[lit-ideas] Re: Fukuyama and the end of history

Omar, the Roger Kimball review you posted
(http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/10/feb92/fukuyama.htm ) was apparently
written about the time Fukuyama published his book in1992.  It is consistent
with my understanding of what Fukuyama wrote.  I had a different set of
reservations but his are interesting.  I read the book in 1999 and
considered Fukuyama's arguments plausible and went about looking for
criticisms and responses.  I didn't initially find many of a serious nature.
But in 2002 I read Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
of World Order.  This is a very interesting alternative to Fukuyama's
thesis.  Huntington wrote his book after Fukuyama's.  Whether it was written
in response to Fukuyama's The End of History I don't know.  

 

On page 2 of Kimball's review he writes "What [Fukuyama] did maintain,
however, was that liberal democracy was the best conceivable
social-political system for fostering freedom; and therefore - because 'the
ideal will govern the material world in the long run' - he also claimed that
liberal democracy would not be superseded by a better or 'higher' form of
government."  This is what Fukuyama conveys in the first four sections of
his book to the best of my recollection and as far as I have reread.  It is
only when he gets to the last section, Section V, that he considers what
might go wrong with the end of history.   The idea that something could go
wrong bothered Kimball who thought Fukuyama should be consistent with what
he perceives as his argument for historical inevitability.  I didn't have
that problem.  Fukuyama follows Kojeve who rejects Marx and turns Hegel
right-side up, but Fukuyama relies as much upon his own observations.  He
considered the various nations of the world and discusses the inevitability
of those nations becoming Liberal Democracies.  Kimball sees two Fukuyama's
one pragmatic and the other an ambivalent philosopher.  I saw just the one
Fukuyama who was marshalling all his intellectual tools to look at the
world's nations and map their direction.  Being a consistent Hegelian wasn't
his concern.

 

Lawrence

 

-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 12:20 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Fukuyama and the end of history

 

 

 

--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

> As to the article's paragraph you refer to, this was

> developed in The Last

> Man portion of his book, Part V.   I don't recall

> Fukuyama doing as Andreas

> suggests, "Constantly attacking liberal democracy as

> a ploy of weaklings."

> I recall him being ambivalent about life where

> Nietzsche's "Last Man" has

> prevailed much as the paragraph suggests. 

 

*Yes, the passage sounds Nietzschean in a Straussian

way.

 

 I do not

> find Fukuyama wishing

> for any alternative to Liberal Democracy.  

 

*It sounds to me like he wishes for an alternative but

he doesn't see a credible alternative available. Yet

is seems obvious that Fukuyama has underestimated the

potential of political religion as well as

nationalism. (He might have correctly estimated the

power and importance of Al-Queda, but that's a

different matter.)

 

Regarding the Hegelian elements in Fukuyama, I would

recommend this article by Roger Kimball. (A rare

sample of enlightened conservative these days.)

 

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/10/feb92/fukuyama.htm

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