Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their ...

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their connection both to ethical theory and to concrete moral dilemmas that arise in actual athletic competition. This fourth edition has been updated with new examples, including a discussion of Spygate by the New England Patriots and recent discoveries on the use of performance enhancing drugs by top athletes. Two additional authors, Cesar R. Torres (...) and Peter F. Hager, bring to this edition a discussion of the moral issues involved in youth sports and the ethics of being a fan, as well as a fresh perspective on the theories of broad internalism and the quest for excellence. Furthermore, major criticisms of broad internalism by philosophers William J. Morgan and Scott Kretchmar add a new dimension to the discussion on the moral foundations of winning. (shrink)

This paper attempts to establish that, and explain why, the practice of punishing offenders is in principle morally permissible. My account is a nonstandard version of the fair play view, according to which punishment 's permissibility derives from reciprocal obligations shared by members of a political community, understood as a mutually beneficial, cooperative venture. Most fair play views portray punishment as an appropriate means of removing the unfair advantage an offender gains relative to law-abiding members of (...) the community. Such views struggle, however, to provide a plausible account of this unfairly gained benefit. By contrast, on my account punishment 's permissibility follows more straightforwardly from the fair play view of political obligation: Specifically, the rule instituting punishment is itself among those rules with which members of the political community are obliged to comply. For criminal offenders, compliance requires submitting to the prospect of punishment. (shrink)

The debate over whether ‘fair-play’ can serve as a justification for legal punishment has recently resumed with an exchange between Richard Dagger and Antony Duff. According to the fair-play theorist, criminals deserve punishment for breaking the law because in so doing the criminal upsets a fair distribution of benefits and burdens, and punishment rectifies this unfairness. Critics frequently level two charges against this idea. The first is that it often gives the wrong explanation of what (...) makes crime deserving of punishment, since the wrongfulness of murder is not primarily about unfairness. The second is that it implies that all crimes deserve the same degree of punishment, because all crimes create the same degree of unfairness. These objections are viewed as revealing fatal flaws in the theory. Although Dagger attempts to meet these objections by drawing on political theory, Duff responds that this still draws upon the wrong kind of resources for meeting these objections. This paper argues that these two objections rest on a crucial mistake that has been overlooked by both the defenders and critics of fair-play. This mistake results from failing to distinguish between what justifies punishment as a response to crime (which requires a common element to all crime) and what justifies attaching particular penalties to crimes (which requires making distinctions in the severity of crime). The arguments presented will give reasons to consider fair-play as a viable justification for legal punishment. (shrink)

According to the fair play defense of political obligations citizens have a reciprocity-based duty to share the costs involved in the production of public goods. But sometimes, states produce collective goods through wrongdoing. For example, sometimes states’ wrongful immigration policies can contribute to the welfare of their own populations. Do citizens have duties of reciprocity in light of such wrongful benefits? I argue that the answer to this question is negative. Drawing on the observation that beneficiaries of wrongdoing (...) incur compensatory duties to the victims of that wrongdoing, I argue that, rather than having a duty of reciprocity for wrongful benefits, citizens have a duty to disgorge the benefits in compensation. Furthermore, the fair play defense of political obligations entails that citizens can be justified in disobeying the law in order to comply with their compensatory duties to victims of their state’s wrongdoing. (shrink)

There is an emerging consensus among political philosophers that state legitimacy involves something more than—or perhaps other than—political obligation. Yet the principle of fair play, which many take to be a promising basis for political obligation, has been largely absent from discussions of the revised conception of legitimacy. This paper shows how the principle of fair play can generate legitimate political authority by drawing on a neglected feature of the principle—its stipulation that members of a cooperative (...) scheme must reciprocate specifically by submitting to the scheme's rules. (shrink)

The fair-play theory of punishment claims that the state is justified in imposing additional burdens on law-breakers, to remove the unfair advantage the latter have enjoyed by disobeying the law. From this perspective, punishment reestablishes a fair distribution of benefits and burdens among all citizens. In this paper, I object to this view by focusing on the case of civil disobedience. I argue that the mere illegality of this conduct is insufficient to establish the agent’s unfair advantage (...) over his lawabiding fellows, hence the imposition of additional burdens upon him through legal punishment. I articulate a broader account of citizens’ fair-play duties, able to capture disobedience as well as obedience to the law. While claiming that some law-breakers may not be treated as free-riders, I also gesture at the fact that some law-obeying citizens may not be ‘playing fair’: in some cases, a failure to engage in civil disobedience represents a failure to do one’s own part within the cooperative scheme of society. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 20 According to the fair play defense of political obligations citizens have a reciprocity-based duty to share the costs involved in the production of public goods. But sometimes, states produce collective goods through wrongdoing. For example, sometimes states’ wrongful immigration policies can contribute to the welfare of their own populations. Do citizens have duties of reciprocity in light of such wrongful benefits? I argue that the answer to this question is negative. Drawing on the (...) observation that beneficiaries of wrongdoing incur compensatory duties to the victims of that wrongdoing, I argue that, rather than having a duty of reciprocity for wrongful benefits, citizens have a duty to disgorge the benefits in compensation. Furthermore, the fair play defense of political obligations entails that citizens can be justified in disobeying the law in order to comply with their compensatory duties to victims of their state’s wrongdoing. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between distributive injustice and political obligation within the confines of the fair-play theory of political obligation. More specifically, it asks how the distribution of benefits and burdens of a cooperative scheme affects people’s fair-play obligations to that scheme. It argues that neither a sufficiency-based nor a proportionality-based approach is capable of answering that question singlehandedly. However, the two approaches can be combined in a plausible way. Noting that some of the duties (...) that go into our fair-play obligations are ‘gradual’ and others are ‘non-gradual’, the article argues that the sufficiency-based approach explains non-gradual duties such as the duty to obey the law, and that the proportionality-based approach explains gradual duties like political participation and civic responsibility. Thus, the article contends that the fair-play theory should be extended beyond the question of legal compliance and be applied to the duties of good citizenship more generally. (shrink)

Most interpretations of the Crito, such as the absolute obligation view and the civil disobedience view, are thought to be grounded largely in an obligation of gratitude. I present arguments for why these interpretations are not viable, and then propose an alternative solution; this alternative is the obligation of fair play. While the obligation of fair play has been discussed before in relation to the Crito, this is the first full account of the position. The (...) class='Hi'>fair play interpretation both precludes absolute obligation and does not require civil disobedience to resolve supposed inconsistencies with the Apology. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to what is currently the most significant criticism of the principle fair play as a basis for political obligations. In a series of cases in which obligations appear to be established by fair play, important scholars contend that the moral principle at work is not fair play but a natural duty of justice to provide essential benefits to other people. Such natural duty accounts strikingly ignore requirements of reciprocity, to (...) make appropriate return for benefits received. In addition, careful examination of possible natural duty explanations of such cases indicates severe difficulties explaining exactly to whom the natural duties in question are owed and why they may require significant costs. (shrink)

Fair play theories of punishment locate the permissibility or desirability of legal punishment in its ability to restore relations of fairness between lawbreakers and other members of society. This chapter discusses the chief objection leveled against such views, which is that many crimes do not yield any benefit for the offender and thus do not create unfair advantages of the sort punishment is supposedly to correct. Duus-Otterström argues that, while this objection squarely hits traditional versions of the (...) class='Hi'>fair play theory that emphasize benefits deriving from committing crime, it is less persuasive against versions that emphasize losses inflicted by crime or the offender’s lack of entitlement to the benefits of the legal order. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between distributive injustice and political obligation within the confines of the fair-play theory of political obligation. More specifically, it asks ho...

This article defends the fair-play theory of legal punishment against three objections. The first, the irrelevance objection, is the long-standing complaint that fair play fails to capture what it is about crimes that makes criminals deserving of punishment ; the others are the recently raised false-equivalence and lacks-integration objections. In response, I sketch an account of fair-play theory that is grounded in a conception of the political order as a meta- cooperative practice—a conception that (...) falls somewhere between contractual and communitarian conceptions—and draw on this account to show how the theory can overcome the objections. (shrink)

Artikkelen ønsker å gi et konstruktivt bidrag til forståelsen og anvendelsen av fair play i en kroppsøvingsfaglig kontekst. Dette er et tema som er blitt aktualisert i og med at fair play er kommet inn som et sentralt element i kroppsøvingsfagets nye reviderte læreplan. Fair play omhandler regler, normer og verdier som skal gjelde ved idrettsutøvelse, og det er et etablert verdikonsept innenfor organisert idrettsliv og idrettsetisk forskning. I skolen, derimot, er fair (...) class='Hi'>play mindre kjent. Kroppsøvingsplanen hevder fair play omfatter aspekter ved idrettsspillet som å overholde regler, vise hverandre respekt og gjøre hverandre gode. Hva betyr så dette? Hva vil det si å gjøre hverandre gode? Rommer det bare en teknisk eller også en sosialetisk kvalitet? Dersom det siste er tilfelle, bør det diskuteres hvilke danningskvaliteter det så ligger i det å gjøre hverandre gode i faget, og om disse har noen tilknytningspunkt til Aristoteles' klassiske dyder om rettferdighet, måtehold, mot og klokskap. Dette er de sentrale spørsmålene artikkelen reiser og prøver å gi noen svar på. Artikkelen ser først på fair play i kroppsøvingsfagets planer, for deretter å gi begrepet en nærmere etymologisk og ideologisk-historisk avklaring, med utgangspunkt i begrepene «fair» og «play». Videre drøftes fair play i lys av de aristoteliske dydene, relatert til kroppsøvingsfaglig kontekst og diskurs.Nøkkelord: kroppsøving, fair play, idrett, lek og danningEnglish summary: Fair play in Physical Education in the light of Aristotelian virtue ethicsThe aim of this article is to give a constructive contribution to the understanding and the application of the concept of fair play in the Physical Education context. This is a topic that has come into focus since fair play has been introduced as a central element in the newest revision of the subject curriculum. Fair play concerns the rules, norms, and values that apply to sports activities, and constitutes an established value concept within organized sports and research related to sports ethics. In schools, however, fair play is less known. The Physical Education curriculum states that fair play concerns aspects of sports and games such as adhering to rules, showing each other respect, and helping each other achieve. What, then, does this mean? What does it mean to help each other achieve? Does it entail purely technical, or also socio-ethical qualities? If the latter is the case, a discussion is needed as to what ethical formation qualities are involved in helping each other achieve in the subject and whether these have any connection to Aristotle's classical virtues of justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom. These are the central issues the article raises and attempts to shed some light on. The article takes a closer look at fair play in the curricula of Physical Education, moving on to an etymological and ideological-historical clarification of the concept, taking the concepts of fair and play as starting points. Further, it discusses fair play in the light of Aristotelian virtues, related to a Physical Education context and discourse. (shrink)

This paper explores a redescription of ‘fair play’ as loyalty. Focusing on the context of elite sport and the case of anti-doping, the paper develops an adaptation of Richard Rorty’s call to dispen...

The philosophical literature on state legitimacy has recently seen a significant conceptual revision. Several philosophers have argued that the state's right to rule is better characterized not as a claim right to obedience, but as a power right. There have been few attempts to show that traditional justifications for the claim right might also be used to justify a power right, and there have been no such attempts involving the principle of fair play, which is widely regarded as (...) the most promising basis for a claim right to obedience. William Edmundson argues that the principle of fair play cannot generate power rights, and so any attempt at a fair play account of legitimacy must fail. I explain how fair play could generate a power right, owing to its stipulation that the rules of a cooperative scheme specify the form of participants' repayment. (shrink)

The principle of fair play is widely thought to require simply that costs and benefits be distributed fairly. This gloss on the principle, while not entirely inaccurate, has invited a host of popular objections based on misunderstandings about fair play. Central to many of these objections is a failure to treat the principle of fair play as a transactional principle—one that allocates special obligations and rights among persons as a result of their interactions. I (...) offer an interpretation of the principle of fair play that emphasizes its similarities to another transactional principle: consent. This interpretation reveals that playing fair requires one to reciprocate specifically by following the rules of the cooperative scheme from which one benefits, just as consent requires one to act according to the terms of an agreement. I then draw on the comparison with consent to reply to some popular and persistent objections to the principle. (shrink)

There is much discussion in sports on whether certain behavior should be considered Fair Play. This moral judgment on Fair Play is influenced by the conceptualization of the term Fair Play as either “respect for the rules” or “respect for the spirit of the game,” as well as by other determinants. To uncover the moral judgment of athletes and which conceptualization of Fair Play dominates in practice, a factorial survey approach is used. (...) The act and the level of the match played a role in the judgment, as well as the gender of the athlete. Our results showed that both conceptualizations “respect for the rules” and “respect for the spirit of the game” were important in this judgment, with the spirit conceptualization being more dominant. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that we can learn much about wild justice and the evolutionary origins of social morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living animals, and that interdisciplinary cooperation will help immensely. In our efforts to learn more about the evolution of morality we need to broaden our comparative research to include animals other than non-human primates. If one is a good Darwinian, it is premature to claim that only humans can be (...) empathic and moral beings. By asking the question What is it like to be another animal? we can discover rules of engagement that guide animals in their social encounters. When I study dogs, for example, I try to be a dogocentrist and practice dogomorphism. My major arguments center on the following big questions: Can animals be moral beings or do they merely act as if they are? What are the evolutionary roots of cooperation, fairness, trust, forgiveness, and morality? What do animals do when they engage in social play? How do animals negotiate agreements to cooperate, to forgive, to behave fairly, to develop trust? Can animals forgive? Why cooperate and play fairly? Why did play evolve as it has? Does being fair mean being more fit – do individual variations in play influence an individual''s reproductive fitness, are more virtuous individuals more fit than less virtuous individuals? What is the taxonomic distribution of cognitive skills and emotional capacities necessary for individuals to be able to behave fairly, to empathize, to behave morally? Can we use information about moral behavior in animals to help us understand ourselves? I conclude that there is strong selection for cooperative fair play in which individuals establish and maintain a social contract to play because there are mutual benefits when individuals adopt this strategy and group stability may be also be fostered. Numerous mechanisms have evolved to facilitate the initiation and maintenance of social play to keep others engaged, so that agreeing to play fairly and the resulting benefits of doing so can be readily achieved. I also claim that the ability to make accurate predictions about what an individual is likely to do in a given social situation is a useful litmus test for explaining what might be happening in an individual''s brain during social encounters, and that intentional or representational explanations are often important for making these predictions. (shrink)

It is customary for institutions that organize sporting competitions and events to exercise a considerable degree of authority over the participants. That authority is often manifested in the enforcement of penalties for infringements of fair play. This paper focuses on one concrete case from soccer, although I take the discussion to extend to other sports as well. I argue that not all fair play rules should be enforced by the respective organizing institutions, and that enforcing all (...) of them indiscriminately is a cause of injustice, rather than promoting fairness in sports. I propose a principled way of making the necessary distinction between those fair play rules that are enforceable and those that are not. (shrink)

For hundreds of years English people have claimed that fair play is at the core of their national identity. Jonathan Duke-Evans looks at the history of fair play in Britain from earliest times to the present, asking whether it is in fact a British, or alternatively an English, characteristic at all - and if so, whether fair play still matters today? In An English Tradition?, Jonathan Duke-Evans explores the origins of the idea of (...) class='Hi'>fair play, tracing it back to the classical world and the Dark Ages, and finding its genesis deep within England's social structure. Charting its early development through both the tales of chivalry and the stories of popular legend, the book shows how fair play manifested itself in literature, the law, the Christian religion, and the family. It examines the way in which fair play was conceived during the ages of slavery and empire, and it proposes a new account of the birth of modern sport in the encounter between age-old popular games and the Victorian cult of amateurism. Taking in the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh manifestations of fair play, Duke-Evans offers contrasts and comparisons from cultures all around the world, and suggests new perspectives on the relevance of fair play in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

My answer to the question why? is relatively uncontroversial among anthropologists. Sharing food makes good evolutionary sense, because animals who share food thereby insure themselves against hunger. It is for this reason that sharing food is thought to be so common in the natural world. The vampire bat is a particularly exotic example of a food-sharing species. The bats roost in caves in large numbers during the day. At night, they forage for prey, from whom they suck blood if they (...) can, but they aren’t always successful. If they fail to obtain blood for several successive nights, they die. The evolutionary pressure to share blood is therefore strong. The biologist Wilkinson [59] reports that a hungry bat begs for blood from a roostmate, who will sometimes respond by regurgitating some of the blood it is carrying in its own stomach. This isn’t too surprising when the roostmates are related, but the bats also share blood with roostmates who aren’t relatives. The behaviour is nevertheless evolutionarily stable, because the sharing is done on a reciprocal basis, which means that a bat is much more likely to help out a roostmate that has helped it out in the past. Bats that refuse to help out their fellows therefore risk not being helped out themselves in the future. Vampire bats have their own way of sharing, and we have ours. We call our way of sharing “fairness”. If the accidents of our evolutionary history had led to our sharing in some other way, it would not occur to us to attribute some special role to our current fairness norms. Whatever alternative norms we then.. (shrink)