Europe treats its civilisation as an embarrassment to be dismantled

When Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history” in 1989, he articulated what had become the West’s unspoken creed: That liberal democracy and market capitalism represented humanity’s final ideological destination. The Cold War was over, the alternatives lay in ruins, and all that remained was the tedious work of implementation and economic optimisation. Thirty-seven years later, that thesis stands not as prophecy but as the high-water mark of Western hubris and a symptom of a deeper malady that threatens Europe’s survival.

Ironically, despite being critical of Fukuyama in numerous op-eds, nobody embodies the spirit of the “End of History” as much as the European Union. According to Brussels, there are no true existential questions left, and the future will be the integration of the world into a web of technocratic regulations, overseen by an ever-growing body of bureaucrats. Yet somehow this vision has not liberated the peoples of Europe from existential dread, but it has created new ones. 

The economic troubles of the continent are just a symptom of its spiritual emptiness: This is the thesis that contemporary analysts stubbornly refuse to grasp. Policymakers speak endlessly of structural reforms, productivity metrics, and fiscal consolidation. They debate carbon pricing and industrial subsidies with earnest conviction that these mechanical adjustments will restore European vitality. But they are treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease. The real crisis is philosophical.

For centuries, European societies were organised around transcendent principles including religious faith, national honour, civilisational pride, the struggle for recognition beyond mere material comfort. These were forms of thymos, a concept Plato identified as the spirited part of the human soul that craves recognition of worth and meaning beyond desire and reason alone. This thymotic dimension animated European culture, driving exploration, scientific inquiry, artistic creation, and the willingness to defend one’s community. It made life worth living because it provided purposes larger than individual pleasure. This spirit was well captured by individuals like the explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, who understood his adventures not as pleasure, but the process of conquering himself. Contributing to a nation’s greatness was considered a worthwhile endeavor, and while comfort was appreciated, it was not pursued at all cost. In a sense, material comfort was a by-product, but not the animating spirit of a healthy civilisation.

Post-war European elites, traumatised by nationalism’s devastations, made a deliberate choice to alter this relationship: They would construct societies centred on material well-being and individual consumption, explicitly stripping away the “dangerous” thymotic passions that had animated fascism and communism. The Homo economicus would replace the glory-seeking warrior. Commerce would replace conquest. And thus, for a time, Europe experienced unprecedented prosperity alongside unprecedented ideological emptiness.

The problem is that human beings cannot live on consumption alone. We are not economic animals. We require meaning, we require struggle, we require a sense of participating in something larger than ourselves. Modern Western thought, since Hobbes and Locke, attempted to reduce human motivation to desire and reason—forgetting the third pillar that Plato identified as essential to the human soul. And now, having eliminated traditional sources of meaning, European societies face a crisis of legitimacy that no amount of GDP growth can resolve.

With traditional forms of meaning like religion or patriotism systematically forced out of fashion by cultural elites, they were replaced by all kinds of secular transitions: An energy transition into a Green utopia that demanded faith in models and expertise rather than in God. A gender transition that was supposed to finally end the “patriarchy” and liberate humanity from biological constraints. A transition to multiculturalism that was meant to forever alter the supposedly narrow, boring, and oppressive Western societies. Each transition promised meaning and progress, yet each left populations increasingly disoriented, unmoored, and spiritually hollow.

The result is precisely what Machiavelli understood centuries ago: Societies that have lost faith in themselves, that no longer believe their own civilisation worth defending, face inevitable decline. When Europe’s cultural elites spend their intellectual energy deconstructing Western achievements rather than celebrating them, when universities teach that Western civilisation is synonymous with oppression, when political leaders apologise for their own heritage—the message to the population is clear: Your civilisation deserves to perish.

This explains phenomena that purely economic analysis cannot account for. It explains Europe’s demographic collapse. A rational actor concerned about pension sustainability would produce more offspring, not fewer. Yet fertility rates plummet across the continent precisely where economic comfort is greatest. Why? Because societies devoid of transcendent purpose offer no compelling reason to sacrifice, to labour, to perpetuate themselves. A child represents an investment in the future, a bet that civilisation is worth continuing. European societies, convinced of their own irrelevance and moral bankruptcy, have essentially ceased making that bet.

It explains the rise of alternative ideologies despite—or perhaps because of—their irrationality. Islam, for all its theological claims, provides what liberal secular Europe abandoned: A comprehensive framework for meaning, a clear sense of belonging, a transcendent purpose that justifies sacrifice. No amount of economic integration or social programming can compete with an ideology that tells people their lives matter, that their choices have cosmic significance, that they are part of something eternal. The Islamic community in Europe reproduces not because it is more economically rational, but because it has retained what Europe discarded: Thymos.

It explains the political upheaval sweeping the West. The rise of populism, nationalism, and identity politics is often lamented as regression or irrationality. But from another perspective, it represents a desperate attempt by populations to recover meaning particularity, and collective pride that technocratic liberalism cannot provide. When establishment parties offer only efficient management and the denial of any binding collective identity, populations seeking meaning will turn elsewhere—sometimes to parties that offer something resembling purpose, even if that purpose is articulated poorly or dangerously.

The deepest irony is that Fukuyama himself recognised this. In his original essay, he acknowledged that the “end of history” would potentially be a very sad and boring time. With all the great questions settled, life would devolve into economic calculation and the satisfaction of consumer desires. Art and philosophy would give way to entertainment. Struggle would cease, and with it, the possibility of genuine human flourishing. What he failed to grasp is that people would reject this vision. Not because it was irrational, but because it was spiritually unbearable.

Europe’s current predicament cannot be solved through policy reform. No amount of competitiveness initiatives, pension reform, or industrial policy will restore the continent’s vitality. These are necessary, perhaps, but they are fundamentally inadequate. What is required is a philosophical recovery—a reaffirmation that European civilisation possesses particular excellences worth defending, that the Western inheritance carries genuine meaning beyond material utility, and that the pursuit of recognition, meaning, and transcendence are legitimate human aspirations, not atavistic dangers to be suppressed.

This does not mean a return to 19th-century nationalism or religious fundamentalism. But it does require abandoning the pretence that politics can be purely technocratic, that human beings are merely utility-maximizing machines, or that meaning is a consumer preference rather than a fundamental human need. It requires recovering the understanding that civilisation is held together not primarily by economic bonds but by shared beliefs about what makes life worth living—and that without such beliefs, no amount of material prosperity can prevent decay.

The continent that once shaped the world through the power of its ideas, its culture, and its civilisation now treats those things as embarrassments to be dismantled. Until Europe recovers its confidence in its own inheritance and its courage to assert that such an inheritance is worth preserving—not as oppression but as achievement—its economic problems will persist no matter how many reforms are enacted. The crisis is philosophical. Only a philosophical recovery will suffice.