by Francis Fukuyama
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Product Description
Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 The Premier Political Science Book of the Last Half Century, 2008-09-12
Fukuyama presents a horrific picture of the end of history where people are fed and housed and watch fifth rate entertainments but I think the situation is much more terrible under the ageis of the Hegelian Absolute than the picture painted by Fukuyama. Science I think is out of the question under a Hegelian system as all that matters is recognition. Hegelianism has always been at odds with science witness Stalin and biology and Marx and economics. The neo-cons call for A and B teams on the science of climatology, decry evolution etc. Science has no special pass with Hegelianism. Nothing has a special pass with Hegelianism. Hegelianism is the universal solvent. Hegel bought the bullet and called history under the Absolute a slaughterbench and so it is. Certainly large elements of society are moving under an almost mindless teleological sway. Palin, a vice presdiential canidate is talking about the US sending troops to Georgia to fight the Russians. For the neo-cons this is no brainer. 'Of course, attack Russia in Georgia!' There is no political sense to this but it fits in with being under the sway of the the Absolute. For Norman Podhoretz whatever the problem is the solution is bombing. There is much to suggest that Hegelianism was and still is the esoteric doctrine of the neo-cons. Achievement doesn't matter under a Hegelian system as all that matters is recognition. Palin has a high recognition factor amongst fundamentalists and is therefore completely acceptable to the neo-cons despite low achievements. Hegel makes clear that masters in the master/slave dialectic don't create. Pundits are the would be masters of today. Pundits don't achieve/create. Pundits redescribe. I think this is the premier political science book of the last half century and stands the test of time extremely well but errs in holding that with Hegel mankind enters a lotus land with the pro and cons of a lotus land. I think the current Hegelianism which I hold to be prevalent today is at odds with civilization of any sort. Clearly a juggernaut seems to be driving current events today and Hegel is the apostle of the juggernaut. Fukuyama correctly stresses Hegel as the uncrowned king of thought today.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 A few overdue remarks, 2008-03-24
Many things have been said about this book - adding one more review would be useless. I'd like to point out, though, two things that have not been discussed so far.
Firstly, what made really hard for me to read this book was the fact that Fukuyama seems to have studied Western Philosophy on a "Philosophy for Dummies" guide. I found particularly painful to read him discuss Hegel and Nietzsche with little to no cognition of the depth of the thoughts of these authors and remaining attached to a ridicolously superficial view of their ideas. This thing alone should put Fukuyama back on a school desk for life and not in an office room with the tag "professor" on the door.
Secondly, this book - for how incredibly shallow and misinformed - has one incredible quality. I've always thought that stupid people should be listened to with the most attention because they involuntarily spell out in words their entire thought process, revealing in this way assumptions and conjectures that more intelligent people with similar ideas would never dare admitting explicitely - even to themselves.
Fukuyama in writing "The End of History" has accomplished a great deed in involuntarily gifting humanity of the most detailed and well explained text ever written about the stupidity of historical eschatology.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Debourd on Hegel (and by extension Fukuyama), 2008-01-25
"So philosophy, as it expires in the arms of truly historical thinking, can no longer glorify its world without denying it, for even in order to express itself it must assume that the total history in which it has vested everything has come to an end, and that the only court capable of ruling on truth or falsehood has been adjourned."
- Guy Debourd "The Society of the Spectacle" (1967)
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
The Contented Dog, 2007-08-05
Fukuyama's style in discussing the history of man is captured by the following paragraph extracted from his book:
"An American politician could harbor ambitions to be a Caesar or a Napoleon, but the system would allow him or her to be no more than a Jimmy Carter or a Ronald Reagan - hemmed in by powerful institutional constraints and political forces on all sides, and forced to realize their ambitions by being the people's "servant" rather than their master."
He describes his concept of the "last man" with this paragraph:
"Nietzsche's last man was, in essence, the victorious slave. He agreed fully with Hegel that Christianity was a slave ideology, and that democracy represented a secular form of Christianity.
In the ultimate society, he uses the analogy of a dog to describe his last man's outlook,
"A dog is content to sleep in the sun all day provided he is fed, because he is not dissatisfied by what he is. He does not worry that other dogs are doing better than him, or that his career as a dog has stagnated, or that dogs are being oppressed in distant parts of the world. If man reaches a society in which he has succeeded in abolishing injustice, his life will come to resemble that of the dog."
As is clear from the above, the book is well written and full of thoughtful insights.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Fascinating, thought--provoking, but out of date, 2007-07-23
In this fascinating and highly thought-provoking book, American philosopher Francis Fukuyama argues that the war at the beginning of human history was a battle for prestige or recognition. And, history has unfolded as a search to find a balance between the drives for victory of one over another to gain that recognition. In the eighteenth century, history effectively began to end as people embraced the liberal democratic/capitalist system that granted mutual recognition.
Now, history is not over for those outside this system, and nations can return to history if they move away from the liberal democratic/capitalist system. Along the way, the author unfolds his argument for the drive for recognition as the engine of human history, explains how we got to where we are, and what the future may eventually bring for the human race. The author makes his argument in a clear, compelling manner that puts great force behind his argument.
I do, though, have several complains against this book. First of all, I have the 1992 edition, and some of what I have to say may not apply to later editions. But, as the West now stands in a crisis situation in world history, it is easy to see that some of what has happened in the last 15 years was not anticipated by Mr. Fukuyama.
Chapter 7 of this book is entitled, No Barbarians At The Gates. Well, in point of fact, the West faces two sets of Barbarians at the gates. The first set of barbarians are in fact within the gates, and is the newly militant Liberalism with its drive to extinguish freedom (think of Dr. Heidi Cullen's desire to remove American Meteorological Society accreditation to any meteorologist who expresses skepticism towards man-made global warming) in its drive for radical equality. This is in fact the "excess of isothymia" that the author mentioned was possible in chapter 29, but he did not expect it to be coupled with an external threat.
Second of all, on page 45, Dr. Fukuyama states that Islam poses "a grave threat to liberal practices," but then immediately moves away from the threat of Islam, as if wishing it out of existence. In point of fact, with the West's inability and even downright refusal to maintain its borders, the "post-historic" world has been invaded by people from the "historic" world, and militant Islam is now working with some success to undermine the liberal democratic system from within the very heart of the "post-historic" world.
Therefore, while I do think that this book is quite correct in its view of the drive for recognition and the victory of the liberal democratic/capitalistic system, I do think that it does not do a good job of anticipating what would (and did!) come next. The "post-historic" world has proved itself unable (at least so far) to protect itself against the "historic" world, and it is uncertain that it will be philosophically able to protect itself without a turn to towards the "megalothymia" that the good doctor so fears.
So, overall, I would highly recommend this book as a fascinating philosophical look at the modern world, but I would not say that it goes so far as to explain where we are now and where we are truly heading. I give this book a somewhat guarded recommendation.
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