The love-of-enemy commandment marks a distinct and unexamined history.
Evidence
As in so many instances, Freud here opens the door to an enormous, if covert history. Indeed, the history of that second commandment, the paradigmatic way in which, even more than the love of neighbor, it articulates the incomprehensible, indeed, the impossible (βit is something that is impossible,β Aquinas had written), the impossibility of a relation of love to the enemy, is a history that remains to be written. β Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 135
Categorization
- XREF: This reading of the enemy commandment as an untold history parallels the framing of the Jew-Arab genealogical project elsewhere in this batch. The love-of-enemy history tracks the theological construction of the enemy to be juxtaposed with the secular histories of nation and race.
- SEED: The claim that the history of loving oneβs enemies remains unwritten offers an article angle contrasting it with the rich historiography of the love of neighbor.