Miyamoto Musashi, The Search for the Unity on the path of the Polymathy

I’m currently reading Miyamoto Musashi’s philosophical treatise “The Book of Five Elements” (五輪書 Go Rin no Sho). The first chapter, “The Earth”, is where Musashi explains the basics of his sword school,, Niten Ichi Ryu (二天一流, something like “style of two heavens [united as] one”, referencing to the use of two swords for the combat and also to the [non] dualist philosophy of the school), and on this explanation, Musashi mentions other occupations beyond the swordsmanship to compare with the practice of the sword itself, such as carpentry and et cetera. On the subchapter. “Knowing the Advantages of Expression ‘Militar Art’”, Musashi wrote:
“The samurai commandments do not include Confucians, Buddhists, kabuki actors, etiquette teachers, noh theater actors. However, even following a different path, if the knowledge on them is deepened, it is possible to understand them all. The important thing is that the man seeks improvement in his area of activity”

And earlier in the treatise, he says a simple sentence: “The principle of military art is aimed at knowing the unity of a thing, and hence understanding ten thousand.” This number “ten thousand” is not randomly choosen, it is a Taoist heritage in the Japanese philosophical/theological mentality, where ten thousand represents infinity (the Dao, from his unity, would have produced Heaven and Earth and, from there, created the 10,000 things, that is, it generated visible and invisible infinity, as reported by Lao Tze). Musashi preaches that only with the knowledge of all things can we become masters in our art. But it is not simply knowing, it is meditating to understand what unites such different arts (such as cooking and theater, or painting and the art of tea) and thus understand the Unity of everything. It is a path of self-knowledge, which is the knowledge of the whole. A phrase with a similar meaning is attributed to the Basque-Arab Caliph of Cordoba, Al-Hakam II, who lived in the 10th century and had an immense personal library and guaranteed high investment in the area of education, “Study about everything, and then you will see that nothing is superfluous”.

I would also like to include an aphorism [48] from the book “Aurora”, by Friedrich Nietzsche: “Only after knowing all things can man know himself. In fact, the things are simply the frontiers of man.” . The Philosopher said at times that things like names and words were man’s limitations, and for man to become truly free, he should know his limitations and understand them, as he proposed in the aforementioned aphorism. And just to finish this brief text, I would like to share a quote of the brazilian philosopher, Mário Ferreira dos Santos, about the polymathy, when he was asked why he was a polymath: “There are so many people that admire me for being I a philosopher and also deal with topics that belongs to so many disciplines, but all of these disciplines belongs to the Philosophy. What would be a case to be concerned, marveled, it would be if I, as a philosopher, wouldn’t be able to deal with this topics, because in the philosophy, there is no specialization. The philosopher who is a specialist is a “contradictio in adjectis”, because the philosophy is universalist, generalist by nature, and a specialization on philosophy can have many philosophy teacher, but never a philosopher. No great philosopher was a specialist, none of them, all of them were universalists and treated about everything that concerned the philosophy field.”