Sport, Ethics and Philosophy

ISSN: 1751-1321 (Print) 1751-133X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsep20

Pursuit of Bodily Excellence: Paul Weisss Platonic

(Religious) Imagination of Sports
John Bentley White
To cite this article: John Bentley White (2013) Pursuit of Bodily Excellence: Paul Weisss
Platonic (Religious) Imagination of Sports, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 7:4, 391-411, DOI:
10.1080/17511321.2013.850529
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2013.850529

Published online: 23 Dec 2013.

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Date: 18 November 2016, At: 05:34

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2013

Vol. 7, No. 4, 391411, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2013.850529

PURSUIT OF BODILY EXCELLENCE: PAUL

WEISSS PLATONIC (RELIGIOUS)
IMAGINATION OF SPORTS
John Bentley White

Almost thirty years ago, Warren Fraleigh wrote that Paul Weisss intellectual contribution to the
philosophic study of sport was like a tributary, converging with others to eventuate in numerous
scholarly colloquia, a new academic society, new courses and curricula, articles and books. Paul
Weiss contends in Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry that sport is a pursuit of bodily excellence. Weiss
tells a story about bodily excellence; it is a bodily good that can be realized in the practice of
sport. His metaphysic and teleology provide the content and context for his philosophy of sport.
For him, sport bodies speak or give voice to a particular metaphysical tradition that I argue is
problematic. Weisss metaphysic and teleology swallow and sublate sportive bodies and the concomitant goods intrinsic to embodiment and the practice of sports. The net effect is dematerialization and depersonalization of bodily performances and personal identity, respectively. More
recently, Feezell and Dombrowski advance theses about sports with Weiss as their primary interlocutor, if not foil. What I put forth travels a different path than Dombrowski and Feezell in that
I plumb Weisss narrative arc, Platonic imagination and metaphysic, more extensively as it tells
a certain story about human embodiment, and thus, grounds his ideal of excellence.
KEYWORDS Weiss; Plato; metaphysic; bodily excellence; sports

In this article, I reconsider one of the first serious philosophical works by a trained
philosopher on modern sport in America. In 1969, Paul Weiss wrote Sport: A Philosophical
Inquiry, a philosophical examination of sport, a human activity that had received little to
no philosophical examination up to that point. Almost thirty years ago, Warren Fraleigh
called Paul Weisss intellectual contribution to the philosophic study of sport a tributary,
converging with others to eventuate in numerous scholarly colloquia, a new academic
society, new courses and curricula, articles and books (Fraleigh 1984, 37). More recently,
Feezell (2004) and Dombrowski (2009) both advance their theses about sports with Weiss
as their primary interlocutor, if not foil.
Weiss recognized sport as a universal occupation of men, but one that lacks a philosophical treatise devoted to it in the Western world of philosophy. Like Socrates, Weiss
sets out to examine the unexamined.1 Weiss makes it clear that his method begins with
stock concepts or principles from the discipline of philosophy (e.g. metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, ethics, etc.) that function as heuristic tools for analysing and speculating about sport. Although Weisss book deals specifically with sport, he believes that any

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JOHN BENTLEY WHITE

philosophic inquiry of a particular activity shares a family of concepts that are pertinent
to other fieldsindeed, to the whole of things and knowledge (Weiss 1969). Thus, his
treatise is not a philosophy of sport. That is, he is not trying to generate a philosophy
belonging exclusively to sport as his object of scrutiny, although he respects sport as a
unique phenomenon. In his view, it is a work in philosophy just as a philosophy of history
or a philosophy of art also is a work in philosophy and not in history or in art.2 As
Dombrowski notes, Weiss makes philosophical sense of sport by drawing primarily from
ancient Greek philosophers and their ideals, such as arete, sophrosyne, paidia, kalakogathia, askesis, eudaemonia, telos and dynamis.3 That being said, Weisss philosophy of sport
was a forerunner for many in sports ethics who claim that sport can be counted as one
among many elements in human flourishing and in a good life (Loland 2004, 116). This
teleological ethic judges the morality of an action based on whether it fulfils or realizes
certain idealsboth general and sport-specific values and norms4that fit the moral
development of a sport performer and community.
My primary objective in this article is to expound Weisss argument for sport as
the pursuit of bodily excellence (arete). What I put forth is different from Dombrowski
and Feezell in that I plumb Weisss narrative arc, Platonic imagination and metaphysic,
more extensively as it tells a certain story about embodiment, and thus, grounds his
ideal of excellence. In exegeting Weisss Platonic metaphysic, important anthropological
concerns are raised, fundamental to who we are and to our bodies in sports.

Paul Weiss: An Ethic for Excellence

Teleological Foundation for Sport: Aristotelian and Platonic Grammar
In his inquiry, the phenomenon of sport is almost a universal interest on the level of
fact, Weiss asks, Why are so many so deeply involved, so caught up emotionally in athletic
events?5 Weiss contends that, as an individual, the athlete in action (chapter 8) meaningfully carries out his role and tests his attributes of speed, endurance, strength, coordination, and accuracy with and against others because he is fundamentally concerned with
or attracted to excellence.6 Because others generally seek and appreciate this ideal, Weiss
claims this pursuit of excellence is a truth that will surely hold as long as men compete
with one another (Weiss 1969, 14). A good athlete is a man who fulfills excellently his
function per his role in a particular sport at a particular time. If we want to know what an
athlete is, according to Weiss, we must understand this concept in relation to a good athleteto become excellent in and through the use of a body (Weiss 1969, 36). Furthermore, as he pursues excellence, the athlete learns how he meets various tests, what it is
that perfection demands, and what man can bodily do and be (Weiss 1969, 142). For
Weiss, we humans appreciate the ideal of excellence as an end value because, It is what
ought to be (Weiss 1969, 3). He summarizes this attraction accordingly:
Excellence excites and awes. It pleases and it challenges. We are often delighted by
splendid specimens whether they be flowers, beasts or men. A superb performance
interests even more because it reveals to us the magnitude of what then can be done.
Illustrating perfection, it gives us a measure for whatever else we do. (Weiss 1969, 3)

Thus, we see that Weisss philosophical starting point is an ethic of excellence.

PURSUIT OF BODILY EXCELLENCE

Weiss discerns, using his Aristotelian teleology, that there is a certain ordering
among a diversity of things, such as flowers, beasts and humans.7 He observes these
indications of order as instances of excellence that we as rational creatures are able
to appreciate.8 This ordering is natural, for there is a point to their movement; it is in
this world that we observe this ordering-to-flourish (ODonovan 1994, 3152). I initially
interpret this common ordering as something Weiss believes to be inherent in the
very nature of things. Weisss approach implicitly draws from Aristotles final cause,
and when Aristotles final cause is applied to sport, young men as athletes compete
for the sake of bodily excellence. Since they undertake sport for the sake of this end,
bodily excellencea mastery of the bodyis what young men are striving for. Bodily
excellence justifies sport, and it is a necessary condition for self-completion. This is
Aristotles telic principle for this cultural activity (Aristotle 1992). It is important to
note that this end is given metaphysical priority. Sport, like other things, has purpose,
and this purpose is not arbitrarily set up, for it appears that Weisss metaphysic (the
nature of a thing) directs this end. Weiss gives due consideration to the object that
young men desire in sport (bodily excellence) and that he deems as good because it
functions as a referent for other and future performances. Equally, excellence is the
end because it is the terminus of a sportive performance. Here, Weiss treats ethics as
a correlate of metaphysics, which means that purpose (telos) is a basis for values, or
how we ought to act.
For Weiss, however, this ordering is not merely a horizontal ordering. Rather, he
argues for some aspect of vertical ordering, presumably to depict a fuller teleology. That
is, excellence is ordered to some higher value. This teleology can be interpreted as Platonic because sportive excellence is ordered to an eternal value. With an Aristotelian teleology, we focus purely on natural ordering; therefore, questions about transcendence lie
outside his immanent teleology (ODonovan 1994, 34). However, Weiss includes a Platonic cosmology to complete his axiology of sport. He asserts that all men illustrate cosmic truths, and it is when we identify with such ideals as truth, beauty, and goodness
that we participate in and become acquainted with the eternal (Weiss 1969, 247). Weiss
believes it is through athletes bodies by means of excellent kinds of performances that
they incarnate or instantiate the eternality of the laws that govern the operation of their
bodies (Weiss 1969, 247). Here, Weiss grounds values in a transcendent referent on which
the meaning of humankind and excellence depend; these ideals obligate us to pursue
excellence. It is when athletes excel, just as it is for artists, thinkers, or religious people,
that athletes epitomize and articulate for all a true representation of humankind (Weiss
1969, 16). Weisss Platonism has him describe the athlete in action as one who should
exemplify the corresponding form of excellence even if it is partial and distorted. Sport
has value in so far as it resembles or participates in the Form of excellence.
Although I believe Weisss anthropology has him envisage sport as a school or
practice for reaching those excellences that complete the athlete, the issue becomes
how his view of humanity comports with his teleology and Platonic presuppositions
once it is more critically interpreted. Weiss is driven by a Platonic imagination, he does
not appear always to derive his ideas directly from Plato but it is clear that he drinks
from this fount. I now turn to exposit this and to raise my objections.

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Platonic Participation and Ascent

Certainly, on a first, charitable reading, Weisss theory of sport commends a
(more) holistic understanding of excellence in that he incorporates bodily goods into
his structure of excellence. Excellence applies to things that actualize their potency.9
Because of Weisss indebtedness to ancient Greece, excellence (arete) for humans is not
only an intellectual and moral matter, but also an ideal that can be applied to all of
life.10 Weiss inspires the reader to see how a transcendent good encounters athletes
embodied actions so that the Eternal or Excellent Form moves down into the performances of athletes as an incarnation, even though this goodness is a lower, contingent
instance. This encounter according to Weiss is meaningful for he indicates that
excellence transformatively enriches the athlete (Weiss 1969, 248).
Yet at the end of chapter two when Weiss concludes that athletes strive to
complete themselves, he explicates his doctrine of being, claiming that each person is
imperfect and incomplete.11 What does he mean? What is the importance of this doctrine of being in relation to his theory of sport? Is he separating goodness (excellence)
from existence itself? If so, is existence something that must be proven or achieved in
order to identify a thing with the fullness of being?
As noted earlier, Weiss infers from metaphysical and anthropological reflection that
each reality has an internal horizontal relationship to other particular realities and that
humankind should not confuse its reality with other realities.12 In their ordering alongside each other, some realities are alien, congenial, useful, and injurious (Weiss 1969, 34).
I understand him to mean that humankind as a reality relates and is ordered to other
realities in a variety of ways, whether they be generic, teleological, or contingent
(ODonovan 1994, 3138). In his estimation, we are conscious of these other beings, and
our ability to transcend time, space, and individuality enables us to identify roles and differences that each reality has with the others. Further, this ordering among the particulars leads him to conclude that, because mankind is distinct and independent, humanity
is only part of the whole of reality (Weiss 1969, 3435). Weisss actualities share a common, ordered universe based on an order of kind and end. His cosmos is an interrelated
dynamic whole that is intelligible (Kuntz 1995, 117, 129). However, following the Platonic distinction outlined above, if man as a part of the whole is incomplete, then to be
fully real, Weiss claims that man must lack nothing; he and they must therefore be one.
Though imprecise, Weisss language bears ontological implications.
If I interpret him correctly, then being itself, according to the nature of a thing, is
insufficient; therefore, the thing is incomplete in its existence. So for Weiss, in order to
alter this condition of our existence, we must strive toward unity with other beings. By
virtue of its incompleteness, existence is not necessarily good. Therefore, because of his
causal efficacy, the athlete must perform acts that complete herthat make her good
in the sense of her existence. Let us examine my understanding of Weiss in more detail
on what I believe is critical to his notion of excellence.
Weiss metaphysical reflection states that, when we observe our world, we see
that it is impure and corrupt.13 For him, this is the way things are. Corruption inheres in
an actuality. In my interpretation, Weiss never accounts for why this corruption exists.
What is wrong with this world? Corruption or evil is a given; it has positive existence. It
is located in actualities themselves indicated by the reality that they lack something in
their being. This lack (in their being) is only overcome as they participate in finalities en

PURSUIT OF BODILY EXCELLENCE

route to self-completion. Weisss universe depends on limited defective goods (Weiss

1967, 243248). Wherever there is finitude, there is evil or corruption. Though Weiss
apparently contradicts himself at places,14 he unyieldingly concludes that, Evil is ontologically necessary (Weiss 1967, 247).
In Sport, it is the existence of ideals like excellence that constitutes a higher degree
of reality. The same ideals necessitate a corrective to cure the problem and the fact that
particular things live in and under the remorseless flux of time (Weiss 1969, 248). Because
we as humans are situated in a world of restless change, we must be awakened to this
hierarchy by living virtuously in sport and life in order to enhance such permanent values.
These values lift us out to what is objective, permanent, and true (Weiss 1969, 248). This
dualism is redolent of Platos cosmos in which the Forms are real, and sensible things are
only semi-real. Dualism implies that our finitude is itself a lack of good. Because Weisss
philosophical narrative rejects an original creation, ex nihilo (Kuntz 1995, 118), and a
human fall from grace, Weiss seems to assume the Greek conception that corruption and
disorder are intrinsic to the material world rather than other social imaginaries, namely
theism (e.g. Christianity, Judaism and Islam) in which evil is the result of human rebellion.
If this world is impure and corrupt, then my interpretation of Weiss seems plausible both
to account for what he explicitly declares and to make sense of his own gaps. This lack of
good is a corruption, and therefore to be is it to be incomplete.15 According to Weiss, to
be is convertible with an incomplete actuality (Reck 1995, 141142). Furthermore, he
elsewhere insists that, when we compare ourselves to God in the scale of being, we stand
guilty and unable to measure up in the presence of the Good.16 Human beings are guilty
by virtue of existing. Our finitude is a fault that positions humans as guilty before God.
Because we are finite, guilt is required by the nature of our being.
I would argue that, when suspended from his Platonic metaphysic, Weisss notion
of excellence commits his athlete in action to seek escape from this transient world
through bodily performances. These bodily performances, as they participate in excellence, are a ladder-like (ascetic) ascent to the ideal. If Platos ideal man, the philosopher-king, sought philosophical salvation, then Weisss ideal athlete seeks athletic
salvation. For the Platonic vision, the spatial metaphor of a climb toward another world
or ascent beyond this world figures predominantly.17 The nature of my argument pieces
together a number of reasons that I believe my hypothesis best explains.

Turn from and Turn to the Sportive Ideal

Weiss claims that, like others, athletes turn from the world of common sense and
its practical demands to try to come to grips with distinct finalities.18 Initially, this metaphor seems to advocate one of the chief characteristics of sport as play or games, that is,
which play is a free activity that stands outside ordinary life and yet is permeated with
both seriousness and non-seriousness. Johann Huizinga, for example, refers to play as
both an absolute and peculiar order (Huizinga 1955, 29). Thus, an athlete turns in the
sense of stepping out of real life. Every sport or game has its own distinctive order, time,
space, and dynamics that are unique to its function.19 The sport world is separate from
the ordinary world. However, even if Weiss intends to respect the structure of play, which
is odd in light of his overall stance toward play, he includes other men (e.g. ethicist, artist,

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scholar, religious believer) in the turn from this world to the ultimate and everlasting.20
He includes these other roles as examples because they, like his athlete, seek to break free
from the ordinary world in order to contemplate and attain the eternal possibilities of
truth, beauty and goodness (Weiss 1969, 247). Weiss makes the point that this metaphor
communicates something about the structure of reality. The practical demands originate
in this material world, and Weiss aims for the world beyond, over this world, because the
material world depends on the everlasting. Even if sport at its very best functions as a Platonic microcosm of the ideal realm, it is still embedded in a transient, material world.
Since the goal is to ascend to a higher reality, these other roles like Weisss athlete are
part of a vital struggle to produce a result and obtain an ideal that links them to the ultimate.21 Weiss states, The more a man cuts himself off from the world around him, in
order to identify himself with what is ultimately real, the more he opens himself up to the
presence of Actuality (Weiss 1969, 244). When this identification occurs, the athlete
identifies himself with what is ultimately real, facing and opening himself to Actuality. He
is caught up and almost swallowed in the role of ideal athlete (Weiss 1969, 247). Platos
ideal man becomes the ideal athlete (Weiss 1969). For Weiss, this identification becomes
the common referent that excellence in this world corresponds to in the Platonic
supra-sensible realm. And it is in this realm where ideals and truths of logic are true
forever outside the corrosive grip of time (Weiss 1969, 247).
Like Plato (1997),22 Weiss conceives the doctrine of participation (methexis) as a
means of making sense of the one and many; it unifies particular things because they
have reality by virtue of something they presently share with Actuality. Actuality is that
finality as an ultimate being that everything is oriented to and that related particulars
equally participate in (Weiss 1969, 244). For athletes, this oneness culminates when they
have learned properly to deal with other realities so they can accept and become one
with their bodies (Weiss 1969, 244). If athletes must become one with everything so that
they lack nothing, then they become excellent or good when informed by Actuality, a
transcendent reality. In Philosophy in Process, Weiss prepared the way for his metaphysics
in Sport: The excellence of Actuality is mediated by the athlete in his dedication or selfsacrifice. He in effect is saying to all men we are (Weiss 1971, 308). This transcendent
reality means, furthermore, that an athlete participates in that which is in fact and forever the case as he becomes one with his body, a habit of dedication, because he refers
or points to Actuality (Weiss 1969, 244). It is the mode of being that sustains such contingent resemblances of excellence. That means, that contingent reality only mirrors and
simply reflects excellence rather than excellence belonging to this-worldly reality as a
quality possessed by humans. In summary, actuality functions as a platonic form in
which athletes and others participate as they strive to exhibit excellence.
Some might object that this reading of Weiss is a stretch and thus, it commits
him to some kind of religious philosophy of sport. However, this analysis of Weiss is not
forced since it actually follows the data. Weiss regularly argues by using religious analogies to illumine the world of the athlete. He witnesses similarities and dissimilarities
between these two modes of being-in-this-world. In fact, I argue below that Weiss
employs an ascent metaphor, which is commonplace in certain religious traditions that
assume an objective, transcendent referent that embodied activities serve. In chapter
ten, Weiss even invokes the language of ceremony to depict the almost sacred space of
games, for games, like religious ceremonies, are bounded events framed in formality
and solemnity. Moreover, Weiss reclaims this religious import for his own metaphysic:

PURSUIT OF BODILY EXCELLENCE

An athlete once was, and still can be, treated as a sacred being who embodies something of the divine in him. He is credited with the dignity of embodying a supreme
value (Weiss 1969, 153). He goes on to say that this value, as expressed in bodily excellence, qualifies a more remote reality. Of course, Weiss admits that today these ceremonies are secular even though the athletes themselves carry this divine value. Finally,
Kuntz, drawing from Weisss other works, claims that Weisss metaphysic is religious
because his athlete opens himself up and relates to superior being (Weiss 19551960,
709; Kuntz 1976, 172). He concludes that Weisss religious philosophy of sport is consistent with French Catholicism in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

The Eternal over against the Temporal

Weiss equates the mathematician with the athlete because they both are
acquainted with the eternal in many ways (Weiss 1969, 247). Toward the end of his
Metaphysical Excursus, his final chapter in Sport, Weiss references mathematics as part
of the intelligible realm that the mathematician accesses through contemplation. This
reality abides forever because it is above the world that decays and passes away. In the
Republic book VII (525527c), Plato emphasizes mathematics educational value because
it turns the soul around, away from becoming and towards truth and being (525c).
Math is an exemplar of the world of the Forms. If math allows us to acknowledge Forms,
then in a like manner, so do athletes when they act (Weiss 1969, 247). Why this equation? I believe the most plausible explanation comes from Weisss stance that only those
who identify themselves with eternality receive benefits. As theoretical man, the mathematician attains the eternality of the laws that govern math when she contemplates, and
as practical man, the athlete attains this same eternality when she seeks to achieve excellence with maximum effect by making her body her servant in her sport (Weiss 1969,
243, 247). According to Plato, genuine knowledge occurs when we focus on the Forms
because they are unchanging and eternal. Similarly, Weisss athlete sees her acts become
eternalized when her bodily attends to and unites herself with ideals such as excellence.
Excellence removes the athlete from the world of becoming and lifts her to the realm of
being that always is and never becomes. Weiss states that this eternalizing applies to
those individuals who get taken up and almost absorbed in the role of ideal athlete
(Weiss 1969, 247248). This state of affairs, like the truth value of a proposition, remains
true, according to Weiss, even if others differ or lack the realization to agree with this
truth.
If I am correctly discerning how Weiss, similar to Plato, privileges the invisible and
eternal over the visible and temporal, then his ascent aims at an ontological union that
overcomes the vicissitudes of life and escapes the flux of the sensible worlda strange
world indeed for Weiss. Weiss himself corroborates this idea:
When we attend to any truth we remove ourselves from the transient world, becoming
one with eternity. The athlete, in his commitment, vivifies this fact. He not only represents all mankindas we all dowhen he judges and knows; he represents it in his
effort to achieve a maximal result in his sport. The world of sport intensifies the meanings
which any man in the course of his life inevitably expresses in his judgments and decisions. The athlete is sport incarnated, sport instantiated, sport located for the moment,
and by that fact is man himself, incarnated, instantiated, and located. (Weiss 1969, 248)

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Immortality and Records: Participation in the Eternal

Because of his Platonic participation thesis, Weiss explicitly contends that participating in what is eternal eventuates in immortality. Without rehearsing Platos arguments for
immortality from Phaedo (which is unnecessary because he simply assumes immortality),
Weiss references immortality as an index for what bodily excellence attains even if modernity distrusts such notions. Indeed, many athletes fail to illustrate the kinds of performances that illustrate eternity (Weiss 1969, 248). Furthermore, Weiss admits that,
although athletic bodies decay and eventually cease to exist, there is something that survives death. According to Weiss, when the athlete incarnates those enduring laws pertaining to the body (though as an individual he passes away), he has made himself into a
place where those laws for the moment are (Weiss 1969, 247). At the moment the athlete
embodies an ideal of truth, goodness, and beauty, he abides forever (in the loosest sense
pertaining to personal identity)or more precisely, his performance as it participates in
the realm of ideas continues in the eternal hall of fame. The latter point is important
because Weiss says that individuality is irrelevant that personal identity in fact passes
away, but that the bodily performance is identified with the role of the ideal athlete.
Watson advances the thesis that Weisss discussion of immortality is consistent with
his logic and conception of excellence (Watson 1983, 3745). That is, because of mankinds
essential human disposition, the value of excellence attracts men like a magnet, and this
attraction moves the athlete to strive for maximal performances that resemble the good
and achieve some form of immortality in a more permanent, ultimate, or ideal realty
(Watson 1983, 41). Furthermore, Watson infers from Weiss that what follows from this concern for excellence is the quest for records (Watson 1983, 41). The quest for records completely expresses the concern for excellence in that records offer the possibility for
transcendence and immortality. In his trenchant analysis of modern sport, Guttmann distinguishes records as a major characteristic differentiating Greek athletics from modern
sport (Guttmann 1978, 5455). That being said, Guttmann concludes that, in spite of these
differences, the very setting of records has become a uniquely modern form of immortality (Guttmann 1978, 55). Though records themselves are imperfect indicators of achievement for a variety of reasons that Weiss puts forth (Weiss 1969, 1415; cf. Weiss 1973, 11
23). Weiss asserts that, the ultimate object of all athletic records is to set down the best
results that men have brought about, severally and together, in public matches under
well-established conditions, governed by rules and competent judges (Weiss 1973, 12
13). Thanks to Watson, I believe that Weiss emphasizes the quest for records because he is
committed to the Platonic prime value of excellence. If excellence underlies the reach for
immortality, then the dynamism of these two together grounds the quest for records in
Weisss inquiry of sport. Spencer Wertz avows that Weiss, Novak, and Keating all depend
on this quest for superiority and eminence because it was and is still a goal that has dominated Western man, beginning with the Greek ideal in sport (Wertz 1991, 8889). He
quotes Keating, who says that maximal effort is the chief value of sport, which this quest
abides in its power to communicate and employ the athletes true potential. For Wertz,
this plainly speaks of transcendence. Though records may not have been a distinguishing
characteristic of sport in ancient Greece, ancient and modern sports both find significant
continuity in Weiss with his dual emphasis on excellence and immortality.
An important implication of the eternal over against the temporary is that Weisss
Platonism entails an oppositional binary between the eternal and earthly, the immaterial

PURSUIT OF BODILY EXCELLENCE

and material. Essentially, Weisss opposition makes the sportive contest as much about
the eternal vs. the earthly as the immaterial or spiritual vs. the physical or body.
Because his prose narrates a kind of Platonic dualism, his athletes reach to participate
in the Forms, denigrating the value of our physicality, and hence, this mode of cultural
life linked to the human body.23 Or, a more venerable interpretation, if we follow Platos
allegory of the cave, is that sports are, at their best, a shadow. When the eternal is set
against our bodies, the implication is that the two are inimical to each other and that
by nature they constitute an essential nisus. Since this appears to be a radical problem
and struggle for Weiss, then Weisss solution is more than the correction or alteration of
what the body demands and challenges but the destruction of the body itself. Historically, I believe Nietzsches contempt for such examples of idealism is tonic in that he
castigates this metaphysical tradition as not merely a negative stance toward life, but
its life-denying thesis eschews our world of bodies, seeking escape in another world
and thus, doing away with the body (Nietzsche 1998, 18).

Heroic Ideals: Attracted to Self-completeness

Weisss aretaic scheme further suggests an implicit, if not direct, relationship
between excellence and the heroic, with his heroic hypothesis being mainly concerned
with young men. Weiss focuses on young men who are attracted to athletics because
it offers them the most promising means for becoming excellent (Weiss 1969, 17). That
is, these young men are poised at this time in their lives to succeed more at sport
rather than in other, more profound, ways.24 Young men readily occupy themselves
with this pursuit of excellence because it is easier to master their bodies, distinguish,
and fulfill themselves by pursuing sport at this stage of their development than by pursuing other means of achieving excellence.25 In other words, this practice commends
itself to the nature of young menstriving is warranted by their own emotional makeup, capacities, and abilitiesbetter than other practices (i.e. piety, wisdom, success in
business, etc.), which demand more maturity than they are yet capable of in their pursuit and performance of excellence. Without contesting his thesis about young men
(with which I admittedly disagree), I want to focus on this link with the hero.26
Once again, Weiss plainly believes that the pursuit of excellence is the attraction
of athletics, and though not everyone experiences it, sport exhibits what man at his
best can do (Weiss 1969, 21). The focus is on those bodily acts and performances that
indicate excellence. What is admired is that this feat visibly communicates a mastery of
or oneness with the bodya bodily good. However, Weiss unapologetically holds that
when these ideals are realized in sport, they put the athlete over and against the rest
of men. Mankind looks on him [the athlete] somewhat the way it looks on glamorous
women, the worldly successful, and the hero (Weiss 1969, 85).
Why does Weiss conceptually connect excellence with hero? Because athletes experience this kind of flourishing, self-completeness, their set apartness becomes a true representation of the ideal man in harmony with his body. Their excellence exhibits a power
that we recognize and confer on others at the far end of human promise; the promises
are the noble ideals realized through an effective use of the body (Weiss 1969, 85). Weiss
focuses on heroism as greatness. He considers bodily greatness to be most about young
men and their individual achievements, which link them to transcendent ideals. However,

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contrary to Weisss opinion, greatness is not merely a bodily good, nor is it the concept of
a hero separate from the moral category. To be sure, Weiss would not disagree about
moral excellence, but as Dombrowski perceptively recognizes, Weiss borders on resigning the young athlete merely to the kalos half of the more complete Greek ideal of kalokagathia, to physical excellence without the intellectual, to kalos without agathos
(Dombrowski 2009, 50). I believe Weisss presentation of the hero supports this primary
focus on physical excellence, especially since he includes the athlete in a category with
other occupations where bodily goods and actions are inordinately prized as the qualities
favoured and honoured by the public. What about athletes who stop to help a fallen
opponent even if it might prevent them from achieving bodily excellence? If Weiss keeps
moral and intellectual excellences in the shadows, then he undervalues these other traits,
because they equally contribute to the qualities that make heroes. Firefighters, teachers,
and police officers might not receive the adulation that athletes do, not because they are
any less heroic, but because of the ambiguity surrounding our conception of what a hero
is. Weiss so believes in excellence embodied in athletics that when he later contrasts the
hero in war to the hero in sports, he reiterates that the desire in sport is for the hero
something athletes strive forbecause the nature of the game arouses, promotes, and
sustains those very virtues that contribute to the making of a hero (Weiss 1969, 182). How
does the contest itself promote the hero?
Though Weiss clearly suspends any strong association between sport and warfare
(which in antiquity warfare instrumentalized sports), it nevertheless makes sense for
Weiss to ally arete with honour as was done for the classical hero because sport is a
medium of self-fulfilment. Jernej Pisk highlights that contests gave classical heroes an
opportunity to demonstrate arete, which strengthened their role in a society (Pisk 2006,
6672); where the goal was to gain public honour and to avoid shame. The love of victory (philonikia) spurred these athletes on because successful achievement offered them
the glory of immortality, to be forever remembered. Victory proved who was better
than the other and therefore deserving of praise. At first, this quest for immortality may
seem to be something limited to Homers symbolic world since Homer fashioned this
ethic of glory with the legendary and heroic tales of Achilles; however, Plato has Socrates relate this same ethic in his Symposium (208c208e):
Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;think only of the ambition of men, and you will
wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by
the passionate love of fame. They are ready to run all risks, even greater than they
would run for their children, and to pour out money and undergo any sort of toil, and
even to die, if so they leave an everlasting name. Do you imagine that Alcestis would
have died to save Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in
order to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the memory
of their virtues, which still survives among us, would be immortal? Nay, she said, I am
persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the more they do them,
in hope of the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal.

If competition was the test and vehicle for arete, or what Spivey refers to as the
agonistic ideal of life,27 then it was the drive for manly excellence that victory exemplified and immortality glorified. Obviously, one should not confuse the Greek orientation
to the value of agon and heroism with ours today. As Miller points out the standards

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for what a hero was in ancient Greece differ from those that might be applied in the
twenty-first century.28 Yet, even if Weisss distinctions are determined more by values of
Western civilization, it stands that Weiss operates from the assumption that young men
accept such values because to do so is central to their motivation, and therefore it is
part of Weisss heroic program. He maintains that what the Greeks practiced in their
zealous desire to win because of the disgrace of losing and the rewards for winning,
we perform in a muted form (Weiss 1969, 175176).
Weiss organizes the role and place of goods such as honour according to the
logic of dedication, his chief mark of athletic excellence. He states,
As a rule, we take it for granted that young men will accept the prospects of honor,
power, self-esteem, good opinion, and the like. We, therefore, offer these prospects to
them at times when there are no competing attractions, in the hope that they will
make those prospects the focused objects of their desires. And we try to redesign the
young men, to habituate them, and to train them so that when they are faced with
those objects of desire they will produce only those relevant acts we think they should
engage in. (Weiss 1969, 59)

He goes on to say that, if his thesis is correct regarding why men engage in
sportwhich is because it offers a means by which they can realize excellence in and
through the bodythen:
one must appeal to more obvious rewards if one is to keep their minds fixed on sport.
The dedication must be kept alive, or be regularly renewed, by making men aware, in
the guise of models and tales of glory, of the nobility of the enterprise they have
embraced. Otherwise they will risk being tempted by crasser goods. (Weiss 1969, 67)

Compared with the heroic society of classical Greece, Weisss athletes at least are more
socially mobile to realize such excellent ends. Therefore, many receive the opportunity
to obtain benefits from external rewards, which, according to Weiss, the coach utilizes
to help tutor the athlete. For Weiss, the practice of sport is attracted to excellence,
while at the same time, this pursuit of excellence is animated by the rewards and outcomes of winning. He claims that true athletes must give themselves to obtaining maximum results, constantly trying, striving, and wanting to win. I commend Weiss for his
focus on excellence. However, as philosopher Raymond Belliotti argues, Weisss overexposure to the image of the great transcender causes him to miss the entire deep truth
concerning the nature of being human and the practice of sport.29 His idealism leads
him to push for better and better, constantly striving, without experiencing a sense of
contentedness with ones efforts because there is always another opportunity to
improve. Excellence attained beckons the athlete to the possibility of better performances. Because athletic excellence is for young men, these athletes have an even
shorter span to achieve sportive excellence, creating anxiety which in turn negates
goods like peace and respite in sport. Weiss indeed hones in on the individual athlete
because the goal is to realize humankinds excellence in the abstract. Contesting with
others, however, is bound to a social context, which according to Belliotti means that
athletes should relish their interdependence with others and appreciate how
self-identity is linked to social contexts (Belliotti 2008, 16).

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If Weisss teleology, as Bellioti points out, disembeds the athlete from her relationships in and to this cosmos, this implies that his athletes aspirations for excellence do
not strengthen ties or connections to her physicality and socialitythe reality of the
immanent. Instead, they challenge any enchantment with relationships to this world,
more specifically, to the created, fictive world of sports. Consequently, Weisss teleology
not only devalues the body in general it renders the athletic body as merely supplemental to his whole project. Immanencethe locus of the bodyis rejected in favour of his
participation theory or Platonic methexis which pursues transcendence sans the need of
materiality ultimately. Since he does away with the body, the body and its lived experience are only instrumentally good. The human player and sports as a practice are evacuated of any intrinsic goodness, since Weisss notion of ideality is not located in
physicality. Thus, the dignity of material existence is not upheld.
At first pass, this conclusion may sound contradictory for Weiss, who, as argued
above, articulates a religious form of transcendence, which arguably brings re-enchantment to this world by affirming the integrity of this world as argued by the Radical
Orthodoxy movement (Milbank, Pickstock, and Ward 1999); however, Weisss ontology
dispossesses the immanent of its integrity; his other-worldliness dissipates embodiment
and the whole of the reality of the immanent. Thus, Weisss notion of transcendence
unlike that described by Charles Taylor, in Modern Social Imaginary,30 does not reenchant this world since his idea of transcendence ultimately cuts his athletes off from
this world. Weisss transcendence constitutes a great divide between this world and the
next which forms a radical sacred-secular dichotomy, estranging sports and other forms
of culture from their worldly energy and life. In Weisss Platonic imagination athletes are
disembedded and alienated from their relationship with this world.31 Once more, Nietzsches acerbic criticism of idealism applies, which for him was directed towards Platonism and Christianity. Zarathustra, Nietzsches literary mouthpiece, speaks to Weisss
problem for he fails to be loyal or true to the earth (Nietzsche 2006, 6), and, consequently, Weisss athletes lack genuine joy, an implication of Platonic asceticism, about
their performances in the here and now. How can Weisss athletes find joy? when his
(religious) teleology and metaphysic contracts or etiolates the intrinsic goods of this
autotelic embodied activity. That is, Weisss Platonic narrative has them shun the earth
and their embodiment, for in the end all that is achieved and shared on this earth as
material beings in sports is utilitarian and eventually annihilated. His gaze of the eternal
does not have humans return to the earth with the vigour and energy of Carpe Diem
but to bypass and despise it in favour of another world. Following Nietzches rebuke,
Weisss instrumental and teleological language does not permit freedom and spontaneity, internal to this practice, because his explanations lean exceedingly on outcomes,32
that is, sports for bodily excellence, rewards, heroic ideals, triumph of the eternal,
immortality, etc. In short, as Feezell and Dombrowski claim, goods such as enjoyment
of play itself are overlooked, if not lost, by Weisss idealism.33
As it turns out, however, Weisss problem with play stems less from his not understanding sport as an insider (contra Feezell), and more about his Platonic metaphysic
and teleology, which points away from and against the goodness of embodiment.34
Weisss dualism splits the lived experience of sports into two worlds with the invisible triumphing over the visible instead of the possibility that the two worlds interpenetratea
co-inherence, or a metaphysics of the body, according to Graham Wardwhich points
to the necessary cohabitation of the material and the metaphysical.35

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Detachment: Mystical Ascent

Paul Kuntz correctly claims that Weiss assumes some kind of chain of beings with
humankind at the apex of all that is finite, not because the Lord made humans a little
lower than the heavenly beings, but because they possesses certain powers (Kuntz
1995, 125; see Weiss 1969, 40). Humanitys rational and moral powers enable them to
aspire to a higher state of being [to] move upward a movement into those finalities (Kuntz 1995, 125). This helps to elucidate the background beliefs that organize
Weisss metaphysic and ethic. Moreover, Weiss compares this ascent to what the yogi
seeks, as articulated in the Bhagavad-Gita. Similar to the yogi, athletes as people of
action detach themselves from the mundane.
If the yogis path to union with ultimate reality functions as an example for how
an athlete comes to experience distinct finalities, then the athletes path must be accompanied by a detachment from the fruits of his sportive action, an indifference to any
action (Weiss 1969, 245). The yogi turns away from contingencies in order to dwell on
the everlasting, while the athlete pushes past the dynamics of sport to create another
domain with its own beginning, ending, process and laws (Weiss 1969, 244245, 1971,
398399). Within this account, I see Weiss describing transcendence in two senses. The
first sense is a harbinger to how sport psychologists today conceptualize athletes peak
experiences, or being in the zone. Consistent with this sense, Weiss claims that what he
[the athlete] is and what he does is for the moment thereby severed from the rest of the
world (Weiss 1969, 245). During a game, boundaries like time appear to be manipulated
and transcended with a contests peculiar time outs, stops and finishes. It is in these
moments that athletes often describe experiences where they transcend the conventions
of this world, losing a sense of time, self, others, etc. Whether these psychological states
are identical to religious and mystical experiences is beyond the scope of this paper.
Nevertheless, the nature of transcendence in the second sense concerns the structures
of reality. This is what is most important for Weiss and his Platonic metaphysic.
The key, both for Weisss yogi example and Platonic ascent, is to transcend the
world of experience, which in some way lacks the fullness of reality. Furthermore, according to Weiss, we transcend our finitude because there is something inherently wrong with
it. Weiss stops short of the Vedantic Hinduism proposition that the transitory does not
possess genuine reality; however, the fact stands that for Weiss, humans are intrinsically
incomplete. With his mystic tendencies and Platonic striving, Weiss clearly moves the athlete toward liberation through the body. That is why he seeks a separation from this
world, which, once attained, repairs this lack or privation in actuality (Weiss 1969, 245).
Weiss views this striving as an effort that secures, even if short-lived, a public result that
facilitates self-sufficiency (Weiss 1969, 245). In Weisss eudaimonistic vision, the athletes
sportive actions produce a good (excellence) that brings about happiness, even if temporary. Thus, excellence as a result of athletic action is a limited version of an ultimate
finality, a thought that seems not to bother Weiss since it identifies her with what lasts
forever. Moreover, Weiss believes this sportive performance (as a production) brings
forth a condition in the athlete herself, namely self-sufficiency.
Self-sufficiency is a leitmotif in ancient ethics. Julia Annas, for example, points out
that self-sufficiency (autarkeia) was a main concern in Aristotle (Annas 1993, 3446). (She
recounts autoarkeia in Aristotle as a condition of a final end.) In arguing that self-sufficiency, coupled with the ascent motif, was a dominant theme in the Platonist tradition,

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Martha Nussbaum shows how it was a background belief for Augustine. As the self-sufficient person contemplates the good as she moves through different stages towards the
top of the Platonic ladder, the self is free from neediness (Nussbaum 2003, 531535). The
progression is to wean the person from earthly loves and temporal attachments so that
her affections are transferred to the eternal, where she finds complete fulfilment and satisfaction. Similarly, Weiss with his Platonic metaphysic, includes self-sufficiency as a condition of the athletes telos, an aspect of human freedom, in that the athlete masters herself
(Weiss 1971, 514519), freeing herself from ordinary life so she can invest completely in
the game and nothing else (Weiss 1969, 245). For Weiss, it is when the athlete is completely absorbed in the game while pursuing bodily excellence that she removes herself
from the temporal and identifies with and inhabits eternity (Weiss 1969, 248).
Assuming the connection between self-sufficiency and ancient ethics I have laid
out is correct,36 Weisss selection of this concept is important because it carries forward
this metaphor of ascent. Self-sufficiency describes the end goal of bodily excellence and
the athletic life. Like Platos just individual, the self-sufficient athlete has dedicated and
disciplined himself so that his self-mastery, a cardinal virtue, allows him to participate in
the immutable, which alone is ultimately real. Thus, the self-sufficient athlete is the
self-complete athlete. For Weiss, then, the two are interchangeable, and the athlete
attains eudaimonia by his or her own efforts.

Conclusion
Weisss philosophic inquiry of sport presupposes dualism which, because of this
great transcender type, results in dematerialization and depersonalization. As I argue,
his Platonic ascent metaphor keeps the itinerant athlete struggling against earthly,
material life by participating in and persistently moving towards the ideal, since the
eternal is hostile to the physical. Thus, at best, sport echoes more essential realities, at
worst; it is an ascetic practice to mortify the human body. This metaphysical tradition
as construed by Weiss concludes that, because of the evil and evanescence of this
material world, dematerialization is the effect of this transformative telos. Such dematerialization follows from dualism in that Platonism is suspicious of and opposed to the
body; there is an antagonistic relationship to the body. Weiss, sets up a cosmic competition between the eternal and temporal since his structure of reality ultimately supplants the sensible world. That is, the real competition is between the athlete and the
Eternal Form with strife and conflict the hallmarks of this ontology. Weisss metaphysic
contradicts his description of competition in that violence winsviolence to embodimentsince the Eternal finally wrests control from and dominates the athlete (Weiss
1969, 150151). What is Eternal only vaguely permits the athlete to strive in his doctrine
of participation, because the telos ultimately mutes the athletes performance, making
this more against and less a testimony of and a testifying with athletes.
Excellent bodily performances, consequently, get swallowed up by and identified
with the eternal. The athlete is merely a characteristic particular of what is everlasting.
Weisss athlete loses his personal identity and becomes a passive player who is an
instrument or a channel of the divine. Depersonalization is an inescapable attendant
effect in Weisss quest for excellence. In the end, this is not this athletes performance,
because Weisss metaphysic and telos deny credit to an athlete. The performance is all

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about the great transcender as the generative source of the eternal which is beyond
this world. For all his rich phenomenological account of sportive acts, his athletes lived
experience becomes thin and lacks durability, robbed of its personal texture as a thick
community practice.
In sum, Paul Kuntz is correct that Weisss religious metaphysic orders how an
athlete ought to open herself up and relate to superior Being. When Weisss athlete
completes her task with excellence, bodily performance is merely a signpost referring to
what is eternal, true, good and beautiful. Consequently, bodily reality and performance
are not indispensable to who and what human beings are. As a religious philosophy
applied to sports, it is so eternally (heavenly) minded that it has limited earthly good.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank John Byl and Shirl Hoffmann for their insightful comments on an
earlier draft of this manuscript. I also would like to thank two anonymous reviewers
for the journal for helpful comments which improved the clarity of the final version of
the paper and Stacy Lubbers for her assistance in formatting this paper to meet the
journals specifications and compiling the accompanying bibliography.

NOTES
1. Weiss states that sport is a subject for which humans are serious about and for which
philosophical reflection is worthy. His purpose is to illuminate instances of general principle which may have been hidden or neglected (Weiss 1995, 656; Dombrowski 2009,
3739).
2. Weiss, Sport, viii. See also Feezell (1981).
3. Dombrowski, Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals, 3839. Cf. Dombrowski
(1995).
4. Loland, Normative Theories of Sport, 116; see Simon (2004) who rehabilitates the moral
status of competition as a mutual quest for excellence, which when this goal is satisfied
then competition in principle and in practice is not only ethically defensible, but also
allows members of this practice to share in a plurality of goods that a zero-sum logic
itself precludes. This mutuality of achieving excellence has been helpful in terms of teleological accounts of sport in the sport ethics literature.
5. Weiss, Sport, 4. Because Weiss used the masculine pronoun almost exclusively, I have
tried to drop this altogether for the sake of gender inclusivity, or avoid it when context
and referencing Weiss permits it, or balance it when it would have been awkward to
eliminate it completely based on Weisss original text.
6. Weiss, Sport, 14, 17. See Feezell (2004); cf. Feezell, Sport, Pursuit of Bodily Excellence or
Play? An Examination of Paul Weisss Account of Sport, 257270. Feezell examines
Weisss account of sport and insists that a more plausible explanation for why men (and
women) seek the good of sport is based on the classic accounts of play offered by
Huizinga and Caillois (Feezell, Sport, Play and Ethical Reflection, 5). Although I do not
directly critique Feezell in this essay, I do consider his hypothesis in my dissertation
(White 2011).

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7. Paul Kuntz identifies in Weiss a cosmos that is law-abiding; there is an ordered-realism
detected in the cosmos which gives directional structure to actualities (1995, 118138).
8. Weiss, Sport, 3. Weiss appears to give dignity to humankind and that some kind of hierarchy exists because humans possess abilities, like appreciating excellence, which other
beings do not.
9. I should note that my criticism of Weiss is not with bodily excellence in itself for when
excellence is properly understood in a larger axiology and narrative of sports (and a
robust anthropology) then it is one among many standards of excellence, which can be
used to judge whether members of a practice are doing well. My hang-up as indicated
by my entire argument is that Weiss fails to find a holistic way to conceptualize and
present it, though this should not detract from our indebtedness to his notion of excellence as an enduring value.
10. MacIntyre points this out in general when addressing arete in heroic societies (1984,
122).
11. See Reck (1995), for he draws similar conclusions in regard to Weiss four modes of
being for each mode is imperfect and in need of the other modes, one of which is
God. In an odd sort of way, these different modes appear to resemble what some theologians more recently refer to when discussing how the Trinity functions as a social
ontology for togetherness is central to how each of Weisss modes interpenetrate and
relate to each other.
12. For a more detailed metaphysic on how actualities relate to other actualities and to
final reality, Actuality, an ultimate of Being, see Weiss (1971, 678679). This inner teleology is another Aristotelian commitment on the part of Weiss.
13. Weiss, Sport, 6. Weiss makes this point in reaction to Aristotle. According to Aristotle,
since God preoccupies himself with the most pure and noble thoughts, then our philosophical investigations should not be wasted on such common and popular activities
like sport for it could not contain significant truths. However, Weiss believes this is ridiculous for our speculations begin with an ordinary world that is imperfect, impure and
corrupt. It might appear that these predications are similar to what a theist means
when she claims the world is fallen. But I do not believe he does as my reasons bear
out in my argument. Weiss holds that actualities in their existence in one sense are not
structurally good.
14. Weiss purports that evil is not ontologically necessary but then later subscribes to the
belief that in this world evil is metaphysically necessary in order for this world to be.
Again, I sense a dualistic hypothesis especially in Mans Freedom where evil will always
be in existence, our cosmos always had and always will have evil, for he claims that it
is the essence of things to urge, impress and impose their goodness on others without
limit (Weiss, Mans Freedom, 244).
15. Weissian scholars may object because Weiss himself saw the defect of his earlier
pre-modal ontology. However, Reck asserts that this formula of incompleteness
pervades all his later thinking, and beside the fact Weiss, in Sport, operates from this
ontology (Reck, The Five Ontologies of Paul Weiss, 141).
16. Reck, The Five Ontologies of Paul Weiss, 144145. Reck identifies Weisss connection of
morality to ontology which means creatures from their beginning live in this dynamic
state between nothingness and being. Perhaps, Weiss diagnoses our radical contingency which has him recoil both at the shock of nonbeing and our inability to comply
perfectly with Gods obligations. Becoming is under the duress of guilt simply because

PURSUIT OF BODILY EXCELLENCE

we are finite creatures. Granted our existence is fragile; however, Weiss contends our
guilt is substantive because when human beings stand in the presence of God, they
inescapably are ontologically guilty. This guilt is a state identified with our existence.
Even if human beings cannot meet all of their moral obligations as creatures, Weiss
places them in a cosmos where each actuality strives to atone for this condition
through their achievements. In fact, in Mans Freedom, Weiss, he states that man
reduces his guilt to the degree he perfects others and himself (Weiss, Mans Freedom,
262). These achievements when identified with excellence hook them up to a God who
eventually realizes the ought that mankind falls short of. In sum, human beings are
guilty as substantial entities because their being when put beside finality like God lacks
the fullness of his being. I am not sure how hope ever figures in because this appears
to be a never-ending struggle unless pantheism is accepted so that our being is
absorbed into the Ultimate itself, where all such good and evil distinctions are irrelevant. Weiss dogmatically avers that even God cannot atone for the absolute guilt native
to our human constitution for this obligation can never be fulfilled (Weiss, Mans Freedom, 262).
17. My use of the ladder metaphor is purposeful in that in Platos dialogue (1997),
Symposium, Diotimas speech (211a-c) describes the quest for universal beauty as a
climb to Eternal Beauty. This trek involves stepping from rung to rung of a ladder
beginning first with lower (temporal) beauties and leading eventually to the Form of
Beauty beyond the physical world. For Weiss like Plato, the goal is to journey toward
the transcendent ideal which implies that our participation in or encounter with
excellence (Beauty) on this earth has only instrumental value for any experience with
excellence in the here and now is partial and impure. The excellence we are attracted
to in sports draws us ultimately out of and beyond this world because the Form or
source is not in or of this world.
18. Weiss, Sport, 244. The italics are mine for the purpose of noting the metaphor. Weiss in
an early publication, Mans Freedom, divides humanitys modes of life into practical and
theoretical. The former concentrates on the real and the latter on the ideal. I believe
these divisions relate to the athlete and the scholar modes that Weiss invokes broadly
throughout Sport but with some variations.
19. Weiss, Sport, 156. Weiss develops the separateness of games from ordinary time in
chapter 10. Weiss revisited the concept of games years later with views which are comparable to MacIntyres notion of practice. See Weiss (1980). MacIntyres notion of practices is important when evaluating excellence in regard to the social imaginaries and
social contexts of modern sports, that is, the institutions of sports, economic markets,
political systems, labor-relations, owners, media, etc. all of which discipline sports with
alien aims, external goods, that habitually undermine standards of excellence intrinsic
to sportive practices. William Morgan, working with MacIntyres definition of practice,
perceives that there are competing visions between the institutions of sports and the
practitioners of sport (See Morgan 1994). Certainly, there is a tension between the two
but institutions do support practices even if they routinely corrupt them with the
weight they place on extrinsic goods. My point is that the line between the two is
blurred and we cannot conclude marketers, for example, do not appreciate the pursuit
of excellence by the members of the practice-communities, even, if marketers at the
same time push sport as play more toward work because of what it can promote and
produce. I do not intend to resolve this real world dilemma and how sport practices are

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20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.
28.

vulnerable to the influence and logic of institutions, but I mention it so that we remember that the formal logic of sports and its relative autonomy are also inextricably
embedded in a wider network of values and institutional contexts.
Weiss, Sport, 244. My criticism of how Weiss denigrates temporality and materiality
equally applies to how cultural practices such as art have been devalued. If, however,
we see art and sports as particular practices which fully engage us in basic goods constitutive of who we are as embodied creatures, then there is no apparent reason to
denigrate or privilege other activities over these practices. Moreover, with both art and
sport, what attracts and fascinates people are standards of excellence or beauty which
the mode of play makes sense of for each practice (see Kretchmar 1992).
See Weiss (1971, 268). Weiss recognizes the artificiality of sport for it is detached from
everyday drama but it is this vital struggle toward excellence which characterizes ordinary life for all men, including sportspersons. I believe Weisss agonism is not only a
physical struggle endemic to the logic of sports, but, because of his Platonism, this agonism is spiritual and thus, as a form of asceticism, his teleology purposes to turn away
from and do away with the body.
Protagoras 322a; Symposium 208b; Republic VI 486a; Phaedo 100c. I acknowledge that
there are other readings of Plato (e.g. see Badiou 1999); however, I follow the traditional
interpretation of Plato.
David Carr concludes that one serious hindrance to using Platos metaphysical fiction
for constructing an account of the value of sportive activity is dualism, which Platos
asceticism precludes our bodily grounded passions from being educative for human
excellence (2010, 13).
Weiss, Sport, 11. Cf. Feezell, Sport: Pursuit of Bodily Excellence or Play? 261. Perhaps, it
need not be mentioned but Weisss focus on young men alone is sexist and difficult to
uphold, for Ellen Gerber persuasively argues that women just as much as men live in
their bodies and women can enhance themselves by having good bodily experiences.
Weiss claims women are naturally one with their bodies while young men must learn
to subordinate their bodies (Gerber 1979, 186).
In addition to my criticism above, Weisss picture of young, fit and healthy men constitutes a cult of the body in that he idealizes and objectifies a quest for perfection which
implies a rejection of those bodies that are disabled and unable to realize strength and
manliness. Therefore, his ideology of the human body not only alienates women but
handicap people whose bodies appear recalcitrant and broken when compared to
Weisss able-bodied Actuality.
Feezell points out that Weisss emphasis on young men is counterintuitive in that excellence is not age-specific for many older people (and women!) equally participate to
experience bodily excellence among other goods native to sport; and further, this
betrays Weisss own lack of sport-specific experience as an outsider to this phenomenon. See Feezell (1981, 257270) and Feezell (2004, 318).
See Spivey (2004, 1116) and Kyle (2007, 198216), for a thorough overview of the
motives, myths and mobility of Greek Athletes.
Dombrowski drew my attention, from his consultation of Miller, to the fact that hero
was a technical term in ancient Greece, and what makes a hero depends on certain criteria (i.e. a person who achieved a semidivine status) of which might not be related to
their athletic accomplishments (Dombrowski, Contemporary Athletics, 1328). See also
Miller (2004, 160165). However, Kyle points out that our data about ancient athletics is

PURSUIT OF BODILY EXCELLENCE

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.
34.

35.

36.

incomplete, unreliable and some of the so-called heroes (e.g. Theagenes of Thasos) of
ancient Greece might not meet Millers supposed criteria (Kyle 2007, 198216).
See Belliotti (2008). Belliotti never mentions Weiss but his analysis of Lombardi draws
out the value of winning and excellence which in many ways parallels Weiss, yet more
concretely with Lombardi as an insider and American football coach.
See Taylor (2004). My tacit movement between Weisss myth or social imaginary and its
implication for sportive practices assumes, for elucidation purposes, some of Taylors
poetical concepts, though there is purposeful irony for Weisss transcendence fails to
hook up to this real world.
Taylors Catholic sacramental imagination envisions a world where the transcendent is
miraculously present in the quotidian, enchanting the ordinary and therefore not flattening everyday life experiences. It would seem that Weiss aims for something similar
because of his pre-modern sentiments (Platonic-modeled cosmology) but the scope of
his work (especially in his Metaphysical Excursus) does not allow for mutual relations
which thoroughly remain part of this world, and thus his telos instrumentalizes and
empties this world of any ontic goodness.
For a careful delineation of Nietzches criticism of idealism (which guides my own reading of Nietzsche) and what this implies, because this metaphysic is antagonistic toward
the earth and thus, diverts faithfulness from earthly performances to another world, see
Hovey (2008).
For an argument that detects idealism in Shirl Hoffmans Christian theology of sport,
see White (2012).
To be exact, Feezell argues that the problem for Weiss lies not only with his outsider
stance, that is, his reflection on sport is a second-order activity without first-order experience, but also with how sport experiences are instrumentalized for they are undertaken primarily because of a goal (telos), namely that-for-the-sake-of-which (Feezell,
Sport, Play and Ethical Reflection, 1518.). My point is that Weisss Platonic metaphysic
more plausibly determines his philosophy of sport than his stance on play or his teleology, since his teleology is made intelligible by his study of being and the nature of reality, metaphysical commitments. In conclusion, for Weiss, athletes can be properly
understood only by reference to Actuality which Feezell misses in his argument against
Weiss; and thus, he neglects the larger meta issues for evaluating an athletes attraction
to and concern for excellence, and in fact, Feezell never interacts with Weisss final
chapter, Metaphysical Excursus, which I argue throughout this essay is the hermeuntical key for unlocking his theory of sports.
See Ward (2009, 223). Though I am sympathetic to Radical Orthodoxys participatory
metaphysic which makes bodies heavy with meaning, my argument turns more on how
Weisss Eternal Form (the divine) enervates, competes with and depletes embodied existence.
For a helpful exposition of Platonic self-sufficiency, though I do not agree in total with
her account of Augustine, see Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 531535.

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John Bentley White, Practical Theology/Ethics, Baylor University, One Bear Place
#97126, Waco, TX, 76798-7126, USA. E-mail: John_B_White@Baylor.edu

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