NP - A clash between positivism and negativity

[David Morris]

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/302/oped/A_clash_between_positivism_and_negativity+.shtml

A clash between positivism and negativity

By H.D.S. Greenway, 10/29/2001

TWO COMPETING world views of the post-Cold War era can be found in the 
writings of Harvard's Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama of Johns 
Hopkins.

In Fukuyama's ''The End of History,'' he argues that after the Cold War, the 
evolutionary process of mankind toward modernity, ''characterized by 
institutions like liberal democracy and capitalism,'' had reached its 
conclusion. ''If we looked beyond liberal democracy and markets, there was 
nothing else toward which we could expect to evolve: hence the end of 
history,'' he wrote in explanation of his theory. ''While there might be 
retrograde areas that revisited that process, it was hard to find a viable 
alternative type of civilization that people actually wanted to live in 
after the discrediting of socialism, monarchy, fascism, and other types of 
authoritarian rule.''

Huntington, on the other hand, in hs book: ''The Clash of Civilizations, and 
the Remaking of World Order,'' predicted that the future would bring 
conflict along the old fault lines of differing cultures.



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