SEPARATE BUT PARALLEL

I was pleased to see Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” selected for your Current Interest Book Prize, but I have a few differences with the review by H. Stuart Hughes (Nov. 8).

Hughes comes awfully close to conflating Fukuyama’s argument about how market capitalism develops (“the logic of modern science”) with Fukuyama’s argument about how liberal democracies develop (“the desire for recognition”). As Hughes puts it: “Liberal democracy stands at the convergence of the two.”

This is not quite the way I read Fukuyama’s arguments; the danger in conflating the two ideas is that one could get the idea that capitalism necessarily fosters democracy, and vice-versa. Fukuyama sees these two as parallel but separate lines of development, and the hopeful aspect of his argument is that the convergence of the two will eventually come to be seen as desirable.

I must also differ with Hughes’ disparagement of Hegel’s place in Fukuyama’s arguments. Aside from the fact that Hegel, via Kojeve, is the source of “the desire for recognition,” one of the major consequences of the book is the material it offers for a revival of the intellectual debate about political philosophy, a debate which has been moribund for most of this century.

This is where Fukuyama takes a stance in opposition to some other prominent intellectual trends: He asserts that the historical tradition of philosophy (Hegel included) is not dead, as has been thought, and can continue to be a useful tool in making sense of the world.

PAUL B. TURPIN, LOS ANGELES