Understanding the motivations behind those who partake in extreme sports can be difficult for some. If the popular conception holds that the incentive behind extreme sports participation is entirely to do with risking one's life, then this confusion will continue to exist. However, an in-depth examination of the phenomenology of the extreme sport experience yields a much more complex picture. This book revisits the definition of extreme sports as those activities where a mismanaged (...) mistake or accident would most likely result in death. Extreme sports are not necessarily synonymous with risk and participation may not be about risk-taking. Participants report deep inner transformations that influence world views and meaningfulness, feelings of coming home and authentic integration as well as a freedom beyond the everyday. Phenomenologically, these experiences have been interpreted as transcendent of time, other, space and body. Extreme sport participation therefore points to a more potent, life-enhancing endeavour worthy of further investigation. This book adopts a broad hermeneutic phenomenological approach to critique the assumed relationship to risk-taking, the death wish and the concept of "No Fear" in extreme sports, and repositions the experience in a previously unexplored manner. This is valuable reading for students and academics interested in Sports Psychology, Social Psychology, Health Psychology, Tourism, Leisure Studies and the practical applications of phenomenology. (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)

Only too often critical realist contributions to understanding and explaining social phenomena fall into one of two discrete categories: exercises in philosophy or social theory, or empirical research that strikes as more or less atheoretical. This paper continues a long-term project to build bridges between abstruse issues of philosophy and theory and attempts to grasp the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of actual social events. The topic selected is elite professional rugby union and the principal theme is its emergence as an (...) class='Hi'>extreme sport and the risk of serious injury. It is argued that the injurious nature of elite rugby has its causal genesis in the professionalization of the sport and that a critical realist-oriented sociology has an important contribution to make in framing and gasping how and why this is. (shrink)

Many amateur sportsmen in the West, have today started undertaking long and intensive ordeals where their personal capacity to withstand increasing suffering is the prime objective. Running, jogging, the triathlon and trekking are the sorts of ordeal where people without any particular ability are not pitting themselves against others but are committed to testing their own capacity to withstand increasing pain. Constantly called upon to prove themselves in a society where reference points are both countless and contradictory and where values (...) are in crisis, people are now seeking a one-to-one relationship by redical means, testing their strength of character, their courage and their personal resources. Going right on to the end of a self-imposed ordeal gives a legitimacy to life and provides a symbolic plank that supports them. Performance itself is of secondary significance; it has a value only to the individual. There is no struggle against a third party, only a method for reinforcing personal will-power and over-coming suffering by going right to the limit of a personally imposed demand. The physical limit has come to replace the moral limit that present-day society is failing to provide. Overcoming suffering tempers the individual, providing a renewed significance and value to his life. (shrink)

In the present study, we explored the effects of high arousal on cognitive performance when facing a situation of risk. We also investigated how these effects are moderated by either positive or ne...

Beginning from an earlier claim of mine that there was really no such area of study as the philosophy of sport, Part One of the paper reconsiders the place previously given to David Best’s distinction between purposive sports and aesthetic sports. In light of a famous cricketing event in the 1977 contest between England and Australia (‘The Ashes’), in which Derek Randall turned a cartwheel after taking the winning catch, the paper clarifies that not all aesthetically-pleasing events taking (...) place in sporting competitions can be understood as the aesthetic in sport. Then, in Part Two, the force of the claim that philosophy is one subject is explored. The conclusion is that a focus just on the philosophy of sport is necessarily inappropriate, since it will present the student with only cases from sport to then apply to sport. Rather, one’s understanding must be informed by (much of) the breadth of philosophy. Charles Travis’s view of occasion-sensitivity provides a clear example of appropriately contextual appeal. Part Three of the paper returns to the need for an institutional account of sport, one recognizing that there is no one occasion on which a particular sport is played; and hence no single set of conditions which can uniquely identify that sport. Thus, soccer played with one’s children typically differs from elite soccer: but both are (genuinely) soccer. When one turns to the appreciation of sport (in the light of Stephen Mumford’s excellent Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion [2012a]), one recognizes that, in order to genuinely appreciate sport, one cannot detach oneself from the outcome as completely as Mumford’s extreme purist seems to. But reflection on that case may also return us to contextualism by moving us away from attachments to the complete or the exceptionless in our accounts of spectating as of sport: maybe there is no one thing that occurs in all the relevant cases. (shrink)

This collection of essays is the first single-source treatment of adventure sports from an exclusively philosophical standpoint, offering students a uniquely ...

Examines extremity as a political and cultural phenomenon in the late 20th and early 21st century. It argues that we can discern a ‘continuum of extremes/extremity’ on which we may locate practices as diverse as Abu Ghraib, extreme sports, biomedical TV series and horror films.

Aretism: An Ancient Sports Philosophy for the Modern Sports World provides a tripartite model of sports ethics founded on ancient Greek principles and focused on personal, civic, and global integration. Heather Reid and Mark Holowchak apply these concepts as a "golden mean" between the extremes of the commercialist and recreational models of competition. This treatment is most applicable to students and academics concerned with the philosophy of sport, but will also be of interest to those in (...) class='Hi'>sports professions. (shrink)

You can freeze that one moment in time Sports photography gets you up close and personal with the action you crave, the athletes you idolize, or the activities that make memories for your children. It also provides plenty of frustration for amateurs and professionals alike. How do you shoot on a rainy day? What about the crowd at the finish line? Can you capture the tension as the ball trembles on the rim? You can, with the professional advice these (...) experts provide. No matter what your sport or level of expertise, this book can make you a better digital sports photographer. Benefit from the advice of more than 20 top sports photographers, including Terrell Lloyd, official photographer for the San Francisco 49ers Learn to handle bad lighting, weather, fast-moving athletes, flash limitations, and other challenges Identify key things to consider when switching from film to digital Get specific advice on how to shoot a wide range of sports: extreme, outdoor, indoor, competitive, recreational, and more Discover ways to sell your photos and manage legal issues See dozens of full-color examples illustrating professional tips and techniques Take great photos with any kind of digital camera, from a point-and-shoot to an SLR Find out how to get photos onto the Web easily and quickly. (shrink)

It has become a mantra, that doping is immorally and therefore should be punished with exclusion, fines and stigmatization. In most parts of the world, the doping debate is characterised by an extreme tunnel vision since all athletes, politicians and sports managers who have public airtime express that doping is bad or the invention of the devil. -/- The purpose of 'Doping in Sport: A Defence' is to identify, clarify and challenge some of the central arguments that are (...) used in the often extremely emotional debate that primarily focuses on rejecting the use of doping. I hope that my effort to clarify and challenge the arguments will help cultivate a productive dialogue where all arguments are given a fair trial instead of the prevailing one-sided condemnation of doping. An open dialogue about doping is important since the question of where the line should be drawn when it comes to doping in sports is highly relevant in terms of the scope within which athletes, sports physicians, sports managers, coaches and pharmaceutical companies can operate in the world of sports. (shrink)

Lack of consent is valorized within popular culture to the point that sexual assault has become a spectator sport and creepshot entertainment on social media. Indeed, the valorization of nonconsensual sex has reached the extreme where sex with unconscious girls, especially accompanied by photographs as trophies, has become a goal of some boys and men.

Since the end of the 19th century, three combat sports – Boxing, Muay Thai, and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) – while different from the point of view of their respective regulatory frameworks and of their technical specificities, have alternately become the target of analogous waves of criticisms, even of “moral crusades.” These are a product of converging discourses of stigmatization coming from policy-makers, from sport managers, as well as from journalists. In a recurrent way, these activities have been accused (...) of being extremely brutal and contrary to the values of sport, and, more so, of degrading human dignity. Formerly deemed to be illegitimate and immoral, Boxing and Thai boxing have been, however, each in its turn, progressively accepted in society, recognized as sports disciplines, and considered as having educational potential. Nowadays, the diatribes mainly focus on MMA. The objectives of this contribution consisted of specifying the socio-historical circumstances of these denigration campaigns against combat sports, between permanence of criticism and periodic reconfigurations of the targets, as well as understanding the social factors underpinning this. In this respect, we formulated the hypothesis that the successive focus of condemnations on these three disciplines could be understood at the interface of an effect of social stigmatization of their participants coming from the most marginalized social backgrounds and of the necessity to define, in a context of axiological crisis, a consensual standard of moral monstrosity. (shrink)

Extreme self-sacrifice in the context of phenomena, such as sports hooliganism, combines aspects of local and extended fusion. How can we best account for such phenomena in the light of the theory presented here, and how can we make a tangible distinction between the two types? I propose ways to explore and operationalize this distinction and the concept of fusion more generally.

Are sports really supposed to be so competitive that, as Henry R. Sanders once famously said, â oeMen, I'll be honest. Winning isâ ]the only thing!â? (WK 2012) This competitive view of sports can be contrasted with a critical view by William Shakespeare, who wrote in Othello (Act. iv. Sc. 1), â oeThey laugh that win.â (BART 2012) Contrary to these opposing views (and other ones, as will be discussed in the book), sports (in relation to both (...) training and winning) are neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe. Of course, this reexamination of the opposing views on the value of sports does not mean that sports are unimportant, or that those interdisciplinary fields related to sports, like sports nutrition, physiology, psychology, biomechanics, sports philosophy, sports technology, anthropometry, kinanthropometry, and so on, are not worth studying. Needless to say, neither of these extreme views is reasonable. Instead, this book offers an alternative way to understand the future of sports, especially in the dialectic context of training and winning - while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). More specifically, this book offers a new theory (that is, the modificative theory of sports) in order to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way. To understand this, the book is organized in four chapters. This seminal project will fundamentally change the way that we think about sports in relation to training and winning from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and its â oepost-humanâ fate. (shrink)

Analysing race as the metaphor of life - by means of which Thomas Hobbes describes the passions in The Elements of Law, natural and politic - seems to be the right occasion to underline the relationship between the mechanistic idea of human being and sports activity. This approach makes a paradigm come to the surface - where factors such as extreme competition, the pursuit of success at any cost, ineliminable fear of defeat confirm the relevance of the Malmesbury (...) born philosopher's thought, even within the so popular but little investigated field of sport. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present a phenomenological description of how athletes in specific risk sports explore human interaction with natural elements. Skydivers play with, and surf on, the encountering air while falling towards the ground. Kayakers play on the waves and with the stoppers and currents in the rivers. Climbers are ballerinas of the vertical, using cracks and holds in the cliffs to pull upwards against gravity forces. The theoretical background for the description is found in (...) the phenomenology of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The phenomenology of Husserl focused on the theoretical intentionality of the transcendental ego. With Heidegger the human being's concrete and practical interaction with the environing world moved to the foreground. Heidegger's analyses of ?equipmentality? also throw important light on equipmentality in sports and how we deal with tools and equipment in sports. However, in Heidegger's analyses the body resides in the background both as subject and object. The importance of the active body-subject is well documented in the work of Merleau-Ponty, and also Todes. The human being is a bodily ?being-in-the-world? and the body is the active medium through which the world is grasped. The body is however also situated and aligned with the fundamental dimensions of the world, with vertical gravity and with horizontal action space. In this article I show in a concrete way how in some sports we use fundamental characteristics of the environing world in a mode of playfulness. In these sports human beings play in an extreme way with fundamental elements of nature. The article thus puts phenomenology to a test. It should be able to move from general characteristics to specific features of our bodily human involvement with the environing world. (shrink)

The sport industry is an extremely diverse industry, including segments such as professional sport, intercollegiate athletics, health and fitness, recreational sport and facility management. The industry is currently experiencing rapid growth and development, and as it grows, sport managers in the different segments encounter ethical issues which are often unique to each segment. This article examines the professional sport, intercollegiate athletics, health and fitness, recreational sport and facility management segments of the sport industry and discusses the various ethical issues facing (...) managers in each of these segments. (shrink)

Physical activity and sports are extremely essential elements for physical and mental health among adolescents. Around 30% of 16 years old and above in Malaysia have mental health issues. For this purpose, 512 university students from Malaysia were surveyed through social media, with 74% response rate. Structural equation model partial least square was used to examine the effect of PA and sports on mental health. The results revealed that both PA and sports significantly predict mental health among (...) university students. The model explained 35.8% variance in mental health. The study suggests that PA and sports activity need to be promoted among university students to control prevailing mental health issues in adolescents. (shrink)

Initiating and maintaining sports and exercise behaviour are usually discussed in terms of strategies for promoting health. In the present study, we analysed a sample of extreme endurance sport athletes and set out to predict exercise addiction, which is a facet of a sport-related health risk. We therefore draw on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000), according to which low basic psychological need satisfaction can lead to excessive compensatory behaviour. We aim to disentangle the effects of need (...) satisfaction in the activity itself (exercising) and outside the activity (work/leisure) on exercise addiction. Furthermore, we propose anxious self-motivation as a mediator and tested whether it links low basic need satisfaction with exercise dependence. A correlational study with 323 multi-triathlon athletes confirmed our hypothesis that need satisfaction in work/leisure (but not in sports) is negatively related to exercise addiction. Furthermore, only need for competence in both domains (sport, work/leisure) is associated with anxious self-motivation. Mediation models showed that low competence satisfaction leads to anxious self-motivation that in turn predicts exercise addiction. The results are discussed critically in terms of their practical and theoretical implications for promoting health through sport and exercise. (shrink)

In this article, we frame men’s club football as an “extremely gendered” organization to explain the underrepresentation of women leaders within the industry. By analyzing women’s leadership work over a 30-year period, we find that women’s inclusion has been confined to a limited number of occupational areas. These areas are removed, in terms of influence and proximity, from the male players and the playing of football. These findings reveal a gendered substructure within club football that maintains masculine dominance in core (...) football leadership roles and relegates women to a position of peripheral inclusion in leadership roles. Through a discourse analysis of gender pay gap reports, we show that men’s football clubs legitimize women’s peripheral inclusion by naturalizing male dominance at the organizational core. These findings are significant because they demonstrate that men’s football clubs, as masculinity-conferring organizations, have excluded women from core roles to maintain their masculine character while superficially accepting women into roles that do not challenge the association of football with hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, organizational change may be possible only if women are granted greater access to core organizational roles. Here, we offer a new theoretical framework for “extremely gendered” organizations that can be applied to other sporting and male-dominated contexts to analyze women’s access to core leadership roles. (shrink)

This study aims to alleviate the current tense employment situation and study the entrepreneurial situation of teachers and students in colleges and universities. Firstly, based on the educational concept of Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics, Ideological and Political Education is added to psychological capital to explore the effect of the combination of the two on entrepreneurial performance. An entrepreneurial performance impact model is constructed, and the questionnaire is set. Secondly, the influence of psychological capital combined with IPE on sports (...) morality is explored, and a sports morality questionnaire is designed. Finally, the questionnaire results are analyzed. The results showed that most of the participants in the survey are under the age of 25. The 25- to 29-year-olds are the smallest among those surveyed. The respondents who participated in the survey had the most undergraduate degrees, accounting for 43.4%. The 40 items on entrepreneurial performance this time obey a normal distribution, and the scale has good reliability and validity. The main factor analysis results obtained by principal component analysis include 6 factors. Their total explanatory power exceeds 67%, and the six factors screened out this time are well represented. The model tolerance is between 0.45 and 0.5, and the Variance Inflation Factor value is less than 10. The scale does not suffer from multi-collinearity issues. IPE significantly strengthens the effect of psychological capital on entrepreneurial performance. The influences of various sports on sportsmanship, bravery, self-confidence, and self-transcendence are significantly different, and the P value is less than 0.001. The difference in aggressiveness is less than 0.01, indicating that it is very significant. Different sports have significant differences in the cultivation of sports morality, and the P value is less than 0.05. The differences in self-discipline are also significant, and there are extremely significant differences in compliance with rules, and the P value here is less than 0.001. There are no significant differences in sporting qualities. IPE combined with psychological capital has a significant impact on entrepreneurial performance. These contents provide references for the entrepreneurship education of teachers and students in colleges and universities. The contribution lies in expanding the research on psychological capital in entrepreneurial performance and laying a foundation for the combination of psychological capital and IPE. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the ethical implications and problems in elite sport as it gets closer to the human performance limit. Modern elite sport must be viewed on the background of the idea of systematic progress. The Olympic motto, 'citius, altius, fortius'- faster, higher, stronger-gives a precise concentration of this idea. Modern sport is also influenced by the liberal idea of a free market where actors can perform, compete and be rewarded according to performance. (...) However, one may ask why and how athletes are willing to risk their health and even their life on the free market of sport when they do the extreme: push limits, break records, set new standards, develop new events. This paper discusses what may be the result as sport moves toward the limits of human performance. The ethical focus on the development of the elite sport should not be restricted to the individual athlete, but should also include the various systems that make up elite sport. Other actors, like coaches, leaders, sponsors, medical personnel, service people, etc., are taking part in the same development. One problem in the modern context is that society is divided into different moral sectors. What is accepted in entertainment or art may not be accepted in sport. It is suggested that we should develop a common ethic for all performance-centered activities like music, painting, science and research, acrobatics and stunts, acting, top politics and business. Or one could include all situations and events where people are put under extreme stress and have to perform well, like during expeditions, in idealistic humanitarian work, during hazards, and catastrophes. At the same time, one should not develop a sort of elite ethic. We need a new ethic that defines the ethical tolerance level in elite sport and that also points to some of the possibilities for development of both character and virtues under extreme pressure. (shrink)

Body ecology by cosmosis refers to the experience of immersion, or the incorporation of the elements of nature through a body practice, leisure or sport. In this article, we propose comprehensive u...

This paper aims to examine the awesome, almost spiritual feeling I experience as an?extreme spectator? while watching Kelly Slater ride the monstrous waves of Pipeline. Drawing on the aesthetics of Kant and Schopenhauer, I examine the experience of the sublime and how it, in conjunction with the perceived kinetic melody of Slater's movements and his karmic connection to the environment in which he thrives, gives rise to the deeply felt awe of the extreme spectator. My intention is to (...) use Slater's case as a paradigm that can be applied to many other athletic performances which share the characteristics discussed in the paper. (shrink)

Question: Where, when and under what circumstances did the two of you get to know each other?Fischer: It was in the early seventies, in Frankfurt, after the dissolution of the gauche proletarienne and while there were still leftist groups in Germany. It must have been 1972. Question: Was that a private visit?Glucksmann: We had private discussions. We also participated in rallies and demonstrations.Question: That was in the late phase of the student movement.Fischer: We kept in contact through my old room-mate, (...) Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He was our link to France, so to speak.Question: And was this the link between the French and the German Left that existed then? (shrink)

Introduction: Traditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others’ emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation. Objective: This study aims to enrich knowledge of the empathic experience of pain by using an experimental phenomenological method. Method: (...) Implementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories. Results: Experiential access to the other person’s painful experience involves four main-themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. Temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant’s own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them. Discussion: We show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory for non-interactive social experience. (shrink)

Martin Strel, a Slovenian hero, swam all 3004 km of Danube in 200, and Mississippi in 2002, to become one of nominees for the sportsperson of the year award. Surprisingly, an orchestrated attack on his status as a sportsperson and on status of his achievements as sport records followed successfully. Martin did not get the award. He continued with his activities, swimming Parana, Jang Tse, and Amazonas lately, but was never mentioned in sport context again. This case is examined to (...) show how definition struggles serve to strengthen the border control between sport as such, and its internationally institutionalised realm. To make a comparison, the case of art and its definition is mentioned. Martin Strel did not endanger sport, being a false pretender on sport-status, but he endangered sport management and sport business. He was thrown out of the ?sport city?, to swim ?extra portes? and to inhabit a place where sport as ?esportes? originally belonges. (shrink)

Among the newly enchristianed "extreme sports" category, ultrarunners and the sport of ultrarunning is on the fringe edge. What makes ultrarunners and their "sport" interesting is that ultrarunners regularly report experiences that can be equated to various types of mystical experiences during their "sporting" events. This paper briefly discusses ultrarunners, a hypothetical mystical (mythical) state of consciousness called Absolute Unitary Being, and the psychoneurophysiological aspects of ultrarunning. Through this process, a link is established that connects ultrarunners and their (...) "sport" with many traditional indigenous practices. It is suggested that many of the traditional indigenous practices may have produced experiences similar to those of ultrarunners, and thus we can look to ultrarunners to begin to understand some of the physiological, psychological, neurological, as well as humanistic, phenomenological, and transpersonal experiences and reasons behind many now lost traditional indigenous practices. (shrink)

Drawing upon in-depth case studies of vacation habits and the observations of philosophers, writers, and sociologists such as Aristotle, Mark Twain and Thorstein Veblen, Al Gini argues why vacations are so venerated and why 'doing nothing' is a fundamental human necessity. From shopping sprees and extreme sports to the ultimate vacation - retirement - The Importance of Being lazy demonstrates that without true leisure, we are diminished as individuals and as a society.  .

A volume with 14 chapters on various aspects of the relationship between responsibility and healthcare, plus a substantial introduction that offers a comprehensive overview of the relevant debates and how they relate to one another. -/- Questions of responsibility arise at all levels of health care. Most prominent has been the issue of patient responsibility. Some health conditions that risk death or serious harm are partly the result of lifestyle behaviours such as smoking, lack of exercise, or extreme (...) class='Hi'>sports. Are patients with such conditions responsible for them? If so, might healthcare providers, be they state-run systems or private entities, be justified in treating such patients differently? And if they are, which forms of differential treatment are justified? Responsibility isn’t just relevant for patients. Even when individuals affect their health through voluntary behaviour, other influences are also at work before, during, and after the patient’s interaction with the health care system. What are the responsibilities of individual clinicians and other medical professionals, when thinking about individual and public health? What about institutions such as governments or national health care services, or society as a whole? This collection brings together work by world-renowned experts in population ethics, distributive justice, philosophy of action, cognitive science, and medical ethics in order to push the debate forward by elucidating our understanding of these questions, their possible answers, and how they are related. (shrink)

Surveillance cameras. Airport security lines. Barred store windows. We see manifestations of societal fears everyday, and daily news reports on the latest household danger or raised terror threat level continually stoke our sense of impending doom. In _A Philosophy of Fear_, Lars Svendsen now explores the underlying ideas and issues behind this powerful emotion, as he investigates how and why fear has insinuated itself into every aspect of modern life. Svendsen delves into science, politics, sociology, and literature to explore the (...) nature of fear. He examines the biology behind the emotion, from the neuroscience underlying our “fight or flight” instinct to how fear induces us to take irrational actions in our attempts to minimize risk. The book then turns to the political and social realms, investigating the role of fear in the philosophies of Machiavelli and Hobbes, the rise of the modern “risk society,” and how fear has eroded social trust. Entertainment such as the television show “Fear Factor,” competition in extreme sports, and the political use of fear in the ongoing “War on Terror” all come under Svendsen’s probing gaze, as he investigates whether we can ever disentangle ourselves from the continual state of alarm that defines our age. Svendsen ultimately argues for the possibility of a brighter, less fearful future that is marked by a triumph of humanist optimism. An incisive and thought-provoking meditation, _A Philosophy of Fear _pulls back the curtain that shrouds dangers imagined and real, forcing us to confront our fears and why we hold to them. (shrink)