Conflict and Political Order Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Conflict and Political Order - Essay Example Both of these theories have foundations of democracy. Conflict is found at the centre stage of politics because of the struggle for power between individuals. Up to the modern concept of political order, conflict remains contentious when it comes to politics. These concepts have drawn from the ancient view of politics advanced by individuals such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Aquinas among others. Some of their concepts and propositions have been dispelled while others have influenced the philosophy of politics for centuries. Conflict among human beings is as old as history itself. War is found to have begun very long time ago because of the desire to control resources. Conflict has been founded on religious differences, ethnic differences, differing political ideologies, and social motivations. Politics is a broad subject that has influence over all humans directly or indirectly. According to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, political science has massive influence over all other things, he mentions about its authority and the control it has over humans under his theory of natural slavery. His assertions that humans are naturally political present a situation that depicts them as differing in opinions and thoughts. His view was that humans are unique, with each playing a specific role just like the way organs functions in a body. The aggregation of communities together is a natural affair because it achieves self-sufficiency among the individuals. The political nature of persons induces them to engage in conflicts between one another. The conflicts may not be based on any personal view but the political affiliations. According to the arguments presented by Aristotle in the Book V the affiliations that appears between individuals creates factions based on common interes ts. In the first place, the mindset of an individual prompts them to affiliate to a certain group and will tend to have disparity in opinion and behaviour with the other factions. Secondly, factions are developed depending on the benefits that are derived from them, it is also possible that some things are lost in joining the groupings thereby some resentment to the differing groupings is experienced. Finally, political disputes are potential sources of factions where there are ideological differences between groups. The traditional approach of conflict seems to have been avoided since its focus was mainly on functionalism. The approach gives weight to the fact that each individual in an organization or community is designated from a specific role in the community. This is contrary to the modern conflict theory where the opinion shapers are the elite in the society. However, to the modern theorists there is consensus with Aristotle’s point of view that all humans are wired to be political. The modern view presents a situation where social classes arise hence creating a huge disparity and dispelling the functionality notion that humans have a specific role that each is supposed to play. Conflict is very much associated with rise to power. According to Machiavelli use of force is one the strategies that power can be obtained, these results in conflict that results to loss of lives and betrayal. These individuals kill the people they want to lead and the existing leaders in order to find their way to power. A situation that does not involve much conflict happens when power is obtained through the favour of the people. In such a situation the conflict arises between the common people and the nobles, however, the funny thing is that the nobles have much influence over the common people such that they are capable of manipulating them to have one of them