Sport as a (mere) hobby: in defense of ‘the gentle pursuit of a modest competence’

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I defend sport as a (mere) hobby in contrast to sport as a ‘mutual quest for excellence through challenge’. With the assistance of ideas found in the novel Don Quixote, I raise questions about the clarity, merit, and sufficiency of the quest-for-excellence apologetic. I employ arguments made by James and Dewey to support my alternate defense of sporting activity as a hobby, that is, as ‘the gentle pursuit of a modest competence’. Based on the work of Wu, my defense stands as both a philosophic argument and a cultural critique.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport
• hobby
• excellence
• mediocrity
• cultural hegemony

Note of Gratitude

I owe thanks to Paul Gaffney and the two blinded reviewers whose comments spurred useful revisions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. As Huizinga (1950) pointed out, there is no contradiction between play and seriousness. In fact, he argued that much play is conducted seriously.

2. Warren Fraleigh, not Weiss, was the driver of much of the early organizational work that culminated in the founding of the Philosophic Society for the Study of Sport (PSSS) in December 1972 and the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport two years later. Weiss was a member of the original steering committee and a contributor at early conferences that predated and followed the founding of PSSS. However, it was Weiss’ name that provided much-needed credibility during the early years of the Society’s work.

3. While Weiss never pursued the topic of female athletics, young women athletes, presumably, would be left in the frustrating condition of having the capability of producing proper mental vectors while being chained to bodies that are incapable of realistically pursuing them. In other words, women would be barred from athletic excellence on physical, not mental, grounds.

4. Billie Jean King is the only woman given much attention in Novak’s text. When Novak asks rhetorically, ‘Is Billie Jean King the wave of the future?’ his answer is, ‘I am not so sure’ (1976, 191). This reticence is not evident when discussing male athletes. By my count, he cites over 350 elite male athletes in his text and only a handful of sportswomen.

5. The account by Frias (2017) is helpful in this regard. He describes two ways in which sport participation can satisfy Kantian imperatives related to treating others as ends rather than means. That is, sport is not inherently selfish or narrowly self-interested in spite of its zero-sum characteristics.

6. See Bloom’s commentary in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (2003).

7. Commentators disagree on where and how Cervantes’ voice emerges in the novel. My rendition of Cervantes’ position is but one of several possibilities.

8. Suits (2014) also supports the exceptionalist understandings of sport. See Yorke (2018) for an interesting analysis of Suits’ Aristotelian commitments.

9. Of course, this is a difference by degree. Socialization and other factors suggest that we are not absolutely free even when at play. Yet, there is a compulsion or necessity in work that forces conformity not operative in play (Huizinga 1950).

10. Simon, Torres, and Hagar (2015) criticized Keating (1964) for drawing hard and fast contrasts between athletics and sport. I agree with Simon and see my distinctions here as far messier than did Keating.