Socio-Philosophical Aspects of Identification and Classification of Nationalism
The purpose of the study is to explicate various ways of identifying and classifying nationalism, understood as a series of mobilization processes, as a result of which a particular nation acquires the ability to demonstrate its own «redundancy» and excess. The methodological basis of the study is represented by the works of leading researchers of nationalism, who primarily tried to comprehend this phenomenon: through the prism of modernization and egalitarianization of the most economically and politically developed European societies - K. Calhoun, L. Greenfeld; in the context of the right of nations to self-determination - R. Brubaker, B. Yack; by contrasting ethnic culture and civil will - H. Kohn; through the prism of the policy of «affirmative action» - T. Martin. The works of E. Smith demonstrated the difference between perennialism and modernism as between two theoretical paradigms of understanding nationalism. The studies of the modern philosopher P. Sloterdijk prompted us to the possibility of an «immune-spherological» description of nations as special cultural systems capable of supporting members of communities in ecstatic tension. Results. The article concludes that the intellectual level of the study of nationalism, to one degree or another, depends on the socio-philosophical discourses of modernism and perennialism. The article reveals the egalitarian context of understanding nationalism that arose during the revolutionary transformations of a number of leading capitalist states of Western Europe. At the same time, attention is drawn to the connection between nationalism and the right of nations to self-determination and the separatist tendencies that follow from this. In the conclusion, the need to synthesize methodological approaches to understanding nationalism and its main varieties associated with nation-building and modern state policy is noted. The prospect of the research is the further development of methodological approaches to the identification and classification of discourses about the nation and nationalism.