Civil nation and ethnic identity: On the question of the “essence of the Russian nation”

The purpose of the article is to reveal the importance of embedding «Russian national identity» in the normative distinction between civil nations and ethnic nations, which has been carried out in Western social studies for more than seventy years. This presupposes the study of the way of representing the nation in the horizon defined by “liberal metaphysics” (K. Schmitt) - in the liberal version of the economic paradigm of the political (J. Agamben’s term). The research method is a philosophical interpretation, which makes it possible to demonstrate the “foundations” (axioms, dogmas, principles, imperatives) that determine the way of presentation, perspectives and conclusions as necessary - for an objective scientific study of nations and national identities, the object of research of which in the presentation is as a given. It is established that a civil nation is a project for which «historiographic recalculation» (M. Heidegger) is a way of combining the reality of a concept and reality; a civil nation as an association based on civic loyalty is reduced to the free self-determination of an autonomous individual-citizen, which necessarily considers any “remnants of naturalness” as invalid, illegal and morally disqualified as “evil” - such a “remnant” is recognized as ethnicity: the methodologically inadmissible confusion of “attribution to value” and “evaluation” is based on the idea. The conclusion is drawn: “civil nation”, being a theoretical concept, is at the same time a political project and is used as an instrument of ideological influence: qualification as an “ethnic nation” singles out the object as a “political enemy” that needs to be removed - “Russian national identity” as European and ethnic is, in consequence of what has been said, a “paradigm case”.

nation, national identity, civil nation, ethnic nation, “Russian national identity”, political project, economic paradigm of the political, “liberal metaphysics”