Francis Fukuyama. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Perennial by HarperCollins, 2002. xxiii + 418 pages.

Francis Fukuyama. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. xiii + 256 pages.

Reviewed by David R. Larson
(September 9, 2002)

Francis Fukuyama, who teaches courses in international affairs at Johns Hopkins University that interweave history, philosophy, politics, and economics, is famous for spotting trends and transitions. A decade ago he heralded the end of human history. He now decries the possible demise of human history. Although they differ, both proclamations are worth considering.

In The End of History and the Last Man, a best seller that Simon and Schuster first published in 1992, Fukuyama argued that humanity’s quest for the primary principles by which to assess political and economic affairs had culminated in the ethical norms of liberal democracies. He did not contend that all liberal democracies balance these principles the same way, or that they all implement them flawlessly, or even that all their achievements will prove permanent or ultimately satisfying. His point was that the long and difficult search for the basic ethical norms for society is over, at least for now. Our next task is to implement them. In this sense, human history has ended.

Fukuyama also argued that human history is a coherent whole with a meaningful direction. Like Karl Marx, he championed the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel, who discerned a definite plot in the human story. Unlike Marx, he claimed that the final chapter in this story is not communism but liberal democracy. Also, unlike Marx, and like Alexandre Koje`ve, a French specialist in Hegel’s thought he often cited, Fukuyama rejected the idea that the direction of human history is wholly determined by economic factors.

Liberal democracies favor relatively free markets because, with the aid of modern science and technology, they produce and distribute goods and services more successfully than do controlled economies, Fukuyama wrote. Partly because doing so often works well with free markets, such societies also affirm the principle of respecting the civil, religious, and political rights of all citizens, as well as their rights to vote, hold public office, and engage in other political activities. The deeper reason they work well is because democratic political systems are more able than their rivals to do justice to each human being’s desire to be recognized as an individual of value and dignity whose ideas and preferences are worth taking seriously.

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution was published in April of this year. In it, Fukuyama warns that we stand on the brink of transforming humanity for the worse. Having concluded human history, we now run the risk of terminating human history. What it means to be a human being is now at stake.

Fukuyama voices this warning in three steps. He begins with six chapters that examine recent and anticipated innovations in the biomedical sciences and technologies. He pays particular attention to studies of the biological sources of human behavior, the use of medicines to alter human thoughts, feelings, and actions, measures that prolong human life without always improving its quality, and manipulating human genes. In the next three chapters he outlines his understandings of human nature, human rights, and human dignity with an eye to how some biomedical innovations put all three at risk. He then concludes with three more chapters that outline some possible political solutions and which of these he prefers.

Without overlooking the various ways humans organize their lives, Fukuyama challenges the claim that there is no such thing as "human nature." He contends that in our thoughts and deeds we should not blur the differences between human and nonhuman beings, whether by treating those who aren’t humans as though they are, or by treating those who are humans as though they aren’t.

Fukuyama is especially concerned with what some of the ancient Greeks called "spiritedness." For good and for ill, human beings are often daring, restless with the status quo, and willing to sacrifice much to realize new possibilities. The decisive ethical difference between a dog and a human being is not that normally the first has four legs whereas the second has only two, for example. It is that the dog’s cognitive, affective, and volitional capacities are satisfied more swiftly and simply. Fukuyama warns that some biomedical innovations may make us like our pets: compliant, content, but wholly incapable of both spectacular failure and great achievement. They may end human history.

Fukuyama makes many helpful political suggestions: we ought to prohibit some biomedical innovations and regulate others; assessing these developments according to their likely consequences for human nature, rights and dignity is a good idea; entire societies, not just those who specialize in biomedical research, should make these evaluations; the line between restoring human well-being and creating new forms of human life is ethically important; the differences between human health and disease are not merely individual or communal preferences.

Nevertheless, I am more worried than Fukuyama apparently is about what a biologist named Garrett James Hardin once called "the tragedy of the commons." This problem is that often it is to each person’s economic and political advantage to damage the natural environment because there are so few immediate and direct costs for doing so. If by being ecologically irresponsible I can make my life more prosperous and prestigious, why not poison air I do not breathe, contaminate water I do not drink, and deplete land on which I do not live? Because questions such as this one affect so many more of us than do innovations like cloning, I think they deserve more bioethical attention.

Fukuyama rightly indicates that liberal democracies often cope with ecological problems more effectively than do other societies. The record of the former Soviet Union in this respect was worse than that of many capitalistic nations, for instance. My question is whether this relative superiority will be enough to prevent the destruction of the ecological basis for human civilizations. All agree that this is a challenge for liberal democracies and other societies. The issue is whether they will find the ethical resources with which to meet it. The answer to this important question depends upon us!

© 2002 Spectrum/AAF