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4My Life as a Two‐Wheeled PhilosopherIn Fritz Allhoff, Jesús Ilundáin‐Agurruza & Michael W. Austin (eds.), Cycling ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010-09-24.This chapter contains sections titled: My Last Race Rolling Up to the Starting Line Racing Toward the Truth Climbing Up Mountains Keeping the Rubber Side Down My Best Race Notes.
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Athletes as Medicine for the Health of the SoulSkepsis: A Journal for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Research 13
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Themata Politico: Hellenic and Euro-Atlantic (review)Skepsis: A Journal for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Research 20. 2009.
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25Plato at Syracuse: Essays on Plato in Western Greece with a new translation of the Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding (edited book)Parnassos Press- Fonte Aretusa. 2019.This book is born from a desire to understand how Plato influenced and was influenced by the intellectual culture of Western Greece, the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. In 2018, a seminar on Plato at Syracuse was organized, in which a small group of scholars discussed a new translation of the Seventh Letter and several essays on the topic. The seminar was intense but friendly, having attracted a diverse group of scholars that ranged from graduate students to senior professo…Read more
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Politics and Performance in Western Greece: Essays on the Hellenic Heritage of Sicily and Southern Italy. The Heritage of Western Greece, Book 2 (edited book)Parnassos Press. 2017.Because the histories of theater, politics, art, poetry, athletics, and philosophy tend to be studied separately, it is easy to forget how interconnected they were in Western Greece—the coastal areas of Southern Italy and Sicily settled by Hellenes in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. Hieron I of Syracuse may be remembered as a tyrant, but his political power was inseparable from the theater. Hieron was the patron of the dramatist Epicharmus, who was as much a philosopher as Xenophanes, who was a p…Read more
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363Wrestling with the Eleatics in Plato's ParmenidesIn Heather Reid, Mark Ralkowski & Coleen P. Zoller (eds.), Athletics, Gymnastics, and Agon in Plato, Parnassos Press. pp. 185-198. 2020.This paper interprets the Parmenides agonistically as a constructive contest between Plato’s Socrates and the Eleatics of Western Greece. Not only is the dialogue set in the agonistic context of the Panathenaic Games, it features agonistic language, employs an agonistic method, and may even present an agonistic model for participation in the forms. The inspiration for this agonistic motif may be that Parmenides and his student Zeno represent Western Greece, which was a key rival for the mainla…Read more
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586Plato's Gymnastic DialoguesIn Heather Reid, Mark Ralkowski & Coleen P. Zoller (eds.), Athletics, Gymnastics, and Agon in Plato, Parnassos Press. pp. 15-30. 2020.It is not mere coincidence that several of Plato’s dialogues are set in gymnasia and palaistrai (wrestling schools), employ the gymnastic language of stripping, wrestling, tripping, even helping opponents to their feet, and imitate in argumentative form the athletic contests (agōnes) commonly associated with that place. The main explanation for this is, of course, historical. Sophists, orators, and intellectuals of all stripes, including the historical Socrates, really did frequent Athens’ gymna…Read more
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693The Athletic Aesthetic in Rome's Imperial BathsEstetica. Studi E Ricerche 1 (1): 255-274. 2020.The Greek gymnasium was replicated in the architecture, art, and activities of the Imperial Roman thermae. This mimēsis was rooted in sincere admiration of traditional Greek paideia – especially the glory of Athens’ Academy and Lyceum – but it did not manage to replicate the gymnasium’s educational impact. This article reconstructs the aesthetics of a visit to the Roman baths, explaining how they evoked a glorious Hellenic past, offering the opportunity to Romans to imagine being «Greek». But tr…Read more
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418Athlete Agency and the Spirit of Olympic SportJournal of Olympic Studies 1 (1): 22-36. 2020.A debate has arisen over whether “the spirit of sport” is an appropriate criterion for determining whether a substance should be banned. In this paper, I argue that the criterion is crucial for Olympic sport because Olympism celebrates humanity, specifically human agency, so we need to preserve the degree to which athletes are personally and morally responsible for their performances. This emphasis on what I call “athlete agency” is reflected metaphysically in the structure of sport, which chara…Read more
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559Olympic Philosophy: The Ideas and Ideals Behind the Ancient and Modern Olympic GamesParnassos Press. 2020.The Olympic Games are a sporting event guided by philosophy. The modern Olympic Charter calls this philosophy “Olympism” and boldly states its goal as nothing less than “the harmonious development of humankind” and the promotion of “a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” The ideas and ideals behind Olympism, however, are ancient—tracing their roots to archaic and classical Greece, just like the Games do. This collection of essays explores the ancient Hellenic roots…Read more
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855Athletics, Gymnastics, and Agon in Plato (edited book)Parnassos Press. 2020.In the Panathenaic Games, there was a torch race for teams of ephebes that started from the altars of Eros and Prometheus at Plato’s Academy and finished on the Acropolis at the altar of Athena, goddess of wisdom. It was competitive, yes, but it was also sacred, aimed at a noble goal. To win, you needed to cooperate with your teammates and keep the delicate flame alive as you ran up the hill. Likewise, Plato’s philosophy combines competition and cooperation in pursuit of the goal of wisdom. On o…Read more
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8Athletic heroesSport, Ethics and Philosophy 4 (2): 125-35. 2010.Creatures of a day! What is man? What is he not? He is the dream of a shadow In 1993, basketball hero Charles Barkley set off a storm of controversy when he declared: ‘I am not...
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26Defining Sport: Conceptions and Borderlines (edited book)Lexington Books. 2016.This book examines influential conceptions of sport and then analyses the interplay of challenging borderline cases with the standard definitions of sport. It is meant to inspire more thought and debate on just what sport is, how it relates to other activities and human endeavors, and what we can learn about ourselves by studying sport.
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45Plato on women in sportJournal of the Philosophy of Sport 47 (3): 344-361. 2020.In a way, there is nothing surprising about Plato’s promotion of sport for women in Republic and Laws; it is logically implied by his philosophical theories. In another way, Plato’s vision of femal...
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29Heroic Parthenoi and the Virtues of Independence: A Feminine Philosophical Perspective on the Origins of Women’s SportSport, Ethics and Philosophy 14 (4): 511-524. 2020.Her name was Flavia Thalassia and she came from Ephesus. She won the stadion for parthenoi at the Isolympic Sebasta Games in Naples during Domitian’s reign in the late 1st c. C...
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12The Educational Value of Plato’s Early Socratic DialoguesThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 43 113-118. 1998.When contemplating the origins of philosophical paideia one is tempted to think of Socrates, perhaps because we feel that Socrates has been a philosophical educator to us all. But it is Plato and his literary genius that we have to thank as his dialogues preserve not just Socratic philosophy, but also the Socratic educational experience. Educators would do well to better understand Plato's pedagogical objectives in the Socratic dialogues so that we may appreciate and utilize them in our own educ…Read more
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17Sport, Education, and the Meaning of VictoryThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 38 26-31. 1998.Sport was included in ancient educational systems because it was thought to promote aretê or human excellence which could be applied to almost any endeavor in life. The goal of most modern scholastic athletic programs might be better summed up in a word: winning. Is this a sign that we have lost touch with the age-old rationale for including sport in education? I argue that it need not be by showing that we value winning precisely for the virtues associated with it. I then take Plato's tradition…Read more
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26The Ethics of EfficiencyProceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 63 25-32. 2018.Ethics in sport demand not only that we respect ourselves and others, but also that we respect sport itself. But the question of respecting sport seems to create a kind of moral dilemma between the obligation to “play one’s best” by maximizing performance, and the obligation to follow rules and traditions that ban the use of ergogenic aids. It is often argued that bans on performance-enhancing substances, equipment, and training techniques are paternalistic and violate athletes’ liberty to ratio…Read more
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28Athletic virtue and aesthetic values in Aristotle’s ethicsJournal of the Philosophy of Sport 47 (1): 63-74. 2019.ABSTRACTWhen Aristotle praises pentathletes’ beauty at Rhetoric 1361b, it is not the idle observation of a sports fan. In fact, the balanced and harmonious beauty of athletes’ bodies reflects Aristotle’s ideal of a virtuous soul in the Nicomachean Ethics: one which discerns noble ends and means, then acts accordingly. At Eudemian Ethics 1248b, he takes it a step further, characterizing kalokagathia as ‘the virtue that arises from a combination’ of virtues. These passages raise important question…Read more
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Looking at Beauty to Kalon in Western Greece: Selected Essays from the 2018 Symposium on the Heritage of Western Greece (edited book)Parnassos Press-Fonte Aretusa. 2019.The ancient Greek word kalon can be translated as beautiful, good, noble, or fine—yet somehow it transcends any one of those concepts. In art and literature, it can apply straightforwardly to figures like Helen or Aphrodite, or enigmatically to the pais kalos: the youthful athlete that decorates so much sympotic pottery. In the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, meanwhile, it takes on an ethical, even transcendent dimension. And yet, the thread between a beautiful painting and the Plat…Read more
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30The beginnings of professional sport - roubineau milon de crotone ou l'invention du sport. Pp. 355, ills, maps. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2016. Paper, €22. Isbn: 978-2-13-065369-1 (review)The Classical Review 67 (2): 457-459. 2017.
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22Responsibility, Inefficiency, and the Spirit of SportAmerican Journal of Bioethics 18 (6): 22-23. 2018.
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26Sages, Heroes, and The Battle for Cycling’s SoulJournal of Chinese Philosophy 43 (1-2): 51-66. 2016.Using my experience at a stage of the 2014 Giro d'Italia, I argue that de is the soul of cycling and that ancient Chinese philosophy's insight into the conditions that promote de may help the sport. I compare the relationship between sages and virtuous practitioners, to the ancient Greek relationship between heroes and athletes, both of which depend on the performance of de. I also criticize modern cycling for its focus on technology, stark commercialism, and emphasis on the individual, prescrib…Read more
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47Why Olympia matters for modern sportJournal of the Philosophy of Sport 44 (2): 159-173. 2017.From the modern scientific perspective, Olympia is a ruin at the far end of a fading sense of history that represents little more than the origins from which sport has continuously evolved. Quantitative measurements show continued increases in human performance, equipment efficiency and funding. But some question this athletic evolution. We worry about qualitative issues, such as virtue, meaning and beauty. The source of this contrast is a difference in values: Olympic vs. Efficiency values. Suc…Read more
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15What is the role of philosophy in education? This timeless question may best be answered by examining Plato's earliest dialogues in which he makes a case for philosophy as the centerpiece of education. I call this effort Plato's project for education and interpret the Apology, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Ion, Hippias Minor, Euthyphro, and Lysis as an integrated attempt to promote philosophy as education in ancient Athens. Plato accepted arete as the proper goal of education, but his interpretation…Read more
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401Mimesis can refer to imitation, emulation, representation, or reenactment - and it is a concept that links together many aspects of ancient Greek Culture. The Western Greek bell-krater on the cover, for example, is painted with a scene from a phlyax play with performers imitating mythical characters drawn from poetry, which also represent collective cultural beliefs and practices. One figure is shown playing a flute, the music from which might imitate nature, or represent deeper truths of the co…Read more
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11Olympic Epistemology: the Athletic Roots of Philosophical ReasoningSkepsis: A Journal for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Research 18 (1-2): 19-28. 2007.The ancient world witnessed a meaningful transition in the conception of human thought and belief. What some have called the “discovery” of the mind can also be understood as a release from dependence on oracular wisdom and mythological explanation, made possible by the invention of more reliable and democratic methods for discovering and explaining truths. During roughly the same epoch, Hellenic sport distinguished itself by developing objective mechanisms for selecting single winners from vari…Read more
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32Aristotle's pentathleteSport, Ethics and Philosophy 4 (2): 183-94. 2010.Beauty varies with each age. In a young man, it consists in possessing a body capable of enduring all efforts, either of the racecourse or of bodily strength, while he himself is pleasant to look u...
Heather Reid
Morningside College
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Morningside CollegeRetired faculty
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Exedra Mediterranean Center, Siracusa, SicilyScholar In Residence
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Applied Ethics |
Classics |