Objetivos y estrategias

choice.²⁰ If not for these unsocial tendencies in man, an Arcadian shepherd‘s life would have arisen and men‘s talents would have been suffocated and stifled in their very gems. This antagonistic tendency in man was therefore ordained by nature to bring out mans potentials. The impulses which nature laid out in men‘s moral constitution, the source of that anti sociality and universal antagonism from which arose many evils also stimulated a fresh reaction of the faculties and by consequence, aided the development of the primitive tendencies. Mans unsocial sociality, and antagonism were therefore the traits in men that led to the advancement of human society from primitive state of existence to development of the state.

point was the realization of human freedom, ―for a society in which freedom under external laws is associated in the highest degree with irresistible power i.e. a perfectly just civic constitution is the highest problem assigned to the human race‖²²The achievement of such a just civic constitution and its universal establishment throughout the world was to be the criterion by which one could understand progress in history. It would also provide the standard with which we could understand and interpret the events in history. The purpose of undergoing such a venture would be to ascertain if when taking all societies and all times into account, there was overall reason to expect general human progress in the direction of a republican government or what we know today as liberal democracy.

Kant also identifies a mechanism or a propeller which would move mankind to the higher level of rationality represented by liberal institutions. This mechanism was the selfish antagonist tendency in man: man‘s unsocial sociality. This unsociality leads to conflict between men, a state of war where all men are pitched against each other as they compete for recognition, desire to dominate others, pride and vanity. This unsocial sociality also led men to leave the state of war and enter into a civil society. The establishment of civil societies encouraged the arts and sciences so that those societies can remain competitive with each other. It was precisely mans competitiveness and vanity, his desire to dominate and rule which was the wellspring of social creativity ensuring the realization of potentials which would have otherwise remained dormant and unrealized.

Kant opined that the establishment of a universal civil state grounded on the empire of political justice was the highest problem which will be faced by the human species. Kant meant the

organization of nations into a universal political organization which will be characterized by complete freedom of men under a common system of law. He states further:

Since it is only in the social state that natures purpose for man i.e.

the development of all his tendencies can be accomplished, a state which combines utmost possible freedom and antagonism of its members the most rigorous determination of the boundaries of this freedom in order that the freedom of such individual may exist with the freedom of others.²³

The establishment of a liberal state which will ensure the freedom and protection of the rights of each man under the law is natures intent for the human race and this for Kant is the symbol of the end of history. It is only by solving this problem of instituting a civil constitution that nature‘s intention for man can be achieved. Man being a creature which enjoys absolute freedom is then compelled to enter by necessity into that state where his freedom and that of his fellows is retrained by the civil community. These inclinations lead to the best effects: all the gifts of art and cultivation which adorn the human race, the most beautiful forms of social order are the fruits of the anti-social principle which forced to discipline itself and by means won from the very resistance of mans situation in this world, gives birth to the perfect development of the best gems in nature.

Freedom is then the characteristic of the civil constitution which is to mark the end of history.

This interpretation has led several scholars of political philosophy to proclaim that history has ended in this century with the general acceptance of liberal democratic government by a majority of states across the world and also the agitation for democracy in states which are not yet practicing it.