History’s End? Francis Fukuyama’s Conception of the West

Abstract

In 1989, the American political analyst, Francis Fukuyama, heralded the end of the Cold War by declaring the victory of the liberal West over the communist East. He characterized the Cold War as an epic battle between two ideologies to determine the direction of man’s evolution through the course of modernity. The West’s victory represented the conclusion of this ideological evolution and, in this sense, the ‘end of history’. While this particular thesis is highly distinctive, the concept of the West embedded in it illustrates broader trends in American liberal thought in the late twentieth century. These provide important insights into assumptions about the West and the cultural world order that can be found in this significant perspective. These assumptions stand in marked contrast to those of earlier authors such as Spengler and Toynbee in the faith they express in science and the optimistic belief in human progress. Fukuyama’s image of cultural world order comprises different cultures, but nevertheless presents humanity as a whole engaged in a single, civilizing process of development and modernization. His assumptions about culture and civilization are influenced by his belief in human progress and his concept of civilizational interaction linked to levels of development and modernization.