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All's fair in love and war?

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
If all's fair, it isn't love. Emotional dependency, maybe, but not love.
 

lunakilo

Well-Known Member
All's fair in love and war?

What do you think?
That I never understood that.

Of course all is not fair in love and war. You may be faced with a choice between the 'right' thing to do and the 'sensible' thing to do if you want to win, but just because it is the sensible thing to do doesn't make it fair.
 

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
Of course all is not fair in love and war. You may be faced with a choice between the 'right' thing to do and the 'sensible' thing to do if you want to win, but just because it is the sensible thing to do doesn't make it fair.
...or a win.
 

Madhuri

RF Goddess
Staff member
Premium Member
I am actually unsure about it. For the most part, I don't really understand the logic behind it. But sometimes I find myself in a situation where it seems to make sense. And then afterwards I forget why it made sense.
Confusion..
 
I am actually unsure about it. For the most part, I don't really understand the logic behind it. But sometimes I find myself in a situation where it seems to make sense. And then afterwards I forget why it made sense.
Confusion..

I can totally understand that.

It seems to me sometimes that maybe sanitizing war with rules and "acceptable" types of attacks, actually makes it far more likely to occur, and keeps it going longer. Would it be less likely if, once a party took the step of attacking, there was no telling what might befall them in return? It might make the need for proper dialogue even more obvious. We seem to have a halfway house at the moment, where it's ok to fight "a bit". Does this encourage protracted suffering?

Perhaps we should say, as a world, ok, if you've got to the stage of taking lumps out of each other, get on with it and don't cry "foul". Perhaps all should be fair in war, because it is the end of civilised behaviour. I am not convinced enough to actually advocate that though, and do really feel that it's better to do all we can to make less violence the norm through internationally agreed law.

As for love though, how can it not be fair? When unfairness comes into it, to me that means a lack of love towards one, who can be wronged, justified by selfish love for another. That can only be fair if one thinks that love between two people is more important than anything else, I would dispute that strongly.

I think perhaps the saying had a different resonance years ago, and probably isn't really helpful in todays world.
 
A

angellous_evangellous

Guest
All's fair in love and war?

What do you think?

I agree, but I think that "fairness" may be defined in a singular way here.

"Fairness" in this context means that a person will do just about anything to win their love and wars.

This is more of a proverb explaining human nature.
 

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
I am actually unsure about it. For the most part, I don't really understand the logic behind it. But sometimes I find myself in a situation where it seems to make sense. And then afterwards I forget why it made sense.
Confusion..
As with other quotes from books, it has context. It's a paraphrase of a line from Don Quixote: 'Love and War are the same thing, and stratagems and polity are as allowable in the one as in the other.'
 
As with other quotes from books, it has context. It's a paraphrase of a line from Don Quixote: 'Love and War are the same thing, and stratagems and polity are as allowable in the one as in the other.'

Really? I don't see any mention of fairness there, only the equality of the two. Was it already generally accepted that all was fair in one or the other?
 
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I agree. I hadn't thought of it that way before.

I hadn't either, I've been mulling this over since. It can be viewed in this more useful light, but whenever it has been used to me, it has just been to justify mailicious acts someone has done, about to do, or that I'm being encouraged to do. So, I'm still not keen.
 

Penumbra

Veteran Member
Premium Member
All's fair in love and war?

What do you think?
I'd regard it as more of an observation than, say, permission.

When it comes down to it, basically nothing is fair. And love and violence are among the most emotional things humans can engage in. Those are the situations when humans put themselves to the hardest test: can they remain fair and honorable even in the moments of extreme emotion? If there is any time when fairness would break down, it would be during those times. When someone is trying to harm me, can I still hold to certain principles of things I will not attempt to do to that person due to some higher sense of virtue? When I'm madly in love with someone, am I willing to break any moral code to be with that person, or do I continue to acknowledge the importance of honor and reason?

The quote implies that for most people, concepts like fairness break down in the face of love and violence. And war is a particular subset of violence where there isn't even really any authority involved, since it is between groups that represent the highest possible authoritative structures we have.
 
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