Clausewitz and the Coup d’Oeil: 18th- and 19th-Century Military Theory Through the Lens of Its Cognitive Practices

Carl von Clausewitz’s treatise On War is one of the most read but also misinterpreted works of Western military theory. Focusing on the cognitive practice associated with the knowledge and the management of warfare named coup d’oeil will allow us to shed new light on Clausewitz’s epistemological approach. The specificities of his perspective will be outlined by an extensive intellectual contextualization retracing the evolutions of military theory from 1760 to 1830 which have been largely ignored in previous discussions of the Prussian’s general thought. Clausewitz’s notion of coup d’oeil emerges as the result of an evolution of military cognition responding to the transformations of warfare from the Seven Years’ Wars to the Napoleonic era. In On War, this mode of understanding focusing on specific details to predict the probable course of a conflict amounts to a form of evidential knowledge similar to that highlighted by Carlo Ginzburg. Moreover, the determining role of sociopolitical factors in war and the importance of historical case studies to train officers affirmed by Clausewitz situate his theory of war at the crossroads of practical knowledge, case-based disciplines and the human sciences.