Does jiu-jitsu have to teach a philosophy of ethics for it to be jiu-jitsu? Ontogenetically, yes.

To be clear from the start, we are speaking of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and not Mixed Martial Arts. It could very well be true that a Mixed Martial Arts program may espouse a particular philosophy beyond the ring or octagon. However, MMA’s history is recent and its iterations too different to attribute one program’s approach to the whole of MMA.

Jiu-jitsu, on the other hand, traces its history to a particular origin. Its combat philosophy is a direct descendant from samurai bushido, the way of the warrior, whose seven virtues form the core of its philosophy. Nitobe Inazo (1862-1933) is the person most responsible for the dissemination of bushido into the West after the publication of his tome Bushido: The Soul of Japan in 1900. Inazo’s book is responsible for the identification of the seven virtues:

Rectitude – righteousness.

– righteousness. Courage – the ability and willingness to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation.

– the ability and willingness to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Benevolence – charity, giving help.

– charity, giving help. Respect – esteem and deference to a person or entity and the world.

– esteem and deference to a person or entity and the world. Honesty – straightforwardness of conduct, along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, et al.

– straightforwardness of conduct, along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, et al. Honor – to adhere to what is right under pressure to do wrong and maintain one’s image to be seen with high esteem within a social group.

– to adhere to what is right under pressure to do wrong and maintain one’s image to be seen with high esteem within a social group. Loyalty – faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause.

A first year philosophy student can tell you that philosophy has four (or five) major branches.

metaphysical/ontological – the study of being and origins.

epistemology – the study of how we know things.

ethics – the study of how we are to engage the world.

aesthetics – the study of how and why something is considered beautiful.

Some add the field of “logic” as the fifth branch which studies the rules by which proper thinking (philosophy) is performed.

A quick reading of the list reveals that the most applicable branch of philosophy for Brazilian jiu-jitsu is ethics. Yet, this ethics arises from a specific ontology, an origin that shows the system of combat is that particular system of combat (and not any other) because of its foremost concern with the proper use of power. Jiu-jitsu’s philosophy is both ethical and ontological. If philosophy starts with “first questions,” the first question of jiu-jitsu as it was conceived was, “how do I conduct myself in the world as a practitioner of a martial art that trains me to choke, break joints, immobilize, and possibly kill another human being?”

Let’s not rehash the old arguments between different martial arts. Jiu-jitsu is real. Jiu-jitsu is the most effective means an unarmed person can kill or maim another human being. Its hand-to-hand combat approach is proven. It is the most effective unarmed self-defense system available.

Jiu-jitsu outside the mat is refracted through an ethics of power. It teaches restraint and proper application of power. Jiu-jitsu must be an ethical system in order to be a combat system. Pedro Valente, Sr. said, “The secret to jiu-jitsu is in its philosophy.” His sons, the Valente brothers, are perhaps the most vocal in espousing jiu-jitsu’s ethical philosophy. A saying attributed to them says, “The reality is that teaching students arm locks, chokes, sweeps, strikes, etc. does not mean that you are teaching them jiu-jitsu.” On their youtube channel Valente Brothers TV, one can find a two-part talk on why they insist an ethical philosophy must be central to jiu-jitsu. They begin by speaking of jiu-jitsu’s bad reputation in Brazil and the problems that arise when jiu-jitsu is taught “apart from its philosophy.” The bad image is of men feeling powerful enough to be disrespectful to women, pick fights, drink excessively, and even commit crimes using jiu-jitsu techniques.

The Valente brothers go on to point that even the origin of judo derived from Jigaro Kano’s desire to reconnect the philosophical principles back to the jiu-jitsu of his era where it, as in Brazil, had gained a disreputable view in Japan. Kano settled on calling the reconnection a new name, judo, the gentle way, to emphasize the being-in-the-world core of Kano’s ethical approach to jiu-jitsu combat techniques. In fact, Kano saw judo as an entire moral educational system, pushing firmly for judo to be part of a comprehensive and compulsory education of young Japanese, believing that physical and moral education could be tackled both at one time with judo.

In reality, though, one must wonder how many Brazilian jiu-jitsu schools teach ethics? And if so, how do they teach it?

One form is through a direct, didactic approach where the instructor informs his students of how s/he expects them to behave in the world. My own instructor, Luigi Mondelli, tells us repeatedly that if he finds out we have been in a fight without any self-defense justification, he will kick us out of the team. And, in fact, he has kicked a number of people for this very reason. He’s also expelled people who have conducted themselves in ways detrimental to jiu-jitsu. Another form of teaching the ethical philosophy is in an indirect, diegetic reflection of various stories of a jiu-jitsuka “withholding power” (for lack of a better phrase). Relson Gracie used to tell stories at my old school that, whenever confronted by someone for whatever reason, would always begin talking to them saying, “My friend, my friend, you are right” and so on. That’s how my first instructor taught us self-defense engagement with an aggressive individual. To say, “My friend, my friend, you are right,” to diffuse the confrontation.

Sam Sheridan tells an anecdote in his book The Fighter’s Heart (2008) of Pat Miletich’s sense of honor in not engaging in street fights because of his ability to destroy the regular Joe of the street. Sam writes,

They [fighter’s like Pat] stopped street fighting because untrained men don’t interest them. Pat said he used to walk through the mall and feel like a shark among seals. And that power, in the great fighters, breeds restraint, understanding, wisdom – even gentleness… (p. 300).

That, right there, shows exactly how the origin, the ontogeny, of the art bred the ethics of the art. The power taught restraint, wisdom, and gentleness. The power, the knowledge of the fragility of limbs and life, birthed the code of honor for its proper use.

The code is inseparable from the techniques.

Of course, not all jiu-jitsukas follow jiu-jitsu’s ethics. There is a very recent case of a rape trial involving two male members of a team based out of Maryland, which revealed that not all jiu-jitsu schools, particularly that one, has the faintest clue about jiu-jitsu’s philosophical core.

Aside from that extreme case, the modern business pressure an honest instructor faces probably necessitates her or him to either eschew the philosophy side altogether and just teach “how to fight/defend,” in fear of driving students out who aren’t interested in something that sounds spiritual. Or, business pressures force them to accept and retain as many students as possible, even those with dishonorable attitudes and actions within the school and outside.

Perhaps extremely embarrassingly, an argument can be made that jiu-jitsu’s rise in popularity (and demand as a business) was the result of ignoring its very own ethics. In its pursuit to prove jiu-jitsu’s effectiveness and superiority over all other martial arts, the so-called “Gracie challenge” was issued. The challenge, in effect, allowed anyone to challenge a jiu-jitsuka, pitting them in a fight. This was done to prove jiu-jitsu was the superior combat system. The Gracie challenge videos are widely available on the internet. Some of the fights are hard to watch because they are, actually, fights. Most end in an honest handshake after the non-jiu-jitsuka tapped or was choked out.

In itself, was the Gracie challenge ethical? No, they were not ethical. They weren’t ethical and failed jiu-jitsu’s philosophical foundation. There doesn’t seem to be any honor or rectitude in fighting without a clear self-defense justification.

However, was the Gracie challenge ethical in its aim? Here, I say yes. The challenges exposed the fraud at the heart of other martial arts. Different styles faced jiu-jitsu and lost, some badly where the jiu-jitsuka merely lay on top of the other martial artist, fear compelling him to give up. No longer could an enormous number of styles claim that they were real self-defense systems. They were proven to be choreographed punches and kicks without any real-world import. The world benefited from their exposure.

There is something ethical in having the courage to put your body in harm’s way to expose people to a fraud being perpetuated on them because of the popularity of kung-fu or Karate Kid movies. Yet, there remains an episode here or there in which a challenge was truly a fight and left a bad mark on jiu-jitsu’s reputation. A famous one takes place on a beach in Rio, the origin of which was that someone said something bad about the main jiu-jitsu academy. The jiu-jitsuka sought out the offender and found him on the beach and beat him. Perhaps, this is one example of the bad reputation jiu-jitsu earned in Brazil.

Yet, that’s in the long past. In the United States, jiu-jitsu – in the popular, causal fan imagination – is subsumed under MMA. Jiu-jitsu is both a beneficiary and a victim of its own success. You cannot do MMA without jiu-jitsu. It is the foundational, core, art. As the saying goes, if you can’t fight on the ground, you can’t fight. In MMA, jiu-jitsu could be easily split from its philosophy, and parceled as a series of techniques to win in the octagon. Perhaps this is what compelled the Valente brothers and others to remind us of the philosophy of jiu-jitsu.

Jiu-jitsu is not jiu-jitsu without its founding code. If you are on the ground without honor, fighting without an ethical reason, you are not doing jiu-jitsu.