\u2018The End of History? Really?\u2019 A Philosophical Investigation into Francis Fukuyamas work the End of history and the Last Man. With Reference to Hegel and Oswald Spengler
\nThe Object of my study is whether Francis Fukuyama\u2019s famous work \u2018The end of History and the Last Man\u2019 and the predictions made in it hold true today since the book was published in 1992. My dissertation therefore is centred around the Philosophy of History and which interpretations are the most accurate for describing the way in which history is manifests itself. The other two philosophers I shall look out is Georg Hegel and his dialectical approach to history and Oswald Spengler with his cyclical approach to History. I decided to do my dissertation on this as I believe we live in a very polarising time I was intrigued find out the significance of it on the historical timeline by investigating various view points written on it
\nFukuyama in his book makes the bold statement that we have reached the end of history and what he meant by this is specifically is the end of ideology as Western Liberal Democratic traditions have reigned victorious for 100 years and have survived many potential coups by Communism and Fascism alike. Fukuyama states that humanity has reached a harmonisation with liberal democracy and their aren\u2019t any contradictions in human life which cant be solved through its mechanism of government
\nFukuyama\u2019s conclusion is based on Nineteenth Century German Philosopher Georg work on the philosophy of History building on his dialectical process as the driving force of history. The \u2018dialectical\u2019 process sees that humanity reaching a final state after the Spirit in history which is in a state of conflict, producing a constant thesis and antithesis, finally resolving itself. Fukuyama believed that liberal democracy was the final synthesis from the thesis and antithesis conflict. Through out this section examine how much Fukuyama agreed with Hegel and where he veers off and goes in his own direction. I then Investigate whether liberal democracy still reigns supreme, I observe the fact that it is indeed still the primary mode of government in the western world however faith in it is faltering. This is highlighted by a Politico Survey which demonstrated Millennial\u2019s are the most disillusioned generation \u2018living memory\u2019 in regards to faith in democracy.
\nOnce examining Fukuyama, I go back into looking at Hegel in more detail, evaluating the circumstance that potentially humanity hasn\u2019t reached a final ultimate synthesis yet as Fukuyama believes we have rather we are still in a state of dialectic. I look more deeply into Hegel\u2019s idea of History being a manifestation spirit. The purpose of this is to help understand whether we are still in a state of dialectical process or not.
\nIn my dissertation I move on to my final philosopher who looked at history in a completely different lens to Fukuyama and Hegel, German Philosopher Oswald Spengler. Oswald Spengler was one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the 1920\u2019s, Times magazine famously said \u2018When Spengler Speaks the whole world listens\u2019. Spengler gained fame for his seminal Work \u2018The Decline of the West\u2019 which he considered to be a Copernican moment in the study of philosophy for history. Unlike the other two who viewed history as linear reaching a final point, he viewed history as the rise and fall of self contained cultures, their life span could be split into the 4 seasons. Spring being the rise of the culture, summer being the Apex, Autumn being stagnation and winter being the demise. According to Spengler the west had entered the Winter period and is in a state of decline which leads to it falling into a era of Ceasers aka dictators. This is at odds with Fukuyama\u2019s belief that liberal democracy has won the ideological battle, hence why I included it in my dissertation. I go on to test the validity of Spengler\u2019s prediction analysing the trump presidency as a possible example as well as using<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oliver James Sloan, 2021, Stage 3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[311,22,123],"tags":[94,156,334],"class_list":["post-2273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-311","category-abstracts","category-stage-3-abstracts","tag-hegel","tag-history","tag-spengler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}