A Philosophy of Sport

Steven Connor

• Editorial: Reaktion Books
• Año: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781861899736
• Categoría: Philosophy
• Categoría: Philosophy History & Theory

While previous writing on the philosophy of sport has tended to see sport as a kind of testing ground for philosophical theories devised to deal with other kinds of problems—of ethics, aesthetics, or logical categorization—here Steven Connor offers a new philosophical understanding of sport in its own terms. In order to define what sport essentially is and means, Connor presents a complete grammar of sport, isolating and describing its essential elements, including the characteristic spaces of sport, the nature of sporting time, the importance of sporting objects like bats and balls, the methods of movement in sport, the role of rules and chance, and what it really means to cheat and to win. Defined as games that involve bodily exertion and exhaustion, sports simultaneously require constraint and the ability to overcome it. Sport, argues Connor, is a fundamental feature of modern humans. It is shown to be one of the most powerful ways in which we negotiate the relationship between the human and natural worlds. Encompassing a huge range of different sports, and enlisting the help of Hegel, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Adorno, Sartre, Ayer, Deleuze, and Serres, A Philosophy of Sport will inform, surprise, and delight thoughtful athletes and sporty philosophers alike.

References

Introduction

1 Mark Perryman, Philosophy Football: Eleven Great Thinkers Play It Deep (London, 1997); Philosophical Football: The Team That Plays With Strength in Depth (Edinburgh, 1999).

2 Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. and ed. George A. Kennedy, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2007), I.5, p. 59.

3 Plato, Euthydemus, trans. Robin Waterfield, in Early Socratic Dialogues, ed. Trevor J. Saunders (London, 2005), 271d–272a, p. 316.

4 Harold Tarrant, ‘Athletics, Competition and the Intellectual’, in David J. Phillips and David Pritchard, eds, Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (Swansea, 2003), p. 351.

5 Isocrates: With An English Translation by George Norlin, 3 vols (London and New York, 1929), vol. II, pp. 289, 291.

6 Michel Serres, Variations sur le corps (Paris, 1999), p. 5 (my translation).

7 Heather L. Reid, ‘Socrates at the Ballpark’, in Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter’s Box, ed. Eric Bronson (Chicago, IL, and La Salle, IL, 2004), pp. 274, 283.

8 Geoff Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago, IL, 1993), pp. 327, 341.

9 Ben Rogers, A. J. Ayer: A Life (London, 1999), p. 20.

10 Ibid., p. 26.

11 Lincoln Allison, ‘How Cool Is This: A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic’ (2005). Online at www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000458.php, accessed 14 March 2011.

12 Rogers, A. J. Ayer, p. 344.

13 Paul Weiss, Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry (Carbondale, IL, 1969), p. 8.

14 Robert G. Osterhoudt, ed., The Philosophy of Sport: A Collection of Original Essays (Carbondale, IL, 1973); Hans Lenk, Social Philosophy of Athletics: A Pluralistic and Practice-Oriented Philosophical Analysis of Top Level Amateur Sport (Champaign, IL, 1979); B. C. Postow, ed., Women, Philosophy, and Sport: A Collection of New Essays (New York, 1983); C. E. Thomas, Sport in a Philosophic Context (Philadelphia, PA, 1983); H. J. Vander Zwaag, Toward a Philosophy of Sport (Fort Worth, TX, 1985); Pasquale J. Galasso, ed., Philosophy of Sport and Physical Activity: Issues and Concepts (Toronto, 1988); Drew Hyland, A Philosophy of Sport (New York, 1990); Martin A. Bertman, The Philosophy of Sport (Penrith, 2007).

15 Eric Bronson, ed., Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter’s Box (Chicago, IL, 2004); Jerry L. Walls and Gregory Bassham, eds, Basketball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Pain (Lexington, KY, 2008); Michael W. Austin, Football and Philosophy: Going Deep (Lexington, KY, 2008).

16 Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (Toronto and Buffalo, 1978); Graham McFee, Sport, Rules and Values: Philosophical Investigations Into the Nature of Sport (London, 2004); Bertman, The Philosophy of Sport.

17 William J. Morgan, Why Sports Morally Matter (London, 2006).

18 Randolph Feezell, Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection (Urbana, IL, 2004).

19 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Cambridge, MA and London, 2006).

20 David Best, ‘Sport Is Not Art’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, XII (1985), pp. 25–40; Andrew Edgar, ‘What Is Art? James and Collingwood on Sport’, in Sporting Reflections: Some Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Heather Sheridan, Leslie A. Howe and Keith Thompson (Aachen, 2007), pp. 20–31.

21 Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (Urbana, IL, 2001), p. 12.

22 Gaston Bachelard, La Terre et les räveries de la volontä (Paris, 1948), p. 78.

23 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (London, 1984), p. 328.

24 Bernard Suits, ‘The Grasshopper: A Thesis Concerning the Moral Idea of Man’, in Robert G. Osterhoudt, The Philosophy of Sport: A Collection of Original Essays (Springfield, IL, 1973), p. 204.

25 Ulama: Jeu de balle des Olmèques aux Aztèques/Ballgame from the Olmecs to the Aztecs (Lausanne, 1997).

26 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 328.

one: History

1 William Camden, Britain, or A Chorographicall Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Ilands Adioyning, Out of the Depth of Antiquitie ... (London, 1610), p. 203.

2 B.J., Two Letters Written to a Gentleman of Note Guilty of Common Swearing (...