The Concept of the National State in Nikolay Alekseev’s Philosophy of His Emigrant Period

Abstract

In the philosophy of Southwest school of Neo-Kantianism culture is interpreted as a result of the realization of eternal values in historical reality. Russian Neo-Kantian philosopher Nikolay Alekseev believes religion to be a tool for project­ing values on historical reality connecting the definition of free will as a funda­mental condition for the development of culture with an individual. Combining the Neo-Kantian interpretation of sociocultural development with Eurasian ap­proaches, Alekseev justifies the nation state as an institution necessary for the implementation of the principle of sobornost. I reconstruct this Alekseev’s concept and show how, using the ideas of Piotr Savitsky and Lev Karsavin, Alekseev was able to justify the state as an exponent of the goals and aspirations of the whole culture, not reducible to the level of an individual, and at the same time find a place in this structure for an individual as a bearer of free will. I ana­lyze the concept of a national state in Alekseev’s philosophy and show that the understanding of free will formulated within the framework of religion is trans­formed by Alekseev into a priority value in the development of a national state and becomes a condition for achieving sobornost as an ideal of social unity while maintaining the multiplicity of individuals constituting it.