Bernard Muntyan, The Public Intellectual: Critical Observations on His Written Legacy

The following text is a critical review and overview of Bulgarian philosopher and Marxist Bernard Muntyan’s post-humously published works. The text transversally traces the book’s main thematic strands, with an emphasis put on both original and Marxist-revisionist contributions of the author before and after the end of Bulgaria’s state socialism, and the retrograde and unreflected tendencies within the figure of the socialist humanist. Emphasis is given on the achievements relevant to the early reception of the Soviet appropriation of cybernetics and the importance of scientific-technical revolutions for the development of socialist humanism, as well as the post-Perestroika uniqueness of the author’s critique of liberalism, and the transition to liberal democracy and its homologization with „capitalism“. A discussion is also offered on the retroactive shaping of Muntyan’s image as a public and global intellectual of „post-truth“.