The enemy must be a living totality whose negation is perilous

Evidence

This activity of production does not look to a product but shatters it directly and makes the emptiness of specific things emerge. The above-mentioned difference in its appearance is specific determinacy and this is posited as something to be negated. But this, which is to be negated, must itself be a living totality. What is ethical must itself intuit its vitality in its difference, and it must do so here in such a way that the essence of the life standing over against it is posited as alien and to be negated … A difference of this sort is the enemy, and this difference, posited in its [ethical] bearing, exists at the same time as its counterpart, the opposite of the being of its antithesis, i.e., as the nullity of the enemy, and this nullity, commensurate on both sides, is the peril of the batde. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 408

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hegel’s own text defining the enemy as a vital difference that ethical life posits for negation.
• DEEPTHINKING: The interlocking claim that the enemy is internal difference vital to ethical life, and that negating it risks mutual annihilation, is dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”