Talk:The End of History and the Last Man

The concept of the End of history has been ridiculed by many, especially after the September 11th terrorist attacks. For the Hegelian dialectic to end, human nature would have to change (IMHO). Chadloder 08:11 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

I added a paragraph to explain what the 'end of history' thesis actually means, becuase people insist on making the most basic of all mistakes and confusing 'history' with 'events'. In fact it wouldn't matter if there was a nuclear war, and most human life was wiped out: Fukuyama would simply reply that it would take a few more millenia for parliamentary democracy to flourish. Also I changed 'retracted' to 'qualified': Fukuyama has never retracted his end of history thesis, for the above reason. A much better critique of Fukuyama would be to state that his theory was in no way new: Hegel and Kojeve had fundamentally said much the same thing (as Fukuyama admits). (BScotland).

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There is another problem I see with this ideology. Like Marxists, Fukuyama sees history as a progressive narrative that builds towards a dramatic conclusion (though the author concludes that this finality would be far from "utopic"). The emergence of Islamic fundamentalism provides a dramatic counterexample, as others have mentioned.

Not only is this a new movement, but it also is a challenge to the progressive narrative claim. The adaptation of this ideology, for better or for worse, would revert the world to the 12th century. Is democracy the champion ideology? Seemingly, yes. Would it be difficult to destroy due to the power of the nations that have adapted it? Again, yes.

For these reasons, Fukuyama sees no possible challenge once the world has adapted democracy, a very Cold War-esque perspective. He fails to note that the antagonist doesn't have to be an outside force - the system could collapse due to internal failings including, but not limited to, economic catastrophe.

--Hohenstauff 23:29, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

See also Universal History. Fukuyama (and Marxists) claim legitimecy from Hegel's "Hegelian Dialectic", the idea that history as a progression towards a better state. Most professional historians see this as flawed, it is coming up with a Universal Theory on history first (induction), cherry picking the facts to fit your model, and ignoring the contradictions. Rather, real history is done via deductive reasoning, looking at all the facts and coming up with conclusions. Hegel, and Fukuyama and Marx, were philosophers (to put it kindly), not historians. Stbalbach 00:22, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally I am baffled as to why people still insist that 'Islamic Fundamentalism' (a phrase used in the West, and only in the West, to describe many different ideologies and religious beliefs) offers a 'fundamental' challenge to Parliamentary democracy. To reiterate, whenever such states have been established they were quickly defeated by the superior military powers of the democracies. Moreover, the appeal of (for example) Osama Bin Laden is wildly overstated in the West. Opinion polls, even nowadays (for example) state that for most Palestinians the most admirable political system is.....Israel's. The idea that Arabs actually enjoy living in US backed dictatorships is a pervasive (and vaguely racist) myth. On the contrary, it is the fact that such dictatorships exist and are enthusiastically supported by the US that is the cause of much Arab militancy. George Bush is despised because he is seen as being a hypocrite when he talks about democracy, not because he promises democracy per se.

The fact is (and it is a fact) that there is currently no serious alternative to Parliamentary democracy. Neither is any likely to develop at any point in the near future. It may well be the case that at some impossibly distant future time, some alternative will be found, but let's face facts. When I die, the country i live in (the UK) will still be a parliamentary democracy, as will all of Europe, as will the US, as will Australia. It is also highly likely that most of Africa/South America will stay democratic, because there is no serious intellectual alternative. Even if capitalism did 'collapse': so what? People would just go about recreating it, becuase, to repeat, no serious alternative has been developed.