Civilizational absolutism and civilizational relativism

The article discusses how the phenomenon of civilization is considered in the framework of binary opposition of absoluteness and relativeness. Recognizing the category of civilization as one of the most important concepts of the modern political discourse, the author comes to the conclusion that the civilization study is not compatible with the modern theories of ethnos and nation because of the supremacy of absolutist methodology in the first case and relativist methodology in the second one. The possibility of dialectic combination of these methodological approaches is considered.