The Consensus-Conflict Debate. Form and Content in Social Theories

Addresses the debate of whether society is a smoldering set of tension-filled relations that periodically erupt into conflict or an integrated and coordinated whole typified by consensus on values and beliefs. Examines seven pairs of philosophers who can be classified as "conflict" or "consensus" theorists: Aristotle and Plato, Augustine and Aquinas, Hobbes and Machiavelli, Locke and Rousseau, Comte and Marx, Durkheim and Simmel, and Parsons and Dahrendorf.