The End Of History

10 Pages 2528 Words

In this paper I will compare two separate thoughts on the new look that International Relations is going to take in the future. Actually these changes have already started to take place; in “The End of History” Francis Fukuyama believes that international conflict will occur through religion and nationalism. In “The Clash of Civilizations” Samuel Huntington states that these changes will happen at the civilization level. Both theories are valid and describe each in their own way, the changes in how the world operates with international conflicts.
Basically since the end of the Cold War there has been a general movement towards peace. Francis Fukuyama believes this procession towards peace is leading to the end of cultural differences. The spread of Western consumerism (free trade) has stretched nearly everywhere in the world. The end of the Cold War also brought the infiltration of Western liberal democracy. Even if a country remains non-democratic there are still hints of Western consumerism throughout.
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel first coined the term “the end of history”. Hegel stated that “mankind has progressed through a series if primitive stages of consciousness on his path to the present, and that these stages corresponded to concrete forms of social organization, such as tribal, slave owning, theocratic, and finally democratic egalitarian societies (Fukuyama, 1989).” This is the modern understanding of man. Hegel, unlike later historians, believed that history would conclude in an absolute moment. After this moment a rational form of society is formed. Hegel’s theories have gained him recognition as the philosopher who most accurately speaks of our time. This happened around the time of the French Revolution and is the key turning point in “the end of history”.
Hegel said that the end of history would occur in 1806, with the fall of Napoleon’s empire to the Prussian Monarchy. His ideas spu...