Philosophy and Football at Berry

Berry's football team has never lost a game!

If you took my Critical Thinking class, you may remember that Aristotle and most modern logicians disagree on whether it's true that Berry's football team has never lost a game. Aristotle thinks it's false because there is no such thing as a Berry College football team, but the moderns think it's true because there is no such thing as a Berry College football team that has lost a game.

But the important question is: Should Berry change all this by getting a football team? I think Plato suggests a good way to frame the discussion, so in this post I'll try to pose the question of a Berry College football team his way. Note that I'm not out to answer the question here; I'll leave that to you!

Plato's Republic presents the theory that the soul has three parts. The first part, the rational part, desires wisdom, knowledge, and justice. The second part, called thumos, desires honor and victory. The third part, the appetitive part, desires physical pleasure. In order for us to have a good life, the rational part of the soul must make an alliance with thumos in order to keep the appetitive part from getting out of hand. For example, thumos must be persuaded that it is honorable to seek wisdom and dishonorable to live solely for physical pleasures.

In other words, a properly ordered soul is one that doesn't seek victory for its own sake; it seeks to honor wisdom and knowledge and justice and to see them victorious.

What does this have to do with football? Like rugby, the only team sport I ever played, football is a struggle resulting in a victory for some and a loss for others. It is a field on which thumos asserts itself.

But we aren't supposed to fight for the sake of victory. We are supposed to fight for the victory of something, specifically something noble. For example, I think the movie Remember the Titans handles football very well, because the struggle on the football field symbolizes the struggle for racial justice. The football player's or fan's passion for victory becomes a passion for the victory of justice.

So here is the Platonic question I wish to pose: Would a football team at Berry encourage a love of struggle and victory for its own sake, or a love of struggle and victory for the sake of something noble?

To elaborate just a little. At Berry College several appropriately noble things are already present: knowledge, the love of wisdom, a respect for our cultural and religious heritage. Would a football team here distract us from these noble things, or would football encourage a stronger school spirit and a stronger love for these noble things, which are after all the main reason we're here?

My philosophy movies

In case anyone is interested, I made two Socrates cartoons and one Boethius cartoon, available here.