The Five Virtues Of The Fighting Arts

Today I would like to touch on a topic or better a perspective that I have been thinking about some time now.

With the worldwide popularization of various martial arts or better fighting arts, too many of these disciplines have been extremely misinterpreted and thus falsely represented.

Due to commercialization and dilution for sporting applications, just to name two, it appears to me that the true values of the fighting arts continue to be contorted.

In times of excessive thirst for fame, power and egotism, it is pivotal to point out how the fighting arts can nurture the human spirit in many gratifying ways.

Countless practitioners of the fighting arts have found a way of life which is referred to as Gojo or “Five Virtues” which were already defined by Confucius (551-479 BC), one the world’s most quoted Chinese philosophers.

Based on the Confucian philosophy, especially the Japanese fighting arts are founded on the these 5 virtues:

Benevolence
Knowledge
Justice
Trust
Etiquette

Even if a number of fighting arts, which were true martial arts at one time, have been transformed and adapted from battlefield applications to cultivate physical and moral fitness such as Judo, which derived form Jujutsu, they pretty much have similar goals according to martial scholar Dave Lowry, namely:

“A perfection of character, a pursuit of life’s truths, and a polishing of the spirit.”

Just something to think about.