Mark A
Cox
Huma
1301-003
Downey
3-5-03
Since the beginning of time, there
have been two things that have been a part of civilization, love and war. Sure
the way each is conducted has changed dramatically through the years but each
still hold an enormous part of our hearts and minds in their wake. If one looks
back in history and even to today, love and war are two aspects of life that go
together. The Battle of Troy was fought over the love of a woman. In World War
II, America went to war because of the love for country and for those lost at
Pearl Harbor. All is, in fact, fair in love and war. Several reasons support
this theory, including the way war is waged, how love is won, and how each is
intertwined together.
Love is a gentle and caring part of
our lives, but it can be a very disheartening part of our existence as well. There
were many rules for love, the way is was to be conducted, and how a lover’s
heart was to be won. Some of these rules
are defined in The Art of Courtly Love.
This book defines how class in society can be a determinant in how one wins the
heart of another. For example, it lays out how one from a certain class level
should approach and go about winning the heart of someone of a lower or higher
class in society. For example, it is easier for a man of noble stature to win
the heart of a woman of the middle class because of his stature and
respectability. While it is quite a feat for a man of the middle class to
approach and obtain the love of a woman of higher stature, because of the fact
that the woman is of higher rank in the society in the world and it would be
more of a disgrace for her to drop down into the lower ranks of society to find
a lover. Yes, true, there were rules for how to obtain that love, but, in fact,
they were more guidelines to follow by, instead of strictly enforced rules. By
any means a man could win the love of a woman, but the most common way was
through words. All of this seemed to be out of the reach of Dante when he wrote La Vita Nuova. The rules seemed to not
apply to him for he never approached the woman he was madly in love with,
Beatrice. He only wrote poems and sonnets of her that reflected on how true his
love was to her beautiful form and features. He proclaimed his love for
Beatrice at nine years old, a rather young age by today’s standards, but still
he was madly in love with her from that day forth. His own mind even toyed with
him while he was very ill. He had a dream about Beatrice dying and it seemed so
real that he woke up with tears in his eyes and it left him in grief even
though it was only a dream. That truly proclaims the power of what love can do
to a person. One part of Dante’s story
was when Beatrice smiled at Dante and it absolutely drove him crazy, he feel
even deeper in love with her and at this point is when he started writing
sonnets and poems in her name. All of this because of a smile. All of these
points prove that there is no fairness in love, it controls one’s heart,
emotions, and, sometimes, even well-being. According to The Art of Courtly Love, it can control how one would go about
living their life in the pursuit of love. A person would go out of their own
way in order to please a lover, sometimes guilt from betraying a lover can
drive a person in deep depression, and even death because of love is not a far
reaching idea. Going into love one must know that the boundaries in how love is
conducted are endless. Love is fair because all lovers never know what will
happen between them and their lover, so each must expected the unexpected.
Some of these same arguments can be
made about war. War does, in fact, have rules that are simply to be used as
guidelines, but there are many instances throughout history that show how these
guidelines don’t have to be followed. For example, innocent people are not
supposed to die in war, but in the attack on Hiroshima by the United States
thousands of innocent victims were killed, in order to shorten the war and
cause less casualties. Was that bombing fair? Probably not, but no one will
ever know how many lives those bombs saved because what happen was something
that had to be done in the eyes of United States politicians. The fact that is
was something that many looked upon as something that had to be done makes this
a fair gesture. Two books give us great examples of how fair war can be. The Book of Joshua in The Holy Bible gives us a perfect
example of how war has no boundaries, therefore, making everything fair. During
the course of this book the Lord gives Joshua rules of how to fight war in
order to gain The Promised Land for the Israelites. He orders Joshua to kill
all inhabitants “…with the edge of the sword” (Joshua 6:21; KJV) of every city
that he conquers, including woman and children, and to burn each city. This was
done all because Joshua said that the Lord had ordered it. Today these same
rules would be considered unfair but during this time period it was perfectly
natural to follow the commands of a higher being. These seemingly heinous acts
give a perfect example why war has no boundaries and anything in war is truly
fair. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is
another book that proves that war is fair in all of its activities. Sure one
could focus on the fact that the whole book is about the guidelines by which
one should follow in order to achieve victory in a battle, but the book does
comment on deception. It states that “All warfare is based on deception.”(Art
of War; 66). If all warfare is based on deception then cheating and lying
could be determined as deception and would be considered fair in battle. If
deception is fair as well as killing innocent victims is fair then there is not
much more one can say to prove that war and how it is conducted is fair.
There is one more aspect that can be
used to prove that all is fair in love and war. It is that love and war go
together. Truly if you think about it love and war go hand in hand, in fact,
most of the time you don’t have one without the other. For example, if one
refers to all of the different religious wars that have taken place throughout
history, The Crusades, the battle for The Promised Land, etc., these battles
were all fought because of the followers love for their God. This can even be
brought in today’s world where Islamic groups have attacked many different
innocent victims claiming that it is a jihad, or holy war. If one would keep
track of the things that this holy warriors have done then they could realize
that there is no end to what happens in these attacks and wars, which are conducted
on behalf of the love these Islamists have for there god. This may not be the
same type of love that is common place but it is in fact referred to in Symposium and Phaedrus as agape love. It
is the love one holds for that higher being in their life. Another type of love
that can be used to compare love and war is phillio/a, or brotherly love, which
is also spoken of in Symposium and
Phaedrus. People would not join the respective armies of their countries if
they did not feel a sense of love for their country and the people in it. If
there were no soldiers then there would in fact be no war in the world. These
are definitely two ways that love and war are intertwined together. If each is
intertwined and all in love is fair then, by these guidelines, all in war must
also be fair and vice versa.
As one can read there are several
different reasons why all is fair in love and war. The reasons range from
loving and the way it is conducted to war and the deception that is used to
achieve victory in war. Since love and war are intertwined because several
different causes, what is true for one might possibly be true for the other.
Love and war are two of the hardest to explain aspects of life and that may be
why all that is done in love and war is truly fair.
Bibliography and Works Cited
“Book of Joshua”; Holy Bible; King James
Version;Nashville,Tn.; Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1972.
Tzu, Sun; The Art of War; Trans. Samuel B. Griffin. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1963.
Plato; Symposium and Phaedrus; New York: Dover Publications,
1994.
Alighieri, Dante ;La Vita Nuova; Trans. Dante Gabriel
Rossetti; New York: Dover Publications, 2001.
Capellanus, Andreas; The Art of Courtly Love; Trans. John Jay
Parry; New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1941.
No comments:
Post a Comment