Jaroslav Daneš: On Internal Conflict

ABSTRAKT: A properly functioning society is a delicate balance of conflict and cooperation, dissent and consensus. A conflict as such appears to be a fundamental characteristic of politics since various agents have diverse and different interests and there are many cleavages in a society. It seems, then, that one of the most fundamental political problems may be formulated as how to manage or to handle a political conflict to make it fruitful instead of letting it be corrosive. The fifth-century Greeks used a term which covered many and various manifestations of political conflict – stasis (στάσις). In my lecture, I will ask about the causes of civil conflict in connection with various theories in the fields of ancient history, ancient political thought, and modern political science.