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ABSTRACT
This article develops a novel theory of sport that I call ‘Confucian mutualism’. Confucian mutualism is underpinned by the Confucian Golden Rule and the Confucian conception of human dignity. It resembles the mutualist theory of sport developed by Robert L. Simon in maintaining that sport participants ethically ought to prioritize promoting sporting excellence both in themselves and in their co-participants. However, while Simon’s mutualism maintains that sporting excellence consists in proficiency at sport constitutive skills, Confucian mutualism maintains that sporting excellence consists in success at achieving the Confucian virtues through sport participation. I provide a preliminary case for why Confucian mutualism’s virtue-centric conception of sporting excellence makes it better able than Simon’s mutualism to explain why sporting excellence is stance-independently ethically significant for all sport participants. I do so by trying to show that we have prima facie justification for believing that Confucian mutualism is not vulnerable to certain kinds of criticisms that have been leveled at Simon’s mutualism.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Russ Shafer-Landau for copious feedback on many prior versions of this article. Thanks also to Paul Gaffney and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Bracketed text insertion original to the translator (Ni Citation2017, 117).
2. All translations of passages from the Analects in this article are from Ni (Citation2017).
3. While there already are scholarly works on the relevance of Confucianism for sport, none of them purport to develop a general theory of sport of the sort exemplified by Simon’s mutualism. Nor do they discuss the Confucian Golden Rule or the Confucian conception of human dignity. For a sample of those works, see Chua (Citation2020), Laumakis (Citation2010), Reid (Citation2010a, Citation2010b, Citation2016), and Hsu and Ilundáin-Agurruza (Citation2016).
4. All translations of passages from Mencius in this article are from Lau (Citation2003).
5. It is worth noting that Confucian mutualism’s view about the essential mutuality of ethical virtue development is potentially how it most differs from Aristotelian virtue ethics-inspired theories of sport. Arguably, for Aristotelian virtue ethics, one can become virtuous without helping others develop virtue (Solomon Citation1997; Williams Citation1985, 34–35). That is not the case for Confucian virtue ethics (Huang Citation2010; Citation2014, 63–98). So insofar as they accept an unrevised conception of Aristotelian virtue ethics, Aristotelian theories of sport, such as Aretism, arguably would offer conceptions of virtuous sportspersons that differ from Confucian mutualism’s conception.
6. See also Xunzi 9.316–9.319 in Hutton (Citation2014, 76).