Introduction to the Philosophy of Sport begins with the history of sport, delves into both the metaphysics and ethics of sport, and also addresses dimensions of the social and political elements of sport. This book is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of sport with a straightforward layout that professors can plan and build their courses around.

Aretism: An Ancient Sports Philosophy for the Modern Sports World provides a tripartite model of sports ethics founded on ancient Greek principles and focused on personal, civic, and global integration. Heather Reid and Mark Holowchak apply these concepts as a "golden mean" between the extremes of the commercialist and recreational models of competition. This treatment is most applicable to students and academics concerned with the philosophy of sport, but will also be of interest to those in sports professions.

From the modern scientific perspective, Olympia is a ruin at the far end of a fading sense of history that represents little more than the origins from which sport has continuously evolved. Quantitative measurements show continued increases in human performance, equipment efficiency and funding. But some question this athletic evolution. We worry about qualitative issues, such as virtue, meaning and beauty. The source of this contrast is a difference in values: Olympic vs. Efficiency values. Such values establish an ethos in (...) sporting communities that influences how we behave, explain and even conceptualize our activities. I argue from the perspectives of metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics and politics, that Olympic Ethos is needed to balance out the modern Efficiency Ethos, which threatens to dehumanize sport. (shrink)

All athletes experience victory and defeat, but how many truly learn from the experience of sport? For ancient Greek philosophers, sport was an integral part of education. Today, athletics programs remain in schools, but we face a growing gap between the modern sports experience and enduring educational values. This book seeks to bridge that gap by advocating a philosophical approach to the sports experience. Combining issues and ideas from traditional philosophy with contemporary analyses of sport and applied "thinking activities," this (...) book invites athletes to learn about life from their experience of sport. The text works its way from internal reflection to social interaction by addressing four important topics: self-discovery, responsibility, respect, and citizenship. This sequence is important because authentic self-knowledge is an essential foundation for effectively dealing with the personal and social challenges faced by philosophical athletes. Reid discusses specific issues such as violence, racism, and performance-enhancing drugs in their relevant contexts, although philosophical athletes focus on the big picture, approaching each issue from a complete vision of themselves, their moral commitments, and their social roles. Athletes as diverse as the teenage college recruit and the aging weekend-warrior will gain insight into their sports experience and into their lives. This philosophical approach maximizes what we can learn from sport and gives us the best chance for leading better lives because of it. (shrink)

A common argument for the social value of sport is that athletes serve as heroes who inspire people – especially young people – to strive for excellence. This argument has been questioned by sport philosophers at a variety of levels. Not only do athletes seem unsuited to be heroes or role models in the conventional sense, it is unclear more generally what the social and educational value of athletic excellence could be. In this essay, I construct an argument for the (...) social and educational value of sport built upon the relationship between athletes, heroes, and the song culture that celebrated them in ancient Greece. On this model, athletes are neither heroes nor role models in the conventional sense. Rather, athletes, athletics, and the poets who extolled them were part of a cultural conspiracy to celebrate and inspire virtue by connecting a community with its heroic past. Festivals such as the Olympic Games, but also local events such as funeral games, educated and unified communities by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for virtue and by inspiring youth to strive for it. Ancient athletes were not heroes, rather they re-enacted heroic struggles, thereby experiencing heroic virtues, and inspiring both artists and spectators to bond with the higher ideals implied by their shared belief in divine ancestry. In this way, athletes, athletics, and the media that celebrated them played important social and educational roles. Insofar as modern sport performs a similar service, its association with heroism and with moral education may ultimately be justified. (shrink)

Classical Greece is famous for its athletic art, particularly the image of the nude male athlete. But how did the Greeks understand athletic beauty? Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and others discuss athletes’ beauty, while the educational ideal of kalokagathia conceptually connects athletic beauty with the good. More questions need to be answered, however, if we are to understand ancient athletic beauty. We need to ask ourselves what the Greeks appreciated when they looked at athletic bodies. What did those qualities mean to (...) them? In what way was it erotic? How did it differ for females and males? In this paper I argue that the beautiful athletic body is framed in ancient Greek thought, not just as an aesthetically pleasing image, but as an ideal expression of a certain kind of soul. (shrink)

It is not mere coincidence that several of Plato’s dialogues are set in gymnasia and palaistrai (wrestling schools), employ the gymnastic language of stripping, wrestling, tripping, even helping opponents to their feet, and imitate in argumentative form the athletic contests (agōnes) commonly associated with that place. The main explanation for this is, of course, historical. Sophists, orators, and intellectuals of all stripes, including the historical Socrates, really did frequent Athens’ gymnasia and palaistrai in search of ready audiences and potential students. (...) Perhaps they were following the example of Pythagoras, who may have been a boxing coach (gymnastēs) and was, in any case, associated with the extraordinary Olympic success of athletes from his adopted Croton—success so great it generated the saying that the last of the Crotonites was the first among all other Greeks. After his visit to Western Greece, Plato famously established his school in or adjacent to the Academy gymnasium in Athens, and he may have held the public office of Gymnasiarch there. In this essay, I would like to argue that there are also symbolic reasons for Plato setting some of his dialogues in gymnasia. These dialogues function as virtual gymnasia in which readers are coached by the character of Socrates toward an innovative ideal of aretē (virtue, excellence). (shrink)

This paper interprets the Parmenides agonistically as a constructive contest between Plato’s Socrates and the Eleatics of Western Greece. Not only is the dialogue set in the agonistic context of the Panathenaic Games, it features agonistic language, employs an agonistic method, and may even present an agonistic model for participation in the forms. The inspiration for this agonistic motif may be that Parmenides and his student Zeno represent Western Greece, which was a key rival for the mainland at the Olympics (...) and other Panhellenic festivals. This athletic rivalry was complemented by a philosophical rivalry, which is dramatized in the dialogue by pitting a very young (flyweight) Socrates against the Eleatic (heavyweight) Parmenides. Through dialectic, an agonistic form of philosophy attributed to the Eleatics, Plato subjects his theory of forms to a variety of conceptual challenges. This process is described as gymnasia (training) at 135d, and the power of dialectic and philosophy itself are said to depend on it. The object of gymnasia (136c) is to achieve a full view (kyriōs diopsethai) of the truth. This philosophical “vision” corresponds to the physical fitness achieved through athletic training, and it distinguishes philosophers (lovers of wisdom) from philtheamones (lovers of images) as explained at Republic 475d-476c. Just as trained athletes are able to participate in the contest while spectators merely watch it, philosophers are able to discern intelligible forms through the particulars that participate in them. In the words of the Seventh Letter 341c, it takes prolonged communion (synousia) with an idea to ignite the philosophical light in one’s soul. The Parmenides’s gymnasia provides an agonistic model for this process, inviting its readers to participate in philosophical training and develop a vison that transcends the material in a way these Eleatic spectators were unable to do. (shrink)

Beauty varies with each age. In a young man, it consists in possessing a body capable of enduring all efforts, either of the racecourse or of bodily strength, while he himself is pleasant to look u...

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. (shrink)

In a way, there is nothing surprising about Plato’s promotion of sport for women in Republic and Laws; it is logically implied by his philosophical theories. In another way, Plato’s vision of female athletes is among the most radical proposals he makes. The purpose of this paper is to examine Plato’s arguments for women in sport and reflect on its relevance in our modern world. His texts include as many misogynist as feminist comments, but Plato’s consistent view in Republic and (...) Laws is that females deserve equal education in gymnastics (i.e. movement activities) and equal opportunity to participate in athletic contests. This position derives from the convictions that athletics serves as training for virtue and communities need to maximize the virtue of all their members. It is his vision of women in civic and military roles, specifically their need for aretē (virtue, excellence) to perform those roles, that motivates Plato to include them in sport. In our modern world, where women are citizens and rulers – and regularly participate in sport – it is worth exploring the educational link Plato saw between the two. (shrink)

Creatures of a day! What is man? What is he not? He is the dream of a shadow In 1993, basketball hero Charles Barkley set off a storm of controversy when he declared: ‘I am not...

Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal Like those champions devoted and brave, When they plunged in the tyrant their steel And to Athens deliverance gave. (Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Hymn to Harmodius an...

The Greek gymnasium was replicated in the architecture, art, and activities of the Imperial Roman thermae. This mimēsis was rooted in sincere admiration of traditional Greek paideia – especially the glory of Athens’ Academy and Lyceum – but it did not manage to replicate the gymnasium’s educational impact. This article reconstructs the aesthetics of a visit to the Roman baths, explaining how they evoked a glorious Hellenic past, offering the opportunity to Romans to imagine being «Greek». But true Hellenic paideia (...) was always kept at arm’s length by an assumption of Roman cultural superiority. One may play at being a Greek athlete or philosopher, but one would never dedicate one’s life to it. The experience of the Imperial thermae celebrated Greek athletic culture, but it remained too superficial – too spectatorial – to effect the change of soul demanded by classical gymnastic education. (shrink)

A debate has arisen over whether “the spirit of sport” is an appropriate criterion for determining whether a substance should be banned. In this paper, I argue that the criterion is crucial for Olympic sport because Olympism celebrates humanity, specifically human agency, so we need to preserve the degree to which athletes are personally and morally responsible for their performances. This emphasis on what I call “athlete agency” is reflected metaphysically in the structure of sport, which characteristically prescribes inefficiencies in (...) order to create challenges, and seeks to reduce or eliminate the proportion of a performance outside an athlete’s control. Emphasizing athlete agency also prevents wealthier and more technologically developed countries from using their resources to gain an advantage in sport. Interpreted according to athlete agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) “spirit of sport” can be clarified to imply that substances, techniques, and equipment that reduce athlete agency should be reduced or eliminated, while things that increase it should be encouraged. (shrink)

This book examines influential conceptions of sport and then analyses the interplay of challenging borderline cases with the standard definitions of sport. It is meant to inspire more thought and debate on just what sport is, how it relates to other activities and human endeavors, and what we can learn about ourselves by studying sport.

Using my experience at a stage of the 2014 Giro d'Italia, I argue that de is the soul of cycling and that ancient Chinese philosophy's insight into the conditions that promote de may help the sport. I compare the relationship between sages and virtuous practitioners, to the ancient Greek relationship between heroes and athletes, both of which depend on the performance of de. I also criticize modern cycling for its focus on technology, stark commercialism, and emphasis on the individual, prescribing (...) as antidotes the connection between de and wuwei, the rejection of acquisitiveness and the emphasis on collectivity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 74-92 [Access article in PDF] John Dewey's Aesthetic Ecology of Public Intelligence and the Grounding of Civic Environmentalism Herbert Reid and Betsy Taylor "[The problem is] that of recovering the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living." John Dewey, Art as Experience "This is not a protest. Repeat. This is not a protest. This is some kind of artistic expression. Over." (...) --A call that went out on Metro Toronto police radios on May 16, 1998, the date of the first Global Street Party. Quoted from Naomi Klein, No LogoThis paper argues for the importance of John Dewey's aesthetic philosophy to recent efforts to cultivate civic environmentalism while critiquing narrowly conservationist environmentalisms. We call for a strong version of civic environmentalism oriented towards holistic integration of ecological [End Page 74] concerns into all aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural life. Such a civic environmentalism argues that it is not enough to strive to preserve enclaved 'wilderness' or 'biodiversity' (as important as that is). It argues also for fundamental changes in the political and economic status quo, because ecological havoc is understood to be integrally linked with the structural forces that are increasing inequality and weakening democratic publics. Strengthening of the civic commons is integral to protection of the environmental commons. If the environmental commons are the substantive goods in common which are the sustaining grounds of life, the civic commons are the institutions, collective memories, social networks, and skills that enable and inspire individuals to engage with each other in stewarding the common good. Such collective labor for the larger good requires some form of collective imagination which enables awareness of self and other (human or non-human) as inherently valuable. But beyond this, it requires perceptual and social infrastructures that nurture the ability to see self and other as emergent from and dependent on the supra-individual matrix that supports both life and individual. Central to such civic labor, is a non-dualistic understanding of individual/matrix. Such a non-dualistic understanding of self/other-in-matrix is central to political and ecological imaginations that are decentered from ethnic, species, class, gender, or other forms of domination and solipsism.John Dewey's work as a whole is a powerful call for such a non-dualistic understanding of individual-in-matrix, and few have better understood its connections to democracy. But, it is in his philosophy of art that Dewey describes most specifically the central importance of the aesthetic dimension of public culture to overcoming crippling dualisms of Western modernity that vitiate participatory engagement- individual/world, nature/culture, ends/means, leisure/work, art/science, aesthetic/ordinary. His writings on art have not been much utilized in the philosophical work for civic environmentalism. This paper argues for their relevance to its key goal of overcoming the segmentation of life ushered in by modernity and buttressed by these dualisms.We first give an overview of recent theories of civic environmentalism and the crises it engages of inequality, injustice, technocracy, corporatization, and the pervasive assault on place and thinning of public participation. Second, we look at the implications of Dewey'saesthetic ecology for an "environmentalism of daily life" that challenges the false dualisms of neo-liberalism and of technocratic professionalism that undermine place-based [End Page 75] forms of life and knowledge. Third, we draw on Dewey's aesthetic philosophy to suggest ways to rebuild democratic public space at the nexus of body, place, and commons. Finally, we briefly outline key philosophical questions that have emerged in our ethnographic and political study of Appalachian grassroots activisms, and that embody this sort of placed, democratic mobilization to protect the civic and environmental commons. American Environmentalism: Crisis and Challenge Toward the end of the last decade, veteran New York Times journalist and now independent writer Philip Shabecoff set out to engage "a broad spectrum of thoughtful and informed people within and without the environmental movement." His Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century offers a very... (shrink)

The inspiration for this paper came rather unexpectedly. In February 2006, I made the long trip from my home in Sioux City, Iowa, to Torino, Italy in order to witness the Olympic Winter Games. Barely a month later, I found myself in California at the newly-renovated Getty Villa, home to one of the world's great collections of Greco-Roman antiquities. At the Villa I attended a talk about a Roman mosaic depicting a boxing scene from Virgil'sAeneid.The tiny tiles showed not only (...) two boxers, but a wobbly looking ox. ‘What is wrong with this ox?’ asked the docent. ‘Why is he there at the match?’ The answer, of course, is that he is the prize. And the reason he is wobbly is because the victor has just sacrificed this prize to the gods in thanksgiving, by punching him between the eyes. A light went on in my head; I turned to my husband and whispered, ‘Just like Joey Cheek in Torino.’ My husband smiled indulgently, but my mind was already racing. I realized that by donating his victory bonus to charity, Cheek had tapped into one of the oldest and most venerable traditions in sport: individual sacrifice for the benefit of the larger community. It is a tradition that derives from the religious function of the ancient Olympic Games and it deserves to be revived the modern world. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume address global, regional, and local landscapes, cosmopolitan and indigenous cultures, and human and more-than-human ecology as they work to reveal place-specific tensional dynamics. This unusual book, which covers a wide-ranging array of topics, coheres into a work that will be a valuable reference for scholars of geography and the philosophy of place.

Paideia is a word that signifies education or culture—two concepts that are only apparently distinct in Ancient Greek thinking. The performance of poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, drama, dance, and even athletics functioned simultaneously as education and culture. They entertained and unified communities by affirming shared heritage and interrogating common values. This process had special importance in Sicily and Southern Italy, where Hellenism was often a matter of education rather than ancestry. This volume explores the intersection of education and cultural performance in (...) a variety of disciplines and from a variety of perspectives. Authors discussed include Sappho, Empedocles, Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle. Contexts range from choral dance, to epideictic oratory, theatrical performance, philosophical dialogue, and gymnastic exercise. Taken together, these diverse essays reveal a cultural paideia aimed at realizing an ideal of human potential—not least by questioning human reality. Edited by Henry C. Curcio, Mark Ralkowski, and Heather L. Reid, the volume includes essays by Audrey L. Anton & Erika N. Brown, Paloma Flávio Betini, Michał Bizoń, L.M.J. Coulson, Mateo Duque, Jurgen R. Gatt & Andrew Debono Cauchi, Michael Goyette, Veronika Konrádová, Georgios Mouratidis & Heather L. Reid, Kristian Sheeley, and Colin C. Smith. (shrink)

The ancient Greek word kalon can be translated as beautiful, good, noble, or fine—yet somehow it transcends any one of those concepts. In art and literature, it can apply straightforwardly to figures like Helen or Aphrodite, or enigmatically to the pais kalos: the youthful athlete that decorates so much sympotic pottery. In the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, meanwhile, it takes on an ethical, even transcendent dimension. And yet, the thread between a beautiful painting and the Platonic form of (...) the beautiful is never completely broken. In the summer of 2018, a group of scholars from varying disciplines gathered in Siracusa, Sicily – a place of not indifferent beauty itself – to discuss the nature of to kalon in ancient Greek culture. We were especially interested in the large part of that heritage that derives from or was influenced by Western Greece – the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. The result is a volume that considers art, literature, rhetoric, and philosophy in exploring the nature of beauty. (shrink)

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. This rich investigation demonstrates the importance of cross-cultural thinking in our reading of philosophical texts and explores how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm.

In the Panathenaic Games, there was a torch race for teams of ephebes that started from the altars of Eros and Prometheus at Plato’s Academy and finished on the Acropolis at the altar of Athena, goddess of wisdom. It was competitive, yes, but it was also sacred, aimed at a noble goal. To win, you needed to cooperate with your teammates and keep the delicate flame alive as you ran up the hill. Likewise, Plato’s philosophy combines competition and cooperation in (...) pursuit of the goal of wisdom. On one level, agonism in Plato is explicit: he taught in a gymnasium and featured gymnastic training in his educational theory. On another level, it is mimetic: Socratic dialogue resembles intellectual wrestling. On a third level, it is metaphorical: the athlete’s struggle illustrates the struggle to be morally good. And at its highest level, it is divine: the human soul is a chariot that races toward heaven. This volume explores agonism in Plato on all of these levels, inviting the reader—as Plato does—to engage in the megas agōn of life. Once in the contest, as Plato’s Socrates says, we’re allowed no excuses. (shrink)

Empedocles of Akragas (modern Agrigento) is arguably Sicily’s most important Greek intellectual. He was considered not only an influential philosopher, but also a poet, an orator, a doctor, and even a god. As a philosopher, Empedocles focused on reality, tracing it to the composition and decomposition of four immutable elements: water, air, fire, and earth, which are moved by two opposing forces, Love and Hate. He is said to have been an enemy of the aristocracy despite his noble birth, and (...) to have died on Mount Etna after throwing himself into a crater. And yet there is no companion-style volume on Empedocles; at best, he is treated as one among many in studies of Pre-Socratic philosophers and philosophy more generally. We aim for this collection to fill that gap. The papers cover Empedocles’s philosophical ideas and understanding, his interactions with contemporary thinkers, and his reception in the hands of later Greek and Latin writers, through to the present day. (shrink)

This book is born from a desire to understand how Plato influenced and was influenced by the intellectual culture of Western Greece, the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. In 2018, a seminar on Plato at Syracuse was organized, in which a small group of scholars discussed a new translation of the Seventh Letter and several essays on the topic. The seminar was intense but friendly, having attracted a diverse group of scholars that ranged from graduate students to (...) senior professors, hailing from at least three different continents, and representing a variety of academic specialties. We tried to create a book that would invite further study of the topic by identifying new questions to be asked while addressing enduring issues. The essays consider the historical, political, and philosophical implications of Plato’s involvement in Syracuse. They also look at the reception of his voyage among fellow philosophers, ancient and modern. Readers may come to their own conclusions, but one thing is clear: the history of philosophy was profoundly influenced by Plato’s voyages in Western Greece. The book begins with a new translation of Plato’s Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding, as well as the epitaph for Dion attributed to Plato. An introduction by editors Heather Reid and Mark Ralkowski is followed by essays from Carolina Araújo, Christos C. Evangeliou, Filippo Forcignanò, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Jill Gordon, Andrew Hull, Tony Leyh, Marina Marren, Mary R. McHugh, Robert Metcalf, Marion Theresa Schneider, Karen Sieben, and Nickolas Pappas. (shrink)

Her name was Flavia Thalassia and she came from Ephesus. She won the stadion for parthenoi at the Isolympic Sebasta Games in Naples during Domitian’s reign in the late 1st c. C...

This chapter contains sections titled: My Last Race Rolling Up to the Starting Line Racing Toward the Truth Climbing Up Mountains Keeping the Rubber Side Down My Best Race Notes.

The ancient world witnessed a meaningful transition in the conception of human thought and belief. What some have called the “discovery” of the mind can also be understood as a release from dependence on oracular wisdom and mythological explanation, made possible by the invention of more reliable and democratic methods for discovering and explaining truths. During roughly the same epoch, Hellenic sport distinguished itself by developing objective mechanisms for selecting single winners from varied pools of contestants. Is there a connection? (...) Following the general thesis that sport is an expression of thehuman desire to know, this paper will explore the epistemological nature of the earliest forms Hellenic athletics. I begin by interpreting the funeral games depicted in Homer’s Iliad as an unbiased, publicly monitored means for settling questions of social honor. I then consider the ancient Olympic games, arguing that their religious foundations motivated a new focus on objective and reliable methods for selecting single winners who could be symbolically sacrificed to the god. In both manifestations, athletic games are used to objectively answer important questions about merit. Eventually, competitive methods of truth‐seeking would become commonplace in Western thought. By examining early the origins of Greek sport in this light, however, Olympia may be identified as a key source of epistemological testing methods, and sport itself may be characterized fundamentally as a search for knowledge. (shrink)

The ancient world witnessed a meaningful transition in the conception of human thought and belief. What some have called the “discovery” of the mind can also be understood as a release from dependence on oracular wisdom and mythological explanation, made possible by the invention of more reliable and democratic methods for discovering and explaining truths. During roughly the same epoch, Hellenic sport distinguished itself by developing objective mechanisms for selecting single winners from varied pools of contestants. Is there a connection? (...) Following the general thesis that sport is an expression of thehuman desire to know, this paper will explore the epistemological nature of the earliest forms Hellenic athletics. I begin by interpreting the funeral games depicted in Homer’s Iliad as an unbiased, publicly monitored means for settling questions of social honor. I then consider the ancient Olympic games, arguing that their religious foundations motivated a new focus on objective and reliable methods for selecting single winners who could be symbolically sacrificed to the god. In both manifestations, athletic games are used to objectively answer important questions about merit. Eventually, competitive methods of truth‐seeking would become commonplace in Western thought. By examining early the origins of Greek sport in this light, however, Olympia may be identified as a key source of epistemological testing methods, and sport itself may be characterized fundamentally as a search for knowledge. (shrink)