Sunday, June 11, 2006

Marx as the sunny optimist of Modernism,

Open Democracy's article suggests Francis Fukuyama "is caught between the triumphalism of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, and the despair of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Kojève."

Marx is viewed as a "sunny rationalist" who embraces modern man's quest to end superstition and replace the "shameful" past of tribalism with a "universal Empire of Reason."

In contrast to Marx, Alexander Kojève "imagined that a cold and arid rationality would take over the globe and that as a result, everything wild, irrational and unpredictable would disappear from it."

Alexander Kojève was heavily influenced by Hegel and Marx.

1 comment:

Tracy Kaufman said...

Fukuyama teaches at my school! Booyah!