First, a little background. The concept was developed at the 2010 ‘Philosophy and the Martial Arts’ conference, which I co-hosted at the University of Melbourne. One of the common debates in martial arts is ‘Is X a martial art?’, where ‘X’ is usually something like Tai Chi, wushu, Capoeira.
Their defenders will sometimes point to the lineage, tradition, beauty, athleticism, or health. All important, but are they relevant? Not really.
And even when the credentials of the arts are obviously dubious, there are often counter-examples. San Shou competitions often include Tai Chi fighters. Jackie Chan did wushu, and won street-fights. Silva did Capoeira. The debates get bogged down in examples and counter-examples, which rarely answer the question. We end up with something like this: Sometimes Tai Chi is a martial art, sometimes it isn’t. Is this helpful? Not really.
I think the question itself can be a distraction. And I realised, at this conference, that it reminded me of a question in aesthetics: Is X art? The defenders of art will often say that it’s historical worthwhile, expensive, educationally useful, and so on. But does this make it art? In the same way, some things are art in a gallery, but not in ordinary life – like Duchamp’s urinal, for example. The game of examples and counter-examples goes on forever, and rarely helps us judge whether something is valuable. It’s an interesting question, but often it’s unhelpful.
One of the ways to sidestep it is this: Don’t ask ‘Is X art?’, ask ‘How is X valuable?’ More specifically, what is its aesthetic value? This is the value of a work, insofar as it offers something to aesthetic experience (which I’ve defined at length elsewhere). This allows us to identify what artworks do best, and to distinguish this from things they also do. We can recognise that a painting has very high historical and economic value – it’s old and expensive. But it might have very low aesthetic value – that is, it offers little to aesthetic experience. So we don’t need to put the works into a grand ontological category, we can judge them on a case by case basis.
I think ‘martial value’ is similarly helpful in martial arts. We don’t need to include or exclude arts into a grand category of ‘martial arts’. We can simply ask: ‘What is its martial value’? If someone replies, ‘Well, it helps me understand Japan,’ we can say: ‘That’s its cultural value. I’m talking about martial value.’ Likewise for history, fitness, and so on.
To do this, we need a robust idea of what martial value is. First, the martial arts are crafts. They’re forms of embodied knowledge, which can be systematised and taught. As in medicine, science informs this knowledge, but it is not a science itself. And as a craft, it has predetermined outcomes: the incapacitation of the resisting opponent.
Now, note that the methods of the incapacitation are not determined. There are various treatments for some diseases. There are various ways to break an opponent’s arm, knock him out. The important thing is incapacitation, rather than being incapacitated. Also note that this doesn’t specify the degree of the incapacitation: it might be a lock, it might be unconsciousness, it might be death. The chief point is incapacitation somehow, which is another way of saying ‘in control’ in such and such circumstances.
Which introduces the circumstances. The martial value of an art is circumstance-dependent. So we can’t just say ‘The art of hydrogen bombs has the most martial value.’ They are good with multiple opponents. And they leave valuable military and industrial assets intact. But they’re literally overkill. They’re useless for the many kinds of unarmed combat that occur daily. The same is true for firearms and knives. Yes, they increase our chances of incapacitating an opponent. But they can also increase our chances of dying, or ending up in jail. Here martial value conflicts with other kinds of value, e.g. moral, political, familial.
By being more specific about circumstances, we can narrow the focus a little. When we talk about martial arts, we chiefly mean hand-to-hand combat with one or more resisting opponents. Then the question is: ‘What is the value of this art for incapacitating one or more resisting opponents in hand-to-hand combat?’
Because martial arts are crafts, they have specific outcomes, and they’re systematic and teachable. And because of this, they can be tested. So asking about any art’s martial value is also asking: ‘How is this art tested?’ If an art claims to be valuable for incapacitating one or more resisting opponents in hand-to-hand combat, we can ask: ‘Can you test this for us?’
If an art does not or cannot test its claims, this does not necessarily mean some of its techniques cannot incapacitate. Aikido’s locks and throws are sometimes identical to those in Judo, for example. The only difference is this: Aikido does not test its techniques properly, against resisting opponents. If Aikido teachers regularly did this, they’d be better able to assess their contribution to their style’s martial value. Those with unhelpful contributions would be discarded, as they were in Judo a century ago.
This idea of martial value does not tell us anything new. It’s simply a clarifying concept, which helps us discuss martial arts. Instead of becoming bogged down in debates about the nature of martial arts, we can talk about their value. If someone doing Tai Chi wants to call it a martial art, this is fine. We simply have to look at how they train, and ask them to show us how they test their techniques. If they fail to test their techniques, or their techniques fail to incapacitate resisting opponents, then we can reply with something like 'You've demonstrated no martial value' or ‘Your Tai Chi has very little martial value, but plenty of historical, aesthetic and medicinal value.’
This also allows us to rank arts. We can acknowledge that point-fighting Shotokan has some martial value (see this thread), and more aesthetic value, while MMA has a great deal more martial value. This is helpful because it recognises that arts can change: their martial value is small now, but can be increased.
That’s all for now. Let me know what you think.
(Photo: Janggeom)
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