In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir, by Francis Fukuyama, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pages, $29
In his thirties, Francis Fukuyama was pursuing a respectable but low-key career as a RAND Corporation analyst and State Department bureaucrat focused on the Soviet Union.
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Fukuyama → pursue → Union
His breakthrough into the public sphere came in the summer of 1989, when his essay "The End of History?" appeared in The National Interest.
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essay → come → Interest
As a child of the Cold War, I was thrilled by his claim that we may be witnessing "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
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we → thrill → government
This bold statement seemed confirmed by the fall of the Berlin Wall later that year and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later.
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statement → confirm → Union
Since then, Fukuyama has been one of America's leading public intellectuals.
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Fukuyama → lead → intellectuals
Now he has written a charming and stimulating memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man.
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he → write → Man
The book covers everything from his grandparents' time in a World War II internment camp to his break with prominent neoconservatives over the misbegotten invasion of Iraq; the career it reveals is an inspiring example of how a rigorous liberal education sharpens a relentlessly questing mind.
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education → cover → mind
He credits his encounter with classicist Allan Bloom for instilling in him the passion to pursue the big questions: "What is the best way to live, what makes for the highest form of human happiness, what is the nature of justice, what is natural and what is conventional in human affairs."
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what → credit → affairs
Fukuyama is entirely correct when he observes, "An appreciation for truly philosophical thought is a gift of inestimable value that remains with you for a lifetime.
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that → observe → lifetime
"
But even as the book covers all these topics, it keeps coming back to ideas that Fukuyama started sketching in that 1989 essay and has expanded upon in countless works since then.
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Fukuyama → cover → works
Fukuyama's argument that humanity had reached the end of history rested on his reading of the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, who argued that the mainspring of history is humanity's drive for recognition, dignity, and respect.
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mainspring → reach → recognition
In his interpretation of Kojève, Fukuyama adapted Plato's tripartite division of the human soul into logos (reason), eros (desire) and thymos (spiritedness).
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Fukuyama → adapt → logos
Fukuyama contends that thymos is the true psychological driver of history, distinct from basic physical survival or economic calculation.
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thymos → contend → survival
Human beings, he noted, are the only creatures that willingly risk death in the service of abstract ideals.
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that → note → ideals
The "end of history," for Fukuyama, is achieved with the universal recognition of the equal dignity of all human beings as the foundational ideal of liberal democracies.
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end → achieve → democracies
Liberal societies, he explains in Realm, provide "universal recognition by granting citizens equal rights; the rights to speak, to associate, to believe, and to have a share of political power through the vote.
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he → explain → vote
In their brilliant 2009 book Violence and Social Orders, the Nobel-winning economist Douglass North and two colleagues approached humanity's political evolution from a less abstract but parallel track.
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economist → win → track
The main problem that confronts societies encompassing more than a few hundred people, they argued, is how to control male violence.
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they → confront → violence
Humanity's first solution to this problem was a "natural state" built around elite patron-client networks.
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solution → build → networks
Think of chiefs, kings, and oligarchs as gang leaders who maintain relative social peace by running protection rackets: In exchange for a portion of your earnings, the strongman and his minions will try to make sure that other guys don't kill you or steal your stuff.
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guys → think → stuff
The dawn of the 19th century, North noted, saw the development of "open access orders" where the rule of law supplanted elite hierarchical rule.
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rule → note → rule
Subjects once under the authority of aristocrats become citizens bearing equal rights.
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Subjects → become → rights
These precursors to today's liberal democracies were better at controlling social violence while simultaneously allowing more human flourishing through market-based economic growth.
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precursors → control → growth
By the end of the 20th century, the number of people living in such societies had expanded greatly.
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number → live → societies
Back in 1989, Fukuyama observed that some societies remain mired in history.
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societies → observe → history
But he predicted such societies would eventually join the post-historical world through the "unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism."
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societies → predict → liberalism
North and his colleagues do not seem to have considered the prospect that bored citizens would rebel against open access orders and revert to autocratic natural states.
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citizens → seem → states
But Fukuyama did.
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Fukuyama → do → ?
In the concluding paragraph of his 1989 essay, Fukuyama declared: "The end of history will be a very sad time."
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end → conclude → history
Because "daring, courage, imagination, and idealism will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands."
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daring → replace → demands
The peace and prosperity that liberal societies make possible is not enough to satisfy some people's thymotic impulses.
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societies → make → impulses
"Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started again," he concluded.
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he → serve → history
Fukuyama expanded on that idea in his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man.
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Fukuyama → expand → History
Fukuyama took the term "the Last Man" from Friedrich Nietzsche's epithet for the contented beneficiaries of bourgeois peace and prosperity.
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Fukuyama → take → peace
"We have been living in the realm of the Last Man for some time now," Fukuyama writes in his memoir.
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Fukuyama → live → memoir
"The problem, though, is that the peace and prosperity brought about by the liberal order based on equal recognition is not enough for many people."
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peace → bring → people
In Realm, Fukuyama reminds readers that the last chapters of The End of History and the Last Man "contain a clear premonition of the rise of the kind of demagogic populism that we have experienced from the mid-2010s to the present."
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we → remind → present
To quote the older book directly: "if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause.
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they → quote → cause
They will struggle for the sake of struggle.
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They → struggle → struggle
They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle.
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they → struggle → struggle
…and 31 more, not listed.
The Aporia
