REALWAP LIBRARY

The End of History?*  Francis Fukuyama** IN WATCHING the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history. The past year has seen a flood of articles commemorating the end of the Cold War, and the fact that "peace" seems to be breaking out in many regions of the world. Most of these analyses lack any larger conceptual framework for distinguishing between what is essential and what is contingent or accidental in world history, and are predictably superficial. If Mr. Gorbachev were ousted from the Kremlin or a new Ayatollah proclaimed the millennium from a desolate Middle Eastern capital, these same commentators would scramble to announce the rebirth of a new era of conflict. And yet, all of these people sense dimly that there is some larger process at work, a process that gives coherence and order to the daily headlines. The twentieth century saw the developed world descend into a paroxy

Introduction Ontology As the Science of Being Ontology can basically be said to be the science of being. It is that branch of Metaphysics which focuses on the study of being as being. Etymologically, it is derived from the two Greek words, onta meaning existence and logos meaning discourse. It is the study of the nature and meaning of being. The uniqueness of this field of study stem from the fact that it studies the most basic quality of all things which is not within the sphere of other disciplines. This because all that are in existence share one elusive property: being or existence. This quality or property is what concerns ontology. Aja further contends that, “ontology does not consider beings either from a material or immaterial aspects; rather it considers them under the general features which are common to all things and which are attributes or determinations of being  in general or being as such”. Ontology as an attempt at elucidating the nature of being is also an attempt