In this article, we distinguish between a ‘game code of conduct’, an ‘ethical and/or legal code of the military profession’, ‘codes of social intercourse’, and a ‘code of respect’, and we assess to what extent these codes are reflected in the chivalrous behaviour we see today. Chivalry has developed from archaic medieval game codes of conduct into a codification regarding the laws of war and humanitarian law, but also in behavioural standards that are formalized in books of etiquette. However, (...) these forms of moral codes of conduct do not overcome the problem of benevolent sexism, due to the fact that ‘chivalry’ is in essence a masculine ideology that excludes women from the military profession. Eventually, chivalric codes of social intercourse might develop into a code of respect, which may solve this issue. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that in early modern Britain, chivalry—allegedly typified by the Crusades—was considered a negative or even ridiculous ideology until its rehabilitation by the pre-Romantic movement. However, this paper argues that Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers had already shown a deep interest in its historical role and influence on modern civilization. That Hume shared a broad interest in chivalry with contemporary philosophers does not undermine the novelty of his thought on this topic. In fact, the (...) pioneering and unique aspects of his contributions can be clarified by setting them in context. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that in early modern Britain, chivalry—allegedly typified by the Crusades—was considered a negative or even ridiculous ideology until its rehabilitation by the pre-Romantic movement. However, this paper argues that Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers had already shown a deep interest in its historical role and influence on modern civilization. That Hume shared a broad interest in chivalry with contemporary philosophers does not undermine the novelty of his thought on this topic. In fact, the (...) pioneering and unique aspects of his contributions can be clarified by setting them in context. (shrink)

Defining the Perian word, ‘Fotowat’ or ‘Chivalry’ is not an easy task; in the rite of ‘Fotowat’, before entering any profession, one must set one’s soul free and pay attention to the moral teaching...

This is the book on bushido, the much-cited but widely misrepresented samurai code of honour. Drawing on authentic historical texts, it is a detailed and accurate exploration of medieval life in Japan and the samurai, a must-have for anyone with a love of martial arts or Japanese history. This is the go-to volume on bushido ("the way of the warrior"), drawing on a wide range of historical sources to paint a vivid picture of the samurai in action and separating the (...) truth from the myth of samurai chivalry. It offers a long-overdue update to the attractive but inaccurate portrait of the samurai painted in Bushido: The Soul of Japan, which has been a bestseller ever since its publication in 1905, and the equally idealistic Hagakure (c.1716). In The Book of Bushido, Antony explores the reality of warrior behaviour versus the idealistic depiction created for an Edwardian audience by the author of Bushido: The Soul of Japan. He reveals the truth of how the samurai really behaved and of what they considered to be a warrior ethos. He replaces the image of the perfect eastern warrior with the much more interesting reality of hardened, bloodstained military leaders with human failings and a complex set of ideas about the world, who engage in ritual, magic and ceremony, who lead their followers in war and peace and who, above all, are fighting a battle between addiction to power and morality. This is the story of bushido – the way of the samurai. (shrink)

Literature plays a relevant role in Hegel’s philosophical discourse. On the one hand, literary references are often interwoven with his speculative argumentation, on the other hand, the Aesthetics regards poetry as the highest form of artistic expression, for it is able to represent the different ways of human action and to bring up their hidden ideal presuppositions. The aim of this paper is to show how the concept of action is crucial to the interpretation of literary phenomena in the Aesthetics, (...) but assumes different configurations in relation to the historical transformation of the concept of subjectivity. To verify the specifically aesthetic import of concepts such as action and recognition, which originally belong to the ethical-political sphere, I will examine Hegel’s interpretation of the chivalric literature, which is present in various areas and with different functions in the structure of the Aesthetics, as a component of his theory of subjectivity. This topic has been little studied but offers an interesting perspective on some problematic points of Hegel’s theory: the controversial relation between the structural dimension of the concept of art and historical development of artistic forms, the apparently univocal paradigm of classic beauty, and the definition of artistic modernity. (shrink)

Just war theory applied to counterinsurgency.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 376-379 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World, by Diana de Armas Wilson; 254 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, $74.00. In Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World, Diana de Armas Wilson describes and analyzes the link between the birth of the New World in European consciousness and the expression (...) of that consciousness in the novels of Cervantes. Those of us whose teaching includes works from both Peninsular and Spanish American literature have long felt the need for a study that goes beyond a cataloging of Cervantes's references to the world beyond Europe, and those Cervantine scholars among us have variously hinted at and side-stepped the fullness of this issue. As it was with those exemplary figures of the age of exploration she examines, it is to Professor de Armas Wilson's great credit that she has risen to the challenge. Her analysis is well-organized, reasoned, thoughtful, and readable.De Armas Wilson's knowledge of previous and current research in Cervantine studies as well as genre, colonial and postcolonial, and gender studies is impressive. She also admits to participating "in the kinds of critique currently associated with cultural studies, although not without reservations regarding the alleged presentism of that discipline or its tendency to turn primary texts into commodities." I would respond that de Armas Wilson's concerns and techniques in this study are precisely the tools we need to help us define "cultural studies" to our students and to ourselves as scholars of various literatures and cultures.To begin her study, de Armas Wilson mentions many of Cervantes's literary and personal references to geographies, customs, and other contacts with the [End Page 376] world outside Spain. The first chapter, "The Americanist Cervantes," focuses on that material and includes a brief review of recent research--the latest "grande escrutinario" (Don Quijote, Part I, Chapter VI)--regarding what works might have been in Cervantes's library and/or the texts potentially available to him. Professor de Armas Wilson looks at Cervantes's references and the texts available to him through three lenses: imitation, influence, and intertextuality. She sees these methodologies as interdependent and argues that: "the intertextual practices in this book--based on a revised concept of intertextuality that includes the notion of agency and participates in a historical project--are as American as its central topic." (Finding myself in the process of completing this review on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I can only wonder what texts will not be influenced by the "historical project" of this day.)In the second chapter, "The Novel about the Novel," de Armas Wilson surveys Cervantes's status in Continental and Anglo-American criticism, reminding her readers of the polemic between scholars of the ancient novel and those who, bent on refusing to accept the Greco-Roman works as novels, designate them "romances." De Armas Wilson's contention that the Persiles is a "long exemplary novel," is convincingly depicted. Her arguments are based on the fact of the fictional time of the Persiles being within fifty years of the time when Cervantes wrote it, "its self-conscious theorizing, its rationalizing of 'miracles,' and its avowed imitation of Heliodorus' Aethiopica." She is not alone in arguing that Heliodorus' novel is the antithesis of a romance of chivalry. On these bases de Armas Wilson speaks not only to those who may not have recognized the importance of the Persiles because it has been called a romance (an often "despised or despicable" genre), but also to those of us who view consideration of the Persiles essential to an understanding of Don Quijote, if not a key to comprehending the major goals of all of Cervantes's works and his expression of the consciousness of his day.De Armas Wilson continues by arguing for "coevolutionary histories of the novel as alternatives to evolutionary ones." She bases her argument on echoes of widely disseminated accounts of happenings in the New World, (most significantly those of... (shrink)

For hundreds of years English people have claimed that fair play is at the core of their national identity. Jonathan Duke-Evans looks at the history of fair play in Britain from earliest times to the present, asking whether it is in fact a British, or alternatively an English, characteristic at all - and if so, whether fair play still matters today? In An English Tradition?, Jonathan Duke-Evans explores the origins of the idea of fair play, tracing it back to the (...) classical world and the Dark Ages, and finding its genesis deep within England's social structure. Charting its early development through both the tales of chivalry and the stories of popular legend, the book shows how fair play manifested itself in literature, the law, the Christian religion, and the family. It examines the way in which fair play was conceived during the ages of slavery and empire, and it proposes a new account of the birth of modern sport in the encounter between age-old popular games and the Victorian cult of amateurism. Taking in the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh manifestations of fair play, Duke-Evans offers contrasts and comparisons from cultures all around the world, and suggests new perspectives on the relevance of fair play in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Examples, Stories, and Subjects in Don Quixote and the HeptameronTimothy HamptonI developed a rare and perhaps unique taste. Plutarch became my favorite reading. The pleasure that I took in reading and rereading him endlessly cured me somewhat from reading novels. Ceaselessly occupied with Rome and Athens, living, so to speak, with their great men.... I thought myself Greek or Roman.Rousseau, ConfessionsThe first part of Don Quixote reaches its rambunctious (...) climax when the Don’s neighbors, the curate and the barber, lock him in an ox cart and triumphantly wheel him back to his village. At one point during the journey home Don Quixote engages in a long and famous debate with the Canon of Toledo about the dangers of reading. The Canon attempts to convince Don Quixote to renounce both knight errantry and his passion for romances of chivalry. He also makes the following recommendation:If you are still obsessed by books of adventures and chivalry, read the book of Judges in Holy Scripture, where you will find great and genuine exploits that are as heroic as they are true. Lusitania had its Viriathus, Rome had its Caesar, Carthage its Hannibal, Greece its Alexander, Castille its Count Fernán González, Valencia its Cid, Andalusia its Gonzalo Fernández, Extremadura its Diego García de Paredes, Jérez its Garci Pérez de Vargas, Toledo its Garcilaso, Seville its Manuel de Léon: their doughty deeds will entertain, instruct, delight and amaze the highest intellects that read them. This reading will truly be worthy of your own excellent mind, my dear [End Page 597] Don Quixote, from which you will rise learned in history, enamored of virtue, instructed in goodness, bettered in manners, valiant without rashness, bold without vacillation, and all this to the honor of God, your own profit, and the glory of La Mancha, from where, as I have learned, you derive your birth and origin. 1The Canon proposes to replace one literary genre with another; he condemns the reading of romance and promotes the reading of history. In the process he presumes to substitute one type of exemplarity with another—an exchange that links Don Quixote’s imagination to his status as a political subject. For he suggests that by occupying himself with real exemplars, instead of the perfect knights of romance, Don Quixote will not only turn from a loco back into a cuerdo. He will also be made into a good citizen. The Canon offers a model of reading that links historical truth, moral amelioration, and political subjectivity. The context of this recommendation—a program of reading offered by a representative of authority to a man in a cage—stresses the relationship between reading and imprisonment, between particular uses of language and particular forms of subjection. If he reads the right kinds of exemplary stories, the Canon infers, Don Quixote will lose his desire to practice the profession of chivalry. No longer will he have to be restrained. Instead, he will live within the bounds of reason, inside the borders of mediocritas. History, as Rousseau suggests in my epigraph to this essay, can cure one of the bad habits induced by too much fiction.Yet no less striking in the Canon’s speech is the way he articulates this connection between good citizenship and good books. He links his list of exemplars to a list of geographical and political spaces: Hannibal and Carthage, Garcilaso de la Vega and Toledo, and so on. By associating heroic figures with countries, he underscores the central importance of exemplary images in the definition of group identity. One of the characteristics of the example that makes it so important in early modern intellectual life is that exemplarity defines a point at which group identity interacts with individual identity. The promotion of heroic images is, to be sure, a central feature in techniques of self-fashioning, as defined in humanist discourse from the time of Petrarch. Yet it is no less important in the definition of grouphood, from Erasmus’s exhortation to Christians to imitate the exemplary virtue of Abraham, to the iconography of patriotism. If there is a crisis of the example, then one way... (shrink)

In the history of Indo-European peoples warriors were known to possess characteristic physical and ethical features which went together with special social status. This is undoubtedly true of ancient Greeks. According to Homer characters who made heroic feats depicted in his books had moulded their personality in accordance with requirements of arete and battle was the best means to achieve this end, even though particular ways of obtaining it were heavily affected by subjective considerations. The individualism of the epic heroes (...) can best be seen in the freedom they enjoyed to choose any method of fighting that suited them at the moment. The highest credit, however, was given for the fortitude displayed in a duel monomachia, which often awarded the warrior with eternal fame. But in exceptional circumstances the heroes resorted to guiles mētis or ambushes dolos. We have no ground to believe, therefore, that any kind of „chivalry code” was observed at that time. (shrink)

This article presents Kautilya, the most important thinker in the tradition of statecraft in India. Kautilya has influenced ideas of war and violence in much of South- and Southeast Asia and he is of great importance for a comparative understanding of the ethics of war. The violence inflicted by the king on internal and external enemies is pivotal for the maintenance of an ordered society, according to Kautilya. Prudence and treason are hallmarks of Kautilya's world. The article shows that this (...) realist and cynical view of politics is very different from other traditions in India, especially the religious tradition of the epic literature, where war is a game and chivalry is paramount. I conclude that Kautilya's tradition has something in common with the Clausewitzean philosophy of war. (shrink)

This article introduces the relatively new field of religious studies devoted to Western esotericism, or Western esoteric traditions including alchemy, various magical traditions, Christian theosophy, Rosicrucianism and other secret or semi-secret groups. In it Versluis also argues that Western esoteric traditions as a whole rely on the power of the written word or image in order to convey and perhaps generate changes in consciousness. Thus Western esotericism tends to see and use language in a fundamentally different way than many of (...) us are familiar with -- here language is used not for conventional designation in a subject object relationship, but in order to transmute consciousness or to point towards the transmutation of consciousness through what Versluis terms hieroeidetic knowledge. Be it Kabbalism or alchemy, troubadours and chivalry, the Lullian art, magic or theosophy, pansophy or esoteric Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry, one finds a consistently recurrent theme of transmuting consciousness, which is to say, of awakening latent, profound connections between humanity, nature and the divine, and of restoring a paradisal union between them. Hieroeidetic knowledge can be understood in terms of a shift from an objectifying view of language based on self and other to a view of language as revelatory, as a via positiva leading towards transcendence of self other divisions. It is here, in their emphasis on the initiatory, hieroeidetic power of language to reveal what transcends language, that the unique contribution of Western esoteric traditions to consciousness studies may well be found. (shrink)

Martial arts and philosophy have always gone hand in hand, as well as fist in throat. Philosophical argument is closely paralleled with hand-to-hand combat. And all of today’s Asian martial arts were developed to embody and apply philosophical ideas. In his interview with Bodidharma, Graham Priest brings out aspects of Buddhist philosophy behind Shaolin Kung-Fu — how fighting monks are seeking Buddhahood, not brawls. But as Scott Farrell’s chapter reveals, Eastern martial arts have no monopoly on philosophical traditions: Western (...) class='Hi'>chivalry is an education in and living revival of Aristotelian ethical theories. Several chapters look at ethical problems raised by the fighting arts. How can the sweaty and brutal be exquisitely beautiful? Every chapter is easily understandable by readers new to martial arts or new to philosophy. (shrink)

In what circumstances is it legitimate to use force? How should force be used? These are two of the most crucial questions confronting world politics today. The Just War tradition provides a set of criteria which political leaders and soldiers use to defend and rationalize war. This book explores the evolution of thinking about just wars and examines its role in shaping contemporary judgements about the use of force, from grand strategic issues of whether states have a right to pre-emptive (...) self-defence, to the minutiae of targeting. Bellamy maps the evolution of the Just War tradition, demonstrating how it arose from a myriad of sub-traditions, including scholasticism, the holy war tradition, chivalry, natural law, positive law, Erasmus and Kant's reformism, and realism from Machiavelli to Morgenthau. He then applies this tradition to a range of contemporary normative dilemmas related to terrorism, pre-emption, aerial bombardment and humanitarian intervention. (shrink)

The roots of ‘ancient sport’, or Zurkhaneh, as its name implies, go back to ancient Iran and the rituals of Mithraism, in which believers pray and learn morality and humanity in cave-shape temples built in connection with running water. After the advent of Islam and the fall of the ancient religions, temples gave way to Zurkhanehs, and athletes who, while learning moral teachings, cultivated physical strength to resist external enemy forces and internal oppression, grown in those Zurkhanehs. With a tendency (...) to Sufism, Shi`ism and following the first Imam of the Shiites, athletes became heroes and knights, many of whom today, after hundreds of years, are still the cultural myths of the people of Iran. The ancient sports such as wrestling are a symbol of human and moral virtues, the promotion of which can lead to the growth and development of the moral beauty and chivalry culture among all athletes in various sports and lead to institutionalize characteristics of heroism and magnanimity in society. Ancient sports exercising tools, art and architecture of Zurkhaneh, poems, rituals and personalities form the nature of Zurkhaneh and ancient sports have a great impact on the formation of heroic identity and the way to perform the sport movements with the special instruments of Zurkhaneh, which is accompanied by epic and religious poems. In fact, Zurkhaneh instruments, the type of poems that are recited and the existence of epic and religious patterns complement each other. This process increases the effect of Zurkhaneh on the formation of athletic and heroic identity among sportsmen. As such, it will be suggested that Zurkhareh offers an ethical ideal from which globalized Western sport can learn. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Vagaries of Exemplarity: Distortion or Dismissal?Michel JeanneretExample is an uncertain looking-glass, all embracing, turning all ways.Montaigne 1Ancients and Moderns: Negotiating CoexistenceDo the Ancients provide the Renaissance with a repertoire of infallible examples? Do they have such absolute authority that their models, whether ethical or aesthetic, retain their relevance in every circumstance? The question is part and parcel of that thinking, which is fundamental to the sixteenth century, on (...) the status of Greco-Roman paradigms in the management of public and private life, or in the methods of science and the arts. Before analyzing two particular responses to classical exemplarity—by Erasmus and Montaigne—we shall set the problem in its general context.Whether lobbying for intense faithfulness to the models or recognizing the need for divergence, whether insisting on continuity or the need for change, on the possibility or impossibility of equaling the masters, everyone in the sixteenth century measured art, knowledge, and moral reflection according to the Greek and Roman norm. Scholars and artists together entered into this exchange on a daily basis and everybody, whatever the extent of their dependence, knew that their work could not be conceived or perceived as anything other than the more or less free modification of a particular vestige of classical heritage. To escape tradition was unthinkable, but to accept it resignedly was absurd. All room for maneuver was therefore in the shifting difference between [End Page 565] old and new, and in the extent of its transformation. 2 It is then predictable, given these conditions, that the transmission of classical examples should be subject to turbulence without, however, undergoing any violent break.The question was even more relevant given that the sense of history, the consciousness of time past being irrevocably lost took on a new resonance now. Recognizing and acknowledging the phenomenon of irreversible development—whether good or bad—counts as one of the most important intellectual acquisitions of the Renaissance. 3 The Middle Ages had been able to maintain the illusion of continuity and, by dressing Antiquity up in the manners and colors of feudal chivalry, had seen itself reflected in it as in a mirror. With the influx of new documents and the perfecting of more rigorous methods of interpretation—the techniques of philology—intellectuals had to acknowledge evident change. The past could no longer be modeled on the present; all imitation would henceforth be witness to the impossibility of any perfect match. At the same time as the classical world was coming to light, it was also getting further away, getting lost. This bereavement sometimes sparked off enough regressive nostalgia to provide matter for many an antiquarian project. In reaction to this loss, most humanists were motivated into salvaging the salvageable by injecting a dose of novelty into the rift created by their awareness of history. The intellectuals of the Renaissance would often have felt as if they were reenacting the famous encounter of the Romans and the Greeks; like the Romans they wanted to be both conquering and conquered, free and faithful, differing and deferring. For them also the antique model will be an ideal simultaneously present and lost, necessary and foreign.Two opposing solutions to this dilemma seemed to offer themselves: on the one hand an unconditional return to the sources minimizing the effects of history, and on the other an exploitation of the eclipses of the past, giving the present a chance to fight it out with the Ancients. We shall sketch out each of these two strategies: both the methods of respectful transmission and those of transformative intervention.Fine-tuned by the humanists, philology was closely linked to the advent of historical consciousness. Since classical civilization had definitively come to an end, the philologist devoted himself to reconstituting and preserving it, in all its original specificity. He removed the layers of interference accumulated over the centuries, reestablished the texts in their authentic versions, maybe even providing commentary on the meaning of the work within its context. Theoretically his intervention stopped there. Acknowledging the difference and [End Page 566] superiority of past authors, he did not touch their works except to restore them to their pristine selves. Soon... (shrink)