Moral Dilemmas of Participation in Dangerous Leisure Activities

Abstract

Participation in risky leisure activities (including so‐called ‘extreme’ sports) has increased in recent years, along with a concomitant growth in the related supporting industries, and in media coverage of events and associated lifestyles. The rise in popularity of dangerous leisure pursuits has led to questions about whether these activities should be regulated, or whether legislation should be enacted to prohibit particular activities. Arguments have centred on harm to individuals, and on the potential costs to others, such as families, rescue workers, and society at large. Very little work has been done on the moral legitimacy of dangerous leisure pursuits, and this paper attempts to address this, using a multidisciplinary approach. The paper evaluates both paternalistic and libertarian approaches, and pursues solutions to the moral problem from both utilitarian (consequence‐based) and deontological (duty‐based) perspectives. It is concluded that mature, rational individuals ought to retain the right to pursue activities that have potential deleterious consequences for themselves. While recognising that individuals ought to concern themselves with the effects of their actions on others, the paper accepts arguments based on autonomy, and defends the right to engage in dangerous leisure activities.

Keywords:

• extreme sports
• risk
• ethics
• autonomy

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Mike McNamee and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on early drafts of this paper.

The paper was initially conceived as a Festschrift tribute to Ian Macdonald, Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Humanities at Rhodes University.

Notes

1. In determining costs to society, it may be important to distinguish between expert and novice participants. It would also be useful to relate psychological characteristics that predispose towards excessive risk taking to injury incidence. However, such analyses are outside the conceptual scope of this article.

2. Tow‐in surfing requires cooperation, as opposed to an individualist perspective. The morality of cooperation in adventure sports is discussed by Storry (2003a).

3. Storry (2003a) reports a fatality rate of 1:4000 for rock climbing, which is considerably safer than riding a motorcycle (1:500). He does note, however, that the fatality rate for successfully climbing 8000 m peaks is notoriously high.

4. Terry Storry, academic and experienced climber, and referenced in the text and footnotes of this article, fatally fell while climbing with two of his children aged 6 and 8, on 4 March 2004.

5. It is worth noting that participants may bring different meanings to the same activities (Storry, 2003a,b), such as agonistic or hedonistic rewards, and that participation might be more appropriately classified according to individual motivation.

6. He holds that in surfing, the total engagement of psychic capacities facilitates the ecstatic union with nature (p. 270), and that surfers experience the sublime (flow) in union with the object of their appreciation of the sublime.

7. It is outside the scope of this article to examine differences between act and rule utilitarianism. However, it is worth noting that if agents consider consequences of particular acts for themselves, then they are egoistic utilitarians, and as such are practicing act utilitarianism (following McNamee et al., 2001).

8. This acknowledges moral aspects of self‐actualisation, such as concern with the welfare of mankind, establishing satisfying personal relationships, honesty and avoiding pretence (Gross, 1992).

10. I use the term free will as a correlate of both hard and soft indeterminism, and as an antonym of the term determinism. A fuller debate of this issue is beyond the scope of this article, which explicitly accepts free will as a basis for moral decision‐making, not least because of arguments relating to accountability for our actions.

11. This relates to Kant’s theoretical proof of the existence of freedom, and the postulation of distinguishing between viewing ourselves as phenomena (actions regulated by the causality of nature) and noumena (actions regulated by causality in accord with the laws of reason).

12. I acknowledge, of course, that the psychological concept of self‐actualisation is not synonymous with autonomy. Nevertheless, I introduce it as an analogous concept as it is a humanistic psychological term, and because ascension of Maslow’s hierarchy (Gross, 1998) is linked to life experience, rather than to biological need. Also, self‐actualisation has self‐determining aspects (see text above).

13. Autotelic refers to the concept of something (e.g. an activity) having a being or purpose in itself.