site.btaGerman Publishing House Releases Commemorative Collection on 60th Anniversary of Bulgarian Scientist

The German publishing house Metzler-Springer has published a jubilee volume on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Prof. Dr. Ivanka Raynova, the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IPS-BAS) announced on its website.

The collection "Säkularismus, Postsäkularismus und die Zukunft der Religionen" is a multifaceted systematic study of the role of religious thinking today. It raises questions about the relationship of philosophy and religion, respectively theology, whether religious faith is only an option or rather a profound dimension of human existence, even in a pluralistic culture, and to what extent religious and liberal values are compatible. Two opposing diagnoses keep these questions alive: on the one hand, the claim that we live in a secular or postreligious age, and on the other, the assumption of a "return of the religious" in the post-secular age, the collection's introduction notes. 

The debates addressed correspond to the central research questions in the work of phenomenology and philosophy of religion specialist Ivanka Raynova, full professor of contemporary philosophy at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, to whom this anniversary collection is dedicated.

Raynova is a full professor and head of the Contemporary Philosophy Program at the IPS-BAS and chair of the Bulgarian Phenomenological Association and director of the Institut für Axiologische Forschungen in Vienna. Her main areas of research, teaching, and interests are phenomenology, hermeneutics, axiology (theories and applied research on values), philosophy of religion, philosophical and cultural anthropology, gender studies, intercultural communication, and translation studies.

At the end of 2021, the International Institute of Hermeneutics awarded Raynova the title of Professor Honoris Causa "for outstanding intellectual acuity and for promoting a culture of thinking, inventiveness, and originality." Then, in addition to the honorary title, Raynova was also awarded the Hermes Prize for the best book of the year in phenomenological hermeneutics for her monograph "Sein, Sinn und Werte: Phänomenologische und hermeneutische Perspektiven des europäischen Denkens".