PHILOSOPHERS from Bulgaria

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Bulgarian Philosophers of all time. This list of famous Bulgarian Philosophers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Diogenes of Apollonia (-460 - -500)

With an HPI of 67.96, Diogenes of Apollonia is the most famous Bulgarian Philosopher.  His biography has been translated into 43 different languages on wikipedia.

Diogenes of Apollonia ( dy-OJ-in-eez; Ancient Greek: Διογένης ὁ Ἀπολλωνιάτης, romanized: Diogénēs ho Apollōniátēs; fl. 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, and was a native of the Milesian colony Apollonia in Thrace. He lived for some time in Athens. He believed air to be the one source of all being from which all other substances were derived, and, as a primal force, to be both divine and intelligent. He also wrote a description of the organization of blood vessels in the human body. His ideas were parodied by the dramatist Aristophanes, and may have influenced the Orphic philosophical commentary preserved in the Derveni papyrus. His philosophical work has not survived in a complete form, and his doctrines are known chiefly from lengthy quotations of his work by Simplicius, as well as a few summaries in the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Aetius.

2. Julia Kristeva (1941 - )

With an HPI of 67.64, Julia Kristeva is the 2nd most famous Bulgarian Philosopher.  Her biography has been translated into 57 different languages.

Julia Kristeva (French: [kʁisteva]; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, Bulgarian: Юлия Стоянова Кръстева; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. Agent of the Bulgarian state security. She has taught at Columbia University, and is now a professor emerita at Université Paris Cité. The author of more than 30 books, including Powers of Horror, Tales of Love, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, Proust and the Sense of Time, and the trilogy Female Genius, she has been awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the Order of Merit, the Holberg International Memorial Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Vision 97 Foundation Prize, awarded by the Havel Foundation. Kristeva became influential in international critical analysis, cultural studies and feminism after publishing her first book, Semeiotikè, in 1969. Her sizeable body of work includes books and essays which address intertextuality, the semiotic, and abjection, in the fields of linguistics, literary theory and criticism, psychoanalysis, biography and autobiography, political and cultural analysis, art and art history. She is prominent in structuralist and poststructuralist thought. Kristeva is also the founder of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize committee.

3. Peter Deunov (1864 - 1944)

With an HPI of 58.74, Peter Deunov is the 3rd most famous Bulgarian Philosopher.  His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Peter Dunov ( DUN-əv; Bulgarian: Петър Дънов [ˈpɛtɐr ˈdɤnof]; July 11, 1864 – December 27, 1944), also known by his spiritual name Beinsa Douno (Bulgarian: Беинса Дуно [bɛinˈsа duˈnɔ]), and often titled Uchitelyat ("the Teacher") by his followers, was a Bulgarian philosopher and spiritual teacher who developed a form of Esoteric Christianity known as the Universal White Brotherhood. He is widely known in Bulgaria, where he was voted second by the public in the Great Bulgarians TV show on Bulgarian National Television (2006-2007). Dunov is also featured in Pantev and Gavrilov's The 100 Most Influential Bulgarians in Our History (ranked in 37th place). According to Petrov, Peter Dunov is “the most published Bulgarian author to this day.”