ABSTRACT
While the need for survival and the common desire for peaceful and sociable existence often calms the struggle and aims it towards consensus, social co-existence is inherently combative and conflict-prone. The factors that play a significant part in whether a society falls into destructive internal conflict or endures peaceably with its internal differences are often circumstantial, unforeseen environmental changes, and novel technological advances can unhinge social arrangements and set groups against each other. These historically contingent factors ensure that the particulars facing any given society at any given time are always unique. Different historical periods throw up different types of problems for people to deal with. For example, the major issues faced by the Aztecs upon meeting with Don Cortez are not issues which the Mexicans of today have to deal with, while the major issues of current times, such as the problems attending the production and potential use of nuclear weaponry, would not be meaningful to people of earlier times. Yet, despite the historical relativity of much politics, sets of issues revolving around the possession and use of power arise again and again, shaped into various guises by the particulars
of the current events of each historical epoch. The concepts and language of political theory enable people from different historical situations to engage in an ongoing analysis of perennial issues which are involved in and are definitive of the political condition in much the same way as the concepts and language of medicine have enabled physicians to analyse, discuss and further their understanding of the biology of the human condition across generations.
