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Have we reached the “end of history”? A little-known former RAND analyst, Francis Fukuyama, asked that provocative question in a lecture he delivered at the University of Chicago in February 1989. Invited by his mentor, Allan Bloom, Fukuyama presented his analysis in a series on the perennial topic of the “Decline of the West.” But he offered a more optimistic verdict. He pointed to the worldwide spread of liberal democracy, and the obvious failure of communist alternatives, especially in the Soviet Union, and suggested that the West had won. Drawing on the dialectical historical system of Hegel, the 19th century German philosopher, and his 20th century interpreter, Alexandre Kojève, Fukuyama argued that the pursuit of freedom led humans to a “modern liberal state, where the equal and mutual recognition of all citizens was guaranteed by a rule of law that granted them basic rights.”

A small foreign policy magazine, the National Interest, published Fukuyama’s lecture in the summer of 1989. After the fall of the Berlin Wall that November, it appeared prophetic. Fukuyama described the “triumph of the West” and the “total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.” He placed the contemporary moment in a deeper context: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Fukuyama explained, “I simply don’t see any competitors to modern democracy.”

Have we reached the “end of history”? A little-known former RAND analyst, Francis Fukuyama, asked that provocative question in a lecture he delivered at the University of Chicago in February 1989. Invited by his mentor, Allan Bloom, Fukuyama presented his analysis in a series on the perennial topic of the “Decline of the West.” But he offered a more optimistic verdict. He pointed to the worldwide spread of liberal democracy, and the obvious failure of communist alternatives, especially in the Soviet Union, and suggested that the West had won. Drawing on the dialectical historical system of Hegel, the 19th century German philosopher, and his 20th century interpreter, Alexandre Kojève, Fukuyama argued that the pursuit of freedom led humans to a “modern liberal state, where the equal and mutual recognition of all citizens was guaranteed by a rule of law that granted them basic rights.”

A small foreign policy magazine, the National Interest, published Fukuyama’s lecture in the summer of 1989. After the fall of the Berlin Wall that November, it appeared prophetic. Fukuyama described the “triumph of the West” and the “total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.” He placed the contemporary moment in a deeper context: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Fukuyama explained, “I simply don’t see any competitors to modern democracy.”

These words exploded like firecrackers around the world. U.S., British, French, and Japanese media immediately summarized the article and sought out the author. He became an instant celebrity, featured in both Newsweek and Time magazines. Leading scholars in numerous disciplines made a point of rejecting his argument—the truest sign of influence. Perhaps most astonishing, a newsstand in Washington reported that copies of the nerdy National Interest magazine with the original article were “outselling everything, even the pornography.” The article made Fukuyama’s career as an enduring public intellectual.

Young Berliners remove a piece of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 16, 1989.Patrick Hertzog/AFP via Getty Images

In his newly published memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man, Fukuyama does not dwell on the popular obsession with his “end of history” essay, except to complain: “I have been asked several times a week over the past three decades whether I wished to recant my argument.” He contends that the questioners, who presume he was somehow naive and wrong-headed when he composed his argument, rarely “read more than the title of my essay or book.” They neglect most of the countless articles and books he has written since the “end of history” moment.

Fukuyama reminds readers of his memoir that, despite being widely interpreted as a........

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