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Abstract
What is a good kinesiologist? Is it possible that the ancient and medieval tradition of the Cardinal Virtues sheds light on this question? The four Cardinal Virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance are so called from the Latin cardo meaning “hinge.” The Cardinal Virtues are said to be the hinge upon which all the other virtues rest or turn. They are the foundation of good character. If this is right, then the answer to the question posed is simple. The good kinesiologist is prudent, just, courageous, and temperate. Therefore, to move the field forward, even on a practical level, kinesiologists must give due attention to the virtues.
Acknowledgment
This lecture is dedicated to my father, Dr. T. Alan Twietmeyer, from whose example I first learned what a good kinesiologist is.
Notes
1. What we are progressing toward and why we should want to achieve such progress is rarely defined.
2. Ron Feingold (Citation2013) made a similar point in his Hanna Lecture when he warned against the increasing calls for accountability and the likelihood that such calls will result in a stunted and emaciated version of success which celebrates “data for data’s sake” (p. 387).
3. One practical result of this is the unwillingness of so many of our students to be committed passionately to anything.
4. It could be argued that this is the condition we find kinesiology in now.
5. Consider, for example, what the reaction would be to statistics that suggested poor literacy in our schools.
6. Unfortunately, it seems clear that many in the discipline do not see physical education as a vital area of kinesiology.
7. “The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries abandoned the idea of spiritual or intellectual happiness in order to have this material happiness, consisting of a certain number of essential consumer goods. And hence, in the nineteenth century, happiness was linked to a well-being obtained by mechanical means, industrial means, production” (Ellul, Citation1997, pp. 34–35). The key point being—of course—the rejection of the importance of spiritual or intellectual happiness. There is nothing inherently wrong with improving the estate of man. The problem is the reduction of man to his “stomach.”
8. Brague’s overarching point is even more profound: Secular society is impossible… .
9. A profound implication of this insight is that we should act in light of eternity rather than succumb to peer pressure, academic trends, or the “tide of history.”
10. Charles Murray (Citation2012) has amply demonstrated what happens when the transmission of such cultural capital collapses.
11. This is often the result of identifying “problems” through top-down data-mining: “Much as mountains are climbed, so statistics are used if they are there” (Moynihan, Citation1965, p. 14).
12. The danger that must be avoided is over-confidence. The social scientists must learn to turn their lens upon themselves. As Bruno Latour (Citation1993) insightfully pointed out, a sound anthropology must confront not only the beliefs of others which “do not touch us directly” for “we are always critical enough of them” (p. 92). Instead academics must be willing to confront, by the same critical standards, their own cherished beliefs which they consider to be “the true knowledge to which [they] adhere totally.” If and when this is done, academics will stop endorsing the naïve idea that although: “Error, [and] beliefs, could be explained socially” the “truth remained self-explanatory” (p. 92). Any real explanation must consider both truth and falsity by and through the same standards.
13. Here is what I (Twietmeyer, Citation2012) am envisioning when I say “physical activity”: Kinesiology is a human discipline, born of, and reliant upon the embodied, curious, political and rational nature of human beings. The field examines physical activity from a myriad of scholarly perspectives, with physical activity being understood not as an abstract or literal moniker, but rather as the placeholder term for culturally significant and recreative movement forms. Games, play, sport, exercise, dance (among others) are central to who we are and what we do. If physical activity is understood in this way, then the field is as reliant upon “ethics” as much as it is reliant upon “biology.” Human kinesis is a function of all aspects of the human person whether those aspects are physiological or just plain logical. Kinesiology is neither a pure science nor solely a member of the humanities, but rather a field that necessarily encompasses both. (p. 20)
14. This is a function of the congruence of the first two schools with the utilitarian and technocratic assumptions of our age.
15. The end of C. S. Lewis’s (Citation1949) great sermon The Weight of Glory gives this same idea a spiritual perspective: All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. (pp. 45–46)
16. Worse yet, they are valued not for who they are, but for what they can or cannot procure for the team, coach, or school.
17. I would add only one more, the child from a large family, which cannot afford the expense or the logistical challenge of providing elite opportunities for multiple children.
18. Physical education is not the most efficient means to promote a “healthy lifestyle” (University of Michigan School of Kinesiology, n.d.a., para. 9). Technique demands a rationalized, universal, measurable, and bureaucratic approach, which results in “a more comprehensive program” (para. 5) of “health promotion” (para. 9).
19. According to Polanyi (Citation1962), To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness … . A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition. (p. 53)
20. Discussions of courage always remind me of one of my favorite poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (Eliot, Citation1920): Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. (lines 79–86).
21. The medieval concepts—see Pieper (Citation2011)—of Ordo Amoris (discerning and prioritizing our loves) and Ordo Timoris (discerning what is really worth fearing) shed important light on this idea.
22. See Book XIX, chapter 4.
23. From Rieff (Citation1966): In fact, evil and immorality are disappearing, as Spencer assumed they would, mainly because our culture is changing its definition of human perfection. No longer the Saint, but the instinctual Everyman, twisting his neck uncomfortably inside the starched collar of culture, is the communal ideal, to whom men offer tacit prayers for deliverance from their inherited renunciations. Freud sought only to soften the collar; others, using bits and pieces of his genius, would like to take it off. (p. 8)
24. Our failings are many. Here are a couple that I think are incontrovertible. First, the collapse of physical education is happening on our watch. Second, our defense of physical activity classes as a necessary part of undergraduate core curricula has been far too tepid.
25. It is similar to the feeling one gets the first time one teaches and sees 40 or 60 or 80 eyeballs looking to you for answers.
26. Ellul (Citation1997) stated:Christian Hope does not, as is too often said, consist in believing in humanity. It is precisely the contrary. Christian Hope means being convinced that we will not go along completely on our own. It is an affirmation of the love of God … . Hope will then simply be the fact that because God is God, because God is love, there is always a future. (p. 89)