[In the following review of The End of History and the Last Man, Deneen provides an overview of Fukuyama's historical postulations and critical reaction to his thesis.]

Francis Fukuyama's 1989 article “The End of History?” in The National Interest caused a sensation in both academic and nonacademic circles of a magnitude unprecedented since Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind in 1987. The resemblance of the sound and the fury is not coincidental: Fukuyama—a former student of Bloom's—veered from the well-worn discursive paths within the field of international relations with as much aplomb as did Bloom in domestic fields. Fukuyama's book—fundamentally a lengthy extension of his original article—should continue to infuriate as well as stimulate debate as the West finds itself somewhat lost in a new but no less frightening international arena.

Fukuyama's thesis is grand, even brash at times, deriving as much from the subtle and difficult theories of Hegel and Nietzsche as from recent developments on the front pages. History—conceived here not as a pastiche of disjunct events, but in broad, panoramic strokes from which developmental stages can be discerned—has reached its logical conclusion with the worldwide embrace of the “universal and homogeneous” state of liberal democracy. Fukuyama contends—and, one would have to admit, correctly—that no other political arrangement contains the legitimate and ethical components found in the liberal democracies of Europe and the United States. Fukuyama provides ample historical evidence demonstrating the decline of alternative political arrangements, notably fascism and communism; but the display of evidence is secondary to his larger contention that it is the idea of liberal democracy that has prevailed, and that localized exceptions merely continue to play out the necessary conflict that will inevitably drive each nation to similar liberal arrangements.

Such a cavalier dismissal of contradictory historical evidence is grounded in Fukuyama's supporting thesis that there are two forces which impel the course of History. First, the exigencies of national defense will inevitably require a country to pursue a policy of a scientific research, and thus foster economic development that supports—materially and educationally—continued military competitiveness. The result of this first force in its most developed form is market capitalism. Nevertheless, Fukuyama acknowledges, a capitalist economy does not necessarily result in a democratic polity, and thus a second force is introduced: the struggle for recognition. In perhaps the most original and controversial part of the book, Fukuyama links the Hegelian notion of “recognition” (Annerkenung) with the Platonic source of honor, thymos—translated alternately as “heart” or “spiritedness.” Described as the “psychological seat” of the human desire for recognition, thymos is the inegalitarian impulse that drives the human person to struggle for recognition of his or her human dignity; writ large, that worldwide individual struggle ironically results in democracy, the only political system in which each person is both accorded recognition by, and is in turn required to recognize the dignity of, fellow citizens.

Yet this very solution contains the seeds of its own dissolution: recognition, by its very essence, requires, on the one hand, inferiors to whom one can compare oneself advantageously; and alternatively, those in a superior position whose esteem is worth seeking. Egalitarian democracy leaves the individual's thymotic desires unsatisfied, akin to “the Last Man” scenario described by Nietzsche in which mankind is left materially contented but spiritually bereft as an equal if mediocre democratic citizen. The “End of History” is by no means to be celebrated in Fukuyama's estimation; in fact, given the inevitability of humanity's continuing search for recognition, the end of History may simply result in a condition of such overarching discontent that human beings will once again struggle—this time against equality itself—thereby jeopardizing the stability of liberal democracy and starting the march of History anew.

Fukuyama's conclusions are certain to provoke an angry response by those on the Left, particularly Marxists, who will be disturbed by the supposed configuration of the economy at the end of History, and liberals who will object to the Nietzschean conclusions that Fukuyama draws from the dynamics of egalitarianism. The vehemence of their response should be indicative of the threat they perceive from Fukuyama's thesis—and justly so. Ultimately, these opposition camps share an uncomfortable similarity with Fukuyama's approach, namely a belief in the progressive course of History. They will object, then, not necessarily with the premises of Fukuyama's analysis, but with its conclusions, rather seeking alternative explanations that will result in a more benevolent future. Such debates should prove amusing: for, if the forces of History must inevitably result in a single tableau, then arguments over its likely appearance should prove quite irrelevant.

Notwithstanding these critics, significant (and consequential) questions should remain for those not wholly satisfied with Fukuyama's thesis, yet sympathetic with some of his criticisms of modern liberal democracy. While at first glance it seems apparent that the two forces of History can be divided into a material explanation (scientific capitalism) and a moral explanation (thymotic democracy), further contemplation should force us to conclude otherwise. In fact, by calling attention to the philosophical origins of the scientific method—namely, in the writings of Francis Bacon and his Renaissance contemporaries—Fukuyama indicates that scientific and capitalistic development was, and to some extent still is, subject to moral considerations. Alternatively, the individual's craving for recognition has been a natural feature of the human psyche, at least since the first chapters of Genesis. The inherent contradiction described by Fukuyama concerning the egalitarian result of humanity's thymos and the individual's subsequent dissatisfaction, suggests no more than the longstanding Judeo-Christian belief that solutions to the cravings of the human soul are not available in wholly secular—including political—terms. Fukuyama, while recognizing the paradox of the individual's desires, nevertheless appears to accept without perturbation Hegel's thesis that Christianity is the culminating “slave-morality” of world history, and that its replacement by liberal democracy has made the individual's inferiority to God unnecessary. Yet, only through “recognition” originating from a higher source can mankind achieve both meaningful equality (as mutual subjects) and recognition (through worship and imitation of the divine). Otherwise—following to its conclusion the argument originally shared by both Hegel and Nietzsche, and acknowledged by Fukuyama—the sole secular source of recognition in a world of liberal democracy is through participation in the glories of warfare. And given the destructive forces that we now wield against one another in this potential struggle for wholly earthly recognition, we may quite literally find ourselves at the end of History, but this time with no one to lament its passing.