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Abstract
In 1974, David Best rightly contrasted purposive sports (exemplified by most sports) with aesthetic sports; and recently I was careful to exempt the issues for aesthetic sports from my critique of the prospects for an all-embracing philosophy of officiating. While discretion plays a part in umpiring or refereeing in both kinds of sports, it is especially important for aesthetic sports (such as gymnastic vaulting, ice-skating or diving), where the manner of execution determines victory. Here, it is urged that the issue of objectivity for judgements in aesthetic sports is not the most crucial aspect: we have reason to expect correct accounts from knowledgeable, sensitive and experienced judges or umpires. Impartiality remains a concern, of course, not least between the training for judges or umpires might tend to favour particular styles of performing key movements. So that many past rule-changes are explained as attempts to improve fairness, with competitors getting their ‘just deserts’. In doing so, they have implicitly contributed to what is then valued in the manner of execution in aesthetic sports. The term ‘aesthetic’ is generally applied in its positive valence, although one must recognize the negative valence also. But, for aesthetic sports, the rules provide guidance as to what will or will not be regarded positively in the context of competition. And rule-changes here will sometimes be best explained as attempting to modify what is rewarded in such sports, the manner of performance. Such changes might be expected to bear on the character of the sport (here exemplified through men’s ice-skating).
Notes
1. Here, I refer to a later publication of these ideas, in Best Citation1978.
2. Best’s distinction resembles that introduced by Suits (Citation1995, 17) between officiated and judged sports, where the first (like one of Best’s aesthetic sports) ‘… is a performance and so requires judges. The other [officiated sport] is not a performance but a rule-governed interplay of participants, and so requires not judges but law-enforcement officers, that is, referees’ (Suits Citation1995, 17). Suits’ point was to urge that the first were, but the second were not, games. Best’s distinction, by contrast, (a) reflects the nature of success (as portrayed through the ‘scoring’) in the respective kinds of sport, (b) offers a real distinction here – all sports are of one kind or the other, or a strict combination (see below); and relatedly (c) recognizes the place of discretion, and such like, even in purposive sports. In that sense, Suits’s titles are misleading since there is an area for judgement even in Suits’s officiated sports, as when it must be determined whether the wide-receiver (in grid-iron football) landed in control of the ball. That is, there is a decision here involving the manner of the activity; the manner of performance – where the referee recognizes how this manner of activity relates to the rules. And hence whether the player’s activity constituted a legitimate ‘move’ in the sport. In one way, then, the officials would also be judges in Suits’s sense. And equally the judges will be officials in determining whether such-and-such gymnastic vault was achieved, prior to (or as part of) recognizing the quality of its achievement. As John Russell pointed out to me, in correspondence, officials like judges are witness of events, a fact reflected in the roles of each. Hence Best’s is a more perspicuous way to contrast sports.
3. Wittgenstein Citation1953/2001 – cited as ‘PI’ throughout.
4. This idea, and this language, comes from Ronald Dworkin: see his 1978, 1985, 1986. See also Russell Citation1999, McFee Citation2011b.
5. Shamoo and Resnik Citation2009, 191‘An individual has a conflict of interest when he or she has personal, financial, professional, or political interests that are likely to undermine his or her ability to meet or fulfill his or her primary professional, ethical or legal obligations’.The key thought is that these interests cloud one’s vision: that is why one fails in these ways.
6. Thus Adams (Citation2011, 76) claims that ‘… in North America, almost nothing marks a man or boy as effeminate as does an interest in the arts, and hence males who wish to appear straight often shun them’; and quotes (from Carolyn Parks in Dance Magazine):‘The American public has always looked at art in any form as suitable for its girls … Most shocking of all seems to be the idea that any boy should put on a pair of tights, and thus brand himself a fop. The American father howls his indignation at the thought … He declares he’d rather see his son dead than up on the stage cavorting with those fools’. (Adams Citation2011, 162–3)This spirit seems to apply also to skaters.
7. Suggested by John Gleaves in conversation.
8. Note that my thought here just concerns rule-changes in sport; it is not specifically about the aesthetic in that sport. I see no reason for the rule changes to make purposive sports more aesthetically pleasing since – after all – that is not what is central to such sports (as Best recognised). It only bears on (positive) aesthetic quality in this case because these are rule-changes in respect of an aesthetic sport. Instead, my idea was that, if the rule-changes were to alter the texture of the sport as played, there was a specific virtue in such changes coming ‘from below’ (that is, from players) since such changes were less likely to amount to a ‘gilding of the lily’ of the sport.