Bulgaria is a philosophical nation. It is one of the few countries in Europe in which the study of philosophy is mandatory in the high schools. Its philosophers often figure prominently in political life. The first philosopher of importance in this country, Dimitri Michaltschew, was an ambassador to Prague in the twenties and twice to Moscow, first in the thirties, later in the mid-forties. After September 1944 and until the Monarchy was abolished on 15 September, 1946, the Marxist philosopher, Todor Pavlov, was a member of the Regency Council. Finally, between 1990 and 1996, another philosopher, Zheliu Zhelev, was the President of Republic Bulgaria, thus joining the club of three philosopher-heads of state in twentieth-century Europe, the other members being A. J. Balfour of the United Kingdom and T. G. Masaryk of Czechoslovakia. There are several grounds for this. On the one hand, religious sentiment in the country is not pronounced; on the other, as some authors of the volume under review note, culture as a whole, education in particular, have a constitutive meaning for Bulgaria’s national identity. So theoretical philosophy came to have the function of something resembling a Weltanschauung. Historically, the introduction of philosophy in the country’s culture was a part of a program for radical modernization, passionately embraced after 1878, which was to wipe away the effects of the “dark age” of the “Turkish