03.03.2026, Moscow.
Today, the system based on bourgeois national states that once relied on humanism and progress, has been undermined by postmodernism, which declares the end of the project of the “Man”, philosopher, political scientist, and the leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan said on February 20 on the Conversation with the Sage program on the Zvezda radio channel.
During the era of bourgeois revolutions in Europe, nation-states have emerged, and although they fought each other, internally they were bound by a single formula, which in scientific language was called Modernity project, the political scientist noted.
According to him, this arrangement elevated the individual above all else, separated religion from the state, and allowed people to practice different religions. And this order was held together by a “legal framework, culture – which has been sacred! – language, history, and some other sacred stones, ethos, ‘reverence for France’ [in the case of the French nation – Rossa Primavera News Agency], and so on.”
However, as Essence of Time‘s leader noted, this project, being implemented in a context where God had ceased to be the authority for everyone, needed to elevate something to a pedestal – something of value to all. And it elevated progress and humanism.
“Humanism is faith in Man; and progress means the fervent necessity to develop. We ascend, we develop, we move forward, essentially, toward God – toward self-deification…,” the political scientist explained the concept of the Modernity project.
Sergey Kurginyan noted that this system based on bourgeois national states, called Modernity, existed until certain forces emerged and decided to put an end to it. At the same time, he emphasized that postmodernism is not a series of individual philosophers, but something far more powerful.
“Postmodernism, with its undermining of all the foundations of modernity, existed as a super-movement that declared that an entire series of projects had ended. ‘Humanism’ as a project had ended, the ‘Modernity’ project had ended. And next, if you read them carefully, they will say that the project of the ‘Man’, in fact, had ended too,” the political scientist explained.
In the 1990s, American philosopher Francis Fukuyama put forward the concept of the “end of history”, and it was supported by the US Democratic Party, Kurginyan recalled. He also noted that the the foundations of modernity were undermined much earlier, essentially with Hegel.
“After all, it was Hegel who said that following the era of the historical spirit, when the nation state was a mighty thing, there would come an era of a new spirit, which, generally speaking, would not create new discoveries. It would endlessly inventory all discoveries. <…> For Hegel, the foundation of the new spirit – and this is very important – was the library, that is, the cataloging of existing discoveries with a de facto ban on novelty,” the leader of the Essence of Time movement explained.
The discussion around the nation state formation arose in the context of the debate regarding the concept of a “multipolar world,” which is not only unequal to, but also contradicts, the concept of the United Nations, which emerged after the collapse of the Third Reich.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
