Postmodern conflictology: issues of theory and approaches to methodology

Abstract

The problematization of the classical concepts in the postmodern philosophy has created some definite challenges that stipulate the development of the “Theory” in its interdisciplinary conceptual meanings and practical applications. The latter demands a certain “list” of the new notions and implies requirements for theorists to reflect the scientific diversity without reducing it to any kind of “theoretical unity”. For these reasons the purpose of this article is the conceptual reconstruction of the notion of the conflict in the specific postmodern context of its sociocultural, political and ethical meanings and senses. The methods of the research are mainly based on the principle of the anthropocentric paradigm, which stipulates the use of the interdisciplinary comparative-critical approaches and social construction methods in the general problematic field of postmodernism. While analysing conflict theories such schools of philosophy as existententialism, phenomenology and pragmatism are considered to be valid in the descriptions of both the actual conditions of the individual human existence and abstract human qualities. The practical aspects of this paper involve the empirical representation of the principles of the value and the sense in the problematic aspects of conflict resolution with the stress on the concepts of the discoursive communication. The obtained results allow to come to the conclusion that the most influential transformations are connected with such postmodern conflict problems as asymmetrical threats and unstable security architecture. The latter proves that the methodological approaches to conflictology should be evaluated from the point of presumably successful resolutions against the background of different spatial and temporal factors, which, in its turn, means creating new administrative modalities of conflict management. It should be stressed that in the context of the conflictological tendencies of the globalizing societies the special place should be occupied by the principles of K.- O. Apel’s discoursive ethics and M. M. Bakhtin’s doctrine of the “responsible dialogism”. Nowadays political approaches cannot be effective in the conflict resolutions without the classical ideals and the absolutes, without the impact of the Pathos, which means implied significance of the “relatively Utopian” ideas and their application in the conflict resolution, the potential possibilities of their realization in the conflict situations.