A Grasshopperian Analysis of the Strategic Foul

Abstract

The question of acceptability in respect to the strategic foul in sport has provoked a rich and seemingly irreconcilable dispute with normative theorists currently divided amongst three schools of thought including formalism, conventionalism and interpretivism. In this paper, I seek to transcend the three-way intellectual stalemate portrayed in the literature via a consideration as to whether or not the strategic foul qualifies as ‘Utopian’. More specifically, after demonstrating that Bernard Suits’ theory of game-playing is fully capable of embracing all three rival accounts, I seek to end the normative debate altogether via a conceptual analysis of the strategic foul as unacceptable via the higher-order point of view afforded by essentialism.

Keywords:

• strategic foul
• formalism
• conventionalism
• interpretivism
• essentialism

Notes

1. Notwithstanding my uncertainty as to whether or not there is an affiliation between game-playing and normative values, I am certain that the method of conceptual analysis championed by the Grasshopper remains fundamental to the quest for the knowledge I am seeking.

2. ^‘Ball in net more often than one’s opponent’ is offered as a less textually cumbersome version of ‘ball passing through a vertical dimensional plane existing between two posts positioned 24 feet apart, the ground, and a crossbar positioned 8 feet above the ground more often than one’s opponent’.

3. The original was ‘play the game and not spoil it’’. ‘Play the game and don’t spoil it’ is preferable as a directive.

4. My choice to quote Morgan (2012) here should not be taken to imply that Morgan believes in the existence of a high-order outlook. Contrarily, he maintains that ‘there is no such neutral rational standpoint that can bail us out when conflicts like this arise’ (2012, 88).

5. I am struck by the observation that a striving ideal existing as prior to a striving instantiation cannot be considered equivalent to the Grasshopper’s ideal of a game-playing Utopia.

6. In the interest of consistency, my previous analysis of traditional foul-prohibited-soccer is more accurately characterized as an analysis of punch-prohibited-soccer.

7. My reinforcing argument as relevant to fouls is mirrored directly after those offered in the Appendices of The Grasshopper (2005) as relevant to games.

8. This rendering of Utopia does not at all preclude the possibility that normative name-calling might be established as a condition of a scholarly striving activity directed toward the goal of establishing normative principles of game-playing conduct as relevant to the games we choose to play in Utopia. That is, that in Utopia we may choose to call certain actions ‘fouls’, that are not really fouls, just for the sake of the normative quest made possible by such name-calling.

9. I wish to extend my gratitude to John Russell as well as the two anonymous reviewers with the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport for their challenging observations, questions and suggestions which very much served to strengthen the argumentative impact of this paper. I would also like to thank Bill Morgan whose critical insights in his more recent paper on deep conventionalism (2012) provided me with the incentive to fully embrace essentialism as a ‘higher-order’ perspective lending to the possibility of normative debate transcendence.