COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AS A METAPHOR: PHILOSOPHIC DISCOURSE

Abstract

The problem of collective identity on national and civilizational levels actualized by cultural consequences of globalization in a number of works by foreign authors (L. Wolf, I. Neumann, E. Said) was considered from the viewpoint of the share which opposition “West”/ “East” had in forming European identity. In the article which is based on philosophic interpreting collective identity as a metaphor the authors show gnoseological limits of the approach using the given opposition and basing on a limited number of narrative sources. Applying methods of narrative logics by F. Ankersmit which allow to consider narratives themselves as metaphors, the authors of the article give reasons for philosophic position as for ways of studying any form of collective identity is concerned. It consists in admitting in such researches the priority of studying a real social activity in the process of which subjects of identity (individuals) show their real beliefs, values, principles uniting them into a single social whole only metaphorically presented in the form of a national, civilizational and other collective identity.