Znanje i moć: divide et impera
Knowledge and power: divide et impera

Summary/Abstract: The traditional form of power was usually based on power and rarely on skill. The modern forms of power, starting from Enlightenment, was created on the basis of knowledge, the knowledge of the entirety: only the entirety of knowledge equal the entire power. That is why power over the entirety assumes knowledge of the entirety. However, the power over entirety and concentration of power are only established when the entirety of knowledge is divided and it continues to be divided into ever smaller, ever more isolated fragments. The entirety of power is most efficiently exercised by dividing the entirety of knowledge, because the concentration of knowledge at the level of entirety becomes fully realised in form of concentrated power only of the knowledge has already been divided into mutually isolated fragments, in form of partial information distributed to appropriate physical entities subjected to a supreme unit which holds the concentration of entirety of power. This makes such individual entities mutually more isolated and thus more susceptible to control by this one unit which holds the power over the entirety. But the more isolated the fragments are, the more power is located at the entirety. Only within this divide et impera logic, knowledge becomes power and power is based on knowledge, and the establishment of quasi-self-sufficient, isolated quasi-entities, highly susceptible to control (be it individuals, nations, scientific disciplines or information), appear as the central point of projects of Enlightenment and Modernity. Finally, this paradoxical logic of Enlightenment and Modernity leads to a paradoxical fusion of the process of globalisation and the process of fragmentation of the world and of societies into ever more isolated groups and individuals, presenting their ever growing self-isolation - which is commonly represented as intensive realisation of their collective or individual freedom – as the ultimate goal of their earthly existence and of History as a whole.

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