A philosophical analysis of the nature, attraction, and limits of sport

Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection

By RANDOLPH FEEZELL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-02955-4

Contents

Acknowledgments.............................................viiIntroduction................................................ix1. Sport, Bodily Excellence, and Play.......................32. The Freedom of Play......................................193. Sport, the Aesthetic, and Narrative......................324. Play and the Absurd......................................465. Sport and the View from Nowhere..........................586. Sportsmanship............................................837. On Cheating in Sports....................................978. Sportsmanship and Blowouts...............................1119. Sport, Character, and Virtue.............................12310. Respect for the Game....................................143Notes.......................................................157Index.......................................................171

Chapter One

Sport, Bodily Excellence, and Play

Where does one begin in philosophy of sport? What does it mean to take a philosophical interest in sport? Even for someone with a significant background in philosophy the answers to these questions are not obvious. Historically, philosophers have for the most part simply ignored sport as an appropriate topic of philosophical concern. Suppose for years you have unreflectively participated in and watched sports, and suppose you are also committed to the Socratic ideal of the examined life. A kind of vague existential imperative might naturally arise to seek a philosophical understanding of sport, but its method and its shape would be indeterminate. It's not that you want to keep a philosophical conversation going; on the contrary, you want to find a way into a philosophical conversation about sport.

In this context I believe it is appropriate to turn to the first systematic work on sport by an important contemporary philosopher. Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry, by Paul Weiss, is important because it seemed to show, for some, that genuine philosophical reflection about sport might be possible. Much has been written about sport since that book was published. In it he offers an early, interesting account of sport. He is first interested in the Platonic search for the nature of sport. Philosophy of sport involves a variety of central concerns, and one might consult relatively recent publications to gain a sense of the subject matter and scope of such reflection. The reader will find in these publications a wide range of topics examined, many of which are related, unsurprisingly, to the central areas of philosophical inquiry: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy. For example, one important part of philosophy of sport might be construed as applied ethics, in which such sport-related topics as sportsmanship, cheating, violence, competition, performance-enhancing drugs, and sexual equality are examined. Or one might reflect on the aesthetic aspects of sport and wonder whether there is a close relationship between sport and art. However, many would agree that an appropriate point of entry into philosophy of sport involves questions about the nature of sport and its relation to two other important concepts: play and game. This might be especially important if other considerations, including ethical ones, were essentially related to such grounding questions as What is sport? How is sport related to the nature of play and game?

In this chapter I primarily examine Paul Weiss's attempt to give an adequate account of the nature of sport. In doing this, I do not want to leave the impression that this is the only topic dealt with either in Sport or in his developmental meditation on sport, which mainly occurs in volume 5 of his philosophical diary, Philosophy In Process. For example, Weiss attempts to give a relatively complete set of categories that describe athletic experience and enable us to classify sports and understand their differences. He offers a phenomenologically nuanced examination of the nature of athletic acts. The categories of speed, endurance, strength, accuracy, and coordination are closely examined to capture descriptively the reality of "the athlete in action."

Weiss's work also attempts to give the vocabulary of sports a precision and clarity it has not previously had by making distinctions among terms not ordinarily distinguished and by giving precise definitions of those terms. For example, he offers insightful discussions of such notions as "play," "sport," "game," and "contest." Finally, there are discussions of topics such as women in athletics and amateurism versus professionalism. However, all of these topics are either directly or indirectly related to what I take to be his major concern in Sport, which is to offer and defend an account of the essential nature of sport. He states his view bluntly and straightforwardly in chapter 1: that sport involves the pursuit of excellence in and through the body. He further attempts to justify his theory by examining other "apparently more plausible views" and by offering a description of athletic experience that would contribute to a more complete account of what it would mean to speak of "excellence" in athletics. I have little doubt that the pursuit of excellence is an important element in sports, but I have doubts about whether this is the element that defines the nature of sport. Weiss insists that he has written "a work in philosophy, and not in sport. It is a work in philosophy just as a philosophy of history or a philosophy of art is a work in philosophy and not in history or in art." This means that Weiss offers arguments and invites a philosophic examination of his account of this historically neglected area of human activity. In the following I examine Weiss's view of sport and the arguments that support this view. Briefly, in the next section I attempt to sketch the account of sport offered by Weiss, emphasizing the important arguments offered early in Sport. This section is straightforwardly expository. In the following section I respond to Weiss's view of sport and tentatively offer a more plausible account based on the classic accounts of play offered by Huizinga and Caillois. Finally, I offer some speculative remarks on the experiential requirements for an adequate philosophy of sport and some brief comments concerning the importance of an inquiry into the nature of sport.

* * *

It is no wonder that philosophers are finally attempting to think seriously about sport. Sports have an almost ubiquitous presence in American culture and in other parts of the world as well. At a time when people find fewer and fewer things to care about, amateur sports are setting records for participation, and professional sports are setting records for spectator attendance. The sporting world offers to many people the context of their hopes, the locus of their momentary reprieve from a burdensome reality, or the repository for the only kind of heroism that they can appreciate at this moment in history. In the preface to his provocative book on sports, Michael Novak responds to the neglect of sport by serious thinkers:

Considering the importance of sports to humankind—considering the eminence of stadia and gyms and playing fields on university campuses, comparing the size of the sports section to any other in the paper—our intellectual negligence is inexcusable. Only prejudice, or...