Strategic fouls: a new defense

Abstract

Among philosophers, the question about strategic fouls has been whether they are ethically justified in light of our best conception of sport. This paper proposes a different defense. I argue that many strategic fouls should be excused even if we regard them as unjustified. I first lay out a partial defense of the assumptions that playing to win cannot be subordinate to playing skillfully and that winning has value that cannot be accounted for in terms of the skill that produces it. I then argue that the logic of competitive play structures practical reason such that it is unreasonable to require even an ethical competitor always to subordinate the aim of winning to ethical standards within the game. Some ethical failures should be excused. The argument implies limits on the excusing conditions. I discuss these limits in some detail, showing that they fit patterns in the common acceptance of strategic fouls. I then address possible objections. In conclusion I argue that the logic of excuse rather than justification explains a common reaction to strategic fouls, resolving what might otherwise appear to be a contradiction in that reaction.

Keywords:

• Strategic fouling
• blame
• excuse
• value of winning
• skill
• playing to win

Notes

1. In this paper I use singular ‘they’. While some find the usage annoying and even incorrect, it strikes me as the most elegant gender-neutral way of dealing with third-person pronouns in English.

2. This distinguishes my view from Kretchmar’s earlier defenses of winning, which I take to cast its value primarily in terms of virtue or skill. See Kretchmar and Elcombe (2007) and Kretchmar (2002).

3. See D’Agostino (1981).

4. However, see Moore (2017) for a defense of the view that formalism does not logically preclude strategic fouling.

5. See Russell (2017), who also appeals to Wolf and the limits of morality in defending certain uses of the strategic foul. On this point our positions are in deepest harmony. I became aware of Russell’s paper only after the original submission of this paper, but it has informed the current version.

6. Here my argument is indebted to Wallace (2000). See especially §4, ‘Accountability and the Stringency of Moral Requirements.’

7. See Dixon (1992).

8. I would like to thank John Russell and Paul Gaffney for extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I’d also like to thank the organizers and participants of the 43^rd Annual Meeting of the International Association of the Philosophy of Sport in Cardiff, Wales, 2015, and the 41st Conference on Value Inquiry at Neumann University, PA, 2015, for the opportunity to present and discuss drafts of this argument.