Lyotard famously announced the end of grand narratives. How does that proclamation look now that postmodernism has receded as an intellectual movement? We have reached the end of the so-called end of grand narratives. A large-scale view of history and society is both viable and relevant, What Lyotard and the postmoderns did, however, was to remind us that grand narratives should be examined closely and criticised. They are not to be accepted as simply ‘true’. For instance, there are many ways that Hegel’s overall philosophy may be criticised, yet his social thought remains of value.