The Philosophy of Games: (1) A brief history of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee and The Five Ways Of Attack.

Jeet Kune Do is a martial art founded in the 1960s by Bruce Lee and was developed by Bruce with the help of his close friends until his death in 1973.

Bruce Lee created JKD because of the limitations that can be found in many martial arts styles. A “karateka” may be skilled at striking, but is likely inferior to a Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner, who would be more skilled when ground fighting. Both martial artists would be inferior to a decent krav maga practitioner if weapons were the focus.

There are clear limitations in certain martial arts as most of them completely disregard weapons, ground game, striking or a combination of those things. There is also tribalism between different martial arts and even between their internal styles, which means flaws are not addressed for the sake of tradition and reputation. Bruce Lee considered this to be extremely negative because martial arts, as a result, stops being about freely expressing one’s self and becomes a form of posturing and self repression. 

Bruce Lee saw these problems and tried to address them by making Jeet kune do, which translates into “way of the intercepting fist”. It is a conceptual martial art with a focus on using what is useful and disregarding whatever is useless. There is also a focus on speed, offense and timing, among other things.

One of the most important concepts in JKD is “the five ways of attack”.