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Sport as a Moral Practice: An Aristotelian Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2013

Michael W. Austin
Michael W. Austin*
Affiliation:
Eastern Kentucky [email protected]
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Extract

Sport builds character. If this is true, why is there a consistent stream of news detailing the bad behavior of athletes? We are bombarded with accounts of elite athletes using banned performance-enhancing substances, putting individual glory ahead of the excellence of the team, engaging in disrespectful and even violent behavior towards opponents, and seeking victory above all else. We are also given a steady diet of more salacious stories that include various embarrassing, immoral, and illegal behaviors in the private lives of elite athletes. Elite sport is not alone in this; youth sport has its own set of moral problems. Parents assault officials, undermine coaches, encourage a win-at-all costs mentality, and in many cases ruin sport for their children.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 73: Philosophy and Sport , October 2013 , pp. 29 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2013 

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References

1 Reid, Heather, ‘Sport and Moral Education in Plato's Republic’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 34 (2007), 160–175CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Plato, Republic 410bc, 411e.

2 See, for example, Holowchak, M. Andrew and Reid, Heather L., Aretism: An Ancient Sports Philosophy for the Modern Sports World (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011)Google Scholar; Jones, Carwyn, ‘Teaching Virtue through Physical Education’, Sport, Education, and Society 13 (2008), 337–349Google Scholar; and McNamee, Mike, Sports, Virtues and Vices: Morality Plays (New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

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8 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1115b15–20.

9 Ibid., 1117a30–35.

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18 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1129a–1137b.

19 http://www.righttoplay.com/International/about-us/Pages/mission.aspx; accessed September 13, 2011. The mission of Right to Play is ‘To improve the lives of children in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the world by using the power of sport and play for development, health and peace.’

20 Nicomachean Ethics, 1103b.

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29 Op. cit. note 24, 221.

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36 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. II.

37 http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OlympicCurriculum/socialstudies5.pdf; accessed 20 October 2011.

38 I would like to express my appreciation to Heather Reid for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.