The Brave New Athlete? The Meaning of Perfection in Contemporary Professional Sport

Filip Kobiela The Brave New Athlete? The Meaning of Perfection in Contemporary Professional Sport1 Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis and critique of Michael Sandel’s argument against human enhancement in sport. In order to examine the problem, I use Bernard Suits’ theory of game-playing (“game” is an activity based on voluntary choice of imperfect means), as well as Wolfgang Welsch’s account of sport as seen from the aesthetic perspective. The image of sport that emerges from these considerations is as follows: by nature, sport does not aim at perfection understood literally, but it is rather an aesthetic enterprise in which participants are acting out (in a different way than in a theatre) the drama of striving for perfection. In light of this philosophy of sport, all forms of doping, including genetic doping, which is one of the main subject of Sandel’s work, seem to be a consequence of a mistaken view of the nature of sport. Thus, contrary to Sandel’s view, the acceptance of the Promethean, quasi-mythological view of sport, is not so much an expression of a lack of gratitude, but rather – of a lack of wisdom. Keywords: Bernard Suits, Wolfgang Welsch, Michael Sandel, Sport, Game, Perfection 1 The three levels of reflection on sport In 2008, during the Olympic Games in Beijing, I came across a virtually surreal sight: a group of exorbitantly tall, black basketball players from the USA stood among the crowd of much smaller fans, contrasting with them in such a stark way that it made the basketballers look like ancient heroes, half-people, and halfgods. Similar observations of ancient athletes of superhuman size and strength surely had to inspire the creators of one of the myths pointing to the heroic deeds of Heracles as the origin of Olympic Games.2 There are, certainly, more profound reasons for associating athletes with superhuman beings, related to their strength and skills, including the perfection with which they control their bodies. Colin McGinn claims that sport requires two kinds of harmony: the harmony 1 2 The writing of this article was funded by the Polish National Science Centre (2012/07/D/ HS1/01099). The contemporary ideological superstructure of the Olympic movement refers to these mythological origins as well. 316 Filip Kobiela between the body and the mind, and the harmony between different parts of the body. Such a state is experienced by athletes and perceived by spectators as a somewhat godlike condition, because gods are not divided in their being. When a person functions as a single unified entity, working as an organic whole, it might even be seen as a sui generis ontological category: embodied agency. According to McGinn, When people idolize their athletic heroes as gods, is it this impression of ontological unity that prompts their adulation? The outstanding athlete seems to operate on another plane of coordinated movement, above mere mortals.3 At the same time, in contemporary discussions on doping in sport a significant role is played by another superhuman character from Greek mythology – the Titan Prometheus.4 Mythological thinking – more precisely, the idea of a mythical hero surpassing human limits – has been accompanying sport throughout its history and became an important subject of philosophical reflection on sport. Certainly, this mythological or quasi-religious level of reflection on sport (which could be called the mythos of sport) can at least partially explain the phenomenon of the popularity of sport and its powerful impact on the mass imagination. However – returning to the experience in Beijing – the god-like athletes, despite the spectacular physical contrast between them and other men, are, in the light of philosophical reflection, the same human beings as anyone else. Within a population there are equally significant, although more disguised disproportions (e.g., related to the power of creative imagination, moral sensitivity, speed of counting, persistence of philosophical reflection.), which do not evoke any associations with heroes. Somehow on the antipodes of the above-mentioned tendency to worship sport heroes, there is also the need to identify with athletes treating them as real people and not “gods”. As Wolfgang Welsch aptly observes, “we take the athletes’ performance to be not totally beyond our scope. We even take it to be ours in a way. There is a feeling of mea res agitur – like in the theatre where when we see kings or people of excellence we don’t think they are of an ontologically different kind.”5 Moreover, “natural” competitions, such as running 3 4 5 C. Mc Ginn, Sport (Stockfield: Acumen Publishing, 2008), p. 118. See, for example, T. Franssen, “Prometheus on Dope. Natural Aim for Improvement or a Hubristic Drive to Mastery?” in: Athletic Enhancement, Human Nature and Ethics, ed. J. Tolleneer, S. Sterckx and P. Bonte (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2012), pp. 105–123. W. Welsch, “Sport – Viewed Aesthetically or Even as an Art?” in: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, ed. Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 149. The Brave New Athlete? 317 or jumping, test abilities which are not solely characteristic of the human world, but also the animal kingdom. Embodied agency as an ontological category might be particularly intensively manifested in sport, but it does not provide an ontological demarcation line between human and superhuman athletes. The “divinity” ascribed to athletes should rather be understood in a figurative way, as in the expression “divine body”, as a figure of a certain level of excellence and not of superhuman status. The pursuit of better results, so characteristic of contemporary sport, generated the phenomenon of doping (and, recently, also gene doping), which raises ethical concerns, constituting the second level of reflection on sport. Doping is clearly not the only problem in sport ethics, though it is, undoubtedly, a significant issue related to the problem of perfection. This second level of reflections on sport is constituted by questions about the morality of human interactions in sportand can be subsumed under the heading ethos of sport. Despite the impression that ethics is the main philosophical issue of sport (which impression is contributed to by the educational aspect of sport, e.g., the fair play rule), I think that the principal philosophical reflection on sport is rather ontological in nature. As noted by Scott Kretchmar, “soft metaphysics is a precursor to good sport ethics.”6 Moreover, considerations sometimes labelled as “sport ethics” are rather of an ontological nature at their core – as are, in fact, some of the analyzes by Michel Sandel included in the subsection entitled “The Essence of the Game” in his work on human enhancement.7 In this way we are approaching the third, most elementary level of reflection on sport, which concerns the logos of sport. My aim in the present article is to analyze this principal, ontological aspect, which, however, generates certain consequences for both the ethos and the mythos of sport. Above all, however, I will focus on revealing the ludic and aesthetic nature of sport, as they are of key importance for the issue of enhancement. 6 7 R. S. Kretchmar, “Soft Metaphysics: a Precursor to GoodSportsEthics,” in: Ethics and Sport, ed. M. J. McNamee and S. J. Parry (London and New York: E & Fn Spon, 1998), pp 19–34. M. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection. Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, Mass and London, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 36–44. 318 Filip Kobiela 2 Sport as a voluntary choice of imperfect means As noted by Hans Lenk, the term philosophy was once introduced (within the so called panegyric analogy) in connection with the Olympic Games of Antiquity.8 However, despite this connection – promising, as it seemed, for the philosophical reflection on sport – a specialized branch of philosophy undertaking the issue of sport has only emerged in the second half of the 20th century. This somewhat delayed,9 but natural and necessary, emergence of a sub-discipline dedicated to sport is associated with a certain unfortunate phenomenon. Philosophers of sport, focused on developing concepts arising within their tradition, do not always take full advantage of the achievements generated within mainstream philosophy. At the same time, the “mainstream” philosophers, undertaking the problems related to sports do not take full advantage of the contribution of the philosophy of sport, as can be observed in the above mentioned work by Sandel. One of the objectives of this article is to fill such a gap related to the issues raised by Sandel: the telos of sport within the context of human enhancement and the achievement of perfection. A variety of meanings attributed to sport in everyday language exists, at least to some extent, also on the theoretical level. What is more, sport as a cultural phenomenon is subject to changes in its very constitution. It is thus necessary to clarify its meaning at the beginning, as it will constitute the basis for further considerations. I will therefore continue to analyze professional sport only, i.e., activities which are highly specialized, institutionalized, strictly regulated games generally based on physical skills. When at the 1988 Seoul Olympics Ben Johnson beat in a spectacular way the world record in track and field crown discipline – 100m sprint – to be then stripped of the title for using an illegal doping substance, the commentators observed that he still remained the fastest man on Earth, although his feat was not of sporting nature any more due to his breaking of the doping rules. Through this example, therefore, we can clearly see that the literal interpretation of the 8 9 H. Lenk, S.O.S. - Save Olympic Spirit: Toward a Social Philosophy of the Olympics (Selected Writings by Hans Lenk) (Kassel: Agon Sportverlag, 2012), pp. 25–26. Philosophy of sport emerged approximately thirty years after sport began to be taken seriously as a cultural phenomenon by large numbers of people, thus turning from an idle cultural curiosity into an often hotly debated ethical and aesthetic phenomenon. Compare W. Morgan, “Athletic Perfection, Performance-Enhancing Drugs, and the Treatment-Enhancement Distinction,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Vol. 36 (2009), p. 5. The Brave New Athlete? 319 famous Pierre de Coubertin motto “citius, altius, fortius” (which is, as a matter of fact, quite often recalled in the context of relations between sport and human enhancement) is highly misleading, as sprint is not all about being the fastest, leastwise, not the fastest by any means. The precise meaning of this assertion, which I call the negative characteristic of sport, and which has key significance for capturing the essence of human enhancement and perfectionism in sport, was only comprehended with the application of the breakthrough game playing theory developed by Bernard Suits.10 In this theory, games (sport – with some reservations – is a subset of games11) are voluntary activities in which means employed to achieve the goal are not the most efficient. The principal type of rules governing games are the so-called constitutive rules, i.e., players voluntarily accept (this acceptance is called the lusory attitude) prohibitions against applying the most efficient means. Therefore, in the case of sprint races, the crude fact of crossing the finish line ahead of others – called the prelusory goal – is, after all, not the real goal in this discipline; the goal is to cross the finish line ahead of others in accordance with certain rules, which impose some additional limitations. In light of this theory, Ben Johnson’s feat was simply completing the prelusory goal of a sprint race in a record-breaking time. However, since the proper goal (the so-called lusory goal) of this competition is the realization of its prelusory goal only according to the rules, Ben Johnson by breaking the rules did not only not win the race, but, in a strict sense, he did not even participate in it. This aforementioned prohibition is itself an illustration of the peculiarity of the ludic sphere in culture to which sport belongs. To capture the contrast between broadly understood work and sport we need to consider a hypothetical example of a scientific achievement, such as proving a new mathematical logic theorem. Should it become apparent that the author used in the process a special doping substance for scientists and, moreover, used a properly programmed computer, it would not limit the value of his work or make his proof invalid. 10 I present this theory on the basis of the article by B. Suits, “The Elements of Sport,” in: Ethics in Sport, ed. W.J. Morgan, (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2007), pp. 9–19, and B. Suits’ work, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978). 11 There is a small group of sports, which Bernard Suits calls performances or judged events, and David Best calls aesthetic sports, whose inclusion in the set of games in Suits’ sense is a matter of controversy, see. D. Best, “Sport and Art,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 14, No. 2, (1980), pp. 70–72; B. Suits, “Tricky Triad: Games, Play and Sport,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport Vol. XV (1988), pp. 1–9. 320 Filip Kobiela The maximum achievable efficiency in realizing the cognitive goal (as long as it does not harm others) is the essence of scientific work, and the possible health hazard of the researcher exposed to such doping would be considered heroism – sacrificing one’s well-being in the name of the science. One who recognizes this view at the same time recognizes a certain axiological relation between the positive cognitive value of scientific discovery and the negative value of a researcher’s impaired health. The mechanism is observable to an even greater extent in the case of rescuers, fire fighters, or soldiers. Having performed this type of extrapolation, I will now transpose this classic discussion on more traditional forms of doping onto the area of partially implemented and partially anticipated fields of genetic human enhancement. In the case of technical activities (work), the limitations of efficiency are dictated by certain necessities (mainly legal or ethical in nature); in sport, the acceptance of limitations generated by constitutive rules is of an entirely different character.12 The above mentioned lusory attitude consists in the acceptance of unnecessary difficulties only because they make such activities possible. Constitutive rules – in contrast to the so-called regulative rules – not only regulate a previously existing activity, but also produce – constitute – a new activity (a chess game is created when the rules of a chess game are created). As, potentially, any achievable, specific state of affairs may become a prelusory goal, and there is an infinite number of methods to limit the efficiency of reaching this state of affairs by constitutive rules, the spectrum of possible games is virtually infinite. Because limitations in the form of constitutive rules are settled arbitrarily within the community of players, what we are dealing with here is an extensive area of creative cultural activities, which are in many respects similar to art, and in particular to theatre. The only certainty here is the inefficiency that makes games possible, i.e., their fundamentally negative nature: they are not the most efficient (i.e., “perfect”) pursuits of specific goals, otherwise they would have lost their identity and become activities similar in nature to work. It should be noted that many sport disciplines (javelin throw may be a model example here) could also be viewed in this context as a symbolic representation of certain historical instrumental activities ousted by more efficient forms of action.13 Since, however, the empirically existing set of sport competitions is only a small subset of all the possible competitions of this sort, the question is whether it is only a 12 On the issue of a more extensive confrontation of work (instrumental activities) and ludic activities, see Suits, The Grasshopper…, in particular chapters 3 and 15. 13 There are some interesting hypothetical examples on this subject provided by Suits, Tricky Triad…, pp. 3–5. The Brave New Athlete? 321 randomly arranged set or there are some reasons for creating and cultivating certain sport games. The problem of the positive characteristics of sport – in contrast to its generally accepted negative characteristics in the form of Suits’ theory – has not found an acceptable solution (it is one of the reasons for the above mentioned variety of meanings of the term sport). The function of the prohibitions generating particular games is to create conditions enabling to perform certain activities otherwise impossible or difficult to carry out.14 It should be noted that in so far as the goal of a given game is a certain state of affairs, the activities performed in pursuing it belong to a different ontological category of processes. Depending on the type of difficulties occurring during the pursuit of the goal, the game writer shall be given the opportunity to model various processes involving different skills to achieve it. Therefore, e.g., the prohibition against the use of hands generates specific abilities proper to football. The creation and acceptance of restrictions constituting the game is actually a pretext to realize a certain potential. But why would anybody arrange conditions to create such – as it seems – absurd activities (and the related skills) as, for instance, pole vault? I think that the famous answer given by George Mallory to the question of why he climbs mountains – “Because they exist” – will provide important guidance. The free will of an entity is a sufficient reason to undertake autotelic activities. If a certain form of expression of human potential – such as sport, but also, for example, playing the saw or swallowing gold fish – has its followers, it is only wise to simply accept this strictly ludic phenomenon. Possible further reasons (health, education, etc.) are of secondary nature, and become an interpretation or ideology imposed from the outside. I, thus, accept that sport is an autotelic form of expression (and celebration) of human physical potential. The primary impulse here is the acceptance of certain possibilities of embodied existence, and especially – a driving force behind its growth – undertaking the development of physical skills as such (and not as a means to achieve a goal). This portrayal of the idea of sport may seemingly differ considerably from its media image (suggesting “positivist” progress and instrumental efficiency) but, in fact, it makes it possible to see some key dependencies in order to solve the general question concerning human enhancement in sport. To complement the positive characteristics of sport, I will now move on to aesthetic reflections. 14 See Suits, The Elements of Sport, p. 14. 322 Filip Kobiela 3 Sport as the drama of striving for perfection While sport games provide their fans with heartfelt emotions and at the same time attract their attention to the rivalry between the leading players, the fundamental question – “What is sport for?” – remains in the shade. Stephen Mumford accurately pointed out that while competitors aim solely at victory, sport itself aims at beauty – its constitutive rules set up situations in which beauty is likely to manifest; furthermore – the rule changes themselves are precisely focused on the need to make the sport more attractive to watch.15 It should be noted that between the goal of an individual player – victory, and the goal of sport itself as a branch of culture – beauty, there is an intermediate link in the form of athletic excellence. Competition is a means of achieving this goal, and the essence of athletic excellence is to show the beauty of the human body in motion. It needs to be observed that if the player’s pursuit of victory would lessen in comparison to his pursuit of beauty, not only would his results suffer, but paradoxically, also the beauty of the whole event would deteriorate, in a process similar to the working of the invisible hand of the market. Welsch presents a discussion of a similar problem in the context of comparing sports to art.16 He claims that one of the main objections against recognizing sport as art is that sport is merely a profane activity aiming at victory and thus it lacks symbolic meaning as well the quality of being an end in itself. Welsch refutes this objection by different means than the distinction between the participant’s goal and the overall aim of the discipline. He indicates certain similarities between sports and performing arts: they both have their ends in themselves and as autotelic activities they do not serve other purposes. The aim of winning cannot be reached directly but only through the sporting performance. The proper work of the athlete is the performance; it might lead to victory, but this secondary result cannot affect the autotelic nature of sport. Furthermore, Welsch claims that sport’s autotelic character is connected with its symbolic meaning. Sport is semantically intense and intrinsically artistic, but this impression is not a result of the fact that sport is explicitly about something (like a play in the theatre). Sport is a drama without a script:17 sporting events act out the most basic features 15 This is one of Mumford’s theses presented in his defense of the aesthetic way of watching sports, see S. Mumford, Watching sport: aesthetics, ethics and emotion (London: Routledge, 2011). 16 Welsch, “Sport…,” pp. 143–148. 17 Even though there is no script in a sport event, the rules afford it with a kind of meta-script, a mechanism generating a particular, improvised narration. This is the reason why a close football game can be perceived as an unpredictable, one-time, The Brave New Athlete? 323 of the human condition, and can display all the dramatic traits of human existence. One of these features of the human condition is striving for perfection. McGinn describes it in a similar manner: “Sport lends itself to narrative exposition, because there is an inherent drama to it; this is why sport enjoys the media saturation it does – it’s a story of stories.”18 It is crucial to note that sport is an artistic display of a human struggle for perfection. The tricky thing is that this quasi-theatrical meaning is expressed through the efforts undertaken by an athlete who appears to be literally striving for perfection. This structure might make the artistic, metaphorical dimension of the struggle for perfection in sport difficult to grasp. Sport is not so much literally striving forperfection, as rather acting out (in a different way than in a theatre) the drama of striving for perfection. Therefore its literal achievement is not expected, and this aesthetic conclusion complements my former ontological thesis claiming that imperfection is somehow a necessary condition for sport to exist. 4 Sport versus human enhancement There are two reasons why contemporary sport is attractive research material to ponder on the idea of perfection within the context of human enhancement. First of all, the idea of sport includes exposing human physical potential in a manner that is accessible to an audience, owing to which at least some relevant, observable phenomena provide handy illustrative material. In this respect, also the variety of sport events is reminiscent of art works which, in their essence, are things (in light of the institutional definition of art provided by Arthur Danto) submitted for assessment. Second of all, sport belongs to the avant-garde areas in which human enhancement is becoming a fact19 (by the way, these practices have their origins in the phenomenon of doping which is specific to sport), thus enabling us to base our reflections on a real, rather than only hypothetical or anticipated, context (following Habermas – “realistically expected”). Gene doping (gene therapy) is an exceptionally important issue in sport as it could, for example, support muscle growth, facilitate regeneration, and improve overall quasi-theatrical show. This uniqueness and particularity of the specific place and time of a sport event – as opposed to the repeatability of a scientific experiment – makes the nature of sport specifically dramatic (especially in the case of higher ranked events). 18 McGinn, Sport, p. 111. 19 See A. Miah, “Be Very Afraid: Cyborg Athletes, Transhuman Ideals & Posthumanity,” Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2003). 324 Filip Kobiela body fitness, thus obviously contributing to the abilities of the player. If we add to this the phenomenon of cyborgization and other relevant technologies, the disturbing (for some) perspective of creating a “superathlete” – whom I suggest to call “the brave new athlete” – becomes quite probable. For these reasons, the discussion on human enhancement in sport, with the important work of Sandel in focus, is progressing rapidly.20 In his analysis of enhancement, Sandel draws attention to the fact that the traditional argument against enhancement concerning the violation of an individual’s autonomy21 cannot be applied in sport: “An athlete who genetically enhances his muscles does not confer on his progeny his added speed and strength; he cannot be charged with foisting talents on his children that may push them toward an athletic career.”22 Additionally, Sandel does not accept the argument against enhancing technologies originating in the degradation of human agency in sport. The core of this argument is as follows: because there is an inverse correlation between enhancement and achievement, the use of enhancing technologies lessens our admiration for the achievement, and the athlete’s agency and responsibility are thus degraded. However, both the athletes and the audience are aware that athletes do not develop their skills in isolation, and they are never totally responsible for their achievement.23 Instead of this Sandel offers another line of argumentation, indicating an opposite problem: not the degradation of agency, but hyper-agency. According to Sandel, enhancing technologies “represent a kind of hyperagency, a Promethean 20 Sandel is one of the three – next to Habermas (J. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, transl. H. Beister, M. Pensky and W. Rehg (Cambridge: Polity 2003)) and Fukuyama (Our Posthuman Future. Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002)) – most renown opponents of human enhancement, however, he is the only one who engaged in the issue of human enhancement in sports in a more systematic way. See also N. Bostrom and J. Savulescu, “Introduction: Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate,” in: Human Enhancement, ed. N. Bostrom and J. Savulescu (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 21 In my analysis of Sandel’s arguments I significantly benefited from the very clear explanations of their premises and conclusions presented in the materials developed by A. Agler, Sandel on Bionic Athletes: 20 Nov. 2015, http://www.davidagler.com/teaching/ philoftech/enhancement/Handout4_BionicAthletes.pdf 22 Sandel, The Case …, p. 9. 23 The refutation of the argument is not provided by Sandel (he immediately proceeds to the hyper-agency argument); for a more detailed discussion see Agler, Sandel on Bionic Athletes, p. 3. The Brave New Athlete? 325 aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is (…) the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses, and may even destroy, is an appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements.”24 The outline of Sandel’s argument is as follows: sport has its essence (telos), and the telos of sport is excellence, which in turn consists of the display of natural talents. The athletes who desire to obtain enhanced capacities express an ingratitude towards their natural capacities, and thus degrade the telos of sport. Such a degraded sport (devoid of its telos – in which natural talents are not appreciated) would be a mere spectacle – like WWF’s staged wrestling – and not a sport with integrity. The described mechanism of the degradation of sport leads to the conclusion that using enhancement technologies is morally wrong because it corrupts sport (a valuable part of human culture) and should be avoided even if there were no other reasons (like health risks) against its use. The two most important presuppositions made by Sandel are as follows: (S1) the existence of the telos of sport and (S2) the identification of excellence through the display of natural talents. In defending the notion of the telos of sport Sandel appeals to the philosophically interesting case of Casey Martin, a golfer who, due to a certain kind of disability, made a request to use a golf cart during professional competition. After getting a refusal from the golf association (PGA Tour), Martin pursued a legal case – and as a result the Supreme Court held in his favor on the grounds that walking was inessential to golf. However, Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, arguing that “To say that something is ‘essential’ is ordinarily to say that it is necessary to the achievement of a certain object. But since it is the very nature of a game to have no object except amusement (that is what distinguishes games from productive activity), it is quite impossible to say that any of a game’s arbitrary rules is ‘essential’.”25 Scalia’s conclusion is correct, because if we allow some players to move around on a golf cart, we cause a medley of two different games, since the constitutive rules referring to Martin are different (no prohibition on moving on a golf cart) from the rules applied to other players.26 However, the argumentation and interpretation of the conclusion performed by Sandel is far more important than the conclusion itself. Scalia is correct in juxtaposing sport and “productive activity”, but his further analysis 24 Sandel, The Case …, pp. 26–27. 25 Sandel, The Case …, p. 43. 26 Martin’s competitors might claim that walking is, in fact, essential to golf, since it causes fatigue that might influence the player’s ability to make a precise shot. In this respect, there is an analogy between golf and biathlon. 326 Filip Kobiela is simplified. His error consists in taking into account only one meaning of the term essence. In this ordinary sense, all restrictions imposed by the constitutive rules of the game are inessential, since the game has no external aim. But in another sense, all these restrictions are essential, since they are responsible for the game’s identity (essence = what constitutes identity). Finally, in the third sense, some restrictions might more or less contribute to the telos of the game (understood as skills centrally tested in the game) and in this sense they are more or less “essential”. In this third sense walking is less “essential” to the telos of golf than using a club. Sandel claims that failing to recognize the telos of sport, i.e., the fact that sport is designed to call for and celebrate certain talents worth admiring might result in neglecting the meaning of the outcome of the game and thus the degradation of the game into a mere spectacle. Indeed, as follows, the popularity and cultural importance of a game are related to the way in which the game tests some skills that might be appreciated (to illustrate this, we can compare, for example, a sack race and running). However, recognizing the telos of the game (S1) correctly by no means allows Sandel to identify tested and admired skills with natural skills only (S2). This is an additional presupposition that cannot be justified solely by analyzing the structure of the game. As viewed from Suits’ perspective, games consist of restrictions placed upon the means of achieving the prelusory goal. These restrictions might or might not involve using enhancing technologies, and this distinction is different from the distinction between valuable and shallow games. Additionally, Sandel’s minor mistake consists in implicitly suggesting a false dichotomy between a spectacle – a source of amusement, and (proper) sport – a subject of appreciation. But in the case of sport as observed by an educated fan, the source of amusement is exactly the subject of appreciation. This point has been clearly recognized by Suits: “All sports appear to be games of skill rather than games of chance. I suggest that the reason for this is that the main requirement in sports, for participants and spectators alike, is that the participants perform actions that must be admirable in some respect. The exercise of virtually any skill (…) will elicit some degree of admiration.”27 Contrary to Sandel, sport is therefore a kind of spectacle, and its telos need not be narrowed down only to manifestations of natural ability. However, despite my disagreement with Sandel’s conclusion, I would like to present an argument against enhancing technologies 27 Suits, “The Elements of Sport,” p. 15. The Brave New Athlete? 327 in sports, which is based, similarly to Sandel’s, on the belief that telos in sports does exist. 5 The meaning of perfection in sport As I attempted to show, reflection on sports consists of certain levels, where the principal ontological part impacts the other – ethical and mythological – parts. Researching the structure (logos) of sports, exposed mainly through Suits’ work, reveals an interesting dialectic of efficiency and inefficiency, perfection and imperfection, as well as the necessity to take into account certain distinctions relating to the goal of sport. While Sandel presents the quasi-theological argument against enhancement in sport, I propose a ludic-aesthetic perspective, which reveals not the unethicality, but rather the meaninglessness of human enhancement in sport. Rather than speaking of fair-play, I suggest focusing on the meaningful-play. Paradoxically, from this perspective, sport – a leading area in doping use (including gene doping) – is the last area in which such procedures would have any greater sense. Allowing the enhancement of the cognitive abilities of a scientist, a surgeon, or a plane pilot has reasonable grounds, as it can indicate a possibility of fulfilling a certain goal, appreciated in itself; a goal beyond the activity used to achieve it. But this kind of rationale is missing from activities of sporting nature (enhancing one’s predispositions to throw a javelin would have been reasonable in the Bronze Age). When the abilities of players and the speed of balls in table tennis became so perfect that an average spectator was not able to follow the game, new, slower balls were introduced, thus also reintroducing the spectacle aspect of the competition (if the average height of basketball players had reached 3 meters, the baskets would have been raised, too). Similar rule modifications are common, and their message is clear: the abilities tested in sports are involved in the making of a spectacle whose goal is not to generate perfection in the absolute sense. I will now consider the problem of the meaning of perfection in more detail. As Władysław Tatarkiewicz noted, the coexistence of these two concepts of perfection (precise and colloquial), raises the so-called paradox of perfection: “If the world were perfect it could not improve and thus would not possess ‘true perfection’ which depends on progress. And so ‘the world is perfect through its imperfection.’ ”28 Tatarkiewicz also points out a similar phenomenon in the domain of technology: in some cases, the imperfection in the structure of matter (e.g., irregularity 28 W. Tatarkiewicz, On Perfection (Warsaw: Warsaw University Press, Center of Universalism, 1992), p. 18. 328 Filip Kobiela in conductor crystals) contributes to the perfection of technology – thus, irregularity can be useful.29 A solution to this paradox might consist in indicating an equivocation: the confusion of two different concepts of perfection expressed by the same term. The concept of “perfection” is ambiguous: in the strict sense of the term it designates that which possesses all the virtues (perfectus = teleos = finished = flawless); in the loose (colloquial) sense it designates that which possesses virtue greater than the others.30 This distinction has its roots in Latin: perfectio involves no comparison (if something is perfect, it is such without comparison to other things), whereas excellentia is a distinction between many and implies comparison (it is thus a relative term; it designates which is the best, which is better than other things, which stands out among others).31 The paradox of excellence, which can thus be solved in relation to the world as a whole, can, however, prove to be a strong heuristic tool on a local level. I assert that this is exactly the situation in sports as perceived through Suits’ theory. Let us imagine the sterility of sprint, for instance, if all the participants of the race achieve identical results, equal to the limit of human potential. Their perfection would, at the same time, mark the end of this discipline. Sandel remarks in a similar manner: “A game in which genetically altered sluggers routinely hit home runs might be amusing for a time, but it would lack the human drama and complexity of baseball, in which even the greatest hitters fail more often than they succeed.”32 It is through this imperfection of the players that sport as a domain of culture bears its specific perfection. It should be noted that in so far as breaking records (where it is possible – so in a relatively narrow group of disciplines) does bring a type of progress, perfection of sport itself is not connected to it. Most memorable sport events are more or less evenly spread throughout the history of sport, and the development of enhancing technologies does not contribute, or contributes only to a minimal degree, to the development of sport itself, as seen in its ludic-aesthetic nature. In the same way that an authentic player maintains his lusory attitude, a mindful sports fan presents his spectator’s ludic attitude, analogously to an art viewer presenting his aesthetic attitude in his perception of art. The development of the proper attitude requires the spectator to be acquainted with the rules, as well as to have a more profound understanding of the essence of sport competitions. This understanding could be served by a practice of placing a forklift next to a barbell waiting to be lifted by an athlete – the situation would point 29 30 31 32 Tatarkiewicz, On Perfection, p. 21. Tatarkiewicz, On Perfection, p. 18. Tatarkiewicz, On Perfection, pp. 15–16. Sandel, The Case …, p. 36. The Brave New Athlete? 329 to the conventionality and theatricality of a sporting performance. Its function would not be the moderation of the athletes’ pride, but rather the dissipation of the fans’ tendency to treat sport too literally, thus misinterpreting the essence of a sport performance. Some known negative phenomena related to cheering and fan behavior result from attitudes foreign to the ludic approach (e.g., tribal). There is reason to fear that this naive manner of watching sport by literally interpreting the drama of pursuit of perfection, in conditions excluding the possibility of this perfection (constitutive rules), will become a force gradually pushing for the implementation of enhancing technologies into sports. However, whoever rejects this mythological, Promethean vision of sports will observe that “breeding” super-athletes is not so much an expression of a lack of gratitude, but rather of a lack of wisdom. However, Sandel is definitely on the right track when he observes that “there is something unsettling about the specter of genetically altered athletes lifting SUVs or hitting 650-foot home runs or running a three-minute mile.”33 We could also add – a significant fact within the aesthetic framework of sports – that it is rather kitschy, as has been aptly observed (within a broader context of bringing to life the idea of a superhuman) by Bronisław Łagowski.34 Treating athletes as superhumans is an incorrect way of interpreting sports, while striving to enhance athletes is a wrong direction in the development of sport itself. Both errors result from mistaking the specifics of perfection within the framework of sport. References Agler, D. W. Sandel on Bionic Athletes. http://www.davidagler.com/teaching/ philoftech/enhancement/Handout4_BionicAthletes.pdf(20 November 2015). Best, D. “Sport and Art.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1980, pp. 69–80. 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