Volume 18, Issue 2, May 2024, Page 123-125.

The aim of the article is the analysis of the principle of fair play which co-creates an axiological basis of contemporary sport as well as its basic moral category. The constituents of fair play are, first of all, responsibility and justice. Both values are central values, connected with each other, and also closely connected with other values inscribed in fair play, e.g. respect, solidarity, care or honesty. The conducted analysis shows that the rules of fair play connected with formal (...) responsibility and justice, i.e. following the rules and caring for the integrity of sport, are constituent for both sport and esports, whereas the rules of fair play connected with acting responsibly, i.e. respect and avoiding victory at all costs, are hard to realise in esports. It results from the fact that contact between the players is digitally mediated. Hence, apart from gestures and verbal communication, display of respect towards a player during a game is impeded, as is still more a spontaneous reaction to his or her being hurt. Also, avoiding winning at all costs is impeded in esports, as activities directed at obtaining victory are built into the content of the game and therefore should be carried out in accordance with the regulations, from the technical and tactical side and according to the possessed skills. However, it is possible to stop the game when the connection with the other player is suddenly interrupted. From a fair-play perspective also the content of some games employed in esports is questionable, as it assumes contesting moral rules, which in turn is at variance with the realisation of integrative, educational and formative functions of esports in society. (shrink)

À l'heure où le débat sur la fin de vie resurgit, Bernard Sportès nous ouvre de nouveaux horizons, dépasse les arguments simplistes et nous aide à comprendre tabous et angoisses. Son analyse, ancrée dans son expérience des fins de vie, nous rappelle que cet accompagnement ultime doit bien rester un soin. Sa vision humaniste se refuse à ces morts administrées selon des critères médicaux prédéfinis, auxquelles il oppose une mort accompagnée, assistée jusqu'aux derniers instants. Cette proposition, nouvelle dans ce vieux (...) débat, prend acte de l'évolution de nos mœurs et place le respect de la volonté au-dessus de toute autre considération. Prééminence d'une volonté trop souvent confondue avec de simples opinions. Émerge ainsi la possibilité qu'une aide à mourir s'inscrive dans la poursuite d'une prise en charge. Le législateur devra l'organiser dans la confiance en la maturité des soignants et des patients, s'éloigner du réglementaire, encourager une pensée collective et supervisée. Nos fins de vies réclament une République fraternelle qui n'abandonne personne, une médecine d'équipe qui résiste au modèle industriel où on l'entraine. Bernard Sportès nous livre finalement un message simple : nous ne mourrons pas mieux tant que nous n'aurons pas bâti cette médecine de la personne qu'il décrit et propose."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Question: Where, when and under what circumstances did the two of you get to know each other?Fischer: It was in the early seventies, in Frankfurt, after the dissolution of the gauche proletarienne and while there were still leftist groups in Germany. It must have been 1972. Question: Was that a private visit?Glucksmann: We had private discussions. We also participated in rallies and demonstrations.Question: That was in the late phase of the student movement.Fischer: We kept in contact through my old room-mate, (...) Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He was our link to France, so to speak.Question: And was this the link between the French and the German Left that existed then? (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 11, November 2024, Page 24-26.

Combining sociological evidence with the analytical tools of philosophy, Ethics, Money and Sport articulates and explores the main concerns about the way money has changed our experience of sports. Clearly written and illustrated by examples from major sports around the world, Ethics, Money and Sport enables students, researchers and policymakers - as well as anyone with an interest in the future of sport - to engage with this crucial debate.

Sport categorization is often justified by benefits such as increased fairness or inclusion. Taking inspiration from John Rawls, Sigmund Loland’s fair equality of opportunity principle in sport (FEOPs) is a tool for determining whether the existence of an inequality ethically justifies the institution of a new category in any given sport. It is an elegant ethical normative framework, but since FEOPs does not account explicitly for athlete safety (i.e. athlete physical and mental wellbeing), we are left in (...) an ethically dubious situation where the risk of harm associated with a categorization regime might in fact prove to be greater than the risk of harm present within the sport before its introduction. To address this critical gap, I propose the ‘scales of ignorance’ ethical normative framework to weigh the relative risk of harm within a sport, crucially inserting athlete safety into the discourse surrounding ethical justification for categorization in sport. The current paper is the first explicit formulation of assessment and ethical justification of risk of harm in the familiar logic of FEOPs. The scales of ignorance framework can also be used independently of Loland’s approach. Two new concepts are also proposed: ‘insidious risk of harm’ and ‘pernicious risk of harm’. (shrink)

Before the pandemic, our life was often described as fast, since in globalised society speed has been generally understood as a marker of efficiency, productivity and diligence; and so many people...

There is a widely held concern that using war and sport metaphors to describe argument contributes to the breakdown of argumentative processes. The thumbnail version of this worry about such metaphors is that they promote adversarial conceptions of argument that lead interlocutors with those conceptions to behave adversarially in argumentative contexts. These actions are often aggressive, which undermines argument exchange by either excluding many from such exchanges or turning exchanges more into verbal battles. These worries are legitimate as far (...) as they go, and given that well-run argumentation is a good thing, we would be remiss not to consider whether our vocabulary inhibits argument's proper functioning. .. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSince the 1960s environmental problems have increasingly been on the agenda in Western countries. Global warming and climate change have increased concerns among scientists, politicians and the general population. While both elite sport and mass sport are part of the consumer culture that leads to ecological problems, sport philosophers, with few exceptions, have not discussed what an ecologically acceptable sport would look like. My goal in this article is to present a radical model of ecological (...) class='Hi'>sport based on Arne Naess’s version of deep ecology called ecosophyT. After outlining the Naessian ecocentric view of biospheric egalitarianism I present the consequences for sport and physical activities. I also give examples from Arne Naess’s own practice of sport which was guided by the principle ‘Richness in ends, simplicity in means!’ I discuss whether Naessian deep ecological sport is what we will all end up with after the ecocatastrophe or whether it can be an inspiring ideal for many of us right now. (shrink)

Deep ethical interpretivism has been the standard view of the nature of sport in the philosophy of sport for the past seventeen years or so. On this account excellence assumes the role of the foundational, ethical goal that justice assumes in Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivist model of law. However, since excellence in sports is not an ethical value, and since it should not be regarded as an ultimate goal, the case for the traditional account fails. It should be replaced (...) by the shallow interpretivist model that I begin to sketch out and defend here. (shrink)

This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if (...) it is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability. (shrink)

Within the philosophy of sport, the phenomenon of practising has received very little attention, whereas other related aspects of sport such as excellence and competition have been subjected to many and thorough studies. This essay will attempt to clarify this particular phenomenon of practising through the notion of athletic ascetics, which will be analysed as a special variant of askēsis. Drawing especially on Foucault’s lectures on ascetics in ancient philosophy and Sloterdijk’s anthropology of the practising life, the essay (...) outlines and interrogates the potential relevance of an ascetological understanding of sport. Through both descriptive and normative analysis, it is argued that athletic ascetics can refine our understanding of performance in sport and comprise an embodied account of the formative aspect of ethics, with implications for ethical considerations related to performance enhancement. (shrink)

Both the approach taken by World Rugby to address the question of trans women participation in women’s rugby and the paper by Jon Pike that explains the ethical justification for the exclusion of trans women players from world rugby are compelling when understood within the dominant rugby/sport narrative. However, in this article, I suggest that what is absent is a radical feminist understanding that engages with the political purposes of separate sport spaces for women in producing feminist counternarratives (...) that challenge men’s power in/over sport. Decisions about the inclusion of trans women in women’s sporting competitions should be made on a sport context-by-sport context basis oriented by broader feminist political goals. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay argues that within competitive sport zero-sum logic and the theory of mutualism are compatible and complementary. Drawing on Robert Simon’s theory of mutualism and Scott Kretchmar’s argument for zero-sum logic, this article shows how athletes can strive for a clear-cut victory and shared benefits such as athletic excellence fully and wholeheartedly at the same time. This paper will also consider how acknowledgment of this dynamic could advance understandings for ethical theories for sport. It will then conclude (...) by describing a subjective approach that will make the affinity of zero-sum logic and mutualism more accessible for sports people. (shrink)

The American philosophical tradition emphasizes the role of experience as part of philosophical discourse and scholarship. Individuals like Henry Bugbee and Henry David Thoreau described their experiences walking, for example, and connected these experiences with philosophical concepts. My overall contention is to remind us of the importance of sport experiences for our scholarly work. In Part One, I outline the nature of experience and why this is crucial for sport philosophers and sport philosophy. In Part Two, I (...) turn to the process of reflecting on experience, exploring how reflection happens and the import of reflection for our lives and writing. Finally, in Part Three, I move to the writing process related to sport experiences. The manner in which we articulate philosophic principles and arguments, even though these points may be written in third-person, may also be informed by and through an experiential lens. (shrink)

In April 2018, the International Association of Athletics Federations released new regulations placing a ceiling on women athletes’ natural testosterone levels to “ensure fair and meaningful competition.” The regulations revise previous ones with the same intent. They require women with higher natural levels of testosterone and androgen sensitivity who compete in a set of “restricted” events to lower their testosterone levels to below a designated threshold. If they do not lower their testosterone, women may compete in the male category, in (...) an intersex category, at the national level, or in unrestricted events. Women may also challenge the regulation, whether or not they have lowered their testosterone, or quit sport. Irrespective of IAAF’s stated aims, the options forced by the new regulations are impossible choices. They violate dignity, threaten privacy, and mete out both suspicion and judgement on the sex and gender identity of the athletes regulated. (shrink)

With recent controversies surrounding the eligibility of athletes with disorders of sex development and hyperandrogenism, as well as continued discussion of the conditions transgender athletes must meet to compete in high-performance sport, a wide array of scholars representing a diverse range of disciplines have weighed in on both the appropriateness of classifying athletes into the female and male categories and the best practices of doing so. In response to cases of high-profile athletes’ sex being called into question, the International (...) Olympic Committee, the International Association of Athletics Federations, and the National Collegiate Athletics Association, among others, published or updated policies addressing who is eligible to compete in the women’s sport category and under what conditions. This paper addresses the areas in which philosophical reasoning and ethical analysis can contribute to reopened debates about the surveillance of the women’s category in sport. Emphasis is placed on determining where the onus of responsibility should fall for ensuring the new policies are followed. (shrink)

This paper argues that for the purposes of any sort of serious discussion about immoral conduct in sport very little is illuminated by claiming that the conduct in question is cheating. In fact, describing some behavior as cheating is typically little more than expressing strong, but thoroughly vague and imprecise, moral disapproval or condemnation of another person or institution about a wide and ill-defined range of improper advantage-seeking behavior. Such expressions of disapproval fail to distinguish cheating from many other (...) types of immoral conduct. The discussion shows that we should set the concept aside and assess the moral disapproval implied by claims of cheating by reference to the moral and other principles that underlie the practice of sport. This allows us to consider carefully the complexity of the issues that are raised when allegations of cheating are made and not be distracted by the emotionally loaded, conversation-stopping tendency of the concept. This means that some types of disputes in sport will be messy and demand more effort to resolve, but the payoff will be better informed and more thoughtful discussions and greater awareness of the moral complexity of sport and of its principled underpinnings. (shrink)

This paper explores how the phenomenon of Joint Attention (JA) drives certain core features of team sport and how sport illuminates the nature of JA. In JA, two or more agents focus on the same object in mutual awareness that the content of their experience is thus shared. JA is essential to joint sporting actions. The sporting context is particularly useful for illustrating the phenomenon of JA and provides a valuable lens through which to examine rival theoretical accounts (...) of its workings. This paper draws novel connections between the respective philosophical literatures on JA and sport, suggesting prospects for mutually advantageous cross-pollination. I contend that the workings of JA within joint sporting action are misconstrued on intellectualistic and individualistic theories which posit reductive explanations in terms of the contents of individual minds. The best evidence and strongest philosophical arguments support ‘relational’ accounts whereby joint sporting actions exceed the sum of their parts. I reject the ‘extensionalist’ contention, associated with ‘lean’ versions of the relationalist approach, that objects of JA are individuated in terms of causal properties not sensitive to how they are perceived. Siding instead with ‘rich’ versions of the view, I argue that team collaboration depends on convergence in terms of the ‘aspectual shape’ of the objects of JA. Finally, a further possible application for these ideas is suggested: that JA plays a central role in the constitution of sport-specific kinds. On this proposal, JA facilitates collective perceptual recognition of particular objects and situations as embodying the general types described in the rulebook, playing an important role in creating and sustaining the public ‘social space’ of sporting competition. (shrink)

The names of two major Gulf airlines, Qatar Airways and Emirates, have saturated the European football scene for many years, sponsoring some of the most prominent European teams and FIFA itself. Th...

Mass participation sport events have become a popular form of recreational sport participation. Understanding experiences of participants is pivotal to designing and implementing socially just and sustainable events. Applying constructivist grounded theory methodology, this inquiry explored experiences of participation in MPSEs, with particular attention to the impact of gender on participation experiences. In-depth interviews were conducted with 13 women who participated in MPSEs. Fear and power were two core themes in interviewees’ experiences. Fear of sexual assault, injury, and (...) “something bad” was a significant element in women’s experiences which related to perceptions of place and time. The second theme, power, was generated from strong sport identities, camaraderie among female runners, all-women races, and finishing mixed-gender races. The findings provide some guidelines for practitioners to enhance experiences of female participants and encourage repeated participation that is key to sustainability of the events. (shrink)

Caster Semenya is done with track and field. At 29, her hopes for a continued career as a professional middle-distance runner are dashed. After her case against International Association for Athletics Federation 1 was dismissed by the Court for Arbitration of Sport on 1 May 2019, she has switched to football later in the year.1 Semenya’s case may have come to its legal conclusion, however it has generated an aporia regarding the binary classification in athletics, which has yet to (...) be solved.2 It is time the implications of the fair equality of opportunity principle as a normative basis for the construction of categories in sport are taken seriously to move forward the debate on unfair advantages in sport. Loland conditionally justifies restricting the women’s category to athletes with testosterone levels below a certain threshold, on the basis of the FEO principle, and of a distinction between stable and dynamic inequalities between athletes. …. (shrink)

Cheating through the use of illegal performance enhancements (such as doping) is a persistent problem in sport. It has been suggested that one response to this problem is to separate sport into two parallel leagues. One league would resemble sport as it is currently practised ? i.e. with restrictions on use of particular enhancements ? and the other would not possess these restrictions, allowing those that wish to use currently illegal enhancements to do so. In this paper (...) I articulate the ?two leagues? proposal further and subject it to critical scrutiny. The proposal fails. It does so by failing to address conceptual confusion regarding enhancement use in sport; by replicating in the new league the current problems associated with enhancement-based cheating; and by creating new problems. In an attempt to revive it I describe other possible justifications for the proposal, based on its promotion of personal autonomy, and rights-based justifications. These fail, with the exception of a group right claiming provision of the enhanced league as a participatory good. I conclude that this latter use of the proposal is the only sensible one, but it nevertheless faces significant obstacles. (shrink)

Dynamic, interactive sports require athletes to identify, pick-up and process relevant information in a very limited time, in order to then make an appropriate response. Perceptual-cognitive skills are, therefore, a key determinant of elite sporting performance. Recently, sport scientists have investigated ways to assess and train perceptual-cognitive skills, with one such method involving the use of blurred stimuli. Here, we describe the two main methods used to generate blur and then review the current findings in a sports context. Overall, (...) it has been shown the use of blur can enhance performance and learning of sporting tasks in novice participants, especially when the blur is applied to peripheral stimuli. However, while intermediate and expert level participants are relatively impervious to the presence of blur, it remains to be determined if they are positive effects on learning. In a final section, we describe some of the methodological issues that limit the application of blur and then discuss the potential use of virtual reality to extend the current research base in sporting contexts. (shrink)

(1984). Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Sport: The Ethical Issue. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 23-28. doi: 10.1080/00948705.1984.9714410.

Zusammenfassung Mittels empirischer Analysen wird die Dynamik der Sportnachfrage im Lebenslauf untersucht. Dabei stechen vier Charakteristika hervor, die den bisherigen Forschungsstand ergänzen: Es kann nicht mehr generell davon gesprochen werden, dass Frauen im aktiven Sport unterrepräsentiert sind. Vielmehr sind Frauen im mittleren Erwachsenenalter häufiger regelmäßig sportlich aktiv als Männer. Im Gegensatz zu bisherigen Forschungsergebnissen konnte ein deutlicher Wandel der sportartbezogenen Nachfrage im Lebenslauf ermittelt werden. Die zunächst dominierende Nachfrage nach Spielsportarten wird im Lebenslauf abgelöst von einer Nachfrage nach Fitness- (...) class='Hi'>Sport und anschließend von einer Nachfrage nach Gesundheitssport. Damit einher gehen auch unterschiedliche Präferenzen in der Institutionenwahl. Der Sportverein stellt nur bei Jugendlichen die wichtigste Organisationsform sportlicher Aktivität dar. Ab dem frühen Erwachsenenalter wird das informelle Sportengagement zur bevorzugten Organisationsform sportlichen Engagements. Im Vergleich zu 1985 ist die Sportnachfrage bei allen Alters- und Geschlechtsgruppen deutlich angestiegen. Besonders markant ist diese Entwicklung für Frauen über 55 Jahre. Periodeneffekte beeinflussen somit die Sportnachfrage im Lebenslauf merklich. (shrink)

Rusticus Or The Future of the Countryside Martin S Briggs Originally published in 1926 "Few of the fifty volumes, provocative and brilliant as most of them have been, capture our imagination as does this one." Daily Telegraph "The book is a pamphlet, though it has the form and charm of a book." Spectator Contents include: "So this is England!" Before the Deluge King Coal The Age of Petrol The Future 126pp Diogenes Or The Future of Leisure C E M Joad (...) Originally published in 1928. "A brilliant and provocative volume." Evening Standard "The writing is vivid and good-humouredly truculent." Times Literary Supplement Arguing that many people do not know how to enjoy their leisure time, this volume offers satirical advice on how best to achieve happiness and fulfilment. Highlighting the dangers of a materialistic, superficial age, the author provides practical advice on how to avoid boredom and how to appreciate the true value of life. Perhaps even more pertinent today than when it was first published, this volume is still relevant to twenty-first century readers. 94pp ********************** Hanno Or The Future of Exploration J Leslie Mitchell Originally published in 1928. "His wonderful book, in which he confutes the popular notion that the explorer’s task is finally fulfilled." Morning Post "Stimulating, packed with eminently practical suggestions." Times Literary Supplement Predicting what the explorer of tomorrow would discover, the author foresaw that the Amazonian jungle and the Antarctic would become accessible as never before. He also argued that inter-planetary communication was not far ahead. 84pp Atalanta Or The Future of Sport G S Sandilands Originally published in 1928 "His provocative and most interesting book." Daily Herald "Points out some of the pinnacles of unreason climbed by those trying to separate amateur from professional." Manchester Guardian Predicting a time when sport as a separate human activity, having served its purpose in the evolution of mankind, will cease to exist this volume discusses issues such as blood sports, amateur sports and the role of gender in sport. 112pp. (shrink)

Studies on sports aesthetics are often marginalized in the philosophy of sport. In this publication, Jason Holt provides an in-depth insight into the aesthetics of sport by offering a moral, compre...