One, a philosopher, announced “the end of history”. The other, President of the French Republic, experienced the “brutal return of tragedy in history”. L’Express will bring together Emmanuel Macron and Francis Fukuyama, for an exceptional conference in the Radio France auditorium, organized to celebrate the newspaper’s 70th anniversary, on October 18, 2023 in Paris. The head of state and the professor at Stanford will try to answer the following question: “Are democracies going to die?” It will notably discuss dramatic news in the Middle East.
In December 2020, when the threat is health – and he himself has just contracted Covid – Emmanuel Macron evokes, in a long interview in L’Express, the doubts and tensions which cross French society. Social crisis, conspiracy, identity tensions, the evils observed were already numerous and the president formulated this observation: “There is, in what we are experiencing at the moment, something of a Promethean destiny. Our society, which is “was accustomed to the end of wars, to permanent and growing comfort, rediscovered vulnerability with the climate and terrorist crises.”
Francis Fukuyama also gave an exclusive interview to L’Express in March 2023, on the occasion of the publication of Liberalism, headwinds (Editions Saint-Simon). In this essay praised by Anglo-Saxon critics, the American academic reviewed the various threats against liberal democracy, with growing opposition from authoritarian states outside our borders (Russia, China, etc.), but also within our borders the rise of right-wing populism as well as the identity drift of a “woke” left.
The name of the intellectual remains inseparable from a thesis as famous as it is poorly read. In the summer of 1989, a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama published an article in the journal The National Interest entitled “The End of History?”, announcing the global triumph of political and economic liberalism. A bestseller followed in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man. “End of the story” ? The expression, inspired by the thought of Hegel, has flourished, even if it means becoming a cliché emptied of its meaning. Let us remember that Fukuyama in no way predicted the end of wars or the disappearance of tragedy in history, but the advent of liberal democracy in terms of ideas. According to him, this mode of government, for two centuries, has so demonstrated its superiority compared to rival ideologies (communism, fascism, hereditary monarchy, etc.) that it can only become universal in the long term, “as a final form of all human government.
For his part, from January 2018, Emmanuel Macron warned of “the illiberal temptation” plaguing certain democracies. Attacked by ever more numerous and ever more diverse enemies, are our democracies in Europe and beyond armed to defend themselves? Is it utopian or insightful to hope today that this model will prevail everywhere? It is all these essential questions that Emmanuel Macron and Francis Fukuyama will try to answer.
“It was good yesterday, it will be better tomorrow” – For its 70th anniversary, L’Express invites you on October 18 to the Radio France Auditorium for an exceptional conference under the sign of commitment and optimism. To register, Click here. Hurry, places are limited!