Interlude I

This interlude examines the desire to correct or admonish one’s friends, neighbors, or brothers. It foregrounds the politics and ethics of this desire in the writings of Plato, al- Fārābī, Aquinas, and Erasmus, and then examines how al-Jāḥiẓ and Ibn Ḥazm confront the aporetic qualities of this desire in their advice on the treatment of friends. The second half of the interlude discusses how various texts from the genre of advice for rulers, or mirrors for princes, schematize the relationship of war and peace to the enemy. These schematizations include the topos that whoever desires peace should prepare for war. They also include a significant alternative schema that Erasmus raises, but which he does not explore. This alternative is based on separation.