ABSTRACT
Philosophical perspectives on social conflict in Western social thought comprise four general positions, formulable by cross-classifying two variables: conflict viewed as inexorable or contingent, and conflict viewed primarily as a negative or a positive phenomenon. The theory of social conflict includes a number of consensually validated propositions about the causes, forms, levels, dynamics, resolutions, and consequences of interpersonal and intergroup conflict. The pessimistic perspective on social conflict has deep roots in Christian theology. Although disciplines concerned with bodily healing have recently started to examine what "non-Western" arts might contribute, it is rare that Euro-American social science has an opportunity to draw on the insights and understandings of other traditions. Certain Asian traditions afford ways of thinking about conflict that are hard to encompass within available Euro-American paradigms and that the most direct entree into those traditions comes from looking at their distinctive views of the body and aggression.
