The Philosophy of Football

Steffen Borge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367180928
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429602122
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Human beings are the only creatures known to engage in sport. We are sporting animals, and our favourite pastime of football is the biggest sport spectacle on earth. The Philosophy of Football presents the first sustained, in-depth philosophical investigation of the phenomenon of football.

In explaining the complex nature of football, the book draws on literature in sociology, history, psychology and beyond, offering real-life examples of footballing actions alongside illuminating thought experiments. The book is organized around four main themes considering the character, nature, analysis and aesthetics of football. It discusses football as an extra-ordinary, unnecessary, rule-based, competitive, skill-based physical activity, articulated as a social (as opposed to natural) kind that is fictional in character, and where fairness or fair play – contrary to much sport ethical discussion – is not centre stage. Football, it is argued, is a constructive- destructive contact sport and, in comparison to other sports, is lower scoring and more affected by chance. The latter presents to its spectators a more unpredictable game and a darker, more complex and denser drama to enjoy.

The Philosophy of Football deepens our understanding of the familiar features of the game, offering novel interpretations on what football is, how and why we play it, and what the game offers its followers that makes us so eagerly await match day. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the world's most popular game or in the philosophical or social study of sport.

1

THE CHARACTER OF FOOTBALL

This is Anfield

Introduction

In the players’ tunnel, above the stairs that lead out onto Liverpool FC’s home ground Anfield, there is a sign reading: “This is Anfield.” The sign was originally placed there on the order of Liverpool’s legendary manager Bill Shankly, to remind the Liverpool players for whom they were playing and to intimidate the visitors by reminding them who they were up against. The sign also marks a transition point. When they descend down the players’ tunnel, pass underneath the sign and walk onto the pitch, the players leave the ordinary world and enter an extra-ordinary world.

In this chapter, I will explore and develop the idea that the extra-ordinary world of football involves some sort of make-believe or pretence. In doing so, I will build on work from the philosophy of play and sport, among others, Karl Groos, Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois and Bernard Suits, as well as from newer philosophical aesthetics, as found in the work of, among others, Kendall Walton and Tamar Gendler. Taking my inspiration from Walton, I argue that football is fictional in character in the sense that it involves make-believe or pretence. The fictionality of football is fairly minimal. Football is not a fiction in the ordinary sense of the word. Furthermore, football is not a fiction in Walton’s sense of fiction. The main fiction present in football, i.e., the essential make-believe or pretence involved in our way of playing and watching football, is that winning football matches matters. In truth, it does not. It is against a background of make-believe or pretence that winning football matches becomes important. That make-believe, I argue, is grounded in what Gendler calls aliefs, which are affect-laden and action-generating mental states that are more primitive or basic than beliefs. The purpose of these states is to ready us for action in the ordinary world. Nevertheless, both footballers and spectators understand that the aliefs that are generated when playing and watching football do not track ordinary world situations. Instead of giving rise to ordinary world behaviour, they give rise to engagement in the game. Getting exited about and acting on that which we on some level realize does not matter – in the sense of not tracking ordinary world situations – constitute the essential pretence of football. This involves a certain type of pretence, which I called proto-pretence, and that mechanism or mechanisms are also found in the kind of social rough-and-tumble play we find among human and nonhuman animals. This is the football fiction.

Preliminaries

The thesis that football is fictional in character must not be conflated with the clearly misguided idea that football is a fiction in the ordinary sense of the word. Ordinarily, calling something “a fiction” means judging it to be something that is not real, something that is made up or imagined. We can call this the naïve ordinary language account.¹ The account of the adventures of Anna Karenina, in the book of the same name written by Leo Tolstoy, is a fiction. The novel does not describe events that took place. Furthermore, the names Anna Karenina, Alexei Vronsky, etc. do not refer to anyone who ever lived (in our world). Tolstoy made it all up.² Unlike fictional characters and events as they are depicted in literature, fiction film, etc., footballers and football matches are real. They exist in this world and not merely in some fictional universe. Sport is, as Lev Kreft puts it, “real action” where “athletes appear and perform as themselves” and not as “dramatic personae” (Kreft 2012: 226, 228, 231).³

Though Kreft emphasizes that actors on a stage do pretend to be dramatic personae, while sportspeople do not, the notion of something being a fiction is not exclusively bound to art forms such as fiction film, theatre, literature, dance, computer games and painting. People readily call something a fiction when they merely want to communicate that something is untrue or made up. For example, Richard Dawkins dubbed the Christian God of the Old Testament “the most unpleasant character in all fiction” and went on to claim that the Gospels are “fabricated from start to finish: invented, made-up fiction (…) the gospels are ancient fiction” (Dawkins 2006: 51, 123). Emeritus Pope Benedict followed suit and made sure that there was no love lost between the two camps by denouncing “The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins [as] a classic example of science fiction” (Emeritus Pope Benedict 2013). Clearly, neither of these authors was attempting to make a contribution to the study of aesthetics, but rather using the word “fiction” to signify that which is untrue, non-existent or made up. I suggest that the naïve, ordinary language understanding of the word “fiction” minimally entails that whatever is deemed a fiction is untrue, non-existent or made up.⁴ It then follows that it is uncontroversial that the content of the book Anna Karenina is a fiction or is fictional, whereas the status of the Old Testament, the Gospels and Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene seems to be open to debate. The ontological status of football, however, is not controversial with regard to the fiction–non-fiction divide. The content of football – the ontological status or the nature of the game – is not a fiction in the naïve, ordinary language understanding of the word. The question of the content or nature of football concerns what it is for the activity of playing football to be a sport and a specific kind of sport. I will return to that question in the next two chapters. The question of the character of football, on the other hand, concerns how the game is played and watched. The fictionality of football pertains not to the content of the game, but to its character – the essential make-believe aspect is that winning football matches matters. Joseph Kupfer makes a similar point when he writes that “[i]n sports, we set up procedures (…) and ‘pretend’ that the activity and outcome are important” (Kupfer 1983: 114). The way we play and engage in watching football involves make-believe.

It is key to my line of argument that we can talk about the content or the nature of a sport like football. Without this assumption, it hardly makes sense to talk about the sport’s character. Admittedly, talk about the content of football can become a bit strained, as it really amounts to talking about football as a sport. However, it is important because it brings out the contrast between the nature of football as a sport and the fact that it is a sport that can be played in various manners. Such talk about the content of football, however, does not commit me to any particular theory of sport. Rather, the only thing that follows from this assumption is that one can truly, or correctly, say about two different games of football that one “is a game of football and is played in a friendly manner”, while the other “is a game of football and is played in a hostile manner”. If you can grant me that, then you have granted me the distinction between the content or nature of football – that a certain activity is a game of football and a sport – and the character of the sport – how the game is played and watched. Football, I will argue, is played as if it mattered. There are games, however, where the outcome is important, like Russian roulette and ancient gladiatorial combat. Such games are not fictional in character. Football could have been more like Russian roulette. Imagine a football tournament where serious injuries were not treated, but injured players were forced to carry on no matter how detrimental it was to their health, and where the teams that lost matches were taken away and executed. In such circumstances, the players would hardly need to pretend that the activity and outcome were important. The difference between those kinds of football matches and ours does not lie in the content of the activity. Both kinds of matches are football matches. Rather, the difference lies in the manner in which the football matches are played, i.e. their character. All I assume in this book is that we can recognize an activity as football – that there is something which is properly called football – and that this activity can be played in different ways or manners.

Throughout the book, I exploit various parallels between the world of sport and the world of art. Suffice to say here that I do not conflate art and sport, and that I assume we can distinguish the aesthetic from the artistic. Football, like mountain ranges, sunsets, tiger stripes, etc., can have aesthetic value, while having no artistic function (Best 1978: 113–114). Aesthetic value is not confined to works of art. Moreover, while works of fiction, like fiction film, literature, etc., are commonly thought of as works of art, but not necessarily the other way round, there is little temptation to think of football and football matches as fine art.⁵ Among the different views on artistic function, i.e. the purpose of art, the most helpful contrast to sports is the view that regards fine art as something that (at its best) teaches us important lessons about the world. Cynthia Freeland argues that “[a]rtworks stimulate cognitive activity that may teach us about the world”, and Martha Nussbaum claims that the special strength of literature is that it can reveal the human condition in an illuminating fashion (Freeland 1997: 19, Nussbaum 1990, see also Nussbaum 1995). Indeed, “certain truths about human life can only be fittingly and accurately stated in the language and forms characteristic of the narrative artist” (Nussbaum 1990: 5). The Nussbaum-Freeland view is that fine art and literature can educate our emotions and contribute to our moral development. It is an open empirical question whether the Nussbaum-Freeland view on literature and fine art as a special provider or felicitator of insights into the human condition – insights that make us better persons – is correct.⁶ However, I think it is uncontroversial that, on a phenomenological level, many (perhaps most) readers of great fiction writers – the likes of Tolstoy, Austen, Ibsen and others of their stature – have a sense that they are being presented with important insights into the human condition that enrich their intellectual lives.

Compared to the above-mentioned writers, I think it is safe to say that, for most of us, playing or watching football gives no similar sense of intellectual depth and importance. In line with this, Kupfer notes that:

Where theatre presents real ends and activities in a pretend setting, the significance of even the ends and activities are pretended in sport.

(Kupfer 1983: 114)

Note that, here, Kupfer explicitly endorses what I have called the Nussbaum-Freeland view on art as an activity that can help us to understand the world better, making us better persons, etc. Art matters because art has real ends, i.e., ordinary world ends. Suits has a related view on how art and sports differ. According to Suits, the subject matter of art is as follows:

[T]he actions and passions of men: with human aspirations and frustrations, hopes and fears, triumphs and tragedies, with flaws of character, moral dilemmas, joy and sorrow.

(Suits 1978: 152)

In short, fine art addresses the human condition, whereas sports have no subject matter outside the activity itself. On the latter point, David Best claims, “the very notion of a subject of sport makes no sense” (Best 1978: 122). Art forms such as literature, fiction film, theatre, etc., often present that which is made up, and rely on pretence, but their respective subject matters often concern the real world. Furthermore, according to the Nussbaum-Freeland view, art can also help us to deal better with that world and become better people. Sports such as football, it would seem, are not like that in any straightforward manner.⁷

Admittedly, in the philosophy of sport, claims have been made to the contrary. Stephen Mumford, for example, believes that sport “provides an aesthetic insight into the nature of our embodied existence” (Mumford 2012a: 140, see also Mumford 2014: 192). Even if Mumford may be right about this, it would also seem correct to say that football is not geared towards or set up with aesthetic insight as its main objective or purpose. Your average footballer and football spectator do not first and foremost think of football as providing aesthetic insight into the nature of our embodied existence. In contrast, one would not have to look far into the art world to find artists (fiction writers, painters, fiction filmmakers, etc.) who explicitly aim to provide us with knowledge about the world and the human condition, and to find an audience that believes artists sometimes succeed in doing just that.

On the other hand, I do not wish to suggest that you cannot learn anything about the human condition by playing or watching football matches (or sports in general). Insofar as playing and watching football are human activities, they will also be possible venues for insight into our nature and our place in the world. But again, sport does not seem geared towards gaining insights or new perspectives on the human condition or any other area (see Suits 1978: 152–153, and Wenz 2006: 238).⁸ Football is an important window into the human condition, but the activity or practice as such is not about the human condition. There is a difference in ambition between the art world and the sport world in this respect. It might be difficult to draw a sharp line between fine art and sport, especially because it is notoriously difficult to define “art” and “fine art”. Still, it is safe to assume that while sports can have aesthetic value, they have no artistic function and, furthermore, that the difference between making or perceiving art and playing or watching sport is immediately felt by (most of) those engaged in these activities.

Some kinds of make-believe

Football is not a fiction in the naïve, ordinary language sense or senses of the word, but there are other ways to understand fiction and fictionality. If we look at Kendall Walton’s notion of fiction, which is quite different from its naïve, ordinary language counterpart or counterparts, then a football match can be a fiction. According to Walton, fictions are that which prompts games of make-believe. Let us call this a Waltonian fiction.

Representations [i.e. fictions] (…) are things possessing the social function of serving as props in games of make-believe.

(Walton 1990: 69)⁹

Any work with the function of serving as a prop in games of make-believe, however minor or peripheral or instrumental this function might be, qualifies as “fiction”.

(Walton 1990: 72)

[T]o be fictional is, at bottom, to possess the function of serving as a prop in games of make-believe.

(Walton 1990: 102)

Walton adds, “representations [fictions] need not be works, human artifacts” (Walton 1990: 72). Take Walton’s example of the child, which “comes across a stump shaped strikingly like a bear” and “imagines a bear blocking her path” (Walton 1990: 21). The stump is a prop in the child’s make-believe. The stump, qua representing a bear in the child’s make-believe, is fictional. Clearly, a football match can be fictional in this sense. Just think of children playing a game of football, while imagining that their game is the World Cup final. That game of football is fictional qua representing the World Cup final. On the other hand, a great many or most football matches are not used as props in these kinds of games of make-believe – they do not represent other imaginary matches or scenarios. I will ignore this category of Waltonian football fictions.

Furthermore, Walton’s inclusive categorization of fiction has met resistance, and alternative views are available. Consider, for example, the intentionalist view of fiction. The intentionalist line on fiction is that for something to count as a fiction, someone must consciously present and think of that something as make-believe. Proponents of this line would take exception to both Dawkins’s and Emeritus Pope Benedict’s use of the word “fiction”. Instead of calling the Old Testament, the Gospels and The Selfish Gene fictions, they should, according to the intentionalists, merely describe them as false. On the other hand, intentionalists also hold that fictions involve that which is made up and not real. That is, in the act of inviting someone to imagine that such-and-such is real, it is the such-and-such that is not actual and is meant to be imagined. According to the intentionalist view, merely being made up or not real is not enough for something to count as a fiction. This would explain why we do not generally think and talk about myths, for example the Norse myths, as fiction, even though they are all false and some perhaps inspired by natural phenomena. An example of the latter would be believing that lightning is caused by Thor throwing his hammer. The props (like the lightning) must be consciously appropriated for there to be a fiction, and in the case of mythology they were not (Lamarque and Olsen 1994: 47–49, Currie 1990: 36). Thus, according to the intentionalist view, myths do not count as fictions. One way to look at the intentionalist view of fiction is to see it as a defence of a refined naïve, ordinary language account of fiction. The intricacies of this debate, however, need not worry us, because there are sport-specific reasons for resisting the idea that football should count as a Waltonian fiction.

The intentionalist view (which includes literature, fiction films, etc.) and Waltonian fictions (which also include, among other things, child’s play) define fiction restrictively, and both allow consumers of fiction (i.e., the audience) to:

A: Fill in certain aspects of the fictional world that are not explicitly represented in the artistic vehicle providing the narrative or fictional world, but which seem reasonable, perhaps even necessary, for understanding that fictional world or the narrative as it unfolds in that fictional world.

B: Speculate and fantasize about what happened to the fictional characters after the final page has been read or the final scene has been watched, and with regard to Waltonian fictions like child’s play, add to the fiction at will.

The possibility of this sort of filling in, further speculation or fantasizing and adding on seems to be a result of or part of the nature of fictions. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen note that the phenomenon that consumers of fiction “often fantasize with fictive content, ‘filling in’ as the whim takes them” is “[a]n integral part of responding to fiction” (Lamarque and Olsen 1994: 89). There is no similar phenomenon with regard to football. We can (and will in Chapter 4) talk in a loose sense about a narrative unfolding in a football match, but there is no filling in, speculation, fantasizing or adding on to be done when watching football. A football audience might want their team to play better, wish for goals and even fantasize that their team will beat a hugely superior opponent while the game is ongoing. However, the nature and structure of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: A funny old game
• 1. The character of football: This is Anfield
• 2. The nature of football: A game of two halves
• 3. The analysis of football: Four four two
• 4. The aesthetics of football: Football, bloody hell
• Conclusion: They think it’s all over
• References
• Index