It's a pretty dog-eat-dog view of history...
But this is why I keep wheeling out people like Carl Schmidt (who
admittedly I only know through Derrida's _The Politics of
Friendship_). They are part of the intellectual context in which this
sort of stance is considered unexceptionable. Hence also delving into
Nietzsche here.
I'm sure Lawrence is more than entitled to think that "context" a
cesspool - it forms part of the intellectual heritage of Nazism, for
instance, to the extent that Nazism was ever an intellectual movement
or capable of being mistaken for one by intellectuals. But knowing how
wars are justified, how policy is framed, how "reality" appears to the
realists and super-realists, is better in my view than holding one's
nose and preferring not to know.
Not that I only want to know in order better to oppose. I want to know
in order to be better able to think - to entertain contradiction.
Dominic
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