Value (ethics)

About: Value (ethics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21347 publications have been published within this topic receiving 461372 citations.

Program for a Sociology of Sport

Abstract: One of the obstacles to a scientific sociology of sport is due to the fact that sociologists of sport are in a way doubly dominated, both in the world of sociologists and in the world of sport. Since it would take too long to develop this somewhat blunt proposition, I will proceed, in the manner of the prophets, by way of a parable. In a recent discussion with one of my American sociologist friends, Aaron Cicourel, I learned that the great black athletes, who, in the United States, are often enrolled in such prestigious universities as Stanford, live in a sort of golden ghetto, because right-wing people do not talk very willingly with blacks while left-wing people do not talk very willingly with athletes. If one reflects on this and develops this paradigm, one might find in it the principle of the special difficulties that the sociology of sport encounters: scorned by sociologists, it is despised by sportspersons. The logic of the social division of labor tends to reproduce itself in the division of scientific labor. Thus there are, on the one hand, those who know sport very well on a practical level but do not know how to talk about it and, on the other hand, those who know sport very poorly on a practical level and who could talk about it, but disdain doing so, or do so without rhyme or reason. In order to be able to constitute a sociology of sport, one must first realize that a particular sport cannot be analyzed independently of the totality of sporting practices; one must conceptualize the space of sporting practices as a system within which each element receives its distinctive value. In other words, to understand a sport, whatever it may be, one must locate its position in the space of sports. The latter can be constructed by using sets of indicators such as, on the one hand, the distribution of practitioners according to their position in social space, the distribution of the different federations according to their number of members, their assets, the social characteristics of their directors, etc., or, on the other hand, the type of relation to the body that each sport favors or demands, whether it involves direct contact, body-to-body struggle, as in wrestling or Ameri-

Wrongdoing and Forgiveness

Abstract: To forgive a person for a wrong he has done has often been valued as morally good and as indicative of a benevolent and merciful character. But while forgiveness has been recognized as valuable its nature as a moral response has largely been ignored by modern moral philosophers who work outside the confines of a religious context.1 Where it has been discussed, forgiveness has been thought particularly difficult to define, and some have thought the forgiving response paradoxical or even impossible. I shall discuss some of these difficulties and suggest firstly that the value of forgiveness lies in the fact that it essentially requires a recognition of the wrongdoer's responsibility for his action, and secondly that forgiveness typically involves an effort on the part of the one wronged: a conscious attempt to improve oneself in relation to the wrongdoer.

Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching

Abstract: Plato's Symposium - eros, the beautiful and the good feminist reflections on the expansive self - sympathy, care and community play-doh, poetry and "ethereal things" the aesthetic background of inquiry and the teachable moment the education of eros - critical and creative value appraisal teaching and the logic of moral audience epilogue.