On the Moral and Ethical Limits of Conflict and Conflict Resolution

Given the overarching theme of conflict resolution and peace building, this chapter presents a model of a communicatively mediated process of mutual learning whereby the necessary conditions for such an eventuality can be established step-by-step. To render the model as transparent as possible, it is located in the framework of the social world conceived as a multidimensional set of relations. Within its historical-constructive and evolutionary structure-stabilizing parameters, the focus is on substantive ethical life, or ethos, as the core of social life that harbors ambivalent potentials. On the one hand, it is the paradigmatic source of the generation of conflict as reflected in in-group/out-group relations, but, on the other, it holds the key to conflict resolution and, by extension, the building of an order of peace across groups. The aim of the argument is to unravel the ambivalence of ethos by analyzing its relations to the concrete ethical ideal followed immanently in everyday life and to the moral principles that transcend any social context in so far as they universally define human beings. The basic question is whether an ethos faced with the unavoidable ethical and moral exigencies either tends toward particularistic closure or toward universal openness without emptying or abandoning itself.