Who is the Fukuyama guy anyway?

[skjpm]

He seems to be a big neocon philosopher. I skimmed his book The End of History tonight. It's supposed to be a logical argument why American democracy will be the triumphant form of government all over the world, and indirectly justifies war as a means of bringing that inevitable end about. Is he nuts or what?

[giantrobot_2000]

1. Is he nuts or what?

Yes.

He has been thoroughly discredited in academic circles. That doesn't mena much to wingers, unfortunately.

Edit: It's pathetic that he's considered to be a neocon "philosopher." His utopian dribble is second-rate fantagraphix at best. Cruise any number of acedmic journals or reviews for delicious takedowns of "The End of History."

[punpirate]

2. Fukuyama has been described...

... most usually, as a futurist, and is a neocom sympathizer, mostly because he believes that the current bunch in the White House are on the right track (if only because carrying out their agenda would legitimize him as a prognosticator and a scholar).

What I find curious is that Fukuyama is a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. If I'm not mistaken, this is where Wolfowitz came from before joining the Bushies. Wolfowitz, in fact, was the dean of the school, I believe, so he would have some say in the composition of the faculty.

My guess is that Wolfowitz intended to transplant the Leo Strauss thinking at the University of Chicago into a more formal setting, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, at Johns Hopkins. Fukuyama is just part of that effort, I would guess. Doesn't mean anything but that he's just another person who thinks that the U.S. ought to run the world.

Cheers.

[skjpm]

3. He seemed Any Rand like in his nuttiness.

His style was good, but I kept getting the feeling that I was heading into wierd territory.

[markses]

6. The End of History

is a pretty piddling retread of neo-Hegelianism that manages to retain all Hegel's faults (the fallacious teleology of Hegel's "Philosophy of History") without drawing on any of Hegel's nuance (the movement of becoming, say, in the "Phenomenology of Spirit"). Worse still, Fukuyama - like Rand - does just an awful version of Nietzsche.

In any case, the major problem is that it relies too heavily on a simplistic Cold War dialectic to bolster its premise, and can therefore make no sense of the configuration of global capital, and provide no solution or even insightful understanding of so-called global terrorism, other than to set up yet another false dialectic. This is, of course, the neo-con solution itself (with us or against us, the new "cold war" on terror), which simply demonstrates their lack of imagination, insight, originality, and, quite frankly, capacity to observe events. There is no more "outside" against which to run a dialectical procedure; from this perspective, terrorism can be seen as an auto-immune response within the body of global capital, as Jacques Derrida has called it.

Fukuyama's main problem resides at that juncture. Because he can only see a dialectic motor in historical transformation (his Hegelian hangover), he must see

1) the collapse of the great Cold War dialectic and the consolidation of global capitalist domination as an end to history (in the absurd pretension of "liberal democracy," which has, like pure communism, never existed anywhere except in theory) and
2) "global terrorism" as a resurgent dialectics - another outside against which to struggle, despite its obvious existence WITHIN (rather than outside) capital and its production BY capital itself.

So, he's not only wrong, but dangerous.

[SanchoPanza]

9. Precisely

"... most usually, as a futurist, and is a neocom sympathizer, mostly because he believes that the current bunch in the White House are on the right track (if only because carrying out their agenda would legitimize him as a prognosticator and a scholar)."

I have the same problem with Sam Huntington. Writing about the likely future direction of world politics is fine, but actively influencing that direction towards the future you are envisioning isn't exactly remaining in the realm of scholarly work.

[pasadenaboy]

4. I read that for Historography class I had

Its arrogant capitalism uber alles nonsense.

Basically, the thesis is that pure capitalism is the pinnacle of human achievement, and history is moving towards this end, hence the end of communism in the late 80s was the end of history, as there is no longer a competing economic structure. True in the short term, but arrogant and wrong in the long term.

[legin]

5. Pretty good summing up

I've bumped into him a few times in the wrong places (Boards of Advisors of neo-con thinktanks, etc). Not a lot but enough to iratate me.

[AliceWonderland]

7. Fukuyama was all the rage

as social scientists in the 1990s fought to earn their keep by explaining the "end of the Cold War." He forms a neat little bookend with Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization thesis. They were two points on a line intersecting neo-con resurgence. Fukuyama always got on my nerves. He wrote another book called "Trust" that drove me crazy. I believe he's connected with Rand Corporation, as well.

[skjpm]

8. I just don't see universal health coverage emerging from this philosophy.

or any other form of social program. His goal appears to be a logical justification for ignoring the poor and weak.