End of History

2 Pages 528 Words

The End of History?
Francis Fukuyama

In the essay, The End of History, Fukuyama claims that soon there will be no more history to be made. This is because his definition of history is “mankind’s ideological evolution (Fukuyama 201).” This evolution consists of mankind evolving from savages to civilized human beings. Along the way, there have been innumerable conflicts and atrocities, which we record and define as “history”. However, Fukuyama believes that currently we have achieved the highest form of government, which he believes is liberal democracy. As liberal democracy slowly spreads, this will eventually eliminate all conflicts, except for the ones motivated by economic development. Fukuyama cites the defeat of Japan and the imposition of American democracy there as an initial step to the democratization of other countries. Although we have stopped making history, Fukuyama believes that Third World countries are still rich in it. He states that conflicts between these smaller states and the larger s!
tates will still be occur, just not the conflict between large states as we have seen such as in World War I and II. Fukuyama’s tone in the essay is one of superiority in terms of the type of government we have, but a tone of disappointment that once democracy spreads, the world will be a “boring” place to live in.

I partly agree with Fukuyama’s view on history. I agree with Fukuyama in the fact that history is mainly based on conflicts. If you look back on significant events in history, they usually include events such as war and revolution. Although history defined in the context of “anything that is past” will always be there, the type of history we typically think about will be radically changed if democracy were to spread all over the world. I am in agreement that if this were to happen, there would be no more wars. However, to believe that every nation will soon employ a democra...