The End of History and The Last Man

As the tumultuous twentieth century shudders toward its close — with the collapse of communism leading to a transformation of world politics — Francis Fukuyama asks us to return with him to a question that has been asked by the great philosophers of centuries past: is there a direction to the history of mankind? And if it is directional, to what end is it moving? And where are we now in relation to that "end of history"?

In this exciting and profound inquiry, which goes far beyond the issues raised in his world famous essay "The End of History?" in the summer 1989 National Interest, Fukuyama presents evidence to suggest that there are two powerful forces at work in human history. He calls one "the logic of modern science" and the other "the struggle for recognition'.' The first drives men to fulfill an ever-expanding horizon of desires through a rational economic process; the second, "the struggle for recognition',' is, in Fukuyama's (and Hegel's) view, nothing less than the very "motor of history'.'