ABSTRACT: The historic event that marks the fall of the Berlin wall was interpreted as a symbolic event: thevictory of freedom over oppression. The American philosopher and politician Francis Fukuyama then undertookto give it a major philosophical depth, making it an end of history in the philosophical and neo-Hegelian senseof the term. In this perspective, the fall of this wall would reveal the true teleology of the global becoming of thewhole of humanity, the becoming, presented not as a simple process, but as a procession: an elevation of thehuman adventure in absolute rationality and dignity. At the heart of the argument then figures the recasting ofthe idea of justice as a transcendental ideal, beyond the individual subject, to the supra-subject of universalhistory. This article offers a critical examination of this legal transcendentalism, in the light of the pragmaticobjections formulated in particular by Amartya Sen, but also of the need to revive the requirements specific to atranscultural approach of the universals in general.
Keywords: appropriation, philosophy of history, pragmatism, legal transcendentalism, transculturality