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 unbelief, can account for it.

What "grabs" so many millions? What is the secret power of attraction? How can we care so much?

In this same spirit, Paul Weiss begins his philosophic inquiry of sport by wondering why so many people are involved in sport.

Sport does not only interest the young; it interests almost everyone. The fact compels a pause. Why are so many so deeply involved, so caught up emotionally in athletic events? Are they in the grip of some basic drive? Do they only express some accidentally acquired cultural habit of admiration for successful violence? Are they really interested in perfection? Does it perhaps give them a special kind of pleasure?

Weiss immediately adds that these questions have "philosophic import, dealing as they do—as we shall see—with what is close to the core of man, what he seeks, and what he does." Yet there is some ambiguity in asking these questions that are said to have "philosophic import." Many people are "involved" or "interested" in sport. But what kind of interest or involvement is Weiss talking about? Are we talking about immediate participation in athletic activity? Or are we talking about spectator involvement? As we shall see, Weiss thinks that an answer to the first question—the one concerned with the athlete's participation in sports—also indicates why spectators are so fascinated by viewing athletic events. I am inclined to think that the fascination involved in these two orders of experience is somewhat different; perhaps something like the difference between the artist who creates an artwork and the spectator who completes the object by viewing it. But I will put off these considerations until later. For our purposes it should be noted that Weiss's account of sport primarily focuses on the athlete's immediate participation in athletic activity. So Weiss is initially asking the following question: Why does the active participant involve himself in sport?

Moreover, what is the sense in which this question has "philosophic import?" For Weiss, a philosophy of sport is embedded in a philosophy of human nature. A philosophic account of sport answers this guiding question by relating sport to the nature of the human person. As Weiss says, "If a study of sport is to be of philosophic interest, it should show its relation to men's basic concerns. It will then be able to make evident why sport is pursued almost everywhere." A philosophy of sport, in Weiss's sense, would attempt to sift the complex elements involved in athletic experience and find the most basic factor or factors that would account for the fact that sport "interests almost everyone."

What is the "basic concern" of people that accounts for the widespread interest in sport? According to Weiss it is "concern for excellence." At first glance, it is not clear why Weiss thinks this is the most adequate account of why people engage in sport. Certainly the pursuit and appreciation of excellence is an important aspect of human existence, and this is the first premise in Weiss's argument. "Unlike other beings we men have the ability to appreciate the excellent. We desire to achieve it. We want to share in it." If we accept this first premise, how are we led to the notion that sport is primarily understood in terms of people's concern for excellence? At this point Weiss makes a very curious—and I think misleading—move. The important clue that reveals the nature of sport is the fact that it is primarily "young men, though, who are most absorbed in sports. It is they who participate in it most passionately and most successfully." Now the argument becomes clear. There are many ways in which people can become excellent, for example, intellectually, morally, or in terms of some skill or craft. All people supposedly desire excellence, but young people—Weiss unfortunately insists on speaking of young men—have neither the maturity nor the experience to become excellent in more important ways. Therefore, they turn to sport as a way to become excellent physically; sport must be understood as the arena in which the person can become physically excellent. "Sport is a traditionalized set of rules to be exemplified by men who try to become excellent in and through their bodies." The young have the possibility of turning to sport in order to attain a unique aspect of self-completion, and they become physically excellent according to the unique demands made by the particular sport in which they participate.

Those who are young cannot do much to maintain or to contribute to culture; they are not experienced or developed enough to see or do things in the round. Most of them find it quite difficult to attend to the important for more than an occasional, short period, or to be much occupied with what is not relevant to the satisfaction of personal desires and short-run concerns. Most young men are largely unformed and undirected. No longer boys, they are not yet full adults, able to function as prime factors in society, state, or civilization. The best that most of them can do is to be good at sport. And that is a goal well worth their devotion.

Weiss sees sport as an arena in which people pursue the ideal of excellence by means of physical activity. Insofar as we are bodily beings, the pursuit of bodily excellence is a necessary element in a person's quest for self-perfection. It is, one might say, an often overlooked element necessary for what Aristotle called eudaimonia, or human flourishing, beyond the perfection of the intellectual and moral aspects of human nature. The young person channels her vitality toward satisfying the desire for excellence, a desire she supposedly shares with the rest of humanity. Weiss thinks this is important: "It makes good sense for a young man to want to be a fine athlete; it is not unreasonable for him to suppose that through his body he can attain a perfection otherwise not possible to him." The "athlete" is the category that best describes the participant in sport who "strives to have a fine body and to use it well." If this is an adequate account of why young people are attracted to athletics, we also have an explanation for why the spectator is fascinated by sports. The spectator has the ability to recognize and appreciate excellence; therefore, the spectator's fascination with the game is also related to people's attraction to ideality.

Few men work at becoming all they can be. Fewer still try to do this by achieving a disciplined mastery of their bodies. But all can, and occasionally some do, see the athlete as an expression of what man as such can be and do, in the special guise of this individual body and in these particular circumstances. In the athlete all can catch a glimpse of what one might be were one also to operate at the limit of bodily capacity.

... By representing us, the athlete makes all of us be vicariously completed men. We cannot but be pleased by what such a representation man achieves.

These arguments offered in chapter 1 of Sport outline Weiss's view concerning the nature of sport. In the remaining parts of the book little or nothing is added to his definition of sport, although much more is added to describe more completely the way in which one might view athletic activity from this perspective. His explanation for the attraction of athletics is further defended in chapter 2. Here he critically discusses a number of other apparently plausible explanations for the attraction of athletics. Among the most important theories examined by Weiss are: that sports offer a way for the young to expel excess energy; versions of what Weiss calls the "social theory," suggesting that sport is an instrument for socialization or that sport "promotes the life" of participants by bringing about certain goods like honor and health; that sport is a character builder; and that sport is an accepted outlet for the natural aggressive tendencies of domination and subjugation. I shall not look closely at all of these discussions, but in the next section, in which I critically examine Weiss's theory, I will look at the way he treats the play theory of sport.

At the end of his discussion in chapter 2 Weiss reiterates his view that sport enables one "to become excellent in and through his body," and that it is attractive to young people because "it is one of the most ready means ... by which one can become self-complete." The following eight chapters in Sport meticulously describe the

stages the athlete goes through in his progress toward self-completion. There is first his acceptance of his body, carried out in training and practice. This is followed by his identification with the situation in which he is, particularly with the equipment to be used, thereby enabling him to enter into a contest, and these define what he is by what he does. Finally, there is his assumption of the position of a representative in a game, where, without losing distinctiveness, he functions on behalf of, and so far exhibits the import of, others.

After these extended discussions Weiss ends his reflection on sport by considering some other topics that are, for the most part, peripheral to our present concerns. Let us now critically examine Weiss's general account of sport and those parts of the more narrow descriptions of athletic activity that are critically relevant.

* * *

I have little doubt that the athlete's pursuit of excellence is sometimes an important part of sport, but I think this account of sport is limited. At best, Weiss's theory can stand only as a partial truth. The reason why his view is plausible is that it seems to fit well with our conception of the dedicated athlete. As Keith Algozin has suggested, "For Weiss the model of the athletic display of bodily excellence is The Olympic Games. Men and women of all nations have trained their bodies to challenge the resistances of space and time with speed, endurance, strength, and accuracy and coordination prescribed by the various particular sports." But can the emphasis on the idealized conception of an Olympic athlete capture the reality of the "universal interest" in sport cited by Weiss? I think the mistake here is rather like the mistake made by some philosophers of art who provide a plausible theory of one particular aspect of art but have insurmountable problems when the theory is extended to other types of art. For example, Suzanne Langer's notion that art is an iconic symbol of human feeling appears to be a plausible theory of music, but not a satisfactory theory of the novel or even of painting. I think Weiss is misled in his theory of sport by his initial suggestion that the crucial factor to be explained by and incorporated into a philosophy of sport is the fact that "young men" are most involved in sport. But why should this be taken as the most important clue to a philosophy of sport? It could very well be that even if Weiss's explanation for why young "men" engage in sport is true—and I don't think it is—this account would not explain why so many others are interested in sport. Weiss himself says, "Sport does not interest only the young; it interests almost everyone."

(Continues...)

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