Code Duello: The Rules of Dueling (1963) | Hacker News Reader

Code Duello: The Rules of Dueling (1963)

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34 pointsthunderbong12 comments

Fascinating. There is a famous course at Michigan Law called Bloodfeuds, which takes a scholarly view of the old Icelandic laws of revenge as told through the sagas. The point of the class is that some of the customs and traditions seem unusual, until you begin to consider the cultural / environmental conditions.

Similarly with dueling. In an honor culture where litigation isn't viable recourse to an offense, what's the best manner of resolving disputes? The formality of dueling as we see from the rules probably provided a much-needed measure of social control over private violence.

Compare that to the situation today, where the state has the true monopoly on legal violence. Private disputes that escalate to killing tend to be unordered affairs that lead either to continuing down spirals of violence or to wounding or deaths of innocents.

Personally, I think violence is inherent in human nature and one of the blessings of society is that we regulate and control it. We have violent outlets in sport and increasingly video games etc., but I also think we should consider whether some manner of "dueling" should be implemented. Obviously I would propose something nonlethal, like boxing. Something similar to:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takanakuy

My dad tells me that when he was in high school, students who fought would be given heavy boxing gloves and put in the ring until they were too tired to fight anymore. The heavy gloves prevented any significant injury and were exhausting to use. He says it usually put an end to the the fued.

There are obvious problems with normalizing that kind of thing, such as giving extra social advantages to people who are aggressive and good at boxing, but it doesn't sound like an entirely bad idea.

I can see how it makes sense. Rather than repress the violence, make it safe enough: it still works as an outlet, it facilitates it so that hunger for violence doesn’t reach high levels, it provides rules and boundaries implicitly accepted by both sides which helps avoiding revenge and escalation…

It applies to many undesirable -but-hard-to-eliminate things really, eg drug use probably ?

It's usually called "harm reduction" in the context of drug use, but I hadn't made the connection that this was an example of the same thing until now.

"Rule 5. As a blow is strictly prohibited under any circumstances among gentlemen, no verbal apology can be received for such an insult. The alternatives, therefore -- the offender handing a cane to the injured party, to be used on his own back, at the same time begging pardon; firing on until one or both are disabled; or exchanging three shots, and then asking pardon without proffer of the cane. "

So, slapping someone in the face is such an ungentlemanly offense that the only civilized way to make amends is to get beaten with cane and/or shot at.

The 1700s must've suuuuuucked.

That's what the rich, landed people did to keep themselves occupied. Imagine how much worse life was if you did not have such idleness to create intricate rules around honor.

> The 1700s must've suuuuuucked.

Yes.

This stuff was ridiculously prevalent despite being both legally and religiously forbidden. It did not require a physical insult; any insult would do. Russia's great poet Pushkin died in a duel: https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2017/02/10/pushkin-duel...

It was so prevalent that various armies had trouble stamping it out among their officer class. Only really obliterated by the social and military upheaval of the 20th century.

Pushkin was not great. His height was 166 cm (5' 5").

Very interesting, I love how it all rests more around the rules of engagement for who should apologize first, and is intertwined with some "but if you don't wanna just shoot at each other"

When I was fencing I learned the foil, and our master of arms was giving us some context behind it. The big difference between foil and sabre on one side, and épée on the other, is that the former has lots of rules of engagement (there's a whole system of time, distance, valid zones, and priorities and ways to recover the priority), whereas the later is very straight forward (you touch, you score). The main reason that is apparently all these rules was that it was a discipline training you for duel, and the training was targeted at avoiding "making two widows", thus making sure that people are trained into not just killing each other and going in only when it is "safe" to do so (ie when you won't get stab at the same time).

In Germany duelling was a legal grey zone until 1953, when it was clarified that fighting with sharp weapons under agreement to cause mutual harm is OK, as long as it not as away to settle matters of honour or kill each other.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ttinger_Mensurenprozess

These days I'd call it a FAFO-cracy. The duel wasn't important, it was the overall regulating effect on malice the potential consequences of a duel had. Bullies are practically defined as exploiting the external protection from present consequences they have. I'd argue the reason we don't have duels anymore is because we have so many lawyers in public office, and systems of honour and consequences tend historically to thin their numbers.

> Rule 22. Any wound sufficient to agitate the nerves and necessarily make the hand shake, must end the business for that day.

Time to retire to the drawing room to play cards, smoke cigars, and drink some port to calm the nerves.

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