Playing Games

An introduction to the philosophy of sport through dialogue

Randolph Feezell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138917262
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317423195
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

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.

Dialogue nine

Fans and role models

I	Fans
	A	The ethics of supporting sports teams
	B	Virtue arguments
	C	The partisan and the purist
	D	The virtues of partisanship
	E	A questionable analogy?
	F	Is the purist fan too detached?
	G	Moderate partisanship
	H	Questioning analogies again
	I	The legitimacy of different fan attitudes
	J	Criticisms of partisanship
	K	Is partisanship morally dangerous?
	L	Partisanship and impartiality
	M	Does the purist lack empathy?
	N	A false dilemma?
	O	The triviality objection
	P	The moderate purist
	Q	Doesn’t sport need loyal fans?
II	Role models
	A	Two central questions
	B	The narrow and broad sense of “role model”
	C	The descriptive and normative senses of “role model”
	D	Clarifying the question
	E	Do all persons have moral responsibilities?
	F	The special responsibilities argument
	G	Additional moral reasons: a distinction without a difference?
	H	The argument from dishonesty
	I	Honesty, dishonesty, and consequences
	J	Do we know our sports heroes?

Introduction

The focus of the first part of the conversation is an essay by Nicholas Dixon, in which he examines “The Ethics of Supporting Sports Teams.” The central ethical issue isn’t simply questionable fan behavior; the issue is whether there is an “ideal” type of fan in terms of praiseworthy traits of character or virtues. Dixon distinguishes two kinds of fans, the partisan and the purist, and argues that partisan attitudes display the virtue of loyalty, while the purist fan is too emotionally detached. Both Skylar and Pat argue that Dixon’s defense of moderate partisanship depends on questionable analogies with friendship and loving relationships. Pat doesn’t think that there is one ideal attitude for a fan to have, but there is another defensible ideal that Dixon has failed to consider. The participants discuss three criticisms of partisanship: it entails bad attitudes and unsportsmanlike, even immoral, actions; it violates impartiality; and fervent partisanship is incompatible with the triviality of sport. Pat agrees with the third criticism and explains and defends the attitudes of the moderate purist, whose interest in sport is appreciative of athletic excellence and aesthetic value, morally sensitive, and may be deeply involved in the strategic details of a game as well as the dramatic narratives of sport. The purist may also have relatively mild partisan preferences, hence a moderate form of purist spectatorship. The conversation turns to other fan-related issues. Are celebrated athletes role models? Do celebrated athletes have special responsibilities to be role models? In order to answer the first question, we need to distinguish different senses of being a role model. Pat argues that we need to make the relevant distinctions between the narrow and broad senses of “role model” and the descriptive and normative senses of “role model.” In response to the second question, they discuss the “special responsibilities argument.” Skylar argues that celebrated athletes don’t have any special responsibilities. Pat argues that acting as if one is morally special is dishonest, and treating celebrated athletes as morally special may lead to cynicism when they fail to live up to our moral expectations. Finally, we usually don’t know famous athletes well enough to know whether they are worthy of guiding us.

Dialogue nine: Fans and role models

I. Fans

LOGAN: Pat, you want to talk about fans? What’s philosophical about being a fan?

RILEY: Everybody has a team. I agree with Logan. Where’s the philosophy? When talk turns to sports, people usually ask whom you’re rooting for. “Who’s your team?” There’s nothing wrong with that.

SKYLAR: Sorry, Riley, but not everyone “has” a team, as you say. I couldn’t care less about who wins games. I see how a discussion of fan behavior could involve philosophical issues. Fans act stupidly sometimes – even violently. Have you read about soccer hooligans? Fans yell at opposing players. Taunt them. Scream at referees. Make asses of themselves. I think sportsmanship applies to fans as well as to coaches and players.

LOGAN: Fans love their teams. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Being passionate about a team is a good thing.

SKYLAR: How about the ridiculous behavior? The violent behavior?

RILEY: I wouldn’t defend that. But not all fans do that stuff. You can be a fan and act well. A fan can respect opposing players and officials. There’s nothing necessary about the connection between being a fan of a team and acting “stupidly,” as you say. And being a fan is part of the fun. You seem to appreciate the value of play. There’s play involved in being a fan.

SKYLAR: There’s nothing playful about mean and vicious comments toward opposing teams and officials. “Fan-atic” attitudes are dangerous. And fans seem incapable of actually seeing the game as it occurs, as opposed to seeing the game through their biased, subjective lenses. They filter everything through their fanatic desires for their team to win.

LOGAN: Come on, Skylar. You’re so negative.

SKYLAR: I’m not negative! I’d say I’m the realist now. Don’t forget the money. The fans feed the machine. Even people who love sports see the way that money distorts what’s going on. The capitalists need rabid fans to line their pockets. American colleges and universities need boosters to support their teams, not their educational missions.

The ethics of supporting sports teams

PAT: Let me redirect the conversation somewhat. For me, issues about being a fan are very interesting. I would say that I’ve been a fan of teams and athletes. But as I’ve gotten older and I’ve learned more about particular sports, and as I’ve thought more about the nature of sport, my fan attitudes have changed. In my research I read a provocative piece called “The Ethics of Supporting Sports Teams” by a philosopher, Nicholas Dixon. Very interesting. Not much has been written about the ethics of being a fan, despite the fact that fans are such an enormous part of contemporary sports. Then I had a conversation with J. K. It turns out that J. K. discusses these issues in the sports ethics course. So here we are again. J. K. will play the role of Dixon.

J. K.: I should apologize to Dixon. Let’s just say that I’ll try to explain and defend a view that seems close to the arguments in his original piece. I find the defense of the “moderate partisan” to be worthy of consideration, at the least.

LOGAN: I’m still not sure I understand what we’re talking about. Sure, sometimes fans do some ridiculous things, but that’s the exception, not the rule. I agree with Riley. There are bad fans and good fans. People have a right to root for whomever they want. There’s nothing controversial or ethically questionable about that.

PAT: That’s not quite the issue. The issue of bad fan attitudes and behavior is discussed in Dixon’s piece, but it’s not the central focus.

J. K.: Dixon defends the view that there is an ideal type of fan.

SKYLAR: “Ideal” in what sense?

J. K.: “Ideal” in the sense that he wants to offer a moral evaluation of different types of fans, in terms of their basic attitudes or motives.

LOGAN: I still don’t get it. Obviously, there are different kinds of fans. Are you saying that some kinds of fans are ethically better than others? Ideal in that sense?

SKYLAR: That’s clear, isn’t it? Soccer hooligans versus respectful fans?

Virtue arguments

J. K.: Dixon offers a virtue argument for the ethical superiority of a certain kind of fan. The type of fan he defends as ideal is supposedly more virtuous. The moderate partisan’s attitudes and actions express a virtue, a morally praiseworthy trait of character. He’s interested in the way in which the motivations of two very different kinds of fans can be subject to ethical evaluation.

SKYLAR: Say more about what you call a virtue argument.

J. K.: Suppose you tell a lie. I might criticize the lie because your action violates an important moral rule: everyone ought to tell the truth. On the other hand, I might say that what you have done is dishonest. You have acted as a dishonest person. We take honesty to be an important moral virtue, a praiseworthy trait of character. There’s much discussion in contemporary moral philosophy about the comparative philosophical strengths and weaknesses of rule-governed ethical theories versus virtue-based approaches to ethics. For our purposes, we don’t have to decide such fundamental questions. In everyday life we do recognize the moral force of appeals to virtues and vices. We evaluate both actions and persons in terms of character traits: being a just or fair person, benevolence, honesty, compassion, kindness, trustworthiness – cruelty, insensitivity, viciousness, and so forth.

PAT: So there is a type of fan who is supposedly more virtuous or whose basic motives express a morally praiseworthy trait of character. The partisan is supposedly more virtuous, in some sense, than the purist.

J. K.: Precisely. Dixon thinks that a partisan fan displays the virtue of loyalty.

SKYLAR: Say more about the distinction.

The partisan and the purist

J. K.: Dixon’s distinction between the partisan and the purist is fairly self-explanatory. I would put it this way. Both the partisan and the purist are supporters of a team, but their motives and desires are quite different. The partisan is a loyal supporter of a team because of some kind of personal connection to its members. Dixon describes different ways that partisans develop their relationships to a team. Sometimes it’s a local team whose members are known by fans. It could be a school or college team representing an institution with which a fan is connected. It may be a team with which a fan becomes increasingly familiar because of media exposure. It could be a team that represents some local, regional, or even national connections that are the basis for identifying with its successes and failures.

SKYLAR: How about the purist?

J. K.: A purist is motivated by an admiration for athletic excellence. The purist supports a team whose play she admires. The support is based on an appreciation of athletic virtues, so to speak. The partisan wants her team to win. The purist wants to see a well-played game, an exciting contest in which the players exemplify the highest virtues of the game being played. I suppose that a purist will, over time, develop a stronger allegiance to a team whose play she admires but whose allegiance may change when another team consistently plays better or in new, interesting, and even innovative ways. As Dixon describes the purist, her allegiances are more flexible, even tenuous.

LOGAN: To me, that doesn’t sound like a fan. A true fan loves her team. There’s nothing flexible about that. The purist sounds like a fair-weather fan.

PAT: I think Dixon’s categories are enlightening. Now, when someone asks me whether I’m a “fan,” I typically distinguish the partisan and the purist, and I say that I am more of a game fan than a team fan. I love the game more than the team, and I do admire teams that play the game well or play in interesting ways. I’m not quite like Skylar, who says she couldn’t care less about who wins games. I do find myself rooting, rather mildly, for some teams, but I’m more interested in an exciting, i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• The characters
• Introduction
• Dialogue one: Why philosophy of sport?
• Dialogue two: What is sport?
• Dialogue three: Sportsmanship
• Dialogue four: Cheating and running up the score
• Dialogue five: Trash talking and gamesmanship
• Dialogue six: Competition and winning
• Dialogue seven: Drugs and sport
• Dialogue eight: Gender and sport
• Dialogue nine: Fans and role models
• Dialogue ten: Sport and meaning: do sports matter?
• Index