Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives

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Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives

Randolph Feezell

288 pages

Paperback

July 2013

978-0-8032-7153-1

$30.00 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

April 2020

978-1-4962-1148-4

$30.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

July 2013

978-0-8032-7165-4

$30.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

There’s more to sports than the ethos of competition, entertainment, and commercialism expressed in popular media and discourse. Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives discusses sport in the context of several traditional philosophical questions, including: What is a good human life and how does sport factor into it? To whom do we look for ethical guidance? What makes human activities or projects meaningful? Randolph Feezell examines these questions along with other relevant topics in the philosophy of sport such as the contribution of play to a meaningful life, the various reasons for pessimistic views of sport, the various claims that celebrated athletes are role models, and the seldom-questioned view that coaches are in a position to offer advice to athletes on how to live or on leadership skills. He also discusses the way that non-Western attitudes found in Buddhism, Taoism, and the Bhagavad Gita might be used to address the vulnerabilities of sports participants.

Feezell draws from current sports issues, popular literature, and contemporary sports figures to shed light on the attraction and value of sports and examine the accompanying ethical issues.

Author Bio

Randolph Feezell is a professor of philosophy at Creighton University. He is the author of many books including Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection and the coauthor, with Craig Clifford, of Sport and Character: Reclaiming the Principles of Sportsmanship.

Praise

"A thought-provoking book. . . . Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives—its first two parts in particular—should definitely appeal to a wide audience."—Stephanie Wilson Rothfuss, Sports Literature Association

"Insightful."—S. A. Klein, CHOICE

"Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives provides illuminating discussion for those in sport studies (both undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars too) as well as general readers interested in reflecting on the meaning of sport."—Douglas Hochstetler, Journal of Sport History

Table of Contents

Introduction
PART ONE:  SPORT AND GOOD LIVES
Chapter 1:  A Pluralist Conception of Play
Chapter 2:  Sport, Vulnerability, and Unhappiness
Chapter 3:  Losing Is Like Death
Chapter 4:  The Pitfalls of Partisanship
Chapter 5:  Sport, Dirty Language, and Ethics

PART TWO:  SPORT AND ETHICAL GUIDANCE
Chapter 6:  Celebrated Athletes and Role Models
Chapter 7:  Coach as Sage

PART THREE:  SPORT AND MEANING
Chapter 8:  Sport and the Question of the Meaning of Life
Chapter 9:  Meaning, Sport, and Deflationary Attitudes

Notes 
Index

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