On The Rules of Fencing
Fencing is a language of the body, a language of action. Like music or poetry, it has its origin in the capacity of the human body, of its efficient and effective movement; the capacity for the effective judgement of which was essential for the selection of allies or prey. It is a language inherent to us. The dynamic lines of painter or sculptor are the lines of a fencer. That those lines are honed by the necessity of Nature, gives us a kin with the World we inhabit; gives us a sense of its truth and our truth. Just as the desire to warn, to anticipate and master, have been honed and sublimated into philosophy, science and art by the application of the abstract necessity of logic and consistency, so fencing has escaped the brutal context of the struggle of life and death; a context in which mistakes are paid with oblivion.
We have rules.
What guards any set of rules is a shared intuition of their purpose and their worth. At last, it's the value we put on the behaviour to which constrains or encourages us. Whether built into technology or in the immediate judgement of an official, arbitration is delegated to guardians. But who guards the guardians? In the end, it is our conscience that weighing human frailty, decides what it can accept. Whether as an evolved, social instinct or a metaphysical intuition, it is conscience that guards civilisation, that prevents rules being used and abused as a satisfaction for the petty desire for dominance.
Rules teach as well as constrain: without the stern school of battle the logic of fencing is lost. We must understand the music the rules intend, the melody from the notes but we must also follow the notes, enforce the rules and not bend them to fad or convenience.
John Rohde