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 Taekwondo
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Preface to the English ver.
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Part
III. SAMJAE
Chapter
17
Questioning
what is Right and Wrong
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"Is it not true that no distinction
leads to abandonment?"
"I just said you should overcome distinction."
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A distinctive life makes for distinctive right and wrong. It is vital
that as a Taekwondo-Een you be a sound judge of what is right and what
is wrong. This will determine whether you use Taekwondo as a lethal weapon
or as nourishment to life. As previously stated, far from being a skill
to save man, Taekwondo is a skill to subdue and kill man. Only under extremely
controlled use can it realize its full potential - to contribute to society
and offer a positive and meaningful life.
There are times when you may be momentarily overwhelmed by the temptation
to use your lethal techniques without reflection. At times conditions
may cause you to explode with an impulsive anger. You can overcome such
dangers only through rigorous training to fortify your character. Therefore,
correct Taekwondo training ought to include the development of good character
along with fighting skills. This is why from ancient times the masters
never instructed those whose characters were not sound.
Generally speaking, seriousness is essential in developing your character.
Thus, TAEKWONDO, which demands character development, forces you to be
serious. Who would not be serious when contemplating skills meant to kill?
In this way, the morality and value of Taekwondo can never be obtained
through the denial of Taekwondo's inherently violent nature. Rather, you
obtain this morality only after you have recognized Taekwondo's violent
and dangerous nature. This also teaches you care and temperance.
An old proverb tells us that those who live by the sword shall die by
the sword. However, the Taekwondo-Een never constructs himself with his
fist, but with an ethical duty towards justice. He then uses his weapon
in the service of this duty, and so he will never be destroyed by his
weapon. Then, where can you find the ethical "oughtness" that
supports justice? Is there such an objective standard for judgment, distinct
of what is right and what is wrong? Yes, there is.
It stands with no shape and no substance on the boundary between man
and nature: "respect what each man wants to do equally". It
is natural, both objective and subjective, and it is a matter of choice.
The Saint King named the substance of ethical "oughtness" "benefiting
everyone widely ( )",
for ethics depends on man and everyone is deserving of respect.20)
Thus, the correct Taekwondo-Een, who considers man of the greatest importance,
does not employ Taekwondo to harm others but only to destroy the bad in
them. This implies a harmony of ethics and TAEKWONDO. Therefore, if a
bad man cannot arise after being felled by a Taekwondo-Een it is not because
TAEKWONDO attempted to kill him but rather because he could not live without
the bad in himself. Every man is deserving of help, but in this case there
is nothing one can do to help. This perhaps is an example of Taekwondo's
only limitation.
<footnote>
20) I am not speaking here of ethics. To speak more precisely, I refer to
the objective criterion of morality, the ultimate foundation of morality.
A brief historical background to this question may help clarify this. Many
philosophers have sought to trace morality's origins and in so doing to
establish morality on a firm foundation. They attempted to explain the philosophical
foundations in describing the world. Their explanations went something like:
our world is like this, so we should live in this way. But other philosophers
recognized the fallacy underlying such reasoning. One philosopher, G.E.
Moore, termed it a "naturalistic fallacy", and argued that any
conclusion on the nature of "oughtness" must have at least one
proposition of "oughtness" as its premise. It other words, you
cannot conclude "one ought to act in this way" from simply "the
world is like this". From that time, many philosophers began to suspect
whether ethics could ever be a science, or even a meaningful philosophy,
and relativism overwhelmed ethics. Other scholars investigated emotions
as the foundation of ethics, for they believed ethics could not be established
on any rational foundation. I have also investigated the objective foundations
of ethics to conquer relativism, and I have found my answer. Of course,
it is a logical one. As it is logical and abstract, it would be boring to
explain it here. In any case, the footnoted text refers to the logical,
and so objective foundation, of ethics; the borderline between the humanistic
and the factual. (I apologize that these concepts may be difficult for those
with no interest in scholastic philosophy. But you can see that the text
has scholastic links, so it may prove worth reading and thinking about further.)
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