When is Fighting Morally Justified?
A Martial Artist’s Guide to Using Their Physical Skills Correctly
Nov 3, 2009
All martial artists have a responsibility to use their physical skills only when absolutely necessary. It is the discipline of refusing to succumb to anger or ego and fight for unjust reasons that truly separates the martial artist from someone who is simply a trained fighter. The rub of this statement of course is justification. What separates a just from an unjust reason? When is the martial artist morally correct to fight?
Martial artists can find the answer to this question by considering the consequences of their actions. Although the consequences are many and varied, they break down into three broad categories. These categories are: risk of injury, guilt, and legal ramifications.
Injuries from Fighting
Possibly the most important, and definitely the most immediate consequence of fighting is the fact that you might lose! Being a martial artist is no guarantee of victory, and opponents can often be tougher than they look. The opponent may have allies that you can’t see, or may have a weapon. Or, while executing your spectacular jump spinning technique, you may trip over something and become injured; leaving you at the mercy of the person you were just trying to beat up. Before engaging in a fight, consider that you may be seriously hurt or possibly killed, and choose if your reason for fighting is worth risking this outcome.
A Consequence of Conscience
Another consequence of fighting is that you may win. Just as some people are tougher than they look, some people are not nearly as tough as they pretend to be or think they are, and in your over assessment of their threat you may seriously injure them. In other cases you may know that your opponent is no match for you, but your ego is telling you to shut their big mouth the hard way.
Before engaging in a fight however, consider how you will feel if you leave this person a bloody mess. If you would feel guiltily for beating a weaker person, then your own conscience is telling you it is morally wrong. If you wouldn’t feel guilty for beating up a weaker person, you have an underdeveloped moral compass. Remember how you felt when you were helpless until your spirit improves.
If a guilty conscience doesn’t dissuade you from fighting, consider another consequence of winning or even engaging in a fight. Consider the legal consequences.
Legal Ramifications of Fighting
The laws concerning fighting and being a trained fighter vary from state to state and country to country. Even knowing and adhering to the law is not a guarantee of moral certainty when fighting, as what is lawful and what is just are not always the same thing. Even in America it was once lawful to refuse women the right to vote, to refuse someone employment based on their heritage, and to even own another human being like any other piece of property. Even today many Americans still do not have equal legal privileges based on with whom they can fall in love. So for a martial artist it is not enough to justify the morality of a fight simply because it is legal. In fact, the moral correctness of a fight is easier to identify if the fight is unlawful. This is because if a martial artist truly considers the legal consequences of a fight — which can include fines, jail, loss of employment, a permanent record of the crime, and being sued into the poor house — and still believes that he or she must fight, then chances are fighting is necessary. Basically, as the saying goes, you need to come to the conclusion that it is better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.
So if a martial artist decides that he or she can live with the risk of pain and injury, of guilty conscience, and of possible fines, lawsuits, and jail time, then usually it’s because they may not live if they don’t fight. When the consequences are life or death, the decision is easy, and the justification is as good as it gets. For all other cases, the answer to the question of moral justification is usually ‘no.’
Because an examination of the consequences of fighting usually leads one to decide it isn’t worth it to fight, the real lesson here is if you can even make the decision to fight, then in most cases you are morally wrong to do so. If you have a choice to fight, that means you have a choice not to fight: you can walk away from the situation. If a martial artist can walk away from a potential fight, then he or she must do so. The one obvious exception to this rule is if a third person is being unjustly attacked, and the martial artist can intervene without risking his or her life.
