"While uncovering the original Hegel is an important task for the purposes of the 'present argument,' we are interested not in Hegel per se but in Hegel-as-interpreted-by-Kojève, or perhaps a new, synthetic philosopher named Hegel-Kojève. In subsequent references to Hegel, we will actually be referring to Hegel-Kojève." —Fukuyama, "End of History and the Last Man", p. 144. (A very good decision on his part!)
Regarding the Hegelian project, I tend to think you've confused the claim at stake with another one that there is nothing that *can* be said. As it happens, much of Kojève's argument is dedicated to refuting the ("Parmenidean") claim that the accomplishment of discourse implies lapsing into silence: the Sage, like Hegel himself, will continue to talk, without however falling into the opposite "Heraclitean" fallacy of talking forever without meaning. Otherwise, of course, Kojève's own project would be self-refuting.
In any case, though, my note's intended only as an explanation of how the term "end of history" is to be interpreted if it's to have any seriousness at all. It's doubtless very interesting, and sometimes useful, to speculate about which social changes are necessary, which successful, and so forth, but to pretend that this sort of assertion about the course of events signals "the end of history" is really just pompous rhetoric and should be recognised as such. As common as this sleight of hand is, in most of its variants it fortunately has very little to do with any of the figures discussed here, even Fukuyama on his better days.
We can invert one of Kojève's own arguments in defence of the concept here: we can't prove that there is no end of history by assuming that events follow one another in mathematical series, and by the same token its accomplishment can't be demonstrated inductively any more than we can prove that a mathematical series is finite by counting upwards without finding new members.
The statement at the end that thought is all that remains is probably more telling than you intended it to be, but instead of answering it directly we should perhaps pause for a while and ask whether the social change of the last century really can be dismissed as "failed". To me—and, I tend to think, to the majority of the world—it seems rather to be incomplete.
Without getting into too much Fukuyamanology, I think that citation is taken out of context, and Fukuyama really is just much closer to Hegel in his positions than Kojeve. Fukuyama defines the end of history in terms of liberal democracy, Hegel defines it in terms of the state, family and civil society, while Kojeve takes a much broader view. I think you can take Fukuyama as a re-Hegelianization of Kojeveian concepts, although crudely and in a way Hegel, or any great critic, would get mad at.
Anyway, I wasn't unaware of the implications of my final statement. I'm perfectly aware that it stands in opposition to "the majority of the world", i.e., the rising powers outside the West, particularly China and to some dramatic extent Russia. Again, this is a point where Fukuyama basically gets it right and identifies Hegel's notion of progress as specific to the West and in opposition to other civilizations. Hegel, if anything, is positively chauvinistic by contemporary standards, and Fukuyama is just honest about this. And indeed, Kojeve was much more a proponent of Western multipolarity than anything relevant to our contemporary conversations.
But I would also add this: the kind of reconciliation Fukuyama is offering is available to everyone. As long as it's a world molded in a Western, (or, increasingly, simply American) image, it's available to everyone. Hegel himself, of course, was notoriously cooperative with the Prussian state, which hardly met the contemporary standards of liberal freedom. The point is really that, while we don't enjoy the immediate wholeness of pre-Socratic Greek society, modern man has real freedom in the world in every important way.
"While uncovering the original Hegel is an important task for the purposes of the 'present argument,' we are interested not in Hegel per se but in Hegel-as-interpreted-by-Kojève, or perhaps a new, synthetic philosopher named Hegel-Kojève. In subsequent references to Hegel, we will actually be referring to Hegel-Kojève." —Fukuyama, "End of History and the Last Man", p. 144. (A very good decision on his part!)
Regarding the Hegelian project, I tend to think you've confused the claim at stake with another one that there is nothing that *can* be said. As it happens, much of Kojève's argument is dedicated to refuting the ("Parmenidean") claim that the accomplishment of discourse implies lapsing into silence: the Sage, like Hegel himself, will continue to talk, without however falling into the opposite "Heraclitean" fallacy of talking forever without meaning. Otherwise, of course, Kojève's own project would be self-refuting.
In any case, though, my note's intended only as an explanation of how the term "end of history" is to be interpreted if it's to have any seriousness at all. It's doubtless very interesting, and sometimes useful, to speculate about which social changes are necessary, which successful, and so forth, but to pretend that this sort of assertion about the course of events signals "the end of history" is really just pompous rhetoric and should be recognised as such. As common as this sleight of hand is, in most of its variants it fortunately has very little to do with any of the figures discussed here, even Fukuyama on his better days.
We can invert one of Kojève's own arguments in defence of the concept here: we can't prove that there is no end of history by assuming that events follow one another in mathematical series, and by the same token its accomplishment can't be demonstrated inductively any more than we can prove that a mathematical series is finite by counting upwards without finding new members.
The statement at the end that thought is all that remains is probably more telling than you intended it to be, but instead of answering it directly we should perhaps pause for a while and ask whether the social change of the last century really can be dismissed as "failed". To me—and, I tend to think, to the majority of the world—it seems rather to be incomplete.
Without getting into too much Fukuyamanology, I think that citation is taken out of context, and Fukuyama really is just much closer to Hegel in his positions than Kojeve. Fukuyama defines the end of history in terms of liberal democracy, Hegel defines it in terms of the state, family and civil society, while Kojeve takes a much broader view. I think you can take Fukuyama as a re-Hegelianization of Kojeveian concepts, although crudely and in a way Hegel, or any great critic, would get mad at.
Anyway, I wasn't unaware of the implications of my final statement. I'm perfectly aware that it stands in opposition to "the majority of the world", i.e., the rising powers outside the West, particularly China and to some dramatic extent Russia. Again, this is a point where Fukuyama basically gets it right and identifies Hegel's notion of progress as specific to the West and in opposition to other civilizations. Hegel, if anything, is positively chauvinistic by contemporary standards, and Fukuyama is just honest about this. And indeed, Kojeve was much more a proponent of Western multipolarity than anything relevant to our contemporary conversations.
But I would also add this: the kind of reconciliation Fukuyama is offering is available to everyone. As long as it's a world molded in a Western, (or, increasingly, simply American) image, it's available to everyone. Hegel himself, of course, was notoriously cooperative with the Prussian state, which hardly met the contemporary standards of liberal freedom. The point is really that, while we don't enjoy the immediate wholeness of pre-Socratic Greek society, modern man has real freedom in the world in every important way.