A critique of mutualism’s combination of the Aristotelian and Kantian traditions

ABSTRACT

In this article, I will identify two key normative principles at the core of Robert L. Simon’s mutualist theory of sport, namely, the respect-for-the-opponent principle and the idea that sport is a practice aimed at pursuing excellence. The former is a Kantian principle grounded in human beings’ rationality, and the latter is an Aristotelian principle related to the development of excellences as a means to human flourishing. After having presented and analyzed both principles, I will critically evaluate Simon’s attempt to combine them within his mutualist approach. To conclude, I will highlight the challenges that mutualism should face to complete such a combination more successfully.

Abbreviation: Categorical imperative (CI)

KEYWORDS:

• Mutualism
• cooperation
• deontology
• Kant
• opponent
• victory
• consent

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Paul Gaffney for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Aristotle’s concepts have permeated into the philosophy of sport through Suits’ work and into sport ethics via the reception of Alasdair MacIntyre’s Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics (Lopez Frias 2014).

2. In ‘Internalism and Internal Values in Sport,’ Simon (2012, 11) makes clear the Aristotelian character of his mutualistic approach when he argues that: [B]road internalists can argue that part of the explanation of why sports have the features they do, as well as a justification of why they should have such features, is a conception of the good life for human beings. According to this conception, the good life […] consists of meeting challenges for their own sake and develops our capacities in order to do so.

3. ‘The characteristics of the good sporting contest are that […] the personal ends intended by all participants are congruent with or consistent with the purpose of the sports contest, and that opponents relate to one another as facilitators’ (Fraleigh 1984, 97, the emphasis is mine).

4. With regard to this, along with Thi Nguyen (2017), it could be argued that, even if all competitors regarded competition as a quest for excellence, their pursuit of excellence by confronting their opponents might be result in instrumentalization, for they would be treating their opponents merely as means to the goal of reaching higher excellence levels: ‘Lurking underneath, it seems to me, is some sort of egoistic social contractualism: I want to develop and exhibit my excellences, and you want to develop and exhibit yours, so we form an agreement to box. Now we are fighting as part of a contractually obligated exchange of services’ (Nguyen 2017, 133).

5. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing out that a caveat must be added here. Victory as such is not what gives value to sport. Rather, it is what comes with victory that makes winning in a sport competition valuable. Those adopting a winning-at-all-costs mentality, for example, value victory as a means to what sport philosophers often refer to as ‘external goods,’ that is, those goods that do not exclusively pertain to sport but confer individuals with a certain social status, monetary gain, and material reward. On the other hand, mutualists value victory as a way to have their excellence recognized by other and tested through competition.

6. A caveat to my critique to Simon could be that Kant’s and Aristotle’s ethical accounts are not concerned with specific social practices, but rather with social cooperation, mostly, in the political arena. In line with this, it could be argued that applying their accounts directly to sport misinterprets their original intent. This is, after all, the main point of internalist theories of sport, for they attempt to morally evaluate sport by focusing on its intrinsic logic and principles. I respond to this caveat in Section 5.

7. Interestingly, MacIntyre is one of the most influential philosophers in the disciplines of the philosophy of sport and, especially, sport ethics. Indeed, his work has influenced that of mutualist philosophers like Simon and Torres, among others (Lopez Frias 2017b).

8. Willliam J. Morgan (2012; 2016) has extensively shown the differences between the two paradigms in his analyses of the differences between the amateur and professional views of sport.