First published 20 November 2009
In my opinion, that famous neo-Hegelian thinker Francis Fukuyama – the man responsible for the predication in the late eighties/early nineties that at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end-of-history had loomed upon us, and it had shown free-market capitalism to be the victor over socialism – has gone from being a thinker of history, to an illustration of how exactly history has panned out. Allow me to explain. (Continue)
First published March 23 2009
Abstract: “For a short while after 1989, Francis Fukuyama was thought to be the leading academic Hegelian when he announced that, since the Soviet Union had collapsed, it was “liberal democracy” that was the end-of-history. Our Posthuman Future, published in 2002 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and reprinted in 2003 in Britain, is a work that sets out to correct his statement while introducing the case for his concern with the advances of biotechnology and their effects. My review presents the argument that not only did Fukuyama not get it correct in 1989, but he also failed to go far enough in his own refutation. I introduce the case that intervention in biotechnology is a necessary step to make, not because there is a human nature to save but precisely because there is no such nature. Further, the complete autonomy of, for example, pharmaceutical corporations is perilous to the real end-of-history and the freedom of mankind generally.” (continue)
