Abstract
Sport builds character. If this is true, why is there a consistent stream of news detailing the bad behavior of athletes? We are bombarded with accounts of elite athletes using banned performance-enhancing substances, putting individual glory ahead of the excellence of the team, engaging in disrespectful and even violent behavior toward opponents, and seeking victory above all else. We are also given a steady diet of more salacious stories that include various embarrassing, immoral, and illegal behaviors in the private lives of elite athletes. Elite sport is not alone in this; youth sport has its own set of moral problems. Parents assault officials, undermine coaches, encourage a win-at-all costs mentality, and in many cases ruin sport for their children.
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Notes
H. Reid (2007) “Sport and Moral Education in Plato’s Republic”, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 34, 160–175
See, for example, M. Holowchak and H. Reid (2011) Aretism: An Ancient Sports Philosophy for the Modern Sports World (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books)
C. Jones (2008) “Teaching Virtue through Physical Education”, Sport, Education, and Society 13, 337–349
M. McNamee (2008) Sports, Virtues and Vices: Morality Plays (New York: Routledge).
For a sustained argument against this view, see W. Morgan (2006) Why Sports Morally Matter (London: Routledge).
For example, see J. Boxill, ed. (2003) Sports Ethics: An Anthology (Maiden, MA: Blackwell)
W. Morgan, ed. (2007) Ethics in Sport, 2nd edn (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics).
A. Maclntyre (1984) After Virtue, 2nd edn (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), 187.
C. Jones and M. McNamee (2003) “Moral Development and Sport: Character and Cognitive Developmentalism Contrasted”, Sports Ethics, J. Boxill, ed. (Maiden, MA: Blackwell), 42.
R. Konyndyk DeYoung, C. McCluskey, and C. Van Dyke (2009) Aquinas’s Ethics: Metaphysical Foundations, Moral Theory, and Theological Context (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 139.
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D.C. Malloy, S. Ross, and D. Zakus (2003) Sport Ethics: Concepts and Cases in Sport and Recreation (Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing), 188–189.
For example, see D.L. Shields and B.L. Bredemeier 2009) True Competition (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics).
See Y. Ommundsen, G.C. Roberts, P.N. Lemyre, and D. Treasure (2003) “Perceived Motivational Climate in Male Youth Soccer: Relations to Social-Moral Functioning, Sportspersonship, and Team Norm Perceptions”, Psychology of Sport and Exercise 4, 397–413
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A.M. Pensgaard, and G.C. Roberts (2002) “Elite Athletes’ Experiences of the Motivational Climate: The Coach Matters”, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 12, 54–59.
R. Adams (2006) A Theory of Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press), 125.
For empirical evidence in support of this claim, see P. Gollwitzer (1999) “Implementation Intentions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans”, American Psychologist 54, 493–503.
T. Morris (1992) Making Sense of it All (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 40–41.
McNamee also makes this point in Sports, Virtues and Vices, 80. On the potential impact of coaches, see B.L. Bredemeier and D.L. Shields (2005) “Sport and the Development of Character”, Handbook of Research in Applied Sport and Exercise Psychology: International Perspectives, eds D. Hackfort, J. Duda, and R. Lidor (Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology), 277–294.
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© 2013 Michael W. Austin
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Austin, M.W. (2013). Sport as a Moral Practice: An Aristotelian Approach. In: Austin, M.W. (eds) Virtues in Action. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280299_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280299_4
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