily as the seed of the dianoetical virtue, which plays such an important role in the ethical treatises of Aristotle.

1.      Debates about the authorship of the dialogue. Arguments and counterarguments for attributing the dialogue to Plato and Philip[i]; conjecture about the possible authorship of Aristotle. Werner Jaeger and many scholars have paid attention to the fact that all the members of the Academy had written dialogues. They had been obliged to do so by their tutor and master[ii]. Aristotle had written poetry and his dialogues did not concede in respect of the prosaic refinement to any of the belletristic masterpieces of Plato[iii]. On the other hand, we don’t know anything about other possible writings of Philip; his highest erudition in the mathematical astronomy and the tables of the correlation between the days in the calendar and the corresponding celestial phenomena, known as parepegmatics[iv]. (Festugière, A.-J. La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste; van der Waerden, Лосев, D. R. Dick vs. Tarán and Hans-Jochan Krämer,  Brisson).
2.      The usual attribution of the dialogue to the hand of Philip and moreover the dating of the dialogue  Epinomis in the decades after the death of Plato, fail to explain  the author’s motive for composing it[v].
3.      The greatest rival of the Academy and personally of Plato in the last two decades of his life was not anyone from the sophists. They had been traveling intellectuals, the best of them were no longer on the scene of life and if not all of them, at least some of them were good philosophers. The greatest rival to Plato and the Academy was Isocrates and his rhetorical school[vi]. The great competition between the two schools probably reached its extreme in the year 355 BC, when Isocrates published his enormous auto-apology Antidosis, in which he re-stated in a neat and systematic form his ideology about the nature of the general education, the higher education as he saw it and the respective disciplines in the curriculum: what is to be studied or not, for how long and for what purpose. The credo of his educational practices and teachings is confessed: the human nature is incapable of real knowledge and cognition[vii].
    [271] I understand it quite simply. Since human nature cannot attain knowledge that would enable us to know what we must say or do, after this I think that the wise (sophoi ) are those who have the ability to reach the best opinions (doxai ) most of the time, and philosophers are those who spend time acquiring such an intelligence as quickly as possible.
     4. De philosophia and Protrepticos[viii]; the  Epinomis and the Academy in Plato’s last years.  Several places in the Epinomis in which the phrase human nature is explicitly mentioned and germane (e.g. in 977 c2 the understanding of the humans is bounded with the ability to conceive of number). 
5. Understanding, possible for everyone
6. Baby-maths will not suffice, as Burnyeat puts it, or correspondingly, some baby-science[ix].  What a mortal man must learn in order to be wise?[x] (973b). Those who strive to live as nobly as they can during their life and at the end to die a noble death have a good hope of attaining after they die everything for which they have striven (973 c).
* understanding phronesis is given in and attainable as a potentiality in every human being (974b So, the dialogue offers an understandable description: starting from the difficulties, endangering the conception of the fetus in the womb, passing through the structure of the Whole and the visible and invisible inhabitants in its realm, adding some new sketches to the explanation of the moving of the celestial dynameis, etc., and finishing with the trip to the Isles of the Blest after the physical death (992b-c).                     
7. the final book of the Laws[xi]; the exclamation of Clinias:
        I hope that this is the goal of your laws, that people will sing hymns to the gods and live purer lives, and then meet with the end that is at once best and finest. (980b) 
         More impressive in the Epinomis is not this undeniable connection with the Laws and the aforementioned exaggerated failure to provide a legislature for something important, although the conversation happens as if on the following day. More remarkable is the general recapitulation of ontological and theological statements, which are fundamental in the previous dialogues. There is a short, but important micro dialogue-precision between Clinias and the Athenian guest (between 979d and 981 b) in which it is clarified that the chief concern of the dialogue is not the finalization of the Laws, but the ambition to sketch a decent account of the most important issues in theology and theogony, and man’s proper conduct, in order for his life to be pious and wise. After having asked for help in his prayer, the Athenian reveals:
    Since people in the past have failed badly in describing the generation of gods and living things, it appears that I must begin by constructing an account based on my previous one, taking up again my attack on impious accounts, and declaring that there are gods who care for all things, great and small, who are inexorable in matters of justice. I suppose you remember, Clinias, since you have received a written record. What we said then was quite true. The most important point was that as a whole, soul is older than any body. Do you recall? You surely must remember. For what is superior, older and more godlike is obviously so in relation to what is inferior, younger and less honorable, and what rules or leads is in every way older than what is ruled or led. (980c-981 b)

The structure of the “beautiful bodies” in the Timaeus and the Epinomis


   In respect of the material structure of the Whole, the Epinomis inherits, first, three great ontological axioms from the previously mentioned works, mainly from the Timaeus. 1. The fundamental dichotomy between the most divine entity, the soul of the cosmos, and the body of the cosmos; 2.The perfect unity between the soul and the body, which every living creature imitates, following the pattern of the beautiful symmetry between them on the cosmic level. This conjunction is needed in order every living being to be perfect, harmonious and healthy one. The soul and the body are initially distinct, but from a certain moment onwards they are inseparable in the created cosmos (36d-e). There are five elemental, stereometric bodies, accordingly to the eikos logos (981b3).  The Epinomis is on the same conceptual track. The first entity, the soul, according to the Athenian guest, is older and invisible, intelligent and intelligible; it shares memory (here remains unspecified with whom or what, but probably with the gods and the invisible daimones), and also it is capable of calculating what is susceptible to odd and even.
    *the five physical elements: fire, water, air, earth and ether. All living creatures reach perfection with one of these bodies ruling or dominating in their material compositions. (981c6-8). The living creatures, whose lives are bounded with the earth, are of course, the humans, the animals, possessing many legs, the reptiles and self-understandable, the plants. They all are genera of living creatures, in the composition of which all the material-corporeal ingredients are used, but under the domination of the earth in the mixture. (981d6) Next in the enumeration of the Athenian guest come the creatures, in whose composition the fire dominates, but also they contain some portions of earth and air, and some miniscule particles of the other (two) basic ingredients. The creatures with this type of corporeal composition are part of the entity of becoming, they are perceptible and visible. In conformity with the Timaeus, but also stepping a little bit aside, the Athenian guest determines that these are the celestial living beings in the divine genus of the stars. Let’s point out and emphasize that this refers to the stars, to the stellar constellations, whereas the movement of the planets requires and correspondingly receives another explanation – both in the Timaeus, and in the Epinomis. These divine and living celestial dwellers – the fixed stars and their constellations possess the most beautiful kind of body and they are endowed with the most blissful and best soul. (981e2-6). The celestial bodies have twofold ontological nature, which imposes the dilemma: whether they are either absolutely imperishable and immortal, or though not eternal in an absolute sense, they have such an eternal duration (from the point of view of the mortals) of their lives, that requires nothing more.
    The perfectly moving celestial bodies are phronimoi. The constant and unchangeable order in their movement testifies that they are understanding. Again, this is in tune with what is said by Timaeus in the dialogue, named after him. There is one more stable bridge, connecting the Epinomis with the core values and the fundamentals of the ontology and the theology of the emblematic dialogues. The celestial bodies possess reason (nous) and the absolute necessity in this cosmic order is guarded by the three Moirai (982 b-c), as the myth of Er narrates in the final book of the Republic. 
     * striking differences between the dialogues in the aspect of the five bodies; the ether;
     **important question. If this is the stereometrical figure of the All, or of the Whole, and as the mathematicians since Euclid has proved, even though it perfectly exhausts any given sphere, better than any other regular polyhedron, how this perfectly congruent dodecahedron correlates with the perfect sphere of the body of the cosmos, so much praised in many instances for its smoothness and evenness, for the conditions, which it creates for the incessant, regular and constant movement of the celestial sphere and the boundless running of time?    
      These questions most probably had been rigorously debated in the Academy, not only because Aristotle might have written some of the chapters of the De caelo still being a member of the school in the life-time of his tutor, but the Epinomis does not pose them at all. There is no stereometry and nothing about the structure of the five bodies is specified.

Conclusion: the invisible inhabitants of the bodies

      The Epinomis holds a position at an equal distance from the spatial concept of the ether both in the Timaeus and in the De caelo and pretty much anticipates the Aristotelian idea of the symphyton pneuma.  
      Instead of mathematical details, the author of the Epinomis aimed at the understanding-phronesis and the believe of the readers: there are spiritual-and-material invisible creatures everywhere in all these spheres of the cosmos.
      The ether is used in the first place and as a primary source for their creation.
       We may suppose that soul fashions living things out of it which (like the other kinds of living things) are for the most part characterized by that substance, but which also possess smaller amounts of the other kinds in order to bond them together. After ether, soul fashions a different kind of living things out of air, and a third out of water… it is plausible that soul filled the entire heaven with living things, employing each according to its character, since all share in life.(984c)
***prototype of divine servants – the good ones, are depicted here, in the Epinomis.
    The daimones, made of ether and air, are wholly imperceptible and invisible. (984e) The demigods, made of water, are “sometimes seen, sometimes hidden and invisible, provoking wonder through its dim appearance” (985c).
         And the divine deeds of all these living, intelligent and sensitive assistants of the gods, shaped by the cosmic soul in all realms of the five beautiful bodies, really do happen, because:
     They have a wonderful intelligence, being of kinds that learn quickly and have good memories, and we should say that they know all our thoughts and both love those of us who are noble and good and hate those who are extremely evil, since already with these kinds we are discussing beings that experience pain. (985a)
***
Text, interpretations and translations:

Text: Leonardo Tarán’s edition of the Greek text in:

Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the Pseudo-Platonic Epinomis. (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society; v. 107). Philadelphia, 1975.

Translations:
The one quoted all over in the paper: the English translation by Richard D. McKirahan, Jr, In: Plato. Complete Works. Edited, with introduction and notes by John M. Cooper. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/ Cambridge.
Novotný, Franciscus. Platonis Epinomis Commentariis Illustrata. Pragae 1960. In aedibus Academiae Scientiarum Bohemoslovenicae.
German translation: EPINOMIS. Anhang zu den "Gesetzen" . Nach der Übersetzung von Franz Susemih. On the internet: http://www.opera-platonis.de/Epinomis.html
The Russian translation by A. N. Egunov: Диалоги Платона. Послезаконие. http://psylib.org.ua/books/plato01/31posle.htm
The French translation and the commentary of Édouard des Places. In: Platon. Oeuvres completes. Tome XII. Les Lois. Livres XI-XII. Epinomis. Paris, 1956, Les belles lettres.
First draft of the Bulgarian translation by Nikolai Gochev. Preprint publication: http://theepinomisofplato.blogspot.com/
***
Interpretations:

Brisson, Luc. Platon. Timée. Critias. Traduction inédite, introduction et notes par Luc Brisson. Flammarion, Paris, 1992.

Brisson, Luc and Walter Meyerstein. Inventing the Universe. Plato’s Timaeus, The Big Bang, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge. State University of New York Press, 1995.

Brisson, Luc. Plato’s Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics. In : Gill, Mary Louis and Pierre Pellegrin (editors). A Companion to Ancient Philosophy. Blackwell Publishing. 2006. p. 212-231.
Brisson, Luc. Le programme d’études des membres du Collège de veille dans l’Epinomis. In : Epinomide. Studi sull’Opera e la sua ricezione. A cura di Francesca Alesse e Franco Ferrari con la collaborazione di Maria Cristina Dalfino. Bibliopolis, 2012.
Brisson, Luc. Epinomis : authenticity and authorship. In : Pseudoplatonica. Akten des Kongresses zu den Pseudoplatonica vom 6-9 Juli 2003, Bamberg. Hrsg. von Klaus Döring, Michael Erler, Stefan Schorn. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2005.       

Burnyeat, Myles. Plato on Why Mathematics is Good for the Soul. In : Proceedings of the British Academy, 103, 1-81.

Burnyeat, Myles. Eikos mythos. In : Rhizai. Vol. II, No2, 2005, p. 143-165.
Burnyeat, Myles. The Theaetetus of Plato. With a translation of the dialogue by M.J. Levett. Hackett Publishing Company. Indianapolis Cambridge, 1990.
Cherniss, Harold. Die Ältere Akademie. Ein historishes Rätsel und seine Lösung. Heidelberg, 1966, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. Übersetzt von Josef Derbolav from the original in English The Riddle of the Early Academy. University of California Press, 1945.
Gill, Mary Louis and Pierre Pellegrin (editors). A Companion to Ancient Philosophy. Blackwell Publishing. 2006.
Dick, D.R. Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle. Ithaca, New York. 1970.
Düring, Ingemar. Aristotle’s Protrepticus. An Attempt at Reconstruction.  Göteborg, 1961. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Düring, Ingemar. Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition. Göteborg, 1957.
Düring, Ingemar. Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens. Heidelberg, 1966.
Festugière, A.-J. La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste. T. 1-4, Paris, 1950-1954.
Jaeger, Werner. Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung. Berlin, Weidmansche Buchhandlung, 1923. English translation: Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of his Development. Oxford. 1934.
Krämer, Hans Joachim. Grundbegriffe akademischer Dialektik in den biologischen Schriften von Aristoteles und Theophrast. In: Rheinisches Museum, 1968, 293-333.
Krämer, H.-J. Philippos von Opus und die “Epinomis”. Geschichte der Griechischen Philiosophie, vol. 3, S. 103-120.
Kraut, Richard. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. 16th printing, 2005. 
Platonis Dialogi secundum Thrasylli Tetralogias Dispositi. Ex recognitione Caroli Friderici Hermanni, vol. I-VI. Lipsiae. In aedibus B.G. Teubneri. MCMXV-MCMVII. Reprinted photographically by D. Papadimas, Athens, 1977.
Rabinowitz, W. G. Aristotle’s Protrepticus and the Sources of its Reconstruction. Göteborg, Berkeley and Cambridge, 1957.
Rose, V. Aristotelis Fragmenta. Leipzig, 1886. Teubner.
Ross, W. D. Aristotelis Fragmenta Selecta, Oxford, 1955. Clarendon.
Untersteiner, Mario. Aristotele. Della filosofia. Roma, 1963. 
Van der Waerden. Title in Dutch; translated in English as Science Awakening* in German Die Erwachende Wissenschaft*; in Russian Пробуждающаяся наука.
Гоготишвили, Л. А. Платонизм в Зазеркалье ХХ века, или Вниз по лестнице, ведущей вверх. Приложение в: Лосев, А. Ф. Очерки античного символизма и мифологии. М., изд. „Мысль“, 1993, с. 922-942.
Лосев, А. Ф. Замечание о „Законах“ и „Послезаконии“. В: Очерки античного символизма и мифологии. М., изд. „Мысль“, 1993, с. 597-599.
Николова, Мария. Бележки относно Платоновите многостени. Послеслов в: Аристотел. За небето. За възникването и загиването. С., СОНМ, 2006. Превод на За небето и встъпителна студия Димка Гочева. Превод на За възникването и загиването Димитър Илиев.



[1]The English translation all over the text: Richard D. McKirahan, Jr, In: Plato. Complete Works. Edited, with introduction and notes by John M. Cooper. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/ Cambridge The paper has been edited by Associated Prof. Svetla Slaveva-Griffin from the Florida State University.



[i]  In the debates concerning the authorship my sympathies are on the side of É. Des Places in his commentary to the French translation in the edition of “Les belles letters” series from 1956, p. 97-105. The stylometric analysis also gives strength to this thesis: see the chapter of Leonard Brandwood ‘Stylometry and chronology’ in The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Ed. by Richard Kraut. 1995, 16th printing, 2005. p. 90-120. Elegant irony for those, who doubt the authorship of Plato, in the chapter, dedicated to Plato’s astronomy in D.R. Dick’s Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle, op.cit. in the bibliography. A third solution of the problem : Brisson, Luc. Epinomis : authenticity and authorship. In : Pseudoplatonica. Akten des Kongresses zu den Pseudoplatonica vom 6-9 Juli 2003, Bamberg. Hrsg. von Klaus Döring, Michael Erler, Stefan Schorn. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2005.       
[ii] Jaeger, Werner, Aristoteles…op. cit. in the bibliography, S. 53-102.
[iii] Cicero had mentioned this in the lost dialogue of his Hortensius. See Jaeger, op.cit., loc.cit.
[iv] D. R. Dick. Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle. Ithaca, New York, 1970. P. 84-85.
[v] Hans-Jochan Krämer. Philippos von Opus und die “Epinomis”. Geschichte der Griechischen Philiosophie, vol. 3, S. 103-120.
[vi] Myles Burnyeat qualifies Isocrates as the arch-rival in Plato on Why Mathematics is Good for the Soul, op.cit., p. 3 and the following. For opposite commentaries see Mauro Tulli and Maddalena Vallozza.
[vii] Isocrates. The quotation in Greek, which follows, is from the TLG edition. The translation in English is the one by Yun Lee Too in The Oratory of Classical Greece. Series editor Michael Gagarin. Isocrates. Translated by David C. Mirhady and Yun Lee Too. University of Texas Press, Austin, 2000. I am indebted also to the comments and the introductions to the different speeches in the Bulgarian translation, made by Violetta Gerdjikova and Nikolai Sharankov in the edition Изократ. Речи. 2008, Колекция Архетип. Фондация за българска литература. But the ironic comments in respect of Isocrates are entirely my responsibility.
[viii] Editions of the fragments of the early writings by Aristotle: in the books by Rabinowitz, Ross, Rose, Düring аnd Untersteiner in the bibliography.
[ix] Burnyeat, Myles. Plato on Why Mathematics is Good for the Soul. In : Proceedings of the British Academy, v. 103, ed. Timothy Smiley, p. 4.
[x] All the quotations from the Epinomis in the paper are from the translation of Richard McKirahan, Jr.
[xi] The place is the same, the dramatis personae are the same, and the conversation continues as if on the following day(s).



Monday, May 21, 2018

some Bulgarian Interpretations


Bulgarian  Interpretations  of  Ancient and Medieval  

                                Philosophy


excerpt from a paper, published in 2001 in Studies is East European Thought, vol. 53 (1-2), p. 75-109

     What is peculiar in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy, interpreted in a small country like ours?
      Standing at the mere edge of the century and trying to grasp the essence of the intellectual tendencies that had evolved here, of course we could make a general retrospection of several prominent scholars who had contributed a lot to the spiritual efforts of our nation. However, most of their works are not translated in any of the used European languages and that’s why we could do something of a broader interest: we could attempt to conceive the deep-lying formative causes which had engendered one or another interpretation; we could try to delineate the background which had forced one or another point of view; we could outline the personal and existential motivation of some Bulgarian historians of philosophy which had determined their choice of certain ancient and medieval philosophical ideas; we could dare to assess their undeniable achievements and unavoidable limits. By all these we could not only represent the particular  - the history of ancient and medieval philosophy made in Bulgaria, but also satisfy the more general need of explanation of the phenomenon history of philosophy.

I.                   The pioneers  of the growing philosophical culture
         
           In the so-called Bulgarian Renaissance several persons with encyclopedical education have mentioned here and there in their writings something of the philosophical heritage of the past. Still, these were merely enthusiastical remarks and exotic pronouncements[i]. The foundations of the history of philosophy as serious philosophic study were laid by Ivan Georgov.  He had been one of the founders of the High Pedagogical school (1889) which later became Sofia University. He had been the professor who taught history of philosophy in it for four decades; person with enormous energy and administrative talent, he had been elected five times to serve as Rector of the University. He had been one of the scholars who had established the learning of philosophy as the prime and most important humanitarian discipline taught at the University.
          He had left 8 big volumes in history of philosophy as manuscripts, but only two of them had been entirely finished and published [ii] - the first and the fourth. His concept of philosophy and history of philosophy is developed and defended in the Introduction to the first volume. According to him philosophy is contemplation and reflection, deprived of all practical interests and every-day application. Philosophy is knowledge searched for its own sake, the knowledge that by its essence and merit is above all the other sciences. Philosophy is the knowledge of truth and cognition.
According to him history of philosophy is the succession of various ideas belonging to different traditions, schools and individuals, but the historian of philosophy ought to emphasize not on the struggle between them, but on the fact that they all asymptotically adhere to the truth - some of them in greater, others in lesser degree. What matters is that they all are in search of the truth and this unites them despite the apparent opposition and at times sharp criticism amongst them[iii].  As a historian of philosophy Ivan Georgov was inevitably influenced by his immediate teacher in Germany  - Rudolf Eucken, but also by Ed. Zeller and Windelband, Alfred Fouillee and Theodor Gomperz. He relies on their authority and often quotes them respectfully. It might seem that he is a follower of Winckelmann as well, because just like him Ivan Georgov speaks with inspiration of the beauty of Greek nature ( just like Winckelmann he had never seen it with his own eyes) and of the magical impact of the Greek climate and geographical peculiarities. They had so great an effect on those who had created art and philosophy there. However on that issue Georgov never mentions Winckelmann explicitly and that is rather an insight of his own.
          But there is something unique which distinguishes his view on the philosophy of antiquity: he stands very far from the europocentrism, which is so wide-spread among the historians of ancient philosophy. On the contrary, he is convinced that philosophy is common euroasiatic spiritual phenomenon and that there is intrinsic congeniality between the philosophizing of ancient India and Greece. Philosophy as the highest striving of man’s reason and spirit has one origin and essence wherever it appears. Ivan Georgov tries to prove this belief of his devoting almost one third of the first volume of  “History of philosophy” to the ancient Indian philosophy[iv]. He had made an interesting comparative analysis between the metaphysical thinking and the logical conceptions in ancient Greece and India, pointing out the resemblances and the differences between them. He also stresses the fact that despite their comparability it would be an oversimplification to think that the one of them had been immediately dependant on the other – neither the Greek thinkers had borrowed some strange knowledge from the Indian sages nor the profound Indian logical systems are taken from the Greeks[v].
        
      
        Ivan Saruiliev had continued the work begun by Prof. Gueorgoff. Prof . Saruiliev had lectured on history of philosophy for 24 years. A considerable part of his interpretative efforts had been directed to the ancient philosophers. He had graduated from classical lyceum in Sofia, and after that had studied philosophy in Oxford and Paris where he had got a doctor’s degree. The strongest influence on his conceptions came from Bergson and Berkeley, whom he translated in Bulgarian.
       In his works Generic ideas and On will we can see the talent he had possessed to develop the view-point, acquired during the years of the philosophical education abroad by his own critical reestimation and enrichment.
       As a historian of philosophy he had been mostly attracted by the ancient thinking and the pragmatism which had been for him a near past.
       His real solidity as an interpreter of the ancient thought is exhibited in The philosophy of Socrates (Sofia, 1947, 275 p.)[vi] . He had been mastering two professional qualities which not so often go together in equality – the perfect handling with the ancient languages (that enabled him to propose a provoking translation of some decisive places in the sources) and the brave philosophical reflection. For him the venerable past of antiquity is the greatest rational challenge for mankind and that’s why it must be not only properly understood as something precious in itself, but also it must be commeasured with the following valuable rational systems in the history of the western thinking.
       According to Ivan Saruiliev philosophy and respectively history of philosophy begin with the analysis of the phenomena of the consciousness. This understanding poses Socrates as the father of our European philosophy. In his respectably professional study The philosophy of Socrates Prof. Saruiliev represents not only the rare combination of detailed classical erudition, linguistic talent and sharpness of the speculative conceptualization. Naturally, he had been well acquainted with the French and the English philosophical traditions, but this had not prevented him from the acquisition and the sophisticated usage of the typically German dialectics. That is evident especially in the pages dealing with the inseparability of the moral teaching and the dialectical method in Socrates’ philosophy.  In his interpretation Prof. Saruiliev insists that the most important idea in the philosophy of Socrates is his theism, exposed in the conception of the teleological essence of nature and in the hints of existence of only one omniscient and omnipotent god, who appeared in his individual consciousness as the famous prohibitive daemon. What is more, thus that consciousness became aware of itself and anticipated the concept of self-consciousness.
        Unfortunately, Prof. Saruiliev could not fulfill his intentions to write similar studies on Plato and Aristotle. When in 1953 again the severe repressions had began against all the intellectuals and political figures expressing their disapproval and doubts in “the luminous future”, Ivan Saruilieff had been one of the University professors, who were most crudely injured. He had not only been expulsed from the University, but also his personal archive had been confiscated and a;most entirely deleted.

       In this presentation of the scholars who devoted all their intellectual capacities and personal energy for the constitution of the philosophical culture in Bulgaria, we are obliged to include the two most influential thinkers in the period of the status nascendi.They are Tsecko Torbov and Dimitar Michaltchev. Both of them were not exactly historians of philosophy and humble interpreters, but used a great deal of the ancient and medieval conceptual heritage in the philosophical constructions of their own.
       Tsecko Torbov had been a German alumnus and one cannot imagine a more faithful upholder of the Kantian and neo-Kantian tradition than him[vii]. He lectured mainly in philosophy of mind, critical philosophy and philosophy of law[viii], but in his teaching  and writings he referred constantly to the thinking of the past. He had translated in Bulgarian The method of Socrates by Leonard Nelson[ix]. He prepared and in 1949 finished a manuscript of a historical study of the period which attracted his analyses mostly. This manuscript was published only in 1996. It is Fundamentals of the history of philosophy. Ancient philosophy and philosophy in the middle ages (Sofia, University Publishing House, 1996, p. 154)[x]. Here a homogenous interpretation is given of the reasoning of these epochs seen from the neokantian point of view. Its concept of history of philosophy presupposes that philosophy is the strict system, which searches for the self-understanding of reason through pure concepts. Accordingly history of philosophy must provide the answers given in the previous mental traditions to the question: how is possible cognition? That explains why Tsecko Torbov treats the ancient and medieval philosophizing as an approach to the development of the concepts almost regardless of the persons who had expressed them. He is preoccupied with the seeking of the forerunners who almost had reached the conceiving of analytical and synthetical, a priori and a posteriori cognition, the possibility of cognition and the boundaries of reason.

       Dimitar Michaltchev had gained the recognition of being the patriarch of the Bulgarian philosophizing. He is the most prolific author in our philosophical literature, the soul of the enormous organization occupied with the publishing of Philosophical review – the most respectable Bulgarian review in the humanities published 6 times a year from 1928 till 1943. He had studied and received his doctoral degree in Germany[xi], where had shifted gradually from neo-Kantian to Remkean  positions. As a professor at the University and author of numerous papers, articles and books Dimitar Mikhalchev devoted his analyses mainly to the theory of knowledge, philosophy of logic and cognition,  history of epistemology and theory of truth. Besides that he had written much on philosophy of history and sociological ideas, exercised smashing criticism on certain occult theosophical school that had caught popularity in the 30-s in this country, and also he had kept uninterruptedly polemical dialogue with the Marxists here – he had denied that Marxism is philosophy at all senso stricto, but he had admitted that in the explanation of the social reality and the historical processes it is worth listening to this ideology.
       In all his lectures and writings he had plumped boldly in history of philosophy in order to prove what he had maintained, but to be true he is not a paradigmatic historian of philosophy. He had written studies as Time, succession and moment (in which he resorts to the Eleatic conception of time), The problem of the relativity of truth in the teaching of the ancient Greek sophistsNew rethinking of an old sophism, Could a man bathe into the same river twice?, Being and consciousness, The “essence” of  things and its “manifestations”, The origin of the logical thinking. The functional semantics and the problem of the unreal formation of concepts[xii]. His own quite individual philosophizing rethinks the past and implements it in the contents of the voluminous works Form and relation (sec. ed. 1931) and The traditional logic and its materialistic justification (published only in 1998)[xiii].  Not only in these, but also in numerous other papers [xiv] he constantly refers to the eleatics, the sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant and Hegel. Prof . Michaltchev is not the kind of interpretator, aiming at the immanent objective understanding of the thinking of the past. He is rather one of the famous European thinkers who absorb and transform the ideas of their great predecessors instead of making only punctual study of them. Just like Aristotle and Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida, Prof. Mikhalchev exemplifies the rule that the independent thinker cannot be a proper and strict historian of the thinking of the previous philosophers. The elaborateness of his own system, the peculiar point of view of his makes the references to the past not a cautious dealing with objective mental facts, but transforms them in useful elements for the development of his own ideas. That is evident especially in the analyses made by him on the problems of the conceiving of reality as a psychophysical parallelism, the essence of truth, the philosophical interpretation of logic, the reasoning of the eleatics, the sophists and above all the philosophy and logic of Aristotle[xv].

II.                Under the auspices of Marxist  ideology (1944-1989)

The brutal imposition of Marxism in all spheres of public life  - politics, economy, education – have had hard consequences. Several times in all schools and Universities had been made purges ( in 1944, 1946, 1948, 1953 and 1954). In the beginning, in  September – December 1944  the most prominent collaborationists  to the previous regime among the University staff and the directors of the schools had been not only fired, but also prosecuted and  in 1945 sentenced to death by the so called “Law-court of the people”. For some years Bulgaria had remained a country with relatively democratic pluralistic political system (relatively, because only left-wing parties were allowed to continue to exist) . Nevertheless, one by one all leaders of the non-communist political parties were swept from the political scene by absurd trials and murders despite their deputy’s immunity. A great number of intellectuals, priests, reserve-officers, teachers and directors of schools, and even communist-activists who were unlucky enough to be well educated, were arrested and vanished tracelessly. Without charge and trial thousands of people were killed or sent to concentration camps ( by the way they have existed till the early 70-s) and most frequently that was in result of personal revenge  or  in application of the uncontrollable revolutionary terror proclaimed a long time ago. In  1946 The Referendum declared that Bulgaria is no longer a monarchy, but becomes a “democratic republic”. In December 1947 the new Constitution had been promoted, all the political parties except the BCP (Bulgarian Communist Party) and BAPA (Bulgarian Agrarian People’s Alliance) were set out of law. In 1948 were created the Law for the public education and the Law for the high University education. All these had given repeatedly the start of new repressions and persecutions – thousands of teachers, educational regional inspectors, University professors, publishers, writers were fired and forbidden to continue their work for a life time. The grounds for that were different – of course, all of them had been punished for being “ bourgeois reactionaries”, but the proofs for that were sometimes ridiculous: some of them had been treated as enemies of “the building of socialism” only because they have studied in Western countries and mastered perfectly foreign languages[xvi].        
       Similar had been the fate of the University professors, whom we have mentioned above. Three of them had been fired in 1953. Prof .Saruiliev  had been not only expulsed, but also forbidden from teaching and publishing for a life-time. Prof. Torbov had been allowed to continue to teach only German. Prof. Mikhalchev had been allowed to continue to be only a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (thanks to the fact that he had been ambassador in the Soviet Union and had accepted the historical materialism as a relevant sociology), but several months later, when he presented his manuscript of the The traditional logic… [xvii], after a scandalous public discussion he had been condemned  for his retrograde thinking and expelled from the Academy as well. Several times they had been searched without an order and certain papers of theirs had been confiscated[xviii]. Nevertheless, they continued to work courageously “for the drawer” – something well familiar for many their “brothers in fate” in the ex-socialist countries – without knowing whether their writings would reach to the readers[xix].
        The flourishing  diversity of points of view in the humanities and the variety of cultural and intellectual trends between the two wars had been crudely eradicated. Only one possibility had been left: to praise the only true and veritable philosophy, to speak and write, to create science and art in accordance with its ideology. No wonder then that for almost 40 years (from the establishment of “the power of the people” till the early 80-s ) in  our country ( as in all the rest  former socialist countries) had appeared books, films, theater-performances, exhibitions etc., the loyalty of which to the communist regime had been beyond of doubt. For almost 40 years the slightest innocent digression in a direction different from the grandeur of Marxism was taken as very suspicious.
        In this atmosphere of totalitarian ideology the teaching and study of history of philosophy was totally neglected as useless and moreover, as a potential threaten in front of  “the building of socialism”[xx].  
         In similar conditions in all countries from the “socialist camp” appeared several histories of ancient – and some of medieval – philosophy, which resembled one another like the drops of water. Although written by different authors, all of them are made in the same way, as if following the same prescription: each issue must be posed predominantly in the light of  “the fundamental philosophical question” which has either materialistic or idealistic solution; the ideas of the past have to be presented in very brief and schematic account without whatsoever authentic Greek resource [xxi]; preferable attention is to be paid to the progressive materialistic ideas of the so called ‘line of Democritus’ and  respectively, the hostile idealistic ‘line of Plato’ is to be ignored or blamed; the indispensable instrument  of the ‘analysis’ must be the usage of the supreme criteria – the opinions of ‘the classics of Marxism’ - and   correspondingly the labels expressing everything in accordance with these unquestionable ‘criteria’: ‘materialism / idealism’, ‘sensitive  / rational’, most of all ‘progressive or reactional?’, ‘favorable for the slave-owners or disastrous for the people?’. Especially with regard to the ancient philosophy the faithful Marxist had to know by heart several quotations from the doctoral thesis of Marx (on Epicurus), from the Philosophical notebooks by Lenin and from Anti – Duering by Engels. These quotations had to be present in all studies and articles dealing with the thinking of antiquity, regardless of their particular topic. That resulted in a stupid – but absolutely unavoidable – quoting of Engels’ opinion of Heraclitus for example in a study on Plato.
      It was unthinkable to explain the origin or the essence of given idea otherwise than by its dependence on the social and political positions of the thinker who conceived it. The opposite procedure was also obligatory. The philosophical systems of the past were not only conceived as entirely determined by the “material conditions of life” and “the productive means”. They also had to be revealed from their outer form and their contents   had to be reduced to the social dimension, to their probable political application. And last but not least, whatever was the issue, whoever was the interpreter, the question in view from the past had to be juxtaposed with its answer given by the “only true and veritable” philosophy and if there was not such an answer available in Marxism, it meant that such a question cannot be posed at all.
          In that pattern were created  ‘histories’ of ancient philosophy or studies on particular problems by many authors, whose chief concern was to remain as close as possible to the holy paradigm. In our country this typical Marxist procedure in the making of history of ancient philosophy was represented in the works of several University professors: Prof. Grozju Grozev, and the academicians Nickolai Iribadjakov and Angel Bunkov.
          Prof. Grozev prepared an anthology which followed the Marxist prescription  and represented only the “good ones” . This anthology is entitled The ancient Greek materialists. Fragments and texts from  Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Epicurus (S., 1958)[xxii]. He also obediently provided works in which admired Democritus and condemned Plato – ‘The materialism of Democritus’ (published in German, 1958) [xxiii]and The philosophy of Plato(S., 1984)[xxiv].
          Angel Bunkov in the 40-s had been an assistant-professor of Prof. Mikhalchev and had a very promising future as an exponent of the Remkean philosophy, but one night he had fallen asleep and on the next morning he had awoken as a convinced Marxist. Since then he had subdued his talent and sharp thinking to his new philosophical credo. From his previous conceptual period he preserved the interests to the problems of epistemology and logic, but the world-view and the ideology he had accepted made him interpret and think about everything in harmony with the prescriptions of ‘the only true and veritable philosophy’. In the prolific heritage of his philosophical writings in respect of the ancient  thinking  for example we can pick up the study ‘The problem of the individual and the universal in the logic of Aristotle’[xxv], which perfectly conforms to what was demanded by the dominating ideology. Understandably, such a scholar becomes academician.

           Nickolai Iribadjakov had also become an academician thanks to his peculiar  qualities: enough talent for  a proper reasoning, undeniable abilities devotedly to teach and write on philosophical matters in accordance with the ‘only true and veritable philosophy’, inexhaustible energy for its propaganda  and for the conceptual smashing of everything different from it. At the University he passionately lectured on the discipline Criticism against the contemporary  bourgeois philosophy . In regard of the ancient thinking he created his enormous The sociological thought of the ancient world in three volumes and [xxvi]– as could be expected -  a study of the father of the ‘materialistic line’ – Democritus – the laughing philosopher (S., 1982). With  these  writings of his he could become a champion of the utmost fulfillment of the Marxist prescriptions. He superseded all the rest authors who had written similar books in similar manner especially in one thing: in each discussed issue he used the following proportion – one tenth of the whole exposes the thinker of the past and the remaining nine tenths give the solution to his problems in ‘the only true and veritable philosophy’. In order to be fair, we have to acknowledge that he possesses another remarkable differentia specifica, which distinguishes him from the rest. He supersedes even many younger interpreters by his acquaintance with the most important contemporary writings, written in the wide-spread European languages on the same subject on which he wrote. All of them had to be well examined, in order to be mercilessly refuted. This is something for which the new generation of Bulgarian humanitarians feels very indebted to him. In the totalitarian times very few of the significant Western studies particularly in the humanities reached the libraries and it was forbidden by law privately to possess such books. A very limited number of readers had an access to this literature, kept in the special reserves of the libraries. Thanks to the energy of Nickolai Iribadjackov, who felt obliged belligerently to criticize everything published abroad by non- Marxist authors in the enormous specter of issues on which he wrote, many readers at least got some idea of what was going outside.

         However, in the 70-s and more remarkably in the 80-s the circumstances changed a little bit. Gradually appeared the symptoms of the impoverishment of the planned economy, more and more the inefficacy of all mechanisms of managing, control and even the uselessness of the suppressions became evident. In the sphere of art and philosophy, in the humanities and in the way and quality of life it was already possible to make thinks different from the previous monopoly of the totalitarian ideology. Socialism was very far from whatever normalization but at least it had lost its most grotesque features.            
         Of course, in the sphere of the humanitarian studies and in history of philosophy as well that made possible the appearance of other kind of works, standing at a distance from the boringly uniform interpretations, totally determined by the ideological prescriptions. The period of the transition from the absolute dominance of  Marxism-Leninism to the liberated writings of the younger generation of Bulgarian scholars in the 80-s  is  closely connected with the interpretative energy of Prof. Radi Radev. He has taught since 1965 (to the present day) history of the ancient, medieval and Renaissance philosophy at Sofia University. Being a respectable and authoritative scholar, he has succeeded to prove the study of the thinking of the past as necessary and indispensable, as having value and merits in itself. He resumed the obligatory reference to the authentic ancient sources, which previously had been substituted by the blunt quotations from “the classics”. He provided two substantial and representative anthologies: Ancient philosophy and Medieval philosophy[xxvii], which gather the most important excerpts from the most important works in philosophy, created in the antiquity and the middle ages. He wrote a very exhaustive  - in respect of the objective factual information - History of the ancient philosophy[xxviii] in two volumes (the first volume deals with the Greek philosophy from its beginning to the Socratic schools and the second one – from Plato to Carneades), a survey of the Philosophy in the Hellenistic epoch[xxix], and a series of minor works, devoted to prominent ancient and medieval philosophers: Socrates, Heraclitus, Epicurus, The Latin Aristotle (Peter Abaelard)[xxx]. His greatest concern has always been the understanding and the interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition. Naturally, in the 60-s he could publish only Materialistic statements in the gnoseology of Aristotle[xxxi] and From the history of the Arab philosophy[xxxii] ( engaged mainly with  the medieval Islam aristotelism). Inevitably he had to hide his sympathy for the peripatetic tradition. His earlier study of its evolution from Aristotle to Etienne Gilson is published under the title Critique of neotomism, but this is perspicuous for all who have lived in that part of the world  - in order to treat something different from the officially recognized in a manner different from the officially tolerated, and above all  to publish such thing, the author was forced to use the hypocritical ‘criticism’ or ‘critique’. Later on appeared Aristotle. The historical fate of his philosophy (exploring again the development of the peripatetic tradition from its founder’s ideas to the neotomistic thinkers) and the popularizing  Aristotle[xxxiii].
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[i] More on that in:  Boian Angelov, Antichnata filosofia prez b”lgarskoto V”zrazhdane,S., 1996, 122 p. ( Boyan Angelov, Ancient Philosophy in Bulgarian Renaissance, PH “Bogianna”, Sofia, 1996, 122 p.)
[ii] Prof. Dr. habil. Ivan Georgov, Istoria na filosofiata, I tom Drevna filosofia, I otdel : Uvod. Filosofskite v”zgledi u starite iztochni kulturni narodi. II otdel : Gr”tska filosofia. P”rvi period: Predsokratovska filosofia.,1926,Sofia, Universitetska biblioteka No 49, 697 p. (Ivan Gueorgoff, History of philosophy, vol.I,  
 Ancient philosophy I, Section one: Introduction. Philosophical views of the ancient cultural people in the far East. Section two: Greek philosophy. First period: Presocratic philosophy. Sofia, University Library  No 49, 1926, 697 p.) Istoria na filosofiata.tom ІV, Nova filosofia do Kanta. Chast I: Nova filosofia do Khobsa.S., 1936, 460 с. (History of philosophy, vol. IV, Modern philosophy to Kant, Chapter I: Modern philosophy to Hobbes, S., 1936, 460 p.)
     Also he had published studies on Giordano Bruno, Roger Bacon and Tomaso Campanela, Herbert Spencer  and Kant,   and a history of the modern philosophy from Kant to Hegel (Istoria na novata filosofia ot Kant – Hegel,S., 1920, 160 p. )
[iii] Op. cit. Vol. . I, Introduction.
[iv] There is also a brief review of the most important ideas in ancient China, Egypt and Babylon, and the teaching of Zoroaster as well, but according to him all they are closer to theogony and mythology than  is the speculative Indian philosophy.
[v] See especially p. 133-135, 315 ff., op. cit.
[vi] Ivan Sar”iliev, Filosofiata na Sokrat, S., Universitetska biblioteka № 352, 1947, 275 s.
[vii]  In that respect see his studies from the 20-s and 30-s published lately in: Izsledvania v”rkhu kriticheskata folosofia. S., 1993, 261 s. (Studies in critical philosophy, ed. By Valentina Topuzova and Dimitar Tsatsov, University Publishing House, 1993, 261 p.)
[viii] Filosofia na pravoto I iurisprudentsia, S., 1930 , S., 1992, “Vеk 22”, s. 120. ( Philosophy of right and jurisprudence, S. , 1930, sec. ed. 1992, “Vek 22”, S., 120 p.
[ix]  Leonard Nelson, Sokratoviat metod,  S., 1993, Liubom”drie,
[x]  Tsecko Torbov, Osnovi na istoria na filosofiata. Antichna filosofia I filosofia na srednite vekove. S., University Publishing House,1996, p. 154.
[xi] Philosophische Studien. Beitrage zur Kritik des modernen Psychologysmus. Leipzig, 1909, 575 S.
[xii] All of them published in : Dimitar  Mikhalchev. Dialectic I sofistika. Etiudi na razni filosofski temi, University Publishing House, 1994, 461 с.
[xiii]  DIMIT’R  Mikhalchev,  Forma I otnoshenie, S., т.1, 1914, 760 с., second improved ed.,1931, University Library, No 107, 547 p. Idem, Traditsionnata logika I neinoto materialistichesko obosnovavane, S., 1998, Zakharii Stoianov PH, 581 p.
[xiv] Some of them republished in  Dimitar Mikhalchev, Izbrani s”chinenia, S., 1981, “Nauka I izkustvo”, с. 438 ( Dimitar Mikhalchev, Selected writings, S.,1981, “Science and art”, 438 p.
[xv] See Form and relation, op. cit.  and  The traditional logic…, op.cit.
[xvi]  Among the most paradoxical deeds in the times of the repressions was the expulse from the University and the schools of thousands of students and teachers,  who had taken part in the last phase of the Second World War – what mattered was not they had fought against the fascist alliance, but that they had been officers in the Army. Needless to say, the children of all these thousands of repressed people were forbidden to study at the University for a life-time (in accordance with the Law for the public education and the Law for the high University education). A very detailed information and analysis of that period could be found by the foreign reader in A short history of modern Bulgaria by Richard J. Crampton,  Cambridge University Press, 1987. Published also in Bulgarian by the Open Society PH, S., 1994. 368 p. Particularly  with regard to the injures of the University professors, students, teachers, directors and inspectors in secondary schools in the 40-es abundant facts and document evidence is given in Vesela Chichovska. Politikata sreshtu prosvetnata traditsia, S., 1995, 457 p. ( Vesela Tchitchovska :Politics against the educational tradition, Sofia, University Publishing House, 1995, 457 p.   
[xvii] Op. cit.
[xviii] Prof. Torbov had been searched  or  - what seems more polite- visited without invitation by  notorious “scholars-party functionaries” in 1973. They had never returned  to him what they had taken from his archive.  See the Introduction to his History and theory of right by  Neno Nenovski, Sofia, 1992, Publishing  House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, p. 7. ( Tsecko Torbov : Istoria I teoria na pravoto, S., 1992. Ed. And  introduction by  Prof. Neno Nenovski.)
[xix] In fact some of these writings were published after their death: Prof. Torboff’s History and theory of right and Prof. Michaltchev’s  The traditional logic and …. . What is more, in the so called “discussion” meant to bring to an end his intellectual carrier in 1954, he had not been allowed to answer to the criticism, exercised  by the young Marxists at the University. He had only to listen to them and keep silence. However, he answered them profoundly and with dignity in a manuscript “for the drawer”. Of course, his response appeared only in 1995: Listen to the other side as well, S., University Publishing  House (Chuite I drugata strana), 392 p.
[xx] Even in the early 80-s a student in philosophy could hear from his colleagues confessing Marxism that in order to  understand the skeleton of the ape one has to know in advance the skeleton of man. That wisdom ascribed to Marx saw the philosophy of the past as the skeleton of the ape and it is needless to say which one philosophy was compared to the skeleton of man.
[xxi] The knowledge of the classical languages was considered to be a bourgeois excess and that’s why all the classical schools were closed in 1948. It had been a real disaster especially when one pays attention to the fact that in Bulgaria even original Greek texts had been published in the 40-s in Bibliotheca Graeca et Latina, published by Metodi B”rdarov and Todor Donchev. In it has appeared about 25 small, but important texts. Later it has been impossible to resume this again.
[xxii] Drevnogr”tskite materialisti. Fragmenti I textove ot Heraklit, Anaxagor, Empedok”l , Demokrit I Epikur. S., 1958.
[xxiii] Der Materialismus des Demokrit. Das Altertum, Band  IV, Heft 4, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1958.
[xxiv] Filosofijata na Platon.S., BAN, 1984, 189 p.
[xxv] In the Annuary of the Sofia University, Faculty of Philosophy,  Book – Philosophy, S., 1986, vol.76, ,.p. 5-55. In Bulg. Problemata za obshtoto I edinitchnoto v logikata na Aristotel.
[xxvi] The sociological thought of the ancient world, vol.I : Egypt, Sumer, Babylonia, S., 1978, 511 p. Vol. II: In the bosom of philosophy. Greece (from Hesiod to Democritus), S., Partizdat, 1981, 535 p. Vol.III: Sophistry and materialism. Metoikos in philosophy, Partizdat, S., 1982, 435 p.
[xxvii] Radi Radev (ed.): Antichna filosofia. S., 1977, 1982, 1988, 1994, p. 514. Introduction and notes by Radi Radev, translation by Christo Danov. Radi Radev (ed.): Srednovekovna filosofia, 1987, 1994, p. 576.   . Introduction and notes by Radi Radev, translation by Christo Danov and Temenuga Angelova.
[xxviii] Istoria na antichnata filosofia. S., Nauka I izkustvo, tom I, 1981, p. 370; tom II, 1983, p.451.  
[xxix]  Filosofiata na elinizma. S., Nauka I izkustvo, 1973, 309 p.
[xxx]  Sokrat. Zhivot I delo. S., 1980, Partizdat, 176 p.; Epicurus, S., Partizdat, 1976, p.; The Latin Aristotle, S., Partizdat, 1982, 175 p.; Heraclitus. S., Partizdat, 1986, 209 p. All of these books have as appendixes translations of selected places and fragments from the most important writings of these philosophers.
[xxxi]  Materialisticheski polozhenia v gnoseologiata na Aristotel, S., 1961, Nauka I izkustvo,p.
[xxxii] Iz istoriata na arabskata filosofia. S.,1966, Nauka I izkustvo, 263 p.
[xxxiii]  Aristotel. Istoricheskata s”dba na negovata filosofia. S., 1989, University Publishing House, 417 p. Aristotel. S., 1988, Narodna prosveta, 215 p.