Leslie A. Howe

Discussions of dangerous sport have not taken significant account of sex-based differences in experience or value of sport. This paper discusses the importance of such pursuits for the development of women’s autonomous selfhood and capacity for agency, through the philosophy of de Beauvoir and her recounting of her own hiking experiences. This is combined with observations from Rachel Hewitt’s In Her Nature concerning women’s contemporary experiences and those of nineteenth-century women alpinists, and discussing the reasons for the erasure of the accomplishments of early female amateur sportspersons. The paper considers the importance of risk/test for the discovery of self and the way in which metaphysical presumptions about women’s capacity for self-transcendence and the attainment of fully autonomous agency has affected a more general view about the relative (un)importance of the development of woman’s independent physical expression, especially through sport. It is argued that woman’s existential authenticity is facilitated through both her own autonomy of action in relation to others in the social world and in realising her own body as for-herself as opposed to only or primarily as for-others. Both, but particularly the latter, are enhanced by participation in demanding outdoor, individual-centred, especially solitary, sporting endeavours.

Discussions of dangerous sport have not taken significant account of sex-based differences in experience or value of sport. This paper discusses the importance of such pursuits for the development of women’s autonomous selfhood and capacity for agency, through the philosophy of de Beauvoir and her recounting of her own hiking experiences. This is combined with observations from Rachel Hewitt’s In Her Nature concerning women’s contemporary experiences and those of nineteenth-century women alpinists, and discussing the reasons for the erasure of the accomplishments of early female amateur sportspersons. The paper considers the importance of risk/test for the discovery of self and the way in which metaphysical presumptions about women’s capacity for self-transcendence and the attainment of fully autonomous agency has affected a more general view about the relative (un)importance of the development of woman’s independent physical expression, especially through sport. It is argued that woman’s existential authenticity is facilitated through both her own autonomy of action in relation to others in the social world and in realising her own body as for-herself as opposed to only or primarily as for-others. Both, but particularly the latter, are enhanced by participation in demanding outdoor, individual-centred, especially solitary, sporting endeavours.

This chapter reviews several of the major feminist issues in the philosophy of sport, beginning with English’s 1978 article, and offers a critical analysis of the debates concerning equality of access and participation, and difference versus integration, as well as questions of women’s autonomy, paternalism, sex discrimination, and the importance of seeing sport’s role as a social practice in the definition of not only gender, but sexualities and sexual identities. The aim of this chapter is to provide an historical overview and context and to facilitate further philosophical analysis. To this end, I endeavour to make explicit the theoretical presuppositions and implications of much of this discussion, such as, for example, specific conceptions of sport or of equality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the most recent efforts in feminist reconceptualisations of the connections between sport and gender and point to areas of further concern.

This paper investigates the point of fame and some historically persistent motivations for its pursuit. These include both immediate instrumental benefits and the determination not to be forgotten after one’s death, the latter being a manifestation of the human existential struggle for permanence against the oblivion wrought by time on memory. The paper begins with a discussion of several epic heroes (Gilgamesh, Achilles, and Beowulf) and their reasons for chasing glory, but then considers more ordinary motivations: the desire to be recognised for one’s achievements or character, or to be remembered by one’s society or descendants in a way that either preserves one’s narrative or that retains one’s agential presence into the future. Consideration is given to problems of accuracy and control of the would-be “hero’s” narrative. It is argued that, beyond any immediate benefit, the desire for fame is humanly understandable but of a specifically limited rationality.

This paper discusses two main types of refusal to engage with teams or individuals in sports competitions on the grounds of (1) association with actions of governments or organisations that are deemed by the objector to be unacceptable, as in demands for boycotts or expulsions of specific groups, and (2) where an apparently inappropriate inclusion threatens the coherence of sport or the rights of other participants. The primary concern in this paper is the underlying moral stance of the subject who engages in such actions (rather than those actions themselves), specifically, their understanding of themselves and of others as moral subjects. It is argued that whether we think such actions are morally justified depends to large extent on whether we also think that those whom we boycott, exclude, or include are moral subjects with the right to claim consideration from us, and from whom we too can claim consideration. That is, whether recognition functions as a reciprocal action between moral subjects. This is discussed with particular reference to Darwall's second-person standpoint and de Beauvoir's criticism of abstract ideals as inadequate for an existentialist ethic that respects the autonomy of humans beings as such. It is argued that all participants in sport, as in society, have the same fundamental authority to make claims and to be accountable, and that we commit an important wrong by claiming a superior moral authority to determine action that fails to take into account the subjectivity and authority of others. Yet, at the same time, we also need to take account of the logic of sport as a particular kind of voluntary practice that incorporates critical ethical principles of equal respect through fairness.

Ethical questions normally arise in sport because its participants are human moral agents and because its practice community entails the observance of rules and responsibilities that humans generally owe one another in a social practice of voluntary competition. Since nature sports are not defined by this kind of inter-agential activity, it would appear that there are no comparable ethical constraints on their pursuit. This paper considers conflicts of preference versus right between humans, how these are resolved, and whether these rights are relevant in assessment of nature sport activity vis-à-vis nonhuman creatures. Relying on a goods perspective instead of a rights framework, via Korsgaard, I argue against an assumption that human preference is sufficient to override consideration of nonhuman animals’ functional goods.

The recently published ‘Scientific Review’ by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport about transwomen’s participation in female sport doesn’t deserve its name; it is wholly unscientific. This publication follows a familiar pattern. The body is not important anymore when it comes to categorisation and eligibility in sport; instead, it’s all about a psychological phenomenon: gender identity. This side-lining of the body (which makes the side-lining of female athletes and the inclusion of male-born athletes possible) is now reinforced by an attack on the bio-medical sciences.

This paper argues that bullshit is a practical resource for self-deceiving individuals, or those who merely prefer to avoid self-examination, insofar as it is able to provide a mask for poor doxastic hygiene. While self-deception and bullshit are distinct phenomena, and bullshit does not cause self-deception, bullshit disrupts the capacity to interrogate the motivational biasses that fuel deception. The communicative misdirection engaged in by ordinary social bullshitters is applied reflexively by the self-deceiver to distort, evade, and obfuscate the self-deceiver's self-accounting. This discussion presupposes a broadly narrative approach to self-awareness and discusses how a motivated susceptibility to bullshit offers an explanation how our reports about ourselves can be frequently at odds with reality, and suggests that a complacency about rational validation of belief outside of self-certainty, i.e., the prevalence of bullshit, is even more of a threat than Frankfurt thought it to be.

This paper is an examination of the concept of recognition and its connection with identity and respect. This is related to the question of how women are or are not adequately recognised or respected for their achievements in sport and whether eliminating sex segregation in sport is a solution. This will require an analysis of the concept of excellence in sport, as well as the relationship between fairness and inclusion in an activity that is fundamentally about bodily movement. I argue that attempts to address the problem of women’s recognition in sport need to do so in ways that neither eliminate sport as a fairness regulated system for developing individual excellence in bodily movement nor that prevent women’s achievement of sporting excellence, with the regard that belongs to them. Doing this requires us to decide whether sport is about champions or about individual excellence.

Two prevalent assumptions in the philosophy of sport literature are that all sports are games and that all games are contests, meant to determine who is the better at the skills definitive of the sport. If these are correct, it would follow that all sports are contests and that a range of sporting activities, including nature sports, are not in fact sports at all. This paper first confronts the notion that sport and games must seek to resolve skill superiority through consideration of sport activities that have no such aim. The reduction of sport to game is also shown to be untenable and due to misunderstanding the point of sport activities, specifically, why people engage in them. This leads to reconsideration of the dominance of an instrumental conception of sport and the pursuit of excellence as anthropomaximising efficiency. The Norwegian tradition of frilutsliv is explored as a counterpoint to both conventional and nature sport.

Ambiguity in the athlete’s perception and description of pain that opens the door to a series of reinterpretations of athletic experience and events that argue the development of an increasingly inauthentic relation to self and others on the part of those who consume performance as third parties (spectators) and ultimately those who produce it first hand (athletes). The insertion of the spectator into the sport situation as a consumer of the athlete’s activity and the preference given to spectator interpretation shift control of meaning away from the athlete and encourage a demand for athlete suffering in aid of the spectator’s own need for meaning. Through discussions of the function of narrative in sport spectacle, the witnessing role of spectators, and the phenomenon of vicarious substitution, I discuss the representation of the athlete as a character ideal and moral exemplar. At a more developed level of external interpretation, the athlete (or team) becomes the champion of the spectator, the role model or focal point of civic pride whose victory asserts the ascendence of my team and town over yours; and finally, the athlete or team is the intentional object of fan identification: my team is me. I conclude that the existential commitment of the spectator as devoted fan is an inauthentic one.

I argue that athletes should neither be taken as role models nor present themselves as such. Indeed, they should resist any attempt to take them as such on the grounds that seeing athletes (or other celebrities) as role models abrogates the existential and ethical responsibilities of both parties. Whether one takes on the role of being a model to others or whether one chooses to model one’s own behaviour on that of another, except in respect of the development of technical skill, one engages in bad faith and fails to act in an existentially ethical way. To this end, I consider the inclination to influence and admiration, as well as self-respect, agency, motivation, and envy. I argue that while celebrity sportspersons and similar others do not have duties that others do not have just by virtue of their notoriety alone, they may have situational responsibilities commensurate with their social reach. More importantly, however, since social influence is not a transformation of inert matter, there are also responsibilities belonging to their audiences, those who merely observe and those who choose to imitate.

This work intends to show that the Kierkegaardian authorship develops a complex critique of ethics which takes as its starting-point a fundamental presupposition concerning the nature of the human self, which presupposition motivates both Kierkegaard's critique of other ethical viewpoints and the ethics which he himself puts forward as its proper realization. It is argued that this presupposition corresponds to the conception of the self which is outlined by the pseudonym Anti-Climacus in The Sickness Unto Death, and that Kierkegaard views the goal of ethics to be the complete realization of the human self as defined by this conception, which includes the necessity of the self's relation of itself to itself and to the God which is the source and the measure of its existence. Hence Kierkegaard's critique of ethics centres around whether it adequately acknowledges this essential nature of the self, especially its requisite relation to God, and allows for its proper realization. Consequently, it is Kierkegaard's contention in the authorship that a humanly grounded, purely rationalistic ethics, which does not ultimately bring the individual into relation to God and the truth of Christianity is fundamentally misconceived and destined to failure. ;Kierkegaard shows this through the dialectical device of the pseudonymous authors, whose works are so related to each other and to Kierkegaard's own as to present a practical demonstration of the deficiencies of the ethical viewpoints which the pseudonyms express. Thus it is argued that the views expressed by the pseudonyms cannot simply be identified with those of Kierkegaard himself, but are intended to illuminate and to illustrate those which Kierkegaard ultimately expresses in his acknowledged works. The pseudonymous works form intervals in a progressive development throughout the authorship toward a deepening consciousness of the nature of the human self, particularly in its religious dimension, which development is mirrored, and then extended, in the acknowledged works, until the relation to Christianity becomes explicit. At this point we also see that Kierkegaard's own ethics is not simply an ethics of inward isolation, but also of practice, and that for Kierkegaard there is no necessary breach between the life of faith and that of social existence

This paper responds to Kevin Krein’s claim in that the particular value of nature sports over traditional ones is that they offer intensity of sport experience in dynamic interaction between an athlete and natural features. He denies that this intensity is derived from competitive conflict of individuals and denies that nature sport derives its value from internal conflict within the athlete who carries out the activity. This paper responds directly to Krein by analysing ‘intensity’ in sport in terms of the relationship between attention and reflection and the interaction between self and environment. I reply directly to Krein’s rejection of self-competition as based on a mischaracterisation of internal struggle and argue that the weighing of incompatible desires does not involve a fragmented self. I argue that the unique intensity to which Krein refers is strongly comparable to the Kantian conception of the sublime and explore how sublime experience fits Krein’s account and outline some serious problems that such an ideal of experience poses for nature sport.

This paper refines a number of theoretical distinctions relevant to deceptive play, in particular the difference between merely misleading actions and types of simulation commonly considered beyond the pale, such as diving. To do so, I rely on work in the philosophy of language about conversational convention and implicature, the distinction between lying and misleading, and their relation to concepts of seduction and bullshit. The paper works through a number of possible solutions to the question of what is wrong with simulation and its difference from strategic fouling, including the argument that games and their rules operate like contracts. I conclude that the wrongness lies in the injustice of unfair advantage gained through actions that silence opposition by resort to unanswerable play.

In a recent paper, Kevin Krein argues that the notion of self-competition is misplaced in adventure sports and of only limited application altogether, for two main reasons: (i) the need for a consistent and repeatable measure of performance; and (ii) the requirement of multiple competitors. Moreover, where an individual is engaged in a sport in which the primary feature with which they are engaged is a natural one, Krein argues that the more accurate description of their activity is not 'competition', but an attempt at harmonious interaction. I raise a number of problems against both criteria and argue that traditional and adventure sports do both involve self-competition on at least two levels: bettering one's previous performance and resisting the desire to quit. I argue that self-reflexive competition is not so much with one's self (which is philosophically absurd), but within one's self, between conflicting motivations and desires. I explore what is involved in self-reflexive competition, particularly at a phenomenological, self-constituting level, and raise the question of whether it is appropriate for activity in wilder natural environments

The paper argues that authentic human selfhood requires the adequate integration of bodily awareness into the self-conception of self, and that a highly significant contributor to this process is athletic activity (sports). The role of athletics in self-integration is examined from phenomenological and moral-political standpoints, and it is argued that, although athletic activity's inherent goal of realizing ontological unity through embodied intentionality is ideally suited to this task, the organization of sport too frequently thwarts this purpose, either through exclusion of potential athletes or exploitation of committed participants.

I argue that understanding the self in terms of narrative construction does not preclude the possibility of error concerning one’s own self. Identity is a projection of first and second-order desires and a product of choice in relation to desire. Self-deceit appears in this connection as a response to an identity that one has constructed through choice and/or desire but not acknowledged in one’s self-account, reflecting a conflict between desires or a motivated failure to account. This analysis is applied primarily to acknowledgement of one’s sexual identity.

“What are you prepared to do to win?” This is a question that any serious competitor will at one time or another have to consider. The answer that one is inclined to make, I shall argue, is revealing of the deeper character of the individual participant in sport as both physical competitor and moral person. To that end, I examine one of the classic responses to the question, gamesmanship, which can be characterised as an attempt to win one game by playing another. I contend that gamesmanship is a deliberate strategy of competition that has certain paradoxical outcomes; while it may produce an enhanced competitive environment that calls forth superior performances from participants, its more aggravated manifestations are in the long term athletically self-destructive for those who rely on them as a competitive device, and argue the presence of more profound underlying moral failings as well.