Dimitar Vatsov
(In Literary journal, 31/2020)
Transformation, alteration, modalisation, dynamics, metamorphosis – these are only a few of the key terms, through which we recognise the figure of Boyan Manchev. In any case, the point where matter flexes – and every entity transforms into another – is the focal target point of his project. His philosophical laboratory is an alchemical furnace (“a new Athanor”) where ontology emerges as fantasy, while the difference between reality and fiction dwindles in the most realistic manner. This furnace, however, does not produce a fictional philosophical stone, but a natural vortex. Via the butterfly effect, it creates a meteorological front – a powerful critical front of reflection that always alters its direction on a sudden and wrings us out of the stale routine. It does not fit the occasion that such a person – a fellow thinker and a friend – even when he turns 50, should receive a souvenir plaque as a gift. The only thing one could gift him is yet another question. My question is a continuation of our already long-standing philosophical dialogue.
Boyan claims that Aristotle, who initially worked under the presumption of eternity – of the prime mover and its pure actuality – nevertheless introduced the category of “possibility” (δύναμις), wondering how to solve the problem of movement and change. In order for them to be possible, we must allow a “possibility” – a possibility for change, for alteration. Boyan even proposes, already beyond essentialism of any sort, to transform “possibility” into a primary ontological principle – so that ontology can “operate not in accordance with the substance, but in accordance with the process of modalisation”.
I wonder if the time is ripe for replacing the question of metaphysics. Because, it seems to me, we have already shattered the metaphysical idealization of pure actuality, of eternity: whether by wedging into actuality a possibility for deflection (δύναμις), as Boyan does; whether by wedging into it an unpredefined activity (ἐνέργεια), as I sometimes put it; whether by using different terminology. The problem is that if we have already toppled metaphysics and optimally dynamized the axiomatics of our analyses, then what still breeds wonderment is quite another thing: the pressing question is not about how alteration becomes possible, but rather – how does stabilization become possible, how does the practical (though fragile) reproduction of the “same” emerge? And does this altered question not force us to re-connote all over again the category of “possibility”: not as possibility for deflection, but as a reproducible possibility, a possibility for repetition? Where does it emerge from? In other words, what baffles me most at present is not alteration, but persistence – order as a valuable (for it is too fragile) practical achievement. How do we muster the persistence – in Boyan’s terms – in order to hold on to it?
Stay strong, Boyan!
Translated from the Bulgarian by Philip Stoilov