Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Sport, rules and values -- Organization of the text -- Some central ideas for this text -- Hope for a philosophy of sport? -- A view of philosophy? -- The audience for this work -- PART I Rules in explaining sport -- 1 Definiteness and defining sport -- The issues -- Why define? -- A definition (of sport) is neither possible nor desirable -- Mistakenly thinking one has a definition -- Rule-following and definition -- The philosophical point (or lack of it) of definition -- What is in common? -- 2 Rule-following and formalism in sport -- Formalism: explaining sport in terms of rules? -- Criticisms: the adequacy of formalism? -- Some defence of formalism -- Constitutive and regulative uses of rules -- Some general considerations about rule-following -- Some implications for formalism -- An occasion-sensitive view of meaning and understanding -- Rule-following and understanding -- 3 Rule-following and rule-formulations -- Formalism extended: the idea of more kinds of rules -- Alternatives to formalism - the ethoi position -- Two versions of ethos account -- Ethos: a normative account -- Rules and the purposes of sport -- More fundamental criticisms -- Rules and rule-formulations -- 4 Practices and normativity in sport -- A view of practices -- Ethos, practice and normativity -- Customs and rules -- Conclusion to Part I -- PART II Rules in judging sport -- 5 Aesthetic sports, publicity and judgement calls -- Just about every call is a judgement call -- Two kinds of sports? -- What is subjectivity? -- Two bad arguments for the subjectivity of judgements -- Objectivity and options -- Aesthetic sports: the importance of judgement -- 6 Principles and the application of rules -- The need to apply the rules (even for purposive sports) -- Some cases? -- Principles and discretion.

A parallel: the moral reading of the American Constitution? -- 7 Spoiling, cheating and playing the game -- Spoiling - 'legal' cheating -- The spoiling example -- The issue of generality -- Finding the real rules? -- Some other cases -- Cheating and rule-following -- What is wrong with cheating? -- Why obey rules? -- Conclusion to Part II: the moral imperative is intrinsic -- PART III Rules in valuing sport -- 8 The project of a moral laboratory -- and particularism -- Sport's moral dimension? -- Explanations and qualifications -- The argument -- Investigation of the premises -- Particularism and moral judgement -- Thinking about the moral laboratory -- Problem: the moral nature of sport? -- Outcomes -- 9 The value of sport -- Reasons for participation in sport -- Normative and motivating reasons -- Normative reasons, rules and sport -- The persistence of value -- The remaking of value-formulations -- 10 Relativism, objectivity and truth -- The denial of the coherence of relativism -- The postmodern challenge: incredulity towards metanarratives -- Understanding and the concrete -- The postmodern challenge II: reason and science -- One sporting world? -- Conclusion: Sport, rules and philosophy -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Overall, this work exemplifies the dependence of philosophical considerations of sport on ideas from philosophy more generally. Thus it sketches, for example, the contrast between rules and principles, an account of the occasion-sensitivity of understanding, and the place of normative and motivating reasons within practical reasoning. The book's argumentative structures originate in the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein without explicitly being an exposition of those ideas. It views philosophy as addressing the specific issues of particular persons, rather than approaching perennial problems. The result is a distinctive and appealing conception both of sport and of its philosophical investigation.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.