Martial Arts - Purposes, Methods, Attitudes

The objective of the text is to demonstrate the analogies between attitudes to martial arts and the empiricist attitude and the rationalist attitude in philosophy. I outline dispute between empiricism and rationalism in philosophy in two perspective: genetic and methodological. I also discuss the languages' tendency to rationalization. Then, I present the analogies of the empiricist attitude and the rationalist attitude in martial arts, and point out the exemplifications of mentioned attitudes. I demonstrate the martial arts' tendency to rationalization in context of the history of aikido. And last, I show how, using mentioned notions, discussion between advocates of traditional martial arts and advocates of cross-sectional training can be settled. In the article three methods were used: analytical, hermeneutical, and comparative method.