This piece was inspired by a boxing exhibition match that was held in UTown in January 2025, in front of a public audience.
After my lecture on modern philosophy, I went to NUS Boxing’s exhibition match where I was struck by the deeply philosophical nature of two men hitting each other in colourful pants. So folks, I’m going to workshop a thing, can I workshop a thing?
***
It’s cloudy and the air is saturated and sodden, and I’m sweating from my pits – which, all things considered, is fine, because this (bright blue) muscle shirt is sleeveless and perfect for ventilating the underarms (important, for people in my position). There’s a crowd on the ground and a crowd in the balcony above, and we’ve all just watched the guy ahead of me get thrashed. I hadn’t wanted to do this, but you know what they say: for college, for nation, take one for the team. They’ve just called in my opponent – who’s called himself The Shadow, probably in a split-second poorly-made decision, and his face says he regrets this. I’m thinking I should have called myself Speed of Light. He’s thinking he shouldn’t have put that name down on a dare. He didn’t know there’d be an audience. Luckily for him, he’s built like a lean bull, and he’s got gravitas and confidence, despite the name, or because of it. Me on the other hand, I’m medium-heavy soaking-wet, and I wish I could say I was built like a highland cow to match, but, well, I’m wearing a bright blue sleeveless shirt and I’m showing off my pits.
When I enter the ring, which, ironically, is square, my coach gives me a pat on the back. “Just focus and keep your hands up,” he says. Man, I’m not sure I want to do this. Does anyone want to do this, in front of a hundred odd students who’ve never been in a spar once? It’s hard to breathe, the commentator is loud, and my opponent looks like he’s locked in. For college, for nation, am I right?
We start, he swings. I take it to the arm. I get one good hit in, maybe two, but he’s got a hard skull, or a strong constitution. My coach is screaming, “Focus!”, which I would be doing, if he weren’t shouting at me every other second. Not helpful. If I were a monk, this would be easy. Taking a hit? Nothing like walking on fire. Or was it coal? Or was it both? Point is, I would have transcended. I’m not an experimental guy, but if The Shadow were a bunch of weed-induced triangles right now, that would be helpful. If he’s a collection of strings, though, those are some pretty solid strings. If I looked away, would he teleport?
He didn’t teleport. So much for Schrödinger.1 “Keep your hands up,” Coach snaps, “Focus!” Someone in the audience, lacking the finer points of etiquette, says, “Actually this is easy. You just have to tackle them and keep punching.” Alright big man, why don’t you get up here, tackle this guy?
Ow. I just got punched. Square in the nose, everybody. The crowd, audibly, gasps. “It’s okay!” yells Coach. “It doesn’t hurt!”
A real Descartes,2 that one. I think my nose is broken.
The referee stops the fight. I stare at him as he counts. He’s got a tight shirt and a close cropped head. He’s sweaty, I’m sweaty. A gong sounds in the background. Stupid gong. There’s something dripping down my lip. We’re sent to our corners. Coach wipes the blood off and rattles off a bunch of other things in a really serious voice. My muscles are moving slow. My brain is, too. What do you mean, “ignore the pain”?
I might have a head injury. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. I too, have some regrets, Shadow.
The referee waves us back in. The time for bowing out gracefully has passed. I put my fists up. I can barely feel them. My throat is burning with air. I wonder how my opponent’s doing, what he’s thinking. He might not be thinking at all. He’s relentless. He throws a jab, jab, cross, then a second combo. He’s got impeccable footwork, I must say. And a good sense for distance. He never overreaches. I’m backing up. He throws a hook, which lands. I throw a jab, which doesn’t.
If I were Neo in the matrix,3 I’d slow time down and hop on out of here. But, as they say, if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bike. This is no British Carbonara.4 This is the Real Stuff. Here is one hand: and it’s coming right at me.
(And that hand hurts.)
All of us know how this fight is going to go. I get punched in the nose again, which, if it wasn’t before, sure is broken now. I wish he’d avoid the goods; you only get one face in life. Getting punched tends to simplify your priorities. I just want to walk out intact, more or less.
The ref calls the fight. He counts to eight, I blink at him. He waves his hands sharply. It’s over.
BY RCS, says the commentator, THE WINNER IS–
***
No points for guessing, it was a tough fight for the guy in blue, and we’ll never envy his position, being judged by dozens of other students who’ve never been in a fight themselves! But that’s beside the point.
My point is that if we were to begin doubting, truly, the nature of our reality, we’d devolve into a state of anarchy. We’d either be screaming and tearing our hair out (like that guy in the painting, The Scream), or we’d be like the boxer, suffering the quite direct physical consequences of hesitation and doubt, because there seem to exist external forces that are acting strongly on us. We can’t escape those by retreating to a state of zen, we can only ignore them. If pain is an illusion, gosh darn is it hard to see past!
Even if we were to be swallowed up by our thoughts (maybe like a boxer in a match), the physical world and the impressions it imposes can’t be erased, nullified, wiped from existence and perception. They materially affect our state of mind: for example, getting punched in a fight. We are reactive creatures; our minds and bodies react to pain, to hunger, to sense data. We reel back and we exclaim, we get distracted and we try to escape. These external forces exist to us in a meaningful sense because they determine our thoughts, and also how we navigate existence and experience. It has to be more useful then, given experience the way we experience it, to treat things by and large as substantively real.
I’ll add a second point. As a person who’s never tanked a fist to the face, or any other hit, I couldn’t tell you what that feels like. I could approximate it in words maybe, but those words don’t correspond, in my brain, with a memory or imagination of the feeling of hit-in-the-face. I can’t meditate my way into feeling that pain (but let me know if you can?), I’d have to experience getting hit in order to feel it, to have a clear idea of it, to understand the word or term or phenomenon completely, and to be able to extrapolate similar experiences. Our ability to imagine and conceive of some of the most fundamental ideas and perceptions – colour, mass, movement, sound and pain – depends on our experience of them. In Meditations IV, Descartes himself stated that our capacity for imagination is derived from what we have previously perceived through the senses. Fundamental ideas are tied fundamentally to the material.
So if our state of mind, moment to moment, is affected by the body; if the body and imagination react to experience; how do we divorce the mind, the body, and the world?
If this fight had happened in Descartes’ mind, he might have doubted whether he had a body at all. If it had happened to Hobbes,5 he might have concluded that we’re just violent, instinct-motivated, unthinking animals. If it had happened to Spinoza,6 he might have wondered whether the guy punching him actually existed. But in the boxer’s mind, none of that matters. Because his nose is broken.
Cover & Banner photos from Freepik
Notes
- Schrödinger and the Double Slit Experiment: the boxer here actually meant to refer to the double slit experiment, which famously found that the behaviour of electrons changes depending on whether or not they are being observed.
- Descartes: A philosopher from the 1600s, who went on an inquiry questioning how our senses, and even our faculties of reason, are prone to mistakes, and that it is therefore unwise to trust them.
- Neo and the Matrix: Keanu Reeves in The Matrix is able to control reality around him (because it’s a computer simulation) and he does this iconic slow-mo backbend scene to dodge bullets when running from the bad guys.
- British Carbonara: a reference to that one Carbonara cooking special on British morning television, where the host says “d’you know, if you add ham in it, it’s closer to a British Carbonara,” which leaves the Italian chef absolutely flabbergasted, and he responds sharply, “If my grandmother had wheels she would’ve been a bike!”
- Hobbes: A philosopher from the 1600s. Hobbes adopts a quite mechanistic account of humanity (do not mistake this for his being an empiricist), viewing man, at some points, as an amalgamation of systems (muscles, bones, etc.) which possess the faculty of motion; at other points as basal and violent creatures, fuelled by pleasure (including the pleasure of curiosity), desire and appetite.
- Spinoza: A philosopher from the 1600s. Spinoza believed that everything was an expression of God, including other people—that is, everything, including people, is subsumed under the substance that is God; God is everything.
About the Author
Davina is a third year PPE major with an interest in sleeping. She has never been hit in the face before, but that is not an invitation to try.