YVANKA B. RAYNOVA SEIN, SINN UND WERTE. PHÄNOMENOLOGISCHE UND HERMENEUTISCHE PERSPEKTIVEN DES EUROPÄISCHEN DENKENS Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017. ISBN 9783631648360

The present review of Yvanka B. Raynova's book Being, Sense and Values aims to outline its contribution to a long debate about the so-called “crisis of philosophy.” Unfolding the diverse facets of this discussion in the phenomenological schools, Raynova displays how the crisis of reason led to a crisis of meaning and of being. According to her, this axiological insecurity came to a head in the area of responsibility, human dignity and human rights and led to the necessity of a rethinking of history and community. The hidden purpose of her analyses is to show the usefulness of philosophy as a basic knowledge, without which the concept of the fundamental values and the history of human rights, upon which the European Community is based, cannot be understood and further developed. What is special about Raynova's approach is that she is well balanced in her interpretations, letting the various viewpoints to enter in an appreciative polylogue. By combining and transforming Ricoeur's dialectical method of suspicion and his discursive mediation into a translative and comparative hermeneutics, and applying it in a problem related manner, Raynova displays the various perspectives of the classics of phenomenology demonstrating convincingly their importance for contemporary European thought.