Over the past week, I read Francis Fukuyama's 2018 book, Identity, so here are a few scattered thoughts about it ("scattered thoughts" being one of the prime modes of blogging):
The shadow of The End of History and the Last Man (an oft-misunderstood work) hangs over much of Fukuyama's work, and Identity is no exception. Using the concept of "identity" as a lens, it explores elements of the modern condition that may keep a polity or even the whole globe from "getting to Denmark"--that is, to a market-oriented liberal democracy. Fukuyama offers a tripartite account of the human soul: reason, desire, and thymos. According to Fukuyama, "thymos"--"the seat of judgements of worth" and the cause of a craving for recognition--poses certain challenges to liberal modernity. While "isothymia" is "the demand to be respected on an equal basis with other people," "megalothymia" involves "the desire to be recognized as superior." For Fukuyama, both valences of thymos are implicated in contemporary politics of identity.
After laying out this division of the soul, Fukuyama surveys evolving notions of identity, from the Protestant Reformation to Rousseau to contemporary therapeutic culture. If you want a more in-depth discussion of the stakes of identity for Fukuyama, you could check out this interview he did with Matt Lewis. But, briefly, he argues that the demand for recognition by members of previously marginalized groups is part of the process of the demand for the universal recognition of equal dignity within liberal modernity. Fukuyama is broadly sympathetic to such demands, though he also fears that the emphasis on identity politics as purely slicing and dicing the polity might end up undercutting some of the norms necessary for defending a liberal society--moreover, it might inspire a backlash. In the final chapter, Fukuyama offers a variety of suggestions to try to confront some of the challenges of identity, such as a more democratic central governing body for the EU, mandatory national service in the US, assimilationist reforms to immigration policy, and an emphasis on creedal national belonging.
I might not necessarily agree with everything in Identity, but it does offer a thoughtful survey of some of the forces that have influenced contemporary notions of the self. Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self plays an important role here, but this book more broadly bears a Hegelian stamp. Hegel's account of evolving shapes of human consciousness seems an important theoretical frame for Identity, and Fukuyama has long acknowledged the influence of Alexandre Kojeve, one of the most influential 20th-century interpreters of Hegel and one of the founding proponents of the European Union. (Speaking of Kojeve: The Strauss-Kojeve debate about tyranny remains, I think, rewarding reading. Of particular note these days might be the theme in that debate about the role of sovereign states. In his "Restatement" to Kojeve, Strauss defends the idea of the world being populated by independent regimes: "the coming of the universal and homogeneous state will be the end of philosophy on earth.")
With the neoliberal order being increasingly embattled, some have doubled down on postnational tendencies. Others have instead emphasized the importance of the nation for maintaining liberty. Fukuyama falls into that second camp. In the twelfth chapter, he outlines the various ways that an "inclusive sense of national identity" helps free societies function: it helps provide physical security, non-corrupt government, economic development, public trust, and a social safety net. He goes even further: "The final function of national identity is to make possible liberal democracy itself." The "social contract" of liberal democracy requires citizens to believe that "they are part of the same polity." It's a popular thing these days to pit "liberalism" against "nationalism," but that headline-generating quarrel should not obscure the way that sovereign nations have proven important vehicles for the defense and exposition of liberty (as it is often understood).
And there's another point about identity here, too. In the final paragraph of this volume, Fukuyama notes that "identity" is a double-edged concept: it "can be used to divide, but it can and has also been used to integrate." It would be a mistake to walk away from this book thinking that Fukuyama wants to end "identity politics." Instead, he wants to foster a form of national identity to balance out and complement other forms of identity. (A similar point might be raised about Mark Lilla's Once and Future Liberal--he criticizes the left not for mentioning identity-related issues but instead for failing to give sufficient attention to forms of civic identity.) As I've written before, one of the ways of addressing some contemporary identity-related tensions is to recognize the mutability of some of the identity silos that seem so solid to contemporary observers--and to realize that there can be robust forms of civic belonging that also recognize the diversity of human experience.
