I was recently asked by a publisher to review a book manuscript. The manuscript was essentially a collection of essays garnered from a conference on sport. Overall it was a good read and I look forward to seeing it in print. That is not the main issue though. The essays were written predominantly by scholars in History and English Literature. The core topics of the book focused on the aesthetics and ethics of sport. What alarmed me was that, firstly, no philosophers had contributed to this volume. (Perhaps we just didn’t think it was a conference for us.) Secondly, and perhaps worse, few if any of the authors seemed aware that there was such a thing as the philosophy of sport, and that the philosophy of sport might have said something important about aesthetics and ethics, let alone more basic issues, such as what a sport is. Crucially, this was not just a matter of failing to be aware of current activity in our discipline, but a lack of awareness of the history of the philosophy of sport. Only the introduction made any reference to Huizinga or Caillois, and there was no mention of Suits anywhere in the text.
My worry here is not simply one of hurt pride, although if I’m being honest there is a bit of that. I do sometimes (or often) get the impression that outsiders think that the Philosophy of Sport is an area that they can step into without paying any regard to the existing literature. It is treated as an amateur pursuit, where merely ‘thinking hard’ about a topic in which you have a personal interest will somehow yield stunning insights, without all that time consuming reading that, say, the philosophy of science or philosophy of art require. I’m sure, here, that my experience as a reviewer for Philosophy journals may sound familiar. I am sent a manuscript on the philosophy of sport, and I return it with the basic comment to go away and read about the philosophy of sport before attempting to contribute to it. Wheels do not need to be reinvented. There is perhaps a little more excuse for a historian or a literature specialist to be unaware of the philosophy of sport, but in an age of ready accessible scholarly research engines, perhaps not.
This experience of reviewing leads me to reflect on the nature of contemporary humanities scholarship. Paradoxically, at a time when accessing work in related disciplines has never been easier, we seem to be in danger of retreating into silos—and philosophers are as guilty of this, I suspect, as anyone. The pure quantity of literature out there is of course daunting, although high quality guides (such as, Handbooks and Companions) make even that bulk of material negotiable, with a little patience. At least you might discover that what you thought was your brilliant insight has already been said, and better, by someone else.
What then is to be done? I suspect that, firstly, we philosophers need to get out more. We should have been at the conference that gave rise to the book manuscript I reviewed. We should be attending sports science conferences, video gaming conferences and perhaps any conference where the word ‘game’ crops up. We should be taking a genuine interest in what is going on there, learning, and not merely explaining the problems of defining ‘game’ to anyone who might listen. This may also be an issue for how a journal such as Sport, Ethics & Philosophy promotes itself and reaches beyond its mere subscriber base. It is always more challenging to preach to the unconverted. But, secondly, perhaps we should be inviting other humanities scholars of sport into our conferences (and more importantly on to the pages of our journals, so a note to myself there). A genuine dialogue with History and English Literature, with Sociology, Archaeology and Human Geography will be fruitful to both sides, and will save cluttering up the scholarly world with badly designed wheels. Today sub-disciplines, such as the philosophy of sport, perhaps grow most effectively and fruitfully by being inter-disciplinary, but there is an effort required to ensure that you have engaged, as far as is humanly possible, with all relevant disciplines. Again, ensuring that others know that there is a philosophy of sport with which to engage is an important first step on our (and especially my) part.
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