The Sports Ethicist

Since it came over my transom a few years ago, Steffen Borge’s The Philosophy of Football has been on my to-read pile. With the World Cup in full swing, and some related research on sports fictionalism that I’m doing, it was time.

The book engages with interesting and important philosophical questions about sport. Borge uses football (soccer) as the stand-in and best exemplar of sport, but much of what he discusses is relevant more broadly. Borge chews deeply into the arguments and brings to bear philosophical discussion beyond sport: from epistemology, theories of social kinds, aesthetics and much more. He brings in real-life examples and illustrations from football that both enliven the text and provide important context. Conceptually, it is a challenging and rigorous book: some amount of serious acquaintance with philosophy is expected and necessary.

There are four main chapters, each focusing on a different thematic issue. The first deals with the question of sport fictionalism. The second with sport as social kind and what that means for analyzing sport. The third is Borge’s critique of Bernard Suits’ classic argument about the nature of games (and sport). The last is a discussion of sport and aesthetics.

At the end of each chapter, there are a set of objections with Borge’s replies. These objections read as though they were lifted directly from external reviewer reports. Including these in the text in this way (if that is what was done) is a creative way to deal with the concerns and objections raised by the peer review process. The execution though was mixed. In some cases, the objection was too hastily dismissed or his reply to the objection would merely reiterate his earlier argument without really addressing the objection.

It often seemed to me that the book’s analysis was at times both saying too much and too little. By too much, I mean there are extended discussions of distinctions and arguments for aspects that didn’t strike me as all that relevant to the main argument. For example, the presentation of the social kinds theories in chapter two gets into some deep weeds, sometimes in interesting and informative ways, but nonetheless didn’t seem to add to the argument that sports are a social kind. There is also an extensive discussion of nonhuman play that, again, is quite interesting, but the relevance of going that deep was never made clear.

And yet, there are parts that go by too quickly or where more discussion was needed but wasn’t forthcoming. There are several examples where Borge uses concepts or ideas that are not sufficiently explained or whose usage or construal is not defended. For example, the use of the phrase “constructive-destructive sport” plays a role in his critique of Waltonian fictionalism and discussions elsewhere in the book. Though from the context one can figure out what Borge’s is talking about, the phrase is never really explained, nor does he make an argument for why football is a constructive-destructive sport as opposed to some other kind. This seems like a part of the argument that Borge needed to say more about. The rigor and detail he brought to some of the more tangential parts of the argument was sometimes missing from central elements of the argument – where it was most needed.

Another example is in the chapter on aesthetics. Borge criticizes what he calls the meritocratic-fairness view of sport. He characterizes this view as the view that sport is about finding and acknowledging the best, most skillful competitors. This is supposed to imply that when the more skillful don’t win, this is an unfair result. Borge rightly dismisses that implication but through that, he dismisses the whole view. However, the argument depends on a particular construal of ‘fairness’. It is not at all clear that the authors that Borge says endorse a meritocratic-fairness view mean fairness in terms of the result. Fairness could indicate procedural or process fairness. In that case, the meritocratic-fairness view doesn’t imply that a result is unfair if the less skilled win so long as the process was fair and properly applied. Since the argument rests on a particularly narrow view of ‘fair,’ the author needs to address that. Either deal with the variations of conceptual construal or argue for this construal as the correct, most relevant, or best one.

This narrowing of concepts and arguments is probably my biggest criticism of the book as a whole. It would take more time and space to adequately unpack this than I can give here, but throughout Borge tends to opt for a narrow construal of concepts (as he does above with fairness; this is also evident throughout his discussion of Suits). That, in itself, is not a fault or a problem except that, first, many of these concepts have broader meanings that are at least prima facie valid, relevant, or meaningful; and second, there are often other narrow understandings that are not touched on. It is important to the argument and overall discussion that a case be made for the preferred usage. Too often, this case was not made and that makes the overall argument and book less persuasive.

Substantively I have two main criticisms. The first is in his account of fictionalism. Part of the main argument of chapter one, and the book as a whole, is that the fictional part of sport is the belief that winning matters (but ultimately doesn’t). I don’t think that claim in so far as it goes is incorrect, but Borge doesn’t really defend it or make a persuasive case that this is the primary fictional aspect. It is asserted throughout but given how central this claim is to his book, I would have expected more said to defend it. He does discuss and dismiss some alternative views of fictionalism, but his positive account for his version of fictionalism needed to be more thoroughly defended.

The second is his critique of Suits. To really (and fairly) explain my concerns here would take much more than the space/time of a short review. Nevertheless, while I think Borge raises some important concerns about Suits’ account of games, I also think he gets some parts of Suits’ argument wrong. In particular, his discussion of Suits’ lusory attitude struck me as off base. I found it odd that he ran together the discussion of the lusory attitude with that of the logical incompatibility thesis. He seemed to be overinterpreting or misinterpreting what Suits meant by the lusory attitude and the role it played in his account.

In closing, the book offers much to chew on. Borge puts many key ideas out there – and agree with them or not — these are worth discussing. Unfortunately, the flaws I discuss above can get in the way of the book’s effectiveness at engaging with these issues.