Sport, Education, and the Meaning of Victory

The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 38:26-31 (1998)
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Abstract

Sport was included in ancient educational systems because it was thought to promote aretê or human excellence which could be applied to almost any endeavor in life. The goal of most modern scholastic athletic programs might be better summed up in a word: winning. Is this a sign that we have lost touch with the age-old rationale for including sport in education? I argue that it need not be by showing that we value winning precisely for the virtues associated with it. I then take Plato's traditional parts of aretê: piety, sophrosunê, courage and justice and show how they are manifest in modern athletic ideals of self-knowledge, discipline, courage and justice. To the extent that scholastic athletic programs develop these virtues, I conclude, their pursuit of winning is not at odds with the institutional mission of educating students. If an athletic program's pursuit of victory allows such character-building to fall by the wayside, however, it deserves no place in our high schools, colleges or universities.

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Heather Reid
Exedra Mediterranean Center, Siracusa, Sicily

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A Never-Ending Story: The Philosophical Controversy Over Olympism.Lamartine DaCosta - 2006 - Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 33 (2):157-173.

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