Rumi wrote that ‘what you seek is seeking you’, and the journey of some books toward finding their readers is a true reflection of this wise saying. Since its spontaneous recommendation from a stranger that I met at a print shop, Fukuyama’s book has rowed the boat with me for years – the journey however, ends today. I bought a copy of this book almost immediately, given its excellent title and pushing recommendation, but due to reasons I can’t recall, this book couldn’t make the next journey from the shelves to my hands for years.
Until last year, that because of a quirky habit of mine, where I, upon certain queues, keep uttering a title of a book that all of a sudden strongly appeals to my subconscious reasonings, Fukuyama’s book propelled its remaining journey therein. I cannot emphasis enough how many times, and with such vigor and quiet passion, I have uttered ‘the end of history’ in the past many months. But did I not only speak it to myself, it also infiltrated my mind and became a tool for my thinking process. Prior to knowing what such a decisive term might mean, I started to perceive my life through its lens, and wrote many life-journals based on the idea that a history ‘had ended’ in my life as well. I anticipated naively the end of my on-and-off relationship and the end of its history; I saw how my university life had ended and its history too; or how these ends of histories also closed off a whole part of my life.
Yet I remained childishly curious as to what an ‘end of history’ truly meant, and who the last man is at such an ultimate end would be. Opening Fukuyama’s book, I immediately got the sense that this title was as problematic and controversial as it was impactful and impressionable. From the very start, does Fukuyama defend his claim that this term points to a resolution of conflicts, where ultimately History with a capital H, ends; and then he continues to rigorously affirm his concept that with the end of cold war and the downfall of Soviet Union, the victory is that of Liberal Democracy and the Capitalist Economy.
In the beginning chapters, I was almost bemused that could a title, and the concept behind that title, could be so inherently explanation-demanding, and how much effort Fukuyama had to put just to get this book underway. But as the chapters progressed, I became so engrossed into the ideas that this monumental book presents, that I completely forgot about its shaky beginning.
Fukuyama rests his arguments on the giants of history, as he prepares to declare its end.
Starting with Immanuel Kant and his question about the ‘directionality of History’, Fukuyama, once past his earnest defense, delves into the concept of how the history of humankind has always been moving towards an end, a conclusion, rather than the Aristotelian idea that history is cyclical. Presenting Hegel’s dialect between histories through Plato’s dialectic, Fukuyama explains how each previous conflict between the peoples and nations of history was a reflection of the respective flaws in the forms of governance, and how an evolved idea then emerged from that conflict as a result. These dialects then produced better reasonings with the help of progressing natural science and an evolving economy of open-market. The previous forms of governance, Anarchy, Imperialism, Totalitarianism, Fascism, and the kinds, failed because it couldn’t sufficiently meet the one basic human need, which is the Hegelian ‘desire for recognition’. The liberalist political theories of Hobbes and Locke, then, became the basis for the now prevailing democracy around the world, and were foundational for USA’s democratic origins as well.
Parallel to these narratives of historical perspective and the political, Fukuyama also introduces philosophy, in that he drives the idea of man’s desire for recognition as a man, first from Socrates’ thymos (spiritedness) and then blending it into Hegel’s condition for the last man: one who meets that recognition. Fukuyama then introduces Nietzsche for the counterargument of how liberal democracy and capitalism might kill that core desire with its flourishing economy and peace from bloody wars: declaring that men would become 'chestless'. Add in Karl Marx and his French follower Alexandre Kojove, and this book becomes an amalgamation of profound and all-encompassing ideas – all in one place.
While definitely dense and simultaneously widening and closing-in (not to mention endlessly controversial), Fukuyama’s book is foundationally important because of it: the seriousness and thoroughness of this book makes it worthy of being a definitive book on the 1990s world and the future it beckoned towards.
Ratings: 5/5 (June 28, 2022_)