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Feezell, Moderation, and Irony

in Contemporary Athletics & Ancient Greek Ideals

This chapter examines philosopher Randolph Feezell's book Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection. It explains that the key insight in Feezell is that Aristotelian moderation provides the best clue we ... More

This chapter examines philosopher Randolph Feezell's book Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection. It explains that the key insight in Feezell is that Aristotelian moderation provides the best clue we are likely to get regarding how to philosophically assess contemporary athletics. The chapter argues in defense of Feezell's view that the main virtue required of an athlete, sportsmanship, ought to be seen along with other understandably well-known virtues such as justice and courage.Less

Making the Save: Conversion and Witnessing

Annie Blazer

in Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry

This chapter describes how Christian athletes have struggled to redefine witnessing and recommitment in ways that reinforce their understandings of evangelical distinction and moral superiority. ... More

This chapter describes how Christian athletes have struggled to redefine witnessing and recommitment in ways that reinforce their understandings of evangelical distinction and moral superiority. Unifying evangelical Christianity and sport has entailed expanding witnessing to encompass behaviors on and off the field: Christian athletes now see their athletic performances as a way to influence others toward conversion and develop believers after conversion. Witnessing without words—using sportsmanship to demonstrate moral distinction—is the primary mission of many of today’s sports ministry organizations. These practices function in much the same way as verbal witnessing. Witnesses are able to cement their own identity as saved, perceive a distinction between themselves and the unsaved, and use this identity and distinction as evidence for their religious beliefs. However, this chapter shows that it is incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, to reconcile the desire to demonstrate compassion for one’s opponent on the field with the desire to win.Less

More than a Game

Roger R. Tamte

in Walter Camp and the Creation of American Football

Camp has a philosophy about sports competition and broadcasts it in his Collier’s column, among other places, in an openly preachy style: compete to the limit of your ability, but whatever the ... More

Camp has a philosophy about sports competition and broadcasts it in his Collier’s column, among other places, in an openly preachy style: compete to the limit of your ability, but whatever the outcome, in the words of a Thackeray poem, “Be each, pray God, a gentleman.” A gentleman, Camp said, enters a contest committed to do his best, does not cheat, is courteous, and never insults a loser. But the growth of American college football introduces complications for such an ideal—large numbers of spectators pressure their team to win, some of them with little regard for sportsmanship; coaches are under personal pressure to win; players are glorified in an ever more spectacular event. In an effort to control some aspects of the spectacle, the New York Thanksgiving Day game is moved to the college campus, and under the Camp-Brooks agreement Harvard and Yale agree to play their contests on campus.Less

A Campaign of Truth

Toby C. Rider

in Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy

This chapter demonstrates how U.S. information officers devised plans to showcase the friendliness and sportsmanship of the U.S. Olympic team and encouraged private businesses to make the hosting ... More

This chapter demonstrates how U.S. information officers devised plans to showcase the friendliness and sportsmanship of the U.S. Olympic team and encouraged private businesses to make the hosting cities a showground for U.S. enterprise and culture. In tandem with these efforts, U.S. propaganda depicted communist sport in a highly negative manner. Furthermore, in order to create and implement a propaganda strategy for the winter and summer Olympic festivals of 1952, the U.S. information program also facilitated cooperation with both the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States (AAU). This intervention challenged a long-held tradition, as the U.S. government began to work in concert with the private sphere in sport-related propaganda to new and uncharted levels under the mounting demands of the Cold War.Less

Aldo Leopold and the Search for an Integrated Theory of Environmental Management

Bryan G. Norton

in Toward Unity among Environmentalists

Aldo Leopold led two lives. He was, in the best tradition of Gifford Pinchot, a forester and a coldly analytic scientific resource manager, devoted to maximizing resource productivity. But Leopold ... More

Aldo Leopold led two lives. He was, in the best tradition of Gifford Pinchot, a forester and a coldly analytic scientific resource manager, devoted to maximizing resource productivity. But Leopold was also a romantic, who joined the Forest Service because of his love for the outdoors, a love he never lost or fully subjugated to the economic “ciphers” that so constrain public conservation work. During the last decade of his life, Leopold the romantic fashioned a little book of essays. He chose from the best of his stacks of field journals and his voluminous publications a few short essays, supplemented these with new pieces, polished them, and strung and restrung them like pearls. The manuscript, representing the essence of his long career, was given final acceptance by Oxford University Press only seven days before Leopold’s death, and the essays were published as A Sand County Almanac. The final essay in that book is “The Land Ethic,” which, Leopold said, “sets forth, in more logical terms, some ideas whereby we dissenters rationalize our dissent.” Although he was not primarily an abstract thinker, Leopold, I will assert, has been the most important figure in the history of both environmental management and environmental ethics. This evaluation is based on one reason: Having faced the environmentalists’ dilemma and, having to formulate goals and actions, he articulated a workable, practical philosophy that transcends the dilemma. The story of how he did so is a sketch of his life. Leopold was a forester in the Southwest for fifteen years. He saw the range deteriorate. He saw the main street of Carson City erode into a deep chasm, and he knew, by the early 1920s, that his agency and its Pinchotist philosophy was significantly responsible. But he was as befuddled as anyone else, and grasped at philosophical straws, or any other straws, to articulate in general terms what was going wrong. Leopold had entered the Forest Service at the height of the Hetch Hetchy controversy. He recognized, of course, that there were critics of the service, and he surely had some respect for Muir’s viewpoint. Less

A. G. MacDonell’s England, their England

Brian Young

in Literature and Union: Scottish Texts, British Contexts

England, their England, a now forgotten bestseller, was one of a series of travelogues produced by survivors of the First World War during the 1930s in a country recovering its sense of purpose and ... More

England, their England, a now forgotten bestseller, was one of a series of travelogues produced by survivors of the First World War during the 1930s in a country recovering its sense of purpose and identity; unusually, in this case it took the form of an autobiographical novel. A. G. MacDonell was an insider/outsider, a Scottish Wykehamist, a journalist and a partisan Liberal writing with astringent wit about the fusion of reactionary, self-serving Toryism and unprincipled Socialism that underpinned the National Government quietly pilloried throughout the book. He also glances disapprovingly at colonialism, both internal and external, as he berates a nation that has lost its sense of diplomatic purpose. A bucolic work, hovering uneasily between sentimentalism and satire, it insists that the real England is that of the shires (and particularly country cricket). But MacDonell’s strongest work was the much less pleasing Autobiography of a Cad, which merits reassessment accordingly.Less

Sport as a Thick Cluster Concept

Mitchell N. Berman

in Games, Sports, and Play: Philosophical Essays

The dominant view in the philosophy of sport maintains that sports constitute a true subset of games—in particular, that sports are competitive games that involve a physical component, such as ... More

The dominant view in the philosophy of sport maintains that sports constitute a true subset of games—in particular, that sports are competitive games that involve a physical component, such as physical exertion or the exercise of gross motor skills. This chapter argues that the dominant view is mistaken and proposes in its stead an account of sport as a thick cluster concept. Sport is a thick concept because it requires the application of what this chapter terms “warranted seriousness.” And it is a cluster concept because such features as game-ness (or contrivance), physicality, and competitiveness bear constitutively on whether an activity is a sport, but none of these factors is individually necessary. The chapter concludes by sketching possible implications of the thick cluster account of sport for normative questions regarding the virtue of sportsmanship and the proper interpretation of sport rules.Less

Hunting as ‘Sport’ in Colonial India: Codes of Sportsmanship, Firearms, Race, and Class in Hunting

Vijaya Ramadas Mandala

in Shooting a Tiger: Big-Game Hunting and Conservation in Colonial India

This chapter is concerned with the development of hunting as ‘sport’, whereby colonial hunters from the late nineteenth century began to carefully shape the idiom of the hunt, gradually distancing ... More

This chapter is concerned with the development of hunting as ‘sport’, whereby colonial hunters from the late nineteenth century began to carefully shape the idiom of the hunt, gradually distancing themselves from indigenous hunting methods. By systematically showcasing their skill and sportsmanship, British hunters portrayed their methods and practices as more sophisticated than the older native traditions. This study also elaborates on how different terrains and environments determined the planning and organization of hunts by the British hunters across the presidencies. Rank, authority, and privilege not only operated between the colonizers and colonized, but also within the world of British hunting communities. In contrast to the Company period, hunting became a microcosm of imperial society in late nineteenth-century India, and different sorts of hunts and clubs were open to people of various ranks. In addition, the making of hunting into a ‘sport’ was heavily linked to a discourse of class and race, drawing upon ideas of chivalry and with only the most acceptable hunting practices encoded into sportsmanship. The development of a class-based regime of hunting is evident in the way pig-sticking came to be regarded as the most superior kind of hunt, because it required great skill in horse-riding and horsemanship, presented added danger and utilized the spear rather than the gun. The chapter also explains how technological change in firearms took place and the way in which such changes were related to the transformation of hunting mores in nineteenth-century India.Less