The purpose of the study is to identify the reasons for the discrepancy in the issue of the time of the emergence of European nations in modern Western sociology in the perspective of the meaning of "" for interpreting the meaning of representing a nation in the political economic paradigm (J. Agamben). It is established that the horizon of the representation of the nation and the national, normatively set by the dominant "liberal metaphysics", which determines the direction of research in disciplinary-organized science and their results, have objective significance, provided that the interrelated foundations / axioms are recognized that form the paradigm of presenting reality as a given object for thematization in subject of scientific research. The scientific novelty of the philosophical interpretation of the beginning and the emergence of reality of European nations is due to an essential feature of liberal metaphysics, defined by K. Schmitt as a "fundamental rejection of truth" in favor of "endless discussion" on the "organization of truth" (F.R. Ankersmit). In this form, "liberal metaphysics" is as an ideology and the representation of a nation simultaneously has the character of scientific objectivity and a political program. As a result of the study, it was concluded that a nation as a civic association based on civic loyalty of freely self-determining autonomous individuals is valid as a project and the meaning of disagreements about the time of its emergence is revealed as a "historiographic recalculation" (M. Heidegger), whose task is to provide a justification for a political project – "civil nation".