Aufhebunga Bunga
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/171/ Fukuyama & the End of History ft. Daniel Bessner
🕑 Added 2021-01-19 08:01:01 +0000 UTCIf liberal democracy has been dethroned, what next?
Francis Fukuyama famously declared the "end of history" in 1989. Has he been misunderstood? Should we understand the declaration in a geopolitical sense - liberal democracy triumphant - or in a more philosophical sense? We discuss what capital-H History means and what Fukuyama's career trajectory can tell us about our times. Is it capitalism realism or the end of history?
Comments
Aufhebunga Bunga
Yes, excellent point.
Lee Jones
I was surprised that no one mentioned the link between Fukuyama's worry that the "end of history" would be a "sad time", and the Iraq War. To me, there seems to be a fairly straight line linking these things, via the Project for the New American Century. Fukuyama worried that the "end times" would hollow out politics by removing the potential for great heroism, drama and sacrifice. This intersected with the neo-conservatives' analysis of capitalist modernity, which worried that it undermined the social cohesion required for a republic to function. The Project for the New American Century was an attempt to reinject meaning and purpose into the "end times", re-moralising public life in an attempt to cohere the republic around shared values. That this sinister dream died a death in the deserts of Iraq only points to the bankruptcy of conservative "solutions" to the end of history.
Eli S
Epur si muove.
