graphic concept and prepress: strx / Meteor
printing: Simolini-94
Meteor, Sofia, May 2023
Boyan Manchev: WHAT IS ONTOLOGY?
Dimitar Vatsov: SHORT METAPHYSICS
The book "What is Ontology? Counter-Definitions" presents and elaborates experimentally central philosophical categories while outlining the horizon of an original ontological program. The peculiar experience is based on the long-standing exchange between Dimitar Vatsov and Boyan Manchev, two philosophers united by the effort to restore the positivity of philosophical thinking: its power to affirm and persist in the world. To this end, they offer "counter" definitions of key metaphysical and/or ontological concepts - existence, being, world, energy, matter, form, time and space, modality, subject - critically reworking their essentialist rudiments so that they can continue to operate in a dynamic mode. The result of the dual effort is a complex "binuclear" theory - a complex unity of two converging in a number of dimensions, yet nonetheless non-identical concepts. The convergences and divergences between them contribute to the multidimensional, "relief", dialogical and experimental unfolding of the fundamental object of study.
The book is aimed at philosophers, specialists in the humanitarian field and students, as well as at the general public interested in philosophical issues. Its innovative nature allows the high theory and individual theses of the two authors to be reworked into an accessible and engaging read. For these reasons, the book is not only an original contribution to Bulgarian philosophy and the humanities, but it is also well-timed reading at a time of crisis of values and concepts, when rethinking the basic categories of our culture and our world is more urgent than ever.
"This book is a kind of manifesto of modal ontology. An ontology of transformation.
In the first place, it is not only about redefining ontology, but about redefining being. Being is interpreted energetically as a modal interaction of forces. Second, this new ontology requires a rethinking of the subject in a way that ontologizes the subject and subjectivates the existent.
There is a courage that can only be expressed and thought as philosophy. There is a philosophy that requires courage. Having overcome both metaphysics and postmetaphysical thinking, Boyan Manchev and Dimitar Vatsov set out on a journey into an unknown ocean that no one has the right to ignore anymore."
-Darin Tenev
The book is published with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture.