Chapter 2. Sportworld

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2013

This is chapter seven of the monograph, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport. The chapter explores the possibility that sport, like art, can be about something. The strengths and weakness of the use of Nelson Goodman’s concept of ‘worldmaking’ within the philosophy of sport are reviewed. It is argued that important lessons for the interpretation of sport may be drawn from the hermeneutics of music. Insofar as sport is constituted according to rules, it seems to have a syntax but no semantics. Arguments from musical hermeneutics and the aesthetic theory of T.W. Adorno are used in order to argue that sport, like music, may ‘speak as a world’ because it takes the materials, ideas and fundamental experiences of our cultural existence, and plays with them. In that it feels right to participate in or to watch sport we recognise this. This is illustrated this through a consideration of the complex and diverse experiences of time that sport offers.

Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

If what can be described as "ideal" in relation to art may be somewhat abstract, then in this article I will apply the basic notion that the ideal is that which links the invisible (thoughtcontent) and visible (the form, "frame", "vessel") to that of ideal as it manifests in sport. For, since we cannot speak intelligibly about x without some image or word, sport "pictures" or shows are an ideal in specific forms, some of which is certainly artistic, rendering a watereddown version of the ideal (abstract), though no less a reflection thereof. In such terms, it is not that sport is "lower" than art; rather it concretizes the abstract in a less intellectual format though no less powerfully and meaningfully. It draws from art and spreads its message downward, as a material framing device of the ideal that satisfies not only a need to relate and socialize, but an intuitive grasp of the hope for a better, more ideal existence. In these respects, sport like art necessarily has moral implications which will be developed toward the close of the article with a view to determining the manner in which the ideal shapes both sport (and art).

I outline the trend to reconstruct sport as an instance of art-aesthetic expression. I do this by bringing the readers attention historically and conceptually to the task of relating art and sport. In this regard, I highlight the " weak " version of the aesthetics of the everyday (so named AEL) which tend to see somewhat of a continuity between art and sport. I then develop three basic underpinnings that suggest what I would call a paradigm shift, namely Einfuhlung (empathy), play and aesthesis. The upshot is that art and sport mediate reality in such a way that although one cannot ultimately know reality, they both offer similar philosophical framings, that is, they enhance a world consciousness of connectivity, sport functioning in such a way that it need not be rigidly distinguished from art. I suggest an observation which devolves from this theoretical framework, namely the " will to form " .

2021

The focus of the book Philosophy of Sport. Emergence and Development of a Discipline is on a drawing and critical analysis of the history and development of the philosophy of sport as a separate branch of philosophy, but also the ethics and bioethics of sport as its key subdisciplines. In the first chapter of the book, the author discusses the question of what sport is. He first presents and critically considers the definitions of play, game, and sport as set out by B. H. Suits in his masterpiece Grasshopper. Games, Life and Utopia and some of his articles. Namely, Suits’ definitions and understandings of the “tricky triad” (play, games, sport) are the foundation and starting point of the philosophy of sport, as well as the framework for understanding sports and all its problems and issues. In relation to Suits', the author also considers the definitions of Huizinga, Wittgenstein, Fink, Guttman and Nguyen, and lay the foundations for the philosophy of play and games as separate discipline or area of philosophical consideration. The author concludes that the definition of sport cannot be provided in a logical and unambiguous way. Therefore, he turns to consideration and critical examination of the different characterizations and conceptualizations of sport presented in the literature – testing and contesting, the spirit of sports, the integrity of sports, Olympic sports. The chapter concludes with the author’s evaluation of the literature on the defining sport. In the second chapter, the author gives his definition of the philosophy of sport and a brief overview of all sub-branches developed so far. Then, he presents his own view of the history of the philosophy of sport in three phases. The first is the Ancient Phase or ‘the ancient Mediterranean roots of the discipline’, where he immediately points out that it is incorrect to call ‘ancient competitive games to honour the gods’ – a sport. Namely, sport per se, as well as its name, originate from the 19th century or over 2000 years after the ancient period. As the content relevant to the philosophy of sport in Ancient Greek period, he finds depictions of competitive games in the Iliad and Odyssey. Furthermore, in the works of Plato and Aristotle, he finds numerous passages that speak of the important role of physical exercise and competitive games in honour of the gods, especially in the terms of education. The second phase the author calls the Pre-Disciplinary Phase, which on the one hand, includes the post-ancient history of philosophy as the pool from which sport-philosophy pulls out relevant authors and works for better philosophical consideration and understandings of the sport, and on the other hand, includes the theory of sport in the 19th and 20th Century which is the forerunner of the philosophy of sport as a philosophical discipline. The third is the disciplinary phase that begins in 1972 – the point in time in which the philosophy of sport became a separate and distinct branch of general philosophy. Within the disciplinary phase, the author points out and critically examine the key points of development. At the end of the chapter, he gives a brief overview of the development of sports philosophy outside the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. In the third chapter, the author critically reflects and considers the role of William John Morgan in the development of the discipline. The author identifies Morgan as one who has made key contributions to the development and global spread of the philosophy of sport in several ways. He puts emphasis on Morgan’s consideration of economization and commodification of the modern sport as one of the fundamental reasons for almost all problems of today's sport. The author makes the second emphasis on the possible solutions for sports, which Morgan finds in sport practice communities and the application of J. Habermas’ deliberation process and J.-P. Sartre’s discourse ethics. Finally, the author brings his own addition to the solution for a (more) moral sport – proper upbringing and education. In the fourth chapter, the author critically examines and considers the ethics of sport, a dominant field or subdiscipline of the philosophy of sport from the 1990s. Firstly, he puts careful and detailed attention to the (development of) contours and divisions of the ethics of sport, where he makes a claim that in the ethics of sport there are actually only four fields of consideration: competition, enhancements, gender issues, and social issues in sport. Then he determines the key points in the development of the ethics of sport and puts critical considerations of them. Finally, he elaborates on possible directions for further development. The fifth chapter brings critical discussion over the normative theories of sport and of the internal or intrinsic values of sport. The author provides a critical account of the theories of formalism, conventionalism, and internalism in five variants: W. J. Morgan’s internalism, J. S. Russell’s interpretivism, R. Simon’s broad internalism, S. Kretchmar’s pluralistic internalism, and S. MacRae’s shallow interpretivism. The author points out, and this is mostly unrecognized in the discipline, that W. J. Morgan was in fact the originator of internalism on one hand, and on the other hand, that he got the idea from A. MacIntyre’s book After Virtue. Here, the author presents his critical understandings of the internal values of sport and suggests that they should be called intrinsic because they are not only internal but, moreover, essential. After the critical observation and evaluation of the debate between the proponents of rationally oriented broad internalism whose aim is to rationally extract the essence of sport and use it as normative guidance on the one side, and Morgans emphasis on the view that there is no essence of sport and that we need to historicize and socialize internal values on the other side, the author puts the emphasis on the possible solutions or ways out of the debate. Thus, on the one hand, he presents the (new) model of intrinsic values in sports that he has developed: intersubjective, emotional, spiritual, sensual, cognitive and ethical. On the other hand, he expresses a clear position on the impossibility of formulating intrinsic values of sports except through personalized narratives of sports practitioners. Finally, he presented three directions of possible exits from the current situation. In the sixth chapter, the author focuses on the bioethics of sport subdiscipline. A the beginning, he offers a (new) definition of the bioethics of a sport that would correspond to all present understandings of bioethics. He then presents a brief history (which is indeed very short) and considers the thematic spectrum in two different understandings of the bioethics of sport, which the author calls narrow bioethics of sport and broad bioethics of sport. In a narrow version, the concept of bioethics as the new medical ethics the term bio is reduced to biomedicine and biotechnology. Thus, the thematic scope is pretty narrow, including eight groups of issues: sports medicine, health, doping, genes, biotechnology, gender, Paralympics, and transhumanism. In a broad version, the term bio is understood as bios or life and refers not only to issues of human life but also to non-human and to all the life forms in general. Thematic spectre is thus very wide: human body issues, animal use, environmental issues, danger and threat issues, psychological and socio-political-economic issues, and the issues of ethical committees and codes in sports… Furthermore, the author defines the bioethics of sport as the one that deals with and solves the most difficult cases of sport today, but also as the one that creates and develops scenarios for the future of the sport. In that regard, the author analyzes cases of doping, cyborgization, intersexuality and the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, in his view of the future of sport, he recognizes and elaborates ten scenarios for the future development of sport. In the final, seventh chapter, the author brings the first history of philosophy, ethics and bioethics of sport in Croatia through three aspects: 1) organized classes at universities, 2) published publications with specific topics, and 3) organized conferences and gatherings. At the very end, the author brings several scenarios for possible further development.

Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Kinanthropologica, 2016

In order to discuss the aesthetics of sport I shall start with some metaphysical considerations: instead of using the notion of essence (definition) of sport, understood as a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, I shall try to base these considerations on the notion of the nature of sport. In my understanding, the nature of sport is a very basic phenomenon that lies at the origin and shapes the history of sport. It is a technology of training and mastering physical skills valued for themselves. Now, the aesthetic dimension of sport is based on the technically valuable qualities of sports, which are the consecutive properties of sport. Such qualities are present in all types of sport, not only in the so-called 'aesthetic sports' (Best) or 'performances' (Suits). Finally, I advance a thesis that although sport is not a form of art, its aesthetic dimension is closer to the nature of sport than its ethical dimension.

International Journal of English and Cultural Studies, 2018

While there is no "expressive theory of sport", there is certainly, according to Hyland (1984, 1990), Osterhoudt (1973), Kerr (1997) and Weis (1969) a pivotal role played by emotions and feelings in sport which amount to a type of expressive theory and in that sense it parallels expressive theories in art. In this article I will first isolate three moments that capture sports performance and parallel art. Then, I will describe sport as an expression of emotional release, which is often how one understands art. Based on such overlaps, I will argue for two philosophical observations that devolve from such a comparison, namely ineffability and the unity of mind-body (in sport). Finally, I will apply a reading of Kant to sport, in order to substantiate the idea that sport, like art draws from a philosophical heritage. Imagine three isolated "steps" in sport: the focus before performance; the performance itself and the fan's response as they articulate the emotional basis of sport which is familiar, albeit perhaps subconscious. After a brief analysis of these imagined images, I give a simplified historical outline of sport which describes the feeling-basis of play that forms the foundation for modern sport. I then examine what I have termed the "(surplus) expressive-energy theory of sport" which I have gleaned from the above writers, a theory that argues that sport is the expression of inner emotional states. Such states are in need of expiation of both the practitioner as well as the expression of certain basic emotions on the part of the audience. A narrower version of this theory is that sport is the release of aggressiveness, which coheres with its instinctual origins and the "surplus theory". A critique of sport as expression (of surplus energy, aggression…) follows with a view to highlight some shortcomings in the ideas presented and thus the need for further theories to account for the multi-faceted nature of sport, a similar requirement that is needed for art given the shortcomings of expressive theories as applied to the arts.

International Journal of Social Science Studies, 2019

I argue that sport can be considered aesthetic and thus converge with a certain view of art. We can enjoy abundance and proliferation as well as negation and austerity in nature, art and sport. The aesthetics of abundance and negation are “intertwined” in sport as art-like. Sport is well positioned to perform art’s cultural task better than traditional forms of art. Art and sport are intertwined in the sense that sport as an aesthetic, cultural phenomenon may continue the work of art. By aesthetics, the author focuses on notions of formalism in sport. This “will to form” is predicated on the need humans have for order, pattern and harmony. In that sense, art and sport might offer us a vision of clarity and precision. A theory of formalism applies equally to art and sport.