Understanding an enemy is a precondition of fighting it
Evidence
Although knowing and understanding are often considered paths to peaceful coexistence, it is easy enough to recognize that they are also conditions of enmity, confrontation, and war. “To know the Other,” writes Guy Brossollet, is the “indispensable method toward the ability to confront him … the inquiry is immense … To know the Other, of course, but also to know others, neighbors, allies, friends and neutrals, the decisions and attitudes of whom interfere with ours, and diminish, in the very midst of alliances, our freedom of action” (Brossollet, Essai sur Ia non-bataille, 13). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 1009
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Connects to the spycraft/information theme in one’s knowledge base — knowing as a tool of war rather than peace.
Related
- Knowledge of the other is as much a precondition of enmity as of peace (similarity 0.94)
- Know thy enemy exposes the Enlightenment promise of knowledge as peace (similarity 0.86)
- Intelligence and knowledge-gathering define the enemy as knowable. (similarity 0.81)
- The enemy question must be separated analytically from the question of war (similarity 0.79)
- The enemy is not definable solely through war (similarity 0.78)
- War and its enemy concept structure Rosenzweig’s entire theory of knowledge (similarity 0.78)