Resilience

Abstract

This paper argues that human psychological resilience is a central virtue in sport and in human life generally. Despite its importance, it is an overlooked virtue in philosophy of sport and classical and contemporary virtue theory. The phenomenon of human resilience has received a great deal of attention recently in other quarters, however. There is a large and instructive empirical psychological literature on resilience, but connections to virtue theory are rarely drawn and there is no agreement about what the concept refers to. This paper attempts to clarify the concept of resilience and explain how it fits into and supports a traditional Aristotelian conception of virtue. It shows how resilience figures centrally in sport and can extend and enrich our understanding of virtue and success in sport and of sport's internal values. The investigations into the nature of resilience in sport can also help us to understand better sport's contributions to human culture and well-being.

Keywords:

• resilience
• virtue theory
• philosophy of sport

Notes

1. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television broadcast, June 13, 2014 (transcribed by the author).

2. Although I will not discuss it separately in any systematic detail, I am confident that the arguments presented about resilience apply widely to non-sporting games of skill as well. It will remain to be seen, however, what the relevant differences are, if any.

3. In one of the few systematic attempts to wade through the psychological literature to develop a coherent general account of resilience. Fletcher and Sarkar (2013: 14), follow Luthar, Cicchetti, and Becker (2000) in accepting resilience that is based on the core concepts of adversity and positive adaptation. They define resilience, however, as "the role of mental processes and behaviour in promoting personal assets and protecting the individual from the potential negative effect of stressors" (2013: 16). While there is much to admire in their discussion (especially the careful attempt to distinguish coping behaviours and recovery from resilience), I do not find this definition clarifying, in part because their definition omits the key elements from Luther et al.

4. The defense of resilience as a virtue here does not strictly require that it fit classical Aristotelian models of virtue in all respects. However, it will be instructive to see the extent to which the notion of resilience actually reflects, and indeed supports, the classical model.

5. I am not sure that "obduracy" represents an exact term for the vice of excess in this case. We may be limited by the resources of the English language in this case. This is consistent with Aristotle's frequent admission that there are "nameless" vices and virtues that are shown to exist by consideration of the doctrine of the mean (1107b2, 1108a15–18, 1125b21–22).

6. I am not claiming that sport is specially situated to train resilience in ways that transfer directly to other areas of human lives. I do suspect, however, that the examples of resilience in sport are at least instructive and inspiring. It is ultimately an empirical question for the psychologists to determine how well being resilient in sport, or observing it in sportsmen and women, contributes to resilience in other areas of life.

7. These are also phenomena that psychologists have studied (Tedeschi and Calhoun 2004, Fletcher and Sarkar 2013).

8. Hardiness and the classic character virtue fortitude (roughly, having the mental strength to face risk or danger) are obviously closely related. Fortitude is also closely connected with resilience. For one of the few discussions of the relationship between resilience and virtue see (Titus 2007). My sense is that fortitude is easily confused with resilience, but they are not at all the same. For example, God mainly tests Job's mental strength or fortitude in maintaining his faith by visiting various adversities on him, but Job is not primarily challenged to adapt to his adversities. Thus, the Story of Job is primarily about fortitude, not resilience. Obviously, they can often go together in practice.

9. Mark Holowchak has suggested to me that resilience is really the axial virtue of Stoicism (personal communication, September 12, 2014). Perhaps this is true, but if so, it is a surprisingly unacknowledged virtue then. It remains puzzling why the Stoic sage needs resilience since he or she has achieved a sort of invincible equanimity which is immune to adversity, which is the ultimate, complete, and self-sufficient end of Stoic virtue and happiness (Holochak 2008). Even if this represents a type of resilience, it is arguably incomplete both qua virtue and qua resilience for reasons given here. However, a proper treatment of this issue is beyond this paper. I would welcome further discussion.

10. For comments on an earlier draft of this paper, I am indebted to Mitchell Berman, Dale Beyerstein, Alister Browne, Xiaolie Deng, Mark Holowchak, Andrew Irvine, Sara Martinez Mares, Mike McNamee, Jim Parry, and Jeffrey Webster. I am particularly indebted to Paul Gaffney for many rich and instructive remarks that have allowed me to sharpen the argument at many points. I am also indebted to an anonymous reviewer for the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport and to audiences at the 2014 International Association for Philosophy of Sport's Annual Meeting in Natal, Brazil, the University of Southern California, Langara College, and Kwantlen Polytechnical University for valuable comments. Finally, I thank Associate Editor Cesar Torres for standing in my stead as editor and overseeing a blind review of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J.S. Russell

Langara College, Philosophy, 100 West 49th Ave., Vancouver, British Columbia, V5Y 2Z6 Canada. E-mail: [email protected]