The end of historyFrancis Fukuyama
The end of history
by Francis Fukuyama · first published 1989
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1recommended by
37HN commenters
2009–2026first – last mentioned
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Also, read the book instead of responding to the title. If you want a response to the idea of the end of history, read the end of The End of History.
on “Francis Fukuyama’s Defense of Liberalism” ↗> This logic completely baffled me The argument that market economies beget democracy was popularly espoused in Francis Fukuyama's The End of History [1]. The Soviet Union collapsed following glasnost [2], itself a response to the West's economic outperformance. The USSR's constituents were replaced by things that looked like fledgling democracies…
>The United Nations Security Council has proven once again to be useless. This line makes me significantly question the author's competence (as if knowing he was the author of The End of History before going into it didn't already negatively color my expectations). Russia has a permanent veto on the security council, of course it's going to be useless. Anything that goes against the interests…
on “Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat” ↗…about The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374533229/) by Fukuyama (yes, I know, I know, but I guess he learned something after The End of History). It and Clash of Civilizations are on my near term to read list.
on “President Obama Should Shut Down the NSA’s Mass Spying Before It’s Too Late” ↗…Huntington, of course, is widely known for his Clash of Civilizations, one of several highly publicized attempts in the early 90s to explain post-Cold War geopolitics with a single thesis. Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) and, less notorious in the popular press, John Mearsheimer, are some of the other authors of grand geopolitical theories of the early post-Soviet period. They are grand and sweeping theories that seem…
on “Collapsing Levels of Trust Are Devastating America” ↗> We should be figuring out how to create a global, collective, human advantage for everyone and the planet We haven’t solved the problem of governance. The End of History seemed close in the 1990s. But we’re back to being torn between the efficiency (and short-term stability) of authoritarian models against the flexibility (and long-term stability) of democratic ones.…
…yes, I am being serious - deadly serious. Most European countries neglected national defence after the fall of the Soviet Union in the expectation that Fukuyama was right when he claimed we were at 'The end of History' [1]. There is a good Swedish term for this condition: fredsskadad which translates to 'peace-damaged', the opposite of 'war-damaged'. It is the condition of a people who have gotten so used to peace…
on “Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing” ↗…more importantly, whether there are any forces or incentives on the horizon that might reverse the trend (IMO, no). Better futures have to be consciously fought for. We can't really rely anymore on the "End of History" theory that the arrow of time inevitably points toward peaceful liberal democracy. Even Fukuyama was iffy about that as he admitted in a WSJ interview in 2014, and things have only gotten dicier since.…
on “Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence” ↗…imagine their successors, or even the possibility of a successor. Each seeing themselves as a logical peak of the progressive arrow history, especially post-enlightenment (cf. Fukuyama's (in)famous The End of History[0]). It seems to boil down to the sort of societal consensus definition of "us" that serves as a foundation for the individual definitions of "me" that comprise a society. It's why societies seem to…
on “The Bronze Age has never looked stronger” ↗…certain varieties of misanthropic nihilism? You know, ideas already drenched in blood that seem to have a disturbing ability to recur throughout history? Fukuyama is also well known as the author of "The End of History," which is basically a court intellectual feel-good tome assuring today's leaders that the world has achieved a steady state and nothing much is going to change. (It's since become a laughingstock, as…
on “The Future Bubble” ↗You can disagree with what Fukuyama wrote in "The End of History" but what he wrote isn't what most people (who haven't read it) think he wrote. The strawman version that most people think he wrote is "Yay! The Cold War is over! Everyone will instantly become democratic…
on “Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization” ↗I'm surprised that this doesn't mention Fukuyama's "end of history" idea [1]. When it looks like the world is full of liberal democracies and nations becoming liberal democracies, history feels less compelling. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history
on “The Bonfire of the Humanities” ↗Exactly. And let's not forget the "End of History" by Fukuyama, circa the fall of the Berlin wall. That also didn't turn out that good.
on “The Fifty is awake again” ↗…than a basic religious worldview with precise tenets, is there a solid framework of meaningfully defining/determining good/triumph/progress? Fukuyama himself considered capitalist democracy to be the End of History, so yes.
on “The War ISIS Wants” ↗…from this later, I appreciate your answer. But don't you think it's redundantly tautological and circular/self-referential to approach it like "Fukuyama himself considered capitalist democracy to be the End of History, so it is the supreme progress/triumph (end of history?) to have that". Besides, I was coming from a philosophical perspective to the point where the basis of the things transcend the transient notions;…
on “The War ISIS Wants” ↗