The landscape of sport shows conspicuous discursive and material disparities between the responses to openly violent on-field transgressors and the responses to other kinds of transgressor, most notably drug users. The former gets off significantly lighter in terms of ideological framing and formal punishment. The latter—and drug users in particular—are typically demonised and heavily punished, whilst the former are regularly lionised, dramatised, celebrated and punished less severely. The preceding disparities cannot be upheld from the standpoint of morality in general or (...) from that of a Broad Internalist sport ethic. Consideration of the consequences, actions, motives and vices involved in the respective categories fails to support them. Nor is support provided by the notion that sports are tests of the physical skills and virtues that the obstacles presented are designed to foster and promote, and behaviour that threatens the opportunity to exercise those excellences or have competitions determined by them should be the subject of critical moral scrutiny. Openly violent on-field transgression does not fare at all well by the yardstick of Broad Internalism. Robust investigation of and ultimate change in the values underpinning the disparities is warranted. (shrink)

In light of the World Anti Doping Agency’s 2013 Code Revision process, we critically explore the applicability of two of three criteria used to determine whether a method or substance should be considered for their Prohibited List, namely its (potential) performance enhancing effects and its (potential) risk to the health of the athlete. To do so, we compare two communities of human guinea pigs: (i) individuals who make a living out of serial participation in Phase 1 pharmacology trials; and (ii) (...) elite athletes who engage in what is effectively ‘unregulated clinical research’ by using untested prohibited or non-prohibited performance enhancing substances and methods, alone or in combination. Our comparison sheds light on norms of research ethics that these practices exacerbate with respect to the concepts of multiplicity, visibility, and consistency. We argue for the need to establish a proper governance framework to increase the accountability of these unregulated research practices in order to protect the human guinea pigs in elite sports contexts, and to establish reasonable grounds for the performance enhancing effects, and the risks to the health of the athlete, of the methods and substances that might justify their inclusion on the Prohibited List. (shrink)

In 1972 I attended the Pre-Olympic Scientific Congress in Munich. For the first time science and sport were brought together in connection with the Olympic Games. The organizers presented a book Sport in Blickpunkt der Wissenschaften (Sport from a Scientific Point of View) that summarized history and state of the art of the main sport scientific approaches (41). The German philosopher Hans Lenk gave a presentation of a broad array of past and present interpretations of sport from a philosophic viewpoint (...) (49). The congress in Munch and Hans Lenk's presentation of sport as a suitable philosophic topic became decisive for my own lifelong interest in philosophy of sport. Soon after the Munich conference some American philosophers convened to launch the Philosophic Society for the Study of Sport. In 1973 the first issue of Journal of Philosophy of Sport was published (35). In several ways 1972 was a turning point for philosophy of sport as a serious academic discipline and for my own interest in sport philosophy. From here sport philosophy found its way to Norway and through this and along several other roads to other Nordic countries. (shrink)

A commonly accepted feature of commonsense morality is that there are some acts that are supererogatory or beyond the call of duty. Recently, philosophers have begun to ask whether something like supererogation might exist in other normative domains such as epistemology and esthetics. In this paper, I will argue that there is good reason to think that sporting supererogation exists. I will then argue that recognizing the existence of sporting supererogation is important because it highlights the value of sport as (...) a mutual pursuit of excellence and reinforces the value of sportsmanship. (shrink)

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Volume 5, Issue 2, Page 161-174, May 2011.

UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations represent the most restrictive regulatory intervention European club football has ever seen. Put simply, it demands from clubs to operate on the basis of their own football-related incomes. While the policy has attracted considerable attention from the economic and social sciences, very few contributions systematically investigate it from a philosophical-ethical perspective. The present paper fills this research gap by posing questions on FFP in relation to fair play as a normative concept. We draw on sport (...) economic assessments concerning potential outcomes of FFP and argue that the policy should go beyond the mere pragmatic goal of promoting financial sustainability and truly aim for creating a level playing field, otherwise it should not be labeled ‘fair play’. (shrink)

Artikkelen ønsker å gi et konstruktivt bidrag til forståelsen og anvendelsen av fair play i en kroppsøvingsfaglig kontekst. Dette er et tema som er blitt aktualisert i og med at fair play er kommet inn som et sentralt element i kroppsøvingsfagets nye reviderte læreplan. Fair play omhandler regler, normer og verdier som skal gjelde ved idrettsutøvelse, og det er et etablert verdikonsept innenfor organisert idrettsliv og idrettsetisk forskning. I skolen, derimot, er fair play mindre kjent. Kroppsøvingsplanen hevder fair play omfatter (...) aspekter ved idrettsspillet som å overholde regler, vise hverandre respekt og gjøre hverandre gode. Hva betyr så dette? Hva vil det si å gjøre hverandre gode? Rommer det bare en teknisk eller også en sosialetisk kvalitet? Dersom det siste er tilfelle, bør det diskuteres hvilke danningskvaliteter det så ligger i det å gjøre hverandre gode i faget, og om disse har noen tilknytningspunkt til Aristoteles' klassiske dyder om rettferdighet, måtehold, mot og klokskap. Dette er de sentrale spørsmålene artikkelen reiser og prøver å gi noen svar på. Artikkelen ser først på fair play i kroppsøvingsfagets planer, for deretter å gi begrepet en nærmere etymologisk og ideologisk-historisk avklaring, med utgangspunkt i begrepene «fair» og «play». Videre drøftes fair play i lys av de aristoteliske dydene, relatert til kroppsøvingsfaglig kontekst og diskurs.Nøkkelord: kroppsøving, fair play, idrett, lek og danningEnglish summary: Fair play in Physical Education in the light of Aristotelian virtue ethicsThe aim of this article is to give a constructive contribution to the understanding and the application of the concept of fair play in the Physical Education context. This is a topic that has come into focus since fair play has been introduced as a central element in the newest revision of the subject curriculum. Fair play concerns the rules, norms, and values that apply to sports activities, and constitutes an established value concept within organized sports and research related to sports ethics. In schools, however, fair play is less known. The Physical Education curriculum states that fair play concerns aspects of sports and games such as adhering to rules, showing each other respect, and helping each other achieve. What, then, does this mean? What does it mean to help each other achieve? Does it entail purely technical, or also socio-ethical qualities? If the latter is the case, a discussion is needed as to what ethical formation qualities are involved in helping each other achieve in the subject and whether these have any connection to Aristotle's classical virtues of justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom. These are the central issues the article raises and attempts to shed some light on. The article takes a closer look at fair play in the curricula of Physical Education, moving on to an etymological and ideological-historical clarification of the concept, taking the concepts of fair and play as starting points. Further, it discusses fair play in the light of Aristotelian virtues, related to a Physical Education context and discourse. (shrink)

It is customary for institutions that organize sporting competitions and events to exercise a considerable degree of authority over the participants. That authority is often manifested in the enforcement of penalties for infringements of fair play. This paper focuses on one concrete case from soccer, although I take the discussion to extend to other sports as well. I argue that not all fair play rules should be enforced by the respective organizing institutions, and that enforcing all of them indiscriminately is (...) a cause of injustice, rather than promoting fairness in sports. I propose a principled way of making the necessary distinction between those fair play rules that are enforceable and those that are not. (shrink)

This article presents a theorized and conceptually informed method for the undertaking of an ethics audit organization. At an operational level, the overall integrity of an organization, it is argued, may be evaluated through the application of a conceptual frame-work that embraces the inter-related themes of individual responsibility, social equity and political responsibility. Finally, a method is presented for ethics audit which was developed in the auditing of a national public sector sports organization: sportscotland. This emphasizes the significance of key (...) personnel (individuals and in groups) in producing and reproducing the organizational ethos, whilst recognizing the importance of anonymity and confidentiality throughout the process. The theoretical terrain of the ethics audit is articulated through a consideration of ethics as applied moral philosophy, equity as social justice and corporate governance as the moral health (or otherwise) of a public sector sports organization. (shrink)

The paper defines the practice of tanking in regard to sport organizations and differentiates this approach from activities such as match fixing and team building. Thereafter, the ethical implications tanking presents are developed using Alasdair MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotilean ethical framework. In particular, MacIntyre’s concept of a practice that supports both internal and external goods is discussed to examine the moral questions tanking presents. The insights developed within this analysis are applied throughout to the specific practice of basketball within the discrete institution (...) of the National Basketball Association. Finally, the paper discusses some broader implications the tanking strategy presents for the management and leadership of a sophisticated sport franchise. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBernard Suits and other formalists endorse both the logical incompatibility thesis and the view that rule-breakings resulting in penalties can be a legitimate part of a game. This is what Fred D’Agostino calls ‘the problem of penalties’. In this paper, I reject both Suits’ and D’Agostino’s responses to the problem and argue instead that the solution is to abandon Suits’ view that the constitutive rules of all games are alike. Whereas the logical incompatibility thesis applies to games in which players’ (...) actions are perfectly controlled, it does not apply to sports. This insight not only justifies the rejection of formalism as a theory about the nature of sport but it also helps explain the greater normative complexity of sports, which in turn leads to the idea that in sports ‘cheating’ should be interpreted as a genus. (shrink)

UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations represent the most restrictive regulatory intervention European club football has ever seen. Put simply, it demands from clubs to operate on the basis of their own football-related incomes. While the policy has attracted considerable attention from the economic and social sciences, very few contributions systematically investigate it from a philosophical-ethical perspective. The present paper fills this research gap by posing questions on FFP in relation to fair play as a normative concept. We draw on (...) sport economic assessments concerning potential outcomes of FFP and argue that the policy should go beyond the mere pragmatic goal of promoting financial sustainability and truly aim for creating a level playing field, otherwise it should not be labeled ‘fair play’. (shrink)

Sport occupies a significant role in modern society and has a wide following. In his Leftist Theories of Sport, Morgan examines what he considers to be a degradation of modern sport and the lack of proper critical theory to address this challenge. In the latter part of LTS, Morgan presents a reconstructed critical theory with ‘a liberal twist’ in terms of an analysis of what he sees as the internal ‘gratuitous’ logic of sport, and a call for critical deliberation in (...) sporting practice communities. I depart from Morgan’s ideas of the ‘gratuitous’ logic of sport which, I believe, has significant potential and operative force. I interpret the logic of sport as forms of self-imposed constraints at three levels: in the logic of the rules, in norms for fair play, and in a particular interpretation of sporting excellence as a form of human excellence. Using the practical case of performance-enhancing drugs, I demonstrate how this interpretation can exert operative power. I conclude by pointing to th... (shrink)

Contributors to the literature on gamesmanship typically assume that gamesmanship can be clearly distinguished from other legal strategies used in sports. In this article, we argue that this is a m...

The role of the ‘enforcer’ in elite-level sports contests is a familiar one. Simply, the role involves establishing or restoring a ‘moral balance’ to the sporting encounter when it is absent – usually when match officials are thought to be failing to apply the laws/rules of the game. How the enforcer secures this outcome is more morally contentious as it may involve deliberate violations of the laws/rules of the sport. In this paper we consider the role of the enforcer in (...) rugby union. First we interrogate some of the extant sports ethics literature and explore the notion of ‘fairness’ in the well-played game, including the role of the enforcer. Second, we illustrate conceptually how the ethos of elite sport as a moral discourse creates a theoretical platform from which to assess the intervention of an enforcer. Third, we address the role of match officials as members of the practice community from an institutional sense (what the international governing body for rugby union makes explicit) and from an empirical sense (what actually occurs or might occur) in the circumstances that precipitate the intervention of ‘enforcers’. We conclude that the conceptual tension between the laws and the spirit (ethos) of the game is reflected in the choices facing players when playing the game. (shrink)