On Sport and the Philosophy of Sport

Graham McFee is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Brighton University, UK, and is part of the Philosophy Department at California State University, Fullerton, USA. His research and lecturing interests include the aesthetics of dance and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. His publications include Sport, Rules and Values (2004), Ethics, Knowledge and Truth in Sport Research (2010) and The Philosophical Aesthetics of Dance (2011).

"McFee’s book is thought-provoking, interesting, and well argued... He has important insights and arguments that should be debated, and opposed, by sports philosophers in the near future. Otherwise philosophy of sport may be dead."—Gunnar Breivik, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, www.idrottsforum.org

• Introduction: The Structure of the Work; and of its Project Part 1: Elements for a Positive Account of Understanding Sport 1. Making sense of sport: a positive account 2. The place of ‘practices’ Part 2: Prospects for a Philosophy of Sport 3. Philosophical issues in respect of sport 4. Making sense of philosophy of sport 5. Why Symbolising Arguments Cannot Offer Rigour to the Philosophy of Sport: A Worked Example 6. Future prospects for the philosophy of sport: Epistemology and aesthetics? Part 3: Rational Reconstruction and History: An Olympic Case Study 7. Amateurism in De Coubertin’s Olympism Part 4: Rules, Decisions and Officiating Chapter 8. A framework for understanding officiating in purposive sports Chapter 9. Officiating in aesthetic sports Epilogue: Retrospective