Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Basics of Philosophical Psychology
- Part III The Cartesian Self in History
- Part IV Value Spheres
- Part V A Self-Understanding Not Only for the West
- Chapter 20 Is the Core Idea of Modernity Realizable At All?
- Chapter 21 Harnessing Extraordinariness
- Chapter 22 Cartesian Modernity
- Chapter 23 The Undivided, Universally Developed Individual
- Chapter 24 The End of History?
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 24 - The End of History?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Basics of Philosophical Psychology
- Part III The Cartesian Self in History
- Part IV Value Spheres
- Part V A Self-Understanding Not Only for the West
- Chapter 20 Is the Core Idea of Modernity Realizable At All?
- Chapter 21 Harnessing Extraordinariness
- Chapter 22 Cartesian Modernity
- Chapter 23 The Undivided, Universally Developed Individual
- Chapter 24 The End of History?
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
By its prevailing utilitarian self-understanding, the west is bound to judge that the end of history is reached when the institutional means to enable everyone to pursue their happiness are secured worldwide. The prevailing self-understanding is no longer utilitarian in the sense of equating happiness with a state of passive pleasures; it even includes liberty of action in the state it considers the highest good. But it is still utilitarian, as it understands life as the pursuit of (multidimensional) happiness rather than as the search for extraordinariness. Moreover, it is oriented to the serving value spheres and neglecting the nonserving ones. No wonder therefore that, when it became obvious that the Soviet empire would collapse, the end of history was declared in the West. Capitalist economy does provide the means to produce a society that satisfies utilitarian standards, if only by “tittytainment.” Already two years before the collapse, Francis Fukuyama produced an interesting argument for the end but at the same time realized that something is wrong with the kind of liberalism that he too conceives in the utilitarian way. He starts with rhetorical questions:
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?
Showing that fascism and communism failed and the cravings of religious fundamentalism can be “successfully satisfied within the sphere of personal life that is permitted in liberal societies,” his answer is in the positive.
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- Rethinking the Western Understanding of the Self , pp. 204 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009