Conflict Dynamics in AikiCom

An Embodied Dialectic

AikiCom treats conflict not as an obstacle to be eliminated, but as the very energy of a possible transformation. This article sets out its underlying logic: the gesture of aikido enacts in the body the operation that philosophy calls sublation (Hegel’s Aufhebung) and that the sciences of change call second-order reframing. I will first consider why head-on confrontation is a dead end, then the perceptual condition under which transformation becomes possible, then what is really at stake beneath the object of a conflict — before setting out the limits of the exercise.

The spontaneous representation of conflict is linear and agonistic: two positions stand opposed, the outcome is conceived as a zero-sum game, and acting well is taken to mean making one’s own position prevail. This framework offers only two exits — to win by force or to concede — and both leave the underlying opposition intact. Watzlawick and the Palo Alto school named this register first-order change: one acts within the rules of the system and invariably produces “more of the same,” whether escalation or submission. Second-order change modifies the rules themselves: it performs a leap of level, a reframing. This is the leap AikiCom aims at — and it is, conceptually, the Aufhebung: an operation that cancels the destructive character of each position, preserves its share of truth, and raises the whole toward a new configuration.

Before any technique, however, there is a precondition that purely rational models neglect. As soon as we perceive a threat, our system switches into defensive mode and our perceptual field narrows: we attribute hostile intentions to the other, and we lose access to two decisive pieces of information — what the other is really seeking, and our own underlying need. In other words, threat renders us structurally blind to whatever might resolve the conflict. The first move is therefore not to look for the solution but to defuse the alarm — in oneself first. This is the function of the welcoming phase: not a courtesy, but the condition of possibility of everything else. The aikidoka who stays centered under attack is doing nothing other than this — keeping open the perceptual field that fear tends to close.

Once the alarm has been lowered, one can descend beneath the surface. Principled negotiation (Fisher and Ury) already distinguishes positions, which are mutually exclusive, from interests, which can coexist; Nonviolent Communication (Rosenberg) likewise opposes strategies to needs. AikiCom adds a distinctly NLP reading: the postulate of positive intention. Every behavior, even a hostile one, serves a positive intention for its author — to protect oneself, to be recognized, to preserve what matters. This hypothesis is often more operative than the mere search for the need, because it compels one to assume an acceptable motive behind even the most unpleasant act, and immediately reconfigures one’s response. The link with the preceding point is essential: interest, need, and positive intention become perceptible only once one has stepped out of threat. Under defensive tension, the other is nothing but an attack; positive intention is cognitively inaccessible. Defusing the threat is thus not one step among others — it is what makes the reading in terms of positive intention possible at all.

One objection must still be cleared away, for it often blocks this work: that understanding the opposing position would weaken one’s own, or even amount to collusion. This confuses understanding with assent. To grasp the other’s logic — to reconstruct what, from where they stand, makes their viewpoint tenable — commits one to nothing regarding its validity. And it is, in Hegel, a non-negotiable requirement: the synthesis can emerge only if the antithesis has been fully developed and understood in its own strength. An opposition one refuses to think through is not overcome; it is reproduced. Far from weakening one’s hand, understanding the opposing position is the very condition of a solution that can emerge.

Hegel offers the most profound analysis of the engine of conflict, in the master-slave dialectic: the ultimate stake is not the apparent object but recognition. Two subjects confront one another, each wanting to be recognized by the other as free. Hence a practical theorem: domination is self-refuting. Recognition wrested from a subject reduced to the status of an object has no value; only the recognition of a free equal satisfies the desire that drove the conflict. Honneth made this insight the foundation of a theory of social conflict. The concrete consequence: as long as the question of dignity is left untreated, settling the surface object stabilizes nothing.

The originality of AikiCom is that it does not remain at the level of the concept: aikido inscribes the dialectic in movement. Each operation has its gesture.

This correspondence is not an ornament. Ueshiba’s aikido understands itself as an art of reconciliation: one does not seek to defeat, but to dissolve the attack without destroying or humiliating the attacker. The adversary’s force is preserved, its destructive intent neutralized, the whole raised up — which is, feature for feature, the structure of sublation.

A purely Hegelian reading would be too optimistic: nothing guarantees that every contradiction finds its synthesis. Two reservations are therefore part of the method. On the one hand, not every opposition admits of being overcome. Some interests are objectively incompatible; some recognitions cannot be made mutual. One then aims at transformation as a hope, not as a guarantee. On the other hand, premature synthesis is a false reconciliation. A harmony imposed — especially by the stronger party — is not an overcoming but a disguised domination. The condition of an authentic sublation is that the contradiction first be fully acknowledged. It is here that martial wisdom corrects idealism: no redirection without prior contact. One must have genuinely received the attack in order to transform it.

AikiCom can thus be defined as a dialectical praxis of conflict. It organizes the work around an obligatory point of entry — stepping out of threat in order to reopen perception and gain access to the other’s positive intention — and then leads the opposition toward an overcoming that honors each party’s recognition. Its rigor lies in conjugating this ambition with lucidity about its limits: to aim at reconciliation without ever mistaking it for its counterfeit.

Key references: Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (the dialectic of recognition); Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition; Watzlawick et al., Change (first- / second-order change); Fisher & Ury, Getting to Yes (positions / interests); Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (needs); the NLP postulate of positive intention; Ueshiba, The Art of Peace.