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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
- David Keymer, SUNY Inst. of Technology, Utica
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
The twentieth century, it is safe to say, has made all of us into deep historical pessimists. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Is this as good as it gets?,
By
This review is from: The End of History and the Last Man (Paperback)
This is a book with a certain fame or notoriety, not least due to its title. Having finally read it, I can appreciate its appeal and yet am perplexed at why it has been misinterpreted so widely, and why such a badly-written and ill-thought-out work has been taken so seriously.The danger of a book like this is that it can reinforce or pander to some people's prejudices - after the fall of Communism we in the West did deserve a metaphorical pat on the back, but that's a long way from just kicking back as saying "well folks, this is as good as it gets". A cursory reading of "The End of History" would no doubt assure the armchair warriors that all's well with the world now the Reds have gone. BUT, Fukuyama is not so sure as that. He puts forward an hypothesis about the triumph of liberal democracy (this is what human history has been leading up to) but utterly fails to prove that hypothesis. That's not to say that the hypothesis is not worthy of thought and debate - Fukuyama is at least to be congratulated for that. What I found less satisfactory was the quality of argument and analysis found in the book, and I'm no professional historian or philosopher. Just two among many examples - Fukuyama classes the USA and Great Britain as a "liberal democracies" from, respectively, 1790 and 1848: utterly astounding. I was equally perplexed by this: "A century of Marxist thought has accustomed us to think of capitalist societies as highly inegalitarian, but the truth is that they are far more egalitarian in their social effects than the agricultural societies they replaced". Well so what? Last time I was in Rome, I noticed they were no longer throwing Christians to the lions. Yet the main problem I found was that Fukuyama's paradigms were themselves utterly conventional, causing him to either miss or duck fundamental issues such as how the rise of globalism, multi-national companies and fundamentally undemocratic super-states such as the European Union will affect liberal democracies. Is democracy a dispensable item provided we have material wealth - voter turn-outs might suggest this - or is this a real and new "internal contradiction"? So, congratulations to Fukuyama for opening the debate. Beware of people who regard this work as some sort of Bible. Read it carefully and be prepared to plough your way through a lot of ropey analysis.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
To Be Frank - A Load Of Old Rubbish,
This review is from: The End of History and the Last Man (Paperback)
Fukuyama's far fetched and frankly irrelevant theories bore me, I'm afraid to say. This was the book that introduced me to that way of thinking - it's basically written by a wealthy American academic (who has spent most of his life employed by the US government), claiming that the American capitalist system has conquered all political alternatives, surpassing even that of democracy and especially that of communism. Capitalism is, for Fukuyama, the end of the evolution of man and the start of an eternal status quo. This idea is laughable in concept and is further ridiculed by his over-selective choice of material which is already outdated. Clearly it is his ideal world - but I not sure that everyone shares it and even less sure that we have reached it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Irrelevant work with amazing staying power,
This review is from: The End of History and the Last Man (Paperback)
It's really hard to top that priceless review below, but I'll give it a shot. It's really amazing that after about seven years of hindsight, people are still writing rave reviews of this book for its amazing philosophical insights. Fukuyama himself had to back-pedal several times to qualify the bubbling optimism he expressed in the early nineties about the final victory of liberal democracy and the "end of History" (he essentially refutes his own thesis in the conclusion to this book). It's also quite interesting that none of the reviewers who loved this book so much noted the inherent contradiction in Fukuyama's use of Marxist philosophical methods to arrive at a "non-Marxist conclusion," or his continuous extolling of Hegel as some sort of predecessor to liberal democracy. Hegel was hardly democratic in outlook (he greatly admired the powerful and autocratic Prussian state) and he can rightfully be considered an early proponent of an exclusive northern German nationalism. Fukuyama's book is very flawed, and should have been relegated to the dustbin of history (no capital "H") long ago.
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