Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

The end of history by Fukuyama is mainly based on Hegel’s treatise of the end of history and Kojeve’s corresponding interpretation. But Hegel’s end of history is a purely philosophical question, i.e., an ontological premise that must be fulfilled to complete absolute knowledge. When Kojeve further demonstrates its universal and homogeneous state, Fukuyama extends it into a political view: The victory of the Western system of freedom and democracy marks the end of the development of human (...) class='Hi'>history and Marxist theory and practice. This is a misunderstanding of Hegel. Marx analyzes, scientifically, the historical limitation of Western capitalism and maintains, by way of a kind of revolutionary teleology, the expectation of and belief in human liberation, which is the highest historical goal. His philosophy of history is hence characterized by theoretical elements from both historical scientificalness and historical teleology. (shrink)

(1994). The end of History or the end of Democracy? National identity and the future of the nation‐state. World Futures: Vol. 42, No. 1-2, pp. 161-171.

What credence should we assign to philosophical claims that were formed without any knowledge of the current state of the art of the philosophical debate and little or no knowledge of the relevant empirical or scientific data? Very little or none. Yet when we engage with the history of philosophy, this is often exactly what we do. In this paper, I argue that studying the history of philosophy is philosophically unhelpful. The epistemic aims of philosophy, if there are (...) any, are frustrated by engaging with the history of philosophy, because we have little reason to think that the claims made by history’s great philosophers would survive closer scrutiny today. First, I review the case for philosophical historiography and show how it falls short. I then present several arguments for skepticism about the philosophical value of engaging with the history of philosophy and offer an explanation for why philosophical historiography would seem to make sense even if it didn’t. (shrink)

The concept of the “End of History” was originally developed by G. W. F. Hegel in the Phenomenology of the spirit in 1806 (Hegel, 2018). The concept can be closely related to a utopia, the completion of the work of philosophers, and the creation of a perfect framework of the finished system of ideas. Hegel had a lot of influence on Western philosophy with the development of this idea and on Marx, who obviously thought of history in dialectic (...) terms. However, he developed the idea of “communism”, which would have been a state of humankind very similar to the concept of Hegel, with no class differences and no opiates of the people—and no place for further development (Marx & Engels, 2002). The “End of History” is based on this theoretical viewpoint that mankind has reached the final and most advanced form of societal development. However, the theorists and their intellectual followers both have to realize a painful way that the phenomenon can only be attained preliminarily. It proves to be a utopia. (shrink)

The “end of history” by Fukuyama is mainly based on Hegel’s treatise of the end of history and Kojeve’s corresponding interpretation. But Hegel’s “end of history” is a purely philosophical question, i.e., an ontological premise that must be fulfilled to complete “absolute knowledge.” When Kojeve further demonstrates its “universal and homogeneous state,” Fukuyama extends it into a political view: The victory of the Western system of freedom and democracy marks the end of the development of human (...) class='Hi'>history and Marxist theory and practice. This is a misunderstanding of Hegel. Marx analyzes, scientifically, the historical limitation of Western capitalism and maintains, by way of a kind of revolutionary teleology, the expectation of and belief in human liberation, which is the highest historical goal. His philosophy of history is hence characterized by theoretical elements from both historical scientificalness and historical teleology. (shrink)

Alex Rosenberg’s latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistemic value. Rosenberg argues not for the replacement of narrative history by something more science-like, but rather the end of histories understood as an account of human doings under a certain description. This review critiques three of his main arguments: 1) narrative history must root its explanations in folk psychology, 2) there are no beliefs nor desires guiding human action, and 3) historical narratives are (...) morally and ethically pernicious. Rosenberg’s book reprises themes about action explanation he first rehearsed 40 years ago, albeit with neuroscience rather than sociobiology now “preempting” explanations that trade on folk psychological notions. Although Rosenberg’s argument strategy has not altered, the review develops a number of reasons as to why his approach now lacks any plausibility as a strategy for explaining histories, much less a successful one. (shrink)

Through the summer and fall of 1989, Hegel scholars in America were treated to the unusual spectacle of a debate in the mass media over the meaning and truth of Hegel’s philosophy of history, a debate running through the pages of major daily newspapers, the weekly news magazines, and the journals of opinion. The occasion for this unaccustomed attention devoted to Hegel was the appearance of an article by Francis Fukuyama in the Summer 1989 issue of The National Interest (...) entitled “The End of History?”. (shrink)

More often than not, business ethics textbooks have included sections on "the great economic debate," that is, the discussion of capitalism as a total system, of the criticisms against it and of the proposed alternatives. The reason for such sections is fairly obvious: at some point one has to consider whether or not all the particular problems of employment, of product quality, of environment, of regulation and so on prove beyond solution without a radical change in the basic institutions of (...) society. Since the collapse of real socialism as an alternative in the period 1989–1991, it has become increasingly difficult to have this discussion. Yet we cannot do without the critique of capitalism even if the answer may be that no other economic system is viable at this moment in history. My interest in this paper is to explore how we might now engage in this critique. Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History?" (1989) and Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (1993) provide a framework for this renewed engagement. (shrink)

In Phenomenology of Spirit (1806) Hegel is often held to have announced the end of history, where 'history' is to be understood as the long pursuit of ends towards which humanity had always been striving. In this, the first book in English to thoroughly critique this entrenched view, Eric Michael Dale argues that it is a misinterpretation. Dale offers a reading of his own, showing how it sits within the larger schema of Hegel's thought and makes room for (...) an understanding of the 'end of history' as Hegel intended. Through an elegant analysis of Hegel's philosophy of history, Dale guides the reader away from the common misinterpretation of the 'end of history' to other valuable elements of Hegel's arguments which are often overlooked and deserve to endure. His book will be of great interest to scholars and advanced students of Hegel, the philosophy of history, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

In the contemporary period of history, so deeply contradictory and in many respects conflict ridden, eschatological themes, predictions of universal catastrophe and the ecological or nuclear destruction of mankind, and other motifs of the end of human history have become unprecedentedly widespread and greatly attractive. Despite the huge stores of scientific knowledge accumulated in the past few decades, many people are being drawn more and more into the stream of mystical monstrous visions and are beginning to connect the (...) end of the second millennium with implausible, obsessive apocalyptic presentiments with regard to the world as a whole as well as to our own Russian history. Soothsayers have appeared who have begun to link the phenomena of disintegration and decline and the destruction of political, ethical, and aesthetic criteria being manifested in our country in one way or another directly with the end of Russian history, with the final act of the Russian historical drama. In the sphere of concrete theoretical and philosophical-sociological knowledge, notions of the limit of historical progress, that history has fundamentally, in its essentials, run its course and that from now on the future will bring nothing essentially new, are being put forward and defended. (shrink)

Francis Fukuyama is one of the most significant political theorists of the past thirty years. Bursting into public awareness in 1989 with his provocative thesis about "the end of history," Fukuyama has made fascinating contributions to a wide range of subjects - the importance of trust in societies, the potential dangers of biotechnology, the development of political authority and the modern state, and most recently, the role of identity in politics. This book records a series of conversations with Fukuyama (...) in which he discusses his background and its role in shaping his thinking, the context and genesis of his major works, and his thoughts in light of the dramatic developments of the past decade, especially the rise of populism around the world. The result is a fascinating picture of a major intellectual. The book both provides an overview of Fukuyama's thought and reveals new insights into his best-known work. This book also allows readers to trace the themes which have animated Fukuyama's entire intellectual career. (shrink)

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write. Michel Fouc...

The problem of Nishida Kitaro's historical philosophy and an introduction to the psychedelic paradigm -- The Zen nexus between Nishida Kitaro and modern psychedelic experience -- Experience and the self: the early phase of Nishida's thought (1911-1931) -- Nishida Kitaro's historical world (1931-1945) -- A psychedelic paradigm of history -- Hallucinating the end of history: reflections on myth, the eschaton and the problem of overcoming modernity.

ABSTRACTThis article explores the importance of the Socratic turn to Hegel’s conception of reason in the Philosophy of History. In the “Introduction” to his work, Hegel initially argues that Socrat...

Henry Hansmann has claimed we have reached the “end of history” in corporate law, organized around the “widespread normative consensus that corporate managers should act exclusively in the economic interests of shareholders.” In this paper, I examine Hansmann’s own argument in support of this view, in order to draw out its implications for some of the traditional concerns of business ethicists about corporate social responsibility. The centerpiece of Hansmann’s argument is the claim that ownership of the firm is most (...) naturally exercised by the group able to achieve the lowest agency costs, and that homogeneity of interest within the ownership group is the most important factor in achieving lower costs. He defends this claim through a study of cooperatives, attempting to show that homogeneity is the source of the competitive advantage most often enjoyed by shareholders over other constituency groups, such as workers, suppliers and customers, when it comes to exercising control over the firm. Some business ethicists, impressed by this argument, have taken it to be a vindication of Milton Friedman’s claim that profit-maximization is the only “social responsibility” of management. I would like to suggest that this conclusion does not follow, and that the “Hansmann argument” lends itself to a less minimalist view, what I refer to as a “market failures” approach to business ethics. (shrink)

In this book, Fukuyama seeks to provide affirmative answers to two fundamental questions: Has the ideal of liberal democracy effectively triumphed throughout the world so that we can now speak of the end of humankind's ideological development and thus the end of history? If so, is this a good thing?

This collection of essays explores 'the end' in various contexts, including art, politics, and the philosophy of time and existence. In different ways, all of the essays address emerging horizons of meaning and reality.

In the early 1990s the American academic, political commentator and government advisor, Francis Fukuyama, leapt to prominence with his argument that society had entered a new and lasting phase. He claimed that the change was so dramatic that it might be accurately depicted as the end of history. Fukuyama derived his argument from the writings of Kant, Hegel and a critical reading of Marx. This new phase represented the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy with the collapse of communism. (...) class='Hi'>History has ended in the sense that there is no more room for large ideological battles. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This article engages in the contemporary discussion on utopia by exploring Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s philosophy. The fall of the Berlin Wall has led to debates about the “end of history” and to doubts about the possibility of achieving the ideals and values embedded within the Marxist utopia. To deal with this challenge, contemporary scholars have revisited Marxist tradition to recover the hope stemming from utopia. However, these readings have not taken into consideration Sánchez Vázquez’s contribution to this topic. With (...) a view to addressing this omission, this article analyzes philosophical assumptions underlying Sánchez Vázquez’s approach. By exploring his Philosophy of Praxis and by highlighting its anthropological assumptions, this study demonstrates the extent to which his works provide theoretical underpinnings and resources for contesting contemporary discourses on the “end of history” and for recovering utopia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. (shrink)

History ended, according to Hegel according to Kojève, with the establishment and proliferation in Europe of states organized along Napoleonic lines: rational, bureaucratic, homogenous, atheist. This state lives in some tension with the popular slogan that helped give it birth: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. But there is now also totalitarianism – the only new kind of regime, according to Arendt, created since the national state. Man is now in charge of nature, technology, and society; much of political life has become (...) a gavotte elaborating the meaning of the Napoleonic model. This interpretation, however opposed it seems to common sense, has been influential, particularly in France where the course of existentialism is unintelligible without taking it into account. Professor Cooper argues that it is inherently plausible and examines the arguments of Hegel and Kojève to reveal its consistency and explanatory power. And he applies it to more contemporary events – the experience of the atomic bomb, the Gulag system of extermination, and the growth of multinational corporations. The work concludes by pulling together the presuppositions and theories of the totalitarian system, the Hegelian version of the Napoleonic state, and our contemporary technological society. Overall, the reader will find here a complete and challenging presentation of how the modern world understands its collective life. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider what it might mean to approach boredom as a problem of post-history, rather than of modernity as such. Post-history, or ‘end of history’, in this sense, is linked with the impossibility or unlikelihood of political-systemic change, and thus with the disappearance of the contingency or temporal flux that had been understood as the context or prerequisite of political action and political freedom. I will, argue, firstly, that both Rousseau and Fukuyama depict societies (...) that are ‘post-historical’, in this sense, and which are marked by ‘boredom’ of this specifically post-historical kind. Secondly, I will argue that both thinkers link post-historical boredom with the disappearance or diminution of the ‘drive for recognition’ that both understood as both an agent and effect of ‘history’. Thirdly, I will argue that while Fukuyama understands post-historical boredom as an ‘irritant’ that threatens to restart history without quite succeeding in doing so, Rousseau understands it as an essentially stabilising (and happy) condition that maintains post-historical man in an equilibrium modelled on the order of nature itself. And fourthly, I consider certain ways in which this ‘post-historical’ boredom might coexist and overlap with the ‘promise of intensity’ experienced in post-Fordist neoliberal society. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider what it might mean to approach boredom as a problem of post-history, rather than of modernity as such. Post-history, or ‘end of history’, in this sense, is linked with the impossibility or unlikelihood of political-systemic change, and thus with the disappearance of the contingency or temporal flux that had been understood as the context or prerequisite of political action and political freedom. I will, argue, firstly, that both Rousseau and Fukuyama depict societies (...) that are ‘post-historical’, in this sense, and which are marked by ‘boredom’ of this specifically post-historical kind. Secondly, I will argue that both thinkers link post-historical boredom with the disappearance or diminution of the ‘drive for recognition’ that both understood as both an agent and effect of ‘history’. Thirdly, I will argue that while Fukuyama understands post-historical boredom as an ‘irritant’ that threatens to restart history without quite succeeding in doing so, Rousseau understands it as an essentially stabilising (and happy) condition that maintains post-historical man in an equilibrium modelled on the order of nature itself. And fourthly, I consider certain ways in which this ‘post-historical’ boredom might coexist and overlap with the ‘promise of intensity’ experienced in post-Fordist neoliberal society. (shrink)

The article ventures a reading of Russian postcommunist politics from the perspective of the messianic turn in continental political philosophy, specifically Giorgio Agamben’s conception of the ‘end of history’. Taking its point of departure from a retrospective construction in the Russian political discourse of the 1990s as a period of ‘timelessness’, the paper argues that postcommunism may indeed be viewed as a paradoxical ‘time out of time’, a rupture in the ordinary temporality that entirely dispenses with the teleological horizon (...) of politics. While the problematic of the ‘end of history’ has been popularized by Francis Fukuyama’s liberal recasting of Kojève’s reading of Hegel, the Russian experience is entirely contrary to this complacent and self-gratifying account of the triumph of liberalism and accords, instead, with Agamben’s understanding of the end of history as the deactivation of the teleological dimension of politics as such. The effect of this deactivation is not a catastrophic disintegration of the social order but rather the opening of the possibility of an inoperative political praxis that is oriented towards the affirmation of existence in the pure present. The article proceeds with outlining the implications of this reading of Russian postcommunism for understanding the present conjuncture of Russian politics. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of central features of modern world history which suggest a confirmation, and extension, of something resembling Fukuyama's Kojeve-Hegel *end of history' thesis. As is well known, Kojeve interpreted Hegel as having argued that in a meaningful sense history, as struggle and endeavour to achieve workable stasis in the mutual relations of selves and state-society collectivities, literally came to an end with Napoleon's 1806 victory at the battle of Jena. That victory led to (...) the establishment or consolidation of a European system which significantly embodied the conceptually ideal roles and mutual relations of individual, state, law, and culture (including religious culture), in the aggregated states ruled or presided over by Napoleon. For Hegel the universal structures which constitute the progression of the Absolute are importantly independent of the actual concrete historical individuals and doings which embody and implement them. Once realized upon the earth, the idea of a civil society living, under law, with a sustainable religious and national normative ideology is inexpungible. Even if it has for a time dimmed, it will resurface and re-present itself, and, for Kojeve, has done so, in the gradual articulation of European union and the formations of the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations, in the world that is still our present world. It is much of this model that Fukuyama adopted, and conceived, more explicitly than perhaps either Hegel or Kojeve had done, as a realized triangulation of democracy, liberal individual rights ideology, and capitalism. The realization came to the fore, in Fukuyama's view, in the matrix of the events set in motion by the fall of communism in the European world in 1989. Contrary to Fukayama, of course, there has been rather a lot of 'history' very dramatically in the years in and since 1989, and of course especially explosively in 2001. This recent history notwithstanding, the end of history thesis seems plausible and defensible. Four large geopolitical struggles may be identified, as constituting sequential clusters of argument aimed at determining the human telos, or end-state. They constitute also a sequence of reductios of blueprints that are rivals to the liberalism-democracy-capitalism complex. The four are World War I and the geopolitical struggles between Liberal modernism and fascism, communism, and Islamism. Analyses of these four struggles are offered and defended. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of central features of modern world history which suggest a confirmation, and extension, of something resembling Fukuyama's Kojeve-Hegel *end of history' thesis. As is well known, Kojeve interpreted Hegel as having argued that in a meaningful sense history, as struggle and endeavour to achieve workable stasis in the mutual relations of selves and state-society collectivities, literally came to an end with Napoleon's 1806 victory at the battle of Jena. That victory led to (...) the establishment or consolidation of a European system which significantly embodied the conceptually ideal roles and mutual relations of individual, state, law, and culture, in the aggregated states ruled or presided over by Napoleon. For Hegel the universal structures which constitute the progression of the Absolute are importantly independent of the actual concrete historical individuals and doings which embody and implement them. Once realized upon the earth, the idea of a civil society living, under law, with a sustainable religious and national normative ideology is inexpungible. Even if it has for a time dimmed, it will resurface and re-present itself, and, for Kojeve, has done so, in the gradual articulation of European union and the formations of the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations, in the world that is still our present world. It is much of this model that Fukuyama adopted, and conceived, more explicitly than perhaps either Hegel or Kojeve had done, as a realized triangulation of democracy, liberal individual rights ideology, and capitalism. The realization came to the fore, in Fukuyama's view, in the matrix of the events set in motion by the fall of communism in the European world in 1989. Contrary to Fukayama, of course, there has been rather a lot of 'history' very dramatically in the years in and since 1989, and of course especially explosively in 2001. This recent history notwithstanding, the end of history thesis seems plausible and defensible. Four large geopolitical struggles may be identified, as constituting sequential clusters of argument aimed at determining the human telos, or end-state. They constitute also a sequence of reductios of blueprints that are rivals to the liberalism-democracy-capitalism complex. The four are World War I and the geopolitical struggles between Liberal modernism and fascism, communism, and Islamism. Analyses of these four struggles are offered and defended. (shrink)

Everywhere the 1990s have been characterized by an odd mixture of ideological triumphalism-Fukuyama's "end of history" being only the crassest example-and of ideological uncertainty-can there be, should there be, a "third way"? For all its pretensions to universality, the "New World Order" has never lost a fragility in appearance. Students of historiography can scarcely be surprised to learn that an uneasiness over the present and future has in turn frequently entailed uncertainty about the past and particularly about those parts (...) of the past which had seemed most able to give clear and significant "lessons."One evident example is the history of what in my Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima I called the "long" Second World War, that is, that crisis in confidence in the relationship between political and economic liberalism and the nation-state which, by the end of 1938, had left only Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia as in any sense preserving those "liberal" freedoms which had spread across Europe since 1789. In this article, I briefly review the most recent difficulties World War II combatant societies have had in locating a usable past in the history of those times. However, my major focus is on the specific case of Italy, very much a border state in the Cold War system, and today the political home of an "Olive Tree" and a "Liberty Pole" whose historical antecedents and whose philosophical base for the future are less than limpid. 1990s Italian historians thus give very mixed messages about the Fascist past; these are the messages I describe and decode. (shrink)

What are we to make of the fact that world leaders, such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau, have, within the last few decades, offered official apologies for a whole host of past injustices? Scholars have largely dealt with this phenomenon as a moral question, seeing in these expressions of contrition a radical disruption of contemporary neoliberal individualism, a promise of a more humane world. Focusing on Canadian apology politics, this essay instead proposes a nonideal approach to state apologies, sidestepping questions of (...) what they ought to do and focusing instead on their actual functioning as political acts. Through a sociologically informed speech act theory and Foucault’s work on power, apology is conceptualized as a speech act with an essentially relational nature. The state, through apologizing, reaffirms the norms governing its relationship to its subjects at a moment when a past transgression threatens to destabilize this relation. From a Foucauldian point of view, the state’s power inheres in the very stability of the state–citizen relation, and we should therefore see apologies as defensive moves to protect state hegemony. In the context of Western liberal democracies, such as Canada, apologies embody, rather than challenge, the logic of neoliberal governmentality by suggesting that everything, including resentment against the state, can be managed within the current status quo. Nevertheless, total cynicism about apology politics is not warranted. In many indigenous apology campaigners’ demands for contrition we see another side of apologies: their potential to bring about change by enacting counterhegemonic relations to the state. (shrink)

Francis Fukuyama has argued that history has come to an end. His argument is a philosophical reading of history which derives philosophical implications from empirical views about human economy, society, recent history and the human conditions for self-realization and flourishing. It is this movement between empirical description and philosophical conceptualization that my paper explores, a movement which is both fascinating and problematical. The paper does not seek to “refute” Fukuyama, whose ideas have great currency with significant reason (...) and assumes that there is some thing significant about the idea of the end of history. It is rather concerned to insert a certain skepticism about the dialectic between empirical description and philosophical conceptualization. What the paper comes down against is the assurance that a philosophical structure can be assigned to history. The paper is part of a larger project about philosophical constructions of finality where similar conclusions are drawn. These are drawn in order to suggest that much of the modern/postmodern debate operates within an Hegelian frame work that entitles a philosophical reading of human affairs with respect to their finality, a finality which is supposed to be happening now. (shrink)