Book Review: The End Of History and The Last Man

The End Of History and The Last Man by Francis Fukuyama. This book begins with questions. Is there a direction to the history of mankind? And if there is, to what end is it moving? And where are we now, in relation to that "end of history"?

The book proposes that while all forms of government showed grave defects that led to their eventual collapse that brought another style of governance, liberal democracy, free from such fundamental internal contradictions shall continue, and be the last form of government. This will have an effect on our history too, where, by not having a big movement that give rise to great events, it will only be random occurrences that stand to get recorded as history.

The book is in five parts, Part I traces human journey from a brute to the civilized one who chose to go to the moon, noting that every step can also be associated with a significant change in the condition of the world. Like, the pessimism prevalent among the thinkers of the eighteenth century gave way to the optimism of the nineteenth. Or, all the strong states of the early times were taken over by liberal arrangements. Part II discusses human nature, telling how, human effort can triumph over the constraints, and with real-life examples, describes the shape it continued to acquire while meeting the external and internal challenges of the past. Come to part III, and the discussion turns abstract. How, in a liberal democracy, the desire for recognition can take other forms, such as religion and nationalism, potent ones of these days. Taking examples from empires of the past, describes the shapes it continued to acquire while meeting external or internal challenges. Part IV is a critical examination of liberal democracy's claims to be the most rational, and thus the longest lasting. How social edifices like apartheid arose, and how it progressed, and how, economic forces can lead to an integrated world market and obliterate national boundaries. Part V, the last part, is about the last man, one who need not work, and need not fight. Who, nurtured by liberal democracy, stands to have an entirely different path to take. A path that is under the sway of inequalities of political and economical spheres.

This book mentions about two powerful forces at work to shape human history, "the logic of modern science" and "the struggle for recognition'. The first one drives men to fulfill an ever-expanding horizon of desires through a rational economic process; and the second drives him to write its history. Human condition becoming better, struggle for recognition is on the wane, and soon, there will be nothing left of that drive. What else is left to happen but the end of history, unless modern science does something to stop it?