Bernard Suits’ groundbreaking work, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, has profoundly shaped the philosophy of sport. Its sequel, Return of the Grasshopper: Games, Leisure, and the Good Life in the Third Millennium, released in October 2022, enriches scholarly understandings of Suits’ views on games, emphasizing the normative aspects of gameplay and its impact on people’s pursuit of the good life. In this book symposium, world-leading Suits scholars analyze the Suitsian conception of gameplay and its relevance to his views on (...) Utopia outlined in the sequel, covering a wide range of topics. Filip Kobiela explores counterfactual situations in Suits’ oeuvre. Christopher Bartel and Gwen Bradford scrutinize the ethical nature and ramifications of Suits’ claim that life is an unconscious game. R. Scott Kretchmar and John S. Russell present thoughtful critiques of Suits’ musing on Utopia. William J. Morgan’s contribution integrates contemporary work studies to illuminate Suits’ utopia. The symposium concludes with the editors, Francisco Javier Lopez Frias and Christopher Yorke, offering their perspectives on Suitsian Utopia, ethics, and metaethics. (shrink)

In this article, I draw on psychoanalysis to provide a novel understanding of Suits’ theory of games by analyzing the riddle in the Grasshopper’s recurring dream, which Suits presents in his semina...

In this paper, I engage the debate on Suits’ theory of games by providing a Kantian view of Utopia. I argue that although the Kantian aspects of Suits’ approach are often overlooked in comparison to its Socratic-Platonic aspects, Kant’s ideas play a fundamental role in Suits’ proposal. In particular, Kant’s concept of ‘regulative idea’ is the basis of Suits’ Utopia. I regard Utopia as Suits’ regulative idea on game playing. In doing so, I take Utopia to play a double role (...) in Suits’ theory of games. First, it highlights the primary condition of possibility of game-playing, namely, the lusory attitude. Second, it provides a normative criterion that serves as a critical principle to evaluate instances of game playing and as a counterfactual assumption that makes game playing possible. I provide further support for my Kantian interpretation of Suits’ Utopia by bringing to light the anthropological assumptions upon which Utopia is built. In doing so, I argue that both Suits’ theory of games, in general, and his Utopia, in particular, lay out the conditions of possibility of game playing, not an analysis on the life most worth living. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the issue of the elimination of sports, or elements of sports, that present a high risk of brain injury. In particular, we critically examine two elements of Angelo Corlett’s and Pam Sailors’ arguments for the prohibition of football and Nicholas Dixon’s claim for the reformation of boxing to eliminate blows to the head based on the empirical assumption of an essential or causal connection between brain injuries incurred in football and the development of a degenerative (...) brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy ; and John Stuart Mill’s rejection of consensual domination. We present four arguments to contest the validity of Corlett, Dixon’s and Sailor’s positions. Specifically, we argue that certain autonomy-based arguments undermine paternalist arguments for reform; the nature of the goods people pursue in their lives might justify their foregoing future autonomy; Mill’s argument against consensual domination draws on ambiguous and arbitrary distinctions; the lack of consensus and empirical evidence regarding CTE arising from brain injuries in sport underdetermines calls for reform. We conclude that these proposals for reforming or eliminating sports with high risks of brain injuries are not well founded. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of sport. In the book, Suits investigates two fundamental issues in general p...

Bernard Suits’ account of play as an autotelic activity has been greatly influential in the philosophy of sport. Suits borrows the notion of ‘autotelicity’ from Aristotle’s ethics, formulating diff...

En este artículo se trata de situar el régimen de derechos humanos –aunque sólo el de los llamados derechos civiles y políticos- dentro del universo mental de los imaginarios sociales modernos que conforman nuestra forma de leer el mundo En estas páginas se sostiene que: los derechos humanos no tienen fundamento filosófico posible ; uno de los ejes de estos imaginarios sociales modernos es el que se extiende desde la humanidad una hasta el estado soberano moderno; el otro eje se (...) despliega entre la civilización y la condición de salvaje, en un relato teleológico. Con estas premisas los derechos humanos, que sólo se entienden hasta el fondo, en una determinada tradición lingüística, pueden y deben ser usados, no como fundamentos universales de la acción, sino como armas de lucha. (shrink)

In this article, we examine scholarly analyses of justice and develop a framework that can help assess the claims from the parties in the Russian state-led doping scandal, including, but not limited to, Russian athletes, non-Russian athletes, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and sport governing bodies. The two key components of this justice framework are pluralism and relationality/contextuality. We argue that a justice framework built upon these elements better captures the nature of justice. We conclude that no party in the Russian (...) state-led doping case has exclusive access to justice. Rather, all the parties have legitimate calls for justice against one another. Thus, the administration of justice will fail to serve justice, in its different meanings, for all parties. (shrink)

In this article, I consider Alkis Kontos’ and Allan Bäck’s critiques to Suits that his theory of games and good living lack ontological grounds or rests on the wrong foundations. Taking these criti...

In this paper, linguistic-analytic philosophy has been identified as the dominant methodology in the philosophy of sport. The hermeneutics of sport is contrasted with linguistic-analytic philosophy by analyzing Heidegger’s view of Truth. In doing so, two views of philosophy are compared: ontology or description. Sport hermeneutics’ task has to do with description. Hermeneutical explanations of sport attempt to describe the facticity of sport. Such a facticity is formed by three moments: embodiment, capabilities, and tradition. They are not components of sport (...) that can be identified as essential components but rather, they are identifiable only for analytic purposes. These three above-mentioned elements cannot be identified as elements, because they are intrinsically intertwined forming a unitary network of meaning. The task of sport hermeneutics is to describe the different relationships that compose such a network of meaning. In doing so, sport is a humane activity linked to the constitutive human task of making sense of reality by projecting meaning into it. (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)

This article examines multinational banks’ approaches to corporate social responsibility in developing countries’ subsidiaries, particularly in Latin America. Building on in-depth case studies of two MNBs that are based in Europe and market leaders in Latin America, we analyze their CSR motivations and outcomes in host countries. We examine institutional environments by applying the national business system framework, and we suggest missing categories in its financial and educational dimensions. We theorize how institutional necessity determines MNBs' CSR in developing countries. Finally, (...) we examine the CSR outcomes in Latin America, where banks’ responsible conduct has led to major improvements in educational levels and financial inclusion. These improvements alleviate poverty and enhance both country's social wellbeing and MNBs’ legitimacy, leading to mutual prosperity. (shrink)

This study attempts to analyse the relationship between two key psychological variables associated with performance in sports - Self-Determined Motivation and Competitive Anxiety - through Bayesian Networks analysis. We analysed 674 university students/athletes from 44 universities that competed at the University Games in México, with an average age of 21 years (SD = 2.07) and with a mean of 8.61 years’ (SD = 5.15) experience in sports. Methods: Regarding the data analysis, first a CHAID algorithm was carried out to determine (...) the dependence links between variables, and then a Bayesian networks was developed. The validation of the BN revealed AUC values ranging from 0.5 to 0.92. Subsequently, various instantiations were performed with hypothetical values applied to the “bottom” variables. Results showed two probability trees that have extrinsic motivation and amotivation at the top, while the anxiety/activation due to worries about performance was at the bottom of the probabilities. The instantiations carried out support the existence of these probabilistic relationships, demonstrating their scarce influence on anxiety about competition generated by the intrinsic motivation, and the complex probabilistic effect of introjected and identified regulation regarding the appearance of anxiety due to worry about performance. (shrink)

This paper addresses the possibility of robots engaging in sports. Recently, several movies like Ex-Machina, Chappi, and Transcendence challenge the spectator to think of the consequences of creating artificial intelligences. Although we refer to athletes who have outstanding sporting performances as machines, for example, in cycling people say ‘the cyclist looked like a machine with wheels,’ the potential participation of such AI in sport has not been addressed. For our argument’s sake, we will assume that the creation of human-like robots (...) who will mirror human athletes’ behavior in the playing field will be possible. Recent advances in cybernetics and robotics point in this way. As argued in the literature on philosophy of mind, the fact that intelligent robots seem to be doing something does not imply they are actually doing it. Understood in this way, sport can be conceived as a particular ‘imitation game’ or Turing test, which permits us to distinguish between an artificial intelligence... (shrink)

This article tries to elucidate the Deleuzian project of the reversal of Platonism in relation to that of Nietzsche. To this aim, I have made a predominantly historiographic sketch of the question in both authors. In the case of Nietzsche, I inquired about both the relationship that the reversal of Platonism presents in his philosophy with the problem of nihilism and the evolution that the topic undergoes throughout his vast intellectual production, until it reaches its final formulation. With regard to (...) Deleuze, I offer a broad overview of his work aimed at tracing the subject, from his interpretation of the Nietzschean formulation, as opposed to that of Heidegger, to the meticulous way in which it fits into his own philosophy as a shift of the essence in favour of the event as a source of singularities. (shrink)

Con base en argumentos sociopolíticos, iusfilosóficos y jurídicos; el presente trabajo sostiene que es necesaria la aplicación de los principios y reglas básicas del Derecho Internacional Humanitario (DIH), en la violencia urbana, en la que se hace necesaria la aplicación de la fuerza por parte de la policía Estatal. La racionalidad sociopolítica se emplea para poner en cuestión la idea según la cual la violencia urbana está determinada por la ausencia de derechos; la aproximación iusfilosófica aborda la relación existente entre (...) legitimidad del Estado y uso de la fuerza; finalmente, los argumentos jurídicos se desarrollan en torno al DIH. (shrink)

Este artículo ofrece la transcripción, la traducción y el estudio de dos nuevas inscripciones funerarias inéditas, halladas en Arjona y que están fechadas en los años 352/963 y 364/975 respectivamente. La técnica epigráfica de estas lápidas es la habitual en las inscripciones de procedencia rural.

Las obras de Carroll representan una ajunción en la que coexisten dos visiones radicalmente opuestas de la realidad. En sus obras teóricas, es un lógico perfecto que expone de forma muy clara la belleza y el orden de las ideas. Por el contrario, en Las aventuras de Alice, presenta un mundo sin un orden, una realidad siempre cambiante donde no hay ley a la que aferrarse. Así, en Carroll las dos grandes tradiciones de pensamiento que coexisten en nuestra cultura desde (...) Parménides y Heráclito se funden. (shrink)

Are democracy and success compatible in a business organization? In this work we show how Spains Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa (MCC) has made it possible. MCC can be considered a world leader in cooperativism. It is one of the few contemporary business organizations that can be viewed as a democracy, and it represents a unique experience in the use of democratic and participatory methods in management. MCC has developed its own Management Model based on its cooperative principles, on modern management practices (...) and on the cutting edge experiences of the most advanced companies. In this work we analyze the key elements of MCCs democratic management model, developed around aspects such as corporate culture, organizational structure or human resources. We also look at the case of Irizar, a component cooperative of MCC internationally known for its successful management model. Finally, we outline some practical implications of introducing democracy into organizations, drawn from the experiences of MCC and Irizar. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como principal objetivo el de lograr una comprensión de la filosofía en cuanto fundamento insoslayable para la teología. Sostiene, en pri-mer lugar, la necesidad de desarro-llar una teología más autocosciente en el sentido racional del σὺν λόγω, es decir, desde el programa ple-namente actual de la fides quarens intellectum. Defiende, en segundo lugar, que la filosofía solo puede entenderse partiendo de la pre-tensión que la ha animado desde el comienzo de su andadura: la bús-queda de la verdad (...) de las cosas. Y para este fin ten-drá necesariamente que dotarse de densidad metafísica suficiente y apostar por las tesis de un sano realismo cognoscitivo. Este estudio concluye con una reflexión, en ter-cer lugar, sobre el uso teológico de la filosofía. La tesis que se defiende es que sin el fundamento filosófico, la fe y la teología pierden lo más nuclear de su misión, la posibili-dad misma de presentarse todavía con algún rastro de significatividad para el hombre de hoy. (shrink)

La consideración del sujeto cognoscente, en los raciocinios de Charles Taylor, se encuentra relacionada con la crítica dirigida, inequívocamente, a las limitaciones e inconsistencias halladas en los posicionamientos filosóficos que atraviesan los raciocinios tanto del liberalismo como del comunitarismo. En contraste con tales teorías, Taylor sabe apreciar la tradición hermenéutica que busca otorgar algún sentido a la vida y al propio sujeto. Para que un discurso moral le resulte aceptable a este filósofo, debe tener en cuenta la experiencia concreta de (...) la vida y los horizontes de valores compartidos por las culturas que apoyan las acciones consiguientes. El encuadramiento moral aquí implicado pudiera contribuir no sólo a enriquerecer la comprensión epistemológica sino también a valorar todo aquello propenso a ser articulado participatoriamente y fundido para beneficio colectivo. (shrink)

¿Puede Tomás de Aquino, pensador del siglo XIII, decirnos algo a nuestra realidad política latinoamericana actual? Un texto entre dos contextos es el pretexto para generar una reflexión en torno al derecho a la rebelión, desde la perspectiva de la no-violencia y el derecho a la desobediencia civil. Un camino desde la justicia y el buen gobierno en el Aquinate, seguido del bien común político y las virtudes políticas en el Angélico para desembocar en el derecho a la rebelión, es (...) la ruta que se traza para esta exposición. Una lectura desde la propuesta exegética hermenéutica del Dr. René Padilla, es decir, una comprensión intuitiva, una comprensión gramático-histórica y una comprensión contextualizadora son el cómo y modo del presente trabajo. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage in the debate on the definition of the cyborg. I identify the two defining components of the traditional definition of the cyborg: the symbiotic relationship between human nature and technology; and the embodiment of a superhuman or inhuman feature or ability. Then, I trace these two components in the scholarly debate on the cyborg. To conclude, I explore the role the scholarly view of the cyborg plays in the debate on cyborg-athletes in the philosophy of (...) sport. (shrink)