After the End of History

In Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a group of rather self-consciously decadent persons are contemplating the follies of the 1890s: fin de siecle' murmurs Lord Henry, fin du globe, ' answers his hostess. 'I wish it were fin du globe,' says Dorian, with a sigh, 'Life is a great disappointment.' A century later, the feeling that we live at the end of history has returned, but in a very different shape. The current fashion in 'endism’ is not decadent and Wildean, but optimistic and sociological, loosely Hegelian, and more than a little confused.