Summary Of The End Of History And The Last Man By Francis Fukuyama

To what extent has History ended?

In 1989, the National Interest magazine published Francis Fukuyama’s essay stating that with the end of the Cold War, the failure of communism and hence the triumph of liberal democracy – history was in fact over. At the time, with a multitude of anti communist protests on going throughout the former Soviet Union, it seemed as though Fukuyama was right. Following the smash hit that was his essay, Fukuyama found himself at the forefront of the political science world and was even named the “court philosopher of global capitalism” by Gray . Although Fukuyama’s work holds up at the time the future is always the biggest question mark for liberal democracy, there is no guarantee that there will not be another Hitler

Fukuyama denotes liberal democracy’s successes to not only the strength of itself but to the failures of communism as people hated living in communist police states so those systems didn’t have any sort of legitimacy for the people that lived there . Liberal democracy also has many strengths of its own, for example, market economics provides a level of prosperity for people that’s unrivalled in human history . However, Fukuyama says that the more important reason that liberal democracy “works” which is the desire for all human beings to be recognised. This is what Fukuyama calls “thymos” which is a part of the human personality that demands recognition from other people to feel a sense of pride and self esteem . According to the theory of thymos, which stems from the Greek work expressing the theory of spiritedness. No matter how brutal the force of fascism or communism may be, there’s no way to wipe out thymos in one’s own instinct and human nature. Fukuyama says it goes further than being human nature, but it’s the core of what makes us human and distinguishes us from other animals is our desire to have our human dignity recognised by other people . It is because of this that liberal democracy works – no other political system has the same opportunity to achieve a sense of