Heather Reid

A common argument for the social value of sport is that athletes serve as heroes who inspire people – especially young people – to strive for excellence. This argument has been questioned by sport philosophers at a variety of levels. Not only do athletes seem unsuited to be heroes or role models in the conventional sense, it is unclear more generally what the social and educational value of athletic excellence could be. In this essay, I construct an argument for the social and educational value of sport built upon the relationship between athletes, heroes, and the song culture that celebrated them in ancient Greece. On this model, athletes are neither heroes nor role models in the conventional sense. Rather, athletes, athletics, and the poets who extolled them were part of a cultural conspiracy to celebrate and inspire virtue by connecting a community with its heroic past. Festivals such as the Olympic Games, but also local events such as funeral games, educated and unified communities by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for virtue and by inspiring youth to strive for it. Ancient athletes were not heroes, rather they re-enacted heroic struggles, thereby experiencing heroic virtues, and inspiring both artists and spectators to bond with the higher ideals implied by their shared belief in divine ancestry. In this way, athletes, athletics, and the media that celebrated them played important social and educational roles. Insofar as modern sport performs a similar service, its association with heroism and with moral education may ultimately be justified.

It often surprises modern readers to find the cerebral philosopher Socrates hanging out in gymnasia and wrestling schools. We tend to downplay Socrates’ association with athletes and contest as mere literary window-dressing. I would like to suggest, to the contrary, that Plato’s depiction of Socrates as an athlete goes beyond dramatic setting and linguistic metaphor. Plato actually presents Socrates as an athlete of the soul, engaged in intellectual contest, occasionally defeating his opponents, and coaching young protégées toward victory in the struggle for aretē. Socratic dialogue is itself an agōn. Sometimes it is aimed at defeating famous opponents such as Euthyphro, Euthydemus, Gorgias, or Protagoras. By refuting these challengers, Socrates elicits shame—a benevolent shame “in service of the god” that serves as a starting point to re-launch and redirect the investigation. At other times Socratic dialogue tests personal beliefs about virtue, amounting to a revelation and examination of the soul that corresponds to gymnastic nudity and competition. In every case Socratic contest aims to serve the greatest agōn: the struggle to be good. Socrates appropriates the competitive spirit (philonikia) he finds in his comrades, and he directs it beyond the relativistic goal of defeating ones opponent towards the idealistic goals of education, virtue, and wisdom. In this way he transforms philonikia into philosophia. Socrates’ approach to and engagement in agōn not only connects the worlds of philosophy and athletics, it serves as a model for how athletic agōn can be put in the service of psychic as well as physical virtue.