Russian European: Fedor Stepun on Nation and Nationalism

Abstract

The rich intellectual heritage of the Russian neo-Kantian and Russian European Fedor Stepun has hardly any lacunas thanks to the intensive research of Vladimir K. Kantor. The 1925 text “Forgotten truths. (On Nation and Nationalism)” by Stepun that we have discovered is devoted to the acutely topical problems of nation and nationalism in Russian cultural, political and religious life. We place this text in the general context of Stepun's reflections on national feeling, national consciousness, the conditions of formation and existence of the nation, and especially on the deformations that national feeling can undergo, transforming into various forms of nationalism, a phenomenon categorically unacceptable to Stepun. We found that Ste-pun's concept of nation expresses cultural, religious and language unity of a certain community of people united by one or another idea. We show that the basis of positively defined national feeling is the love of ‘I' to ‘you.' In addition, the ideological and historical context in which Stepun's position on the problem of nationalism was formed is restored. We show the role of Vladimir Kantor in the research of Stepun's heritage.