Between 28 and 31 August, an international philosophical conference on “Modern Philosophy – Problems, Trends and Perspectives” took place in the Creative House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Varna (Bulgaria). This congress was organized by the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge (BAS) in collaboration with several foreign partners: the Czech, Slovak and Polish Academies of Sciences, the Romanian Academy, the Universities of Liege (Belgium), Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš (Serbia), as well as of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The International Organizing Committee, chaired by Assoc. Prof. Bogdana Todorova, included scientists from each of the listed institutions. The conference was attended by over 40 scientists from 10 European countries. The talks were distributed in six thematic panels. The purpose of each panel was to outline the specific challenges that today’s world poses to each of the major philosophical disciplines – from logic, ontology and philosophy of science, through political philosophy and philosophy of religion, to aesthetics, philosophy of education, and comparative philosophy. In the papers presented and during the lively discussions following them, the role of the philosophical reflection and argumentation in today’s public debate was treated from various points of view. However, the main perspective of the discussions was constituted by the reality of the world which we live in: a world made small by the globalization but also painfully divided by economic, religious, civilizational and other conflicts. The three working days of the Varna conference cleary showed that in spite of the dynamic changes during the last decades and despite the leading role of technology in our century, philosophy still has something to say about the topical problems of mankind. It is up to the international philosophical community to address these problems and focus their efforts on giving their specific contribution to solving them.
