In 1989, the age of power political realism ended. The conditions were set to replace the prevailing Hobbesian model of peace by deterrence with the considerably more challenging Kantian model of peace by right. If, however, Huntington's paradigm of fighting civilizations were right, we would have to forget Kant and remember Hobbes. Sober rationality, healthy distrust, striving for power accumulation and all the other instruments from the realist's toolbox of political prudence are very well suited to facilitate political self-assertion in (...) an age of violently clashing cultures. However, this helplessness is not well grounded. Considering that from the very beginning liberalism is a theory of religious and ethical pluralism and well-experienced in dealing with problems of multiculturalism, it is at least possible to argue for a weak liberal universalism which provides normative foundations for a global order of peacefully living together. Of course, conceptual and moral modesty is crucial. If the human rights doctrine wants to defend its universal claim in the face of cultural diversity , it has to restrict itself to the conditions of esse: the pre-cultural and sheer natural conditions of human being and human coexistence. However, the formulation of the conditions of bene esse has to be left to culture and its authorities and belief systems which buttress a cultural constitution of meaning, both theologically and metaphysically. Traditional natural rights theory knew that both have to go together, and that the esse-enabling duties necessarily enjoy priority. No cultural conception of thriving life and existential significance can be accepted which contradicts the fundamental imperatives and conditions of pure human existence and coexistence. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar e interpretar la teoría del fin de la historia en Alexandre Kojève. El contexto de esta investigación se basa fundamentalmente en la nota a pie de la página añadida por Kojève en la segunda edición de su libro Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Esta nota a pie de página ha dado lugar a intensos debates e interrogantes filosóficos importantes. En ella, se toma como paradigma el esnobismo japonés como alternativa a la animalización (...) definitiva del hombre posthistórico. En el trabajo, concretamente, se valorará la rectificación kojeviana sobre el fin de la historia a la luz de la obra de Kojève en su conjunto, sus debates con autores de su tiempo y las referencias a la tradición filosófica. Todo ello con la finalidad de desentrañar las implicaciones éticas de la supervivencia de lo humano en el fin de la historia y su relación con los planteamientos postmetafísicos contemporáneos. (shrink)