The Crisis of Universalism in Contemporary Social-Philosophical Discourse

The object of this article is the crisis processes within the structure of social-philosophical knowledge in the early twenty-first century, associated with the transformation of the normative and universalist foundations of social theory. The subject of the analysis is the paradox of universalism, understood as a key characteristic of this crisis and expressed in the simultaneous disintegration of modern universal horizons and the reactive return of the universal in simulacral forms. The article examines the changing status of the universal under the conditions of late modernity and postmodernity, as well as the consequences of this transformation for social and political philosophy. Particular attention is paid to the way in which the critique of metaphysical and normative universals that developed in the second half of the twentieth century led not to the elimination of the universal as such, but to its transformation and paradoxical reproduction in new ideological, cultural, and technocratic configurations. The aim of the article is to provide a critical reconstruction of this paradox and an analytical account of its place in contemporary social-philosophical discourse. The methodological framework of the study is based on philosophical and comparative analysis of contemporary social-philosophical concepts, as well as elements of discursive and historical-philosophical approaches that allow for the identification of structural features of the transformation of universalism in recent theory. The scientific novelty of the article lies in its systematic analysis of the paradox of universalism as an integral structure of the contemporary social-philosophical crisis rather than as a set of disparate theoretical positions. Drawing on the works of P. Sloterdijk, A. Badiou, and S. Žižek, the article demonstrates that the relativist deconstruction of the universal foundations of modernity and the reactive forms of the return of the universal are not mutually exclusive tendencies. On the contrary, they constitute a mutually reinforcing dynamic in which the loss of normative universals is accompanied by the growth of pseudo-universal political, cultural, and technocratic constructions. It is concluded that contemporary social philosophy is confronted not with a simple rejection of the universal, but with its crisis-driven transformation, which exerts a decisive influence on the socio-political processes of the early twenty-first century. The article proposes an analytical framework for understanding this situation without recourse to normative or authorial projects of reconstructing the universal.