The article presents a historical, philosophical, and cultural research into the creative work of Vladimir Dvorniković (1888-1956), a Serbian thinker, who is not generally known in the modern academic world. The research focuses on his most prominent and creatively different philosophical work «The Characterology of the Southern Slavs». In this work, the author declares a necessity to withdraw from the tradition of Kant and Hegel and proposes to replace «the pure ego» as a subject of the world order and world perception with the ego of a concrete individual in the unity of his/her national and social characteristics, developing through historical experience and passing from one generation to another. The author discusses the main aspects of Dvorniković’s analysis of the Serbian national character in a broad historical and cultural context, in the dynamics of development and obliteration of some of its traits. The author concludes that Dvorniković was right when pointing at the main trend of «crystallizing the form of the hypertrophied ego», which had become a dominant model of interaction of the Serbian society with others. The article demonstrates how this trend, as a result of inertia, currently challenges the development of contemporary Serbian national identity