Mike McNamee

The?values of sport? is a concept that is often used to justify actions and policies by a range of agents and agencies from coaches and teachers to governing bodies and educational institutions. From a philosophical point of view, these values deserve to be analysed with great care to make sure we understand their nature and reach. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the values carried by the educational conception of sport that Pierre de Coubertin developed and to see how they relate to certain values in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. To be able to understand in depth the moral construct of de Coubertin's system, it is essential to delve into the entire system he builds in order to develop athletic participants closer to his ideal of what a human should be. This in turn rests on his conception of Man, which is comprised of body, spirit and character. An understanding of his structure opens the way to a broader awareness of de Coubertin's educational system, of which sport was only part. We will then see that the values are a consequence of this pedagogical search for the ideal human. It is argued that this ideal of a human is similar to the one described by Nietzsche as the Übermensch. A philosophical case study is conducted, taking as its object the story of the first recipient of the Pierre de Coubertin medal, which rewards fair play among Olympic competitors. Judging the story through Nietzschean eyes allows for his thoughts to be put into practice. His lesser-known texts such as Homer and Competition on the emulation of creative powers shed light on today's sports. Concepts such as guilt, excellence, will to power and effectiveness help us compare these two authors and understand that competition is not necessarily about dominating others, but more about generating human excellence.

In the formation of the multi-disciplinary field that investigates the participation of disabled persons in all forms of physical activity, little ethical and philosophical work has been published. This essay serves to contextualise a range of issues emanating from adapted physical activity (APA) and disability sports. First, we offer some general historical and philosophical remarks about the field which serve to situate those issues at the crossroads between the philosophy of disability and the philosophy of sports. Secondly, we bring brief but critical attention to the contestation of key concepts such as ?ability? and ?normality? and the recent criticisms of polarisation of the medical and social models of disability. Finally, we show how these conceptual issues are implicated in the whole spectrum of contexts of APA and disability sports from the ethics of research with and for the disabled, to coaching, rehabilitation and teaching, and sports administration, that are predicated on key ethical concepts including empathy, entitlement and equity

The potential of physical activity to improve our health has been the subject of extensive research [38]. The relationship between physical activity and well-being has prompted substantial interest from exercise psychologists in particular [3], and it seems, is generating increasing interest outside the academic community in healthcare policy and practice inter alia through GP referrals for exercise. Researchers in the field have benefited from a rich tradition within psychology that investigates subjective well-being and its antecedents [7]. We argue that the exercise and health psychology research suffers from this intellectual ancestry specifically in the form of two significant conceptual limitations. First, short-term pleasure and enjoyment which are associated with exercise induced well-being may mask activities that are doing us no good or even harm us [18]. Second, focusing on pleasure entails unacceptable methodological reductionism which undermines the validity of such research by excluding other ways in which our well-being may be enhanced in non-hedonistic terms.

When Richard Peters wrote Ethics and Education (1966) he could scarcely have imagined the revolutions in ethics that have since occurred. Nor could he have imagined the way philosophers have created curricula and codes of ethics that have been incorporated in the various professional spheres within and beyond education. Whether this signals a decline in the trust that professionals might once have claimed, the diminishing of a strongly internalised sense of responsibility, or merely an extension of the natural developments of professionalisation is not yet clear.

Brent Kious has objected to our previous criticism of his views on doping, maintaining that we, by and large, misrepresented his position. In this response, we strengthen our original misgivings, arguing that (1) his views on risk of harm in sport are either uncontroversially true (not inconsistent with the views of many doping opponents) or demonstrably false (attribute to doping opponents an overly simplistic view), (2) his use of analogies (still) indicates an oversimplification of many issues surrounding the question of doping in sports, and (3) his doping analogies are insufficiently precise to support his conclusions.

Sports Medicine as an apparent sub-class of medicine has developed apace over the past 30 years. Its recent trajectory has been evidenced by the emergence of specialist international research journals, standard texts, annual conferences, academic appointments and postgraduate courses. Although this field of enquiry and practice lays claim to the title ‘sports medicine’ this paper queries the legitimacy of that claim. Depending upon how ‘sports medicine’ and ‘medicine’ are defined, a plausible-sounding case can be made to show that sports medicine is not in fact a branch of medicine. Rather, it is sometimes closer to practices such as non-therapeutic cosmetic surgery. The argument of the paper is as follows. It begins with a brief statement concerning methodology. We then identify and subscribe to a plausible defining goal of medicine taken from a recognised authority in the field. Then two representative, authoritative, definitions of sports medicine are discussed. It is then shown that acceptance of these definitions of sports medicine generates a problem in that if they are accepted, no necessary commitment to the defining goal of medicine is present within sports medicine. It seems to follow that sports medicine is not medicine. In the final part of the paper a critical response to that conclusion is presented and rebutted. The response is one which rejects the identification of the defining goal of medicine upon which our argument rests

Brent Kious has recently attacked several arguments generally adduced to support anti-doping in sports, which are widely supported by the sports medicine fraternity, international sports federations, and international governments. We show that his attack does not succeed for a variety of reasons. First, it uses an overly inclusive definition of doping at odds with the WADA definition, which has global, if somewhat contentious, currency. Second, it seriously misconstrues the position it attacks, rendering the attack without force against a more balanced construal of an anti-doping position. Third, it makes unwarranted appeals to matters Kious considers morally ‘clear’, while simultaneously attacking a position many others take to be equally morally ‘clear’, namely that of anti-doping. Such an inconsistency, attacking and appealing to the moral status quo as befits one’s argument, is not acceptable without further qualification. Fourth, his position suffers from a general methodological flaw of over-reliance upon argumentation by analogy. Moreover, it is argued that the analogies, being poorly selected and developed, fail to justify his conclusion that the anti-doping lobby lacks philosophical and moral authority for its stance. These issues are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: any attempt at providing a blanket solution to the question of whether doping is morally acceptable or not is bound to run up against problems when applied to highly specific contexts. Thus, rather than reaching any particular conclusion for or against doping products or processes in this article, we conclude that an increased context-sensitivity will result in a more evenhanded appraisal of arguments on the matter