Girard makes an interesting statement in discussing Clausewitz’s book On War.
We can suggest that, on one hand, Clausewitz is a man of the Enlightenment and that, on the other hand, at the level of his deep thought, he is not. I tend to think that the reason why he could not finish his book, and was constantly rewriting it until his death is because of that: he could not bridge the gap between his rationalist side and the intuition that he did not completely describe, but that haunts him. If you describe the intuition in too much detail, you might go too far. Or perhaps it cannot be thought about directly and is FOR THAT VERY REASON interesting. This is the mystery in his book, and perhaps also its hidden profundity.
-Rene Girard, Battling to the End, p.81
Clausewitz was unable to use his enlightenment tools to describe the deep intuitive thought that would not let him go.
To do that would require either a poet or a God who is not always rational.
For this reason, Girard insists that all of his books are indirectly apologetics for Christianity. It is the only framework where you can make everything fit.
On a side not, this phenomenon about describing intuition can be used to explain why so many very good men have written a stack of lousy books. It’s the same reason that many of the world’s greatest musicians are awful teachers. There are unable to take others along with them because they are unable to break it down and understand how THEY got there in the first place. To do this properly is a gift.