AFRICA IN THE IDEALS OF FUKUYAMA’S NOTION OF THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN: A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY QUEST

This essay pursues a critical examination of Fukuyama’s appropriation of the Kantian/Hegelian/Marxian philosophies of history, particularly the notion of the end of history, and the idea of the last man. Fukuyama uses the concepts to explain what he claims to be the triumph of liberal democracy over socialism and many other ideologies. In Fukuyama, the notion of the last man has at its centre the triumph of liberal democracy – personified in the United States of America – over other socio-economic-political ideologies. This triumphant advent and settlement of liberal democracy has impact on weaker nations of Africa and other parts of the world. The paper advances an argument that the advent and triumph of Western liberal democracy, its universalization and declaration as the final form of government has perilous implications to African human sociocultural development. Its purposive end cannot mean the end of human capability to come up with a new forms of governing framework: since not all nations wholly embrace the ideology as the logical conclusion for social, economic, and political development. Fukuyama did not think within the possibilities of the aftermaths of such a conceptualization of history that it has a tendency of overlooking his position as a source of enhancing the disenfranchisement of the weaker states of the world, in particular, those in Africa. Africa is left out of the movement of human history towards the ‘superhuman’ by intention. The main ideals of Fukuyama’s notion of the end of history, namely, freedom, recognition and consciousness have proved not to be meant for the African people unless they assimilate into the Western cultural preconditions. The paper will use descriptive/analytic method