Ethical discourses for and against doping in sport philosophy

ABSTRACT

Sport doping is not a recent phenomenon. Athletes have used many forms of performance enhancements going back to antiquity. Within the sport philosophy literature, sport doping is entangled in a multitude of ethical discourses, some denouncing, and some supporting, doping in sport. Our aim is to use a systematic approach to classify ethical discourses put forward by scholars focused on doping. To take stock of these ethical discourses, and to advance the sport philosophy literature on doping, this paper provides an empirical account of the types of arguments used in the peer-reviewed sport philosophy literature. This empirical account is intended to provide a map of the ethical discourses in circulation, to highlight the most common arguments, and to show where other types of arguments are absent or less well developed. To map the ethical discourses, the authors use an ethical discourse typology from a university-based ethical reasoning program.

KEYWORDS:

• Doping
• arguments
• ethics
• literature review

Acknowledgments

The authors presented a previous version of this paper at the 2023 International Association for the Philosophy of Sport conference in Split, Croatia and benefitted from the keen insights and questions from attendees. Additionally, the authors appreciate the reviewer feedback as well as guidance from Paul Gaffney.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).