Yvanka B. Raynova

A peculiarity of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy is his effort to elaborate a hermeneutic phenomenology of the Self on the roots of reflexive philosophy. Thus, the problem of responsibility, which Ricoeur debated on different occasions, appears in the context of the Self as an acting, suffering and capable subject, which is not only responsible for its own acts but has also duties in respect to others. Ricoeur's hermeneutics of "l'homme capable" analyzes responsibility on different levels – historical, ethical, political, juridical etc. The main thesis of the author is, that this levels of responsibility constitute the different dimensions of the will of the Self "to engage itself with" which should be recomposed hermeneutically in order to capture responsibility as an integral phenomenon. At the difference of some authors who offer only a partial interpretation of the problem of responsibility in Ricoeur's work, the following article aims to give a holistic one by reconstructing it through the complex evolution of Ricoeur's philosophical writings.

The aim of the following paper is to show that it is not possible to penetrate into the depths of Nikolay Raynov's universe and to comprehend its wholeness, without posing and investigating the question about the origin or the foundation of his various creative occupations, i.e his novels, philosophic and theosophic writings, art history and critique, paintings, decorative design etc. This question is far too complex to be answered briefly without being simplified, and therefore two main directions will be articulated: the recption of Orphism developed in Plotinus' and Porphyry's Neoplatonism – which is the basis of modern Theosophy –, and the synthetic understanding of art, which puts Raynov's views in close proximity to Wassily Kandinsky and Nicholas Roerich.

After the end of the era of "absolute idealism", philosophy is falling into a sort of "identity crisis," which requires the constant rethinking of its essence as a specific type of knowledge, and also of its subject and method. As a result of the attempts to "save" philosophy, meta-physics was replaced by ontology, the absolute - by the attempts of an "open system" and/or integral thinking, and the place of the identity of truth, good and beautiful were taken by axiology. Consequently, notions as world, horizon, life, life world, self, alterity, and values became of crucial importance. In this context, the author argues several interrelated theses: Firstly, that in post-Husserlian phenomenology, especially in its French versions, a reinterpretation of the notion of "life world" based on Heidegger Being in the World is done, which turns in a sense against Husserl's transcendental justification of phenomenology. Secondly, this reinterpretation gradually leads to a departure from Heidegger's ontology towards the practical philosophy and axiology, respectively, towards the values denied by Heidegger. Thirdly, the living world becomes a crossroads between the problems of theoretical and practical philosophy, as it stands at the center of value discourse.

On the Value of Freedom: Ricoeur's Value Theory vs. Sartre's?The following article is an attempt to reconstruct Sartre's and Ricoeur's theories of value in its main features, to compare it and to make some conclusions in regard of Ricoeur's Sartre reception. Thus, the task is to fill a gap in contemporary research since Sartre's value theory has been rarely examined, while that of Paul Ricoeur continue to be a blind spot within the study of his work; Ricoeur's Sartre reception has been hardly raised, but not in a explicit axiological context. In contrast to Françoise Dastur the following analysis is showing that in Le volontaire et l'involontaire Ricoeur not simply sided with Marcel by arguing against Sartre, but that he tried to mediate between the positions of the two thinkers. Finally, the author shows that Ricoeur's axiological concept, which emerged from this exchange, was retained partially in his later works precisely in that part which brought him closer to Sartre and detached him from Marcel, namely – freedom as a value and as a fundamental human capability of creation and invention of new moral and social values.

The Critique of the Transcendental Ego: On Sartre's and Ricoeur's Heidegger InterpretationsAccording Otto Pöggeler Heidegger's main brake with Husserl consists in his rejection of the tran-scendental constitution conceived as the life of an "absolute Cogito," replaced by Heidegger by the "factual life" from which phenomenology should always begin. The author of this paper argues that the problem about the starting point of phenomenology also appears later in the debates between Heidegger and Sartre, as well as in Ricoeur's Heidegger interpretation. Thus, the aim of the article is to analyze to what extent the positions of Heidegger, Sartre, and Ricoeur contradicts or even exclude each other, and to what extent they cross or eventually complement each other. The inquiry shows that Heidegger's accusation of Sartre's forgetting of the question about the sense of being of Dasein is unjustified. Equally untenable is Sartre's critique of Heidegger, that he had bypassed the Cogito as a starting point of the existential analysis, because Sartre's transcendence of the Cogito, which pretends to involve the transphenomenal Being, cannot be derived from it and risks to fall again in the trap of "phenomenalism," which Sartre reproached to Husserl. Ricoeur's Heidegger interpretation brings clarity to this discussion by pulling together the decentration of the subject and the limits of apodicticity of the Cogito. But his elaboration of the hermeneutics of the Self contains the risk of a hyperbolization of the role of language.

In the following study the author goes back to the beginnings of the Women's Rights movements in order to pose the question on gender equality by approaching it through the prism of language as a powerful tool in human rights battles. This permits her to show the deep interrelation between women's struggle for recognition and some particular women rights, like the "feminization" of professional titles and the implementation of a gender sensitive language. Hence she argues the thesis that even in the most advanced European democracies, where freedom of speech, education, and scientific research seem actually to be legally guaranteed as universal rights, there is still a deep conflict in regard to the use of language and also that we have throughout history backlashes, reproductions of past stereotypes, and a loss of women's rights which were previously acquired.

Der folgende Beitrag ist ein erster Versuch, Sartres und Ricœurs Werttheorien in ihren Grundzügen zu rekonstruieren, sie zu ver- gleichen und daraus bestimmte Schlussfol- gerungen bezüglich der Ricœurschen Sartre-Rezeption zu ziehen. Somit wird die Aufgabe gestellt, eine Forschungslücke zu füllen, denn Sartres Wertekonzeption ist relativ wenig untersucht worden, während die von Paul Ricœur sogar einen blinder Fleck innerhalb der Ricœurforschung darstellt; die Ricœursche Sartre-Rezeption ist kaum zur Sprache gebracht worden, jedoch nicht in einem explizit axiologis- chen Kontext. Im Unterschied zu Françoi- se Dastur wird aufzeigt, dass Ricœur in Le volontaire et l‘involontaire nicht einfach Partei für Marcel ergreift und gegen Sartre argumentiert, sondern dass er zwischen den Positionen der beiden Denker auch zu vermitteln versucht. Abschließend soll aufgezeigt werden, dass Ricœurs axiologis- che Konzeption, die aus dieser Vermittlung entstand, in seinem Spätwerk zum Teil bei- behalten wurde und zwar gerade in jenem Teil, der ihn in der Nähe von Sartre bringt und zunehmend von Marcel entfernt

Since the new millenium the discourse on values is playing a central role in the social and political life of the West and, more especially, in the European process of enlargement. It is particularly the question of whether Europe should constitute a community of values or a community of rights which constitutes the center of the EU value controversy. The main proposition of the paper is to analyze some recent debates on this topic, to discuss their problematic points and to indicate possible solutions.

Wenn der Übergang von der antiken zur mittelalterlichen und modernen Philosophie als Übergang von den metaphysischen zu erkenntnistheoretischen Problemen des Menschen charak¬terisiert wurde, so lässt sich der Übergang von der modernen zur gegenwärtigen, bzw. "nachmetaphysischen" Philosophie als eine Kehre vom abstrakten Subjekt zum konkreten, in der Welt situierten Ich - zum "Mich" kennzeichnen. Gerade diese "neo-sokratische" Revolution der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts drückt für die Autorin die wesentliche Tendenz zur Anthropologisierung der gnoseologischen und ontologischen Problematik beziehungsweise ihre differentia specifica aus. Die Verfasserin betont, dass im Laufe dieser Kehre nicht nur die sogenannte "Philosophie des Menschen" (die Lebensphilosophie, die philosophische Anthropologie, der Existentialismus, der Personalismus, die Phänomenologie des Lebens u.a.), sondern auch ihre wichtigsten Alternativen (der Dekonstruktivismus, der Postmodernismus, der Feminismus) sich als Negation des abstrakten Subjekts der Modernität formiert und entwickelt haben. Diese "anti¬moderne Einstellung" entstand im 19. Jahrhundert als Widerstand gegen den Glauben, dass die Vernunft der Gesetzgeber der Wirklichkeit sei, um mit Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger und Foucault zur Nicht-Philosophie überzugehen und sich schließlich, in den 80er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts, in eine Thematisierung des Endes zu verwandeln. So bleibt heute, in der Epoche des "Ende", des Endes der "Großen Erzählungen", der Großen Illusionen, der all¬umfassenden, totalen und totalitären Systeme, heute, wo nicht nur Gott, Marx und Kommu¬nismus für tot erklärt sind, sondern auch "der Mensch" mit seinen klassischen Attributen von Kosmotheros, Held und Herrscher, zweifellos nur eines - nicht das identitätsstifende Cogito, sondern das Ende selbst. Das Ende als Fragestellung, als Diskurs über uns und es selbst. Wenn die Frage des Endes eigentlich die große Frage des Sinnes und des Ganzen ist, so ist der Grund dafür die Tatsache, dass in dem gigantischen Haufen des "Alles", das die postmoderne Welt der Ge-gensätze bildet, der Sinn völlig verwischt ist, so dass anscheinend eine einzige Frage übrig geblieben ist: "What are you doing after the orgy?" Was bleibt übrig, wenn alles verfügbar geworden ist? Es scheint als ob die sogenannte "obèse", oder Hypertelie der postmodernen Welt, para¬doxerweise das Zeugnis des letzten Stempels der Apokalypse. Und vielleicht ist das, was die ge¬genwärtige Philosophie interpretiert oder zu Ende als Ende (be)schreibt, eigentlich nur das letzte Kapitel des ältesten Drehbuchs der Welt.

Too often associated with suspicion rather than trust, Ricœur's hermeneutics is understood by many primarily as a critical endeavor. In this way, the fragile balance that he is trying to maintain between the two approaches is ignored. The objective of the following study is, by means of Ricoeur's "dialectical game of suspicion and trust", to elucidate the complexity of his hermeneutics and to demonstrate that trust is as pivotal as suspicion. At the difference of some authors who maintain that trust and suspicion are opposed, even mutually exclusive approaches of two kinds of hermeneutics, it will be shown that Ricoeur has developed a single hermeneutics which encompasses both approaches and explores them on different levels (epistemological, anthropological, ethical, sociopolitical). In the limited number of contributions dedicated to Ricoeur's concept of trust, these different levels are frequently conflated, whereby the relationship between religious belief and trust/mistrust is completely ignored. Consequently, the divergent perspectives of his early and late philosophical work, as well as certain discontinuities, are overlooked. Therefore, this study places a central emphasis on the neglected religious level of suspicion and trust.

The aim of the article is to argue the thesis that, 25 years after the fall of communism, with the exception of former Yugoslavia, there has been and still is, a lack of „women’s movements“ in the post-communist countries. The author also proposes some explanations as to why there are dozens of women’s organizations but no women’s movements. In order to support her thesis, Raynova emphasizes the difference between “women’s movements”, “feminist movements” and “social movements”, and shows the weakness of some current definitions. Instead of a definition, she indicates the conditions for a women’s movement, which are: (1.) women’s oppression and discrimination as a prevalent situation, which motivates a movement when that situation is perceived as intolerable; (2.) ideas and concrete strategies on how to proceed in order to change this situation; (3.) some kind of organization or leading personalities, able to coordinate and unite women in a mass movement and to ensure continuity of action until the goals of the movement are achieved; and (4.) large masses of women who are motivated and ready to fight resolutely for changing their situation. The provided analyses show that these conditions have not been always given, but that the persisting problems of women’s problems can be resolved only if women engage more actively in civil society so as to enforce their claims.