The critique of social development conceptions and the fundamental contradictions of modernity

The article analyzes the criticism of the conceptions of social development which plays an important role in modern social philosophy. The author demonstrates that this critique is directed not only against specific conceptions or models of development, but also against the very idea of social development which used to be the substantial element of western intellectual tradition. This obvious discontent that gives us an opportunity to speak about new "post-development" discourse, is analyzed within the context of social and cultural contradictions of modernity. The main hypothesis based on the ideas of H. Blumenberg, is that the central motive of modernity is its desire to solve the contradiction between part and whole, and to find the model of social unity. The idea of social development represents an attempt to deal with this task. Finally, it failed. Thus, one of the reasons behind the critique of the social development conceptions is the need of western elite for new model of social unity.