"The
End of History" is a concept from the field of political philosophy
associated with Francis Fukuyama, an American thinker of Japanese descent. In
1989, Fukuima published an article entitled "The End of History" (and
later in 1992 a book entitled "The End of History and the Last Man")
in which he argued that with the collapse of the Communist bloc the great
ideological controversies were closed, and Western liberal and capitalist
democracy would now be accepted without competitors.
Fukuyama
claimed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall historical reasoning achieved its
final goal. Inspired by Hegel, who argued that there are deterministic ideas in
history that seek self-fulfillment, Fukuyama argued that this process had
indeed matured and ended: the long-running conflict between Capitalism and
Marxism ended in the full victory of the Capitalist West. We now come to the
utopian stage, where history is no longer a field of conflicts between
competing ideas. The human figure we know, which is a product of these
conflicts, is also coming to an end according to Fukuyama.
see a brief summary of The end of History and the Last Man by Fukuyama and an extended summary with defenitions and examples.
see also End of History vs. Clash of Civilizations debate for a critique of Fukuyama's ideas.
