The End of History and the Last Man Quotes

“It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“But supposing the world has become “filled up”, so to speak, with liberal democracies, such as there exist no tyranny and oppression worthy of the name against which to struggle? Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“For Hegel, freedom was not just a psychological phenomenon, but the essence of what was distinctively human. In this sense, freedom and nature are diametrically opposed. Freedom does not mean the freedom to live in nature or according to nature; rather, freedom begins only where nature ends. Human freedom emerges only when man is able to transcend his natural, animal existence, and to create a new self for himself. The emblematic starting point for this process of self-creation is the struggle to the death for pure prestige.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“In particular, the virtues and ambitions called forth by war are unlikely to find expression in liberal democracies. There will be plenty of metaphorical wars—corporate lawyers specializing in hostile takeovers who will think of themselves as sharks or gunslingers, and bond traders who imagine, as in Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, that they are “masters of the universe.” (They will believe this, however, only in bull markets.) But as they sink into the soft leather of their BMWs, they will know somewhere in the back of their minds that there have been real gunslingers and masters in the world, who would feel contempt for the petty virtues required to become rich or famous in modern America. How long megalothymia will be satisfied with metaphorical wars and symbolic victories is an open question. One suspects that some people will not be satisfied until they prove themselves by that very act that constituted their humanness at the beginning of history: they will want to risk their lives in a violent battle, and thereby prove beyond any shadow of a doubt to themselves and to their fellows that they are free. They will deliberately seek discomfort and sacrifice, because the pain will be the only way they have of proving definitively that they can think well of themselves, that they remain human beings.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“For capitalism flourishes best in a mobile and egalitarian society”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“But it is not necessarily the case that liberal democracy is the political system best suited to resolving social conflicts per se. A democracy's ability to peacefully resolve conflicts is greatest when those conflicts arise between socalled "interest groups" that share a larger, pre-existing consensus on the basic values or rules of the game, and when the conflicts are primarily economic in nature. But there are other kinds of non-economic conflicts that are far more intractable, having to do with issues like inherited social status and nationality, that democracy is not particularly good at resolving.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“The effect of education on political attitudes is complicated,
for democratic society. The self-professed aim of modern education
is to "liberate" people from prejudices and traditional forms
of authority. Educated people are said not to obey authority
blindly, but rather learn to think for themselves. Even if this
doesn't happen on a mass basis, people can be taught to see their
own self-interest more clearly, and over a longer time horizon.
Education also makes people demand more of themselves and for
themselves; in other words, they acquire a certain sense of dignity
which they want to have respected by their fellow citizens and by
the state. In a traditional peasant society, it is possible for a local
landlord (or, for that matter, a communist commissar) to recruit
peasants to kill other peasants and dispossess them of their land.
They do so not because it is in their interest, but because they are
used to obeying authority. Urban professionals in developed countries, on the other hand, can be recruited to a lot of nutty
causes like liquid diets and marathon running, but they tend not
to volunteer for private armies or death squads simply because
someone in a uniform tells them to do so”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“For Hegel, by contrast, liberal society is a reciprocal and equal agreement among citizens to mutually recognize each other”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“و لا شك في أن الأمريكي الذي تربى على أفكار هوبز و لوك و جيفيرسون و غيره من الآباء المؤسسين الأمريكيين سيرى في تعظيم هيجل للسيد الأرستوقراطي الذي يخاطر بحياته في معركة من أجل المنزلة مفهوماً يعبر عن الثقافة الجرمانية "التيوتونية”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“لقد إتضح في أواخر القرن 20 أن نظامي هتلر و ستالين إنما كانا طريقين فرعيين للتاريخ لم يوصلا إلى شيء، و لم يكونا بديلين حقيقيين للتنظيم الإجتماعي البشري”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“و قد كان الفشل المطرد الذي صادفته الشيوعية في سعيها في التغلغل إلى العالم النامي، مع انتشارها في دول هي على وشك الدخول في المراحل الأولى من التصنيع، موحياً بأن "إغراء الشمولية" هو كما وصفه والت روستو "مرض المرحلة الانتقالية" أو هو حالة مرضية ناجمة عن احتياجات سياسية و اجتماعية خاصة في دول تمر بمرحلة معينة من التطور الاجتماعي و الإقتصادي.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“An industrial policy worked in Taiwan only because the state was able to shield its planning technocrats from political pressures so that they could reinforce the market and make decisions according to criteria of efficiency—in other words, worked because Taiwan was not governed democratically. An American industrial policy is much less likely to improve its economic competitiveness, precisely because America is more democratic than Taiwan or the Asian NIEs. The planning process would quickly fall prey to pressures from Congress either to protect inefficient industries or to promote ones
favored by special interests.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“What Asia's postwar economic miracle demonstrates is that
capitalism is a path toward economic development that is potentially
available to all countries. No underdeveloped country in the
Third World is disadvantaged simply because it began the growth
process later than Europe, nor are the established industrial powers
capable of blocking the development of a latecomer, provided
that country plays by the rules of economic liberalism.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“التاريخ العالمي ليس بحاجة إلى تبرير كل نظام مستبد و كل حرب حتى يوضح نمطاً أكبر دا معنى و هدف في التطور الإنساني.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“-و ليس بوسع الديموقراطية أن تنهض إلا على أساس من تقسيم الدولة إلى وحدات قومية أصغر .
-الديموقراطية لا تصبح بالضرورة أكثر فعالية كلما إزداد المجتمع تعقيداً و تنوعاً في تكوينه، بل إنها لتفشل حين يتعدى التنوع حداً معينا.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“but on Hegel, his "idealist" predecessor who was the first philosopher to answer Kant's challenge of writing a Universal History. For Hegel's understanding of the Mechanism that underlies the historical process is incomparably deeper than that of Marx or of any contemporary social scientist. For Hegel, the primary motor of human history is not modern natural science or the ever expanding horizon of desire that powers it, but rather a totally non-economic drive, the struggle for recognition. Hegel's Universal History complements the Mechanism we have just outlined, but gives us a broader understanding of man—"man as man"— that allows us to understand the discontinuities, the wars and sudden eruptions of irrationality out of the calm of economic development, that have characterized actual human history.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“The experience of the twentieth century made highly problematic the claims of progress on the basis of science and technology. For the ability of technology to better human life is critically dependent on a parallel moral progress in man. Without the latter, the power of technology will simply be turned to evil purposes, and mankind will be worse off than it was previously.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“Nietzsche believed that no true human excellence, greatness, or nobility was possible except in aristocratic societies. In other words, true freedom or creativity could arise only out of megalothymia, that is, the desire to be recognized as better than others. Even if people were born equal, they would never push themselves to their own limits if they simply wanted to be like everyone else. For the desire to be recognized as superior to others is necessary if one is to be superior to oneself. This desire is not merely the basis of conquest and imperialism, it is also the precondition for the creation of anything else worth having in life, whether great symphonies, paintings, novels, ethical codes, or political systems. Nietzsche pointed out that any form of real excellence must initially arise out of discontent, a division of the self against itself and ultimately a war against the self with all the suffering that entails: "one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star." Good health and self-satisfaction are liabilities. Thymos is the side of man that deliberately seeks out struggle and sacrifice, that tries to prove that the self is something better and higher than a fearful, needy, instinctual, physically determined animal. Not all men feel this pull, but for those who do, thymos cannot be satisfied by the knowledge that they are merely equal in worth to all other human beings.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“For Nietzsche, the very essence of man was neither his desire nor his reason, but his thymos: man was above all a valuing creature, the "beast with red cheeks" who found life in his ability to pronounce the words "good" and "evil.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“Men are made unhappy not because they fail to gratify some fixed set of desires, but by the gap that continually arises between new wants and their fulfillment.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“no man is a good judge in his own case.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“Verily, men gave themselves their good and evil. Verily, they did not take it, they did not find it, nor did it come to them as a voice from heaven. Only man placed values in things to preserve himself—he alone created a meaning for things, a human meaning. Therefore he calls himself “man,” which means: the esteemer. To esteem is to create: hear this, you creators! Esteeming itself is of all esteemed things the most estimable treasure. Through esteeming alone is there value: and without esteeming, the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear this, you creators!”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“men had been everywhere and had seen everything, life’s greatest experience had ended with most of life still to be lived, to find common purpose in the quiet days of peace would be hard”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“صحيح أن الإسلام يشكل أيديولوجية متسقة ومتماسكة شأن الليبرالية والشيوعية، وأن له معاييره الأخلاقية الخاصة به ونظريته المتصلة بالعدالة السياسية و الاجتماعية. كذلك فإن للإسلام جاذبية يمكن أن تكون عالمية، داعيا إليه البشر كافة باعتبارهم بشرا لا مجرد أعضاء في جماعة عرقية، أو قومية معينة. وقد تمكن الإسلام في الواقع من الانتصار على الديمقراطية الليبرالية في أنحاء كثيرة من العالم الإسلامي، وشكل ذلك خطرا كبيرا على الممارسات الليبرالية حتى في الدول التي لم يصل فيها إلى السلطة السياسية بصورة مباشرة. وقد تلا نهاية الحرب الباردة في أوروبا على الفور تحدي العراق للغرب، وهو ما قيل (عن حق أو عن غير حق) إن الإسلام كان أحد عناصر
غير أنه بالرغم من القوة التي أبداها الإسلام في صحوته الحالية، فبالإمكان القول: إن هذا الدين لا يكاد يكون له جاذبية خارج المناطق التي كانت في الأصل إسلامية الحضارة. وقد يبدو أن زمن المزيد من التوسع الحضاري الإسلامي قد ولى. فإن كان بوسع الإسلام أن يكسب من جديد ولاء المرتدين عنه، فهو لن يصادف هوى في قلوب شباب برلين، أو طوكيو، أو موسكو، ورغم أن نحو بليون نسمة يدينون بدين الإسلام (أي خمس تعداد سكان العالم) فليس بوسعهم تحدي الديمقراطية الليبرالية في أرضها على المستوى الفكري. بل إنه قد يبدو أن العالم الإسلامي أشد عرضة للتأثر بالأفكار الليبرالية على المدى الطويل من احتمال أن يحدث العكس، حيث إن مثل هذه الليبرالية قد اجتذبت إلى نفسها أنصارا عديدين وأقوياء لها من بين المسلمين، على مدى القرن ونصف القرن الأخيرين. والواقع أن سبب الصحوة الأصولية الراهنة هو قوة الخطر الملموس من جانب القيم الغربية الليبرالية على المجتمعات الإسلامية التقليدية.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“Whether or not true free will exists, virtually all human beings act as if it does, and evaluate each other on the basis of their ability to make what they believe to be genuine moral choices.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“Moreover, it appears to be the case that rational recognition is not self-sustaining, but must rely on pre-modern, non-universal forms of recognition to function properly. Stable democracy requires a sometimes irrational democratic culture, and a spontaneous civil society growing out of pre-liberal traditions. Capitalist prosperity is best promoted by a strong work ethic, which in turn depends on the ghost of dead religous beliefs, if not those beliefs themselves, or else an irrational commitment to nation or race. Group rather than universal recognition can be a better support for both economic activity and community life, and even if it is ultimately irrational, that irrationality can take a very long time before it undermines the societies that practice it. Thus, not only is universal recognition not universally satisfying, but the ability of liberal democratic societies to establish and sustain themselves on a rational basis over the long term is open to some doubt.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“A liberla democracy that could fight a short and decisive war every generation or so to defend its own liberty and independence would be far healthier and more satisfied than one that experienced nothing but continuous peace.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“The decline of community life suggests that in the future, we risk becoming secure and self-absorbed last men, devoid of thymotic striving for higher goals in our pursuit of private comforts. But the opposite danger exists as well, namely, that we will return to being first men engaged in bloody and pointless prestige battles, only this time with modern weapons. Indeed, the two problems are related to one another, for the absence of regular and constructive outlets for megalothymia may simply lead to its later resurgence in an extreme and pathological form.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

“The possibility that liberal society does not represent the simultaneous satisfaction of desire and thymos but instead opens up a grave disjuncture between them is raised by critics on both the Left and the Right. The attack from the Left would maintain that the promise of universal, reciprocal recognition remains essentially unfulfilled in liberal societies, for the reasons just indicated: economic inequality brought about by capitalism ipso facto implies unequal recognition. The attack from the Right would argue that the problem with liberal society is not the inadequate universality of recognition, but the goal of equal recognition itself. The latter is problematic because human beings are inherently unequal; to treat them as equal is not to affirm but to deny their humanity.”
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man