Coralie Camilli, substitute philosophy professor at the University of Corsica and French boxing champion, published L’art du combat (Puf) in 2020, Jours de grâce et de violence (Vérone éditions), and Insulaires (Vérone éditions) in 2023.

Halves, Degrees and Perfection

Each discipline has required for its mastery a wholeness, pushed to the extreme.

To emphasize from the outset that the path is not “exploded” or random, but planned and defined in order to push the limits of the mind, then those of the body, to their ends. No moderation. Only degrees. Let me explain.

To master a discipline presupposes in its learning a principle of wholeness. This ultimately means nothing other than: To will. This is already what is called in philosophy a “performative act.” To will is always to will more than anything, it is to devote oneself to what one wills, it is also to renounce everything that is not on the path one traces, it is to set aside the superfluous, the inessential, the secondary, the superficial, the non-necessary.

If such a definition of the will seems extreme it is because it distinguishes itself from simple inclination, wish, desire, longing, or whatever else.

To will means to concentrate and devote oneself to what one does, it is to be ready to climb mountains, to cross oceans, to endure solitude perhaps, to stand at the edge of chasms and to walk near abysses, to be ready to live a thousand lives and to suffer a thousand deaths: To will, in the proper sense of the term, is always to will against everything and sometimes also: against everyone! …Even sometimes: against ourselves. Sacrifices and self-denial are required.

Thus, if one thinks the will as primary, with all its wholeness and its demands, it is up to capacities to follow it! It is then that one surpasses oneself, and that capacities become qualities. That wishes become accomplishments. That the possible becomes real. That fears are overcome, for one has raised one’s capacities a thousand degrees above what one believed oneself “capable” of.

To will is not to wish, a literary illustration: to be Captain Ahab (Moby Dick). To set out upon all the oceans, to brave storms and the doubts of his modest crew, yes, but at all costs, to will to find the white whale again and to take revenge. Even if it means never returning alive, but having done it! “My will rolls like a train upon iron rails,” he says. Who would dare imagine Captain Ahab simply “wishing” that? He would never have left the harbor.

Now your sweetest thing will become the hardest. In the one who has always spared himself much, excess of self-sparing ends by becoming a sickness. Blessed be what makes hard! I do not praise the land where butter and honey flow! To see many things one must learn to look far from oneself: this hardness is necessary for all those who climb mountains. (…) From where do the highest mountains come? that is what I once asked. Then, I learned that they come from the sea (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

Now your sweetest thing will become the hardest.

In the one who has always spared himself much, excess of self-sparing ends by becoming a sickness. Blessed be what makes hard! I do not praise the land where butter and honey flow!

To see many things one must learn to look far from oneself: this hardness is necessary for all those who climb mountains.

From where do the highest mountains come? that is what I once asked. Then, I learned that they come from the sea (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

Pain and sweetness, victory and defeat, kindness and harshness, pride and modesty, question and revelation, anguish and ecstasy, prayer and sin: it is therefore only a single ladder to climb to the top. Now, a remark imposes itself: a ladder is made of degrees.

On this subject, it would no doubt be interesting to begin by considering the notions at stake (ethical, philosophical and no doubt also bioethical) not in terms of oppositions or contraries; good/evil, help/indifference, autonomy/beneficence (can one moreover think that one can protect another against himself?), freedom/duty, help/non-assistance, poison/remedy. The example of the verb “aufheben” in German, often recalled by Hegel – and which means at once to suppress and to preserve, can also serve as illustration.

A single substance, according to its degree of injection, can prove lethal or salvific: thus with the vaccine. It is not a matter of opposites (it is the same substance), but of degrees.

And one then discovers that in each domain, this is what is at stake. For it is a matter of activities (of praxis) which require the distinction force / power: when to act and when to abstain. Example in Judaism, example in the martial arts, examples in philosophy.

We evoke the mountains through Nietzsche’s text (mountains, just like the ladder, which must be climbed!). The mountains, the abysses and the oceans? Philosophy which expresses itself through concepts very often joins religious texts which, they, express themselves through metaphors, (and more broadly, through figures) but just as eloquent:

One of the first things one approaches in Talmudic studies is obviously the names of God. One of these names is the following: “El Shaddai,” from “dai,” stop, limitation. The mercy of El Shaddai translates as his capacity to suspend his judgment: the religious texts say:

“When I suspend the sins of Man, I am called Shaddai.” The etymological origin of the Name El Shaddai proves interesting: indeed, according to the Talmud (Hagigah, 14b) and the Zohar, Shaddai means “He who says to the world ‘enough,’ or ‘that is sufficient!’”

Note therefore that “Dai” means sufficiency, enough: principle of limitation.

For example used at the moment when the oceans are created, and where it is necessary to say to them: “Dai”: “it is enough, up to there you shall go, but not beyond.” So that the oceans do not pour themselves out up to the mountains.

To conceptualize further this principle of non-opposition of contraries, of the notion of degree that follows from it, and by consequence that of limitation, let us look at philosophical texts.

The notion of perfection in Leibniz is inseparable from what he calls “a rule of goodness,” and this rule – even, let us dare the word, this norm – makes the real possible and renders the sphere of the real necessary (not according to an absolute or metaphysical necessity, that is to say whose contrary would imply contradiction), but according to a moral necessity. “The most perfect is that which is at the same time the simplest in terms of efforts, and the richest in terms of results.” (Theodicy). In other words, the principle of perfection is equal to the principle of economy.

And to update the point and render it less abstract: perfect is what is effective. And effective is what requires the least obstinacy for the greatest results, understood in moral (or ethical) terms.

Perfect is not what is visually irreproachable, perfect is what requires the least number of efforts for the greatest number of results.

There is no other definition of the principle of economy that one encounters in Aikido (and here we are on another illustration from another domain): a technique is perfect when the one who applies it mobilizes the least forces possible (that is to say when he does not exhaust himself moving for nothing!), and when this minimum of efforts brings about the greatest possible results (the opponent’s attack is mastered).

(It is at that moment that I wanted to learn the Art of combat. I trained up to the black belt, and even one rank above, obtained in Japan, mother house of Aikido).

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)