Conflict Resolution in Moral Development
Moral thinking is about moral development. Without conflict and its resolution, moral development is impossible. This is the majority sentiment among major moral thinkers. In other words, moral development is about experiencing and then transcending conflict.
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Function
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Conflict in moral development is central to the work of Thomas Hobbes. The moral life derives from a period where human beings fight one another, and then seek to create law and the state to end this fighting. Law, mutual respect and the state are the ends of moral development, and they derive from conflict. In this case, conflict resolution is identified with moral development, per se.
Features
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Writers like John Locke do not posit a war of all against all as does Hobbes. But like Hobbes, Locke sees conflict at the center of moral development. Locke pictures a more peaceful life of property holders who occasionally come into conflict. This conflict is resolved by the creation of courts and other institutions that seek to objectively resolve conflict. What Locke and Hobbes have in common is that conflict, and its eventual resolution, is precisely what teach the respect for law, objectivity and a rational system of resolution and reconciliation. Without the initial state of conflict, these virtues would have no basis for existing.
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Significance
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The great writers on moral thinking and development always took some sort of conflict resolution as central to their work. Conflict is the state they find humanity in. Therefore, moral theory exists to lay out a blueprint for its conciliation. For J.J. Rousseau, conflict is not the natural state of man but comes into existence with private property. Prior to property, man lives as a noble person--benighted but peaceful. Conflict arises with property. Resolution derives from the creation of the political community based on contract. In Rousseau's case, moral development goes from noble savage to property owner to conflict to community. In this system, the development of the moral person is the movement from savage to owner to community member.
Benefits
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Conflict benefits humanity. For most of these writers, conflict is a school of virtue. No one likes it. But in this dislike, this repugnance from fighting, do virtues receive their origin. For writers like GWF Hegel, people come to know themselves as moral beings as they seek to end conflict. The world of capitalist relations is constructive only in the sense that it creates people who want unity, not competition. Conflict creates moral people precisely as it forces them to resolve it.
Considerations
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The only chief difference among these writers concerning conflict is the nature of its resolution. Hobbes sees moral development as nothing but conflict resolution. Hegel sees it as a means to an end--the state and its virtues. At the same time, Locke sees conflict resolution as something that exists from the already more or less peaceful nature of man and does not hold it nearly as important as do other writers. For Hegel, conflict is necessary for human beings to find their moral center.
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References
- Photo Credit Statue de Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Chambéry en Savoie image by Uolir from Fotolia.com
