Frank Fukuyama on how to rescue liberalism

Dialogues with Richard Reeves

It's not news that liberalism is under pressure. And one of the most prominent liberals of our era is Francis Fukuyama. As he writes in his latest book, Liberalism and its Discontents, the virtues of liberalism need to be clearly articulated and celebrated once again." In this wide-ranging dialogue, Frank and I discuss how his thinking has evolved since his famous 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, including the central tension between the universalism of liberal morality and the fact of nation states, and between the pluralism of liberal politics and the central importance of thymos - respect, dignity, recognition. Along the way we talk about the perils of the university tenure system, the significance of the war in Ukraine, why Papua New Guinea is such a good place to study political order, the relationship between liberalism and laissez-faire capitalism (Spoiler: hugely overstated), and the content of a good life, or what it means, in Mill's word "to pursue our own good in our as seen through the eyes of a liberal.

Francis Fukuyama

Tweets from @FukuyamaFrancis

Read:

Liberalism and Its Discontents (2022)

The End of History and the Last Man (1992)

The Origins of Political Order (2011)

Political Order and Political Decay (2015)

See also my review of his latest book in the Literary Review here.

Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

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Check out my dialogue with Joseph Henrich whose work we discussed, on Spotify here or Apple here.