On the Basic Concepts of the Eurasian Discourse

Abstract

It is shown that the original message of the founders of the Eurasian doctrine corresponded to the paradigmatic foundations of non-classical science, but does not correspond to the modern paradigm of socio-humanitarian knowledge. The authors of the Eurasian concept, whose scientific thinking was formed in the context of the formation of non-classical approaches in social and humanitarian knowledge, developed the idea of cultural and historical types by N. Y. Danilevsky. But some of the categories they based their theory on had their origins in the classical paradigm, the methodological limitations of which were already obvious at that time. If the category of the West is still used in science, then the concept of the East has turned out to be debatable and therefore always requires explanation. The state of social knowledge at that time (the 20s – 30s of the twentieth century) required a revision of the classical ideas about Russia's place in the geopolitical process as a catching-up country, but it turned out to be unable to answer the main questions that the political elite asks at the turn of each century. The inadequacy of the categorical apparatus did not allow us to build a viable social theory.