Conference Report
- Written by BPSA Committee Member Dr Leon Culbertson.
Faculty of Sport and Faculty of Arts
University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
19-21 November 2003
The first International Conference on Philosophy of Sport was held at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia on 19th-21st November. The conference was jointly organised by the Faculty of Sport and the Faculty of Arts. There were no themes to the papers, allowing a diverse range of topics to be addressed and all papers were delivered in plenary sessions. In total, thirty papers were presented, seven of which were keynotes. The papers were presented by academics from nine countries (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Serbia & Montenegro, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States).
Following the customary welcome (from Bojan Jošt and Milan Hosta, president and secretary of the organising committee respectively) the conference was opened by a keynote paper by Sigmund Loland (Norwegian University of Physical Education and Sport) entitled 'Three Ideal-typical Theories of Sport and Their Normative Implications.' It wasn't apparent at the time, but it transpired that this was perfectly judged (I suspect accidentally) and provided exactly the kind of overview of key themes from important and well known work in the philosophy of sport that the conference required. Building on Bob Simon's 1999 IAPS Presidential Address 'Internalism and Internal Values in Sport' (published in JPS in 2000), Loland looked in more detail at the specific nature of externalist and internalist theories, and the consequences of those theories. This involved a distinction between two forms of internalism referred to as 'performance' and 'performer' theories. The paper was an exercise in clarifying conceptual confusion in relation to values and as one might expect it succeeded admirably.
Sigmund Loland was followed by Bojan Jošt and Milan Hosta (Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana) with a paper entitled 'Philosophy of Sport – a Bridge Between Sports Science and Empiry.' This was the first opportunity to hear some Slovenian work in the philosophy of sport. What emerged was a fascinating insight into the impact of state socialism and relative academic seclusion. An entirely different approach to the philosophy of sport currently exists in Slovenia compared to that in the United Kingdom, North America and much of Europe. This is a result of the fact that the philosophy of sport is an academic discipline that is in its infancy in Slovenia, and Slovenian academics have had rather limited exposure to international literature in the philosophy of sport. This did not prevent many of the papers being of great interest, but it does suggest a direction for future development.
Thursday began with Jim Parry's (University of Leeds) keynote on 'Olympism for the 21st Century.' As the title suggests, the paper was concerned with how the Olympic ideals might be put into practice in an age that is very different from the one in which they were conceived. Is there, for example, a contradiction in the fact that popularity and universality are the basic criteria by which decisions over selection of sports for inclusion in the Olympic programme are made, yet it is a central mission of the Olympic Movement to promote the development of sport in all its forms? Applying the popularity and universality criteria leads to a list of sports developed in the West and therefore contributes to Western cultural hegemony. Commitment to multiculturalism would suggest that we should be introducing sports to the Olympics which originate from outside the West. Parry suggests the implementation of a compensatory policy by which one popular sport from each continent would be included in the programme.
The central problem addressed by the paper was an applied form of the well-known problem of the universal and the particular. The universalism of the Olympic Movement doesn't appear compatible with the cultural relativity of meaning. The paper is a cautious rejection of the idea that we are doomed to relativism.
Lev Kreft (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) delivered a revised version of the paper that he presented at the IAPS conference in Cheltenham two months earlier. Part history, part philosophy of sport it was entitled 'Martyrdom as Extreme Sport'. It is a paper which calls for a detailed discussion of the meaning Kreft gives to 'sport' and 'extreme sport' along with consideration of the issue of whether the paper offers us anything by way of analysis of modern sport, if indeed it needs to. Such conceptual clarification and discussion of historicity are beyond the scope of a report such as this.
With the keynotes over the merciless barrage of short papers began. There were far too many papers to comment on all of them, but a few are particularly worthy of note: Ivo Jirásek delivered a paper on 'Philosophical Kinanthropology in the Czech Republic.' Following his review of philosophy of sport in central Europe (the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland) in JPS (Vol. XXX, issue 2) this was an interesting and informative insight into what appears to be becoming an increasingly significant alternative approach to philosophy of human movement. Regardless of whether one accepts the specifics of this approach, the way that knowledge of such things leads one to reconsider one's own approach and terminology makes it extremely valuable.
Jeffrey Fry (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Ball State University) tackled the thorny philosophical issue of human nature in a paper entitled 'Coaching Human Nature.' He examined the implications of the distinction between 'thick' (capacities and propensities) and 'thin' ('blank slate') conceptions of human nature. The paper considered the significance of assumptions made by coaches regarding the issue of human nature. While not rejecting the notion of human nature, Fry argues that the development of a suitable theory of human nature cannot be enough to make one a good coach. Aside from the obvious objection that technical expertise is essential, Fry argues that good coaching demands sensitivity to the nuances of the individual; uniqueness of athletes must be identified and appreciated by the good coach.
Bojan Šalec (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) offered a sustained attack on competition in sport in a paper entitled 'On Sport, Play, Competition and Fun.' The arguments made in the paper resemble a depoliticised version of those made in early Frankfurt School/Althusser influenced sociology of sport. The paper addressed all the major issues around competition and sport including competition and human nature, sport and play, the implications of constant exposure to competition and the possibility of competition as pleasure. This was a paper which would have benefited from considerably more time to explore these issues in much more detail. The resemblance to the critique of competitive sport by New Left sociology of sport could easily lead to a trivialisation of some of the central issue around competition. This paper was a serious attempt to address them, although the lack of consideration of the political origins and implications of competition in modern sport is a clear omission.
The strangest moment of the conference came when the young man who had been providing technical support and making sure that everyone's powerpoint presentations were working correctly suddenly got up and delivered a sophisticated paper on Aristotelian ontology. The individual in question was Jernej Pisk (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) and the paper bore the cumbersome title of 'Sport and Being as Being.' Pisk wanted to know what sport is. He found that the substance ontology or metaphysics of presence advocated by Aristotle made it impossible to account for sport as being. This led Pisk to consider Scholastic modifications to Aristotle's ontology. These modifications allowed him to argue that sport exists through human beings and therefore the substance, the lack of which in sport would have troubled Aristotle, can be found in human beings; sport being a human product. The paper was extremely interesting, but placed certain unnecessary restrictions on the moves open to us when trying to find an answer to the question 'what is sport?' Of course, we may simply wish to follow McFee (1998 and 2004) and argue that the question calls for some form of definition which is both unnecessary and impossible to achieve. Perhaps this is as far as we should go with the question; 'what is sport?' should be what is “Sport”? The answer is that it is a word that we apply, following certain conventions which have both geographical and temporal specificity, to a range of social practices which may display some form of family resemblance, but certainly don't have an essence. If one wished to be more sympathetic to ontology one might point out that Heidegger offers an ontology which rejects the metaphysics of presence entirely yet claims to retain the ability to ask about 'Being' and beings.
Heather Sheridan's (Centre for Ethics, Equity and Sport, University of Gloucestershire) paper on 'Tennis Technologies: De-skilling and/or Re-skilling the Game' provided an antidote to all this metaphysics. She explored the proposal that a 'one serve only' rule would counter the supposedly negative impact of tennis racket technology. She noted that technological advances in racket design result in both de-skilling and re-skilling. She also explored the argument that the 'one serve only' rule is counter to the values and traditions of the game. She concluded that while maintenance of the status quo 'retains the strategic and cognitive complexity of the game' it is nonetheless, 'imperative that technological innovations do not compromise the nature of the … game.' This raises interesting questions about the notion of 'the game' and the tension between preserving that nature and respecting the fact that any game is socially and culturally produced. This does not mean that the histories, values, traditions and the culture of a game become reified, but rather that they are regarded as complex processes which both preserve and alter the game over time.
Friday 21st consisted of a much shorter session. Yet it contained two excellent keynotes. Gunnar Breivik (Norwegian University of Sport and Physical Education) provided a long overdue first step in developing a detailed analysis of the application of the thought of Heidegger to areas of sport. There have been previous attempts to use the work of Heidegger in the philosophy of sport, most notably Paul Standish's (1998) excellent discussion of authenticity and sport. This, however, is a short piece which does not move beyond the consideration of a general theme in Heidegger's work. Breivik attempted in this paper to take a much closer look at some of the concepts employed by Heidegger in Being and Time and the relationship between those concepts, while also considering how they can be applied to sky diving. Breivik's paper (entitled 'Being-in-the-Void: A Heideggerian Interpretation of Sky Diving') looked closely at two topics: The condition known as 'Zuhandenheit' and the concept of 'angst' as modified by Heidegger from the work of Kierkegaard.
Breivik argued that parachute jumping is an experience which he referred to as 'Being-in-the-void.' This means that the person jumping finds that they are devoid of context and not 'in-the-world' in the sense in which Heidegger describes our everyday existence. This also means that they do not experience the Zuhandenheit condition in which objects are tools that are enmeshed in our existence and therefore of little consequence to us until they are found to be missing or not to be working properly. Brevik explored a number of alternative interpretations of the experience of parachute jumping, including the view that beginners experience a breakdown of the condition of Zuhandenheit, yet for experts there is a normal experience of Zuhandenheit. The aim here was to clarify the normal condition of Being-in-the-world and the experience of objects as tools by looking at an example in which there is a breakdown of this 'normal' experience.
The discussion of angst perhaps requires a little more work as the general nature of the anxiety that it refers to is distinctly different from the apprehension and fear that one might experience either in the face of danger or in the contemplation of possible defeat. The treatment of angst in this paper is somewhat closer to the treatment of authenticity by Standish (1998); they are both difficult ontological themes in Heidegger's work and both carry the danger of appearing easier to apply than they really are.
Nonetheless, Breivik concluded with two very important sets of questions. First, he was concerned with the specific nature of the condition of Zuhandenheit in sport. Indeed, is Zuhandenheit the correct way to think of sport-tools? Is it problematic that sport-tools do not 'disappear' in the way that, for example, a hammer does? Second, and perhaps most interesting of all: What, if any, is the role of the body in such an analysis? Heidegger has been criticised for devoting only six lines of Being and Time to the issue of the body. He claimed that Being-in-the-world was more primordial than the body and therefore the body was not a central concern of Being and Time. Heidegger did, however, consider the body in some detail elsewhere (most notably The Zollikon Seminars), yet it still occupied a subordinate role. This is one of the principal differences between French phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, and Heidegger. It has important implications for our understanding of the way we experience our body in sport, the question of whether the body is part of the condition of Zuhandenheit and the more general issue of the value of the work of Heidegger to the philosophy of sport. The mark of a good paper is that it prompts others to engage with the issues it has raised; I need say no more than I am currently working on these problems.
Mike McNamee (University of Wales, Swansea) insists that his paper ('What's the Point of Suffering for Sport?') was at a very early stage of development when he presented it at this conference. This was not apparent to those of us listening to the paper. The paper considered the similarities and differences between the concepts of pain and suffering and specifically addressed the issue of the meaning of the claim that one suffers in and for sport. McNamee offered a critique of two accounts of suffering proposed in medical ethics literature (Cassell 1991 and Edwards 2003) and developed ideas from Van Hooft (1998) to allow him to consider suffering in sport in Illich's terms as a 'culturally acquired art.' McNamee concluded by considering the 'intentional object' of suffering. The meaning given to the term 'intentional object' in this case is rather different from that found in phenomenology (the paper was a careful consideration of the potential contribution of both phenomenology and linguistic philosophy). Here, it refers to 'that which one suffers for' and leads to the obvious, though rather difficult question: Is the experience of suffering in sport virtuous given the nature of that which one suffers for? No doubt Mike will have an answer for us in some future issue of JPS.
As I understand it the purpose of this conference was twofold. First, to raise the profile of the philosophy of sport within Slovenia and second, to make connections between those interested in the philosophy of sport in Slovenia and international academics working in the philosophy of sport. It is difficult for me to be certain as to the level of success in relation to the first aim, but I suspect that the organisers would regard the conference as having been as successful at raising the profile of the philosophy of sport in Slovenia as they could possibly have hoped. The conference was very well attended and there were a significant number of graduate students in attendance which is in itself a healthy sign. The number of papers presented by Slovenian academics is also encouraging and the importance which appeared to be placed on the conference (shown by the involvement of a government minister, the deputy mayor of the town of Bled and a number of companies as sponsors) also indicates that the profile of the philosophy of sport within Slovenia has been raised considerably by the staging of this conference.
I am less convinced, however, that the conference was quite as successful in relation to the second aim. By this I mean that while acceptance of the philosophy of sport in whatever form appears to have been forthcoming from academics in Slovenia who work in other areas of the study of sport, there was a clear difference in approach to the philosophy of sport between many of the papers delivered at this conference. The papers delivered by many, although certainly not all, Slovenian academics were a mixture of scientism, mysticism, sports science and ancient philosophy. Clearly, how philosophy is understood and practiced in Slovenia – perhaps Eastern Europe generally – betrays something of a family resemblance notion. The trend toward holistic systematization of all knowledge is still evident here despite the fact that in the West this aim has largely been passed over. The influence of phenomenology found in Czech philosophy of sport was not apparent in the Slovenian work. Broadly speaking, there is a considerable amount of work to be done to improve the access to, and the profile of, international work in the philosophy of sport among Slovenian academics. At present, the fact that the conference was held in English does not mean that we are all “speaking the same language” so to speak. This is not simply an indication of work to be done on one side of this language barrier. It appears, however, that there is a willingness to engage with international material on the part of academics in Slovenia, but a lack of access to that material. This conference was a significant first step, but it is clear that reduced subscription rates for the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport and reduced membership rates of both IAPS and the BPSA are essential if we are to encourage development of philosophy of sport in Central and Eastern Europe. The conference also provided considerable evidence that there would be value in considering expanding the BPSA to a European rather than simply a British association. With these issues in mind, short presentations were made on IAPS (by Sigmund Loland) and the BPSA (by Mike McNamee and Heather Sheridan).
I should conclude by noting the excellent organisation of the conference and the unparalleled hospitality that was enjoyed by all including a cultural visit to Lake Bled which was spectacular. Particularly worthy of mention are the efforts of Milan Hosta, who appears to have enough enthusiasm and entrepreneurial skill to host an Olympic Games, never mind an international conference.