History cannot end unless time itself ends.
Wat do you mean by this?
Your point is well taken, but I disagree with you on a few levels. "Communism" acts only as a representation of the last ideological contradiction in existence, to which there has been no replacement. So, it's not the loss of "Communism" per se or some specific system that Fukuyama is lamenting, but instead, the realization that the realm of ideological conflict and the daring imagination that characterized it has ceased to meaningfully exist within the human discourse. And to that end, we are left with the victor of that history (conflict) and find ourselves having entered a post-historical world. Moreover, I would argue that the idea underpinning the debate isn't naive, because Fukuyama's forecast at the time has shown to be largely correct. We do live in a world that is dominated by "...economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands." So, I ask my question again, in the post-historical world that we live in, have we lost something?
In 1989, Francis Fukuyama wrote one of the seminal essays of 20th century political philosophy: The End of History. In it, he asserts that history is ideological conflict. And this conflict has come to an end with the victory of Liberal Democracy over its last historical contradiction: Communism. As Hegel perceived history as the Mind finally becoming free and realizing itself, Liberal Democracy can be viewed as the ultimate conclusion of human sociocultural evolution.
Fukuyama leaves his readers with a very interesting conclusion: "the end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth 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. In the post historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual care taking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.
So, here is my question. Was Francis Fukuyama's position in the 80s an accurate reflection of the modern American Liberal Democracy, and if he was/is correct, have we lost something at the end of History and is History, as he interprets it doomed to repeat?
The Best Classical Composer
The best Classical composer is clearly Clint Mansell. Anyone who has heard Lux Aeterna will agree. The music has the capacity to make standing still seem epic. And those who disagree hate the Classical genre, don't know what they're talking about and their opinion is therefore moot.
I do agree with you in principle - in terms of the geometry (and its implications). But such a descriptive constraint is similar to someone arguing that it is absolutely true that my CreateDebate screen-name is Mahollinder. This is entirely dependent on the qualifier: if and only if, and as long as my screen-name is Mahollinder. It's contingent on its linguistic referent and therefore subject to change. I don't think that such a contingency or descriptive constraint is sufficient for "absolute truthhood". I think that there is a need for a static correspondence for absolute truth. That is, the very term "triangle" must necessarily refer to a non-linguistic object, in a non-process being in order for any description of it to be absolutely true. Or, the very term "triangle" itself must never change uses, which is not guaranteed. But even then, it seems to me that mathematical truths are somewhat fundamentally arbitrary in their consistency. Mathematics leads to mathematical truths, and I think that is in itself sufficient to satisfy.
No. The Constitution can be amended. It's inherent in the system. What would be the point of creating a new version of something that can already be, has already been, and will be changed?
In spite of the complete and total, whole wrongness of your assertion, God still doesn't exist.
Riles wasn't referring to the origin of life; he was referring to common descent in the current population of species.
A more appropriate description of evolution-as-literature would be to present an article you have written that is selectively transformed into a book or an article that diverges over time into multiple variations of itself to communicate with a new audience, each variation existing independent of the other forms and without replacing these variations.
Insofar as any natural phenomenon can be studied, processed, explained and supported through and by the scientific method, evolution has been "proved".
