Philosophy and the Martial Arts

Engagement

Graham Priest, Damon Young, Graham Priest, Damon Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317703532
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

This is the first substantial academic book to lay out the philosophical terrain within the study of the martial arts and to explore the significance of this fascinating subject for contemporary philosophy.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section concerns what philosophical reflection can teach us about the martial arts, and especially the nature and value of its practice. The second section deals with the other direction of the dialectical interplay between philosophy and the martial arts: how the martial arts can inform philosophical issues important in their own right. Finally, because many of the notable martial arts are of Asian origin, there are particularly close links between the arts and Asian philosophies – and Buddhism in particular – and therefore the last section is devoted to this topic.

The essays in this collection deal with a wide range of philosophical issues: normative ethics, meta-ethics, aesthetics, phenomenology, the philosophy of mind, Ancient Greek and Buddhist thought. By demonstrating the very real nature of the engagement between the martial arts and philosophy, this book is essential reading for any serious student or scholar with an interest in the martial arts, Eastern philosophy, the philosophy of sport, or the study of physical culture.

PART I From philosophy to the martial arts

1 The Promise and the Peril of the Martial Arts

Simon Roberts-Thomson

DOI: 10.4324/9781315780788-3

In the minds of many who come to the sport, there persists a vague notion that judo is character building. It is a nice-sounding idea, but what exactly does it mean? Surely sitting in front of the television eating crisps all day is character building, but what kind of character does it build? Should the question we are asking be: ‘Is judo character improving?’ Does the study and practice of throwing people on to the floor really make someone a better person?

Law 2007, 96

1 Introduction

A recent study found that 43 per cent of people beginning Judo and 62 per cent of people beginning Karate agreed that the cultivation of character was a motivation in choosing to study a martial art (Zaggelidis et al. 2004). To most people outside of the martial arts, the idea that there could be a link between studying a martial art and improving one’s character is likely to seem puzzling. How is it possible that learning techniques designed to hurt and kill others could lead to someone becoming a better person? Within the martial arts, however, such beliefs are widespread and ancient. Consider the following quote from a document from the Kashima-Shinryū, a Japanese martial art dating back to the fifteenth century:

Know that the essence of Kashima-Shinryū lies not in savoring the unavailing joy of felling an enemy, of destroying evil, but in fostering noble men who strive to revere and satisfy the will of those who govern the realm. Thus it nurtures in those who practice it the will to kill one only to save ten thousand.

Friday 1997, 99

Although one may disagree with the particular conception of nobility presented here, it is clear that for members of the Kashima-Shinryū the end of their practice is the cultivation of noble characters rather than martial skill for its own sake. Indeed it is likely that the link between martial skill and character development goes back much further than this to at least the Warring States period (475BCE–221BCE) in ancient China (Lorge 2012, Chapter 2).

In contrast to the above, however, we can also find descriptions of the martial arts that point to considerably less savoury consequences of such training. One example is provided by Ellis Amdur:

When I practice my koryu,¹ I make every effort to reach the spirit of the founders, who were born and died in a bloody period of survival. Such practice has both kept me safe and enabled me to help and protect other people. But as I practice, I often stop and think, “What the hell are you doing? There are millions of people, right this minute, slaughtering others using methods not too different from what you are practicing now.” I have found good reasons to continue my martial training, but I must be mindful of its pitfalls every time I practice. To paraphrase Nietzsche, if I begin to play with power, power may begin to play with me.

Amdur 2000, 38

This quote points to a very different, and less frequently acknowledged, possibility associated with training in the martial arts. To practice a martial art is to learn how to cause damage to the human body in an efficient and methodical manner. In learning to do this, its practitioners are exposed to a kind of moral peril; learning to harm people exposes them to the possibility that they will become the sort of people who are likely to do such things. Thus, the martial arts also seem to be consistent with the cultivation of traits that are vicious.

This chapter will explore both of these aspects of the martial arts, both the promise and the peril. One way of looking at this is to ask whether, and in what way, learning a martial art can help us to be virtuous. There seem to be three basic relationships that might hold between studying a martial art and virtue: perhaps learning a martial art makes it more difficult to be virtuous, or even facilitates the cultivation of vicious traits; perhaps it helps us to be virtuous; or perhaps there is no relationship between learning a martial art and becoming virtuous.

At first glance none of these positions seems right. The first is cast into doubt by the everyday experience that most of us have of the martial arts; we have met people who study martial arts who seem to be good. The second possible relationship, that studying a martial art might help us to become virtuous, seems puzzling. How is it that learning how to cause damage to the human body in an efficient and methodical manner can help us to become virtuous? Causing such damage seems to be something that virtuous people should not do, except perhaps under very limited circumstances. Finally, the idea that learning these things can have no relationship to being good also seems not quite right. Whether we are good people is determined, at least in large part, by what we do, and those of us who study martial arts regularly practice doing things that we generally ought not to do.

2 On virtue

Before we can talk about how practicing a martial art affects our virtue, we need to clarify the nature of virtue and determine how we can become virtuous. Before looking more closely at the martial arts then, I will briefly go over some aspects of the conception of virtue that I will be working with in this chapter, focusing mainly on Aristotle.²

We can think of the virtues as having three different aspects. The first is that the virtues are dispositional states (Aristotle 1984, Book II). To have the virtue of courage, for example, is to be disposed to act in a courageous way. Furthermore, virtues are stable dispositions; a courageous person doesn’t just have the disposition to be courageous on Tuesdays, or when it involves mortal combat, but rather is disposed to be courageous whenever courage is required. A virtue is not, however, merely a habit. For something to be a habit involves a degree of unthinking behaviour, or perhaps inflexibility. We can distinguish a virtue from a habit in two ways (Annas 1993, 51). First, a virtue is consciously chosen, and continuously chosen. When I decide to become courageous, I do so by choosing the courageous action rather than cowardly or reckless ones. To have the virtue of courage is simply to have built up over time a disposition to be courageous through choosing to perform courageous actions. Each of these actions is consciously chosen, unlike a habit. The actions are chosen for reasons, and it is these reasons that become more efficacious as one becomes more courageous. A virtue is thus a rational disposition.

The second way in which a virtue is different from a habit is that habits often cause actions unconsciously; when I twirl my pen I often find myself doing it rather than intentionally doing it. In the case of a virtue, however, one never just finds oneself performing a virtuous action; when I perform a virtuous action I always choose the action, and it is this choice that results in the action rather than the virtue. ‘The disposition is not a causal force making me choose; it is the way I have made myself, the way I have chosen to be, and in deciding in accordance with it, I endorse the way I have become’ (Annas 1993, 51).

The second aspect of virtues is that they have an affective element. For the ancients, the emotions are involved with the virtues in a number of ways, but for the purposes of this chapter I will just focus on two. The first is that the emotions were not seen as merely a hindrance to virtue, a view that is often ascribed to Kant.³ Virtue, for the ancients, is to be distinguished from mere continence; the virtuous person’s emotions accord with what they perceive to be the right thing, whereas in the merely continent person the emotions are often in conflict with what they perceive to be the right thing, and need to be overcome.

We must take as a sign of states the pleasure or pain that supervenes on acts; for the man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent, and he who stands his ground against things that are terrible and delights in this or at least is not pained is brave, while the man who is pained is a coward. For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains…

Aristotle 1984, 1104 b 3–10

A second way in which the emotions figure in virtue is that there is a right way to feel. The emotions are things that can be defective; not only can they be inappropriate, the wrong emotion to feel at the time, but they can also be had in the wrong amount:

it is [moral excellence] that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of excellence.

Aristotle 1984, 1106 b 16–23

This idea of the right emotion being the ‘intermediate and best’ is what is often known as Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. This does not mean that the right emotion is always the one felt in moderation, although some of the ancients described it as such (Annas 1993, 61). Sometimes it will be appropriate to be very angry, and in such situations the emotions of the virtuous person will reflect this. For the purposes of this chapter, however, it is not necessary to focus on exactly how we should interpret this doctrine. What is important is just that, for the ancients, the virtuous person will not only do the right thing but also have the right emotions.

The third aspect of virtues is that they have an intellectual component. Aristotle often compared the virtues to skills, while the Stoics thought that virtue was a skill, albeit of a special kind.⁴ What the skill analogy emphasizes is that being virtuous does not consist merely in doing the right thing, it also requires understanding. The virtuous person, unlike the merely lucky one, understands why it is that a particular action is the right one; she has reflected on her beliefs about what one ought to do and has come to an understanding of what makes them right. But just as there is no set of rules that one can follow in order to be a good musician, there is no corresponding set for virtue (Annas 1993, 71–72).

3 How to become virtuous or vicious

Once we know what virtue is, there arises a second question: how do we become virtuous? The answer that Aristotle gives us is that we become virtuous through mindful habituation. ‘For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts’ (Aristotle 1984, 1103 a 32–1103 b 2). Of course, this just leads us to another question: how can we act in accord with the virtues if we are not virtuous? How do we know which actions are the virtuous ones? It is here that virtue ethicists typically stress the importance of role models. One can come to see the reasons that underlie virtue, and so come to see which actions are virtuous, by doing as the virtuous person does.

Just as acting virtuously leads to virtue, so acting viciously leads to vice:

But perhaps a man is the kind of man not to take care. Still they are themselves by their slack lives responsible for becoming men of that kind, and men are themselves responsible for being unjust or self-indulgent, in that they cheat or spend their time in drinking bouts and the like; for it is activities exercised on particular objects that make the corresponding character.

Aristotle 1984, 1114 a 3–7

To act in a way that is vicious will serve to mould one’s character so that one becomes vicious. Virtue then, is only achieved by acting virtuously and not acting viciously.

4 The peril

This section will examine whether the martial arts can be dangerous to one’s virtue, or, to be more precise, whether they can make it more difficult to become virtuous. The main focus of this section will be the presence of violence within the martial arts and the potential impact that this might have on the practitioner’s character.

At least part of the reason that acting viciously leads to vice and acting virtuously to virtue is that acting in those ways involves us taking as good reasons the goals of the actions; accepting these reasons then provides us with a structure for viewing and evaluating the world. Studying a martial art then provides us with one way of seeing the world, and it is a way that involves violence at its core. As a result, when we encounter potentially hostile situations, those of us who practice modes of violence may be more likely to use violence, even where it is inappropriate. Thus practicing violence can make us violent people, that is, people who are disposed to use violence:

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every excellence is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. … This, then, is the case with the excellences also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly.

Aristotle 1984, 1103 b 7–17

In a similar way, it is through violence t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction Philosophy and the martial arts
• PART I From philosophy to the martial arts
• 1 The Promise and the Peril of the Martial Arts
• 2 Practicing Evil Training and psychological barriers in the martial arts
• 3 Martial Arts and Moral Life
• 4 The Martial Arts as Philosophical Practice
• PART II From the martial arts to philosophy
• 5 Understanding Quality and Suffering through the Martial Arts
• 6 Is Proprioceptive Art Possible?
• 7 A Sublime Peace
• 8 On Self-Awareness and the Self
• 9 Mushin and Flow An East–West comparative analysis
• PART III Buddhism and other Asian philosophical traditions
• 10 Ahiṃsā, Buddhism, and the Martial Arts A soteriological consequentialist approach to understanding violence in martial practice
• 11 The Martial Arts and Buddhist Philosophy
• 12 Bowing to Your Enemies Courtesy, budō and Japan
• Index