Criticism of ethnoconstructivism in the light of disputes about the nature of ideal

The article offers a criticism of Western ethnoconstructivism (E. Gellner, E. Hobsbaum, B. Anderson), which denies the objective existence of nations and ethoses and affirms their dependence on the illusions of the individual psyche among members of a certain community. The author analyzes the arguments in favor of the objectivity of the ideal in the foundation of spiritual culture, which were put forward in the Russian dialectical tradition of the twentieth century. According to the author, in these methodological disputes (the dispute between M. A. Lifshits and vulgar sociologists in the 1920th, the dispute between D. I. Dubrovsky and E. V. Ilyenkov in the 1960-1970th, the concept of reality was popularized the ideal of A. F. Losev) substantiates the existence of a “world of the objective ideal” - values, laws, cultural norms, which are relatively independent of the will of individuals. The indicated understanding of the ideal, alternative to ethnoconstructivism (with its subjectivity), but not coinciding with biologizer primordialism, contains the prerequisites for the most adequate study of the nature of nations and national culture.