Talk:The End of History and the Last Man

message: As I said at the time.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.10.154.17 (talk) 14:31, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Utter counterfactual nonsense

message: "(...) either they will become Islamic democracies (like Turkey) or they will simply disintegrate."
I wonder if "Turkey = islamic democracy" is the author's opinion, or an interpretation -and what does it mean in the first place? Can you call France a 'christian democracy'? Just like France, Turkey is a secular democracy. Gandy.Phoebus 23:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Islamic democracy? 

message: Was Nietzsche's concept of the Last Man explicitly implied in the title?  The article makes no mention of it per se, though it sounds implied, so I added a link at the end.
Addition to Anonymous User's above post:
More recently, if "Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Bioechnology Revolution" suggests that biotechnology will enable us to control our evolution and make ourselves unequal, seems to me that regardless of race, one could truly become a Ubermensch... Perhaps this is a question for the main Fukuyama page? (I'm no expert, so I don't know.)
Max Way 00:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nietzsche's Last Man 

message: Hi all,
I'm curious as to the Fukuyama's possible connection with Leo Straus, especially as Fukuyama does not desire the neoconservative label associated with Paul Wolfewitz (sp?) and other of Straus's pupils. There doesn't seem to be any source for this connection... I could be wrong, but as an interested student using these articles as launching points for research some measure of citing would be helpful.
Regards,
Max Way (Renaissance College Student)
Max Way 18:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Connection to Straus? 

message: It wouldn't be so controversial or misinterpretted if he had titled it better. "End of History" has an eschatological sound to it. It's unnecessarily dramatic.
:"Coming to a theater near you..."
:(explosions and car chases)
:"...The End of History!...History will end Summer 2007"
:Schwartzenegger: "I'll end your history"
::Jigen III 06:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title 

message: "Some researchers have found empirical evidence that democracies are better at reducing poverty as compared with non-democracies.[8]"
-I have not even read the link because the research supporting this claim is not what I am contending. What I am saying is that statement is reductionist, as I'm sure there are many variables involved (eg. There are also arguments that the liberal democracies  which multilateral institutions such as the WTO, IMF, and WB are supported by, ideologically and finanacially, are in fact stymieing innovative economic progress in many countries: Jamaica, Indonesia, etc...)
If this statement is to be kept in the article, I think it should be expanded upon somewhat (at least to address the complexity of the issue, so it doesn't come off as reductionist as I think it does now). Moreover, it certainly won't suffice to say only "It's more complex than this though" or something along those lines.
Also, I think it is relevant to the article.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.82.118.115 (talk • contribs) 19:09, November 13, 2008
Empirical evidence is never pointed out by those it dosen't favour.
Sioraf (talk) 12:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concerning a rebuttal found in the criticism section 

message: Considering the empirical evidence used to "discredit" Derrida's book, I thought I could contribute to this discussion, considering I've read this book many times.
Derrida is IN NO WAY trying to indict liberal democracy as an effective means of government or removing poverty, etc. What he critiques is rather the notion that by defeating communism, we have reached the end point in our political evolution and have identified the main political ideal that will magically make humanity a happy species. He points out the problems of that time (late 80's-early 90's) and how these still exist in a post-cold war world and what needs to be done to rectify the political structures that permit them or allow those injustices to take place. Perhaps also the inevitiability of new problems that will arise even with systems such as free market democracies. That's a crude summation of his point, among others in that book. The larger point is a critique of the idea that with the defeat of communism, we've vanquished Marx and his legacy for good. It should also be remembered that Derrida himself was quite a bit of an anti-communist himself, having protested injustices in socialist Poland (along with Michel Foucault) and advocating majority democracy in South Africa, among other places. The book itself (while not dismissing Marx crudely) does not provide a doctrinaire or entirely uncritical affirmation of Marx's thought and it was extremely criticized, if not dismissed, by most major Marxist thinkers at the time, even by some of his own Marxist-oriented acolytes, such as Gayatri Spivak. Afghan Historian (talk) 17:30, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Before I say anything else, I will state that your interpretation of Derrida's thoughts on the matter seems pretty well-justified, and so what I say here applies to the text of the article not your exposition of Derrida. Moving on then, the problem with the passage on Derrida's work in the article is that Derrida seems to have a very... unique take on matters of fact. I understand full well that Derrida is a liberal arts theorist and not an actual economist or scientist, so he may be woefully under-qualified to make such claims of fact, but that does not excuse the incredulous and just plain incorrect statement that "violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of... humanity." When you consider the genocides and famines (the gulags, Holodomor of Ukraine come to mind) not to mention wanton destruction of wealth carried out under the Stalin-era Soviet Union and Maoist China, I would disagree. My counter-statement amounts to the fact that the spread of western liberal democracy has drastically cut back on the violence, famine, and economic oppression experienced in the world. Taking your point, Afghan Historian, I would agree that western liberal democracy seems to stall-out when it comes to solving the massive crises of places like Africa. In fairness, if you look at the intellectual attention that groups like TED Talks have given to these matters, and that TED Talks could only effectively exist in a western liberal capitalist democracy, I am optimistic for western mixed/capitalist democracy on this point.
76.199.175.33 (talk) 18:02, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Derrida, Specters of Marx and liberal democracy

message: In his 2006 book America Alone, Mark Steyn argued that Europe and its liberal democracy were threatened by declining birthrates of native Christian Europeans in conjunction with a dramatic population growth of Muslim immigrants, who did not share Europeans' affinity for tolerance and democracy (this is sometimes known as the "Eurabia" theory). Steyn argued that the chief cause of this trend was a lack of cultural confidence among native Europeans. In the book, Steyn wrote:
"One of the most obvious refutations of Francis Fukuyama’s famous thesis The End Of History – written at the victory of liberal pluralist democracy over Soviet Communism – is that the victors didn’t see it as such. Americans – or at least non-Democrat-voting Americans – may talk about “winning” the Cold War but the French and the Belgians and Germans and Canadians don't. Very few British do... pace Fukuyama, there was no sense on the Continent that our Big Idea had beaten their Big Idea."[13]''
::This guy is a clucking loon.--66.233.55.145 (talk) 09:04, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ehhh, I'm just gonna edit out that Mark Steyn nonsense until further notice. 

message: The entire premise is Utopian in the worst sense.  The End of History is comparable to the Kingdom of God on Earth, the Second Coming, the Last Judgement, The New Age, the Aquarian Age, etc.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.3.151.239 (talk) 13:30, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Utopian 

message: As of 2016 most commentators seem to agree that the future of liberal democracy is far from assured and we may even have passed 'Peak Democracy'. I think this may mean it's time for a re-appraisal of this article? Stub Mandrel (talk) 21:35, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The End of History - CANCELLED DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have changed the last para of the above mentioned section, as the previous was the wrong depiction of Fukuyama's views, in his Wall Street Opinion Piece. Please review them, if anyone get a chance.
Fukuyama's opinion piece can be found on the following link:
https://englishmatters.gmu.edu/issue6/911exhibit/emails/fukuyama_wsj.htm
If anyone wishes to change it, I would highly appreciate, if we could discuss it first. Thanks a lot. Zed J Alexander (talk) 23:41, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not see how the previous version was a "wrong depiction."  Could you explain the issues with the previous version of the article text?  Thanks.  The new version is serviceable, but not necessarily any more accurate, in my opinion.  I fixed a few grammar errors in the new version as well. I inserted "toward" because the "evolution" phrase did not seem to make sense the way it was written, but I think the original meaning still remains.--MattMauler (talk) 17:36, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes to "Radical Islam, tribalism, and the "Clash of Civilizations"