Talk:Enemy

Attribution

Some material on this page was restored from previously deleted versions of the page; see the edit history of Enemy (disambiguation) for details. bd2412 T 18:54, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Still not a fan of the article

See Talk:Enemy (disambiguation) for my original shelving of this article in favor of the disambiguation page, and [1] for its last incarnation.

BD2412: This article looks a little better from its form in 2006, but. I'm not sure adding Google Books links to snippets from Sociology books that mention "enemy" off-handedly a good article makes. It's still a mess of either over-long dictionary definitions or rambles. "Enemy" is just not a concept suited to having an encyclopedia article rather than, say, a dictionary entry (wikt:enemy). Take this paragraph as an example:

The general ideological mechanism by which particular threats are determined is called marginalization. The characterization of an individual or group as an enemy is called demonization. The propagation of demonization is a major aspect of propaganda. An "enemy" may also be conceptual; used to describe impersonal phenomena such disease, and a host of other things. Throughout religious theology, "the Enemy" is typically reserved to represent the human tendency to do evil, often personified as a malicious deity, such as the devil or a demon.

No, marginalization is not an "ideological mechanism" for determining "particular threats." Marginalization is a metaphor to book margins, and talks about parts of society on the "outside" that are ignored. Moreover it doesn't have anything in particular to do with "enemy." Groups can be marginalized but not be the enemy, enemies can exist yet not be marginalized, and these are common occurrences. "Demonization" is certainly not the overarching term for decreeing something an enemy, but is actually rather specific in academic use. Something demonized likely is an enemy, but so are lots of things ("denounced," "excoriated," "bombed with napalm", whatever, all likely refer to enemies as well). Everything in the English language is conceptual; there isn't a word yet that people won't make metaphors for, and you don't even need to with Enemy, as the default definition doesn't even point to something seemingly material (unlike "home run" or "rock solid" both of which are used conceptually despite seemingly referring to things / events). Lastly "The Enemy" is indeed a name of the devil in Christianity that comes up sometimes - think Martin Luther liked referring to him as such - but it's pretty rare to call "the human tendency to do evil" the Enemy. That's usually called "original sin" or "depravity," at least in Christianity. So it's a dictionary definition (which is bad - WP:DICDEF), but it's not even right.

Okay, so I just took apart *one paragraph* as being rambles that are either trivial, wrong, or both. I could do that to the entire article. I don't think a reasonable article could be written - the enemy is just what the wiktionary link says, a hostile force. There are a million billion incidents or concepts that involve opposing forces, and they are often hostile, but we don't need to list them here. What do you think? I'm probably inclined to nominate this one for deletion, but willing to listen to your input. SnowFire (talk) 02:39, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The fact that "Enemy" is a difficult concept to capture does not detract from the fact that a coherent concept exists with a scope and history that goes beyond what a dictionary can properly cover. Our responsibility to provide an encyclopedic treatment for the topic. Having a disambiguation page, and no article at all on the psychological, sociological, political, and literary concept of the emotionally threatening other borders on being irresponsible. bd2412 T 03:16, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

But we've got plenty of articles covering the *specific meanings* which are encyclopedic of the examples you give. Other and Social psychology (psychology)#Relations with others would be a good start, or could be expanded if need be. The actually encyclopedic concepts just aren't some abstract overarching conception of "enemy," nor should they be. The social psychology / philosophical points deal with a different and more general topic than requiring the use of the word "enemy," and "enemy" can be used in a sense that has nothing to do with the psychological / sociological one.

The "political" and "literary" versions I'm leery on. There isn't a lot to say on "enemies" in politics that isn't uselessly abstract. Who's the enemy? Why? "Enemy" in ancient Bablyon is totally different from "enemy" in Fourth Republic France which is different from "enemy" in modern American politics. Attempting to write "Enemies in politics" makes about as much sense as "Enemies in popular culture" - it's vaguely possible that there could be a subtopic of a *specific place and time*, i.e. what Enemy of the people is for the USSR, but it's utterly impossible to write about it in general. As for literary, Antagonist and villain are that way, and are far more useful concepts since they're defined in relation to a literary work's point-of-view. "Enemy" can refer to either "side", or neither, and isn't overly useful compared to the two I offered. By the broad standard you suggest, we need to add a section for "Enemy in American sports," "Enemies in business", "Enemies in technology," etc. SnowFire (talk) 03:32, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

It might be useful to look at other encyclopedic treatments of the term. German Wikipedia has has a fairly substantial article which might be useful if we can get an effective translation. Going just by other public domain works, The Encyclopedia Americana: a library of universal knowledge (1918), Volume 10, p. 325, has the following:

ENEMY, in international law, a nation at war with another. The term includes the nation as a whole, and also individuals belonging to the latter. A state of war must exist before States assume toward each other the position of enemies. By international law the status of an enemy is regulated according as it is a combatant or non-combatant. If a combatant the opposing nation may employ its whole force toward _ its destruction. Noncombatants, however, in as much as they have no connection with the war but continue their ordinary avocation, are exempt from attack according to the usage of modern civilized peoples. A state of war precludes commercial relations between the non-combatants of states at war, contracts are not upheld, and the courts are closed to enemy aliens. Ordinarily noncombatants are not liable to injury in person or property arising from military operations, but it frequently happens that they suffer property losses through bombardments, etc. If attacked or robbed by troops of the enemy without authorization and contrary to international law those troops are liable to punishment by their own military superiors for violation of the rules of war. The modern tendency of civilized peoples is to limit all acts of hostility to the actual combatants in the theatre of war.

Note that the concept of the nation as an enemy is different from that of the "enemy combatant", the individual soldier. I note also that The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) has a substantial article on the treatment of enemies, that begins with the proposition that "Hatred of an enemy is a natural impulse of primitive peoples; willingness to forgive an enemy is a mark of advanced moral development." The article goes on to distinguish enemies in the military sense from personal enemies, observing that we are commanded to "do good... even to an enemy who has pursued you with relentless hate", and that Biblical instructions advocating "a spirit of hatred and vengeance toward the enemy... are for the most part purely nationalistic expressions—hatred of the national enemy being quite compatible with an otherwise kindly spirit". The proposition that religious texts suggest that we should do good to our enemies is certainly worth mentioning, but would just as certainly go beyond the scope of a dictionary definition. The questions you raise pose content disputes and potential (if as yet unrealized) possible problems regarding the weight to be given different characterizations of an entity against which one might be negatively emotionally inclined. They are arguments for keeping the article reasonable, which is a concern with any potentially broad topic. Those are really not arguments against having an article that happens to be difficult to write. bd2412 T 04:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Add something about "mortal enemy"?

The words "mortal enemy" redirect here, but the word mortal isn't found anywhere in either the Article or Talk. IMO would be nice to say something. This is a common idiom and surely someone has something to say about it? There's quite a bit of nuance associated with it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.87.230.89 (talk) 19:10, 9 January 2021 (UTC)