著者

川谷 茂樹

出版者

Japanese Association for the Contemporary and Applied Philosophy (JACAP)

雑誌

Contemporary and Applied Philosophy

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.65-78, 2012-11-26

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The aim of this paper is to reconsider the relation between victory or defeat in a contest or a game of sport and athletic superiority of the participants and to make clear the implication that the former decides the latter. In his noted essay related to the same topic, Nicholas Dixon regards victory or winning as "an operational definition" of athletic superiority of an athlete or a team. Our examination of his argument clarifies the point that it would bring about a kind of skepticism with respect to any decision of athletic superiority by winning of contest. This kind of skepticism results in the failure to decide that any winner is superior and its practical effect to our ordinary concept of sport would obviously be very destructive. If we are to avoid such kind of skepticism and such conclusion, then we must think that the particular contest of sport creatively decides athletic superiority of an athlete or a team. Athletic superiority of an athlete or a team wouldn't exist preceding a contest or independently of it as such, but be generated through it for the first time. When victory or defeat in a contest is determined legitimately or according to the rules of the game, therefore, we must admit that athletic superiority of the participants in it could be decided legitimately as well, that is, "the winner is superior". The ethos of sport, in other words, the intrinsic goal of sport can be thought as "the decision of athletic superiority in terms of victory or defeat" and it could have the four different following decisions, though partially implicitly: 1/the decision that it is precisely through victory or defeat of a contest that athletic superiority of the participants could be decided, 2/the decision how victory and defeat of a game are to be decided (the decision of the rules of the game), 3/the determination of winning and losing in terms of the rules, 4/the decision which player or team is superior.