Cabal

Intrigue (from Latin intricare "to embarrass"), also obsolete cabal or intrigue, refers to a strategy by which individuals or groups of people attempt to harm others or set them against each other. The bearer of this strategy is called an intriguer.

The purpose of the intrigue may be personal emotional satisfaction (gloating, sadism, etc.) or personal or group advantage.

In literature, intrigue is particularly important for drama. Whereas in comedy the intrigue set up by the intriguer finally exposes the latter, in tragedy it brings about the hero's downfall. Typical intriguers are Iago in Othello and Franz Moor in The Robbers.

Intrigue is related to the cabal, for example in Friedrich Schiller's drama Kabale und Liebe. A cabal is a secret agreement of persons for an evil purpose or plot. Cabala (from Hebrew qabbâlêh; see also "Kabbalah") is an expression from Latin for secret. Other expressions for intrigue in German are Machenschaften, Doppelspiel, Ränke. Ranküne, meanwhile, is the pursuit of revenge from harm suffered. A plot (conspiracy) is the purposeful action of several persons by means of trickery. In English, intrigue also means an affair between a pair of secret lovers.

Deviating from this, intrigue is also a technical dramaturgical term. It refers to the visible action of a play, its implication and its resolution. According to Jean-François Marmontel, intrigue in this understanding is a chain with the various events as links.

In his work Die Intrige (The Intrigue), the Swiss literary scholar Peter von Matt has examined and located the change in the concept and practice in the history of civilization. Inspired by Nietzsche's theoretical reflections on the subject, he examines the extent to which the concept of intrigue has a function and a necessity for the progress of the Enlightenment, for example in Theodor W. Adorno's work.

According to von Matt, the structural elements of an intrigue are the experience of hardship (emergency situation), the naming of a goal (goal fantasies), the planned scene, the practice of intrigue, dissimulation, anagnorisis, gnorisma and the intrigue prop. The intrigue victim, the intrigue subject or the intrigue master or instigator, and the voluntary or involuntary intrigue helper appear. Intrigue patience and intrigue enjoyment are often associated with an intrigue. An intrigue can be answered by a counter-intrigue. In addition, there are also so-called court intrigues.

The same behavior occurs in great apes.

Friedrich von Heyden opens his novel Die Intriguanten (1840) with the following paragraph: "At no time has intrigue been more widespread and more powerful than in the middle of the seventeenth century. In the church, in politics, in society, in love, it chiefly caused the reversal of conditions. The mind seemed to matter less than ever. Cunning, subtlety, malice mixed the cards of public and private life to play often the most treacherous intrigues, and only the spirit was considered perfectly educated, claimed the general approval of the great and distinguished world, who happily succeeded in outwitting the most cunningly, to lure all trumps to himself, to spend them to general surprise at the end, and thus to win the game. One played falsely; but the other party expected nothing else, did not do better. The victory of falsehood, unconcerned with the appalling immorality, took its price. Defeat, on the other hand, was followed by the corrosive power of the ridiculous. Only those who disgraced themselves were destroyed."

See also

• Mobbing
• Conspiracy