What we are witnessing is not just the end of the
Cold War, or a passing of a particular period of
postwar history, but the end of history as such:
that is, the end point of mankind's ideological
evolution and the universalization of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human
government.
-"X" (Francis Fukuyama),
The
End of History? (The National
Interest)
One assumes that only George F. Kennan's "Containment" memo, likewise
published under the pseudonym "X", can rival Francis Fukuyama's essay "The
End of History"--first published in 1989, in The National Interest--in
terms of impact on the public consciousness of a foreign policy brief.
Fukuyama's essential argument was not that history, in terms of events
and conflicts and the like, had actually come to and end, rather that liberal
capitalist democracy represented the final step in Man's political evolution.
With its overtones of Cold War triumphalism, the piece set off a huge kerfuffle
and turned a State Department cypher into a significant political philosopher
almost overnight.
In this book, Fukuyama expands on the ideas in his original essay and
introduces several new ones, the most important of which, embodied by the
idea of "thymos", is that the greatest threat to the End of History is
the fact that people demand recognition. By recognition, he means
something fairly broad, but which we all intuitively recognize :
...that part of man which feels the need to place
value
on things--himself in the first instance, but
on the people, actions, or things around him as
well. It is the part of the personality which is the
fundamental source of the emotions of pride, anger,
and shame, and is not reducible to desire, on
the one hand, or reason on the other. The
desire for recognition is the most specifically political
part of the human personality because it is what
drives men to want to assert themselves over other
men... .
Liberal democracy succeeds brilliantly at fulfilling Man's basic desires--food,
clothing, shelter--but it raises several questions. Will Man, once
satiated, still have the kind of thymos which has driven the species to
achieve technologically and culturally ? Will the most able in society
be content to be treated equally with those they consider their inferiors,
or will they demand a level of political recognition commensurate with
their contributions to society ? Will those at the bottom of the
social scale--and liberal democracy does, undeniably, produce a hierarchy
from poor to rich--be content to have less than those at the top of the
scale, or will they demand that the high be brought low ? Fukuyama
seeks to provide answers to these questions, drawing upon thinkers like
Plato, Tocqueville, Kant, Hegel, Marx,
Nietzsche,
and Alexandre Kojeve, and upon the experiences of modern times.
The book is always fascinating, sometimes wrongheaded and frequently
brilliant. In the end, the question that animates the discussion
is the same that mankind always faces ; which will ultimately triumph,
the desire for security or the urge to freedom. There is no more
important issue in human history and the ways in which we answer it will,
as always, determine our future. Even if he does not arrive at any
final answers, Fukuyama adds immeasurably to our understanding of the question
and its importance.
-ESSAY: Shattered illusions (Francis Fukuyama, 29jun04, The Australian)
-ESSAY: Nation-Building 101: The chief threats to us and to world order come from weak, collapsed, or failed states. Learning how to fix such states-and building necessary political support at home-will be a defining issue for America in the century ahead (Francis Fukuyama, January/February 2004 , Atlantic Monthly)
-ESSAY: Our Foreign Legions: Lessons and cautions from Europe on assimilating immigrants. (FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, January 31, 2004, Wall Street Journal)
-ESSAY: Beyond Our Shores: Today's
"conservative" foreign policy has an idealist agenda (FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, December 24, 2002, Wall Street Journal)
-ESSAY: Housekeeping, Post-Saddam: It's time to get
U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia. (FRANCIS FUKUYUYAMA, 4/20/03, Wall Street Journal)
-REVIEW: of The Great Disruption (David Gordon, Mises Review)
