Student's surname and name: Mukhadas Telzhan

Section number and day, time of lecture: Friday 9:00 - 10:00 [08 - N]
"Francis Fukuyama" What's Become of the Common Good?

There are some books that are fun to read. There are some that bring an
element of novelty. And there are those who, like a bolt from the blue,
turn our thinking around. For me, Fukuyama's book became like that, it
was like a bomb explosion. After which there was an awareness of how I
had not noticed this before? The author, as a skilled artist, depicts our
modernity with excessively realistic colors. Traveling through the pages
of history with the author, let's look at the sources of modern politics.
And let's try to understand what kind of identity this is and what it is
eaten with. In the nineties, Francis Fukuyama wrote an article about the
end of history. In it, he described the victory of democracy. According to
Hegel, the driving force behind human history is the struggle for
recognition. He argued that the only rational solution to the problem of
the desire for recognition would be universal recognition, in which the
dignity of each person is recognized and respected. Since then, universal
recognition has been challenged both by other forms of exclusive group
recognition—on the basis of nationality, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or
gender—and by individuals demanding recognition of their superiority
over others. The increasingly politicized issue of identity is one of the
main threats to modern liberal democracies, and if we fail to return to a
more common understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves
to continued conflict. Our social world is arranged in such a way that
even the most important, common truths tend to be erased and forgotten,
to fade into the background. Therefore, modern people, who, according to
scientists and experts, are obsessed with an almost manic pursuit of
novelty, are not bad to be reminded of these common truths from time to
time. An attempt to recall them can be considered the latest book by the
famous American political scientist Francis Fukuyama "Identity: the
desire for recognition and the politics of rejection."In it, the author again
brings to the forefront of modern politics and international relations the
struggle for the recognition of individual and collective identity as the
most important explanatory principle of modern socio-political
knowledge.The immediate reason for writing the book was the victory of
Donald Trump in the presidential election. Despite the diametrically
opposed assessments of this political event, which split both the
representatives of the US ruling class and ordinary Americans, the rise to
power in the largest power of the West of a politician who was
immediately dubbed a "populist" by his enemies, launched a new round
of debate about where the modern world is going. and America, for many
years considered its undisputed leader. Fukuyama needed to refer to this
precedent in order to declare the urgent need for a "conversion" of
political vision.In the modern world, however, the problem of recognition
is complicated by the fact that instead of the trend towards universal
recognition of human dignity in the modern world, as Hegel saw it, new
trends are emerging associated with the struggle of individual groups for
recognition of their exclusive position in society, as well as with the
struggle individuals for recognizing not only their “right to be special”,
but also their exclusivity and originality. Thus, the principle of universal
recognition as both an actual and a normative principle of the modern
world is called into question.In fact, what Fukuyama is talking about is
that the very struggle for recognition in the modern world takes on such
unexpected forms that it calls into question the former universalist and
progressive claims of the modern world. If Hegel argued that “the only
rational solution to the problem of the desire for recognition will be
universal recognition, within which the dignity of each person is
recognized and respected”, today “universal recognition is challenged as
other forms of exclusively group recognition - on the basis of nationality,
religion, sect, race , ethnicity or gender, as well as individuals demanding
recognition of their superiority over the rest. Such politicization of
collective and individual identity seems to Fukuyama one of the main
problems of modern world politics. It is to her that a significant part of
his book is devoted, the central theme of which is the possibility of the
decay of modern liberal democracy or its regression. He connects such a
regression with a host of threats that have recently come to the forefront
of world politics. Among them is not only the politicization of collective
identity issues, but also the rise of various forms of religious
fundamentalism, as well as the “surge of old-fashioned nationalism” both
in the West itself and on its periphery.Fukuyama believes that the history
of modern liberalism is connected with the gradual mutation of the
principle of universal and equal recognition and its transformation into a
requirement to give priority or even grant exclusive rights to certain,
often marginal, groups. In this, in his opinion, both left-wing and right-
wing politicians succeeded, because instead of relying on the principle of
universal recognition, which is characteristic of early modern world
politics, they successfully retrained as defenders of various minorities.
This version of identity politics and multiculturalism in the developed
countries of the West also contributes to the "retreat of democracy" and
generates a policy of ressentiment on the part of opponents of identity
politics. The rightists demand a return to a homogeneous understanding
of the nation and raise the dominant culture, which was privileged in the
past, to the shield, while the leftists, criticizing them for this and relying
on the protection of marginal minorities, throw out the child along with
the water, seeing in national pride and love for the fatherland only the
relics of "atavistic nationalism", with which they demand to part without
any regret. In Fukuyama's opinion, "The type of identity politics most
often adopted by both the left and the right is deeply flawed because it
reintroduces the interpretation of identity on the basis of fixed
characteristics, such as race, ethnicity or religion." Rejection of the
received ideas in the past, the production of Fukuyama, was the cost of
great losses True, it remains unclear whether it will be possible to
abandon them even now, especially since an analysis of reviews of
Fukuyama's book in American academic publications and printed
national mass media suggests that reviewers both from the right and from
the left unanimously claim that he brings down everything with a sick
heads on a healthy one, addressing them with those reproaches that only
their opponents rightly deserve.