On Virtue in the Context of Sport

PHYSICAL CULTURE AND SPORT. STUDIES AND RESEARCH

""The so-called “weak thought”, theorized by the Italian postmodernist philosopher Gianni Vattimo (born in 1936), considered one of the most important Italian philosophers, has dismantled the main concepts on which Western philosophy was based (that is, the notion of Truth, God, Reason, an absolute foundation to thought, etc.). This philosophy, which is inspired by Nietzsche’s nihilism, by Heidegger, and by the philosophy of hermeneutics and deconstruction, offers a critical starting point not only to rethink, in a less rigid way, our Western culture, its philosophy, and its problems, but also the ethical principles and educational values that guide human life. Sport – as a human phenomenon and philosophical problem characterized by the presence of values, norms, behaviors, and rules that involves the action of human beings who interact and communicate “in” and “by” the game – can also be read in the light of this emerging philosophical theory. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that weak thought and its fundamental categories can be used and applied from a theoretical point of view in order to interpret and understand sport, deconstructing its meanings and its sociocultural and educational values. Using the critical contribution of weak thought, in this study we will reflect on and rethink in a new way some of the main concepts considered absolute and fundamental to sport’s logical and philosophical structure, such as “winning” and “losing”, “referee” (which embodies the principle of “authority”), “opponent”, “freedom” in the game, “rules”, and respect when one plays. The purpose of this study is to undertake a critical reflection on the limits of the concept of sport proposed by the Western tradition and to lay the foundations for a new model of ethics and education for the sports of the future. """

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2010

Despite the rich philosophical heritage of the East, the connection between athletics and education for character or virtue is more commonly associated with the West. Classical Eastern philosophy does focus on virtue, but it seems to exclude sport as a means of cultivation since the Confucian is uninterested in victory and the Daoist seeks passivity and avoids contention. A closer look reveals, however, that Eastern conceptions of virtue have much in common with those of Ancient Greece so often linked to sport. Combining research in the history and philosophy of sport with analysis of such texts such as the Analects of Kongzi (Confucius), Laozi's Daodejing , Plato's Republic and Epictetus's Handbook , this paper argues that the enlightened practice of sport has the potential to cultivate qualities common both to de and aret . The fact that sport was linked to virtue in Ancient Greece but not Ancient China derives from different ideas about social prestige more than different conceptions of ethical education. Indeed, the enlightened practice of modern sport may develop a more universal kind of virtue; thereby providing common ground upon which to heal the East-West split in a way characterised by mutual respect and emphasising our common humanity

In the last decades virtue ethics in sport has gained much attention. This is not surprising because it seems that some characteristics of this ethical theory successfully respond to very complex situations in sport. The experience shows that merely rules of particular sport do not assure moral sport actions. Already Plato has pointed out that there are two guides of moral actions: laws (or rules) directing us from outside and virtues directing us from inside. He was convinced that virtues are better than laws, since it does not make any sense to promulgate laws among non-virtues persons, because they will disregard them. On the other hand the virtues people are able to find out what is good and what is not regardless of laws. Therefore, it is important to become a good person, since only then also laws or rules make sense. Plato exposes four main virtues: justice, prudence (wisdom), courage (fortitude), and temperance (moderation, self-control). But the question arises why only four virtues and not more? Plato responds that these four virtues represent the whole of virtues. (Republic, 428a) These virtues are evidently connected with Plato‘s construction of human soul. But these four cardinal virtues are not the only virtues, neither in Plato‘s philosophy, but they are the 'hinges', on which all the other virtues turn. They are the necessary foundation and prerequisite for all the others. So, which role can be ascribed to cardinal virtues in sport? For Plato the first and the most important is virtue of justice. It seems that it is also preferential in sport, especially when we think about sport competitions. But, as emphasized the medieval philosophy the source of justice and other virtues is reason. Reason is the essence of human nature and of all moral acts. Therefore to act in accordance with reason – to have the virtue of prudence is the first demand. While prudence refers to individual alone, justice refers to others. Every sport competition, contest, is therefore the field of virtue of justice. The basis of justice is to give everyone his due. Justice put us in a position of a debtor to a fellow-man. This requires that we play fair and honorable. Therefore donated victory is not righteous because it is not owed. Besides that, virtue of justice arranges matters between the individuals and between the individual and community which has a great impact on morality in sport. The third virtue is courage that is directed towards individual itself. Plato already recognizes sport activity as a main mean for development of this virtue. (Laches, 190c) To be courageous and to endure till the end is the essence of courage. It is obvious that courage is essential for any quality sport. The last one is the virtue of temperance which is also directed towards individual itself. At a first glance it appears not suitable for modern times. But, if we take a closer look it can be seen that the athletes cannot succeed without renounce of many unnecessary things.

hrcak.srce.hr

Starting from Plato's Th e Republic where we can easily note Socrates' statements that music and gymnastics can be applied to creative activity, i.e. that "there are two arts for which I would say that a god gave them as a present to the human race-music and gymnastics because ... love for knowledge in them-not for the soul and the body separately, but for their harmonious alignment"-it is logical to wonder about the importance of sport for the moral upbringing of an individual, but what is more, about its importance in the development of an individual into an ethically autonomous person (personality), i.e. whether moral values of sport should be included today not only in the moral upbringing but also in the ethical education of an individual? Th is comes from the fact that in addition to instrumental values of sport, there are also its intrinsic values which are very important for further development of a person on his/her way to autonomous formation. All of the abovementioned only indicates the main basis for the direction of considerations in this paper: what are the ethical values that sport off ers and that we set in sport and from there about the role and importance of sport in broader spheres of moral development; further, the role of school in setting and necessity of sport and its ethical value in moral upbringing and ethical education in a person's character development, to be able to respond to the dilemma about the basis and justifi cation of UNESCO's imperative on the introduction of sport and its ethical values into the concept of ethical education.

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.

International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 1995

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2017

Wood in Sport Equipment – Heritage, Present, Perspective, 2022

Very often, the reaction to the many scandals that periodically rock the world of sport is simply to make urgent demands to develop a healthy sports culture. If this is the aim, I shall try to outline what the sphere of ethics and philosophy might contribute to the debate.

JPS, 2006

In his seminal work, Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga argues persuasively that sport is a form of play. This view is widely accepted among sport philosophers today, as evidenced by the use of terms such as ‘nonserious,’ ‘autotelic,’ and ‘gratuitous’ to describe the subject of our study. At the same time this play-paradigm seems at odds with the modern world, which takes sports very seriously, puts them in the service of deliberate ends, and views them (or competition at least) as essential for human thriving. Indeed our modern use of sport seems to better resemble ancient Greece, where athletic contest (agōn) served specific political and educational goals. Huizinga claims that the ancient Hellenes simply became unaware of their contests’ autotelic character (5: 30–31); my own concern is that we moderns are becoming unaware of–or indifferent to–sport’s contemporary ends.1 Insofar as we still value the social and educational potential of sport in the modern world, we can benefit from a study of its corresponding function in the ancient world. What my own study of these phenomena reveals is that sport’s social and educational benefits derive not from its playful character, but from its philosophical origins as a knowledge-seeking activity.