The implicit activities of the living body in sports (such as heart rate, involuntary gestures, stress, reflex, emotional regulation and interaction expressions) emerge in the consciousness of the lived body without our voluntary control. We demonstrate physiological emersion, and how, including in dramaturgical perception, physiological flows and processes collide with the image of a whole body. In this paper, we introduce corporeal non-property as the missing (?) link between phenomenology and neuroscience, renewed by research on the cerebral unconscious and the (...) perception of their lived body. Rather than mindfulness, physical activity obliges the subject to learn the unconscious and his motor skills from his living body: a new psychoanalysis of sport is thus established by studying what emerges from the activity of the living body up to the level of the conscious description of motor action. In this paper, we explain why that awareness occurs, and why it matters for the understanding of unconscious activity of the athlete’s living body. This is potentially interesting, although it needs, as a theory, to overcome the obvious reliance of the body on unconscious or habitual/automated physiological processes. But the incorporation of body techniques forms a habitus. (shrink)

In this essay, we address the influence of psychoanalysis on Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the esthesiological body. Our analyses are about the relation of senses and meanings established among the notions of game, sport and ludic, dialoguing with esthesiology and with the pulsional body, based on Freud's psychoanalytic referential, also approached by Merleau-Ponty. Our interlocutor considers that the expression of play in language seeks to situate the body, perception, and desire as primordial sources in the process of signification, presenting a different (...) way of conceiving the problem of ambiguity of the word game, based on a lacunar, indirect, and nascent conception of language. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy beckons to an alternative and possible path in the movement of re-reading the game and the ludic, including the dialogue with Psychoanalysis concerning the relations of the pulsional body with the game and the play in shaping the feeling of existence, and broadening the horizons of the philosophy of sport. (shrink)

Since Sigmund Freud developed and popularized psychoanalysis, this psychological theory has significantly influenced contemporary thinking, particularly in philosophical disciplines focused on understanding human behavior and addressing social problems. Take the examples of political philosophy, race theory, and feminist thought, among many others. However, although sport philosophy qualifies as one such discipline, scholars in this field have given little to no attention to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theorists. Remarkably, psychoanalytical notions, especially those of Eric Berne and Norman O. Brown, significantly shaped Bernard (...) Suits’ pioneering thoughts on games. Nevertheless, sport philosophers have largely overlooked the importance of psychoanalysis in Suits’ examinations of games and, more broadly speaking, rarely attempted to apply psychoanalytical concepts to their analyses of sport. In this paper, I explain the psychoanalytical roots of Suits’ theory of games and explore how much of his theory of games is indebted to psychoanalysis. Specifically, I first compare Suits’ analysis of unconscious gameplay to psychoanalytic concepts of repression and neurosis. Subsequently, I explore the alignment between Suits’ views on gameplay and psychoanalytic accounts of play and pleasure. To conclude, I examine the therapeutic and emancipatory character of Suits’ proposal, drawing parallels between his philosophical corpus and critical theorists whose critical analyses of modern society are heavily indebted to Freud. (shrink)

The article takes up diverse strands of psychoanalytic thinking to investigate how desire is manifested in male team sporting environments. In particular, it is posited that sporting desire shares a remarkable structural similarity to the joking relationship in that they both work through the overcoming of obstacles. In doing so unconscious desires are long-circuited and only emerge in radically altered form, upending traditional gender and sexual subjectivities in the process. The paper explores the concept of desire from perspectives that are (...) either straightforwardly psychoanalytic or heavily influenced by psychoanalytic thought. Initially, I examine desire from a Freudian viewpoint before looking at how Jacques Lacan extended Freudian analysis through a linguistic lens. I then explore desire in terms developed by Gilles Deleuze before turning, in the second part of the paper, to an examination of the work of George Bataille to consider the desire of sport through the mechanism of the joke to trace the complex routing that it often takes. (shrink)

‘Cause of a Lust for LifeI got a Lust for LifeGot a Lust for LifeOh, a Lust for Life’Iggy Pop, 1977Why this Special Issue on Sport & Psychoanalysis, a still relatively little explored approach in c...

In this paper, we present a Lacanian perspective on football, while notably fathoming its normative dimension. Starting with a defining imperative, the prohibition against ‘handling’ or touching the ball with your hands, diverging football historically from rugby, we will subsequently focus our attention on the role of the foot, the eye (notably the eyes of the audience) and the ‘object a’ (in the context of gender). Against this backdrop, we will address pressing issues such as the troubled position of the (...) referee (as an ‘impossible profession’), the commercialisation of football, and the rising tides of violence, match—fixing and other instances of systemic deviance. As we will argue, football exemplifies modern sport as an arena defined by prohibitions and desire, by inclusion and exclusion, by purity and abuse, culminating in recent challenges involved in gender trouble. Symbolical practices, like modern football, are based on in- and exclusion. Instead of more regulations and dichotomies, we advocate careful attention to the delicate art of handling desire in practice. (shrink)

Freudian psychoanalysis offers us often neglected but unique and very fruitful possibilities for an original interpretation of sport. In this article we first look at some basic Freudian concepts, such as the role of sexuality, the unconscious and dreams. In doing so, it becomes clear that sport can and should be interpreted in a similar way to Freud’s interpretation of dreams. Just as dreams need to be decoded and interpreted, sport needs to be decoded and interpreted in order to understand (...) it. On this basis, we then build a system for understanding sport that also incorporates the other important concepts of Freud’s psychoanalysis. The concepts of repression, symptom formation and the role of symbols prove to be particularly relevant for understanding sport. Decoding symbols in sport (e.g. scoring a goal) shows us that sport is a derivative of the libido and has an unconscious sexual structure. Unveiling the hidden unconscious sexuality of sport shows us that (male) sport was created for the sake of women, so that men (as winners) could gain a privileged status in female desire. Sport turns out to be a symbolic substitute for the satisfaction of human sexual needs. However, to better understand the competitive nature of sport, one must include the Oedipus and castration complex. It is castration anxiety that drives sporting competition. Victory is symbolically linked to the castration of the opponent. Next we turn to Freud’s concept of transference. It helps us to understand the complexity of the relationship between the athlete and the coach. This has a strong influence on athletic success. When things do not go as planned for an athlete and unexpected injuries occur, Freud’s concept of ‘advantage through illness’ can help us understand the athlete’s ‘escape into injury’. (shrink)

This text argues that psychoanalytic philosophy is a valuable tool for the Philosophy of Sport. To situate it within the philosophical tradition, I place Freud’s ideas as an heir to the Philosophy of Impulse of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Then, I explain how psychoanalytic philosophy can be understood as a form of hermeneutics, which aligns well with the interests of the field. I also recognise the importance of questioning whether we can consider sports and their events as analysable psychoanalytic facts. To (...) this purpose, I use Paul Ricoeur’s methodological approach, which proposes to analyse collective and common phenomena hermeneutically as psychoanalytic facts. I demonstrate the consistency of this method and adapt it to the Philosophy of Sport. The method involves a triangular operation that analyses psychoanalytic facts by articulating their relationships of meaning (narratives, manifest content, memories and objects), their relationships of force (resistances, neurotic repetitions, symptoms, latent contents and transfers), and psychoanalytic theory. As an example, I apply this method to conduct a micro-psychoanalytic analysis of Brazil’s defeat to Germany in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which the Brazilian coach referred to as a ‘blanked out’ moment. I observe that the destiny of drives, which Freud understood as the tendency of unconscious material to return to consciousness in the form of commitments to objects and symptoms, is prominent in sports reality. This may encourage us to see the potential of promising interpretations grounded in the Psychoanalytic Philosophy of Sport. (shrink)

In continuation with my on-going research and presentations on sport as a field of channeling and externalizing cruelty and violence, as a field of transfiguration of drives, in this paper I will examine instincts, drives and sublimation in Freud and post-Freudian psychoanalytic literature within the context of sports. Freud was influenced by Nietzsche on his drive theory; however, in Freud it assumes a specific meaning and finds its place within the context of his overall psychoanalytic work, especially in relation to (...) his second topology of the human psyche that consists of id, ego and superego and his theory of sublimation. Ultimately, Freud reduces all drives to Eros and Thanatos and explains their workings in relation to the constitution of the psyche. Sublimation has a direct correlation to drives, which is a culture/individual specific way of treating and channeling drives; sublimation also has much to do with suffering and how we deal with suffering (and other emotions as I discuss in my book, Emotion in Sports). What I would like to explore in this paper is to understand in what ways sport is a form of sublimation and how sport may address the subject of drives, both Eros and Thanatos. Since Freud sees both of these drives as bound together in many contexts, does sport constitute one of those areas? What type of psychic constitution does the sporting culture assume? Or, to put it differently, what are the dynamic relations of the different parts of the human psyche, the id, the ego and the superego, in the practice of sport and in the community of sports? Here and elsewhere, in agreement with Jung, I will include discussion of ‘collective unconscious’, as I explore the significance of symbols of sport in the life of individuals and cultures. (shrink)

Recently, shifting societal attitudes towards animals have resulted in an increasing challenge to the ‘social license’ to use animals in competitive sport. Against that background, this paper explores whether the use of animals in competitive sport is ever justifiable from the perspective of three commonly used ethical theories: deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. In so doing, it recognises the importance of human understanding of animals as sentient beings. The author argues that when deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics are each used (...) to consider the question ‘Is the use of animals in sport ethically justifiable?’, only absolutist rights theory leads to a negative conclusion. Specified rights theory, utilitarianism and virtue ethics all allow for the human use of animals in sport. However, the author then goes onto argue that even if one does not accept an absolutist rights point of view and does believe that the use of animals in sport is generally ethically justifiable, that use should be limited by fulfilment of certain ‘qualifying constraints’: (a) minimisation of negative welfare effects and maximisation of positive welfare effects, to enable ‘good lives’ for animals (b) identification of and mitigation against avoidable, unnecessary risk and (c) compliance with governing body regulations and the law. (shrink)

There is a dearth of academic research on the ethics of pigeon racing. We argue that pigeon racing is associated with significant benefits and disadvantages, but that the benefits that have been associated with it can be provided by alternative practices. Disadvantages include the competitive element associated with racing, which creates a strong incentive to kill birds where this is not in their best interests, as well as the welfare issues related to transportation, the widowhood system, the races themselves, and (...) the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Whilst some of these disadvantages can be diminished, we argue that an ethical form of pigeon racing is not possible, and that it therefore ought to be prohibited. In the final part of this article, we question whether the moral problems associated with pigeon racing include the keeping of pigeons per se. On this issue, we argue that keeping pigeons does pose moral problems, but that more research is needed to explore whether these might be relatively minor compared to the problems associated with de-domesticating pigeons. The moral implications of our research extend beyond the world of pigeon racing as similar arguments should be used to question the racing and keeping of many other animals. (shrink)

In contemporary society, humans interact with nonhuman animals in a number of ways, many of which involve the captivity of the nonhuman animals involved. Nonhuman animals trained for sport (sled dogs, horses trained for dressage, etc.), nonhuman animals confined for human entertainment (zoos, aquariums, circuses, etc.), and companion animals are all held captive by the human beings who interact with them. However, the moral acceptability of these forms of captivity seems to vary widely; this variance isn’t only a function of (...) the conditions of the captivity itself, but the reasons, attitudes, and intentions of the captors. Martha Nussbaum’s conception of species-specific flourishing allows for what she calls ‘respectful paternalism’ in the case of nonhuman animals, and in this paper, we will explore (a) Nussbaum’s account of ‘respectful paternalism’ as an aspect of justice that governs our interactions with nonhuman animals, (b) what the ‘respectful’ aspect of that paternalism involves by examining what it means for a captor to limit the autonomy of a nonhuman animal respectfully and (c) implications for our interactions with nonhuman animals in sport and entertainment environments. (shrink)

We argue that extreme endurance sport can be valuable for some nonhuman animals. To make the case, we focus specifically on dogsled racing. We argue that, given certain views about the nature of self-affirmation, perceptual agency, and affordances, sled dogs are capable of realizing significant value through extreme endurance running. Because our focus is on the axiological question of the nature of the value of the sport for its participants, we do not claim that extreme dogsledding is ethical; indeed, we (...) acknowledge the morally objectionable aspects of the practice in its current form. Still, we offer our argument as a critical step in providing an adequate moral justification for a reformed model of dogsled racing. If it is permissible, that is likely because it offers some significant benefits to sled dogs. Given some assumptions about sled dogs’ capacity to be guided by both internal and external affordances, those benefits include self-affirmation. (shrink)

Though animal ethics in sport obviously applies most urgently to cases of animals at mortal risk (e.g., hunting and bullfighting) or vulnerable to various types of abuse (e.g., doping and harmful training practices), less obvious domains bear scrutiny as well. Here I examine whether we can strictly take not just riders but horses to be players in equine sports. There is an apparent tension in the concept of equestrian prowess, a peculiar blend of skills and attitudes, between regarding horses as (...) subjects of persuasion or collaboration and treating them as objects of control. As our understanding of animal cognition and behaviour continues to improve, it becomes increasingly clear that animal intelligence and agential capacities are far greater than we formerly presumed. In this light, using Suits’s theory of games, I argue that horses are game players that sometimes consent (or assent) and sometimes refuse to play equine sports. Drawing on recent accounts of horse-rider partnership and on my own equestrian background, I conclude by sketching a utopian vision of what equine sports could be. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a conceptual analysis of blood-sport as a concept. Through utilising a generalised notion of sport as well as the concept of fair-play, the objective will be to examine whether blood-sports are games and analyse to what extent, if any, blood-sports can be properly called ‘sports’. For the purposes of application and because of the sheer numbers of birds used in the sports-shooting industry, the paper will focus on a discussion of game-birding, but the findings will (...) apply to the practice of ‘blood-sport’ more generally. Work by Sam P. Morris (IJAP, 2014) argues that ‘fair-chase hunting’ can be classified as a game, as well as a sport, although Morris stresses that answers to questions concerning the sport status of hunting do not provide answers to questions regarding the ethics of blood-sports. The author of this paper agrees with Morris regarding the latter point, but pace Morris, she argues that it is doubtful that blood-sport is a game let alone a sport, and that even if one assumes for argument's sake that it is indeed a game, it cannot be properly classed as sport, and that a fair-chase code undermines itself in the context of so called ‘blood-sports’.Footnote1. (shrink)

Herein I engage with the very difficult question of whether the duty to aid (sometimes called a duty of assistance or a duty of beneficence) extends so far as to justify harming persons, perhaps even lethally, in order to protect wild animals. I argue that this question is not nearly as settled as our intuitions may suggest and that Shelly Kagan’s arguments on Defending Animals, contained in his book How to Count Animals, More or Less, provide a rich substrate in (...) which to cultivate ideas on this subject (2019, pp. 248–279). My intuition is that killing a person, even one ‘guilty’ of trying to kill an animal for sport or leisure, is far beyond what a duty to aid can command, though admittedly I find my own intuition somewhat morally dumbfounding. I argue further that Tom Regan’s ‘worse-off principle’ may ease the ever-uncomfortable sense of moral dumbfounding by providing a surer foundation for the intuitive sense that we cannot ethically go so far as to threaten a person with lethal force in defense of nonhuman animals. (shrink)

The role of animals in the realm of sport is the focus of this special issue which delves into the nuanced intersections of sport, animals, and ethics. For millennia, humans have forged multifacete...

AI (Artificial Intelligence) has become the subject of intense reflection recently, not least due to the rising public profile of Open AI’s ChatGPT, and the spread of AI generated images that readi...

This book symposium on Jason Holt’s Kinetic Beauty: The Philosophical Aesthetics of Sport includes commentaries from Stephen Mumford, John E. MacKinnon and Andrew Edgar with replies from Holt.

From the institutional inauguration of the discipline in 1972, philosophy of sport tends to expand, spreading itself around the world from one country to another, and including new philosophical in...

The objective of this article is to propose an intersectional approach to gender and disability in sport. Starting from the postulate that the production of gender and disability-related norms is based on similar social logics, we will first show how these normative systems intersect in the field of sport and participate in the construction of heteronormative and ableist patterns. Then, we will rely on crip theory to understand to what extent it is possible to consider sport and physical activity as (...) opportunities to question these normative systems. In this way, we will defend the idea that sport and physical activity can support alternative experiences and visibility for disabled people and thus promote diversity. (shrink)

As a 52-year-old academic and mother of three, this research explores the ethics of the question ‘do I have time to go skateboarding?’ Using the themes of time, injury, ageing and learning, it explores the question in relation to Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity. The approach employs autoethnographic and sensory methods to document the authors own experience of learning to skateboard in her late forties and uses learning to skateboard as a vehicle from which to consider time and productivity. (...) Embracing Beauvoir’s ethics of transcendence in navigating the psychological burden of ageing and informing the ongoing methodological approach required for making time to play, the author subverts ideas of progression and knowledge acquisition from childhood to adulthood and explores instead the converse transition from adult to child. The article draws conclusions about the value of lifelong learning and what expanded ideas about productivity mean for our ethical positioning in the world. How being in the skatepark together requires an ethical contract between skateboarders, an unambiguous ethics of being together where adhering to a system of unwritten rules means that everyone has enough space to stay safe. Risk and the time implications of injury are explored throughout in terms of the choices we make at different stages of our lives as we navigate a balance between personal desire and social good. (shrink)

The field of eSports is undergoing a process of developing and evolving with irresistible forces. The process witnesses the ever-refreshing and hybrid meanings and definitions of Sports and eSports in the digital era of technology empowerment and advancing artificial intelligence. This paper calls us to re-construct the meanings and sporting values of eSports, re-evaluate the eSports landscape, going beyond the debate ‘Are eSports Sports?’ and move to re-examine the contextual nature and values of Sports and eSports, as well as their (...) interweaving relationships in contemporary society. It is of significance to explore the way in which the intelligent embodiment of eSports and the virtualisation of traditional sports integrate with each other, offering the potential for fitness and physical exercises and practices in real and virtual spaces. Meanwhile, crucial digital ethics issues are emerging in the field of eSports, potentially challenging and alerting the eSports industry to take timely measurements to maintain the Sport’s integrity. (shrink)

Governing bodies in golf, in particular the R&A and USGA, are proposing to introduce an elite golf ball for their tournaments (the Open and the US Open) in 2026 (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/gol...

When the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup was awarded to Qatar, it raised a number of moral concerns, perhaps the most prominent of which was Qatar’s woeful record on human rights in the arena of migrant labour. Qatar’s interest in hosting the event is aptly characterised as a case of ‘sportswashing’. The first aim of this paper is to provide an account of the nature of sportswashing, as a practice of using an association with sport, usually through hosting an event (...) or owning a club (such as Newcastle United, owned by Saudi Arabia), to subvert the way that others attend to a moral violation for which the sportswashing agent is responsible. This may be done through distracting away from wrongdoing, minimising it, or normalising it. Second, we offer an account of the distinctive wrongs of sportswashing. The gravest moral wrong is the background injustice which sportswashing threatens to perpetuate. But the distinctive wrongs of sportswashing are twofold: first, it makes participants in sport (athletes, coaches, journalists, fans) complicit in the sportswasher’s wrongdoing, which extends a moral challenge to millions of people involved with sport. Second, sportswashing corrupts valuable heritage associated with sporting traditions and institutions. Finally, we examine how sportswashing ought to be resisted. The appropriate forms of resistance will depend upon different roles people fill, such as athlete, coach, journalist, fan. The basic dichotomy of resistance strategies is to either exit the condition of complicity, for example by refusing to participate in the sporting event, or to modify one’s engagement with the goal of transformation in mind. We recognize this is difficult and potentially burdensome: sports are an important part of many of our lives; our approach attempts to respect this. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that philosophers of sport should avoid value-laden definitions of sport; that is, they should avoid building into the definition of sport that they are inherently worthwhile activities. Sports may very well often be worthwhile as a contingent matter, but this should not be taken to be a core feature included in the definition of sport. I start by outlining what I call the ‘legitimacy-conferring’ element of the category ‘sport’. I then argue that we ought not (...) to include such a dimension in our definition of sport, on the grounds that it confuses issues of description with issues of definition: the issue of what sport does with what sport is. Following this, I consider a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach to defining sport; Kevin Schieman’s argument that sports are necessarily good games; and the oft-cited wide-following and institutional criteria, as arguments for including an evaluative dimension in the definition of sport. I conclude that none succeed, for similar reasons: they either fail to track our common sense intuitions about what does or does not count as a sport; and/or they make it impossible for us to ever describe something a ‘bad’ sport (or instance of sport). Just as a good definition of, say, art, shouldn’t make it impossible for us to describe something as ‘bad art’, I argue that our definition of sport shouldn’t build in a necessarily positive evaluation. I conclude by discussing some of the practical reasons why supporters of activities about which there is currently debate as to their status as sports might want to see those activities included under the sports umbrella, but suggest that this on its own isn’t a good reason for modifying a philosophical definition of sport to include them. (shrink)