Word: fukuyama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Hegel, history "ended," in this sense, with Napoleon's triumph over the Prussian forces at Jena in 1806. That battle, to Hegel, marked the vindication by arms of the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution. True, Napoleon was eventually defeated and authoritarian monarchy restored. But Fukuyama approvingly cites the argument of a little-known French-Russian philosopher, Alexandre Kojeve, that Hegel was essentially correct. The reason: it was at Jena that the "vanguard" of humanity implemented the French Revolution's goals...
...Fukuyama, who considers Hegel an unjustly neglected thinker, argues that those ideals, as embodied in liberal democracy, have outlasted two principal 20th century competitors for the hearts and minds of Western men. "Fascism was destroyed as a living ideology by World War II," Fukuyama writes. As for Marxism-Leninism, he notes that "while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang or Cambridge," no large state that espouses it as an ideology even pretends to be in the vanguard of history. Witness, as evidence, the glasnost-inspired admissions of economic failure and bureaucratic bungling that...
...Fukuyama has no illusions that the end of history represents the beginning of secular paradise. In fact, he sees it as a "sad time," when ideological struggles that called for "daring, courage, imagination" will be replaced by the "endless solving of technical problems." He worries about the cultural banality that pervades liberal societies obsessed with consumerism, and notes that nationalism and religious fundamentalism continue to appeal to many Third World peoples. While it is impossible to rule out the emergence of new ideologies, or indeed of entirely new political systems, Fukuyama argues that for the foreseeable future it will become...
Irving Kristol, founding publisher of the National Interest, says Fukuyama's article serves to "welcome G.W.F. Hegel to Washington." To Harries, the . piece "de-parochializes the debate over Gorbachev's policy and removes it from a cold war context." But Fukuyama also has plenty of critics. In general, conservatives, like historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, argue that he is excessively optimistic in predicting that Marxism's demise as an ideology means that the era of superpower conflict is over. Liberals like Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic charge that he is too complacent in proclaiming the triumph of democracies that have done...
...Fukuyama, a Sovietologist with a Harvard Ph.D. who previously worked for the Rand Corp., is pondering the criticism and will respond in the winter issue of the National Interest. And if he can take time from readying position papers for his new bosses at State, he hopes to explore his thesis at greater length. Unlike history as he sees it, the debate sparked by Fukuyama may be just beginning...