In paperback for the first time, Randolph Feezell's Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection immediately tackles two big questions about sport: "What is it?" and "Why does it attract so many people?

The philosophical and scientific literature on play is extensive and the approaches to the study, description, and explanation of play are diverse. In this paper I intend to provide an overview of approaches to play. My interest is in describing the most fundamental categories in terms of which play is characterized, explained, and evaluated. Insofar as these categories attempt to describe what kind of reality we are talking about when we make claims about play, I hope to clarify the metaphysics (...) of play. Once this categorical scheme is made clear, we will be in a better position to evaluate the task of definition, claims about the relation of sport and play, and assertions about the significance of play. First, I place the discussion in the context of Bernard Suits's account of play and some other recent approaches to play. Next, I distinguish the following approaches to play: (a) play as behavior or activity; (b) play as motive, attitude, or state of mind; (c) play as form or structure; (d) play as meaningful experience; (e) play as an ontologically distinctive phenomenon. There is a natural progression in the way the analysis unfolds. In the final section I argue that my analysis generates a pluralist, nonreductive account of play. (shrink)

There’s more to sports than the ethos of competition, entertainment, and commercialism expressed in popular media and discourse. Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives discusses sport in the context of several traditional philosophical questions, including: What is a good human life and how does sport factor into it? To whom do we look for ethical guidance? What makes human activities or projects meaningful? Randolph Feezell examines these questions along with other relevant topics in the philosophy of sport such as (...) the contribution of play to a meaningful life, the various reasons for pessimistic views of sport, the various claims that celebrated athletes are role models, and the seldom-questioned view that coaches are in a position to offer advice to athletes on how to live or on leadership skills. He also discusses the way that non-Western attitudes found in Buddhism, Taoism, and the Bhagavad Gita might be used to address the vulnerabilities of sports participants. Feezell draws from current sports issues, popular literature, and contemporary sports figures to shed light on the attraction and value of sports and examine the accompanying ethical issues. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine Myles Brand’s criticisms of what he calls the Standard View of the role and value of intercollegiate athletics. According to Brand, the Standard View, held by most faculty members, undervalues college sports and should be replaced by the Integrated View that properly stresses the educational value of participating in athletics. I claim that Brand’s analogical argument has a variety of problems. I show that Brand’s conclusion, derived from his attempt to compare the experiences of (...) student-musicians and student-athletes is unpersuasive, yet his argument forces us to confront persistent and important questions about liberal arts education and the role and value of the arts, especially music, in higher education. (shrink)

What is sport? Why does sport matter? How can we use philosophy to understand what sport means today? This engaging and highly original introduction to the philosophy of sport uses dialogue a form of philosophical investigation to address the fundamental questions in sport studies and to explore key contemporary issues such as fair play, gender, drug use, cheating, entertainment and identity. Providing a clear, informative and accessible introduction to the philosophy of sport, every chapter includes current sporting examples as well (...) as review questions and guides to further reading. The dialogue form enables students to engage in debate and raise questions, while encouraging them to think from the perspectives of athlete, coach, spectator and philosopher. The issues raised present real and complex ethical dilemmas that relate to a variety of sports from around the world such as soccer, athletics, baseball, basketball, hockey and tennis. No other book brings this rich subject to life through the use of dialogue, making this an indispensable companion to any course on the philosophy or ethics of sport. ". (shrink)

In this paper I examine some issues raised by conspicuous displays of religiosity in sports. In particular, important questions have been occasioned by the relatively recent pronouncements and behavior of a celebrated evangelical Christian athlete in American professional football. I explain reasons why some find such conspicuous piety worrisome. I raise concerns related to the nature of sport, consistency, divisiveness, trivialization, and religious diversity. After discussing objections to exclusivist forms of religion, especially theistic religions, I focus on how religious beliefs (...) should be held. I present what I call the Basic Argument from Religious Disagreement, whose conclusion claims that religious beliefs ought to be held fallibly, rather than confidently or with certainty. Fallible religious belief has important and valuable consequences, overall and in the specific context of sports. Celebrated athletes have strong reasons to hold religious beliefs fallibly and, if they claim to be role models, they may have epistemic responsibilities as well as moral responsibilities. (shrink)

A series of eight fictional conversations offer an introduction to ethics, providing critical discussion of the definition and value of ethics and of ethical theories.

Pascal’s famous pragmatic argument for belief in God is plagued by a number of well-known problems, not the least of which is related to the claim that significant benefits may arise when we acquire a certain set of religious beliefs. But it is reasonable to hold a wide range of conflicting beliefs about the existence of God, the nature and supposed purposes of divine reality, and other related metaphysical claims. If it is not clear what claims are true about God, (...) then the world is religiously ambiguous. If the world is characterized by religious ambiguity, then the punishment-reward structure that underlies Pascalian wagering should be rejected in favor of what I call the agnostic wager. Given our bewildering epistemic situation in relation to questions about divine reality, if theism is true it is unlikely that it matters whether we believe theism is true. (shrink)

Philosophers of sport have debated whether supporting one team over others is commendable or morally suspect. We show how Stoicism sheds light on this controversy. Several caricature views of Stoic sportsmanship are studied. Stoics learn how to enjoy the blessings that come their way without mistakenly judging challenges to be hardships that detract from their happiness. Stoic sportsmen celebrate the successes of their teams while exercising the virtues of patience, endurance, loyalty, and appreciation of athletic excellence when their teams flounder. (...) The Stoic ideal is not to be an indifferent, disinterested spectator, but rather a calm, polite, and engaged sportsman. (shrink)

When tennis fan Jane Bronstein attended the 1995 U.S. Open she probably knew there was a remote chance her image would end up on television screens around the world. But she surely did not know she was at risk of becoming the object of worldwide attention on the David Letterman Show. As it happened, Letterman spotted an unflattering clip from the U.S. Open showing a heavyset Bronstein with peach juice dripping down her chin. Not only did he show the footage (...) six times that fall, but he ridiculed her on his “Top 10 List,” calling her a “seductive temptress,” even paying to put the clip on the Sony Jumbotron electronic billboard at Time Square. Ms. Bronstein sued David Letterman’s production company under New York civil rights law for violating her privacy. (shrink)

We extend attribution and stakeholder theory in the context of crisis reputation management by examining differences in stakeholder perceptions in the form of organization-related blame. We presented eight stakeholder groups with factual information surrounding the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and asked them to indicate the extent to which they blamed the leaders and organizations associated with the event. Stakeholders also completed a survey assessing their attribution styles. Results indicated that perceptions of blame were affected by the interaction of stakeholder role (...) (i.e., active vs. passive) with attribution style (i.e., optimistic vs. pessimistic). Our results suggest that organizational leaders’ understanding of their stakeholders may be an important aspect in managing stakeholders’ sensemaking during crises. (shrink)

It is widely held that one can be responsible for doing something that one was unable to avoid doing. This paper focuses primarily on the question of whether one can be responsible for not doing something that one was unable to do. The paper begins with an examination of the account of responsibility for omissions offered by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, arguing that in many cases it yields mistaken verdicts. An alternative account is sketched that jibes with (...) and explains judgments about a variety of omissions cases, including intentional omissions as well as simple failures to act. (shrink)

Stephens and Feezell argue, in?The Ideal of the Stoic Sportsman?, that?one need not be a scholar of ancient Greek philosophy to refer to?stoic? conduct or a?stoic? approach to certain matters, because the vocabulary related to this apparently antiquarian view of life has seeped into our common language?. Nonetheless, Stephens and Feezell go on to give a scholarly account of Stoicism as it relates to athletic participation. Their account, in part, takes the form of a distinction between?simple Stoicism? and?sophisticated (...) Stoicism?? the former being a common, contemporary grasp of Stoic moral psychology; the latter being a more sophisticated and historically accurate grasp of Stoic moral psychology. In fleshing out their more sophisticated account, they disclose a paradox. Given the Stoic sufficiency thesis? i.e., that the sole good is virtue? the Stoic sportsman must be indifferent to failure or winning. Yet the Stoic sportsman must be sufficiently attached to the athletic experience to use it as a means of developing virtuous states of character. That they dub the paradox the?paradox of Stoic detachment?.?Curiosity? Paradox? Or psychological incoherence?? they ask. The aim of the present undertaking is a?soft? critique of Stephens and Feezell? soft, because the critique is not so much a critical rejection of the authors' view tout court. Instead, I aim to point out deficiencies with their account and expand on other points not fully elucidated in it. The most salient point I make is that what they deem paradoxical is not really paradoxical, once there is a more thorough account and clearer grasp of Stoic?detachment? (shrink)

Beyond the Fields is not the usual kind of book reviewed in JPS. Randolph Feezell is a highly regarded scholar in the philosophy of sport, having written significant books like Sport, Play and Ethi...

In this article, I take up Uri McMillan’s work in Embodied Avatars to rethink the subject–object relationship in women’s preaching. In performance art, the subject fashions herself into an object. I stretch the performance art genre to include preachers Rachel Baker, Jarena Lee, and Florence Spearing Randolph, arguing that these women have strategically performed objecthood to navigate gendered and racialized constraints in Christian proclamation. Examining these three women preachers through the lens of performing objecthood opens up theological understandings of (...) how the Spirit works in a world marked by social sin. Contrary to theologians who describe submission to the Spirit as self-effacement, I show how submission to the Spirit can counter worldly authorities, while enabling women preachers to transform perceptions of gender and race in a liberative way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Big Women:Mark Adamo's Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess Between Monteverdi and Musical ComedyRalph HexterWe live in an age when opera companies across America are regularly presenting new operas, and some of them are even making hesitant first steps into repertory status, though it is too soon to tell how long- or short-lived their performance history will be. Opera itself began—Peri's Dafne (1597) is commonly regarded as the starting (...) point—as an attempt to recreate Greek tragedy on the stage, and for at least its first two hundred years, plots drawing on classical material, if not always classical literary texts, were staples. Nineteenth-century opera composers were relatively less inclined to turn to the classics for plots and characters, but the twentieth century witnessed renewed activity in classically based operas, from Strauss' Elektra (1909) and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex (1927) to Hans Werner Henze's Venus und Adonis (1997) and Randolph Peters' The Golden Ass (1999), to name but a few significant examples. Mark Adamo's Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess, which premiered in Houston in 2005, is among the first operas in our new century to continue the tradition.Accompanied by a trio of distinguished distaff classicists, I attended the 2006 revival of Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess at the New York City Opera. Some months later, as word of the outing—any resemblance to this or any other Aristophanic comedy is purely accidental—trickled out, AJP's editor asked me to write this "Brief Mention." The reader will infer, then, that I neither watched nor listened with the idea of writing such a notice. What follows are reflections based partially on recollection of my immediate impressions (especially of the music) but also on subsequent study of the published libretto,1 Adamo's earlier and quite popular Little Women (1998), and stray remarks of the composer in published or online [End Page 119] interviews. In no sense is it a review of the particular April 2nd matinee performance that I saw. Of that let me say that my impression was almost uniformly positive. The principals, who have very demanding parts (and not only vocally), were strong; several were reprising roles they had taken in the Houston world premiere.Adamo states on the title page of the libretto that the opera is "[f]reely adapted from the play by Aristophanes," and this is both true and to the good. Before I turn to the adaptation itself, it might be worth observing that within the reception history of ancient stageworks in opera, the tradition of classical comedies turned into operas is relatively slight. I put it that way because, of course, one might well argue that New Comedy in its Roman form is the ultimate source of all opera buffa. I say nothing new when I place Figaro directly in the line of servi callidi.2Greek Old Comedy (i.e., given the state of preservation, Aristophanes) has only infrequently provided fodder for opera. One of the most interesting cases is Walter Braunfels' setting of Aristophanes Birds—Die Vögel—premiered in 1920. Braunfels (1882–1954) was fired from his teaching post by the Nazis in 1933—he was half Jewish—and his works were banished from the repertory. Die Vögel, his most successful stagework, has been recently revived, and a recording is available in Decca's "Entartete ["degenerate"] Musik" series. One must also recall the famous Frogs performed in the pool of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium in 1941, since, a generation later, in 1975, the piece was revived, provided with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and, like so many other shows, transferred from New Haven (if not the Shubert) to Broadway.3Aristophanes is more at home, I would argue, in American musical comedy than in opera, at least opera as it has come to be received by modern audiences treated almost without exception to post-Gluckian opera, with major houses, until recently, shunning the more interesting hybrids. (Think even of Carmen and how long it took for it to lose the recitatives by Guiraud that replaced the original opéra comique spoken dialogue.) To modern spectators or readers, Aristophanes, with... (shrink)