The End of History and The Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

One of the more controversial books of the start of the late 20th century. In this book, Francis Fukuyama pleads for the end of history which has been reached with the implementation of the liberal democratic form of government. How and why will be explained in this review!

Fukuyama starts by stating that he does not want to declare the end of history in itself, he used the Hegelian sense of world history. Fukuyama thinks that the current liberal democracies might be an endpoint within ideological evolution for which he argues in the book. History as understood by George Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel was meant as an occurring evolutionary process towards an endpoint within history. This endpoint would not be a literal endpoint but would indicate that all the bigger political and societal issues would have been solved. Francis Fukuyama will argue that we have reached this state of history which could have been inferred from the name of his book, and he will argue in favor of this position with two arguments: an economic and a more philosophical argument regarding the struggle for recognition. But first, what exactly reached this endpoint in history? This is the current liberal democratic system. According to Fukuyama, this system still has its problems and deficient, but there are in general no potential problems so strong that it can undo the fundaments of the liberal democratic idea and come up with something better.

One of Fukuyama’s goals is to state the argument for universal history, as was tried by Immanuel Kant and Hegel. He starts this argument for a universal history by relying on the natural sciences. According to Fukuyama, the natural sciences molded a universal horizon between countries via economic and conflict concerns. Both areas of interest motivated countries and peoples to modernize and (accidentally) universalize. This shows a universal trend towards a certain endpoint, but it can not explain the liberalization or democratization of nations. Here the philosophical argument comes in. For this argument, Fukuyama relies on the master-slave dialectic of Hegel. To give a simplified idea of this concept, according to Hegel, mankind in general has a need for recognition by other men. Especially a recognition of their ‘being human’. This recognition can be done by staking one’s life at a risk. This essentially comes down to two human beings staking their lives at risk in a battle for recognition which ends in the master-slave dialectic. Because this battle is fought over prestige/recognition, it is not biologically determined, and here Hegel sees a glimmer of human freedom.

Hegel relies on a term first used by Plato in his Republic: thymos , which is a third essential part of human beings next to desire and reason. Thymos is an innate sense of human justice of which self-esteem, pride, and this need for recognition comes forth off. The battles fought over Thymos led history to be divided by lordship and bondage. However, for both the master and slave this relationship led to a contradiction in their recognition. The slave was essentially not recognized as a human being, and while the master was recognized, he was recognized by an essentially lesser being. With the French revolution, this pattern was broken by creating universal recognition where every citizen recognizes one another as equal. This was further enforced or realized by the state through the use of rights. This liberal form of thought essentially recognized all, which is why the liberal concept is near to the end of history. This form of liberalism is also different compared to John Locke and Thomas Hobbes’s concepts of liberalism who combined desire with ratio and created a society of individuals who focused on themselves and fulfilling their own needs. This was not sufficient according to Hegel, who understood the importance of thymos.

This short summary of the book is expanded on in different chapters of which I want to highlight multiple. The first chapter is in my opinion quite interesting because Fukuyama tries to argue for a more positive perspective on world history. In the trend of Steven Pinker, Fukuyama states different facts with which he essentially tries to disprove our pessimism. But what is interesting about it, is that here one can see Fukuyama’s more empirical fundament underlying his philosophical argument of the liberal democracy as endpoint of history. This is because, in this first chapter and multiple that follow, Fukuyama shows that most totalitarian regimes (both communist and fascist) have failed during the last century and have been replaced by liberal democracies. And while these governments still struggle, Fukuyama partly sees the superiority of liberal democracy in this development.

In the second part of the book, chapter 5 Fukuyama starts a new interesting chapter regarding the universal history. Here he explains the unfolding of history as understood by Kant and especially Hegel of history’s progression towards a fuller realization of rationality and self-consciousness which expresses itself in freedom. This is then connected to the liberal democracy which realizes the recognition of all which could be achieved by further rationalization and self-consciousness.

Furthermore, in chapter 10, Fukuyama writes a more sociological essay on the link between the natural sciences/industrialization – education – democracy and liberalism. In this chapter, he tries to combine the three to first connect this progression of the natural sciences and the universal history to the rise of democracy and liberalism through the use of education. He does this by first stating the fact that within these industrialized societies, both education, as well as liberal democracies, seem to rise (as was founded by S.M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan). Fukuyama uses three arguments; first, he argues in line with Talcott Parson that democracies are most efficient in representing and finding consensus in most interest groups created by industrialization. Second, democracy arises out of frustrated elites under an authoritarian regime. All are held back by this single rule and the best outcome for all is democracy. Lastly, industrialization created the middle class. A class that has enough money to be educated, to have free time which can be spent in politicizing different subjects and demands participation. From these arguments, finally, the liberal democracy arises.

Then in part three of the book, Fukuyama starts his philosophical analysis. Here he starts first by further developing the concept of the master-slave dialectic with help of the Hegel interpreter Alexandre Kojève.

And it is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance. The individual, who has not staked his life, may, no doubt, be recognized as a person; but he has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness . – G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind’

All human, anthropogenetic desire–the desire that generates self-consciousness, the human reality is, finally, a function of the desire for “recognition.” ‘ And the risk of life by which the human reality “comes to light” is a risk for the sake of such a desire. Therefore, to speak of the “origin” of self-consciousness is necessarily to speak of a fight to the death for “recognition . -Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel

Here one of the most interesting parts is Fukuyama’s argument on why Hegel’s liberalism is different from Locke and Hobbes. The latter thinkers focused mostly on the human as existing in twofold, partly rational, partly desiring. This led to a rationalistic human-focused to fulfill its diseres without a moral aspect. Hegel in contrast tried to envision the moral part of the human in Thymos.

Over to part 4. I personally found chapter 4 less interesting. It mostly focused on the interconnectedness between thymos and democratic states. However, at the end something interesting happened. At the end of chapter 26, Fukuyama nuances his position and warns us. While some people reacted quite hostile towards his position on liberal democracy as the end of history, Fukuyama isn’t necessarily happy about this being the case either. Yes, he concludes this as being the currently best form of government and as the endpoint of history. But at the same time, he warns us that this will leave us without an opponent, without ideological battles, and in general without this cultural aspect in our lives. Furthermore, he does not leave out the possibility that liberal democracy could still leave us unsatisfied.

Lastly, chapter 5, the last man. Fukuyama attacks his own concept of equal recognition of all from both the left and the right. The attack of the left is mainly focused on the fact that this equality can not be reached within a capitalist system because it is grounded in inequality itself. However, the attack from the right attacks the principle of equality itself and if it is even worth striving for. For this, Fukuyama relies on Friedrich Nietzsche and tries to argue that men does not reach greatness via equality, but by the recognition of being better than others (this might be connected to the concept of Ubermensch, however, I am not familiar with the concept). Here Nietzsche would state that the human is now fundamentally hollow, one strives for only one’s self-preservation in equality. This takes away all value, all creativity, and all drive to be better. Furthermore, because of our knowledge of history, all sense of direction is taken away. We know that our current horizon is just one of many, which fades away with the passing of time. Nothing can give us steadiness in life and this is why we are the last man, we have nothing concrete except for our current passing of time. Here Nietzsche shakes hands with Alexis de Tocqueville who both argued that the slow degeneration of the master-slave dialectic would lead to the vanishing of traditional communities, striving for nothing, only being cared for by their all-encompassing state.

However, in the end, Fukuyama sees the possibility of a solution to these relativism issues and is convinced that most trains will reach the end stop. All in all, was it a genuinely interesting read from a perspective that I am not at all used to. Furthermore, the analysis on the universal history combined with Hegel’s concept of recognition is a truly interesting philosophical argument that Fukuyama interestingly and fluently seemed to combine with political reality. Even if one does not agree with Fukuyama’s idea of liberal democracy as the endpoint of history, his philosophical and sociological essays are worth reading.