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The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war. John Lyly, Euphues, 1578.
All’s fair in love and war, we hear at a tender age. Though this is tempered by schoolboy concepts of fair play and never hit a man when he’s down. Fair play is reasonable if you don’t mean to win at any cost and the other guy doesn’t mean to kill you, but all that goes by the board in any genuine confrontation. more
Does ethics describe key ultimate wants, or only minor wants, and social norms and signals which instrumentally help us achieve key wants? Consider the saying “All is fair in love and war.” It is often quoted, and rarely does a listener respond “Not it’s not.” Yet folks also often complain loudly about unfairness. Taken together, these suggest that for most, fairness is largely instrumental.
Those who embrace this saying suggest that a threat of military defeat, and perhaps extermination, would overwhelm most other considerations. Similarly, they suggest that the threat of not attracting a hoped-for mate also overwhelms most other considerations.
Setting love alongside war as a similar reason to ignore fairness is quite telling. Wars have often ended extremely, with total victory or total defeat. But if you don’t attract a particular desired lover, you might well attract a lover nearly as good. Those who equate the harm of getting their second favorite mate, vs. their favorite mate, with the harm of losing vs. winning a war, seem to say that mate quality is overwhelming important. Little matters nearly as much – certainly not fairness (or racism).
Added 11Aug2010: This page has been translated into Belorussian.
Fairness in Love And War
I think most everyone here surprisingly misses the point of the quote, then they go on to justify their 'bias" with the pillars of bias like Darwin. John Lyly, Euphues...this writing known as "Euphemism"...hello? The subtitle is the "Anatomy of Wit". We are told "at a tender age" euphemistically that "all is fair in love and war". So, tell me...where is the euphemism? The irony? Tell me what else is there...but "love and war"? The statement is to suggest irony in the concept of fairness being applied selectively. The truism suggested is that "fairness" and thus "justice" do not exist in "this world" (of his time...coming out of the "dark ages"). It is not "in support" of unfairness, but rather the opposite. It is a slap in the face of the so called 'philosophers" who see themselves as "rational" and "fair". Stop reading literature and philosophy "literally" as if you are reading the Bible in Kansas.
I think you may be mistaking the use of fairness in this context. Given that there were rather significant rules governing the proper conduct of warfare (and, for that matter, love) during the 16th century, it's extremely unlikely the original author of the quote intended to claim that any means used in love or war was justifiable.
It seems more likely that this is an observation rather than a moral dictum. If you lose at love or war, it is quite useless to claim that the victor succeeded through unfair means; you've still lost. This makes far more sense with our current (and past) values. It's wrong for terrorists to use biochemical weapons, but they still can, and we still have to deal with it and try to stop them. It does no good to get hit with a biochemical attack and then protest, "But that's cheating!"
As much as you might like it to be, the quote does not seem intended to endorse any action on behalf of someone who is at war or is in love. That might have nice evo-psych implications, but virtually no one genuinely believes this, even if they do acknowledge that if your opponent breaks the rules, you need to have an actual response, not a moral objection.