5 - Ethics

Summary

Sport is full from top to bottom with normative notions and judgements: the team deserved to win; a player should have given the ball back; the referee’s decision was unfair; a particular move was against the spirit of the game; an incident was deceptive, perhaps even cheating; someone did the wrong thing, or right thing; there was a good outcome. These are example of normative judgements where normativity concerns what should or should not be rather than what is. The normative, I maintain, does not merely intrude into sport. Rather, sport is an inherently ethical space, which concerns right and wrong, good and bad, and what ought to be.