[lit-ideas] Fukuyama and Danto

  • From: Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 11:57:27 -0500

_The End of History_

Has anyone considered that Fukuyama was simply piggybacking his title (if not his total concept) from Arthur C. Danto's popular and hugely influential essay, from the mid-80s, called THE END OF ART?

As Fukuyama does eight years later, Danto reprises a Hegelian thesis. Danto means the "end of art" to be the end of so-called "master narratives" in art

As F says of history (ahem..8 years later) Danto maintains that art will continue, but the defining characteristics that allow art to extinguish their competitors, and create stylistic "progress" have disappeared from art, that art has no special way to be received.

For Danto, after linear progress in artistic styles has been overthrown, anything goes and pluralism reigns. Fukuyama (ahem...8 years later) says that the dialectics that define civilizations will disappear and capitalist pluralism will reign.

So maybe Fukuyama was at a cocktail party somewhere and overheard an aesthetics professor or artist describing Danto's essay (and later, book) and thought...."Hmmm, maybe I can make a name for myself by applying this same schtick to history?"

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