The Importance of Virtue in Sport

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The Importance of Virtue in Sport

• Frankena
• Gibson

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What virtue does Frankena demand?
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Why is virtue important?

• A virtue is an acquired human quality the
  possession and exercise of which tends to enable
  us to achieve those goods which are internal to
  practices and the lack of which effectively
  prevents us from achieving any such goods.
  MacIntyre

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Importance of Virtue...

• without them, without justice, courage, and
  truthfulness, the practice could not resist the
  corrupting power of the institutions.
• Virtues needs sophrosune and phronesis. Not
  abusing ones position and knowing what is due to
  others.

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What is a practice?

• pp. 72.
• What is the difference between internal goods and
  external goods?
• Why can only those who practice know the internal
  goods?
• Which is more important?
• Internal goods of practice only accessible to the
  virtuous, not to the merely technically adept.

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What is Nietzsches overman?

• Man of power...pp. 67

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Internal Goods

• pp/ 73. The athlete who is not rewarded by
  internal goods, and who violates the practice in
  his quest for external goods is easier to
  understand discusses within this framework. He is
  not doing wrong, rather he is missing out.

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The importance of dialogue and conversation

• External goods can provide a reason, but internal
  goods draw intention. Without intention, the
  understanding of internal goods, our athletic
  enterprises become empty motion. Without the
  willingness to converse, our motives become
  meaningless activity, the dead grist of the
  positivists mill. Our lives, our jobs, and
  our games all become meaningless without the
  openness to conversation and possibility. The
  intention is to continue the conversation. pp.
  91.

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Athlete as Artist, and Creative Overman

• The emphasis is on the internal goods of the
  practice, the possibilities within the game of
  self-expression, the chances of transcending the
  limits of the game, and of playing with that
  effortless effort in the artless art. What we
  might describe as letting the game play you.
  This is the highest peak of athletics and not
  victor in the contest. This is the overman at
  his most creative, with power over himself to go
  beyond the good and bad of the practice and play
  directly with the game. pp. 107.