Clausewitz: When all is said and done, it really is the commander’s coup d’oeil, his ability to see things simply, to identify the whole business of war completely with himself, that is the essence of good generalship. Only if the mind works in this comprehensive fashion can it achieve the freedom it needs to dominate events and not be dominated by them.
Koo doy: the ability to look and understand, to see the little pieces and the big picture, at the same time. A stroke of eye. The lightbulb moments.
For Clausewitz, koo doy is what sets apart the great generals, what makes Bonapartes so special and different from, for example, Percival or Grant.
Koo doy exists in every field. It is the summation of mastery, flow, and gestalt. Picasso had koo doy. So did Beethoven. So, surely, did Steinbeck when he said upon finishing East of Eden, “It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years…I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this.”
Thanks Yinan for recommending Napoleon’s Glance which describes and applies this concept.