[see also bibliography, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8]
"We can see how many factors are involved and have to be weighed against each other; the vast, the almost infinite distance there can be between a cause and its effect, and the countless ways in which these elements can be combined" (Clausewitz 577) - yet despite this insurmountable uncertainty and unpredictability of the strategic field, I must act, I must judge the concrete situation concretely (Schmitt 31), I must choose my expression. "Everything has to be guessed at and presumed. Conviction is therefore weaker. Consequently most generals, when they ought to act, are paralyzed by unnecessary doubts" (Clausewitz 179). How can I bring myself to decide? Berlin asks:
If I am a statesman faced with an agonising choice of possible courses of action in a critical situation, will I really find it useful - even if I can afford to wait that long for the answer - to employ a team of specialists in political science to assemble for me from past history all kinds of cases analogous to my situation, from which I or they must then abstract what these cases have in common, deriving from this exercise relevant laws of human behaviour? (Berlin 44)
Such abstract reasoning is clearly inappropriate for understanding the concrete political situation, crucially determined by its particularities. And indeed, as Berlin implies, I cannot afford to wait for the answer. By the time the political science is prepared, the political terrain will have shifted, perhaps dramatically, and always significantly. The fragmented details that constitute my experience of the political, the scattered particles that are the object of the political scientist, "are too minute, too heterogeneous, succeed each other too rapidly, occur in combinations of too great a complexity" (Belrin 48) to be submitted to rigorous scientific investigation and calculation. Owing to the same transience and uniqueness of the political situation, "any method by which strategic plans are turned out ready-made, as if from some machine, must be totally rejected" (Clausewitz 154) as well, for they will invariably be unsuited to the particular factors that determine the situation. "The application of a norm requires a homogeneous medium," and "there exists no norm that is applicable to chaos" (Schmitt 13). With neither the certainty of scientific proof nor the assurance of a ready-made plan to guide my action, I must conduct a discouragingly partial survey of the political terrain as quickly as possible, identify its most particular and strategically important features, situate them within my conception of the whole, and select the most promising course of action.
This requires a perceptual quickness, a "swiftness in connecting seemingly disparate facts" (Gramsci 252), "a sense of unity and a power of judgment raised to a marvelous pitch of vision, which easily grasps and dismisses a thousand remote possibilities which an ordinary mind would labor to identify and wear itself out in so doing" (Clausewitz 112). Clausewitz, borrowing a French term, calls this
coup d'oeil:
Because time and space are important elements of the engagement... the idea of a rapid and accurate decision was first based on an evaluation of time and space, and consequently received a name which refers to visual estimates only... But soon it was also used of any sound decision taken in the midst of action - such as recognizing the right point to attack, etc. Coup d'oeil therefore refers not alone to the physical but, more commonly, to the inward eye... the concept merely refers to theh quick recognition of a truth that the mind would ordinarily miss or would perceive only after long study and reflection (Clausewitz 102).
This mental quickness is important in another sense. Because of the constant flux of the political terrain, because of the uncertainty with which we perceive it, and because of the unpredictability of the indiviudal actors involved in a particular situation, "the commander continually finds that things are not as he expected" (Clausewitz 102). Just as our expressive language is "logic in contingency, an oriented system which nevertheless always elaborates random factors, taking what was fortuitous up again into a meaningful whole" (Merleau-Ponty 88), the strategist must formulate coherent action while simultaneously and rapidly reacting to the unforeseen circumstances thrown up at him from the political terrain, continually incorporating new information and chance events into his perception of the situation. This "presence of mind... must play a great role in war, the domain of the unexpected, since it is nothing but an increased capacity of dealing with the unexpected.
We admire presence of mind in an apt repartee, as we admire quick thinking in the face of danger" (Clausewitz 103).
[next: part 5]