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?

That is an interesting theory, but it seems to be short-sighted to me. People once thought that science had come to an end, before another problem presented itself (genetics) and the solution of that problem brought about a whole new range of sciences, all of which had their own problems to solve.

The idea behind this debate is the same, and just as naive. It is common for people to feel a sort of 'societal inertia' after a victory or great upheaval, such as the defeat of communism, because it heralds the end of the period of history in which they have lived most (or all) of their lives. When the Roman empire fell, for example, I imagine that its people felt that the world would be from that point on an unenlightened wasteland. Or when America was discovered that people felt exploration in any form was defunct. Both assumptions would be wrong.

The validity of the second assertion of the theory disproves the first. History is doomed to repeat itself, and therefore cannot end, except with the utter destruction of the human race.

History cannot end unless time itself ends.

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