Thinking about the END OF HISTORY.

[Orbie]

i have read Spengler yes. The issue here is the end of Western history and civilization , as we have learned it, a very Eurocentric view.We have the East arising, they are not at all involved with Western culture, they have everything to look forward to. The end of Western history, does not coincide with Eastern History, which is transcendental and timeless. So German idealism does not speak a universal language at present, it is a dated, neo-classical, romantic notion. It is a notion , which is a non affordable luxury.

[Arminius]

My questions:

1.) Is the „end of history“ merely an idea of an idealistic philosopher, so that this idea will never be realised?
2.) Is the „end of history“ not merely an idea of an idealistic philosopher, so that this idea has or will have been realised?
      2.1) Has the „end of history“ been realised since the last third of the 18th century, when the „Enlightenment“ („Aufklärung“) ended?
      2.2) Has the „end of history“ been realised since 1989/'90, when the „Cold War“ ended?
      2.3) Will the „end of history“ have been realised in the end of the 21st, in the 22nd, or in the 23nd century?

What do you think?

Let's get practical. Regardless of all the brilliant intellectuals declaiming on the matter, there is no "end of history" if we have to keep on asking the question. The words "End of History" is fallacious if it only sums up the end of an epoch. It's like saying at the end of Götterdämmerung no one is left alive when it's only the Gods who have left the scene whilst humans are forced to continue. The way EOH is here applied amounts to nothing more than a paragraph within history as a whole.

So your answer is not an answer to the questions 1.), 2.), 2.1), 2.2), 2.3), but to the question: What do you think?

But your answer that there will be no end of history, but merely an end of an epoch can also be interpretated as a mostly "YES" to the question 1.), else as an answer to the question: What do you think?

I would like to get a more precise answer to one of the questions 1.), 2.), 2.1), 2.2), 2.3). Is that possible, Monad?

[Arminius]

i have read Spengler yes. The issue here is the end of Western history and civilization ....

Yes, but to say it very precisely: in Spengler's theory as well as in the German language there is a difference between "Kultur" ("culture" ["civiliation"]) and "Zivilisation" ("civilisation") - b.t.w.: this difference has more or less disappeared in the English language. Unfortunately the German "Kultur" is often translated with both "culture" and "civilisation", and merely "Zivilisation" is always "civilisation". What you call "civilisation" is not always "Zivilisation" in German, but often "Kultur" and merely sometimes also "Zivilisation". That is very important when it comes to understand a "Kulturphilosophie" ("culture philosophy" / "civilisation philosophy").

According to Spengler the "Zivilisation" is a late part of the "Kultur", and in the West this part began in the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th century (b.t.w.: this is also the time when, according to Hegel, the history perhaps ended - but that is not important for the understanding of Spengler's theory), and leads into a more and more non-historical time, a cultural / civilisational "winter", a kind of senility. The West ("Abendland" = "Eveningland") will reach this time of cultural / civilisational "winter" in the 21st, or the 22nd, or the 23rd century, approximately in the year 2200. When this time will be reached it will be possible that the end of history will also be reached because there will probably be no new "Kultur" anymore.

[LaughingMan]

i have read Spengler yes. The issue here is the end of Western history and civilization , as we have learned it, a very Eurocentric view.We have the East arising, they are not at all involved with Western culture, they have everything to look forward to. The end of Western history, does not coincide with Eastern History, which is transcendental and timeless. So German idealism does not speak a universal language at present, it is a dated, neo-classical, romantic notion. It is a notion , which is a non affordable luxury.

I'm European and very Eurocentric. I am not apologetic about this either.

[Arminius]

This is a post of another thread:

Well, i will try.

Thank you, Obe.

However, i have an inkling, that You guys have a pretty good idea of the U.S. Situation ....

Not all, some (including me) know quite enough about the U.S. situation. But the rulers in Europe don't inform „their“ people, and most of the Europeans are not interested, because and although they are not informed by „their“ governments.

..., as it's fairly obvious from world reporting on the late great recession, the plight of returning veterans who find themselves having to wait inordinately for referrals to specialists to treat their maladies, of gi's living on the streets near VA hospitals, strung out on dope, not able to return to civilian life. Other things: the air here is not at all like the sixties, to give You an example, when i came to live here, gasoline cost per gallon was 15 cents, now it's almost $5. A pack of cigs was 25c, now it's $5. First class stamps were 4c now they are 50c. The same with rents and food.

The suicide rate in the military is very much larger then before, and there is a foreboding of valuelessness as purchase price of products rise, along with the cost of living.

Don't get me wrong, only segments of the populations feel this downward trend, while the upper middle class has no apparent problems with any of it.

These „segments of the population“ are not a few, because, depending on the respectively definition of the word „classes“, the percentage of the population of both the middle and the lower class is generally more than 99%, and the percentage of the population of the middle class is generally about 50%, that of the upper middle class generally about 5%, so that generally about 94-99% of the U.S. population may be affected. Because of the fact that some people are more contended than other people, the percentage of discontended people is - for eaxmple - about 47-50%.

As far as my take on living in the USA, it is anchored in a sense of high resiliency of the population, much like Henry Miller describes it in his novel "air conditioned nightmare. Still, people are able to live the mix,of ghettos and areas of great wealth coexisting in a geographical no man's land, and everybody tries to live under the idea of a 'classless' society. In a sense it is classless, and that too, is a catch 22, where that idea, also suffers when economic markers lower the bar, where social interactions at times painfully drag on the cheering thoughts of personal freedoms.

The collapse is nought, i don't quite see that, but what i see, is more of the same, the hidden downtrodden, the homeless ghettos, the high rate of crime, etc., it implies a societal chaos, that the US population can absorb.

Recently, there has been a sharp upsurge of child molestation among educators, and this is a veery sign of moral decay.

The way i see it, if it wasn't for the laxity of morality, (after all isn't Sweden a good model for it?), dissent and societal unhappiness would not have the safety valve of releasing at least on Freudian truth, of civilization's discontents.

That's not only a Freudian truth.

And Sweden „a good model“? Well, I doubt that.

Perhaps absolute, new world order Capitalism will solve all the insidiousness, and the word is out on that.

If so, then - according to Hegel's Dialektik - it will have to be a Synthesis of the Thesis „capitalism“ (especially successful in the 19th century) and the Antithesis „communism“ (especially successful in the 20th century). What can that kind of Synthesis be? Merely something like globalism or its contrary: localism / regionalism which will lead to the pre-historical times resembling post-historical times.

I feel my answer to Your query may be sort of disjointed, in fact i know it is, but the reason for it is, that the issues and problems parleyed are not reducible to formulas of only a few variables. This country, is, now, i feel, one of the least understood social systems on earth, minus Great Britain, with which it has a historically close relationship.

And before U.K. and U.S. came together (during the First World War), there was a deeply realtionship between Germany and U.S.

The EU, adopting many of the same platforms, is far more sensitive to the inherent changes of cultural and ethnographic effects, but cross cultural dynamics, related to the flow of peoples and capital, make it not only a US situation.

It will turn out well in the end, but there will be cataclysms of major proportions, as the changes create ripple effects, cumulatively effecting the world over.

Maybe it will turn out well in the end, but can we be sure?

The US has enjoyed 50+ yeas of unparalleled post world war economic superiority, and the sad fact is, a well fed middle class, taking such prosperity pretty much for granted, would not stand a chance of survival, was it not for the international corporations sustaining, as of yet a positive cash flow toward the United States, and Great Britain and the EU.

The new world order is as ideologically necessary in today's world, as Marxism seemed to fit the bill, prior to the great ideological showdown, which brought in the World War. In that time, it appeared, as if Capitalism was a dying institution. History proved itself otherwise, and it is to Communism that distinction went to. It was a Hundred Years' War, of ideological conflict, and what we are seeing and feeling in the world today, are the sparks shooting out of the dying embers of ideology. This is what the end of history signifies, there are no credible cognitive markers, which can be used, as tools, to unearth, 'The Truth' of what the basic formula requires. Pragmatism has definitely won out worldwide over all forms of idealism, excepting art.

Idealism, right. And idealism is mostly German idealism. If the „new world order“ is really „as ideologically necessary in today's world“, then this new world order can merely be - as I said - something like globalism or its contrary: localism / regionalism, which will lead to the pre-historical times resembling post-historical times.

What you are calling the „Hundred Years’ War“, „of ideological conflict“, is the epoch where egalitarianism (socialism, communism etc.) were stronger that liberalism (capitalism etc.) bcause it had undercut and threatened all liberalistic (capitaliistic) systems. But now we are living in a different epoch: capitalism is weak, communism is not as strong as in the last epoch, and globalism - as the Synthesis of capitalism and communism (cp. Hegel's Dialektik) - is the strongest. That means that both capitalism and communism still exist, but as a mix in which capitalism dominates as a communism.

Referring to the fact that globalism is a Synthesis of capitalism (Thesis) and communism (Antithesis) the end of history will be reached when this Synthesis has changed to such a New Thesis whithout any historical existence. Merely something like globalism or its contrary: localism / regionalism, which will lead to the pre-historical times resembling post-historical times.

So as bad as things are in the Western World, it is more stable then at anytime in the history of the world, and as new emerging markets get progressively involved in a new world trade, we, who appear in a decline, have to grin and bear it, hoping for a turn for the better.

That much for the social/economic markers.
It would be preposterous, and naive of me to not notice the psychosocial objects left hanging, as the genius of utilitarianism is always to point to the futility of such an abstract yet naive way to describe a situation, where it can just as equally be pointed out, that it is not the 'system's fault but those singular individuals' who decide to construe a point of view, predicated on the simple
notion of directing fault outside their orbit of reference.

Art has retained this freedom of expression, an absolute reminder that the 2nd amendment is alive and well, but there are a lot of starving , disheartened artists out there, with or without a portfolio, to whom life as art, best describes their being, and soul.

The current art shows also what globalism means (see above), so the current art is also enbedded in both capitalisms and communism, in Thesis and Antithesis of the Synthesis globalism. Nobody else than Oswald A. G. Spengler has so consequently and arrestingly shown how art works as a semiotic and/or linguistic indicator for historical phases of a culture / civilisation.

According to Schopenhauer in the face of the will as Kant’s „Ding an sich“ („thing in itself“) human beings are almost powerless, but amongst them the genies of the art, especially of the music, are able to conceive and represent the eternal ideas.

I think most are all attuned to the aesthetic side of our personality, and it is that, which somehow manages to feel and react to the plight of ourselves and those others' around us in need. I have this feeling, and the beatniks and the various movements of dissent , no one can let pass without notice. However, the media is such an incredibly strong force here in the U.S., that any movement can be popularized to the extent, that the message is lost herewith. The media is the message, and even great reactionary movements, can be bought out this way, as a few minutes' worth of time in commercial utilization. Mainstream media can absorb almost any social dissent, and the middle will hold it's own, under the most ridiculously obvious nonsense. I could give countless examples, but one which comes to mind off the bat is the conspicuous way the Warren Commission handled and neutralized all the conspiratorial ideas about 'who really killed JFK' That study pretty much put to rest any doubt as to 'what really happened'

The pragmatic inertia of society, and the devaluations thereof, are successively modified and dealt with, the incessant and relentless march of newer and newer products. Production is the key to social cohesion, and the production machines of Hollywood dreams, creates the very schizophrenia of the dreamlike world of how life and fantasy are blended , albeit in a very imperfect way, into the fantastic as a retreat from reality. The legitimization of such retreat and escape, has always been part and parcel of the escapism , always westward, into the wide open spaces , to create anew, and tear down the old.

The only true escape from this tearing down, is the narcotic effect, of experiencing the dissolution as part of the self, there is joy in tearing one's self apart, and experiencing the complete, and dangerous newness emerging from this. This is how the west was won, the emerging heroes? Kit Carson, Dillinger, Wyatt Earp, Lucky Luciano, Steve Wynn. The American myth is founded on violence, on land grab and claim jump, the existential jump not available to such men, as Hart Crane, who could not jump from New York to Cuba, a voyage of diminishing returns, as time flowed by. The East, could never fathom the West, the Old World is in the same relation to the New World, they are unwitting bedfellows.

Thank you, Obe, for answering my question that I have asked on behalf of most Europeans.

[Arminius]

Do you know both Huntington and Fukuyama?

According to Huntington history will not end in the next time beacuse there will be a clash of civilisations (cultures); according to Fukuyama history will end because the occidental civilisation (culture) has won.

[Only_Humean]

Do you know both Huntington and Fukuyama?

According to Huntington history will not end in the next time beacuse there will be a clash of civilisations (cultures); according to Fukuyama history will end because the occidental civilisation (culture) has won.

It's worth noting that Fukuyama has abandoned and rejected his position since.

I don't see China as moving towards liberal democracy, politically or culturally. While they're growing in power, history is alive and well. In addition (related to your other thread) mechanisation/posthumanism is maybe a longer term challenge that will keep history alive. History will always be interesting while there is change and uncertainty. I think there will most likely always be change and uncertainty.

[Arminius]

It's worth noting that Fukuyama has abandoned and rejected his position since.

Yes, I heard or read about it. And I heard or read too that Huntington partly abandoned his postion some years before his death, but I don't know whether it is true or not.

I don't see China as moving towards liberal democracy, politically or culturally. While they're growing in power, history is alive and well. In addition (related to your other thread) mechanisation/posthumanism is maybe a longer term challenge that will keep history alive. History will always be interesting while there is change and uncertainty. I think there will most likely always be change and uncertainty.

Yes, but change and uncertainty are also characteristic for devolopment in general (including evolution and history), thus not only for history. So change and uncertainty are useless when it comes to answer the whether history ends or not.

I also think that there will most likely always be change and uncertainty because there will most likely always be development. So I think there will be change and uncertainty as long as there will be development.

I define „history“ as a „cultural evolution“. All „archivable artifacts“ belong to history. So e.g. padded dinosaurs in a museum belong to history because they are archived artifacts, although dinosaurs themselves belong to eveolution-without-history because they did not archive artifacts, they did not have any history. Even human beings had not had any history for the most time of their existence. But they have been having story (here „story“ means only „telling story“, „told story“, etc.) since they began to speak. So „story“ as a „oral tradition“ (tale and so on) does not belong to history.

Do you agree with that definition? If yes, then we can think about the „Eloi“ as an example for humans without history in the future, can't we? The question in this thread is not, whether humans will have story in their future or not, but the question in this thread is, whether humans will have history in their future or not.

Why am I saying that? Because we should not confuse history with any development, for example with the natural development or with the natural evolution. History is cultural evolution. Archivable artifacts belong to history, and history belongs to evolution, and evolution belongs to development in nature. So history is embedded in evolution and in natural development, while evolution is only embedded in natural development. All events are based on natural (physico-chemical) development. Evolution is based on natural (physico-chemical) development. History is based on natural (physico-chemical) development and on (biological) evolution, history is defined as a cultural evolution. Story - as I define it (cp. above) - is also defined as a cultural evolution, but in contrast to history story contains no archivable artifact (except all kinds of an engineered story like an audiotape and so on). Story in this text and context means merely oral tales or oral narratives - not more.

The "house of development":

_______________________| History |
__________________|____ Evolution ____|
______________|______ Development ______|

History is merely the "roof" of the "house of development".

So if we are asking in this thread, whether history ended or not, ends or not, will end or will not, then we are always asking, whether cultural evolution ended or not, ends or not, will end or will not, whether the relation between human beings and archivable artifacts ended or not, ends or not, will end or will not.

The "end of history" means the end of all great narratives, of all great stories, of all "historical existence" (Ernst Nolte), of all culture, of all great wars, and so on. => #

End of history or not, end of historical existence or not - that's the question of this thread.

=> #

So: History is always part of the evolution and of the general development, and evolution is always part of the general development. Development can, but don't has to be evolutuion and history, and evolution can, but don't has to be history.

[Historyboy]

Obe still doesn't know that the Decline of the East was written by Oswaldastra Spengleriustra 1882 BCE.

[Historyboy]

Imagine what happened to Rome. They have lost their population in quality and quantity. In the end there is Italy with cities, especially in the Northern part, which all descend from different people, those which do trade, like Florence and Venice descend from Germans, some other from the Celts, perhaps like Mailand, some other from Slaws, the other from Illyrians... and none of them can cooperate with each other, there is an eternal hate and war between them.

The North represents the Roman decay in quantity, and south in quality, where all people have dark skin and black hair, mostly as a product of interbreeding with negros etc.

And this is exactly what is happening in the US ... future United Cities of America. And England too. France's South is already Muslim.

Perhaps some of you think "well, I am not into debauchery, I can survive", but life is not about not doing something...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

We have two alliances after the second Persian war struggling for domination: the Athenian and the Peloponnesian league. It is just that NATO and the Eastern Pact have Cold wars, but could the outcome be the same like in Greece? Spartans were also conservatives but did not make it better than the Athenians.

Germany (or Europe)) is actually the same like Persia, appearing after the second war/defeat only indirectly, through money. So we have the US as Athens, Russia as Sparta and Germany (or Europe) as Persia. But where shall the new Caesar come from? Will he be a mix of something, like Alexander, or ... was Caesar mixed?

[Arminius]

Only Humean, is it right that you have studied linguistics? If so, then you probably know the meaning of "hyperonym" ("superordination") and "hyponym" ("subordination"). My interpetation of „time“, „development“ („change“), „evolution“, and „history“ in their structural relations to each other is the following one:

1) „time“ is the hyperonym of the hyponyms „development“ („change“), „evolution“, and „history“;

1,1) „development“ („change“) is a hyponym of the hyperonym „time“ and the hyperonym of the hyponyms „evolution“ and „history“;

1,1,1) „evolution“ is a hyponym of the hyperonyms „time“ and „development“ and the hyperonym of the hyponym „history“;

  1,1,1,1) „history“ is merely a hyponym, namely of the hyperonyms „time“, „development“, and „evolution“.

That consequently means: if history ends, evolution, or development (change), or even the time do not have to end simultaneously; and if evolution ends, history ends simultaneously, but development (change) and time do not have to end simultaneously; and if development (change) ends, evolution and history end simultaneously, but time does not have to end simultaneously. So in that relation merely the time is independent. Development (change) depends only on time. Evolution depends on time and development (change). History is the most dependent, because it depends on time, development (change), and evolution.

You may compare (1) time with our universe as such, (1,1) development (change) with our planet, (1,1,1) evolution with a living being (for example an alga, or a snake, or a human being without history, and (1,1,1,1) history with a - of course - historical human being.

They all belong to 1 (time), and merely historical human beings belong to 1,1,1,1 (history).

[Arminius]

Excerpts from Francis Fukuyama's "End of History":

"The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism. ....

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affair's yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in. the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. To understand how this is so, we must first consider some theoretical issues concerning the nature of historical change.

THE NOTION of the end of history is not an original one. Its best known propagator was Karl Marx, who believed that the direction of historical development was a purposeful one determined by the interplay of material forces, and would come to an end only with the achievement of a communist utopia that would finally resolve all prior contradictions. But the concept of history as a dialectical process with a beginning, a middle, and an end was borrowed by Marx from his great German predecessor, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

For better or worse, much of Hegel's historicism has become part of our contemporary intellectual baggage. The notion that mankind has progressed through a series of primitive stages of consciousness on his path to the present, and that these stages corresponded to concrete forms of social organization, such as tribal, slave-owning, theocratic, and finally democratic-egalitarian societies, has become inseparable from the modern understanding of man. Hegel was the first philosopher to speak the language of modern social science, insofar as man for him was the product of his concrete historical and social environment and not, as earlier natural right theorists would have it, a collection of more or less fixed "natural" attributes. The mastery and transformation of man's natural environment through the application of science and technology was originally not a Marxist concept, but a Hegelian one. Unlike later historicists whose historical relativism degenerated into relativism tout court, however, Hegel believed that history culminated in an absolute moment - a moment in which a final, rational form of society and state became victorious.

It is Hegel's misfortune to be known now primarily as Marx's precursor; and it is our misfortune that few of us are familiar with Hegel's work from direct study, but only as it has been filtered through the distorting lens of Marxism. In France, however, there has been an effort to save Hegel from his Marxist interpreters and to resurrect him as the philosopher who most correctly speaks to our time. Among those modern French interpreters of Hegel, the greatest was certainly Alexandre Kojève, a brilliant Russian émigré who taught a highly influential series of seminars in Paris in the 1930s at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes. While largely unknown in the United States, Kojève had a major impact on the intellectual life of the continent. Among his students ranged such future luminaries as Jean-Paul Sartre on the Left and Raymond Aron on the Right; postwar existentialism borrowed many of its basic categories from Hegel via Kojève.

Kojève sought to resurrect the Hegel of the Phenomenology of Mind, the Hegel who proclaimed history to be at an end in 1806. For as early as this Hegel saw in Napoleon's defeat of the Prussian monarchy at the Battle of Jena the victory of the ideals of the French Revolution, and the imminent universalization of the state incorporating the principles of liberty and equality. Kojève, far from rejecting Hegel in light of the turbulent events of the next century and a half, insisted that the latter had been essentially correct. The Battle of Jena marked the end of history because it was at that point that the vanguard of humanity (a term quite familiar to Marxists) actualized the principles of the French Revolution. While there was considerable work to be done after 1806 - abolishing slavery and the slave trade, extending the franchise to workers, women, blacks, and other racial minorities, etc. - the basic principles of the liberal democratic state could not be improved upon. The two world wars in this century and their attendant revolutions and upheavals simply had the effect of extending those principles spatially, such that the various provinces of human civilization were brought up to the level of its most advanced outposts, and of forcing those societies in Europe and North America at the vanguard of civilization to implement their liberalism more fully.

The state that emerges at the end of history is liberal insofar as it recognizes and protects through a system of law man's universal right to freedom, and democratic insofar as it exists only with the consent of the governed. .... here is no struggle or conflict over "large" issues, and consequently no need for generals or statesmen; what remains is primarily economic activity. .... Believing that there was no more work for philosophers as well, since Hegel (correctly understood) had already achieved absolute knowledge, Kojève left teaching after the war and spent the remainder of his life working as a bureaucrat in the European Economic Community, until his death in 1968.

FOR HEGEL, the contradictions that drive history exist first of all in the realm of human consciousness, i.e. on the level of ideas - not the trivial election year proposals of American politicians, but ideas in the sense of large unifying world views that might best be understood under the rubric of ideology. Ideology in this sense is not restricted to the secular and explicit political doctrines we usually associate with the term, but can include religion, culture, and the complex of moral values underlying any society as well.

Hegel's view of the relationship between the ideal and the real or material worlds was an extremely complicated one, beginning with the fact that for him the distinction between the two was only apparent. He did not believe that the real world conformed or could be made to conform to ideological preconceptions of philosophy professors in any simpleminded way, or that the "material" world could not impinge on the ideal. Indeed, Hegel the professor was temporarily thrown out of work as a result of a very material event, the Battle of Jena. But while Hegel's writing and thinking could be stopped by a bullet from the material world, the hand on the trigger of the gun was motivated in turn by the ideas of liberty and equality that had driven the French Revolution.

For Hegel, all human behavior in the material world, and hence all human history, is rooted in a prior state of consciousness - an idea similar to the one expressed by John Maynard Keynes when he said that the views of men of affairs were usually derived from defunct economists and academic scribblers of earlier generations. This consciousness may not be explicit and self-aware, as are modern political doctrines, but may rather take the form of religion or simple cultural or moral habits. And yet this realm of consciousness in the long run necessarily becomes manifest in the material world, indeed creates the material world in its own image. Consciousness is cause and not effect, and can develop autonomously from the material world; hence the real subtext underlying the apparent jumble of current events is the history of ideology.

Hegel's idealism has fared poorly at the hands of later thinkers. Marx reversed the priority of the real and the ideal completely, relegating the entire realm of consciousness - religion, art, culture, philosophy itself - to a "superstructure" that was determined entirely by the prevailing material mode of production. Yet another unfortunate legacy of Marxism is our tendency to retreat into materialist or utilitarian explanations of political or historical phenomena, and our disinclination to believe in the autonomous power of ideas. A recent example of this is Paul Kennedy's hugely successful The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which ascribes the decline of great powers to simple economic overextension. Obviously, this is true on some level: an empire whose economy is barely above the level of subsistence cannot bankrupt its treasury indefinitely. But whether a highly productive modern industrial society chooses to spend 3 or 7 percent of its GNP on defense rather than consumption is entirely a matter of that society's political priorities, which are in turn determined in the realm of consciousness.

The materialist bias of modern thought is characteristic not only of people on the Left who may be sympathetic to Marxism, but of many passionate anti-Marxists as well. Indeed, there is on the Right what one might label the Wall Street Journal school of deterministic materialism that discounts the importance of ideology and culture and sees man as essentially a rational, profit-maximizing individual. It is precisely this kind of individual and his pursuit of material incentives that is posited as the basis for economic life as such in economic textbooks. One small example will illustrate the problematic character of such materialist views.

Max Weber begins his famous book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by noting the different economic performance of Protestant and Catholic communities throughout Europe and America, summed up in the proverb that Protestants eat well while Catholics sleep well. Weber notes that according to any economic theory that posited man as a rational profit-maximizer, raising the piece-work rate should increase labor productivity. But in fact, in many traditional peasant communities, raising the piece-work rate actually had the opposite effect of lowering labor productivity: at the higher rate, a peasant accustomed to earning two and one-half marks per day found he could earn the same amount by working less, and did so because he valued leisure more than income. The choices of leisure over income, or of the militaristic life of the Spartan hoplite over the wealth of the Athenian trader, or even the ascetic life of the early capitalist entrepreneur over that of a traditional leisured aristocrat, cannot possibly be explained by the impersonal working of material forces, but come preeminently out of the sphere of consciousness - what we have labeled here broadly as ideology. And indeed, a central theme of Weber's work was to prove that contrary to Marx, the material mode of production, far from being the "base," was itself a "superstructure" with roots in religion and culture, and that to understand the emergence of modern capitalism and the profit motive one had to study their antecedents in the realm of the spirit.

As we look around the contemporary world, the poverty of materialist theories of economic development is all too apparent. The Wall Street Journal school of deterministic materialism habitually points to the stunning economic success of Asia in the past few decades as evidence of the viability of free market economics, with the implication that all societies would see similar development were they simply to allow their populations to pursue their material self-interest freely. Surely free markets and stable political systems are a necessary precondition to capitalist economic growth. But just as surely the cultural heritage of those Far Eastern societies, the ethic of work and saving and family, a religious heritage that does not, like Islam, place restrictions on certain forms of economic behavior, and other deeply ingrained moral qualities, are equally important in explaining their economic performance. And yet the intellectual weight of materialism is such that not a single respectable contemporary theory of economic development addresses consciousness and culture seriously as the matrix within which economic behavior is formed.

FAILURE to understand that the roots of economic behavior lie in the realm of consciousness and culture leads to the common mistake of attributing material causes to phenomena that are essentially ideal in nature. For example, it is commonplace in the West to interpret the reform movements first in China and most recently in the Soviet Union as the victory of the material over the ideal - that is, a recognition that ideological incentives could not replace material ones in stimulating a highly productive modern economy, and that if one wanted to prosper one had to appeal to baser forms of self-interest. But the deep defects of socialist economies were evident thirty or forty years ago to anyone who chose to look. Why was it that these countries moved away from central planning only in the 1980s' The answer must be found in the consciousness of the elites and leaders ruling them, who decided to opt for the "Protestant" life of wealth and risk over the "Catholic" path of poverty and security. That change was in no way made inevitable by the material conditions in which either country found itself on the eve of the reform, but instead came about as the result of the victory of one idea over another.

For Kojève, as for all good Hegelians, understanding the underlying processes of history requires understanding developments in the realm of consciousness or ideas, since consciousness will ultimately remake the material world in its own image. To say that history ended in 1806 meant that mankind's ideological evolution ended in the ideals of the French or American Revolutions: while particular regimes in the real world might not implement these ideals fully, their theoretical truth is absolute and could not be improved upon. Hence it did not matter to Kojève that the consciousness of the postwar generation of Europeans had not been universalized throughout the world; if ideological development had in fact ended, the homogenous state would eventually become victorious throughout the material world.

I have neither the space nor, frankly, the ability to defend in depth Hegel's radical idealist perspective. The issue is not whether Hegel's system was right, but whether his perspective might uncover the problematic nature of many materialist explanations we often take for granted. This is not to deny the role of material factors as such. To a literal-minded idealist, human society can be built around any arbitrary set of principles regardless of their relationship to the material world. And in fact men have proven themselves able to endure the most extreme material hardships in the name of ideas that exist in the realm of the spirit alone, be it the divinity of cows or the nature of the Holy Trinity.

But while man's very perception of the material world is shaped by his historical consciousness of it, the material world can clearly affect in return the viability of a particular state of consciousness. In particular, the spectacular abundance of advanced liberal economies and the infinitely diverse consumer culture made possible by them seem to both foster and preserve liberalism in the political sphere. I want to avoid the materialist determinism that says that liberal economics inevitably produces liberal politics, because I believe that both economics and politics presuppose an autonomous prior state of consciousness that makes them possible. But that state of consciousness that permits the growth of liberalism seems to stabilize in the way one would expect at the end of history if it is underwritten by the abundance of a modern free market economy. We might summarize the content of the universal homogenous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic.

HAVE WE in fact reached the end of history? Are there, in other words, any fundamental "contradictions" in human life that cannot be resolved in the context of modern liberalism, that would be resolvable by an alternative political-economic structure? If we accept the idealist premises laid out above, we must seek an answer to this question in the realm of ideology and consciousness. Our task is not to answer exhaustively the challenges to liberalism promoted by every crackpot messiah around the world, but only those that are embodied in important social or political forces and movements, and which are therefore part of world history. For our purposes, it matters very little what strange thoughts occur to people in Albania or Burkina Faso, for we are interested in what one could in some sense call the common ideological heritage of mankind.

In the past century, there have been two major challenges to liberalism, those of fascism and of communism. The former saw the political weakness, materialism, anomie, and lack of community of the West as fundamental contradictions in liberal societies that could only be resolved by a strong state that forged a new "people" on the basis of national exclusiveness. Fascism was destroyed as a living ideology by World War II. This was a defeat, of course, on a very material level, but it amounted to a defeat of the idea as well. What destroyed fascism as an idea was not universal moral revulsion against it, since plenty of people were willing to endorse the idea as long as it seemed the wave of the future, but its lack of success. After the war, it seemed to most people that German fascism as well as its other European and Asian variants were bound to self-destruct. There was no material reason why new fascist movements could not have sprung up again after the war in other locales, but for the fact that expansionist ultranationalism, with its promise of unending conflict leading to disastrous military defeat, had completely lost its appeal. The ruins of the Reich chancellery as well as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed this ideology on the level of consciousness as well as materially, and all of the pro-fascist movements spawned by the German and Japanese examples like the Peronist movement in Argentina or Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army withered after the war.

The ideological challenge mounted by the other great alternative to liberalism, communism, was far more serious. Marx, speaking Hegel's language, asserted that liberal society contained a fundamental contradiction that could not be resolved within its context, that between capital and labor, and this contradiction has constituted the chief accusation against liberalism ever since. But surely, the class issue has actually been successfully resolved in the West. As Kojève (among others) noted, the egalitarianism of modern America represents the essential achievement of the classless society envisioned by Marx. This is not to say that there are not rich people and poor people in the United States, or that the gap between them has not grown in recent years. But the root causes of economic inequality do not have to do with the underlying legal and social structure of our society, which remains fundamentally egalitarian and moderately redistributionist, so much as with the cultural and social characteristics of the groups that make it up, which are in turn the historical legacy of premodern conditions. Thus black poverty in the United States is not the inherent product of liberalism, but is rather the "legacy of slavery and racism" which persisted long after the formal abolition of slavery.

As a result of the receding of the class issue, the appeal of communism in the developed Western world, it is safe to say, is lower today than any time since the end of the First World War. This can he measured in any number of ways: in the declining membership and electoral pull of the major European communist parties, and their overtly revisionist programs; in the corresponding electoral success of conservative parties from Britain and Germany to the United States and Japan, which are unabashedly pro-market and anti-statist; and in an intellectual climate whose most "advanced" members no longer believe that bourgeois society is something that ultimately needs to be overcome. This is not to say that the opinions of progressive intellectuals in Western countries are not deeply pathological in any number of ways. But those who believe that the future must inevitably be socialist tend to be very old, or very marginal to the real political discourse of their societies.

0NE MAY argue that the socialist alternative was never terribly plausible for the North Atlantic world, and was sustained for the last several decades primarily by its success outside of this region. But it is precisely in the non-European world that one is most struck by the occurrence of major ideological transformations. Surely the most remarkable changes have occurred in Asia. Due to the strength and adaptability of the indigenous cultures there, Asia became a battleground for a variety of imported Western ideologies early in this century. Liberalism in Asia was a very weak reed in the period after World War I; it is easy today to forget how gloomy Asia's political future looked as recently as ten or fifteen years ago. It is easy to forget as well how momentous the outcome of Asian ideological struggles seemed for world political development as a whole.

The first Asian alternative to liberalism to be decisively defeated was the fascist one represented by Imperial Japan. Japanese fascism (like its German version) was defeated by the force of American arms in the Pacific war, and liberal democracy was imposed on Japan by a victorious United States. Western capitalism and political liberalism when transplanted to Japan were adapted and transformed by the Japanese in such a way as to be scarcely recognizable. Many Americans are now aware that Japanese industrial organization is very different from that prevailing in the United States or Europe, and it is questionable what relationship the factional maneuvering that takes place with the governing Liberal Democratic Party bears to democracy. Nonetheless, the very fact that the essential elements of economic and political liberalism have been so successfully grafted onto uniquely Japanese traditions and institutions guarantees their survival in the long run. More important is the contribution that Japan has made in turn to world history by following in the footsteps of the United States to create a truly universal consumer culture that has become both a symbol and an underpinning of the universal homogenous state. V.S. Naipaul traveling in Khomeini's Iran shortly after the revolution noted the omnipresent signs advertising the products of Sony, Hitachi, and JVC, whose appeal remained virtually irresistible and gave the lie to the regime's pretensions of restoring a state based on the rule of the Shariah. Desire for access to the consumer culture, created in large measure by Japan, has played a crucial role in fostering the spread of economic liberalism throughout Asia, and hence in promoting political liberalism as well.

The economic success of the other newly industrializing countries (NICs) in Asia following on the example of Japan is by now a familiar story. What is important from a Hegelian standpoint is that political liberalism has been following economic liberalism, more slowly than many had hoped but with seeming inevitability. Here again we see the victory of the idea of the universal homogenous state. South Korea had developed into a modern, urbanized society with an increasingly large and well-educated middle class that could not possibly be isolated from the larger democratic trends around them. Under these circumstances it seemed intolerable to a large part of this population that it should be ruled by an anachronistic military regime while Japan, only a decade or so ahead in economic terms, had parliamentary institutions for over forty years. Even the former socialist regime in Burma, which for so many decades existed in dismal isolation from the larger trends dominating Asia, was buffeted in the past year by pressures to liberalize both its economy and political system. It is said that unhappiness with strongman Ne Win began when a senior Burmese officer went to Singapore for medical treatment and broke down crying when he saw how far socialist Burma had been left behind by its ASEAN neighbors." - Francis Fukuyama, 1989, The National Interest.

[Orbie]

Obe still doesn't know that the Decline of the East was written by Oswaldastra Spengleriustra 1882 BCE.

to bad i'm historicalinntelectually unfamiliar with the incline toward indifference in the west toward learning for it's own sake, while making absolutely no project out of the matter. Does that make me or anyone else comfortable with this kind of analysis? hope not.

[Only_Humean]

Only Humean, is it right that you have studied linguistics? If so, then you probably know the meaning of "hyperonym" ("superordination") and "hyponym" ("subordination"). My interpetation of „time“, „development“ („change“), „evolution“, and „history“ in their structural relations to each other is the following one:

1) „time“ is the hyperonym of the hyponyms „development“ („change“), „evolution“, and „history“;

1,1) „development“ („change“) is a hyponym of the hyperonym „time“ and the hyperonym of the hyponyms „evolution“ and „history“;

1,1,1) „evolution“ is a hyponym of the hyperonyms „time“ and „development“ and the hyperonym of the hyponym „history“;

  1,1,1,1) „history“ is merely a hyponym, namely of the hyperonyms „time“, „development“, and „evolution“.

That consequently means: if history ends, evolution, or development (change), or even the time do not have to end simultaneously; and if evolution ends, history ends simultaneously, but development (change) and time do not have to end simultaneously; and if development (change) ends, evolution and history end simultaneously, but time does not have to end simultaneously. So in that relation merely the time is independent. Development (change) depends only on time. Evolution depends on time and development (change). History is the most dependent, because it depends on time, development (change), and evolution.

You may compare (1) time with our universe as such, (1,1) development (change) with our planet, (1,1,1) evolution with a living being (for example an alga, or a snake, or a human being without history, and (1,1,1,1) history with a - of course - historical human being.

They all belong to 1 (time), and merely historical human beings belong to 1,1,1,1 (history).

Hyp(er)onyms refer to increasing levels of abstraction: Animal < mammal < primate < human < Arminius. "Time" and "change" are arguably at similar levels to each other; at least, one could make (and others have made) arguments for each being a hyperonym of the other, which one can't do with "animal" and "mammal", say. I don't think the linguistics affect the basic statement that evolution and history require time.

However, "history" is a completely different semantic field from "change". In theory, evolution *could* end without history ending. Keeping species stable would still allow room for societies to change and for conflicts of values. It is the most specific of the terms in the subjects it encompasses, and the most likely to end.

[Arminius]

Excerpts from Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations":

World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be-the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among others. Each of these visions catches aspects of the emerging reality. Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in the coming years.

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world. ....

With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its centerpiece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history.

On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the same time, however, and perhaps as a result, a return to the roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations. Increasingly one hears references to trends toward a turning inward and "Asianization" in Japan, the end of the Nehru legacy and the "Hinduization" of India, the failure of Western ideas of socialism and nationalism and hence "re-Islamization" of the Middle East, and now a debate over Westernization versus Russianization in Boris Yeltsin's country. A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.

The west is now at an extraordinary peak of power in relation to other civilizations. ...." - Samuel P. Huntington, 1993, The Clash of Civilizations?, Foreign Affairs.

[Orbie]

I remember a guy a few years back ran for president on this platform. he didn't make it to the primaries, in a long shot.

Cant even remember his name, and have had absolutely no luck in finding him in any source. He did predict economic disaster, in addition to using the "Clash of Civilizations" as his basic antidote against Reagan's 'New World Order' proclamation. So it must have been in the eighties. He was imprisoned for years for some subversive act, but he didn't make it as a write in independent, and didn't even make it to the primaries. Can anyone remember him this far back?


It wasn't Ron Paul

[James S Saint]

They tried to assassinate him too.

And everything he, and JFK warned against, became true.

[Orbie]

They tried to assassinate him too.

And everything he, and JFK warned against, became true.

Still looking for his name, it seems like he just sort of vanished.

[Arminius]

I remember a guy a few years back ran for president on this platform. he didn't make it to the primaries, in a long shot.

Cant even remember his name, and have had absolutely no luck in finding him in any source. He did predict economic disaster, in addition to using the "Clash of Civilizations" as his basic antidote against Reagan's 'New World Order' proclamation. So it must have been in the eighties.

No, in the 1990s because it was after the end of the so called "Cold War" when George Herbert Walker Bush proclaimed the so called "New World Order".

[James S Saint]

Actually, H.G. Wells introduced the term back in 1940, The New World Order.

Many have talked of it since. And as usual, the conspiracy theorists were right (again).

[Orbie]

Actually, H.G. Wells introduced the term back in 1940, The New World Order.

Many have talked of it since. And as usual, the conspiracy theorists were right (again).

James, i have no clue, but do You think that HG Wells would have thought at the time he coined the concept,that if, it would become disseminated, and really understood, then the genre, would become more than sci fi? And conversely, as history proves this not to have been the case, for the most part, the people involved, (for i heard there were others then Wells )may have been aware of the secretive, conspiratorial nature of what they were planning.Their hauteur may even at that time could have been misinterpreted, therefore,as almost writing in code?

My feeling is that Wells assumed that some of his readers may excuse his naive presumption that
his readers could read between his intended lines, again proved wrong. Most think Wells as a science fiction writer.

One incident comes to mind, the fiasco with the Orson Welles radio fiasco, which almost caused a panic. Incidentally the two met briefly in 1940, during the war.

[James S Saint]

Actually, H.G. Wells introduced the term back in 1940, The New World Order.

Many have talked of it since. And as usual, the conspiracy theorists were right (again).

James, i have no inkling, but do You think that HG Wells would have thought at the time he coined the concept,that if, it would become disseminated, and really understood, then the genre, would become more than sci fi? And conversely, as history proves this not have been the ,the case, for the most part, the people involved, (for i heard there were others then Wells )may have been aware of the secretive, conspiratorial nature of what they were planning? Their hauteur may even at that time could have been misinterpreted, therefore,as almost writing in code?

My feeling is that Well assumed that some of his readers may excuse his naive presumption that
his readers could read between his intended lines, again proved wrong. Most think Wells as a science fiction writer.

One incident comes to mind, the fiasco with the Orson Wells radio fiasco [War of the Worlds], which almost caused a panic.

All sci-fi films, monster films, and TV series are fantasy metaphor for real events. And every sci-fi writer knows that. But most people don't realize that. Almost all stories written throughout history, regardless of how fantasy they seem, are fantasy metaphor for real events, including large portions of the Bible.

And modern mainstream media is entirely for the purpose of hypnosis, subtle mental persuasion, regardless of the subject matter or content. Media is merely a platform for persuasion. In the USA, mainstream media is the Propaganda Ministry and very strongly censored, but since the USA isn't supposed to have such things, many tricks are employed to avoid calling it that or letting the average person realize it. Everything in the West has become typical third world deceptions and manipulations. Nothing produced today is merely entertainment for sake of money. And nothing is a "public service" despite the government mandate that all public broadcasting maintain it to be so. That is what happens as a part of the decline of every society.

H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Gene Roddenberry are merely a few of the more famous in the sci-fi genre. All of their stories are about things already happening or on the verge of happening, merely given a fantasy setting.

[Arminius]

H. G. Wells was inaugurated.

[Arminius]

Actually, H.G. Wells introduced the term back in 1940, The New World Order.

Many have talked of it since. And as usual, the conspiracy theorists were right (again).

But are they really "conspiracy theorists" then and not merely theorists?

Have you raed H. G. Well's book "The New World Order", James?

[James S Saint]

H. G. Wells was inaugurated.

?? inaugurated as what?

And no, I never read the book.
But have seen the films.