An interpersonal conflict in which persons come into opposition with one another. Conflict differs from war in its interpersonal, non-organized form — it takes place between concrete persons, not between groups or states.
Constructive and destructive conflict
Conflict is not evil in itself. From a personal-ontological perspective, a distinction must be drawn:
- Constructive conflict serves truth: when persons wrestle for the right insight, conflict can be a path to cognition. Philosophical dispute, factual debate, the struggle for the better solution — all of this honors the rationality and capacity for truth of the person.
- Destructive conflict violates dignity: when the other is no longer regarded as a someone who might hold a legitimate perspective, but as an enemy to be defeated, conflict becomes instrumentalization. The person of the opponent becomes a mere obstacle — a form of oblivion of the person.
Conflict and the Personalist Norm
The Personalist Norm demands that the person be treated as a person even in conflict — to be affirmed for their own sake, even when one rejects their position. Conscience is the inner measure that, in conflict, marks the boundary between factual debate and personal injury.
From conflict to peace
The path from destructive conflict to peace runs through reparation and atonement: where dignity has been violated in conflict, the harm must be healed and the moral order restored. This presupposes freedom, self-consciousness, and a readiness for love — capacities that belong to a person alone.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate class: Entity
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology. Bexten 2017, pp. 279—283 (interpersonal conflict and the Personalist Norm).
Further sources:
- Wojtyła, Karol (1969): Osoba i czyn. Kraków (Eng.: The Acting Person, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979). (Interpersonal encounter and the affirmation of the other.)
- Hengstenberg, Hans Eduard (1957): Philosophische Anthropologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. (Objectivity and the oblivion of the matter in dealings with persons.)
See also: