Introduction
Something strange happened to the game of chess between 1470 and 1490.
Two
families of Jewish converts from Valencia, Spain, the Lucena and the Vinyoles,
unsatisfied with the pace of the game, decided to introduce a series of radical innovations
to permit a quick development of the game and enhance its tactical possibilities. They
turned the weakest piece of the game, the Queen, into the most powerful figure on the
board. They enhanced the powers of all other pieces, aside from the King. In so doing,
they substituted the traditional manner of winning the game, "baring" -- that is, victory by
eliminating all the opponents pieces -- by victory through checking the King, a rare
outcome in earlier versions of the game. The new version of the game was a spectacular
success.
This radical shift in the rules of chess is peculiar if only because chess is often
cited as a prime example of a structure governed by constitutive rules. In philosophy,
Wittgensteinian game theory and International Relations theory, the rules of chess are
used as an example of a type of rule so deeply imbedded in the nature of the game as to
constitute its identity, the very significance of what it means to play chess.
Regulative
rules, governing the superficial aspects of the game (time limit, shape of figures) may
change, but constitutive rules cannot change without transforming chess into a different
game entirely. Both parties to the dispute over the existence of constitutive rules in the
international system have played up this metaphor: Social constructivists use the case of
1
Ricardo Calvo and Egbert Meissenburg, "Valencia und die Geburt des Neuen Schachs" in Strouhal (ed.)
Vom Wesir zur Dame: Kulturelle Regeln, ihr Zwang und Bruechigkeit; Ueber Kulturelle Transformationen
am Beispiel des Schachspiels (Vienna, Austria: Internationales Forschungszentrum der
Kulturwissenschaften, 1995).
2
Harry Golombek, A History of Chess (Routledge &Kegan Paul, London, 1976), p.83.
3
See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, (Basil, Blackwell & Mott, 1958); John R.
Searle, The Construction of Reality, (New York: The Free Press, 1995); Robert Jackson, Quasi-States:
Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).
2
Convention