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?
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Philosophy and Football at Berry
Posted by Mark Boone at 4:06 PM
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4 comments:
Dr. Boone,
You draw a dichotomy between the love of struggle and victory for its own sake and the love of struggle and victory for the sake of something noble. It's a great question, and raises a question that's proving tricky for me:
Is there a possibility that it's a false dichotomy? Is it possible for struggle and victory to be noble ends in themselves?
On the one hand, it does seem like we want to draw a distinction between loving an act for its own sake versus for the sake of a greater good. On the other hand, I consider the study of philosophy and find myself torn-- do we study philosophy for its own sake, or treat it as a mere tool in the pursuit of something greater?
Is it true that football (or any sport for that matter) is the type of thing where victory and struggle (thumos) is established? I can see this in a Roman gladiator fighting for his life or as a captured ancient Incan warrior playing ball for his freedom, but in football as we know and play it today? Sport fetishists use the words struggle and victory in this sense but maybe something more along the lines of having a ‘hard/difficult time’ instead of struggle and the word ‘win’ for victory is more appropriate. If this is the case, I don’t think that having a hard time in practice and winning against the neighboring college just for the sake of doing so is a good reason because it doesn’t make sense in relation to Berry. As an academic institution unless there is an obesity epidemic or rampant low self esteem the struggle or victory (or what have you) for their own sake is a non-issue.
The second option, to have a football team for something (namely noble type of things), is tricky. Whatever ends I think that the people of Berry College should be careful about using certain individuals as tools to achieve these ends. This gets even worse when we use something that people love as a carrot to lead them along.
I like Zach’s proposal that perhaps struggle and victory are noble in and of themselves. There is something wrong with someone who doesn’t struggle in some fashion when their life is on the line; and in the same way something wrong with denying victory to someone who has earned it.
On a side note, I don’t know what this properly ordered soul is. Are souls the type of thing that gets out of whack? Is it a good thing to talk about certain people in this way (as in so and so’s soul is not properly ordered)? And if we do, is a bent up soul something that a human being has control over?
Zach,
"Is it possible for struggle and victory to be noble ends in themselves?"
I think some things are noble in themselves and also noble as means to an end. In Republic things noble in both ways are considered best, better than things noble only in themselves. (However, somewhere Aristotle says that things noble only in themselves are the best.)
Such a thing is justice, good in itself but also good for the benefits it provides.
Could struggle and victory be such things? I'll take my best guess at an answer from Plato, and that is: Yes. Struggle and victory by their very nature have the good of keeping our basest desires down. In other words, a soul (or a city) dominated by thumos is better off than one dominated by the lowest part of the soul.
But better still is the soul (or the city) dominated by the rational part of the soul, with a lively thumos keeping the lowest part of the soul in its place but serving reason.
RJM,
"Are souls the type of thing that gets out of whack? Is it a good thing to talk about certain people in this way (as in so and so’s soul is not properly ordered)? And if we do, is a bent up soul something that a human being has control over?"
These are great questions! A lot of philosophers, especially the ancient and medieval ones, think the answers are yes. The whole point of living virtuously is to bring the soul into good working order.
Of course, there are many great philosophers who disagree and give different analyses of ethics. But rigorous accounts of the proper functioning of the soul have been made. I think the Republic is one of the best.
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