Identity. The desire for recognition and a policy of rejection

The “identity” of Francis Fukuyama makes us think about the flaws of a schematic policy, the fruitlessness of attempts to reduce a multifaceted reality to the template. It doesn’t matter which Marxist, liberal, conservative or any other. Fedor Lukyanov, the editor -in -chief of the Russian Global Policy magazine, the chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in the new book, Francis Fukuyama explains why the development of mankind has gone in a different direction, which he suggested in his famous “end of history”. Correct the situation and the liberal-democratic order from populism and nationalism should correct a competent policy of identity, the author believes. It remains to determine how to pursue such a policy and who to do it. Dmitry Train, Director of the Moscow Center of Carnegie.
Finally, Fukuyama undertook to explain how the countries and peoples, finding the best form of social structure, voluntarily retreat from it. He dispels the economic determinism of the 1990s, discovering that not only material reasons are driven by man and societies, but a thirst for equality and recognition described by Plato. Alexander Baunov editor -in -chief of carnegie.ru from Russia, steadily rising from the knees, to the Ukrainian “Revolution of Dignity”, from the “Islamic state”, banned in the Russian Federation, to Trumpovskaya America, which wants to “become great again,” Fukuyama finds the general denominator of global Changes: a feeling of resentment and thirst for recognition, the sacramental question Do you respect me? A book-book, a diagnosis, but even more a preliminary book: identity, as it turned out, is a terrible force. Sergey Medvedev Professor HSE.
What is the book about: in recent years, more and more attention people around the world begin to devote their identity - national, racial, gender, religious. This global trend, according to Francis Fukuyama, the author of the bestseller “End of history and the last person”, is a decisive factor for the effective work of the social mechanism, whether in the countries of the East, Southeast Asia, the United States or Scandinavia. In his new book, Fukuyama explores the origins of our desire to recognize dignity and understands the consequences of the influence of the policy of identity on the liberal world order in the era of populism. The task that Fukuyama sets himself is to prove that the rights of the individual underlying the liberal idea can not only lead to individualistic fragmentation of societies, but also create the basis for social consolidation.
Quotes: In this book I use the term “Identity” in the sense that will help to understand why it is so important for modern politics. Identity grows primarily from the difference between the true internal “I” and the external world of social rules and norms that do not recognize and respect the value or dignity of this internal “I”. Throughout the history of mankind, individuals conflict with their societies. But only now there was an opinion that the true internal “I” has a natural, natural value, and external society is systematically mistaken and unfairly evaluates it. It is necessary not to change the internal “I”, subordinating it to the rules of society, but society itself.
But no matter how important material interests are, people are guided by other motives. And these motives are better explained by the current chaos. What we encountered today can be called a policy of resentification. There are many examples when a particular political leader mobilized the followers, exploiting their group insults, a sense of humiliation or suspicion that they are neglected or that they are underestimated. The complex of these sensations, called a resentim, requires public restoration of the violated dignity of such a group. The emotional impact that is capable of having a humiliated group on society, which achieves the restoration of honor and dignity, may be much stronger than the influence of people who simply pursue economic benefits.
The success of democracy does not depend on the optimization of its ideals, but on the balance - the balance between personal freedom and political equality, between the capable state exercising legal power, and the institutions of law and accountability that are trying to limit it. Metoo, “Arab Spring”, the heyday of nationalism, etc) from the point of view of the universal desire of people to recognize not only their individuality, but also identity to others. The author explores the concept of identity (personal, group, collective and national) through the prism of different philosophical schools and analyzes the consequences of the spread of identity policy (struggle for recognition of dignity) around the world. Socrates and Plato, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Rousseau, Hegel, Hobbes and Nietzsche, Marx and modern psychotherapy adherents are far from a complete list of intellectual guru, called up by Fukuyama in order to explain today"s problems of the Western world. The author offers specific steps so that the policy of identity brings real benefits to people, leading to long -awaited changes both in state policy and in cultural norms. For whom for political scientists, economists, journalists and philosophers